Meet the newest member of the family at:

http://brennenkeith.spaces.live.com

I'm an administrator not a programmer.  Nevertheless, this morning I needed a script to determine the differences between two files; counting adds, deletes, and changed records.  Seemed simple enough, but the results weren't coming out right.  I spent almost 20 minutes adding debugging and looking at the output before I realized what was wrong.   I prepared the input files using the Windows sort command which sorts without regard to case.  My string comparisons (>) in my script were doing a binary compare where lower case letters have higher values than upper case letters.  A quick change to uppercase for the comparison and everything matched up fine.  Now back to the REAL project which is to figure out how to apply these changes to AD correctly.

I hate old computers.  They aren't like broken betamax VCRs or 8-track players;  you can give those away to people without  them asking questions.   I had an old power mac (5400?)someone rescued from a dumpster a few years ago and gave to me. I used it  to demo Services for Macintosh with for a number of classes, but recently the training center asked me to go pick it up when they started doing renovations.  So I lugged it home.   It sat in my office until I needed the space to set up a windows 2003 server; then it was headed to the garage, but only made it to the living room. 

This morning my wife announces she is off to help with a garage sale.  In an instant I say "here, give them this", and put the mac in the back of her car.  "Genius!"  I think.   Off she goes.   

Five minutes later while in the shower the phone rings.  I get out and answer just in case it might be important.  It's the wife.  "Where are all the cables?"   The Mac had a keyboard and a mouse.  What other cables?  Oh yeah,  the power cord.   "It's just a standard power cord" I say.

"Do you have one?"

"Sure, I've got a million of them"

"Can you bring it by?"

... At this point I start feeling a lot less smart...

"um, I'm taking a shower, can I call you back?"

"Oh okay"  -click-

So then I start thinking, when was the last time I actually used the thing?  I had it in the office and I remotely remember putting a version of IE on it and trying to surf the web.   Hmm, did I configure it to pop mail too?   Oh gee,  I wonder if any of my email may be on there.   I wonder if I've changed my password since then.  Damn.

Then I realize that the "do you have the power cord" isn't the kind of question someone who knows what they are buying and getting into asks.  It's the first of several questions including "do you have the manuals", "do you have the CDs it came with", "Why doesn't this game I bought at Wal-Mart work" and "can you come over to the house and look at it?"    Suddenly I have no intention of bringing over a power cord or going anywhere near the garage sale. 

I kill some time and watch "Battlestar Galactica" on the Tivo.   Perhaps they will forget about it.

An hour later the phone rings.   It's the wife.  

"Did you find it?"

"Yeah,  but... " (and I explain the situation. Thankfully she understands)  "Can you just bring it back home?"

"No, the guy who wants it already has it in the trunk of his car.  I'll tell him you couldn't find the cord."

Phew.   Somehow though I have a nagging suspicion this isn't over.   I better go change my e-mail password....

I ate at Taco Bell today. (yeah I know) There latest promotion was "win a million pesos."  Whoop-de-freaking-do.  I remember when they gave away cool stuff like free cinnamon twists.   

Actually it's not all that bad,  according to the cup a million pesos was about $88,000 when they did the 'official' calculation.  After taxes I could probably get a decent car.  But then I'd have to build another garage...

So anyway there is a number on my cup I need to enter into a website.   Taco Bell doesn't have free wifi or anything so you end up dragging a big consipicuous cup that looks like it might hold a half-gallon of soda back to the office.  I got my order to go, so I had to do this anyway, but I'm ranting here.  

When I'm back at the office I go to the website first thing.  (If I just won $88,000 I'm sure not going to eat tacos for lunch.) First thing they want is me to register and give them an email address.  Yuck.  It's not that I don't have enough gmail accounts to generate a throwaway, I figure it just isn't worth that much of my lunchtime.  I switch to reading slashdot.   I eat my tacos.  Drink my drink.  (Well half of it anyway) Toss the cup in the trash.  Some dumpster diver can have it.  

I miss the old days when you could peel off a sticker and instantly win an order of cinnamon twists.  Another sign I'm getting old.

Walking in the backyard today and came across the varmits that have been digging holes in my yard.  Four baby armadillos!  I've been planing on bricking in the crawlspace since we redid the siding on the house, but never got around to it.  As a result it's been a haven for all kinds of critters.  Last summer it was baby skunks, so these aren't so bad, relatively speaking.  They are getting big, so I expect they'll move off and find some other place to live soon.  They are quiet and aren't a problem, other than digging up the yard a little.    I took pictures for about 15 minutes and it didn't bother them a bit.  Usually they sleep during the day and come out at night, but today I guess they got hungry early. 

I've uploaded some pictures under Photos of the armadillos and some other critters that live in my yard.

For more information about armadillos click here.

One of the problems we had deploying machines with OEM installs of Windows XP is that the vendor (DELL) used the Windows XP Welcome instead of Mini Setup.  With the Windows Welcome it steps a new user through a few screens to set language and time zone and then creates a new local user that is administrator with no password.  We didn't want to have to have someone click through all this only to have to delete the user.   After a lot of searching we found that if you type [CTRL] [SHIFT] [F3] at the first Windows welcome screen you will get a EULA and then reboot into the sysprep factory mode.  From there you can then choose to use the mini-setup and reseal.  After the machine reboots it reads a sysprep.inf off of the floppy and configures itself unattended.  

Before machines reach our users we like to do some customization and preparation.  For basic security we put a lock on the case and configure BIOS settings to do things like allow the machine to boot only from the first hard disk and  to power on at 6:00am weekdays to get patches/ Antivirus/spyware definitions.  Of course we also set a BIOS password to prevent a user from messing with these settings. 

If you deploy Dell machines, Dell has a cool tool called the "Dell Client Configuration Utility" that builds a self extracting (and self-removing) executable to configure these BIOS settings.   We run it as part of our initial setup, however you can also use the packages after initial deployment to change passwords settings by assigning it to run in a startup script.   

The tool is relatively straightforward and easy to use. One tricky thing we found is that when setting a BIOS password the tool wants the old password, a space, and the new password.  If there isn't a password yet you still need to put a space before the password you do want.  

 You can get the Dell Client Configuration Utility here.

Finally I get to go somewhere!  I love home, but it's nice to get out once in a while.  I'll be attending the Windows in Higher Education Conference 2005 at the Microsoft Campus in Redmond from April 24-27.  

Considering that I've owned four previous models in the last ten years I wouldn't be surprised to have one of these in the garage someday...

http://www.autoweek.com/files/specials/2005_geneva/mx5/pages/1.htm

While wandering through Lowes this weekend I came across an 'Over the Range' style Microwave on discount.  It had been damaged  when someone dropped it on the top front corner.   The damage looked mostly cosmetic, and I just couldn't pass up getting a $300 microwave for $75.   (We were planning on buying one anyway.)   The cashier said we could return it if it didn't work.

I got it home, verified all the electronics and internals had survived and made some adjustments (hammer and pliers) to get the cover straightened out.  We broke it in with a bag of popcorn and it seems like it's going to be fine.  The only concern was that I had to adjust one of the door switches a tiny bit to get it to work.  The door seal looks fine, but I'm going to give it a once over with a Microwave leak detector before we install and use it.  With a minor blemish it will match the rest of our kitchen appliances in a way something brand new never could.