News

JR

My wife is tiny… 5 ft tiny… Suffice it to say I needed a safe and easy way to load (and unload) my motorcycle without assistance. I researched the expensive solutions from LoadAll and deemed it unnecessarily complicated (with far too many moving parts) for my taste. I also didn’t want to sacrifice my truck cargo space. I decided on the 40″ wide, 8 ft. long Black Widow Ramp from DiscountRamps.

JR

[][1]Inventoried replicated folders and their corresponding backlog counts Before you even get started, make sure your Powershell execution policy is set to RemoteSigned for your standard AND x86 Powershell console; Check_MK will generally execute PS scripts from the x86 console, so it’s critical to set the policy for both: Start > Accessories > Windows PowerShell Right-click ‘Windows PowerShell (x86)’, select ‘Run As Administrator’ Execute: Set-Execution Policy RemoteSigned Repeat the same steps above, but for the standard ‘Windows PowerShell’ console.

JR

Someone important suggested this get posted somewhere so that anyone else experiencing check_http socket timeout problems with client/servers running Microsoft System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection would have a clue as to what could be causing issues: If you’re receiving strange/unexpected timeouts from the check_http plug-in when running it against a server using Microsoft System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection, the Network Inspection Service may be blocking your check attempt. Don’t bother trying to force an agent string or any other weird options; either switch to header-checks-only [no body] using the -N option with check_http, or disable your Network Inspection service entirely (not recommended).

JR

I’ve stumbled on a useful plug-in from Lars Michelsen that easily monitors a single Windows Server DHCP scope for usage using SNMPv2, but found this fell short of what I needed for monitoring several scopes at once. I’ve modified Lars’ original plugin/script to accommodate all available DHCP scopes on your monitored Windows server. You no longer need to add separate service definitions to monitor all available scopes. It’s worth noting a couple of important details:

JR

I’ve recently stumbled across Play.FM, a flash-based music streaming service similar to Pandora but exclusively featuring Electronic and Dance Music. Friendly site with sensational tunes, but many of the songs, particularly those uploaded by independent DJs or artists, are not available for sale or download, making it difficult to listen on portable devices or offline. I tried the usual methods of download/capture for Flash-based music, but nothing was saved to my cache directory, and FreeMusicZilla detected no active streams… I gave the popular FlashGot Firefox plug-in a try and found it to work great.

JR

I’ve recently sent out invites for our [local] wedding ceremony/reception . Along with custom-designed invites (and RSVP cards), we’ve created an informational website for attendees: http://wedding.liveaverage.com It mostly hosts info related to directions, accommodations, registries, etc., but we were pleased with the outcome of the site and invites. In case anyone asks, the invites were printed by Rush Flyers (a great printing outfit from Florida).

JR

I spent more time than necessary looking for a VMware disk mount utility to use on a Linux-based distribution. For windows, there’s the VMWare Workstation Disk Mount Utility (5.5) that can installed with the VMWare DiskMount GUI, but I couldn’t find the simple vmware-mount.pl program for Linux distros. Instead, I had to dig it out of a compatible VMWare Server package [for Linux], copy it to /usr/bin/ and create the necessary symlinks for operation.

JR

I recently had the [unfortunate] opportunity of rolling-out (2) Lenovo RS110 servers targeted for SMBs. We seemed to fit the market for this relatively new Lenovo offering, but the product failed to meet the needs and expectations of my environment. The intention was to launch one of these two units with an Ubuntu/Debian-based Linux distribution to host our Zimbra mail server (currently residing virtual Ubuntu 6.06 LTS machine, with a host OS of Ubuntu 8.

JR

Figured I’d post a few helpful pictures for any other GSXF enthusiasts looking to install HID lighting on their 2008 Suzuki GSX650F. I chose to use a pre-existing, pre-drilled location for mounting the HID ballasts. To make certain vibration and movement of the ballasts is kept to minimum I secured the mounting brackets directly to frame using heavy-duty zipties (two ties for each ballast bracket). You will need to drill holes in both plastic caps.