Misreply.org

Hello dear readers (all 1 or 2 of you that are left due to my lack of updates), I am alive! Contrary to popular belief, I did not fall down a ditch; never to come out. I am here, and have a brand new post. As for not updating very often, I apologize. You ever have one of those days when you wake up and have to go to work…then when you are done, you simply don’t want to do anything at all? Or a day that is just busy, and when you are done, you want to do nothing more than flop on the couch and try to beat a vegetable at lack of action? Yea…well, I’ve had one or two of those….or forty, in a row.

So, my faithful Microsoft Intellipoint 5 button mouse finally gave out. After months of hiccups, missed clicks and tracking errors…it finally bit the dust and became so unreliable that I had to give it the boot. I used the opportunity to finally go wireless, and minimize some of the clutter on my desk, minimize some wires, and extend the reach of the mouse. I settled on a Logitech MX Revolution. Rechargeable battery – check, wireless – check, many buttons – check.

The SetPoint software, however, left a bit to be desired. Before I go any further, let me explain to you my love of the middle mouse button (or third button). In Firefox, it opens links in a new tab, closes tabs, and activates the scrolling mechanism. In TF2, it was my reload button. Logitech, however, decided that the middle mouse button simply wasn’t important enough to be an available option for button mappings.

The MX Revolution is pretty cool. It has your normal right/left buttons, a 4 way wheel (which also can act as a button…more on that later), a button right below the scroll wheel, 2 buttons on the side by the thumb, and another toggle switch of sorts under those. The Revo also has the nice option of having a clutch for the scroll wheel, which allows for some super fast and super smooth scrolling, without the clicky clicks. This behavior can either be toggled by the scrolling speed, or by pressing the scroll wheel in (using it as a button, as stated earlier). In the Logitech software, you can set that mouse wheel to act as your middle button instead. This is all well and good, since I love my middle button, but the click action is very hard; it wasn’t made to act as a button that is pressed multiple times per minute. That being beside the point, I like having it as the option to switch between scrolling modes. This leaves the button right under it, which is actually in perfect position to act as the middle button. It’s in between the right and left buttons, easy to press in, and easy to reach. Perfect…let’s set that as the middle/3rd button in the Logitech software!

Oh wait…you can’t. What? Logitech, did you REALLY not allow that as an option? I mean…really? I can use it to search stuff, flip documents, auto scroll, invoke Winamp, be a double click, close stuff…pretty much any function you can think of EXCEPT middle button. I mean, a nutless monkey could have coded the software better to allow that as an option. Sure, you can install an alternate driver, but I don’t recommend it since it breaks other functionality (such as using the side toggle as win+tab in vista), and generally doesn’t work as well.

So Logitech: this means war! A war that I intend to win. And I did win. See, (ok folks, this is where it gets geeky, so be warned) Logitech stores all the button configurations in an XML file on your hard drive. In Vista, that file is stored in C:\users\YOUR USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Logitech\SetPoint and is called user.xml .

If you open up that user.xml file, you will see that all the button configs are pretty straightforward XML format…all you have to do is replace the correct section with a correctly formatted, modified version. So…I made that little ’search’ button my middle button by changing the button 6 configuration to the following: (No, I have no idea why it’s button number 6, but labeled as button number 4…it doesn’t make sense, it’s probably left over from some copy/paste I did when banging around the XML, but it works, so sue me)

(I’d like to have posted the text directly, but wordpress thought the XML was supposed to get parsed, even though it was in between code tags…oh well)

Voila! I now have a middle mouse button! So so nice.

Software, me = geek logitech, mouse, setpoint

Back in November of 2008, I was looking to buy a new car due to the unfortunate fate of my previous Civic. I wanted something somewhat fun…not boring. The Civic was certainly a great car; it would never have any mechanical issues, and would last forever, but I thought it was time for something a little better…something more fitting with my infantile mindset.

After some research, I narrowed my list to three sub-$25000 cars, and did some test drives.

Ok, let’s just preface this by saying that my test drives were of varying length, weather condition, time of day, and passenger. I have had the most amount of time driving the Speed3 mostly because Ry has one, and I “borrow” it fairly often. When I test drove the SI, the dude was a bit of a douchebag, and we only went about a mile or two in it due to it being a busy-ish Saturday morning. That does not excuse that dealership’s conduct toward a potential buyer. I drove the GTi the night before, and drove it in the rain when it was dark outside. Took it through some back roads, some highway..dude was pretty cool about letting me get on it.

Anyway, onto my reviews.

2008 Mazda MazdaSpeed3
Pros: It’s a fast car. No matter what gear you are in, it just wants to go. Some noticeable turbo lag, but once it hits about 3000-3500 it goes “hello!”. Braking is awesome, it stops on a dime pretty much. Handling is great…there is very little body roll, but then again, with it not being my car I haven’t really pushed it very hard. Interior is well made, the controls are within easy reach, it’s fairly comfortable, and has a decent amount of room in the back. The glovebox is xbox huge for storing stuff. It’s a four door, so the backseat passengers are happy. It looks good…I mean…really good; from almost any angle.
Cons: It has a hard ride. The suspension is stiff and the tires are low profile, so you feel everything. They overdid the red in the interior. Everything is red, from the dash, to the climate controls, to the radio. Don’t get me wrong, I like red as much as the next guy, but goddamn. The speedo is a bit weird as well (not a big thing, just nitpicking), as the separation takes some getting used to… the 60mph mark is where I’d think 35 is in any other car. Visibility isn’t that great with the way the hatch is, there are a few blind spots, but not too bad. It has a few weird rattles, especially in the hatch and the seats. The hatch cover moves around, and the seats squeak a bit as you move around in them. The backseat isn’t very comfortable, but I wouldn’t be spending much time there.
Other comments:You also can’t really feel speed in the car. Cruising at 90mph, it feels like you’re standing still, which is both good and bad. The steering is very touchy. The slightest movement makes the car change direction…I like feel in my steering, but without having to worry about moving the wheel too much.

2008 Volkswagen GTi
Pros: This is a fun car. Less turbo lag than the Speed3. The DSG transmission is like having god himself shift for you…it’s quite an amazing experience. It’s fun around corners (it was rainy so I took it easy), with very good braking and handling (Although people say it’s worse than the speed3..I wasnt really able to notice the difference due to lack of being able to push both cars hard). The 2 door looks pretty awesome, but not like some of the classic GTIs (not that I care). The one I looked at had a moonroof, premium sound, 6 cd changer with mp3 and sat radio, ipod connector..the works. Hatch is roomy, and contoured well. The interior is also very well put together, no rattles, everything is within easy reach and easy to see. The coloring of the interior is beautiful…when it’s dark and the dash lights up, it just looks amazing. The ride is very comfortable, virtually no road noise, and the bumps are nicely handled by the suspension. Under the hood it is very well designed and clean. Great fuel economy also (yea…dont care). 0% financing for 60 months.
Cons: Not quite as fast as the speed3. As tested, it came out to be a bit more expensive than the speed3 and the SI. The backseat isn’t quite as roomy as either the SI or the 3, but it is also the only 2 door that I tested. With it being a two door as well, passengers might not be all that satisfied. Volkswagen has some weird seat adjustments as well. In most cars, your seat angle is either electrically chosen, or you pull a lever and move the seat backing forward or back; in the GTi, there is a knob. It takes some getting used to. Parts for VWs…Im just kind of expecting them to be more expensive.

2009 Honda Civic SI
Pros: It revs to 8000 rpms and loves being in the high revs. It does about 30mpg with an engine that makes 200HP. The ride is very comfortable for both front and backseat passengers. The clutch and trans are one of the best 6 speed manuals I have ever driven…it is very very smooth. Trunk is roomy…the exterior looks pretty damned good, while still not drawing much attention to itself. It’s a Honda…so it will pretty much never break. Cheapest of the bunch.
Cons: it makes no power down low. It does nothing until you hit 6000 rpms. The interior is ugly…I have no idea who decided that having a dash that is long enough to use as a dinner table was a good idea. That same person probably also thought that having your tach by itself, and then having a digital speedo were a good idea. Guess what…it’s not. The car just wasn’t very fun to drive…unless you’re just revving the shit out of the engine, no instant power if you want to just GO. With the way the gearing is, you’re doing over 3000 rpms just going 60mph on the highway…wtf?!

So…those were my initial impressions of the cars I test drove last year. Did any of them change since then? Did my car of choice turn out to be great or a mistake? Tune in next time.

cars cars, gti, mazda, test drive

Virtualization is great…it’s the current hot item in IT. Everyone is doing it; it’s the future of datacenter consolidation.

…it’s my current project.

After a few days of research, some CBTs, and a few meetings, we finally decided to start implementing our grand master plan. Brand new 16 core server with 128GB RAM…check, ESX licensing…check, sanity…check.

After deciding on our virtual network and disk architectures, we finally went to work. VMware is ungodly easy to setup, it’s almost scary.

Next step was getting our VirtualCenter server up and running, and this is when the fun begins (and by fun, I really mean WTF). In the title of the post, I mentioned something about “tricking” around in this particular portion of the setup process, so allow me to explain.

VirtualCenter is basically just a consolidated ESX host management solution. Instead of connecting to each ESX host individually to manage it, VirtualCenter (VC from now on) allows you to manage all your hosts from one area. In VC, you can make ESX clusters, manage Distributed Resources, manage VMotion, and a whole bunch of other goodies. It runs on top of a basic Windows server, uses Active Directory for authentication, and is supposed to make everything nice and easy. Indeed, it does; the interface is great, and manageability is superb…it makes my job all that much easier.

Installation is pretty straightforward, and after clicking “Next” a few times for the VI Client and for the VC server, you think you’re golden. Of course, there are some steps you have to perform as pre-requisites for VC.
First, you need to create a database for it. Well, I’m lying, you don’t particularly HAVE to create a database for it, since it would offer to install MSDE in the same step, but we have a SQL 2005 Cluster…why not take advantage of it? So, created a database, and assigned a domain user myDomain\esxdb as db_owner to it.
Next, create a system DSN to point to that database using NT Authentication. Make sure you use the SQL Native client since it’s SQL 2005, and you’re ready to roll.
Finally, during install, provide the installer with the DSN name, the username, and the password that it will need to connect to the database.

Wait wait wait…so what about this trickery you keep talking about?
Let me get to that!

Next up…installing the Update Manager and the Converter. Go through those steps…and wait…it tells me that the VirtualCenter server is not running? I JUST INSTALLED THE DAMNED THING…on a brand new clean server, no less.

Ok then…I go to the Services menu and try to start it manually….fail. Fail? FAIL?!

Looking through logs (which are in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\Logs …yea don’t ask why they are there, they just are), I see this:

[2009-04-01 16:20:21.613 'App' 1784 error] ODBC error: (28000) – [Microsoft][SQL Native Client][SQL Server]Login failed for user ‘NT AUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS LOGON’.
[2009-04-01 16:20:21.613 'App' 1784 error] Failed to intialize VMware VirtualCenter. Shutting down…
[2009-04-01 16:20:21.613 'App' 1784 info] Forcing shutdown of VMware VirtualCenter now

Now wait a minute…why the hell is it trying to login to the SQL server as anonymous when I damned clearly provided a username and password for it, and I’m logged into the VC server as a domain admin, so even if it was passing active credentials, it should work. However, it was not.

So ok…what if I go back to the DSN and specify credentials there. Nope, can’t do that…it’s either NT authentication (which does not let you pass credentials), or SQL authentication (which does). Putting domain credentials into the SQL authentication fields result in a whole bunch of fail.

Ok then, next step: create a local SQL user, and use that instead. So I create a local user called esxlocaldb on the SQL server, make that user the db_owner, and re-run the installer for VC. I give it the credentials of the esxlocaldb user (after changing my DSN to use those SQL credentials, obviously), and it comes back and tells me that the credentials are incorrect. I doublecheck everything, do a test in the DSN config window, and everything is dandy…but the VC installer simply wont work.

So now, the trickery begins. In order to install this F-ing thing, I basically had to have both the esxlocaldb user as db_owner AND the domain\esxdb user as db_owner to the ESX database. For the DSN, I gave it the esxlocaldb credentials using SQL authentication, but for the ESX installer, I gave it the domain account. This seemed to work flawlessly.

I think that the installer is just wacked…it uses the DSN credentials to query the DB, but VirtualCenter actually requires a domain user to have access to it. Really, makes no sense to me, but we basically tried everything else. Every other possible combination of database rights and DSN configurations.

Makes no sense to me, but it works now…if anyone has any comments on what we may have missed, I’m all eyes and ears.

me = geek, work

No, really…I’m not confused; I did just say William Shakespeare’s Land of the Dead.

Official Link

I highly suggest you go see this. It’s hilarious. As much as I’d love to give you a synopsis, it would kind of ruin the fun of seeing it.

However…just imagine this: Shakespeare….and zombies. I mean, really, do you need to know more? GO SEE THIS!

Do: Sit in the first three rows.
Do: Laugh
Do: Wear clothes that you don’t mind getting splattered in stage blood.
Don’t: Be a pansy.
Don’t: Bother to look for parking (it’s pretty much next to impossible, unless you get there early)

People

No, I have no intention of becoming Fark.com, but some of these things are just too hilarious/absurd/crazy to not post.

Too fat to work, eh….well, fuck you

Bat hangs on for dear life during space shuttle launch…stupid bat

Beer and titties….on the same bottle? Yes please!

Links

Senator tells AIG to go kill themselves

Pope Joe Pesci is an idiot

Fellow Shacker and an awesome photography concept

Beyond awesome time waster…your keyboard can be a Daft Punk music machine!

Apple are idiots. Same thing happened to LatestChatty

Aaaand finally, John Stewart serves up a case of woop ass on Jim Cramer: here

Links

7:45…7:50…7:55…8:05am. The previous times are scheduled stops for the High Speed Trolley that takes me to work in the morning, and all times that it did not arrive. I looked at my phone; 8:10am. I had been standing on the cold platform for 25 minutes now to no avail. At this point, I’m contemplating just driving in and saving myself the needless hassle of standing there like an idiot waiting for a trolley that may never come.

Of course, the logical mind is thinking that it has to come. There may be a broken down trolley that they have to move off the track, but eventually, in order to not block the trolleys coming from Norristown and to allow people to actually get somewhere, it would come. It finally did, shortly after 8:10. “Don’t worry about the fares, just come on in”, said the driver, both trying to save time and perhaps make up for the lateness, “first stop will be Bryn Mawr, so if you need to get off before then, there is another trolley coming in about a minute or two.” In essence, he was about to skip about 8 stops in an effort to make up time…awesome! Not that it would really help, since it would only save about 5 minutes total, but still, it made for a quicker ride. Quicker indeed, dude put the pedal to the metal, I don’t think I’ve ever traveled as fast in a trolley as this dude made it go. In fact, he overshot the Bryn Mawr platform due to his speed, and I’m pretty sure he almost jumped the track at one point. I want this dude to be my driver everyday.

“Next stop…40th street” was the last thing I heard before the subway stopped….in between 46th street and 40th street. Figures…only my luck would have it that my trolley is fucked, and my subway is fucked. A few minutes later, they announced “the train will be moving shortly”…right. Eventually we get moving, and make it all the way to 34th street, where we stopped again for another 10 minutes. They finally told us that the train in front of us was having mechanical problems, and we’d be moving again shortly.

SEPTA…epic…fail.

And now for some people much worse than me: Most unfortunate names ever, according to the BBC

And…wtf? Zombie…pinup…calendar?

General Stupidity, Links

First of all, I bet most of you are wondering what the hell IISADMPWD even is. Well, basically it’s a tool built into Windows 2000+ and IIS that allows password changes over the web. You go to a webpage, type in your username, current password, and new password, and it updates your information using ASP. This works on local workstations, domain accounts, you name it. It’s quite awesome.

I wish I had known about this tool two years ago, when I was asked if there was any way for VPN users to change their domain passwords (which they used to authenticate to the VPN) remotely, without having to be on the domain.

Setting it up is pretty easy, but it’s not really documented very well anywhere. A bunch of websites reference it as a tool to use for this purpose, but most just leave it at that; Microsoft tells you how it works, but not how to get it running initially. Well…here is how to get it running…after the jump:

Read more…

Software, me = geek iis, iisadmpwd, password, windows

“Hey, Hey…where’d you get that green shirt?” yelled a tall, crazed Septa rider as he admired the green Phillies “luck o’the Irish” shirt that I wore to the parade today, “I couldn’t find one of those anywhere.”
I turned to him and grumbled a response, something along the lines of “luck, I guess”.

In reality, it’s simply a mass produced shirt that I bought at the stadium one day, but who am I to diminish the Phillies Spirit in the guy.

I hate Septa. Riders of the lowest common denominator, the left half of the intelligence bell curve occupied the El I had ridden just a few minutes earlier, and it seemed that the 100 trolley would not be any better.

The Phillies parade was today, so people were traveling on Septa en masse, similarly to how the Japanese ride their subways at rush hour. For the first time ever, there was not even a place to breathe, no matter if you were sitting or standing. Surprisingly, the ride into work was quite normal, eerily normal actually, I guess it was a bit too early in the morning for even the most die hard of fans. The parade was not starting for another five hours, leaving plenty of time for the crowds to gather in every orifice of the city.

We left for an early lunch to catch the parade. In reality, we simply skipped the lunch part and made our way along Walnut Street to where it intersected with Broad Street: The parade route. “Hi, remember that today is a regular work day, and no concessions of time off will be made to those wanting to attend the parade”, said an email earlier in the day. Pfft….yea, ok, get right on that chief. We managed to get a pretty decent spot to stand, only about ten feet or so from Broad, about six or seven lines of people back; not bad for having left an hour before the parade was to start.

Coming from work, we were dressed business casual; no Phillies attire whatsoever, and Hasan had his Halloween costume with him….or…on him: The Wendy’s girl wig. We were heathens, getting perplexed looks. No Phillies gear at the parade…we must be mad! Are we not citizens of Philadelphia, are we not patriotic to the Phillies? At some points, I thought we were going to be clubbed like a baby seal.

The ride home was oh so very different from the ride in. That mass of people was also traveling back, much to my discontent. The 100 trolley was packed nuts to butts, with the crazy guy among us. He was loud…everyone was loud, some cheering the Phillies, others telling this particular rider to shut the fuck up.

Finally…Gulph Mills; head pounding, deaf in the ears, glad to be off.

As I threw out my October Transpass, and searched for my mustang keys…
“I would rather have stayed at work”.

Personal

We have the Patriot Act….but that’s NOTHING compared to this: YRO@Slashdot

The UK is being the Nanny state hardcore.

Your next link brought to you by Police Brutality/Stupidity: KTVU News Story

Links