Adventures in stupid technology
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Dell PowerVault RD1000
A while back when I bought a small business server for a client and the Dell PowerVault RD1000 seemed like a relatively inexpensive backup option compatible with Backup Exec 12 so I added it to the order. After a few months of use I’m convinced that this thing is a just a glorified SATA to…
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Virtualize your old computer
Virtualization is process of separating a computer system from its underlying platform resources. In other words taking a system off of its existing hardware platform and letting it run on virtual resources. With today’s multi-core computers it has become easy to consolidate several older systems into one. VMware has released two tools that allow anyone…
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Block MP3’s from getting on your file server
IT managers know that when it comes to keeping music files off of corporate file servers & workstations that acceptable use policy the lawyers ripped off the internet is only as good the paper it’s printed on. Every environment I’ve word at has had to deal with inappropriate media files that made their way into…
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HP printer drivers: software engineering gone wrong
I’ve worked with HP Printers throughout my entire career. Lets face it, they’re still the gold standard in business laser printing. So when the time came to refresh all HP printers at a clients headquarter site, I found that HP had made some changes to their popular 2000, 3000, and 4000 lines of business laser printers. Unfortunately…
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Archive your corporate e-mail, it’s the law
As of December 2006 the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) rules have been amended to require institutions to archive their email and other electronic data so they can present present it as evidence in civil litigation. An entire industry has sprouted up to help companies comply with what is commonly termed eDiscovery law. The…
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Goodbye Oettinger GTI
The dot-com bubble was good to me, ain’t gonna lie. By the time I was 21 I was obsessed with this car and had enough cash to buy it with cash. Looking back, I put way too much money into it and thankfully sold it in ’04 to finance a trip back to school amongst…
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Cisco Catalyst with StackWise not that wise
Today I attempted to add a Cisco catalyst 3750 to an existing stack of Cisco switches. A stack is a number of sequentially connected switches via the proprietary 16gbps StackWise™ cable. As the advertising story goes adding a switch to an existing stack should be as simple as connecting the switch to the stack via…
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Fix a Cisco 3750 with blinking PoE light
In this article I’ll discuss how to fix a Cisco 3750 24 Port power over Ethernet (PoE) switch with a rapidly blinking amber PoE light. Amber lights usually indicate something bad, so I consoled into the switch and did a “show power inline” to find out that several ports showed faulty PoE operation. Here’s how to resolve…
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Fix broken images in Outlook 2003
A strange problem exists with Microsoft Outlook 2003 where embedded images in HTML encoded messages are replaced by a red x (broken image). After searching lots of articles on Google which suggest an issue with a temporary internet folder called OLK20 or OLK40 I was still unsuccessful in fixing the broken image problem. Here’s how…
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Rock meets windshield
This is a story about a little girl who threw a rock and unknowingly broke my car’s windshield. It happened in a corporate parking lot adjacent to an apartment complex separated by a seven foot high retention wall. The girl who threw the rock had never seen the parking lot and I’d never seen the…