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I was chomping at the bit the weekend before I got my Motorola DroidX for something to do to pass the time.   So I gave this a shot:  http://www.androidx86.org

I got AndroidOS running on a Microsoft VM just for kicks.  Pretty easy too.  Though I have to admit, i didn’t really know what I was doing at the time.  Plus, you can’t exactly make calls.

No one on Earth is more ready or more normal.  Just ask my monkey.

- The man in the Yellow Hat, Curious George

I’m not sure how it happened, but I ended up with quite a few songs in iTunes that were duplicates.  Generally, I am never hurting for space on my 80 gb iPod.  However, I really don’t like having duplicate songs, if I can help it. These were the exact same files, but with a ’1′ at the end of them, as if I had consolidated the library, and instead of deleting the duplicates, iTunes renamed them.  I had been gradually going through each folder and getting rid of quite a few of them when I began searching for alternatives.  I would click on ‘show duplicates’ within iTunes, open up a duplicate file within Explorer, sort by date modified, and manually delete the duplicate files. 

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I have decided that my Vista upgrade has been kind of like an episode of Scrubs.  So here it is.

After 7 years, we finally decided to buy my wife a new computer.  I couldn’t let my wife have the Vista OS, and still be stuck on Windows XP.  So I took a crack at upgrading my computer to Vista.  I was still using a computer that I built myself in 2000, so there wasn’t much chance of using too many of the same parts.  Of course being the unselfish man that I am, I decided to set up her computer first. We bought a nice little Dell.  I still like Dell.  They make some good stuff, and their machines always have cool features that I appreciate.  I am a sucker for a fairly solid little keyboard or a well crafted mouse.  In this case, it was the notification within Windows that the audio port was unplugged.  I know that it is silly, but it gives me a degree of satisfaction when I know whether or not my speakers are plugged in.

“Dr. Dorian, Do you not realize that you’re nothing more than a large pair of scrubs to me? For God’s sake, the only reason I carry this chart around is so I can pretend to remember your damn names.”

For me, I decided I would replace some components in my existing system and install a copy of Vista.  One new motherboard, processor and power supply later and here I am.  I have to say, so far so good.  I only have has one minor problem so far.  A PCI Communications Controller that wouldn’t install.  This is when I begin to think, “Maybe I need a little Dell?”

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There is a “hidden” DLL in the Windows 2003 Resource Kit called Acctinfo.dll which provides additional information from the MMC console within Active Directory Users and Computers.   This dll needs to be registered on the system you are accessing Active Directory Users and Computers from, but allows you to see additional properties for users within the domain.

Once you download it or locate the file within the resource kit, run the following command on the machine from which you access Active Directory Users & Computers in order to register the dll.

regsvr32 C:\”path to the dll”\acctinfo.dll

Once you have registered the .dll, go to Active Directory Users and Computers and you will see a new Tab called “Additional Account Info” in the properties dialog for a user.  In addition to useful information such as “Last Logon”, the SID and GUID are also listed.  Also, the tab shows the last time the password was changed.

A practical application for disabling cookies on a site by site basis. 

I use several sites for testing various parts of my web hosting configuration.  However, I have been a little disillusioned lately because some of my favorite “free” services now want to charge a membership fee for access to very basic functions like WHOIS or reverse DNS lookup, tools that I use often.  I appreciate their usefulness, and the fact that they are located outside of my domain, but I don’t use them often enough to justify a subscription.  After all, once you set up DNS for hosting, the only other time you need it is probably going to be if it changes.  With only 3 or 4 domains for which I manage DNS, I just don’t change things much.

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…but you think you can ignore because you read this WSJ article.

I was simply amazed at the things recommended in the WSJ article. While they do list the cons and costs of such activity, there is a blatant disregard for security and the range of controls organizations now have in place. Fundamentally, whether you like it or not, it is almost certain that your computer activity either already is logged and that tools used to bypass controls in place at your workplace are easily detectable.

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