Aaron Tiensivu's Blog

It looks like not a lot has changed since the March CTP of SP1. A big noteworthy detail is that Vista and Longhorn are officially supported now.

New additions:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/916940

Fixes:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=913090

Download link:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=cb6c71ea-d649-47ff-9176-e7cac58fd4bc&displaylang=en

Tiny URL version of the download link:
http://tinyurl.com/efgun

Sometimes it is handy to know what version of BIND someone is using on a site, especially when the people involved have no idea what BIND is or what you are talking about when you ask them.

Quick and easy way with the BSD/*nix version of nslookup:

“nslookup -q=txt -class=CHAOS version.bind. 0 dns.roflcopter.com"

Server: dns.roflcopter.com
Address: 127.0.0.1#53
version.bind text = "9.2.4rc6"

So, if 'dns.roflcopter.com' actually existed, they are running 9.2.4.rc6.

On any DNS server that I have running BIND, I tend to fake the version returned, so this isn't always accurate. You can accomplish this by setting 'version' within the options section of named.conf

For instance:

options {
directory "/var/named";
version "Go away"
};

Why? I don't like users knowing the version numbers of software I am running. Worms and script kiddies love looking in search engines/etc for versions of software that can be easily exploited. For instance if your system advertises that it is using "Whizzbang 1.0.1" and a new exploit comes out for any version of 'Whizzbang' earlier than 1.0.2, you will most likely have people trying to get in. Of course most scripts will just try a brute-force attack, and if you are vulnerable, you are already hosed.

A great resource for securing BIND by Rob Thomas (not singer), is located here: http://www.cymru.com/Documents/secure-bind-template.html

This can't be good. My primary data phone started reporting that it had an 'Invalid Battery', and considering that the battery and phone is less than a year old, it worried me a bit. I started getting more worried when I couldn't remove the cover. After a lot of hassle and prying, I was finally able to get the back off.

The battery is at about 110% to 115% size it normally should be - that can't be good. I've used normal chargers with it, so this has me a bit worried. Thankfully, I had a spare battery from my old v60i that I retired a long time ago and that is now in the phone.

I'm glad it didn't decide to explode. I'm curious how common this is. I'm going to end up taking the phone and the battery to Verizon tomorrow to see if I can get a replacement/explanation.

This seems to be a hot topic on the security front. I can see both sides of the coin on this one though. Essentially, there are a list of domains and hosts that the DNSAPI in Windows XP and 2003, and most likely Vista, that are essentially hardcoded into Windows.

The list of sites involved:

DomainScreenList:

windowsupdate.microsoft.com
windowsupdate.com
microsoftupdate.com
download.microsoft.com
update.microsoft.com

HostsScreenList:

microsoft.com
www.microsoft.com
support.microsoft.com
wustats.microsoft.com
microsoftupdate.microsoft.com
office.microsoft.com
msdn.microsoft.com
go.microsoft.com
msn.com
www.msn.com
msdn.com
www.msdn.com

You can watch the story unfold here:
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/431032/30/0/threaded

My take on it? I think it was done on purpose to help prevent malware/virus writers from overriding/hijacking "valid" sites, and in turn, allowing a direct path to MS to grab updates, when a box has been compromised. A lot of people are up in arms about it but I don't think it is that big of a deal.

A few years ago, 2 friends of ours ended up getting married and my wife and I were the first ones to get access to the wedding reception guest book. I had since forgotten about doing this but while they were packing up their house to move, they stumbled upon their wedding guest book and went through it again.

This time though, they noticed that when I signed the guestbook, in the comment section, I put in big bold letters, "FIRST POST!!!11!!!", much like the overused internet cliche.

Apparently they were laughing so much tonight that their cheeks were hurting, so I guess that means mission accomplished.

I’ve always wanted a piece of software like this. I could have used it when working on a VBrick codec problem a few months ago.

You could think of it as VMWare’s ‘snapshot’ technology, without using VMWare.

For instance, say you want to test out a new version of Adobe Acrobat. You install it while this software is running, and it takes note of all the system changes. Later on, you decide that you don’t like the new version of Acrobat, so you want to remove it without relying on the uninstall program to do the right thing. Bang, just reverse the ‘layer’.

It is free for personal use so I’m definitely going to give it a whirl.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1941377,00.asp

Ah yes, more quality driver code from HP strikes again. It looks like it is possible that the Share-to-Web namespace daemon doesn't process callback calls and/or signals correctly because anytime that the new VERCLSID.EXE tries to validate the .EXE, hpgs2wnd.exe will cause VERCLSID.EXE to hang.

There are workarounds listed here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918165

The ideal, and best, fix is for an update from HP but unless a lot of people complain, I have a feeling it will fall on deaf ears unless things have changed at HP.

Wow.

I would be kind of cool to be on this migration team.
"Yeah, let's power down this Pentium and replace it with this Opteron"

http://www.woodtv.com/global/story.asp?s=4771988

Seems like they could have scheduled it a little better, as mentioned in the article:

"The upgrade is unprecedented and comes at a time notorious for severe weather in West Michigan. The National Weather Service will be shutting down one of its largest eyes on the sky for five days; five days with little to no radar."

Windows Defender has been updated with a tweaked UI (again) and marks the return of the system tray icon if you want it there all the time. Believe it or not, this was a hot topic in some circles.

http://blogs.technet.com/antimalware/archive/2006/04/13/425175.aspx

Someone on the Anti-spyware team still posts on Something Awful from time to time as 'Microsoft Spy', thankfully, that usually gives us a heads-up when a new build is coming.

The EEC, for those that don't know, is essentially the place where Microsoft will replicate complete customer sites inside their own network to either work out problems and test out configurations. I was lucky enough to tour (and drool at) this section of Microsoft last October during the Windows 2003 R2 Beta tour.

If I had seen this job posting in 2002 and hadn't been dating my then girlfriend (now wife), I would have been applying instantly. Although, in 2002, I was only an MCSE 2000 and I had no idea what the EEC was.

Now, I'm too rooted in my house, job and family to go after it. It does look like a dream job though for someone.

I like my house, like my current job, and like Michigan in general too much to move to Redmond.

Job link is here:
http://blogs.technet.com/eec/archive/2006/04/14/425246.aspx

I've been looking into bridging our CRM 3.0 installation with the billing section of Quickbooks so we can do simple imports and exports of data between the two. So far, as far as I can tell, this might be more work than I initially suspected. Although not directly related to this, I did find a good write up on how the callout functions have evolved from 1.x to 3.x

I like doing little 'quickhack' widgets from time to time that do functions like this, but it looks like this will be more than just a quickhack.

A CRM-centric blog, and the callback info I talked about, can be found here: http://blogs.msdn.com/mikemill/archive/2004/12/09/279021.aspx

Subject line says it all pretty much - although there of course is a lot more involved than just that. A blanket statement like that doesn't cover all the aspects of BitLocker in Vista.

They have opened up their own blog which is worth a visit at: http://blogs.technet.com/bitlocker/archive/2006/04/14/welcome.aspx

It is always cool to see a former coworker in the spotlight on the internet, and he's always been generous enough to answer my sometimes esoteric and unusual questions over IM when I really needed it.

He's out on his own now and if you are in need of Citrix help, make sure to check out his new (work-in-progress) website at http://jeffpitschconsulting.com/

I don't get any money or kickbacks for providing the link. I figure it is the least I can do for all the questions he's answered for me in the past.

Since the new work building is very close to M-6 (South Beltline), I wanted to see what the recommended route was from Troy to the new building, and M-6 finally showed up on the mapping software provided by Yahoo maps / NavTeq.

Only took a few years.

I'm hoping other mapping providers start using M-6 for routes because it is a great way to avoid 28th street.

To quote some other lyrics, "Snakes are shedding and so am I"

My car lepersy seems to be subsiding and I've got a 2005 Dodge Neon to call my own. Low mileage, and there are a lot of fanatics that are helpful over at http://www.neons.org

I tend to keep cars until they no longer function. I did that with my original Dodge Colt in the high school and college days, to the Ford Aerostar, to the Dodge Stratus, and now I pan on pretty much doing the same with the Neon. The only difference this time is that the Neon only has 22k miles on it whereas previous cars usually already had over 50k on them. Even though we have 2 little ones, this car makes the sense for me since I drove the most overall and this gets well over 30 miles per gallon in a world with ever rising gas prices.

I looked into hybrids but unfortunately there seems to be a lot of waiting lists and cars going for more than retail. I am hoping my next vehicle will be some sort of hybrid and by that time, prices will have normalized and there will be a decent amount of supply to meet demand.

Thankfully with good credit, good home equity, and a clean driving record, I was able to get everything arranged pretty easily. Insurance wasn't much more than the 1999 Stratus because of the good crash test results of the Neon compared to the Stratus.

All in all, after a lot of research and tension, I think I made a good choice. It is also a reason I've been so silent the past few days. If I wasn't at work, I was researching cars and cleaning up the Ford Aerostar and Dodge Stratus for sale. When I was at work during lunch time, I was working on bank commitments.