Posted by Jim on December 19, 2009
Looking to increase your twitter contacts, both followers and people you follow? Take a look at the services provide by <a href=http://twitterfriends.org?i=storpappa>twitterfriends.org</a>. Twitter Friends let you search on up to 5 categories, to locate people with similiar interests. As you add them to your list of people you follow, you accumulate credits.
Those credits can then be used as rewards to others to follow you. In a hurry to get more followers for what ever reason? Then look at the VIP options at Twitter Friends. This gets you higher listings in the daily listings of twitter people, and gets you people without you having to be on the site every day.
What makes for a good twitter follower? They follow you first off, secondly they follow you and stay. Bewary of other services that promise huge numbers overnight. Twitter prohibits bot services and you could end up costing you not only their fees, but your twitter account. Be wary of the Twitter policies and stay compliant.
Who should YOU follow? Start with family, friends and co-workers. Then add people from your groups and circles. Include your Facebook friends. But follow people with similiar interests that you want to know what they are doing right now. Remember, Twitter is about what are you doing right now.
Be sure to follow me at www.twitter.com/storpappa
Posted by Jim on September 12, 2009
I installed Quicken Deluxe for Windows 2009 this week and started a new family budget with Anna as of September 1st, 2009. Its the start of a new school year for Eilis, Granuailes first time in school, and Brighid in college. This is a transitional month for me at work, either to a new position or a new location.
With the changes and cuts in Microsoft Money, I returned to Quicken for the first time since 1997. Other then a few questions on linked accounts in reporting loans and assets, everything so far went smoothly.
I did contact Wachovia and get off of the zzzWachovia financial account, or was it zWachovia ? Anyway, it was the code for older accounts that started with First Union Bank. As a long time FUNB customer, we did not want to start a new slate and have to continue to use an older account and an account name and password that we cannot change to keep the accounts secure.
Always change your passwords on financial accounts at a minimum every 3 or 6 months. More often if you have a common password for everything. Keep finances on one list of passwords, and general stuff on the rest. I mean really, do you see the problem with using your super secret password to get onto someones website as you use to access your 401(k)?
Password security is your responsibility
Posted by Jim on June 24, 2009
Printer printed out one page, and then on the second print job this morning, flashed error code 6A00 on the Canon PIXMA MP960 All-In-One InkJet Printer. Looking on the web isn’t very promising. If you open the cover, you can manually slide the print head back and forth. Power cycle the paper feeder seems to cycle, but I do not see any jams.
Checking on the web for any real troubleshooting tips other then jiggle it till it wakes up and goes to work.
Posted by Jim on November 12, 2008
Pictures is boxes of NEW, UNUSED and in the original cartons, original EPSON toner for the EPSON R800. I am asking for $5.00 per ink cartridge, OBO in bulk or for everything. These go for $15-18 each, so this is a great deal. I just don’t have a working printer for these, and want to clean up my desk a bit.
I have a used and non functional EPSON R800 Photo printer and all of the parts - if you can use it for spare parts, free to pick up
I am also selling toner pictured
is 10 used cartridges that can be refilled and reused
Posted by Jim on October 31, 2008
I switched over to using Feedburner on one of my blogs a few months back. This isn’t my first use of FeedBurner - I have used them for Podcasts in the past as a way to get them circulated around, just as I subscribed my podcasts to other podcast aggregation services. Its not that I liked Feedburner better then the others, I went to them all for the sole purpose of getting out the word.
At this point in time, with all the features in 2.6 and 2.7 coming out, do WordPress publishers need Feedburner, or is it best to just go it alone with the out of the box capabilities in WordPress?
Now I have a WordPress site with a deck of users, and next to me an envelope with a stack of rubber banded business cards. And FeedBurner has no way for me to import these names. Checking on the forums leads you on a dead end path of no response from the Feedburner team, now part of the Google empire. Are we aloud to complain about Feedburner, or do we risk loosing our Adsense dollars? Like so much with Google, when it works, it works great. When it doesn’t work right, don’t expect an answer from them, except for macro replies telling you to shut up and take it.
Just ask anyone who has been the target of click warnings from Google how well they respond to your requests for details. And heaven help you if your are a publisher with multiple sites on a single Google Adsense account - you might get your payments earlier and check your stats in one screen, but if you have an issue, you don’t know where it is happening to narrow it down. Enough of a divergence on the evil empire of Google. Oh wait, I thought only Microsoft was an evil empire? No, large corporations dominating the world are only bad if they are Microsoft. We don’t see the DoJ going after splitting apart Adsense.
Posted by Jim on October 19, 2008
I am trying to do the following -
I want a picture in a post - easy - use the built in media uploader. Now step #2 - if I do this, is there an easy way to pull the image out to make a post thumbnail?
I am looking for a more ‘automatic’ way to add a thumbnail of an image on the summary and archieve pages. Drop in a set of DIV tags to scale the image down to a set size, and the call to bring the image out of the post. Or if it has multiple images, just the first image.
I’ll have to keep looking - I am sure someone has done this already and even added default images by tag or categories to make it even more dynamic.
I have seen this done in many themes by using custom fields. In fact, setting of different Wordpress sites for friends, families and projects I see a mix of options for images. Custom fields for features, favorites, thumbnails. And even some theme authors change their approach from version to version. I don’t see a consistent best practice or standard way to do this.
This is another attempt and getting this to work -
< ?php
{
global $wpdb; $attachment_id = $wpdb->get_var("SELECT ID FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_parent = '$post->ID' AND post_status = 'inherit' AND post_type='attachment' ORDER BY post_date DESC LIMIT 1");
$image1 = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'Image', $single = true);
}
if (empty($attachment_id))
)
;
elseif (empty($image1))
;
else
;
?>
Posted by Jim on October 17, 2008
Buy 2 1Gb sticks of DDR2 SDRAM PC2-4200 for Anna’s computer
Buy her a Tablet and pen
Backup all her data
Image her machine with a fresh install of Windows Vista
Put Office 2007 on her computer
restore all her data and her IE favorites
Posted by Jim on October 9, 2008
An old discussion thread on the differences between a Notes environment for 5,000 users and a then brand new Microsoft Exchange environment supporting 5,000 users - and the database sizes, Exchange recovery, and licneses differences for hardware, servers and CAL’s on a per seat licene.
Date: Fri, 7 Mar 1997 12:15:13 +1000
Reply-To: MS Windows NT Server and relatives discussion list
<LANMAN-L@LIST.NIH.GOV>
Sender: MS Windows NT Server and relatives discussion list
<LANMAN-L@LIST.NIH.GOV>
From: “Feek, Joshua” <J.Feek@PRAXA.COM.AU>
Subject: Re: Re[2]: MAIL SYSTEMS on NT
X-To: MS Windows NT Server and relatives discussion list
<IMCEAX400-c=AU+3Ba=+20+3Bp=PRAXA+3Bo=BRISBANE+3Bdda+3ASMTP=LANMAN-L+40LIST+2ENIH+2EGOV+3B@mel.praxa.com.au>
You will need the outlook client that comes with office 97, but yes it
can. You create a public folder of type contact from the outlook client.
Each user can then access this info as client contacts.
We have a client with a office in Australia and New Zealand. They have
set up a local public folder with their respective contact databases and
then used replication to move this to each other. Users can then access
both lists by accessing each public folder. They did it this way so the
owner of the list is responsible for its maintenance.
Joshua Feek MCSE
Senior Consultant
Praxa Ltd.
Brisbane, Australia
http://www.praxa.com.au
Email : j.feek@praxa.com.au
Phone : +61-7-3369-8100
Fax : +61-7-3369-0722
Mobile : 0416-116-316
>—–Original Message—–
>From: Lewis Lowe [SMTP:llowe@CGAUS.COM]
>Sent: Friday, March 07, 1997 7:32 AM
>To: LANMAN-L@LIST.NIH.GOV
>Subject: Re: Re[2]: MAIL SYSTEMS on NT
>
>Will exchange also maintain email and contact information in its database,
>sort of like a company wide Act! data base?
>
>Sunny Lowe
>Cawley, Gillespie & Associates, Inc
>Petroleum Engineers
>slowe@cgaus.com
>817-336-2461
>
>———-
>From: Bobby Seder
>To:
>Subject: Re: Re[2]: MAIL SYSTEMS on NT
>Date: Thursday, March 06, 1997 1:11 PM
>
>
>Well, I have gotten into this discussion several times with other folks -
>here’s my take.
>
>For those of you not aware, Microsoft Exchange Server has one - and only
>one - advantage over SMTP, that is messaging. Messaging is the ability to
>tie into Schedule plus, and book meetings. Unless you plan to do that, i
>would *HIGHLY* recommend using just a regular old SMTP and POP3 server.
>Keep your user lists and distribution lists on a PH server with something
>like Eudora or the Exchange client on the desktop.
>
>Another note about Exchange Server, we have found that the disaster
>recovery methods are FAR from optimal. If ANYTHING happens, you need a
>restore - it does not recover well from the tiniest glitch. Also, in
>comparison to SMTP mail (in most cases), Exchange holds EVERYONES mail AND
>the attachments in ONE huge database file!! So in our case, this priv.mdb
>file spans a RAID0+1 set and takes up about 4GB!! That is ONE 4GB file.. as
>you can imagine, simple disk problems exacerbate into huge Exchange
>database corruption problems.
>
>In closing, Exchange Server is GREAT - when it is running. But we have had
>nothing but corruption, outages left and right with it. Our management has
>decided to move forward with it Enterprise wide, but not with my consent.
>SMTP and POP3 would be more than ideal. It is stable, trouble-free and VERY
>low maintenance compared to Exchange Server. We have an entire department
>dedicated to email!! How absurd is that!!!!
>
>My bitter $ .02
>
>Bobby
>
>
>———-
>From: James Skamarakas[SMTP:SKAMARAJ@STRICOM.ARMY.MIL]
>Sent: Thursday, March 06, 1997 5:49 AM
>To: LANMAN-L@LIST.NIH.GOV
>Subject: Re[2]: MAIL SYSTEMS on NT
>
>But the 5,000 users can be handled on 5 notes servers (1,000 each +), or on
>20
>exchange servers (250 each)
>
>
>
>Joshua Feek wrote
>
>It may be different now, but before a $300+ notes client vrs a $40
>Exchange client. I can tell you which 5000 seat environment I would be
>buying.
>
>
>
>———-
>
Posted by Jim on
I had the pleasure of working on a great security guide a few years ago. I still have a hardcopy of the book, including signatures of many of the contributors when we meet at the SANS Security conference after publication. And when you search for this guide on the web, you find that many organizations had copies or excerpts of it on their websites, and it was cited in many discussion forum posts. These guides, collectively published, with facts, tips and best practices that make not just IT sense, but clear business common sense, are worth publishing.
Of course, I would be writing A Survival Guide for Windows 7 and A Survival Guide for Windows Server 2008 today - but I do that with my customers, my peers, and on this blog. And the level of tips and tricks today is much deeper in many areas. The complexity to manage an environment has gotten deeper to manage. Technology does so many things automatically. And yet people still want to uninstall and turn off everything for several reasons - performance, security, lack of understanding and if I don’t understand it better to have it turned off. It requires some level of a leap of faith by IT professionals to just trust the out of the box settings.
A S U R V I V A L G U I D E F O R W I N D O W S N T …
… M&I Data Services James R. Skamarakas, US Army STRICOM Jim Esten, WebDynamic
Gary Ragan and the Answer Desk, Collective Technologies Edmo Lopes Filho, …
http://www.physics.umass.edu/eshop/win_nt/ntsbs215.pdf - View old version on the Internet Archive |
Posted by Jim on
Below is my speakers bio at the 2001 SMS Users Conference run by Altiris, or was it the Computing Edge Conference? A proper timeline of these conferences would be interested to see. And side by side show the products and their at the time announced names and release dates. Here is my history of the SMS Conference that evolved into the now Microsoft Management Summit. BTW - the link for the web archieve will show you a long list of the SMS leaders of the day.
This all started in Naples, Florida by Brady Richardson, and local efforts by Skippy and myself to run the Microsoft table, demo products, give out handouts, and sell the event to our friends and customers. From this small beginning, Computing Edge took the risk and book a convention in Las Vegas. It was a great success. The following year we were now the Computing Edge / SMS Users Conference. They it became the Altiris / Computing Edge / SMS Users Conference. Then the next version of SMS started to come down the pipeline. And the folks decided it would be better to move to a company event rather then a users group event being steered by a single company - ironicly not the company making the product.
For the users, it was a better move - I would rather go to an SMS Conference run by the people who make SMS. And that of course evolved, and we moved from one hotel to another then to San DIego. Now why did we leave Las Vegas? At the conferences the discussions all focused around the rumor mill that Microsoft had issues with various states attorney general’s and voted with their convention dollars. Was there ever an official announcement on the reasons? And did it make people go ahhhh or ahhh-yeah-right?
Regardless, from those small beginning where Brady spoke, Skippy and I worked the tables, and Brady drove over for an after convention meeting with a CIO in Ft. Lauderdale, today the Microsoft Management Summit is a must attend event for anyone who uses any of the Microsoft System Center products. And of course thats all of you. If you for some reason are not using these products, then you need to run to the convention to get some needed information on what you can do for less money and free up your resources for other projects.
http://web.archive.org/web/20010210202314/www.altiris.com/shows/sms_speakers.htm
Jim is an infrastructure consultant with Microsoft Consulting Service (MCS) in the Gulf States District, Ft. Lauderdale, FL office. His areas of specialization are SMS, Windows 2000, network design, architecture and security. He has worked with large enterprise customers with the JDP and RDP programs for early deployments of Office 2000, SMS 2.0, Exchange 2000, Windows 2000, and Windows 2000 Data Center. Jim has contributed on several Windows NT, Windows 2000 and security publications and papers. Jim is a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) for Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF), and a member of the MSF Certification Advisory Committee. Jim is a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer + Internet (MCSE+I) and holds other various professional certifications.
I don’t know if I could possibly get 600 more Tweeple in...
