OCNTUG Newsletter
Volume 1 Number 5
November 1,
2003
Welcome Members, Visitors and Friends!
As we enter the joyous autumn and winter holiday season with all its bustle of activity, the snow flurry of purchase orders, the cooking of new schemes for the coming year, we must pause a moment to remember those faithful friends lost in the past struggle, those hard disks, motherboards, power supplies, and memory chips that gave up the ghost in the performance of their duty. We must resolve to maintain good service warranty policies, and schedule maintenance, rather than letting these dear friends go to the point of failure. Now is the time, before the winter rains and snows hit, to buy that extra UPS, and make certain it and the computers are up, off the floors, above flood levels, out of reach of plumbing leaks. Now is the time to shore up the firewalls, update the anti-virus files, to prepare for the long cold winter. And if not now...when?
Inside this Issue:
LoadFest
Meeting Announcement: November 13, 2003
Previous Meeting...
Random Access Department:
3rd Party Tools Department:
Employment Opportunities
Final Notes…
Email the Editor
And Now, The News...
Windows® Server 2003 LoadFest Waiting List
Microsoft offered a LoadFest
for Windows® Server 2003 to be held Saturday, October 4th. Seating was limited,
and by RSVP, and it filled up very quickly. If you didn't get a chance to
attend, but would still like to, please register at www.msugevents.com
as soon as possible to add your name to the Waiting List for the next LoadFest!
Use "ws03loadfest" (without the quotes) to RSVP.
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Meeting Announcement: November 13, 2003
On November 13, we will have a presentation by Chris Good of Consera Software (www.consera.com), who graciously provided the following information:
"Whether you are deploying or consolidating windows servers, or migrating from NT 4.0 to Windows Server 2003 you know how time consuming and difficult these tasks are. Microsoft’s recently announced Automated Deployment Services (ADS) kick starts these activities. During the discussion ADS best practices will be revealed as well as how it can be integrated into overall IT workflows."
"Consera Software: Leaders in Lifecycle Management for Windows Servers that optimize an organization's server resource environment utilizing our Intelligent Automation System, this server resource management environment automates IT workflows, incorporates best practices, and adapts infrastructure management operations to the specific environment. Whether discovering, deploying, moving, migrating or consolidating server resources, Consera AgileOne delivers business agility."
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At the Previous Meeting...
At the October 9th meeting, Cisco (www.cisco.com) and Metronome, Inc. (www.metronome.net) combined forces to give us a fascinating demonstration of Cicso's AVVID technology (Architecture for Voice, Video & Integrated Data) and how Metronome applies it in IP Telephony.
Following a brief break, Bill Rice of triCerat (www.tricerat.com) provided a view of their practical, timesaving software products, Simplify Profiles, Simplify Lockdown, and their Thor Technology add-ons for Windows Terminal Services. Those attendees who send Mr. Rice an email (billrice@tricerat.com), will receive a copy of Simplify Profiles. You can also download a free copy of their ebook, "The Definitive Guide to Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services" at www.tricerat.com/ebook/.
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Random Access Department:
A couple weeks ago, my primary hard drive crashed. Fortunately, I burn everything important to CD once a month, and backup each important document to floppy, as soon as I finish updating it, so losses weren't particularly great. Of course, I spent some time attempting to recover the drive, but bad sectors prevented retrieval, and while repartitioning was possible, reformatting failed at 70%. A low-level format is beyond the modest means of my setup, so, der drive ist kaput! Then I began wondering what I might be able to use the drive for. I have other paperweights (a nice desktop magnifier, a fossil trilobite, etc.), and various and sundry doorstops (a 286, an 8086, and a huge old SCSI drive), so I began thinking about better uses for malfunctioning hard disks.
The old name for a hard disk is "Winchester Disk," which immediately brings to mind one use, determining the precise thickness of hard drives is required to stop a Winchester .30-06 calibre shell fired at a range of twenty-five yards, fifty yards, and one-hundred yards. Now the quick physics student will realize the when the bullet passes through the outer casing and impacts the disk, itself, at any angle greater or less than ninety degrees, some of its momentum will be translated into rotary motion of the platter (angular momentum, or torque), therby absorbing and decreasing some of the forward motion of the shell, reducing its penetrating power. It might be of importance to determine which brand of hard drive, and what number of platters makes the most efficient momentum absorbing device. However, it stands to reason that a multi-layered shield of used hard drives, staggered in the scale pattern of a fish, might prove effective in stopping armor-piercing shells. If we donated all of our old hard disks to the manufacturers of tanks, our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan could be more effectively protected from enemy fire by these high-tech, momentum-absorbing, rotary-motion shields. Of course you would want to at least attempt to remove the partitions from these drives before donating them...after all, you wouldn't want company payrolls, contact lists, and love emails to secretaries to fall into enemy hands...
If any of you have any other ideas for making use of old hard drives, I would be happy to include them in my next book, "1001 Uses for Old Computer Hardware."
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Favorite Third Party Tools Department
If you have been experimenting with Windows Server 2003, you may have noticed that its newest version of Windows Explorer will allow you to open and read .zip files as though they were normal folders. You can read text files within the archive, and you can copy the contents or execute .exe files within them. For example, you can run a setup program from within the archive. What you cannot do, as far as I can tell, is create an archive. Well here is a friendly third party program that will help: Freezip.exe!
Freezip is a tiny freeware (free for both personal and business usage) program that adds itself to the right-click popup menu within Explorer. If you wish to extract an archive, simply right click, and you'll find Unzip at the top of the menu, followed by a number of useful options, including listing the contents of the archive, or testing it. If you would like to create an archive, place the files in a separate directory, then in the directory tree in the left pane, right-click on the folder to be archived, and the "Zip" command will appear farther down on the popup menu. Freezip will compress the contents of the directory and leave the archive file within that directory under the name "free.zip," which you may then rename to your liking.
While it's true you don't need Freezip to unZip a file in Server 2003, you can use it to Zip one. Also, it's useful in Windows 2000, Windows NT, and Windows 9x. You'll find Freezip 1.4.9 at http://members.ozemail.com.au/~nulifetv/freezip/freeware/index.html, along with a number of other, very useful freeware products including file processing, encryption and security.
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Employment Opportunities
Employers, please note, we will publish job opportunities in the OCNTUG
Newsletter. This publication is released once per month, and can be found at www.SoCalITPro.org.
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Final Notes…
It has come to my attention that the link for locating the third party utility, CyberKit v.2.5, given last month didn't seem to work. Have no fear, you may also find CyberKit at www.download.com.
Wasn't that pizza at the last meeting delicious!? (But where were the walnut fudge brownies?)
See you at the meeting on November 13, 2003, enjoy!
Robert Holtzman,
Editor
rholtzman@netzero.net
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OCNTUG Newsletter
Volume 1 No. 5 11/01/03
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