K Blog

Corporate spammers

Kieran.Block — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 07:13:00 GMT

As I mentioned before, I was the unlucky recipient of a domain which had previously been published (accidentally).

This has led to the unique bonus of a ready-made honeypot. Honeypots, for those of you who don't know, are email addresses that have been posted onto the internet for the express purpose of being found by spammers and then added to their lists of people to sell Viagra and fake Rolex watches to.

Why do I want a few thousand Viagra emails a day? Well, I don't (yet). It does, however, lend itself to an interesting by-product - legitimate companies spamming me. How? Well, most legitimate companies send out newsletters and offers and what-not to people on their distributions lists - everytime you put a business card into a barrel at an expo, you just signed up. However, these companies do not actually send out the emails themselves, they use other companies that specialise in sending out their mail (prices go up to extortionate levels of $0.30 an email) and as with all tactics or industries less than perfect, people do stupid things to make a buck.

Some of these third party companies will, on occasion, increase their lists by using less reputable methods of getting email addresses - if you search for "email address lists" chances are you will find some hockster selling a few million email addresses for $50 - if each address you add to the list costs the customer $0.30, that is effectively free money.

Now, I was aprehensive about actually doing this - I am sure there are legal folks out there who will no doubt request removal of this page and try to sue me. What I have is undeniable proof, full insurance, and an office on a floor full of lawyers.

What I also did was offer the offending company a chance to explain themselves, which they ignored.

N-able Technologies, makers of (actually quite good) remote management software, were the most recent company to find their way into my honeypot. Twenty five times, since April, although I only just noticed.

Headers;

Microsoft Mail Internet Headers Version 2.0
thread-index: AclTyvbGK2lTvEIpQQSn81lP7LJ1yw==
Received: from mkt8.verticalresponse.com ([209.66.113.63]) by vrbl.kicks-ass.net with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.1830); Tue, 2 Dec 2008 02:39:13 +1100
Return-Path: <bounces-910a7023ec-ea0136bbbb@b.cts.vresp.com>
DomainKey-Signature: q=dns; a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws;s=mkt; d=vresp.com;h=X-MailerISP:Received:From:Reply-To:To:Subject:Date:Message-ID:List-Unsubscribe:MIME-Version:X-Company_ID:X-CTS-Enabled:X-Campaign:Content-Type;b=JPX3Cl2sN/FwxDVxnZmH893kxIFb86F/zm7wHH1M1JfQuJSvFk+IN4RM0w4xsdHcZ+AfCP6o3Bm+rCJvY7TmHzzroKLDgzAyVEXiDfZ32a8Vmf/nyb3xDPNiToQwlbto09KaHcbEZIPZ/FfHgW0EU4YOpClMd4BU9nhUYjRJF6E=
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-MailerISP: AboveNet
Received: from [10.4.7.56] ([10.4.7.56:48203] helo=mailer02.sf.verticalresponse.com) by hollister.sf.verticalresponse.com (envelope-from <bounces-910a7023ec-ea0136bbbb@b.cts.vresp.com>) (ecelerity 2.2.2.35 r(26825/26826M)) with ESMTP id A3/FA-07009-E0104394; Mon, 01 Dec 2008 07:21:50 -0800
From: "N-able Technologies" <N_able_Technologies@mail.vresp.com>
Content-Class: urn:content-classes:message
Importance: normal
Reply-To: "N-able Technologies" <reply-910a7023ec-ea0136bbbb-614f@u.cts.vresp.com>
Priority: normal
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.3790.4325
To: <geos@block.net.au>
Subject: Last Chance: Webinar - Earn More Desktop Revenue with N-able & Intel
Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2008 15:21:50 +0000
Message-ID: <910a7023ec-geos=block.net.au@mail.vresp.com>
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:reply-910a7023ec-ea0136bbbb-614f@u.cts.vresp.com?subject=unsubscribe>
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Company_ID: 226579
X-CTS-Enabled: 910a7023ec-ea0136bbbb
X-Campaign: 910a7023ec
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="__________MIMEboundary__________"
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 01 Dec 2008 15:39:13.0982 (UTC) FILETIME=[F6703DE0:01C953CA]

--__________MIMEboundary__________
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="UTF-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

--__________MIMEboundary__________
Content-Type: text/html;
charset="UTF-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

--__________MIMEboundary__________--

Vertical Response seems to be the company that N-able use to send out their emails, and somehow, my honeypot address got in there.

Even more damning is the fact that the emails start "Dear Geo:" or "Hi Geo,"

This is not new either, about 18 months ago I received similar spam from a different, high profile, software company (no, not Microsoft) - I brought it to their attention on their forums, and they apologised profusely and then swept it under the rug - I am not completely happy with how that worked out, but at least they seemed to care that they had done something wrong. They did, however, try to make good - so I will not name them.

Corporate spammers beware.

-- Before posting this article, I gave N-able a week to respond to it - they opted not to.

Moving from ESX to Hyper-V - Part 1

Kieran.Block — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 13:18:00 GMT

So, I have my ESX server humming away nicely here -- it does what I need it to do, and I don't have too many complaints. However, with the release of Hyper-V, I think it is time to move over.

Why? Is it because I am on the kool-aide? Dogfooding? Nope, I just think it will be better.

Put down your pitchforks folks, I'm serious. I searched long and hard for an unbiased comparison of ESX and Hyper-V, and it simply doesn't exist. You either get a VMWare or MS bias, which is a shame, because I just want my test server to work as well as it possibly can. I have (free) licensing for both, and have no problems with the learning curve so I have no real reason to choose one over the other. There is a perception that MVPs are supposed to instantly side with MS, and I can tell you right now it aint so -- if an MS product sucks at something, I tell them. More importantly than that though, I tell them why. So, with that out of the way, I present _my_ comparison of ESX and Hyper-V. So far, the only meaningful reasons that I have seen for using ESX over Hyper-V are as follows;

Support for non MS guests
Live Migration over Quick Migration
Product maturity
That is it. Performance wise, I have it on good authority that "there should be no performance reason for a user who is virtualizing Windows servers to choose ESX over Hyper-V", I am yet to test that out, but it was enough for me to have a go.

Now, Live Migration is great, if you are using it. I only have one server, and Directly Attached Storage, so it is on zero value to me. That doesn't mean I disregard this lacking feature overall, just that it isn't important to me now. The same can be said for non MS guests; this is my test server, and I support MS environments pretty much exclusively. As for product maturity, it is another very valid point, but one that is unimportant to me. As I said earlier, I had an MS guy tell me it would all be fine, and I am sure I could bribe someone for his phone number so that I can hassle him to no end if it all goes pear shaped.

The problems I have had with ESX are pretty low. First, I have had a few issues with VMDKs becoming corrupted. I am not saying this couldn't happen in Hyper-V as well, but it sure took some of the shine off what I was expecting to be my love-affair with ESX. The solution was usually always a host reboot (and/or some VMDK tools) but it really took away from the whole "realiability" angle I expected (I have one of these in production as well, and it is never fun rebooting 8 servers at once...). Second, ESX had some unwieldy ways of doing things. Moving ISOs from a workstation to the host took AGES, it was so bad that I would try and line up a few at once and do it overnight (this was using FastSCP - apparently the quick way of doing it). Third was supportability, I had a stack of problems using a HP LTO3 drive attached to an ESX host that were a bear to fix. Way more importantly, Microsoft do not currently support Exchange server in a virtualized environment (edit; I believe this is changing now). Finally, it can be a bit of a pig to the linux unskilled. Changing an IP address is usually answer with "reinstall ESX". It sounds a whole lot worse than it actually is, but it is still something that I never liked (add to that, USB was a big ugly grey area).

So, my hope for Hyper-V is that I will a) have much faster access to moving things on and off the server, b) a similar speed to do everything I normally did on ESX (I have setup performance counters for seven days on my server, and I will compare them with identically configured servers on Hyper-V), selfishly c) something worthwhile to write about.

Down to planning for the actual move.

Currently, I have two critical production servers; DC-01, my Windows 2003R2 x32 DC/DNS/DHCP and EX-01, my Exchange 2003 server. These must make it over perfectly, so I am going to spend the most time on them. Additionally, I have a few less important servers; two CRM servers (CRM-01 and DB-01 (CRM3x32 and CRM4x64 respectively)) and an Exchange 2007 server that I was planning to migrate to (and had started...). Everything else was test only, and for my sanity, will be skipped. There is also a huge collection of ISOs that I don't want to have to transfer again - If I can keep them, great.

I am torn on the best approach; ideally I want to do as many different methods as possible to show what works best, practically I want to do as little work as possible to get it done. That said, I mainly just want my mail back up and running - anything else is a bonus. Currently, the server has two RAID5 arrays which means I may be able to move everything to the secondary array, install Hyper-V on the primary and then somehow get data back over. So, I am going for a multi-pronged attack which will look something like this;

Move all ISOs to secondary array
Configure another machine on the network to receive mail while the Exchange server is down (which I will publish shortly)
File backup of EX-01 (I have *never* done a backup of my Exchange server (as a proof of concept for "ultimate disaster recovery", more on that later) so I have a stack of transaction logs - I want to back all of this up exactly as it is, so that I can test it later if I need/want to.
NTBackup of DC-01 and EX-01 - moving the BKF files over to a workstation off the server, this is my "Plan Z"
Acronis Image of both servers to a virtual disk, which will then be copied over the network to a workstation
Shutdown the servers and move all the VMDK files to the secondary array, and to a separate workstation - there is a tool which will convert the VMDK files straight over to VHD here <<LINK>>. I am concerned about it, as "allegedly" Hyper-V does not support SCSI disks, and ESX does not support IDE. Fun will no doubt ensue.
Format and install of Windows 2008 x64 Core with the Hyper-V role to the primary array
Install SCVMM and try first at a direct conversion of the VMDKs, with the option to fall back on my Acronis images, and then to a more standard disaster recovery.

All in all, I can't see too many problems -- then again, I haven't started yet...

HP ML Series Server - Unknown Devices

Kieran.Block — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 04:41:00 GMT

While installing a new server here, I came upon one of the more annoying problems in installs, missing drivers. This is a brand new HP ML150 with Windows 2003 Standard x32, I installed all the drivers that came on the support CD, and did all my windows updates.

Still, the problem remained of two unknown devices with ID ACPI\HPI0002\0 and ACPI\IPI0001\0

After much looking around, I ended up tracking the two items down - they are not located on the CDs, and one of them is not even available for download without calling HP! The files are now located here -> http://www.block.net.au/help/files/HPDrivers.zip

That zip file contains the drivers necessary for most HP Servers with this problem, including the ML150 and ML110 - the readme.txt file is effectively just the instructions of which is which.

One driver has an executable that will install it for you, the other must be done the old fashioned way.

Good luck!

Kieran

Site Update!

Kieran.Block — Sat, 10 May 2008 03:48:00 GMT

Due to an external request, I have made some changes to the website.

First, my blog has moved from http://www.block.net.au/cs to http://www.block.net.au/blogs/kieran

Second, I would like to welcome James Kindon to the site, and thank him for his contributions - his blog is at http://www.block.net.au/blogs/james and his articles will be published on the helpsite -> http://www.block.net.au/help

Finally, we have added more of the Community Server functionality (and upgraded to the latest version) and now have a forum - I am not expecting wild amounts of traffic just yet, but if nothing else it will give us a chance to answer the questions you have about our articles.

I am very excited about the changes and look forward to pushing out even more content for your benefit.

Thanks,

Kieran

Isn't that some kind of dodgy mud hut?

Kieran.Block — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 21:57:00 GMT

Adobe is right near the top of my list of software companies I hate, second only to Symantec. Why? They code crap. Acrobat is quite possibly one of the most overpriced, bloated piece of rubbish I have ever had the misfortune of using. Now I know all the anti-ms folks out there will point the finger at MS doing the same thing, but I see a huge difference. I mean, most folks would argue that Vista is overpriced and bloated - I am not trying to argue that point, but imagine, for a terrifying moment, that Adobe started making operating systems. You would be paying about $4,000 for an operating system that runs like an asthmatic pensioner carrying a disabled seal.

Now, with that argument completely killed, let's move on.

Considering that I maintain my own website and am everything to everyone in my client's eyes, I need a few things. I need to be able to make and read PDFs, I need to be able to make websites without resorting to frontpage (see my previous entry), and I need to be able to do some image editing for the websites and whatever else suddenly becomes within scope.

Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Dreamweaver, and Adobe Photoshop are the 3 that immediately jump to mind. Now, I am in no mood to waste $2,500 on buggy as hell software today, nor any other day, but I need to be able to do these things. So what is out there that can do the job?

PDF was the first hurdle. I know of open source stuff like ghostscript, but last time I played with that it was ugly as hell. I am not completely against spending money, so I raised my sights from "free" to "sensible" and came up with Nitro PDF -> http://www.nitropdf.com <- at $99 for the full fat version, and $49 for the basic version, it beats the hell out of $700! So far, it has done quite well. It starts faster than Acrobat reader, has a PDF printer and even looks like Office 2007 with the ribbon bar. I am not a fanboy yet, but the fact that it started in under 2 minutes means that it is already lightyears ahead of Adobe.

HTML was the second. There are a multitude of applications that do this, but the concensus is, you either want to use Dreamweaver or Frontpage. I may go back to Frontpage or Expression Web or whatever it is called today, but for now, I want to know that I am not going to stuff anything (my blog) up horribly. After some serious googling, I found Nvu -> http://www.nvu.com <- considering it is free, and very clean, I have to say I am quite impressed. It looks and feels familiar, which is handy - but as I completed the majority of my site hack with notepad, I will have to wait and see how we go. Another $715 saved.

Finally, we had Image Editing. This I thought would be the hardest, I knew that Photoshop was good, and I knew that it was complicated - surely there will be no really good and reasonably priced alternative. Assuming I was going to be forced to use mspaint, I found paint.net -> http://www.getpaint.net <- This is a project that grew from a college project mentored by Microsoft and does a remarkable job. Take into account the fact that it is FREE, and so far, has been able to do whatever I used Photoshop for, and I have just saved $1,155.

Now, if only there was a way for me to uninstall Adobe Flash player...

The eternal struggle of ASP against Frontpage

Kieran.Block — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 00:56:00 GMT

I have been an unwilling participant in this battle through my own laziness. I didn't want to code my site from scratch, so leaving it in frontpage was the easiest thing to do. Until now. In an effort to have a blog and website that can actually live together in harmony, I decided to kick the hell out of my website.

It was a hard decision, but ultimately the right one. Frontpage does some horrible things to web pages, not as bad as Word, but still, pretty bad.

The real problem was that I built the site in frontpage, using a theme. This in an of itself is not so much of a problem, the issue is that Frontpage extensions and ASP2.0 cannot live together on the one godaddy server.

I can't update the frontpage website (and have it live) without frontpage extensions on, and when they are on, my blog is down. The catalyst for this was a recent format/reinstall of my main PC, as well as a new laptop, and logging into my blog to cover some horrible problems, only to find that my blog does not exist. Sigh.

So, how did I defrontpage my site? Relatively simply.

I am by no means a coder. I can read HTML, and regularly kick it until it works, but I haven't got a creative bone in my body - I am an engineer, not an artist.

The things I was worried about were the menus. I cracked open the index.htm file and started ripping out all the frontpage related garbage.

The first thing to break was the left menu and the rollovers, the theme that I was using autogenerated images for the menu - this is clearly not going to work anymore, but I doubt I will be adding much to it anyway. Fixing this was as simple as copying the topbuttons (which were part of the theme) over the sidemenu. I decided to rename all the images to make it easier while I was at it.

So, now I had the mind numbing task of going through all the pages and updating the data so that it points a the new files, with the new rollovers. I uploaded the site, it all worked and looked surprisingly good - it fails w3 validation, but not on anything too bad. I also updated the helpsite, but have not yet uploaded it.

As soon as I got the site up, I made sure frontpage server extensions were uninstalled, resetup ASP2.0 and click on my blog link. Nothing. Fantastic, so I severly retard myself by hours of HTML coding, and my blog still doesn't work. I scoured through my install notes from when I initially installed community server, only to find that all the godaddy options have changed because there was an update 3 days ago...

So, I rip it apart, setup my permission, setup my ASP directories again and wait for the update. I can't test it internally because CS resolves www.block.net.au/cs to block.net.au/cs - as block.net.au is my internal domain name, I obviously can't go split DNS'ing that. So, I abuse my admin powers and login to a client site to test it - down. I search for any other insight I might have left myself by googling my name (knowing that I am both the first hit of my name, and that I had full install details of what I did the first time).

In a string of what can only be described as endless, influenza induced boobery, I discover that my blog has been taken off Google. Kinda serves me right for not noticing it was down for so long I suppose...

So, the #1 Kieran Block is now my hero, a young lad from Canada who plays hockey, and punches the absolute crap out of people week in week out. A heart warming moment, but not a whole lot of help for me.

After clicking every link in Godaddy's control panel hopefully trying to find the "uber-secret-makeitwork-page", I stumble across the DNS section, which is throwing an error because block.net.au is not resolving to godaddy, but rather somewhere else.

A whole lot of swearing and a hosts file hack on the remote terminal server, and here I am. And now, slightly satisfied and disappointed with myself all at once, I am off to bed.

Kieran

How not to join a community

Kieran.Block — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 13:16:00 GMT

Recently, there was a bit of spat on Experts-Exchange. The other party involved has been good enough to not blog on the details, and as a courtesy, I don't intend on doing that either.

Suffice to say, it was a long time coming, and raised an interesting discussion on what you should and shouldn't do when joining a community, so here it is;

Obey the rules. There are thousands of ways to help people in the community - each has their own set of rules. Don't like one sites rules? Go somewhere else. Daniel Petri's forums are renowned for Daniel himself not dealing with stupidity, and why should he? Experts-Exchange's rules are probably middle of the road, and then there is the wild west of the newsgroups. The point is, the rules are the rules - if you do not have the raw intestinal fortitude to work at changing them by committing more time, then you need to obey them or go elsewhere.
Respect the janitors. All sites have admin staff - they are not the police of the site that people think, actually being a Zone Advisor on EE, I can tell you it is far more akin to being a cleaner at an average office. Generally it is tidy, and just needs a bit of a dust, other times someone leaves a nightmare situation for you in the toilets. There is no glory, and the satisfaction you get from it is the crap kind that makes you feel like you are making the difference, but you realise it is just a drop in the ocean.
Actually, respect everyone! You might be good at what you do, we are happy for you, but skill is easily overshadowed by arrogance and narcissism. I know some really, really bright people that are arrogant as hell, but they find a balance. Arrogance and respect for those around you are not totally incompatible. For example, I have no time for what we call "Google Monkeys". People who have no idea, but represent themselves as an expert and fill in their vacuum of knowledge by just googling your question and spamming you with links. EE has a lot of these, in fact, some are right up near the top of the hall of fame, and have been awarded MVPs for it. However, I deal with it - I will either ask them about, or offer to help them in a better way to post. Abusing people asking for help because you think they are stupid is really wrong. I mean, I absolutely hate having to clean up after useless network admins in the real world, and hope they crash right out of the industry, but you can't assume that everyone asking a question is like that. I consider myself a very good and responsible network admin, I do things properly, and I do things fast - but I also have no idea on a Mac. If I asked a question like "I am a network consultant, how the hell do I get this Mac to work" should that instantly mean I am a fraud?
Focus on what you are doing. If you are on a site for knowledge sharing, share it with everyone. I don't get people to contact me off the lists simply because I don't want the next person to contact me off the lists. It is stupid to do the same thing over and over again. If you are on a newsgroup and are happy to spend endless, free, hours working on someone else's system, knock yourself out.

That's it. Tough isn't it? I suppose it all falls down to respect - respect the rules, respect the admins, respect other members and respect the people asking the question.
The advice I give aspiring experts, or even more junior experts at EE is simple - find someone really good, and follow them around. When I started, I watched Sembee and learned how he was interacting with the site and it's members. I knew exchange, that wasn't the problem (although I did learn a lot more about it), but what I didn't know was how to work the site successfully.

Stick to your guns, don't change who you are for anything, but also know when to shut up and listen - I don't care who you are (myself included), there are thousands of people out there that know FAR more than you (or I) do.

Kieran

Vista Readyboost

Kieran.Block — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 01:47:00 GMT

I had not been enjoying my Vista experience. I installed it the day before release, and have used it ever since. Initially it was good, I was really enjoying it, however the drudgery quickly overtook the shinyness - even simple things like saving a new text file in notepad would take 20 seconds to open up the Save As dialog.

Now, don't get me wrong - I am not writing this as a big cryfest. I specifically chose not to write anything about it for the simple fact that I had not really given it that much of a chance;

I am running on a HP NC8230, it is about 2 years old, 1.86Ghz, 1GB RAM. It is probably the bear minimum that would run Vista at all - which is not really a good test.

So, why bother writing now? Readyboost!

This system scored a 2.0 on the Windows Experience Index.

Processor - 3.8
Memory - 4.4
Graphics - 2.0
Gaming Graphics - 3.7
Primary Hard Disk - 4.3

Cleary, graphics is the problem (I had already given up on Aero a few months ago, unfortunately). I have tried everything, new drivers, chipset drivers, manufacturer drivers, HP Vista updates. Nothing made a difference.

However, at a Sony conference in Sydney today, I was given a little 2GB MicroVault USB Key. It was a promotional thing and they were throwing them around (probably because it is the older model) so I didn't have much hope in it being readyboost compatible, especially after I tried a brand new (allegedly good) 4GB USB Key the other day, as well as formatting it in every combination, and messing with my (mistakenly purchased) SD Card. But, to my utter joy, I plugged it in, went to properties expecting to see the dreaded "Test Again" button - but instead was greeted with "How much of this drive would you like to use for ReadyBoost".

I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't this. After about 20 seconds, it seemed to be ready to go, things seemed a little bit quicker - then I decided to get a new Windows Experience Index;

Processor - 3.8
Memory - 4.4
Graphics - 4.1
Gaming Graphics - 3.7
Primary Hard Disk - 4.3

My new Windows Experience Index is 3.7 - all from one little $50 USB Key.

So, what difference is that making? Well, I am yet to re-enable Aero, but from what I have seen so far just in moving around and doing day to day things like opening word, outlook, notepad, etc - it is SIGNIFICANTLY better. Recently I was given the opportunity to give some feedback to the Vista Product Group, and I was critical but fair - I realise that my hardware is not great, but it was fine for XP, so I was disappointed at how much it sucked in Vista. Given that survey again now, just days after I did the original - it would be hugely different.

This is the operating system I installed 6 or so months ago - this is Vista. It is exciting, shiny and intuitive - not mind-numbingly painful. I had recently said in a mailing list that I would be due for a reinstall in the next 6 months or so, and would probably roll back to XP (unless Vista SP1 came out) - but now, I think everything is good.

I just hope that I am not posting a retraction in a few weeks time :)

Kieran

Microsoft CRM

Kieran.Block — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 18:23:00 GMT

A new financial year, I figured that I needed a better system than Excel and the Outlook calendar to track my working life. Sure, I have MYOB at the backend for accounts, but my system is clunky and inelegant - especially considering I am supposed to be cutting edge :)

So, what to do. As a Microsoft Certified Partner, I get a free copy of MS CRM. I thought "Fantastic, a handful of wizards and a lost weekend or two, and I should be right on track!". Oh how wrong I was.

CRM is incredibly powerful, and configurable. This sounds great, but what it means is that "out of the box" it is not going to be a perfect fit (I mean, nothing that attempts to do this will be 100% perfect out of the box).

Key to my issues is that the system apparently lets you invoice and quote - the two things that I wanted to do most. However, and this is the mother of all "however's", you can't actually send these quotes out, or even print them. "OMGWTFBBQHAX??!!11" I hear you ask, my question exactly.

It was at this point that I decided to crack out my super special MVP handshake and go on the prowl for an MS CRM MVP, and I found one. When I was first looking at this, and looking through my Technet Plus, MSDN, and Partner downloads, I found several versions of CRM, and had no idea what did what. At that time, I searched the MVP directory (which should be publicly available here -> https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/communities/mvp.aspx) for the answer to my question, and found Guy Riddle

Initially, I asked Guy a simple question as to "What is going on with all these versions" and got the answer quite simply of "They are all totally different, but you should be looking at CRM". Right, sorted - I have that in my Partner kit, winner.

I installed it, followed the guide (as much as any real IT guy/gal does) and started plugging in my data - wondering what I am going to do with territories, and static price lists - and ending up with something that looked like another version of my outlook contacts. So, I tried pushing it, creating an invoice for the new month for Client Number 1 and emailing it off - the email went, but with no attachment - turns out printing an invoice from CRM just aint possible (well, it can be, you can get custom reports going, but it isn't designed to do this "out of the box").

So, in a last ditch hope to try and get myself together, I sent another email to Guy, asking for help - I was wholy expecting that it would lead to me contracting his company to deploy CRM for me properly at whatever the going rate is. Guy emailed me, and we made a morning appointment.

I have to say right now what a great fellow that Guy is. He gave me over an hour of his time to go through CRM and showed me what I should be looking at; how to configure custom entities, their forms and attributes, and so on. He also confirmed that invoicing through CRM can be problematic, and that it is not something he uses (with custom reports). His solution was to use Excel as per normal, but to attach the emails to CRM using the Outlook client! Righto, good enough for me, that sorts out the majority of my accounting needs in CRM, but surely half an accounting system is not the end use of this giant of a program?

Not at all. I started this expecting it would be my accounting system with a few bonus sections, and maybe a bit of a knowledge base. Instead, Guy has shown me how to effectively remove all the information about my clients and my work and drop it into CRM - enabling me to not only forget a whole heap of information without consequence, but also to become more organised and plan details, and even more importantly allow me to easily hire somebody to step in and know everything I know without me having to say a word. Now we are talking! I have been planning to hire a junior for a little while now, especially now that I am getting busier - but what good is hiring someone to save me time if it takes twice as long for me to show them what they have to do?

Anyway, as of now, I am building a massive database of everything - configurations, hardware registers, software registers, etcetera - and just had to post about it to let all you other poor folks who are screaming for a solution to your business issue know that CRM isn't the unweildy beast that it appears. There is hope, and I would like to again thank Guy Riddle for his time and I whole heartedly advise any of you out there hoping to get the most out of CRM to call him now!

Kieran

A big thank you to all those email administrators out there who have just spammed the hell out of me

Kieran.Block — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 11:19:00 GMT

That's right, you, the guy/gal with your hands in your pockets looking at your shoes - I hold you responsible.

Sure, it wasn't you that unleashed this volley of spam on the world, BUT, it was you that configured your server in such a way that it sends a helpful little email NDR informing me that the 4,500 emails I apparently sent out yesterday, unfortunately didn't make it - because jjwse032jds@yourdomain.3ejw doesn't actually exist...

Recipient filtering and tarpitting - AD Lookups - Recipient validation. Every half decent mail system has this functionality, and if yours doesn't then you either upgrade your life to the 21st century, or drop any anti-spam system infront of it - such as GFI or Vamsoft (no, anti-spam built into your anti-virus, is not real anti-spam)

OK, I accept some of the responsibility - I have a catchall setup on my domain. Why? Because I have had it for so long that I don't know what addresses I have published. I have an idea, but I will miss a few. Needless to say, after this little stint, that is going to change (especially as I am now staring down the barrel of a long weekend).

Additionally, I wan't to make an apology of my own, and plead for you to bear this in mind the next time you write a fake email address in a public forum. Make it unroutable, please. I have been guilty of using yourdomain^com or whatever^com but am far more concious of this since being on the other end. A few years ago, some online star trek folk (no capitalisation for you) had a website called swd (or something). Anyway, their domain was swd^net^au - they then had the idea of masking that against spam by listing it as BLOCK^net^au - see the problem here? Fair enough, the domain wasn't registered back then, and their domain is now long dead (posted in 98 originally, I believe), but it has made me pay more attention to what I am writing as a domain name.

Anyway, I have a few thousand emails to move around

Kieran

Websites, help guides, new clients and wireless bridges!

Kieran.Block — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 01:36:00 GMT

It has been a HUGE few weeks, I have finally completed my commercial website http://www.block.net.au . That has taken me, disappointingly, about 9 months to do - further proof that I am not a web designer, or moreso, I am rubbish at writing content.

Being a Frontpage web, and GoDaddy not liking Frontpage and Community Server living on the same hosting account - I took the blog down. Fortunately, I figured a way to write an ASP form for the site, and simply stripped the sitemap - meaning there are no frontpage components left. So all I had to do was reactivate the CS site, which was relatively simple, considering I found my initial blog post in the Google cache on how I did it initially (Thanks Google!)

So, that ends that trial of my website, on to my helpsite and the help guides. I have been wanting to build and document a test network, particularly so that I can detail more of the common setups (like Self Signed Certificates on the clients, RPC/HTTP, etc). Now, I have my virtual server, which has survived a few upgrades, primarily RAM, Hard drive, and RAID Controller - so I am building a full virtual network there. Aside from the usual test network build, I thought it would be an idea to create a video of it all. Fortunately, the MVP award has given me a copy of Camtasia Studio 4, courtesy of Tech Smith (no doubt so that people like me use it, see how good it is, and then write a blog post about it :) Anyway, this has brought out the perfectionist in me again, as I detail absolutely everything, and then compile it into videos that are actually worth watching. So far, I have full (read: unedited) videos of the network being built, and am now starting to get into the useful stuff, like RPC/HTTP configuration and troubleshooting.

This has all taken a back seat for the moment, thanks to a few new clients. I am excluding names primarily because I have not asked for a testimonial (but I will for the commercial site), but they are taking up a lot of my time, and more importantly forcing me to think more :) Key to this has been to solve a problem of frightening regularity in Australia.

Telstra are useless.

When getting the phone system organised, and preparing the contract for the client, I gave the wrong address - 255 instead of 225. A tragic mistake, but fortunately one that was noticed that same day by the client, correct with Telstra, and then even confirmed by the client with Telstra in a separate phone call. So, we waited our 5 weeks for the ISDN phone lines be installed.

"Hi, this is Joe Installer from Telstra, trying to install your lines at 255...." Good work Telstra.

Fortunately, they worked very hard to resolve it - and actually had the lines installed and working the Monday after they were due (they were due the previous Friday). A stellar feat, but one that was overshadowed the next day by the most disgusting person I have ever dealt with - our account manager Claire (I would give the last name if I had it!)
Fully knowing that I am a consultant, she told the client that I was responsible for giving them the wrong address in the first place when they complained about the delays (not just the lines, but even once they were installed, they didn't ring...). This is after she had already admitted it was a Telstra fault, and knew full well that the contract, signed 5 weeks earlier, had the correct address.

Now, this client is not small fry, they are part of one of the largest banks in the world - exponentially larger that Telstra themselves - and this "customer service" person actually hung up on the client, refused to listed to the manager (she stopped listening to me after the first day, and having walked the "bend over for Telstra" path before, I was definitely not trying to stir the pot), and even had the misguided notion that somehow trying to pass the blame around was going to work. Luckily for me, this client is very switched on - and knew straight away (before I had a chance to even protest) where the issues were.

Wow, now that was a rant :) Anyway, the point of this was not to whinge about Telstra, or this horrid Claire person, but rather to solve a problem they caused. Without phonelines, our internet was also delayed indefinitely (and still is) - the scope, to use a neighbours alternate ADSL line. The problem, getting through the tennancy walls (which cannot be penetrated). The solution, a wireless bridge.

Now, I had never used one of these, but I knew they existed (just not what they called). So, go to what you know, I asked at Experts-Exchange -> http://www.experts-exchange.com/Q_22598618.html

The real thing I am trying to convey here, is that the WET54G is (out of the box) a piece of rubbish. It would not connect to the WRT54G, and when it did, it would lose ethernet, so here is how I fixed it, and got it to work;

Reset the WET54G to defaults (not easily done, but this worked)
1. Plug the unit in
2. Press the reset button and count to 10
3. Leave the button in and disconnect power for 10 seconds
4. Leave the button in and reattach power
5. Count to 10 again, and then release the button and unplug power
6. Disconnect the LAN cable
7. Plug the unit back in again and wait for it to boot
8. Disconnect power, plug in the LAN and then turn it back on
9. Done - these are probably redundant instructions, but they consistantly worked for me, and I did it at least 20 times (no, really)
Now, with the unit reset to defaults, immediately update the firmware of the unit - I tried for hours without doing this (like a fool) but you need to do it
With that flashed, you should be ready to now follow the (non Vista compatible) instructions

And, after many issues with range, dropouts, tradesmen and anything else that can go wrong - it is now working. The users have full internet access, and now almost have a full office!

Hopefully that little tidbit helps someone else - if not, whinging about Telstra made me feel a little better :)

Kieran

Microsoft MVP Award!

Kieran.Block — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 15:15:00 GMT

Huzzah!

A month ago now I got an email from the MVP awards folk advising me that I had been nominated, this was a bit of a surprise since I had been told in November last year that I was nominated (unofficially) and had just figured that I missed out. Apparently you only hear from MS if you win the award.

Anyway, this email said that I would find out in early April whether or not I had been successful.

Last night, at about 8:30, I realised that it was the first of April, and already had a slight doubt that I had not heard anything - even though it was a Sunday :)

Obviously, expecting an email on a Sunday about the MVP program was HIGLY unlikely, but I checked anyway - and there it was.

I am still in a slight state of shock, I wasn't really expecting to win this time around, and was gearing myself for the intake after this one.

Going forward, I will write more about what it all means, but right now I am just too excited and overwhelmed with what I now seem to have at my fingertips

http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile/Kieran.Block

Kieran

Virtual Server, Take 2

Kieran.Block — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 22:15:00 GMT

OK, this virtual server has been on massive learning curve - first I was not even sure that I wanted a virtual server, all I was really after was a way to test out exchange 2007 (as well as a few other things, such as SBS environments).

From here, it has dissolved into a massive project, that I suspected it would, but was in no way prepared for the sheer scale of it.

So, here are some points that I have learnt which will hopefully save time for someone else out there;

Exchange 2007 requires a 64bit processor, MS Virtual Server 2005 does not support 64bit OSes (!)
VMWare Server is free! and supports x64. I preferred MS VS in the beginning, but quickly adapted due to necessity.
VMWare ESX is not so free, but the demo version is well worth installing.
When using the demo of ESX, you may receive the following error when trying to use the VMWare VirtualCenter "there are not enough licenses installed to perform the operation", to resolve this, simply combine the consolidated.lic and vcms.lic files into one file, and get the license server using that lic file. This may have been written somewhere better than my tiny blog, but it is here now!
MS Virtual Server servers can be imported into VMWare ESX using the VMWare converter (as can running machines) -> http://www.vmware.com/download/converter/
HP have a VMWare Sizing Guide here -> http://www27.compaq.com/SB/VMware/UI/index.aspx <- to use this effectively, configure perfmon on your server to get the relevant items (processor time, RAM usage, Disk IO / Second, Network Bytes / Second
HP also have a Configuration service here, which builds servers with VMWare ESX Included -> http://www.hp.com.au/products/configureaider

I am now a virtual server convert, and have recommended it to one of my customers for a network rebuild - they were going to spend large amounts on a rebuild anyway, so why not explore every possibility.

It really started with my virtual server, but also a meeting with another company in the city here that offered hosted virtual servers - sure, their virtual servers are on multi-redundant links and million dollar hardware, but investing $70k can provide similar benefits to a small business...

I will detail this as I go, if for no other reason than a breadcrumb trail to find my way back out again!

Kieran

Help site launched

Kieran.Block — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 21:00:00 GMT

Help site launched

I have been considering writing a help site for a long time now - answering the same question multiple times is no fun at all, but ironically, it was laziness that stopped me from creating one!

So, it is now online and filled with 1 whole guide, a simple problem with a simple solution, but also illustrated.

http://www.block.net.au/help/smtp-greeting

This site is effectively a mirror of my commercial site, albeit with less content and none of the commercial pushyness.

I am intending on writing at least 1 guide per week - even if it is for something simple - and now that I have the shell, it should require less motivation to do so.

Coming up with an idea for a guide is not so simple, so feel free to email me through any ideas you have ;)

Kieran

My new server has arrived!

Kieran.Block — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 11:33:00 GMT

OK, after managing to convince my loving wife that I actually needed this server, deciding that I wanted a big Virtual Server server over multiple workstations, specc'ed out the server to within my budget and then awaited delivery - it has arrived!

There were a few issues though; first, delivery was not due until 19/Feb/2007 - however some fantastic storeman at Ingram Micro (without bribes mind you) has released the hardware early. Second, one of the 250GB sata hard drives is a Maxtor (the others all being seagate). Personally, I hate Maxtor drives, but appreciate that this could just be bad luck - the server has allowed me to build the RAID arrays with it, so I will continue on with a certain sense of apprehension.

The final issue was that to get this server earlier, I opted to build it myself (well, as much as you build a HP server). All I really had to do was install the RAM, the redundant power supplies, the second processor and the hard drives (which are hot swappable anyway).

The only tricky part to this was the RAM. I will not descend into the fits of swearing and hair pulling that was occurring in my office about 30 minutes ago - needless to say, it is not a simple matter of just lining things up (I should have known). I knew that you needed matched pairs, and I knew that they had to go into the same banks (Bank A presumably being Slots 1 & 2, etc). However, this is not completely accurate. Bank A is actually Slots 1 & 5; B is 2 & 6, etcetera. Lesson learned :)

Anyway, I am currently building the server as a Windows 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition 64bit server - this will then host MS Virtual Server, which inturn will host 3-5 full time servers (for testing, primarily Exchange 2007) and another 10 or so rolling servers (For SBS migrations to 2007, coexistence, 2007->2007 migrations, etc).

The specs of the system, for those interested, are as follows;

HP ML350G5T
4GB RAM (which should hopefully go to 6GB in the future)
2x 160GB SATA drives, RAID 1 - Host OS, and master images
2x 250GB SATA drives, RAID 0 - Storage and rolling images (I predict right now that the Maxtor drive will last no more than 6 months)
Redundant Fan
Dual Processor Xeon 5120 1.86GHz

Stay tuned on my adventures in building this monster test server

Kieran