Today I wanted to do a simple port check (e.g., telnet webserver 80) from my laptop running Windows Vista Beta: "'telnet' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file." WTF? I run as LUA, so I tried as an admin in case it somehow masked it for Users - same. I know it's beta, but come on!

And don't even get me started on why Microsoft doesn't include a basic SSH client with Windows. But the same holds true for tar/gz support, and could we get a built-in PDF printer?!? I'm a big proponent of Microsoft, don't get me wrong, but these are some of the little reasons why I still dig OS X. And don't tell me it's a licensing issue - if Apple can afford to license PDF writing technology inside the OS, Microsoft should have no problems. But I'm sure they're trying to push MDI and/or whatever is the new Microsoft Reader format. You'd think by now they'd learn to be early adopters of industry standards instead of pushing their own proprietary formats into an established space!

# posted by Aaron @ 8:12 AM 0 comments

I just learned today about the OldCmp tool at joeware.net. A very cool tool with a lot of great features.

The funny thing is that about a year or so ago I wrote a series of scripts to do just this. Now I'm kicking myself for not doing a bit of research first - this would have saved hours of headaches. But I guess it was a good learning experience....

I know it's awful, but one thing I really like about my current job, especially compared to my previous position, is that I don't need to keep up on all the crazy security vulnerabilities. Previously, I was expected to be the expert on security updates, especially those for Windows, Internet Explorer, Office, etc. It's just so refreshing to be able to ... well, not ignore them, but just short of. I'm sure there are folks who would say, "as an IT professional you have to be knowledgeable on critical security updates!" I say screw it: turn on Automatic Updates, run with LUA, sit back and relax.

From New Scientist: Ultra-fierce DoS computer attacks on the rise

Not some weird deviant behavior or obscure disease, but a MS Research project. The home page has lots of links; this article provides a good summary of the project. I guess if I was a regular Slashdotter, I would have heard about this earlier.

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/BgInfo.html

My current client is using this on all servers. It's a great way to display basic system information right where any/everyone can quickly see it. It appears to be flexible enough that it could even be deployed enterprise-wide for desktops as well as servers. It would make help desk calls much easier if basic system information is constantly displayed on the desktop.

I got fed up with the pre-loaded software/utilities/crap on the new Toshiba laptop given to me by my new employer, so I decided to reload it using the Windows Vista Beta 2 (Ultimate Edition). After only a few days, so far so good. I haven't had a chance to really dig into it yet; I'm hoping that general experience through day-to-day activities will give me a good sense of the new OS. Fortunately (knock on wood) no major failures yet; so far it's pretty stable.

Stay tuned for more on Vista....

Download WMIDiag

"WMIDiag.vbs is a VBScript script designed to help you ascertain the current state of the WMI service on a computer. The download package includes the utility itself, a ReadMe file that discusses how the tool works (and how to best use it), and sample spreadsheets that provide information about the default WMI configuration on various versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system."

Written by Alain Lissoir of the WMI team at Microsoft, this is a fantastic tool for troubleshooting WMI issues. It's a first attempt at the tool and they plan on continually improving the product in the future.

Alain presented a webcast today on WMIDiag, it should be available in the next few days for offline viewing.

One thing that came up during the webcast: they encourage those who use it, especially when deployed via SMS, to send the results to wmidiag@microsoft.com so that they can parse the logs and improve the product. Fortunately this functionality is built-in to the tool via two switches.

I came across this recently in trying to locate documentation on AT to schedule a task as the Local System account:

Windows Server
Windows XP

From both articles: "Schtasks replaces At.exe, a tool included in previous versions of Windows. Although At.exe is still included in the Windows Server™ 2003 family, Schtasks is the recommended command-line task scheduling tool."

It's a great combination of AT and the Scheduled Tasks GUI.

In my attempt to segregate my professional and personal lives, I've decided to start a new blog where I can post tidbits about things that I encounter at work. Instead of continually spamming my friends and colleagues with interesting information, I'll just post it here. Instead of boring my family and friends with technology-related posts on my personal blog, I'll post it here. At the very least it will serve as a dumping ground for useful tips that I want to archive. And if anyone else gets something useful from it too, all the better.