Semi-regular web-link clearance – January 2010

How to Install GPMC on Server 2008, 2008 R2, and Windows 7 (via RSAT)

Can You See Me – Open Port Check Tool

Is a free utility for remotely verifying a port is open or closed. It will be useful for users who wish to check to see if a server is running [...]

"It’s not what you see that counts, it’s what you know is there”

In the news the other day, there were some photos of Jennifer Hawkins, and I got to thinking how we measure beauty.

And I wish I knew. There would be a dollar in knowing the formula for sure.  Googling around, I found this quote from Helen Razer, which might explain why Jen does nothing [...]

Lotus Notes Mail Exporting – add a feature, add a bug!

With v0.8, I added the feature “don’t create the same attachment, in the same attachment folder, if it already exists.”

And I added a bug.  The bug would crash LNME when this happened:

Find duplicate attachment file name Extract the new attachment to the %temp% directory.

It would crash if the “new” attachment [...]

Printer toner

Printer toner, depending on who you ask, is cancerogenic.

Or not.

The Material Safety Data Sheets I’ve seen, say not.  But I still wouldn’t breath toner in.

Now some of the printers I’ve worked on over the years, have conspired to leak toner over me. 

There was the StorageTek mainframe printer, with [...]

Australia Day – buy your kids a job

Ah, Australia Day, the day the British rowed ashore and claimed Australia for King George III.  Since 1988, it has been claimed by the politicians as a way to glad-hand the common folk and kiss babies.  Don’t believe me?  Our latest Prime Minister turned the announcement of the “Australian Of The Year” into [...]

Microsoft SMS 2003 goes extended support

SMS 2003 going extended support is not a real surprise.  It’s replacement, Microsoft SCCM 2007, has been out in the market place since November 2007.

It isn’t that big a problem for the IT Shop I work in.  Our SMS 2003 infrastructure is mature, and we’re running stable client operating systems.

And as I [...]

Semi-regular web-link clearance (2) – January 2010

Dealing with VMs, Snapshots and the dreaded broken security channel

The problem with that perfect world is that you might want to snapshot a single machine to perform a what-if test and then be able to roll back if the idea is a bust. But if you do not snapshot all the VMs at [...]

Remove hidden data from Microsoft Office documents.

I was sent a word document with "hidden data" in it.

"Hidden data" in Microsoft Word documents can be one of several bits of information, such as hidden data, change tracking, or even comments on the document.

Comments.

Such as this example:

This problem isn’t just limited to Microsoft Word, oh no.  It [...]

Reading the end of a log file with PowerShell

I needed to read the last line of a log file.  PowerShell made it very, very, easy.

All you need to do is Get-Content the file, and then pipe it to Select-Object with the –last parameter set to 1.

Here is the code snippet which does that:

$failure_reason = (Get-Content $file_txt | Select-Object [...]

16 Mobile Friendly Web Sites

This collection of (mainly Australian) mobile phone friendly links was something I put together (almost) a year ago. All the links still work from a mobile phone, which was a surprise that some of them are still around..  Some of the links, such as cricinfo, do not work from a normal web browser. Do [...]