Aaron Tiensivu's Blog

A great example of how not every tool fits every scenario. It gives a lot of insight into the 'why' and 'why nots' of various technologies.

http://blogs.technet.com/mscom/archive/2006/02/13/419406.aspx

Their blog is usually a good read anyway. If I didn't like my house, land, and job in Michigan right now, I'd probably want to be working in that department. It is the type of stuff I love to do. Only thing that might eclipse that is the stuff that goes on in the EEC.

The main "Windows Live Mail" blog:
http://spaces.msn.com/mailcall

The new tech support "Windows Live Mail" blog:
http://spaces.msn.com/mail-support

The biggest thing I gleamed from the above is that Outlook Express is supported again so you can use the HTTP protocol for snatching what used to be HotMail.

Looks like I might have to yank IE 7 off one of my machines at home - it seems to totally break Money 2006. I don't know if previous versions have the same problem, but I suspect any version that uses the IE backend for most of its dirty work is going to be affected. I think that started happening around Money 2004.

Cool site of the day.

http://www.zillow.com

It doesn't have my neighborhood yet but it has houses that my family owns or has owned at one time or another.

I found out this weekend that the crib that Juliana has had about 14 "incidents" due to the manufacturer using the wrong screw size in the construction of the crib. I suspect that this is a 'spin' on what actually happened but I could be wrong. Maybe they got a better deal on batches of screws that were a slightly different size and the engineering department said 'Yeah that will work just fine'.

Either way, I know our crib is within the date range of the recall but they are less than helpful on actually finding where the serial number and model is located. I had to find a news report on the web on where to find it because the Simplicity website did not mention it anywhere.

Only cribs with wooden mattress supports and with model number 8740KCW SC and serial number 2803 SC (made the 28th week of 2003) to 1605 SC (made the 16th week of 2005) are included in the recall. We received this crib secondhand from my parents so that envelope is long gone. That is my biggest gripe about this all. If a company is going to make baby products, they should stamp the serial number and model somewhere physically on the actual crib. The website requires a serial number and model number to see if you qualify for the "retrofit kit", which just means they are either going to send you the right screws or some type of widget to make it baby safe.

Well, I simply put in one of the week codes of the recalled items to be safe because it was purchased between those dates, right smack dab in the middle of the recall pool.

If you think you have one of these cribs, please go to: http://www.simplicityforchildren.com/ourproducts/notice_aspen/index.htm

I'm tempted to write a letter to the company, but maybe I am overreacting.

There is a strange file that is called out in KB article 894351. It will look familiar to Exchange and Sharepoint 2001 people, although slightly renamed. "esentutl" - it looks like some of the JET database utilities have snuck into other parts of the OS. I know that was one of the selling points of Windows 2003. I know the WINS backend now uses the JET technology.

Anyway, if you are trying to reinstall IIS 5.1 and Windows complains about not being able to find "staxmem.dll", 9 times out of 10, it means that %windir%\security\database\secedit.sdb was shutdown incorrectly or invalid.

As a sidenote, everytime my local group policy would refresh, sometimes a svchost.exe for network services would crash and in turn, take down the laptop with it. Ever since I repaired local group policy database, I no longer get crashes. So if you are getting crashes every 15 minutes on the nose, which is the default refresh, you might want to do a repair on that file anyway.

So far, even the front page on R5.0.10 of the 3com NBX VOIP platform is rather broken. It looks like most of these web pages were constructed around 1998 and modified as time goes on. This isn't great news because I still work on some R4.1.77 boxes that I doubt will be upgraded anytime soon.

As seen here:

http://www.virtualization.info/2006/02/toutvirtual-launched-free-beta.html

ToutVirtual unwrapped the beta version of its ShieldIQ Standard Edition middleware, which monitors VMware's Player, Workstation, and GSX Server offerings. ShieldIQ gives users a bird's eye view of complex virtual environments that often share CPU, memory, and disk resources across a slew of applications.

Read more about it here:
http://blogs.technet.com/steve_lamb/archive/2006/02/10/419239.aspx

It is going to be a rootkit protection / virus / spyware prevention program.

In other news, a new build of Windows Live Messenger is out, and it's sort of a step backwards in the UI department I think. I know things are getting changed around but I like the old build better.

They are also giving away stuff for the bug bashes and random drawings from bugs.

The good: They are giving away a ton of XBox 360 games and other goodies.
The bad: I don't think I'll have an XBox 360 for a long time if we keep getting car, medical and adoption bills like we have the past few months.

I don't want to jinx myself but slowly we seem to be getting back on our feet financially. It's been a rough few months.

http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/VMware_Server_for_Windows/1139242993/1

http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/VMware_Server_for_Linux/1139242993/2

Color me excited!

http://www.virtualization.info/2006/02/breaking-news-vmware-to-make-server.html

I'm in the 'wait and see' mindset on this issue but I could see a lot of programs using it in bad ways.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/02/01/522481.aspx

This is only a preview release but it is too bad something like this has popped up already.

http://security-protocols.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3169

How to try out IE 7 Beta 2 Preview while keeping IE 6 (unofficially):

1. Grab http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/7/1/971d0256-739c-4445-a2fe-f980d7cf3252/IE7B2P-WindowsXP-x86-enu.exe
2. Extract IE7B2P-WindowsXP-x86-enu.exe with Winzip or 7zip (Open Inside) to a temporary folder, like "%ProgramFiles%\IE7"
3. Delete install.ins, spmsg.dll, spuninst.exe, spupdsvc.exe, and the 'update' folder from the extracted folder.
4. Create a blank text file in the extracted folder called 'iexplore.exe.local'
5. Run 'iexplore.exe' from the extracted directory for IE 7.

Fun fact of the day: [Alt]-Q also toggles between the old and new style menu system in IE 7.
Fun fact of the day #2: You can try out the new GPO ADM files that are extracted too.

Note: There have been reports that this method can make IE 6's HTTPS support unhappy.

http://www.artlebedev.com/portfolio/optimus-mini/

I still haven't built the external LCD I've always wanted to build on a USB port but this looks much more sexy.