joeware – never stop exploring… :)

Even though it was a rainy day I love this picture…

by joe @ 1:17 am. Filed under house stuff

I took this shot after doing the cleanup work last Saturday/Sunday. It is about 650 feet back from the road (350 from the house) and the property goes back about another 1000 feet behind where I took the picture and all you can hear are birds and frogs and fish jumping in the pond. The road is barely visible and the pond is extremely relaxing. I have to admit I am extremely lucky to have this. Even better… Wireless from my house works all the way out by the pond so I need to get some more picnic tables and set them up out there so I can enjoy even more how lucky I am. This evening the stars were crystal clear and the moon was out and looking stunning.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

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She wants to come out and play…

by joe @ 1:03 am. Filed under general

Rating 3.00 out of 5

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You are all over the map…

by joe @ 12:54 am. Filed under general

I have received a few emails lately that all pretty much comment about being “all over the map” with my quotes, etc. People asking, what in the world do you read, you seem to be a trifle eclectic in your tastes…

Why yes, that is true. I read any and everything pretty much. I have a huge library with a bunch of books from my grandmother, some dating back into the 1800’s. I can’t say I have read everything in it but I have read a lot and I buy a lot and several publishing houses have been sending me free books for years to “look over” or “comment on”. Thanks to them, keep it up, sometimes I start recommending those books…

But I think these people were mostly wondering about my personal tastes and again, I am all over the map. I think I mentioned this in a previous entry but right now I am reading a book on Root Kits, Dr. Phil’s Family First book, a book about Life’s Purpose based on the Celestine Prophecies book series), and any number of magazines including Mother Earth News, 5.0 Mustang & Super Fords, Popular Science, Playboy (yes I actually read the articles, though I don’t close my eyes for the pictures) and whatever else might catch my eye in the magazine rack.

My personal book recommendations are here –> http://www.joeware.net/books/funbooks.htm

I really should add Richard Bach’s Illusions which I have been posting quite a few quotes from lately. I have read and reread that book 10+ times over the years. You can pretty much read it in a single night if you really want to.

My all time best favorite hands down period author though is Robert Anson Heinlein. I grew up on Heinlein and my values and way of looking at life are taken from my parents and grand parents and close friends but also in great part from what I learned from R.A.H. in his writing. Just seeing “Time Enough for Love” in someone’s hands is enough to make me smile and tell them that is a great book and to enjoy it. So many other good books from Robert as well. Love them all. Heinlein is a sci-fi genre writer but his writing in sci-fi is just so he could give commentary on our current society, it is much easier to do that (and not be castigated) in sci-fi than most other genres I think. There are several sci-fi writers both in books and TV/Movies that do this. If you haven’t been interested in sci-fi but are interested in commentary on the human condition and society as a whole, try looking into some sci-fi. You may be mildly surprised.

joe

Rating 3.00 out of 5

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AdFind and the -list option

by joe @ 12:33 am. Filed under tech

I saw a posting that had a piece on AdFind at ActiveDir.org that made me want to post something to my blog here for anyone who doesn’t read ADOrg…

Basically one of the posters came up with a good way of setting local admin passwords on machines and part of the solution was to use adfind to get the list of machines. I was thrilled to see that but the command line was a little longer than needed but I don’t blame the poster… That is actually an issue with AdFind because there are soooo many options, sometimes you don’t see the cool option that you need. So in case anyone else is doing anything similar… here is some help for you

Basically the command used was

adfind -b ou=prodservers,ou=computers,dc=contoso,dc=com -f “objectcategory=computer” cn -nolabel -nodn | grep -iv “Objects returned” | grep -iv “Directory” | grep -iv “Using Server” | grep -iv “^$” > d:\servers.txt

The goal here is to get a list of computer names that doesn’t have my “shameless” AdFind Banner in the listing… I actually have an option explicitly to help with that when listing a single attribute… that option is called… -list

So instead of the command above using the grep’s to filter out some of the output, you can instead do something like

adfind -b ou=prodservers,ou=computers,dc=contoso,dc=com -f “objectcategory=computer” cn -list > d:\servers.txt

Much simpler, much cleaner, more pretty. 🙂

And in the spirit of perl… there is more than one way to slice this orange… You could also do something like

adfind -b ou=prodservers,ou=computers,dc=contoso,dc=com -f “objectcategory=computer” cn -nodn -nocsvheader -csv > d:\servers.txt

Granted that isn’t as elegant but it does quote the server names for you if you need them quoted.

Probably the one functional change I would make overall would be to dump the dNSHostName attribute instead of the cn/name. Why you ask? Well my dear reader, because you don’t have to rely on short hostname resolution… I would also change the filter to be an AND of the computer objectcategory tied together with dNSHostName having a value. If that attribute isn’t populated on the computer, it means the computer hasn’t successfully spoken to AD yet, why waste time on it? So how about…

adfind -b ou=prodservers,ou=computers,dc=contoso,dc=com -f “&(objectcategory=computer)(dnshostname=*)” dnshostname -list > d:\servers.txt

joe

Rating 3.00 out of 5

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The Golden Rule…

by joe @ 12:33 am. Filed under quotes

The Golden Rule doesn’t work. How would you like to meet a masochist who did unto others as he would have them do unto him? Or a worshiper of the Crocodile God, who craves the honor of being thrown alive into the pit? Even the Samaritan, who started the whole thing… what made him think that the man he found lying at the roadside wanted to have oil poured in his wounds? What if the man was using those quiet moments to heal himself spiritually, enjoying the challenge of it?

Even if the Rule was changed to Do unto others as they want to be done to, we can’t know how anybody but ourselves wants to be done to. What the Rule means, and how we apply it honestly, is this: Do unto others as you truly feel like doing unto others. Meet a masochist with this rule and you do not have to flog him with a whip, simply because that what he would you to do unto him. Nor are you required to throw the worshipper to the crocodiles.

– Richard Bach “Illusions”

Rating 4.00 out of 5

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Live Happily…

by joe @ 12:31 am. Filed under quotes

In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice.

– Richard Bach “Illusions”

Rating 3.00 out of 5

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A Butterfly…

by joe @ 7:52 pm. Filed under quotes

The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy.

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

– Richard Bach “Illusions”

Rating 3.00 out of 5

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Impossible…

by joe @ 7:32 pm. Filed under quotes

Do you think that maybe if you say impossible over and over again a thousand times that suddenly hard things will come easy for you?

– Richard Bach “Illusions”

Rating 3.00 out of 5

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Amazon you missed me on this one…

by joe @ 7:21 pm. Filed under rants

I have an ad for some new service Amazon has called subscribe and save. It is a service to order food and other type items like that through Amazon and have it delivered for free. Well I decided to look up an item I just bought last night, my favorite cereal… Cocoa Pebbles… Yes I am a goof but I still like them. Here is the link inside of Amazon for that

http://www.amazon.com/Post-Cocoa-Pebbles-Cereal-17-Ounce/dp/B000FKEWLS/ref=sr_1_34?ie=UTF8&s=grocery&qid=1210541653&sr=1-34

Now this is, according to the ad I have, supposed to be 10-15% cheaper than the everyday price… So what do they have here

5 x 17 ounce boxes for $27.10 which works out to be around $0.32 an ounce… This seemed high. I looked at the box of Cocoa Pebbles I got from Meijer last night and it wasn’t on sale (they often have 2 for 1 on the Cocoa Pebbles but I must have missed the most recent sale) and it was $1.98 for 13 ounces… That comes out to about $0.15 an ounce… No wonder shipping is “free” from Amazon on this service…

Rating 3.00 out of 5

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Dandelions

by joe @ 5:18 pm. Filed under house stuff

Call me weird but I actually like Dandelions, never got why people were so “out to get them”. I think they are really pretty. Our neighborhood was just covered in them the last few weeks well except for the neighbor across the street, I think they spray something to kill them off. They actually looked weird as they were the only house in the area whose lawn was green instead of yellow… The pictures just don’t do it justice.

Some of the pics are after I mowed (didn’t want to but had to or else I wouldn’t have been able to get through the grass later) so the number of dandelions got knocked down a notch or two for a day.