A wise, long serving public servant once told me:

Everything goes in a circle.  First we de-centralised to give control to each of the government departments.

Some years later, we centralised to save money and streamline management.

I was reminded of this today when I received an email about the latest company initiative.

Or as Sir Humphrey put it in The Whiskey Priest:

Bernard, I have served eleven governments in the past thirty years. If I had believed in all their policies, I would have been passionately committed to keeping out of the Common Market, and passionately committed to going into it. I would have been utterly convinced of the rightness of nationalising steel, and of denationalising it and renationalising it. On capital punishment, I’d have been a fervent retentionist and an ardent abolitionist. I would have been a Keynesian and a Friedmanite, a grammar school preserver and destroyer, a nationalisation freak and a privatisation maniac, but above all, I would have been a stark staring raving schizophrenic!

Trying to install my Lexmark X215 multi-function printer results in this error message under Vista:

I don’t know the actual cause, as I have 3GB of memory installed, but this workaround works:

1. Select “Add New Printer”
2. Select “Local Printer” instead of “Add Network Printer”
3. Select “Add New Port”
4. For the port name, type in the network path to your printer.
   ie. \\homeprintbox\lexmark
5. Click Next, and follow the remaining prompts.

And this is not the only way to resolve the problem. Over at VirtualTechSupport.ca, Simon writes about another way to solve the issue.  The printer he was having problems with was a Samsung ML-1710.
VirtualTechSupport.ca: Error when connecting to a shared printer with Vista

It’s still Symantec Ghost for me, but the next time around I’ll try free again.

Recently had to build a Linux system out of a Asus EEE Box PC.  The first step was to clone the hard disk.

There must be an open source utility I can use!
I thought …

So I tried G4L, and it was horrible.  It’s horrible because the user interface is difficult to use.

I wasted 1/2 hour on it.  And then tossed the G4L bootable CD hit the shredder.  It was so bad that I didn’t want anyone else to grab it off me.

Broke out a WinPE-based Ghost 8.2 disk utility.  It just worked, and that also reminds me that I need to create my own WinPE build (I’ll blog about it soon).

Since I was able to copy my Asus EEE BOX PC hard disk, I was able to build Linux on it.

And have a bit of relaxation time, to look around to see what other free hard disk copy utilities there are.

Here’s 8:

XXClone

• Windows based.
• Free version only does FULL backups

PING (Partimage Is Not Ghost)

• Linux based boot disk
• Looks very impressive

EASEUS Disk Copy

• Supports IDE, SATAI, SATAII, SCSI, Firewire(IEEE1394) and USB drives
     (Some products don’t support SATA …)
• EaseUS also have a freeware partition manager

DriveImageXML Private Edition

• Runs under Windows, and uses the Volume Shadow Services service.

CloneZilla

• supports multi-casting.

Macrium Reflect – Free Edition

• Runs under Windows
• Supports CD/DVD burning.

HD Clone – Free Edition

• available under Windows and as a standalone boot.

G4L

• Linux based
• Awful user interface.

Version two lists out all the other utilities I’ve heard of.

When I heard this announcement, I thought to myself, “Must get around to visiting General Motors Railway Station”.  Time elapsed, and I moved interstate for a while.

And General Motors closed.

General Motors Railway Station was used by shift workers at the General Motors Holden Plant.  The car plant closed in 1991, and the last train stopped there on the 26 July, 2002.  The station was closed, and with it, my chance to catch a train there.

Fast forward to now.

The station, as you can see, is a bit run down.  Vandals, taking their small-minded pleasure, are slowly destroying the old safe-working/ticket box.

Nature is also doing her part in trying to reclaim the space. 

You can find more photos of General Motors Railway Station at these places:

Victorian Railway Stations
Station pics by Somebody
Metf2nk

Some VBscript code which ACTUALLY works. I don’t understand some sites which share code. You go looking for VBscript code on the net to do something, and invariably IT DOES NOT WORK.

For one of two reasons:

• it’s a code snippet, and you need to write code around it to get it to work
• it’s a code snippet, which has been copied from somewhere else, where it did not work either.

The VBscript I’ll post in the CodeWhichWorks category will work because:

• I use it in a production environment, so I know it works
• I use it in a production environment, and I use this code as a memory jogger.

GetLoggedOnUser

Get the username, user domain & computer name of the user & computer which is running the VBscript.

'*********************************************************
' NAME: GetLoggedOnUser
'
' AUTHOR: Dale Robinson (WISEFAQ.COM)
' DATE  : September 2008
'
' COMMENT: Get the logged on user.
'
' Version: 1.0
'*********************************************************

Option Explicit
On Error GoTo 0

Dim bGotUserDetails
Dim sUserName, sUserDomain, sDisplay_ComputerName

Call fn_GetLoggedOnUser(sUserName,sUserDomain,sDisplay_ComputerName, bGotUserDetails)

If bGotUserDetails Then
   MsgBox "Username: " + sUserName + VbCrLf + "Domain: " + sUserDomain + VbCrLf + "Computer Name: " + sDisplay_ComputerName,,"User details"
End If

WScript.Quit

Function fn_GetLoggedOnUser(fnsUserName,fnsUserDomain,fnsComputerName, boolresult)
   ' get some common computer / user details.
   Dim objNet, objWSHShell, objEnv
   On Error Resume Next
   'get the username and domain
   Set objNet = CreateObject("WScript.NetWork")

   If Err.Number <> 0 Then
      boolresult = False
   Else
      boolresult = True
   End If

   fnsUserName = objNet.UserName
   fnsUserDomain = objNet.UserDomain

   'get the computer name
   Set objWSHShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

   If Err.Number <> 0 Then
      boolresult = False
   End If

   Set objEnv = objWSHShell.Environment("Process")
  
   If Err.Number <> 0 Then
      boolresult = False
   End If

   fnsComputerName = objEnv("COMPUTERNAME")
   Set objNet = Nothing
   Set objWSHShell = Nothing
   Set objEnv = Nothing
   On Error GoTo 0
End Function


You can download a zipped copy of GetLoggedOnUser.vbs here.

Yes, PrimalScript uses alternate data streams to remember where I’ve set breakpoints in my code.

(this prompt appears because I’m copying from NTFS volume to a FAT16 volume).

No, I don’t know how many matchsticks are in it, but you can Google that for yourself. Yes, I do agree he should have gotten some "F1 Babes" to model.

I was tempted to blog about the history of 404 errors, but some sad git splendid fellows, brave heroes, risking life and limb for Blighty!*, has beaten me to it.

My two favourite 404 pictures follow:

* ironically, checking this link from work results in the error "The Websence category Tasteless is restricted"
  and, yes, you might recognise the Blackadder quote

I’ve always suspected that Andrew Bolt is a BOT, and BlairBoltWatch/An Onymous Lefty might agree.

Saw this screen the other day when trying to view Andrew’s blog.

It explains why Andrew seems to post all hours of the day.