Aaron Tiensivu's Blog

They are still looking to fill my old job position. I've been asked to ask around so I have no problem doing so, and I'm still on good terms with the people there, so I have no problem posting this.

[snip]

Network Engineer
Located in GRAND RAPIDS

Candidate will be responsible for maintaining client networks onsite around West Michigan/Grand Rapids Area and maintenance tasks in our Datacenter. Must be a self motivator, have the ability to multi-task, and communicate effectively with team members and clients. Candidate must have solid experience with Windows 2000/2003, Exchange 2000/2003, SPS 2003, Citrix and Terminal Services. Candidate will make recommendations, design, configure, and administer systems, as well as handle daily support requests from clients and any duties assigned by manager. 3-5 years experience, MCSE, and other certifications preferred. Qualified applicants should e-mail resume, along with salary requirements to networkrecruiter@corpcomp.com

[/snip]

One behavior change that isn't well known to most people using Outlook and Exchange is that when you turn on cached mode on the Outlook client, your address book reverts to the Offline Address Book that is generated by Exchange/Outlook. By default the OAB is updated every 24 hours since the last time it was accessed.

Typically, that doesn't cause a lot of problems except when a new user is added or deleted from the GAL and all the cached Outlook clients still see the entries or don't see the entries that are now invalid, yet people running non-cached are perfectly fine. A lot of times you end up thinking that the RUS service hasn't done its job but it really has.

If you want your cached users to allows 'ping' to the live GAL instead of using the offline address book, use this registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Cached Mode
Parameter: DownloadOAB
Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 0x00000000

One thing worth noting: If users go offline with this registry setting, they won't have a GAL to refer to anymore, so it is almost better to setup the OAB to update more often if your Active Directory isn't huge.

More background information on OAB can be found here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/841273

Taken from the release notes:

[snip]

To grant access to a user whose Microsoft Office Outlook is configured for cached mode, but to deny access otherwise:

The ProtocolSettings attribute on the user object in Active Directory stores client access settings.

This attribute is a multiple-valued string property, where each string applies to a different protocol. MAPI access can be restricted by manually adding the following string to the ProtocolSettings attribute using a tool such as ADSIEdit:

MAPI§§§§§§§§

The eight § separators define exactly nine fields. The fields have the following meanings.

MAPI
Specifies that this string contains settings that apply to the MAPI protocol


0 to block all MAPI access; 1 to determine MAPI access based on Bool2


0 for no effect; 1 to deny access to non-cached mode Outlook clients

Remaining 6 fields
Currently not used

If there is no MAPI string in ProtocolSettings, all MAPI clients are allowed.

Note:

The access restrictions specified earlier do not apply in the following cases:
The client is an Exchange component (for example, the mailbox moves work correctly regardless of the MAPI access settings for the mailboxes) or the client is doing delegate access to the mailbox.

If the MAPI string does not have the eight separators and conforms to the expected data types, the behavior is undefined. The ProtocolSettings attribute is cached in the MBICache and in DSAccess, and these caches may delay the time that is required for a change in the ProtocolSettings to become effective.

[/snip]

Unfortunately, it doesn't handle the situation very "nicely". It will simply deny access to anyone trying to connect in with a non-cached connection.

Many thanks to anonymous commenter, "JC", for the tip on where to find this.

http://www.getfirefox.com is a nice download site now for Firefox.

Once in a while, I get asked what extensions I use and whenever I do a system buildup that I'm going to be using personally, I always grab these and they work with 1.5 already.

AdBlock Plus - http://p2.forumforfree.com/releases-vf3-adblockplus.html - This blocks most annoying web "features" of some websites.

Filterset.G Updater - http://www.pierceive.com/ - Autoupdating ad filter list for AdBlock Plus

FasterFox - http://fasterfox.mozdev.org/ - Tweaks a few common settings inside FF that I normally tweak anyway - Yes I know it breaks RFC specs if you fully enable it, but setting any of the HTTP max requests over 8 is pointless because FireFox is hardcoded to not go over 8 even if you specify a number above that.

Nightly tester tools - http://users.blueprintit.co.uk/~dave/web/firefox/buildid/nightly.html - Extension fixer-upper - Most people won't need this one but I typically run either the Branch trunks of the FireFox builds when a new release is coming out or sometimes I have other profiles that I use to run the Trunk builds when I feel like living dangerous. This forces potentially non-working extensions to run under new builds even if they might break your build. I used to manually edit the extensions, but not anymore!

I think this falls under the 'unsupported' umbrella by Microsoft but it is nice to know that it is at least doable for installations that don't need/want MSDE and would rather use the 'real' SQL for their WSS sites. I do believe you might be able to trick WSS into using SQL 2005 Express with WSS 2.0 SP2 but I could be wrong on it. I haven't tried it out personally but would be curious if anyone has had any luck with it.

Link on the details:
http://weblogs.asp.net/jan/archive/2004/02/03/66544.aspx

I get to use my current skills, hopefully as much as they were used at my last place of employment, and dive into a whole new area that I've always been interested in and wanted to learn about.

I'm one of those people that has to learn new things/etc to keep motivated and/or happy, so it is a perfect fit. I'll be doing more voice over IP and IP video security camera stuff as time goes on. Very exciting.

The commercial for XM with Paul McCartney has an editing error. In 2 shots, his acoustic guitar has a Red Wings logo near the back of it. In one of the shots in the middle of the commercial, it's gone. It seems to go by pretty fast but it definitely is either edited out on purpose, or it was a different guitar.

Yes, I'm one of those annoying people that notice these types of things. I can't seem to help it.

[snip]

1.1. What's New In Fedora Core 5 test1

* Xen virtualisation software and yum package manager are now well integrated within the Fedora installer. The installer interface is more streamlined. Remote logging and improved support for tracebacks is included.
* Pup, a graphical updater using yum, has replaced rhn-applet.
* GNOME 2.12 and KDE 3.4 desktop environments are available.
* GNOME Power Manager and GNOME Screensaver are available as a technology preview within this release.
* OpenOffice.org 2.0 final release is included. OpenOffice.org now uses system versions for many of the libraries leading to increased performance and efficiency.
* Xorg X11R7 release candidate 2 has been included in this release. This is the first modular version, which helps in providing additional features and bug fixes at a faster pace.
* Kernel 2.6.14 is included. Software suspend is enabled in this release.
* SCIM has replaced IIMF in Fedora Core in this release.
* There are changes in the animated mouse cursor theme.
* Fedora Project now has a new logo.

[/snip]

Hopefully it won't have the "Bloated Evlis" feel that FC3 and FC4 have. Even on a fast machine, FC3 and FC4 seemed to run a bit clunky.

Nothing says Happy Thanksgiving like a dead mouse in your furnace filter.

That's not what killed the furnace today though. A quick call to a furnace repair place with the LED diagnostic code, screw driver, and a couple Tim Allen 'More power' chants, and I had a working furnace again.

Lots of TTL based chips on a simple little breadboard on these Goodman furnaces, which I think got bought out by Amana. 6 LED flashes meant it had an open blowout (?) apparently. Resetting the switch on the blower did the trick, for about a half hour. After it had done that a few more times, which meant dismantling the whole side of the furnace each time, I made a 1am trip to Meijer's to get a replacement filter.

For being Black Friday, the place was empty, but I think the official sales don't start until 6am, which I'm thankful for. I try to avoid going out on the day after Thanksgiving. I'd much rather cocoon like a bargain basement Howard Hughes.

According to Consumer Reports, Goodman is on the bottom of the list for furnace reliability. If this *year old* furnace keeps breaking down (this is the 3rd time in less than a year), I'm biting the bullet and getting a different brand of furnace. Unfortunately, this is the furnace that came with the house. A brand new house. It is still under warranty for now, but I don't want to be stuck with a lemon and make these late night holiday emergency trips. It's supposed to be 96.6% efficient but I'm more concerned with "uptime" at this point.

I learned quite a bit about HVAC in the process, at least.

It is scary how she doesn't look 4 years old, but she really is. It is also scary how good of a photographer my wife is.

Reading this thing made my head hurt.
I have seen a lot of code like this though.

Apparently this has made the rounds around the Internet but it is the first time I've seen it.
It's a nice HOWTO on writing unmanagable code.

Yep, unmanagable.

http://thc.org/root/phun/unmaintain.html

This was my favorite:

void* Realocate(void*buf, int os, int ns)
{

void*temp;
temp = malloc(os);
memcpy((void*)temp, (void*)buf, os);
free(buf);
buf = malloc(ns);
memset(buf, 0, ns);
memcpy((void*)buf, (void*)temp, ns);
return buf;

}

I've seen this on a few Exchange servers now and it is a bit strange. Something tells me that either the setup program doesn't check the right spots, or possibly some post-SP1 hotfixes register a few IMF registry entries when they really shouldn't.

I haven't narrowed down the reasons why, since it is easy to just install the old IMF for real, then go right back into Add/Remove Programs and remove IMF for good. That seems to make the SP2 setup installer happy.

Very strange. I'm sure someone somewhere knows why, and if I had time, I'd run the setup program thru regmon to see which keys it is querying.

This is just plain neat and clever. I found it at: http://terminal.servebeer.com/php/reset_winstations.php

For /f "tokens=2" %i in ('QWinSta ^| Find /i "listen"') Do Echo y | RWinSta %i

In a perfect world, spammers would get caught, go to jail, and share a cell with many men who have enlarged their penis, taken Viagra and are looking for a new relationship.

As seen on bash.org

Oh, and they would have also worked from home, and just refinanced their mortgage, while high on all the drugs they got from overseas pharmacies.

Yep. Totally.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/downloads/activesync41.mspx

Hopefully, this version works with Windows Mobile 2005 on Axim X50v devices. I could never get 4.0 to work properly.