October 2005 Archives

After not receiving the money for our house today, I also found out that none of our wages this month got paid as there was a problem with Huntington's Automatic Clearing House procedures and the money did not go into the account (or anyone else's at work) This is 5 days after the bank came to the office to give a presentation on how wonderful they are and how we should move our banking across to them - I have yet to be convinced that I should move.
In the end we got paid via paper checks (which could take a couple of days to clear - fortunately we don't have a mortgage to pay today or tomorrow)

We were also due to see a mortgage advisor this evening but he had to cancel as he had forgotten it was Halloween and his kids would not be impressed if he didn't go trick or treating with them. I understand his intentions, but tonight was the second attempt to try and meet up with him and tonight was the only evening we have free this week.

Finally - our house sold today and the money was transferred into our account or it would have done if the annoying solicitors hadn't employed a sneaky trick to hang onto the money for an extra day. We had previously told them (several times) our account details at the bank but today they sent an email to us giving a summary of the house balance (less the estate agents and their fees) and asking us if we really wanted the money paid into our account that we had previously told them. So we've sent them a snotty letter asking for the money to be paid into our account immediately.
The whole house selling saga has been a right pain with lots of hassles with estate agents who lie and do not work for our best interests by telling people to put in an extremely low offer on the house as it is overpriced whilst at the same time telling us that there would be no problem selling the house at the price we were listing at and then having the cheek to tell us that they were trying to protect our higher price as long as they could - for less than 24 hours after they became our agent.
I would suggest anyone who wants to sell a house in the congleton area to stay away from HamRidingSimpson.

Mark's blog at sysinternals talks about Sony's latest DRM software that acts like a rootkit - resisting efforts to appear in active processes on the system and other really nasty software. Although Sony's aim is to stop you copying their music, when they start doing tricks like this (which is possibly illegal as it modifies your computer without you agreeing to let it do so but ianal) it is more likely to encourage piracy as people rely on getting mp3's off the internet as they are less likely to get copy protected additions at the same time.
The direct link to the article is this link which appears to be broken

11 outlook web access tips for 2003 which are also useful in outlook itself. I did wonder what the difference between premium and basic version was and now I know. My bonus tip is that unless you have owner access to a users mailbox you only get read access to someone elses calendar in outlook web access, even if you have edit or author access within outlook. I spent ages trying to work this out for a remote customer (who I couldn't talk through things over the phone as they only had 1 phone line which she used for dialup! I finally managed to get hold of someone in the office, make sure that a pc in the office wasn't in use and then take control of the pc to test the outlook vs outlook web access functionality.

...when you double click on them but will from the File/Open menu was a weird one that I hadn't come across before. However, following the instructions in a Google Groups posting where the tools | options | general | ignore other applications was unchecked and it worked. Very strange. Not sure why this has started to happen but it works - *shrug*

Essential Pim are going to be giving away the pro version of their software for everyone who visits their site on Halloween. Looks like Opera started a great trend :-)
The cool thing is that the portable version will be available too which means you can use it on your usb key. The data is encrypted and it doesn't need installing on the pc.
Although I've not tried this software it sounds really good. Now that we don't have outlook in the office (or even on the computer) and the Notes Pim functions just suck big time (at least on a naff 1024*768 screen) this will hopefully be really useful.

I've taken the step of forwarding all incoming mail for my userid at my main domain to my google account for 3 reasons. 1 is to reduce the amount of spam that I get in my inbox and the second is to give me a decent web interface for my mail as the web interface with 1and1 is awful to use and really slow and thirdly to have a searchable archive of mail available from any computer.
The main computer at home will download the email via pop3 as usual but I'll also have email on the move. I've not forwarded all email via google as it blocks certain attachments (.exe files for example) which I occasionally need but I might do this at a later date with an exception email that goes direct to pop3 instead of via gmail.

Scott Adams has a blog and starts off with "If you’re reading this on company time, congratulations on beating the system. If you’re reading it on your own time, you really need to find a job where they pay you to do this sort of thing."
I'm sure i've read the follow up story in one of the dilbert books (or management principle books) but its still pretty funny and shows how pointless committees are.
Thanks to Adam

Ben talks about the confusion that is going on about exchange2003sp2 and the best ways to install the upgrade and have imf working at the same time. subsequently.

kb article 909444 has how to fix the issues that may arise when you install Microsoft Security Bulletin MS05-051: Vulnerabilities in MSDTC and COM+ Could Allow Remote Code Execution (902400). Although I've not had any of these issues - yet - this will be good reference for me.

Although i'm not using it (at the moment) there is a new version of Synergy out

Skype are doing a decent bonus in that if you sign up for $10 or 10euros worth of skype out minutes (or voicemail) then you get 3 months of voicemail free and 2 hours of skypeout credit if you pay by credit card. I now only have .06euro's left in my account after our first $10 purchase so I am about to renew. The annoying thing is that most of the people in the uk don't have skype although I had a great 100 minute conversation about the church website this morning over skype for free :-)

Although I am not aware of any customers running snort, this may be of use to other people reading this, but snort 2.4, with the Back Orifice processor enabled is vulnerable to attack as per the details at Sans

George does a good skit of what would happen when the techies from Compusa get in the ring with the techies from BestBuy to battle over a consumer's tech support. With weapons such as rebates, price match flyers and even a blueshirted sales rep (i think) the action gets pretty intense. Well worth catching up on the In the Trenches podcast from a couple of weeks ago. The file is pretty large but contains a lot of other good techie stuff too.

1. If a computer freezes every 20 minutes, is it safe to upgrade the bios (which might solve the problem)? A tricky question and in my case, the answer is no. The computer crashed during the bios update and consequently was Columbus' biggest doorstop. Fortunately I had made sure the machine was under warranty before I began but still had to endure a 45 minute phone call with Dell as they troubleshooted the call. The last 2 minutes went something like this
Dell: Sounds like you need a new motherboard.
Me: Yep
Dell: Sounds like you knew I was going to say that.
Me: Yep!
The engineer will be on site tomorrow to swap out the part although they asked if I wanted to do it. Very cheeky on their part seeing as though the company is paying for the warranty and the coverage - why do their job for them? That and the engineer can sit and wait whilst the lengthy diagnostics runs and I won't.

2. If you use Lotus Notes as your mail client and synchronise your databases to the server, it doesn't synchronise your address book (which doesn't need a replica on the server either to confuse matters). Instead you go to Actions/Synchronise Address Book. Why you have to do this I don't know *cough* you don't have to do that in outlook you know - its all included in the synchronisation/offline capabilities *cough*. I've also not worked out how to get that command onto a toolbar so I have one click access rather than going to the menu to do it (or even better to automatically do it). I've also yet to work out what they synchronise journal does as I dont see an option for a journal in my notes client - this notes client lark is a steep learning curve.

3. If users complain they can't see unread email in outlook, make sure that the messages view does NOT have the "Use Group" menu item selected otherwise it is possible to hide last weeks mail, including unread emails, in this one line within the view (and its too complicated for the users to go to the unread emails view)

Systems that have changed the default Access Control List permissions on the %windir%\registration directory may experience various problems after you install the Microsoft Security Bulletin MS05-051 for COM and MS DTC

For my information if needed later this week!

I finally finished the install of Small Business server 2003 on the virtual server on the laptop this morning. It's taken forever to do and this morning I had to go through the activation of the software. As the server doesn't have internet connectivity (yet) I had to do it over the phone. The whole process was simple and straightforward with voice recognition guiding me through the process. After I had read out the 42 (i think) digit number it was time for it to read out the 42 digits. They were split into 7 groups of 6 digits and the funny thing was that it would ask you to say "Go On" at the end of each group if you were ready. I was starting to sound like Mrs Doyle - that annoying woman from the self assessment adverts on tv a couple of years ago - go on, go on, go on!

You have probably seen the ads on tv for Capital One - where they are training the telephone guys to say NO all the time - well I think 53rd Bank have also been watching this too many times.
After not giving me a credit card and then sending a letter saying they want to do everything in their power, I arranged to get a secured credit card - apparently all I needed was a savings account with $300 in it....but they neglected to tell me that I'd only get a $300 limit on the card - not much use if I'm putting work expenses on it!
I come home, feeling annoyed that I wasted my trip to the bank (and they farted around before finally paying attention) and went to pay a bill online - you know, the service that is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - unless its Friday night and you have a bill to pay and the service is temporarily unavailable....or if you need to speak to customer service about online banking, then they are only open during business hours...grrrrr. I really need to change banks, one that provides a credit card, free checking, no atm charges and a decent online service - know any?
In the meantime I think I'll be fighting for a refund of my cheque charges and a closure of my account.

Patch Management.org looks like a good resource of keeping up to date with the Windows updates and seeing if other people are adversely affected with the latest windows patches.
I must admit to being pretty cautious about all the patches that came out this week as they seem to affect major parts of the network, however it looks like there are exploits going around for some of the unpatched machines already

OABInteg and Troubleshooting may be useful tomorrow. Two weeks ago a user didn't appear in a outlook address book on one machine but did on another machine and on the server. Hopefully these pages may help troubleshoot if I still have the problem tomorrow. (I'm hoping it will have solved itself over the past 2 weeks)

I've been receiving a lot of spam email from Pfizer (who make Benadryl in the US) after trying to find out where to get Benadryl in the US. They never responded to my email request, their telephone response was incorrect ("we don't do it over here" is wrong) and now they've been sending me marketing emails with unsubscribe links that show how naff their database server is.
It wasn't until I eventually found an email address for their privacy office AND complained to etrust that I got some action from them to investigate the problems. Apparently they "understand the frustration and would like to help you in
the most efficient way."
I've suggested they do the following:-

1. Monitor your privacy address so you would have taken action on the request (with forwarded email) I sent on the 2nd Octobe


2. have working unsubscribe links in a newsletter.


3. have contact information on your website so that people can contact you to get off if a and b don't work


4. Don't send out emails with a fake/unread return email address

...with my new bank. After a nice start at the bank on Saturday to fill out all the paperwork to open an account I got a letter yesterday from them to say they won't give me a credit card as I have no credit history. I'm not sure if they spotted the irony in that statement or not, but from my next experience today I doubt it.
Today I get a letter from the branch manager (I presume as they didn't put an address on the letter) that welcomes me to the branch and that they are "thrilled to get the opportunity to serve you and will do everything in our power to meet your expectations. If there is a financial need that we haven't filled...."
Now if I wasn't busy at work I'd love to slap the letter on his desk and ask why my credit card application was refused - instead I'll have to settle with a phone call or wait until Friday night or Saturday morning.

Neil pointed out that typekey id's (used for MT commenting) can now be used with livejournal - so I can now comment on Pauls blog without being anonymous.

the geeky way to propose is to get Ask Jeeves to collaborate with you so that when your girlfriend types her name into the search engine, your proposal comes up. I wonder if this will be googles next beta product - propose.google.com or willyoumarryme.google.com

Google Reader launched yesterday and I've just had a quick play with it this morning. It choked on my initial import of my opml feed from feed on feeds, but that is because the description field in the exported data did not end with a set of double quotes if the descriptions were more than 3 lines long (for some very strange reason). I edited the file and started the import and now have lots of feeds in google reader. I'm not sure if I like the interface or not yet as it doesn't load up feeds with old items, instead you just get new data so I don't have a lot of feed items to read through. However I have found that clickable links in feeds do not appear in the google page so you have to load the original source (which is a bit pants really) Hmmm looked like that was just that one particular blog - (under the stairs) as others seem to be working ok now.

At last, I've found a good online app for tracking what books I own, have read, borrowed from the library, ordered from the library etc. My Library Thing shows the four books that I had down in the basement to test with and the great thing is that adding a book is really simple. Just swiping the barcode with the cuecat scanner and the book was looked up on amazon and ready to be entered. I just had to add the tags that I wanted to use. It would be great if it showed the tags already used ala flickr, but I suspect that won't be long in coming. The service is free for 200 books and $10 for a lifetime membership after that which sounds pretty good to me.
The widget for recent books read appears below (which I am going to have to change the styling of)

I must have been living under a rock for a while as I didn't realise that Yahoo also has a desktop search engine. I'm still in the search for a working dse for the home pc as it is so handy to have things in one place. I really like Googles version - just wish it would actually index the content on the pc and work with a lot more applications that might be stored on a pc.

Anyone know of some good Lotus Notes blogs? Seeing as though this is the mail client I could do with some extra reading to get back up to speed on it. It has been several years since I last used Notes (and then as a developer for databases). A lot has changed since then - the web based front end is really impressive, even if it does rely on java which is often broken on a lot of machines and a new version needs to be downloaded. However, the mail interface leaves an awful lot to be desired.
Yesterday I couldn't understand why I couldn't copy/paste from a Notes database. Apparently it is one of the ACL options that means you can't copy from a document. Thats great for security, to stop you saving your own versions offline, but naff when it comes to copying ip/telephones/licence key information into another window.

There's a great sounding concert in Columbus next week when Audio Adrenaline, Superchik, Sanctus Real and Pillar are playing in one concert at Grove City, Columbus. Unfortunately we're on a spending freeze at the moment (and we also have a marriage course that starts on the same night) so I'm going to miss it - shame they are not televising or streaming audio as that would be good. Oh well, I guess that means I can go to Petra's farewell tour which would be the fourth time I've seen them (five if you include solo appearance by John Schlitt) with the other ones at London, Manchester and Leigh ( & Liverpool).

The bug I reported about onecare slowing down the performance of thunderbird has been closed because someone else has reported the same problem. Although it's good to know that it is a known issue, closing the bug BEFORE it's fixed is a bit daft as I won't know when they've fixed it and it is ok to do more testing. I've had to remove the software in the meantime so any form of autoupdate is not going to reach the desktop!

Several people have blogged about the new addon to msconfig that enables you to run extra tools from within msconfig. This thing should really be part of windows update to make life easier for everyone (or rather the techies amongst us who support other people's machines). Incidentally I was asked to validate my copy of Windows XP AGAIN - I don't know how many times I've had to do this - thought it was meant to be a one off thing.

Apparently there is a spat going on between level3 and some other isp which explains why I've not been able to download a couple of podcasts for the past couple of days. Thankfully though it is not as bad for me as it is for GeekNewsCentral

There is a great tool from Microsoft to troubleshoot SUS installations from the client. From my experience it tells you fairly quickly where the problem lies.
Download from this location with the Readme. These are linked (at the moment) from the wsus support page which also contains a link to the server version of this tool (which I've not tried yet)
A good set of results can be found in the extended entry.

For my reference - troubleshooting and DR readiness Thanks to You Had Me At EHLO

I'm currently reading the Firefox Hacks book which is so much better than the firefox garage book. One of the extensions listed in the book is infolister which lists all extensions and themes installed in firefox and can publish it to a website. (Which would possibly reduce these firefox extension posts :-) Combined with the Mass Installer extension it looks like you can replicate an install of software from one machine to another easily - this would make it a lot easier for me to keep my machines in synch. Note that I've not tried this yet as the infolister on this machine is very bare - only two extensions but that is because all the extensions that were loaded got wiped when I moved my Firefox profile directory. It would be good if infolister also listed greasemonkey scripts installed - perhaps that will come in the future. The forum discussion is 20+ pages long so I've not had chance to read it yet to see if anyone else has had the same idea.
Update The infolister is merged into Mr Tech's Local Install (but doesn't have the ftp uploader facility) but you do have the ability to copy/paste the output as html, text or bbcode - I've added the html output from my machine in the extended entry.....

The library are unveiling their new website next week according to their announcement. I'm surprised they are doing this now before the new computer system goes in later this year. Will be interesting to see if they start doing native rss feeds for library books that are on loan.

We heard back from the Estate Agents today to say that the survey didn't show up anything that the buyer wasn't happy with so the sale is proceeding. In disappointing news we got a letter from the solicitors asking for the deeds for the house and the inventory - something we gave them about 5 months ago. After calling them they admitted they had lost the papers but found them after sending the letter to us. This is good news as I didn't want to delay the proceedings by having to get another inventory done and get the paperwork back to the UK. Oh, and if you are looking for a solicitor, find one who uses email so you don't have to rely on snail mail for correspondance (or the time difference on phone calls)

I'm getting the message "library not registered" when attempting to open a navigator in quickbooks with errors on the various qpg files that it tries to open. On speaking to their tech support who had me remove the software, install it, install in safe mode, remove, reinstall in normal mode, then download the updates again (thankfully I had saved the 80mb patch file to disk so I didn't have to download it again) he then recommended that I repair Internet Explorer as this was the problem. Unfortunately you can't repair IE in xpsp2 (see KB318378 so I reinstalled xpsp2 again.
At this point, he admitted, several times, that NOONE in support can tell me what ocx's or dll's are required by the various pages used in the Navigator pages. I asked who could tell me which files are needed, but he kept telling me to repair internet explorer instead.
I've heard Intuit's support is notoriously bad and I now believe it. I would have expected him to check my internet explorer security settings, popupblocker settings and it was only after about 40 minutes on the phone that he checked what version of quickbooks I was using (pressing F2 gives that information)
He was not interested in the fact that there was an incompatibility issue with Quickbooks Premier 2002 and Windows NT and that I am getting the same type of message. Unfortunately in this case, the pc that has a working copy of quickbooks and the faulty pc have the same version of comcat.dll
From the sounds of it, there is a permission problem in the registry under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TypeLib\ but whereabouts I am not sure. It's time to use regmon from sysinternals again to monitor for access denied messages when launching quickbook navigators.
Solution in the extended entry

A useful tip to provide a bit more screen space in the browser (useful for low resolution monitors) is to move the bookmarks toolbar in between the throbber and the help menu.

Kristen and I went to some garage sales this morning and we got some good bargains. We got a couple of sandwich cooler bags (which I need to keep my sarnies cool in the car whilst I'm driving to customers) for a couple of bucks each, Operation and battleship games for 30cents each - a bargain although I'm much better at Operation than Kristen - even when I use my left hand - she had a flukey series of lucky guesses with battleships and it took me another 16 shots to sink her battleships after she had sunk all of mine.
We also got a HP Deskjet 930c for $5 - our printer in the uk was a 940c model. We were told it had a paper jam in it which the previous owner couldn't be bothered to fix and when I opened it up there was a sticky label in the innards - part on the back roller and the other half deep inside but as it was a thick plastic label it held together well so I was able to reach in and grab a corner and slowly peel it off. 5 minutes later I had an almost new printer for $5!
The same garage sale had a brand new full size tripod which we got for $5. Previously I've made do with a wall and a mini tripod but now I can take this one around for family shots etc.
Whilst driving around we drove through one estate in Dublin, Tartan fields, and the houses there are (gi)(e)normous. Most of them had 4 car garages and some looked like they were almost their own gated community. The sad thing is that most of the houses probably only had 2 people living in them. If you feel like donating some money to the building fund then take a look at this listing site - only another 3.5billion adsense clicks needed to put a deposit down :-)

Anyone know how to get firefox to NOT auto remember fields in a form on certain (banking) web sites? My new bank which is an online account remembers my account number in the form which I really do not want to have kept in the browser. I know I can turn the autoremember form details off, but thats a global function which I really do not want to do.