siliconpizza.com

It is a condition of my house insurance that I have a catalog of ALL my DVDs. I used to use a package called DVD profiler from invelos. After some digging I found my old licence key, which was upgraded for free to the latest version, they do a mobile version too, which means I can keep a copy on my PDA and know what DVDs I have next time I see any on offer (During that catalog I discovered I had two copies of memento and goonies). The software support bulk entry using a bar code scanner, which being a tech hoarder I have one stashed away which I acquired some time ago.

Now this is where the fun starts…..

Apparently bar code readers can be programmed, with pre amble and post amble characters, and various other options. This one seemed to be programmed to insert and ‘ESCAPE’ before the output and a ‘CR’ after, so in notepad it all looked fine, but the escape caused the data entry screen to ‘cancel’ DOH!
Time to RTFM for the scanner, to program the scanner, you scan special bar code from the programming manual.?? So print the manual, 10 Blank pages later, power cycle printer, 10 more blank pages, clean heads, 10 more blank pages, replace black ink, 10 more blank pages. DOH !!!!!!!
Of to the shops for a NEW printer, being a fully networked house hold it would be nice to have a network aware printer, and I hate trying to work out whats what from online reviews, so 5 shops and lots of box reading and helpless staff later, cheap Lexmark wireless printer from Sainsburys !

Print Manual, re program the reader, sorted.

Nah not that easy, some DVD barcodes have check digit, which is not sent by the reader, but it expected by the software, read the manual again, and enable check digit transmit,

Sorted, 350 Bar codes later. All done, 6 hours after I started !!!!!!!!!!!

Over the xmas break i thought i would review my data backup process, i have a few friends with kit at their house linked to mine via long range WiFi !, so File replication between server seemed like a good plan !
Got some big disks attached to each server using??USB 2, and setup replication, Sorted,
NAH, nothing is that easy,
NTFRS has got to be the most quirky thing ever to setup, my first word of advise, is go for a pint after you configure it, and BEFORE you put any data in the replicated folder. no in fact, that is No 2. No 1 has to be test you infrastructure HARD first.
My 1st snag was a delayed write error on my USB2 disk, which corrupted the USN data for the replicated folder, and completely screwed the whole replication process, after some soul searching, crying, fretting and LOTS of cursing. I reset the entire NTFRS config for that server.
Sorted I though, no such LUCK
another Delays write error, Closer inspection revealed i had been a cheap skate when i added USB2 to my aging server, it had a “VIA” chip, DOH!, DOH!, DOH!, DOH!, DOH!
Quick trip to a local computer retailer?? (not PCWorld), we have a local back street guy who is VERY good,
and i kissed good bye to the I/O issues. This is cool so i thought, all my data became “pre install” and everything seemed to be fine,
This is where the pint comes in, I “moved” (big mistake) my data from the pre_install folder to the replicate folder, and everything looked good, get up the next morning, NO DATA AROOGA AROOGA CURSE CURSE CURSE (BTW this was XMAS day, i have a record of upseting the wife, but tellting her i may have lost all the photos on XMAS would surely top it all)
after a week of searching volume shadows copies and offline data on all my PCs and friends servers, I had successfully recovered ALL our data, (can i have my testicles back now please)
so 1st things first MAKE Copy or three, and try again !
This time i did go for a pint or 3 before “COPYING” in my valuable data, and all i NOW Ok
all the data if almost fully synchronise across the servers, well 150 G of photos and other random data, will take a while to sync over wifi !
Some serious Lessons learnt
1. don’t mess with your home IT on Xmas Eve
2. don’t rush NTFRS config
3. don’t MOVE data when you have the space to copy it

I am currently looking at Enterprise RSS technology. What a mine field ! No one knows what they want, let alone how to do it.
So I look at it like this.

1. Central  location to discover internal and external RSS feeds
2. RSS feed consumption stats
3. Easy to use
4. Easy to configure
5. Flexible

Newsgator seem to provide all of the above. However with the small problem of a proprietary clients which then have to be deploy to 80,000-100,000 desktops (in my case), and you can guarantee that a large portion on the community (mainly the geeks) won’t like the client. So what you really need is a RSS Proxy server,  that will consume, cache and aggregate RSS feeds and republish them as standard a RSS or ATOM feed, which can then be consumed by the users favourite RSS client (outlook 2007, IE7, Vista, Feedreader etc etc )
Only found one so far http://gregarius.net/ which is open source PHP, I have budget and can buy a solution but can’t find one. 

Are my requirements that bizarre ???

A corporate version of FEEDBURNER woudl be perfect

I have had quite a few of these lately , this is the result of spam tosser spoofing email from my domain, but the bit that has pissed me off here is the fact the target email server even bothered to send a reply. I know the email is spoofed as it has breached the SPF, so why even bother responding, Just delete it. respond during the SMTP conversation, not afterwards Apparently almost 90% of all email on the internet is spam, but how much of that is bounces and “no user here” errors from mail servers with admins who have a 12th centry idea of server config

The Last day …. My brain is close to melt down, so i only attened a few sessions today, Stuck some labs in the gaps to practice what we had been learning.so
Session 1, Delivering rich media with server 2008, shame the presenter could not deliver a rich presentation.
at least the new media extensions support MP3s and other file formats, there also seem to be a better level of integration between HTTP and MMS delivery of content, shame there is NO API for automatic creation of play lists in the current beta, so i may just have to pop to http:/iis.net and have a whinge..Session 2,  Q&A with the REAL IIS team, Hard core stuff but i will try to summarise what came out of the session, following many Questions from myself and a few other

IIS is no longer supported with failover clustering, a large debate ensued over why cluster instead of load balance
The ability to initiate a worker process re-cycle still requires admin, and therefore cannot be delegated, like other feature of IIS7, but ops manager may provide a solution there
There is no feature to do logging by folder for micro sites, but the integrated pipeline architecture would make it easier to write a plug in module to achieve that,
Modules can be written in managed code (.net) as well as native code (c++) and thre is a good SDK
Apparently if you install a *.domain SSL Cert you can do host-headered SSL…. ( this was available on IIS6 and something I did not know)
There is a NEW feature on Worker process timeouts, at a server level, you can enable dynamic timeouts, if the server is under stress, it will adjust the idle timeout of a worker process to free up memory. Something I picked up on though, this is a server setting, so in a shared environment where some heavy apps co-exist with lightly used apps, the session stability of the lightly used apps could suffer. Yet another excuse to go to IIS.NET and have a whinge, sorry provide constructive critisism

Just in case anyone thinks a week at TechEd in Barcelona is a jolly, you are sadly mistaken. FIVE days of rapid fire presentations is total DATA overload, which despite the doing apparently nothing is extremely tiring.

So Day 4…..

Session 1. PHP on windows, now don’t laugh. Monday saw the release of fastCGI for windows server 2003, this is a Microsoft bolt on to run supporting CGI apps almost 15 times faster. CGI is traditionally very slow on windows due to the over head involved in creating and destroying a NEW process. CGI creates a NEW process for EVERY request. In fastCGI the process is persisted and re-used offering almost a 15 folder performance improvement. Add to that you can use asp.net forms authentication in front of the zend PHP and obtain the login credentials i may just have to try standing up a copy of Wordpress on windows, Cuz I can !!!

Session 2. IIS7 on Server core, Server core is the NEW low foot print install for windows server 2008, it is not actually a SKU, but an install option you buy standard edition licence and install CORE or Full, (I wonder if they will rebrand ARCADE edition like the XBOX 360) Core will present some interesting challenges for the “right click” boys, as there is NO GUI, it is CMD line (hooray) or remote admin. I have never fully understood why a server needs a GUI, but my first server was novell 2, Shame that server CORE does not support managed code, so you can’t install a .net frame work, which sort of cripples a windows web server

Session 3. SQL Server indexing by Kimberly Tripp, OH MY GOD, a serious session on SQL indexing and tools and scripts., using DMVs on SQL 2005, she demonstrated scripts she had created that woudl recomend index creates and index drops. the most enlightening statement she made (which made so much sense , but i had never though of it before) dont just look at the long runing queries, but run a trace over the a fully daily workload and look for common queries, shaving 50% of a query which is run 5000 times day provides better overall performance gain than looking at the long runing query which only runs a few times a day.
 

Very Busy day, 6 Session, some good some bad

session 1, IIS7 to IT Pro’s by Issac Roybal
Tonnes of really good new features, many of which directly address problem i have experianced over the past FOUR years, I wonder when i can get it on the ground

Session 2, went to a?? great hand on, self paced LAB on configuring IIS7, this actually left me with more Questons than answers

Session 3, Lunch team slot on Windows Home Server, fantastic home Pc backup and central storage box, full support for up to 10 media connect 2.0 devices, (shame i dont have any YET !!!!!!), built in web server to allow uncle jim to acces a slice of your library, yoiu even yourself from that nasty hotel 1000 miles from home! soon to be shipping with a pucker public cert on the homeserver.com domain with full support for UPNP and dynamic DNS too.

Session 4, MORE IIS7, but how to used the new shared config feature in a WEB farm, so many NEW features to fix problems i spent weeks writing scritps for in IIS6. (met a dutch bloke yoiu managed a web farm doing 150,000,000 hits per day, make my intranet 8,000,000 per hit look pathetic)

Session 5, SQL server storage and performance, some excitable lunatic talking about 32CPU server with 512 Gig of ram and 92 hard disk spindles just for the data

??Session 6, Windows server 2008 core, seem like a nice idea, but with .net being “managed code” it cant be deployed on CORE, making the IIS CORE version suitable for ASP (yeh right), ??HTML and PHP (i think DONT QOUTE ME)

ah well time to return to the hotel for nosh and an early night, unless i can find seom of the guys i met in redmond in april

just left the Keynote speech at MS TechEd in Barcelona
some really great stuff on the horizon, Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V, system center etc,
However the most impressive thing for my, as a geek, was Home server, and dedcated windows based server for the home, automated back up household PCs, support from windows media devices such as XBOX 360. Full PC backup and restire etc etc

Far too many usefull feature for a home PC enironmrnt too mention here

however some what ammusing was when the speaker asked how many people are running a “server” at home over 20 % of the audiance raised their hands,
So I am NOT the only one

Microsoft wants you to know that you can now purchase a home server loaded with its very own Windows Home Server operating system.

See This Register Article 

got my self one of those domestic power meters and been around the house,

HOLY COW!!!!

Need to change my storage strategy, the Compaq RA4100 fibre channel chassis with 12 disk may well be over kill, but it is also DAMN expensive to run,
and I have NO idea why the UPS is pulling 100Watts with NO load !!!

??As i am only ising the storage for archive type stuff not “live” apps, I am planning to replce it with an external USB2 disk,
the Cost Recovery Period will be less than 4 months !

Not sure what to do about the server though, it is runnign AD, Exchange, VMware server with VOIP PBX and dansguardian ….