Information about joeware mixed with wild and crazy opinions...
My inner geek is coming out again…
Looks like they may have done it correctly this time. Though no one has yet to have properly explained to me why his pants stretch so much… I gain a few pounds and my pants rip right out in the crotch darn near every time. 😉
Better Quality Trailers here – http://www.apple.com/trailers/universal/theincrediblehulk/
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gsPiYvAUO3i7krLIdN-nv09fxkvQD90CE08O0
Chilean town giving free Viagra to senior citizens
SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — A working class suburb of Chile’s capital began handing out free Viagra to senior citizens on Wednesday. Lo Prado Mayor Gonzalo Navarrete said he launched the program because “an active sexuality improves the overall quality of life.”
About 1,500 residents of the working-class area are eligible to receive as many as four pills of the erectile dysfunction drug each month, the mayor said. They have to be at least 60 and be registered with the municipality’s health service.
“A doctor will have to certify that they suffer from erectile dysfunction and that their condition would not put them in danger of suffering cardio-respiratory side effects,” Navarrete told The Associated Press by telephone.
He said he has assured about US$10,000 (euro6,400) in financing for the program through the end of the year.
Some government insurance plans in the United States and elsewhere provide Viagra, but Lo Prado hands the 50mg pills out free, with no membership in any public or private insurance plan required.
Navarrete said some other mayors in the Santiago area, which includes 34 municipalities, have told him they plan similar programs.
Navarrete said he did not know how many pills had been distributed so far.
I know some of you may read that and choke on your bagel or candy bar or coke or whatever else you were shoving down your throat as you relaxed and sat back to read what I have to say today…
But I mean it!
I had an unfortunate issue where one of my virtual host servers started having issues with one of the Western Digital drives in it. This particular drive was in a MOBO RAID (Promise RAID) "stripe" set. This caused my server to act quite erratically and black screen (like a blue screen of death but worse because you have nothing to go on) and generally perform poorly. After a series of tests I worked out what happened. Unfortunately both my Exchange Server and my mail client machines were virtuals on that one host… So I lost Exchange and all of my PSTs in one fell swoop. I was devastated as you may imagine. Well you may not imagine it all… When I moved, my backup system "broke" and I never reset it all up. It was one of those, "I will get to it" items. Well busy schedule and Carbon Monoxide poisoning prevented me from worrying about it and voila, several months later, here I am with broken pieces and a need for a backup but that backup was almost 6 months old…
Long story slightly shortened, the Promise RAID "Stripe" set apparently wasn’t a stripe set because I noticed while trying to copy files off, some worked fine, some didn’t work as fine and actually hung the box. So I worked to get as much off as possible and soon realized that the symptoms added up to the "Stripe" set where the data is interspersed on both drives equally in stripes (hence the brilliant name) was actually implemented as a volume set… I.E. The info was written to one drive and then slowly crawled onto the second. Luckily, 3 DCs and my client’s Data logical virtual drives were all on the "good" disk and the Exchange server, one DC, and my client’s OS disk logical virtual drives were on the "bad" disk. Using the command line virtual disk mounting tool in Virtual Server I mounted my client data virtual disk and immediately copied the gigs and gigs of PSTs off and to about 10 different other machines. 😉
So only thing left was to rebuild a DC and the Exchange Server… Well I wasn’t relishing the Exchange Server rebuild as I had a lot of custom settings… Well my good friend and coworker and co-MVP buddy old pal Brian Desmond casually said in IM… why don’t you just use "setup /disasterrecovery" (dumbass)[1]. I was like… hmmm never heard of it, my Exchange servers don’t do that normally. Let me try it…
WOW. Very cool. I was very impressed. Worked like a dream. I was, at that moment, thinking, hey the Exchange team did something right here. I was quite happy as all special configs I had were all in place and bam things just worked. Very good.
Of course if I look on this in the slightly negative way I could say… why is it that one of the best implemented features I have found to date was the disaster recovery option??? Have to run that much around the world? I will just assume they thought it was exceedingly important to get right and exceedingly easy to do because all of the data was in AD already. I am glad it ran that well. If it didn’t, it is quite likely I would be running a FreeBSD mail server right now because honestly, Exchange is running in my house for two reasons. First, it is for testing things to see how it impacts AD and of course for my ExchMbx utility and second, I need a SMTP/POP3 landing zone server and that is all it is.
BTW, some folks I consider to be good friends now are over on the Exchange Dev team and I know we will see amazing things because of it. I look forward to when their influence is helping us all out.
joe
[1] Brian didn’t say dumbass, I just inferred it from how it was said. 😉
So maybe not a complete geek, this looks good too.
Deception…
Those who can…. do.
Those who can’t… beg.
– Me (in post to ActiveDir.Org)
I received the following email:
If I wanted to copy the IP Phone attribute of each user into Exchange Extension attribute13 for that user, would AdMod work? and if so, can you point me to and example?
This is actually extremely easy with adfind and admod since I added the -adcsv capability… This is however where you have to use the “special” formatting protocols in AdMod to describe what you want. This is what my friend Laura Hunter (Shutup Laura) calls the perl like syntax for doing things… There is a definite hint of perl with the {{ and }} but it isn’t perl. I just needed something handy to point out things that needed to be replaced.
So anyway, here is initial output of adfind trying to show the values
G:\>adfind -default -f “&(objectcategory=person)(objectclass=user)(ipphone=*)” ipphone extensionattribute13
AdFind V01.37.00cpp Joe Richards (joe@joeware.net) June 2007
Using server: dc2.joeware.local:389
Directory: Windows Server 2003
dn:CN=testuser,CN=Users,DC=joeware,DC=local
>ipPhone: testipphone
>extensionAttribute13: somevalue
dn:CN=testuser2,CN=Users,DC=joeware,DC=local
>ipPhone: testipphone2
2 Objects returned
As you can see, one already has a value in the extensionAttribute13 and one doesn’t.
Then you run the following command (all one line but it may wrap…) (oh and don’t mind the ##BETA## in there, that is my personal version of admod that has bugs in it…
G:\>adfind -default -f “&(objectcategory=person)(objectclass=user)(ipphone=*)” ipphone -adcsv |admod -unsafe extensionattribute13::{{ipphone}}
AdMod V01.11.00cpp ##BETA## Joe Richards (joe@joeware.net) June 2007
DN Count: 2
Using server: dc2.joeware.local:389
Directory: Windows Server 2003
Modifying specified objects…
DN: CN=testuser,CN=Users,DC=joeware,DC=local…
DN: CN=testuser2,CN=Users,DC=joeware,DC=local…
The command completed successfully
Now if I rerun the show the info command again…
G:\>adfind -default -f “&(objectcategory=person)(objectclass=user)(ipphone=*)” ipphone extensionattribute13
AdFind V01.37.00cpp Joe Richards (joe@joeware.net) June 2007
Using server: dc2.joeware.local:389
Directory: Windows Server 2003
dn:CN=testuser,CN=Users,DC=joeware,DC=local
>ipPhone: testipphone
>extensionAttribute13: testipphone
dn:CN=testuser2,CN=Users,DC=joeware,DC=local
>ipPhone: testipphone2
>extensionAttribute13: testipphone2
2 Objects returned
Very nice huh? Previously, that would have taken a script. Granted it would be a simple script but how nice is it to not have to write a script for something so silly?
The command uses AdFind to output a CSV file with the DN and iPPhone values and then AdMod scoops that up and writes the value in the iPPhone column for each object into the extensionAttribute13 attribute. Normally with AdMod if you want to set a value you specify
attribute::value
Since we are pulling data from the CSV file to insert, you tell it to grab that field and I have that set up to do that when AdMod encounters {{attribute}} like
attribute::{{attribute from CSV File}}
If you want to populate the same attribute name with that field from the CSV file… for instance you need to set the displayName of an object to the displayName value in the CSV file you can use this shortcut {{.}} to specify the displayName value from the CSV file… like so
attribute::{{.}}
I didn’t like typing displayname::{{displayname}} as much as the next person and figured, there should be a shortcut there…
You can also do manipulates of the data like merging it with other info, slapping two attributes together (say first and last name), bitwise operations, search and replace… See the CSV help in AdMod to see the manipulations possible… Just type
admod /csv?
or look at http://www.joeware.net/freetools/tools/admod/usage.htm
joe
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and stars;
you have a right to be here.
Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace
there may be in silence.
As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly, and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter,
for always there will be greater
and lesser persons than yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe
is unfolding as it should.
Enjoy your achievements
as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career,
however humble;
it is a real possession
in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you
to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself.
Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face
of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit
to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and lonliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe
is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery,
and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be careful.
Strive to be happy.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
– Max Ehrmann 1927
A DNS server that is dynamically handed its address is NOT the most useful device you could have on a network…
– Me (in a post to activedir.org)
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