By Chad Voller on 11/17/2008 2:59 PM

Change in Sunday’s official NFL scorebook

Today at 2:26pm

Per a memo planned to be released publicly later today (11-17-08) or tomorrow, the National Football League as represented by the Commissioners’ Office is changing the final result of the Steelers/Chargers 11-16-08 National Football League game from Steelers 11 Chargers 10 to Steelers 17 Chargers 10. This is in congruence with the established power of the Commissioners’ Office.

Also, the final play is updated as a fumble lost by SanDiego Chargers Chris Chambers, recovered by the Pittsburgh Steelers Troy Polamalu and a 12 yard touchdown return with a decline penalty of an illegal forward pass. There is no PAT. Referee Scott Green has been informed that the normal disciplinary and review actions will be taken. It also re-iterates Referee Green's long standing service in the National Football League. There is no comment on the effects of an official scoring change on ancillary activities outside the normal business operations of the National Football League.

(just so you know, this is a hoax, but nothing if not a little fun!)

By Chad Voller on 8/19/2008 11:47 AM

So, you're working on your network administration skills?  Wandering through snap-ins from Microsoft's adminpak.msi that you just installed on your workstation?  Perhaps you've graduated to Vista and you're even using RSAT.  Anyway, the truth is, Hyena is essentially the best tool out there for Active Directory management.  If you're a loan network administrator, looking for a way to streamline your management process in your Windows environment, I highly suggest Hyena.

Take a look at the website and discover for yourself the beauties of the program.  From export to queries to browsing shares on user's machine, creating templates for home folders, advanced search, etc., Hyena is probably going to make your life a lot easier if you give it a shot.  Besides, you can demo the product free of charge...  Try it!

By Chad Voller on 3/11/2008 11:45 PM

1:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m. -- Work

I would go into a detailed description of just exactly what it is that I do at work, but then I would have to kill you.  Ok, I wouldn't have to kill you, but it wouldn't be appropriate for me to share too much information about what it is that I do, so I'll share a little.
First, before I DO any work, I arrive at work.  Since I'm a contractor for my company, I'm not always at the same location, even though I could be working on the same contract for several months at a time.  I even worked one place for a full year.  So, I get to the building and head up to the 3rd floor where my team sits.  The team I work on now is migrating a large amount of data for one of the larger banks in the northeast Ohio area.  Actually, this bank has locations in several Mid-West states, so they have a LOT of information.
The first person I walk by is Megan.  She's the receptionist who moved up from some southern state to live with her boyfriend who plays for the Akron Zips.  She's nice and can be occasionally swindled into giving me a Charleston Chew (the mini size, all you diet hounds).  I walk past her toward the back of the office and on the way I pass the two unfriendly sales people.  They might just seem unfriendly, but they always bury their heads when I walk past.  I greet them with a hearty "Good afternoon," then proceed around the corner to where the team sits.

We have a counter-top type of area along a wall in the back part of the office area.  So, we all get a small space on the counter along this wall.  I think it's made of formica (sp?).  Everybody else works in a cube or an actual office and we get the command center style seating.  This is where it gets interesting.  We sit close to the developers, who are all working on a big project for Kroger.  Yes, Kroger needs computer programs, too.  Developers, though, are a unique breed.  This group is very quiet and keeps to itself.  They like to work with the lights off, so that all lighting is coming from outside (not bad, but what if it's not exactly bright outside?).  The funny thing is, we need the lights that light up where they sit in order to see what we're doing, so we usually come in and turn on all the lights.  When we do so, we are met with the look of death from the developers.  They collectively, silently moan, because we have just ruined their entire existence by turning on the lights.  HELLO, this is a business office, and lights tend to be a normal part of something like that.  They just don't undertand.

Usually, right around the time that I arrive at work, the Looney Lunch Lady arrives.  She has her own business of selling home-made lunches to all of the businesses in this area of town.  She purchases and makes everything at home, then packs it up the next day in coolers galore to take all around town for business people to consume.  It is not drastically expensive, but it probably costs slightly more than the average lunch-time meal that an average person might purchase during the average day at work.  The Looney Lunch Lady carries a wide variety of foods, from soup and sandwich to stir fry and dessert.  The quality is high, and if you don't like the price, might I remind you that this lunch was hand made and came delivered to your cubical?  You ask, "Why do you call her the Looney Lunch Lady?"  I respond by telling you that she always seems to be talking to herself under her breath and she always talks about the same thing: weather.  There is something about her that just makes you think, "Hmmm, I wonder what exactly is going on in her head."  She also seems to be in a hurry all the time, because she probably IS in a hurry all the time.  No matter, I bring my lunch nearly every day, so I think I've only purchased 1 thing from her in 3 months.
Throughout the rest of the day I'm typically working on updating information or some other type of work that helps the team get ready to move data from the Novell world to the Microsoft world.  Again, we're moving lots of data, so there is plenty of stuff to do.  Although, lately things are winding down a bit, as there is only 1 more month on the project.  Migrations are fewer and fewer, but more and more complex.  It should be an interesting month finishing out the project.

10:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m. -- drive home, settle in at home, go to bed

The drive home is usually quiet and meditative, or I'm listening to Delilah.  Sing it with me... De-Liii-Laah.  Ha!  If you know that tune and just sang it, then I got you.  Phffllght!  I arrive home close to 10:30.  When I walk in the door I am greeted by two people: Allyson and Myles.  Myles does a nicer job of greeting these days than he used to.  He has begun to truly get it through his head that we are not out to get him, so somewhere deep down he's allowing himself to enter into the joy of life with us.  Allyson has hugs and kisses to bestow upon me, since she is the love of my life and the designated snuggler.  We embrace and soon after begin discussion of how our days went.  I might plug in one last time in order to check all of my email and make sure there are no fires that must be put out right away.  If I'm really engrossed in a project, I'll probably spend an hour working on a customer's new website, or updating my local servers at home, or downloading some patch for a program on my computer, or something I.T.  We might catch one of our favorite shows that we have waiting for us on the DVR (Bones, CSI).  More often than not, we are both very tired at this point during the day and we simply head up to bed.  This brings us clear up to 11:00, typical bed-time. 
So, now you have been an audience to a day in the life of The Rook.  Perhaps your curiosity was satisfied.  Am I as normal as you thought I would be?  Is my life so much different from yours?  Would you be willing to write about your life and share it here on the site?  I'm looking for more contributors to the site, so drop me a line on the contact us page if you're looking to write.  Otherwise, keep lurking, keep reading, and when something strikes a chord with you or offends you, write back!  Bunch of sicko's.  Lighten up, it's a joke.

By Chad Voller on 3/4/2008 5:48 PM

Welcome back, my fellow on-lookers.  It's fun, you've got to admit, isn't it?  I mean, watching everyone's life unfold online is kinda cool.  You get a voluntary look into what makes people tick, what they do with their spare minutes, a glimpse into their formerly private life.  Some of us like to share, most of us like to read.  So, here's how the rest of my day plays out... at least during this phase of my life.  :-)

11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. -- grab a light lunch, get ready for work, touch base with allyson, pack my light-weight dinner

Wow, I twice used the word "light" to describe this part of my day.  Some of you know that I have been on a diet recently.  Honestly, I don't know if you could call it a diet in the conventional sense.  I guess it depends on how you view the word diet.  I have not been following south beach or atkins or anything else potentially funky.  This is my diet plan:
1) Eat Less
2) East less junk
It has worked like a charm over the past 2 months.  Just last night Allyson and I went shopping, and I have lost over 2 inches in my waist.  Anyone who sees me on a regular basis can easily tell at a glance that I have lost a lot.  Now, I must say that I had the "fat" view of myself before starting this plan of mine, and now I am feeling skinny.  Well, I'm the skinniest I've been in years.  It feels great, and I know I could probably still stand to lose a few more pounds.  So, how much have I lost, you ask?  I have no idea.  I made a deal with myself when Joe and I started our friendly competition that I wouldn't weigh myself until the official weigh in (it doesn't hurt that we don't own a scale).  I just know I've slendered down in my face, tummy, and buttocks.  Yeah, I said buttocks, what are you going to do about it?!  Ha!

So, anyway, during this part of my day I get my light lunch packed (probably some soup in a can, string cheese, an orange, maybe a bag of microwave popcorn).  I also reconnect with Allyson, find out how her day is going, and chat with her for a few minutes.  By 12:30 I'm heading out the door, because I work from about 1 p.m. to about 10 p.m. every day. 

12:30 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. -- drive to work

I won't include the door to door driving instructions, but I head out to work at 12:30-ISH.  The first part of the journey begins by getting through our stop sign and past the square in Medina.  Let me tell you, this can be interesting.  Do you live somewhere in a town that everyone coming in or out of that down drives by?  We do.  I tell people that everyone and their dog drives into Medina or out of Medina by way of the stop sign at the end of our street.  Not only do I have to get through that stop sign, but I also have to make my way through/past the square (indirectly).  It is so significant, in terms of driving, that it deserves its own section of this post.
 
People do not make very good driving decisions at our stop sign or at our "light."  We call them ours because they are the first two driving obstacles on our way to most of the places we travel from our house.  First of all, at the stop sign, people turn into complete idiots.  People run this 4-way stop sign in so many different ways that I could probably write a book about it...literally (i say "literally" so i can be like bill marras).  Needless to say, you need to keep your head on a swivel while driving up to and through this stop sign, because your life could be taken from you at absolutely any moment.  Then you have to make it through the traffic light.  Now, this is worth describing, because it's one of those lights... you know, THOSE lights.  There are LOADS of people going through this intersection, and there are major problems with the older design of the intersection.  For instance, there is no left turn while driving north (the direction we drive through this intersection).  What is the impact of this design flaw?  The primary effect of not having a left turn lane and only 1 lane each direction is that people turning left cut off any straight or right-turn access for the people behind them.  So, imagine a very busy road with 1 lane each direction where cars are stacked up several deep and the person in front is turning left.  Naturally, they must wait until people driving south make it through the intersection, because you can't just turn left in front of oncoming traffic.  So, people behind must wait, because there really is no other way around (well, not within reason).  It is NOT an exaggeration to say that sometimes it can take 15 minutes to make it through this light.  Note the reason for this being potentially frustrating:  We live less than 1/4 mile south of this intersection!  So, now you can imagine that if you leave in what might normally be "plenty" of time to get somewhere, then you get 15 minutes added to your travel time (whereas it normally takes 1 minute or less to travel that distance, you might be slightly frustrated!  But no matter, I make it to work within 1/2 hour, get settled in and start work...
Well, I'm out of typing breath, so tune in next time for A Day in the Life: Part Three.

By Chad Voller on 2/29/2008 8:31 AM

Yeah, not exactly technical here, but it makes for good reading... you bunch of sickos.

You know, to some extent I think we're all voyeurs.  So why not let you in a little bit on the routine?  Let's face it, you're all curious what I do every minute of every day.  No?  Liar.

So here's a snapshot of life currently, 1 day that is:  I'll begin with the end in mind... 

11:00 p.m. -- go to bed
After a day of doing everything I do, going to be is a very nice moment.  I happen to be one of those people who is asleep almost as soon as he hits the pillow.  I hope you're jealous.  I sleep with 4 pillows and an egg crate foam thingy that all of us had in college or at one point or another during our lives.  My cat, Emma, typically joins for me right as I'm getting in bed and is spoiling for a fight, so we wrestle, then she freaks out and runs away, only to come back a few minutes later to make a serious attempt at sleep.

5:30 or 6:00 a.m. -- go to the bathroom
You thought I was going to say "get up" didn't you?  Not yet!  It never fails for me, I'm always getting up to use the restroom an hour or two before I actually get up for the day.  Since it's never been a problem for me to get back to sleep, this is not really much of an issue, only a slight annoyance.  No matter, soon I'm back to bed and back to sleep, Emma purring along close to the headboard, curled up by one of my many pillows.

7:00 - 8:00 a.m. -- get up
I don't mean that it actually takes me a full hour to rise from my slumber (I'm a light sleeper even though I don't struggle getting to sleep).  Sometime between 7 and 8 in the morning, I get up.  If I have to be somewhere early, I get up earlier, thanks to my trusty Palm Treo 700p's alarm that I set before going to bed every night.  When I do reach this stage of my daily routine, it's not hard for me to get up.  I just get up, it's really that simple for me.  When I get up, I'm focused, intent on getting ready as quickly as possible for the day ahead, because I don't want to waste any time.  So, I head to my top drawer, grab out some clothes, head for the shower, get clean, get dry, get dressed, put on deodorant, do my hair (takes all of 60 seconds), pocket my Treo, and head downstairs.

8:00 a.m. -- tea, breakfast, email, take out the dog
Ally may have already put on water for tea, but if she hasn't, I put some water on to boil so we can have our morning tea.  Between the two of us we down 2 full pots before noon (sometimes more!).  Oh, and by the way, I usually turn on my laptop before I get the water going for tea, so it has time to start up and go through it's very own little morning routine.  Hmm, we actually DO call the things our computers do "sub-routines."  Anyway, I may also slap a piece of whole-wheat bread into the toaster oven to spice up the breakfast experience.  I don't do this full, huge breakfast thing, even though sometimes I will scramble some eggs and fry up some bacon.  The big breakfasts usually come on Saturdays, and often by special request from Allyson, who happens to love chocolate-chip pancakes (who doesn't?!). 

While absorbing the tea into my system, I settle down at the computer to check my email.  Let's see, I have my vollersolutions account to check, my gmail account, my dspsolutions account, and my seldom used musicmad account.  Thank God for Outlook, which checks them all for me, so I don't have to go to 4 different places to get my email!  YES!  What usually shows up in my email box in the morning?  Well, there are always some emails from my technical subscriptions, which I'm sure you're all dying to hear about.  They usually contain helpful hints on managing networks and improving system performance, monitoring security threats and making changes to your network infrastructure.  Ok, so I just lost half the audience with that last sentence.  No matter, you get the idea, it's nerdy stuff because, well, I'm a nerd.

I'll also get some spam from Staples, and the inevitable ads for Cialis or some such thing.  Outlook catches almost all of those for me, though, and shoves them into my bulk mail folder, which I can glance at to make sure your email isn't in there before pressing the Empty Junk Mail button.  Typically I receive anywhere between 40 and 70 emails per day, most of which are valid and require some sort of interaction.  Gosh, when did that happen?!  So many emails, sooooo mmaaaaannnnyyyy eeeeemmmmaaaiiiilllllllllllssssss....  Ok, I'm back.  Phew.

During this time window, I also make time to take Myles outside, since he doesn't use an inside toilet.  He may be smart, but he's afraid of the downstairs bathroom (like, really afraid, in a hyper-paranoia sort of way).  I start putting on my coat and shoes and he just knows.  Does your dog just know when you're going outside together?  He starts to wag and dance and hop around and lick my face when I bend down to put on the shoes.  He really likes going outside.  This time of year, we've found he really likes snow.  We head out the back door and up the driveway toward the road, usually.  I used to take him out the front door, but it seems to work better for us in the morning if we start out from the back.

We get to the front yard and he just starts tearing around, like he's never been outside before.  I like that in Myles, this childlike passion for outdoor sport.  He cuts around the bushes and across the yard, grabs the first available toy and the chase is on.  Me chasing him, of course.  Although, with my bad knees these days, I don't really do much chasing, more like stalking.  I pose like Frankenstein's monster with my arms held out zombie fashion, growling and lumbering around the yard at Myles.  He eludes me easily, but I have to wonder what the neighbors think of this routine.  Surely, it must seem strange to them.  Well, I enjoy it and I chuckly to myself when I think they're watching out their windows at my behavior with my dog.  They're just jealous. 

9:00 - 11:00 a.m. -- morning busy work, personal business

So an hour has gone by for a small breakfast with tea.  For some protein, I usually put crunchy peanut butter on the afore mentioned toast, with a small splurt of honey... YUM!  By this time I am full-on into "getting things done" mode, which means, well, I start getting things done.  Much of what I get done happens on the computer, so that means I'm busy typing away, building a graphic, or writing code.  This time is currently dedicated to personal business (Voller Solutions), because later on when I go to my "real" job, I can't just sit there and work on my own stuff, so now's the time.  I'll take some time to touch up a customer's website, perhaps post to one of my 3 blogs (yeah, tell me about it), hammer out some code, study for a Microsoft exam, pay home bills, whatever needs to get done.  I don't usually take the time to write out lists for this stuff, I just go for it.  Bad habit?  Not sure.  Maybe I should do lists... Anyway, that's what I do for a couple hours.  It is during this time that I will work on Allyson's computer issues, as well, if she has something that needs to be fixed, changed, or improved.  She and I usually get some quality time in the morning talking about life, talking about our day, etc.  It's nice to have a cup of tea together in the morning, since my "real" job starts at 1 p.m. these days, and goes into the evening...

Well, that's it for A Day in the Life: Part One.  Stop back soon for the next chapter... you sick voyeur.

By Chad Voller on 2/6/2008 9:17 PM

Why does it seem like "Scripting" in the networking world is such a scary thing?  Just today I learned for the first time how to run scripts.  I'm working on a project for Microsoft right now (yeah, cool huh?) that is an enterprise file migration from Novell servers to Windows 2003 servers.  Well, one of the rules of the migration is we have to delete the data on the Novell side once we migrate it to the Windows side.  The problem is that we are not permitted to delete it as part of the actual migration, we have to keep the data around for 2 weeks before deletion as a security/data retention policy.  Here's another part of the problem:  Novell permissions include a file/folder attribute called "Delete Inhibit."  If this attribute is checked on the Novell side, you can't run a "c:\ rd \\servername\sharename" from the command line b/c the rd command chokes on files and folders where "Delete Inhibit" is checked.  So, the method we came up with is to write a script, shove the script into a batch file (.bat) to remove the delete inhibit attribute from all files and folders on the Novell servers.  The problem is we have to run it from a remote machine (project rules) so we have to map a drive and therefore essentially go one server at a time.  The Novell command line to perform this action is [ f:flag x:\*.* /fo /s /c ], but we had to include the drive mappings... so our final script looked something like this:

net use /y r: \\PIT-MAIN51\sys\public  & net use \y s: \\PIT-MAIN51\vol1  & r:\flag s:\*.* -Di /FO /S /C

net use /y r: \\PIT-MAIN51\sys\public  & net use \y s: \\PIT-MAIN51\vol2  & r:\flag s:\*.* -Di /FO /S /C

net use /y r: \\PIT-MAIN51\sys\public  & net use \y s: \\PIT-MAIN51\vol3  & r:\flag s:\*.* -Di /FO /S /C

net use /y r: \\PIT-MAIN51\sys\public  & net use \y s: \\PIT-MAIN51\vol4  & r:\flag s:\*.* -Di /FO /S /C

net use /y r: \\PIT-MAIN51\sys\public  & net use \y s: \\PIT-MAIN51\vol5  & r:\flag s:\*.* -Di /FO /S /C

net use /y r: \\PHI-MAIN01\sys\public  & net use \y s: \\PHI-MAIN01\vol1  & r:\flag s:\*.* -Di /FO /S /C

It was pretty cool to work this thing out.

Helpful hints:

1. First do your scripts in Excel.  You can concatenate fields and make global changes to your scripts by using good formulas.  It will save you a lot of time in the long run if you set up an excel sheet to work on your scripts.

2. Learn the command line commands by typing [commandname] /? at the command prompt to get help on using the correct syntax for your commands.

3. Use a batch file in large environments (you can create you command, then copy it down line by line in a text file, change the path for each line so the command executes where it is supposed to).  To create a batch file, use Notepad to make a new text document, then rename the file with extension .bat instead of .txt and voila!

Well, that's all for now, my brain is starting to hurt, esp. since this is the first time I've ever done this!  Phew!