Public Access Television

Actually, I did not expect that there would be so many people interested in Public Access television. I figured I would be in someone's office or a dark room watching a slide show on public access regulations. I was pleasantly surprised at the turn out of 20+ when I went to orientation for TVACCESS21 here in Charlotte. The staff trainer was knowledgeable and quick to answer questions and offer suggestions. Why am I learning about Public Access Television? I am doing leg work for a friend who would like to get a show on in this market. But after the experience, it gets the mind going to think you could learn to use real equipment and produce content that has your opinions in public view.

The requirements are enough to stop people from coming up off the street and screaming for an hour. But they are not so cost prohibitive as to stop someone interested in the process from taking a few classes over the course of a couple months, completing a few projects, volunteering on other programs, then screaming for an hour. For a one time membership of $25, you can get instruction in control room operations, directing, producing, and basic studio operations. For an a extra $60 -90 per class(4-6 x 3hour sessions) you can get more in depth training in other topics - Screenwriting, Final Cut Pro, Webcasting, etc. I cannot speak to the caliber or rigor of the instruction but the price is right to get training in something that everyone on the Internet is doing so poorly.

Of course, you supply the crew and they all have to become members and go through the free classes. So it pays to make friends with others who may be recording before or after you, in case you need to someone certified to run a camera or direct the action.

All in all, an interesting evening. Check out the www.richardbrownshow.com for public radio and television in action.

Viva la Frech Stuff

Last night, we made it out to Georges Brasserie in South Park. For all intents and purposes, it was the upscale casual dining experience you would expect along side Del Frisco's and Brio Grille. The dining was good - oysters fresh, wine palatable. No stands outs as far as food goes as we only had hors d'oeuvres. Raw bar chef was a little heavy handed on the sashimi special but I like hunks of fish as well as slices. I will post a review on Yelp if we make it back for food. The seating in the bar area is low which makes it feel more casual somehow. Looking up at people involuntarily makes you sit back in a more relaxed position.

Wine of note: 2005 Saint Jean Du Barroux L'oligocene

Food of Note: Oysters from Raw Bar

Then, of course, it was off the Amelie's, our mid evening and sometimes late night haunt. We followed somewhat familiar routine of sharing a french press and leaving with a salted caramel brownie.

-- posting to remember

High Percentage Interrupt Time equated to VMWARE Memory Issue

Just something that came up.

Error: Using Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, an alert was generated that % Interrupt Time had exceeded a threshold of 10.
Environment: Windows 2003 Server 512 MB RAM, 1 CPU, 10 GB free HD Space running Tomcat App Server.
Impact: Although server and service still running, web app would not serve pages.
Notes/ Troubleshooting: Memory was not exceeding threshold on the server; Paging was not above normal.
Resolution: Allocate more memory to VM.
--
P. Alston

Parental Controls Post

First let me say for anyone who stumbles upon this, I don't have kids. So my perspective on parental controls is probably skewed towards the child more than the parent. Controls are a drag. Tracking web history and restricting others is initially frustrating and confusing for the user/kid and the administrator/parent. It does demand vigilance and participation by the parent to provide a safe environment for your family. So partially I had to adopt a mindset that was not my own.

But controls are a part of life. My company blocks websites and protocols to protect data and decrease liability. Auditing Web history and/or keylogging is a bit heavyhanded for industry but the if the circumstances warrant it to protect the company asset, so be it. The changes below are not transparent. The child/user will know they are being restricted.

Administrator to the Computer
Whether Windows, Mac, or Linux, always, always create a low privileged guest account users. It is safer and more secure for the computer and the user/child to have to ask if a program should be installed versus having to remove it later. How to do this in Vista is very simple from the start but that is not where most people approach security. So here is how to do it from the middle.

First of all the must be at least one Administrator account. In most cases, this is the only account. So instead of making the user setup all their Favorites and move documents around, we are going to setup a new Administrator and reduce the rights of the initial user/child's account.

In Vista:
Setup new Admin Account
Start-> Control Panel->User Accounts
Chose Manage another account
Chose create New account give the account a name like Admin or Dad.
Make that account an Administrator.
Log off.

Alter previous account:
Log in as the new Administrator i.e. Dad
Go back into the User Accounts
Start-> Control Panel->User Accounts
Chose Manage another account
Chose the account you wish to reduce the permissions for.
This time choose Change Account type and select user Standard User.
Then choose Setup Parental Controls
Here you can do a lot of things -
You can setup items like web filters, track activity, and prevent the use of certain programs like Limewire.

File Downloads and Program Installs
As a standard user, the child/user will not be able to install any software. Which is a good thing. Extra software means system bloat. System bloat means slower computer and more chances for viruses and malware. You will have to install every piece of software which means you "know" what applications, companies, and some extent people yours kids are interacting with.

Auditing Web History
In order to audit the web history of a user, you have to save it for some duration. This includes preventing it from being deleted.

Start-> Run
From Tech Support Forums:

There is also a "Turn off "Delete Browsing History" functionality" setting in the group policy for XP (run gpedit.msc under User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Internet Explorer) that can be set to disable this functionality.

Note: This works in Vista as well, but only effects Internet Explorer. So if the user is using Firefox, Safari, Opera, Maxthon, or any other web browser this will not work. This is why you have to prevent the users from being Administrators to the machine so they cannot bypass your efforts.

You can view the web history in activity reports in User Accounts Control Panel, or logging in as the child/user and view it in Internet Explorer.

End of Part One....

Links:
How to keep tabs on my Teens:
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/windows/en-US/Help/961FFB00-E793-41B3-BD35-B00442F6A0D71033.mspx

Pulled Chicken and Broccoli Slaw

Too easy to forget but this will remind me next time.

Pulled Chicken:
Split Chicken Breast
Half an Onion (Sliced)
2 cloves Garlic (crushed)
1 cup Barbecue Sauce
Chicken Broth (to Cover)
Hot Pepper Sauce (to taste)
2 Tbl Apple Cider Vinegar

Add all ingredients to crock pot, cook on low for 6 to 8 hours.
Remove lid, two fork shred the chicken, remove bones.
Cook on High for 30 minutes to reduce sauce.

Slaw:
Broccoli Slaw Mix
1/2 cup Coleslaw Dressing (Bought or made)
Make when chicken goes into crock pot. Refrigerate for 8-10 hours.

Serve with Hot Pickles, Dijon Mustard and Tomotoes.

--
P. Alston

Known but just now Realized Creepy Revelation

Check out www.google.com/history. Here you can step back through your Google searches to enlighten or embarrass yourself. In past searches, I have needed to find homepathic flea remedies (for the dogs), various IT related searches on which my job depends, and it seems I cannot spell even the simplest of words - masculine. (No Jokes.) While I knew that Google was retaining search information, I never wanted thought I could be faced with it so easily. I envisioned long court battles and special prosecutors who would only receive blacked out versions of the most relevant bits of my online life. Now I am faced with the ability to retrospectively review my late night lookups whenever I want or don't.

Windows XP Tip: Search AD Shortcut

Looking up people in Active Directory can be really useful especially when you are new to an organization. This was readily available in 2000 so obviously it should be complicated in XP?!? So not must to say here just a link to give you some functionality that you thought you already had.

http://www.windowsnetworking.com/kbase/WindowsTips/WindowsXP/AdminTips/Network/GiveXPabilitytosearchActiveDirectory.html

Enjoy.

Import/Export Users from AD

The linked website explains in more detail the differences in LDFIDE and CSVDE. Luckily the syntax is mostly the same, you can interchange ldfide and csvde in the example script below.

csvde -f Exportuser.csv -s exdc1 -d "dc=example,dc=local" -p subtree -r "(&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=User)(givenname=*))" -l "cn,givenName,objectclass,samAccountName"

Drop Schema

Thank you BJ for the following content. I wanted to recreated a user. So my DBA Guru gave me this script to remove the schema so the user can be deleted.

**********************************************************

DECLARE DropSchema CURSOR

READ_ONLY

FOR select name from master..sysdatabases where name like 'Some user naming convention%' or name = 'master' or name = 'Tempdb'

DECLARE @DB varchar(40),

@SchemaName varchar(40)

OPEN DropSchema

set @SchemaName = 'user to be dropped'

FETCH NEXT FROM DropSchema INTO @DB

WHILE (@@fetch_status <> -1)

BEGIN

IF (@@fetch_status <> -2)

BEGIN

declare @str varchar(200)

set @str = 'use ' + @DB + ' Drop Schema ' + @SchemaName

print ''

print ('Dropping Schema ' + @SchemaName + 'From ' + @DB )

Print '==================================================='

print ''

print 'Schema ' + @SchemaName + ' has been dropped or does not exist'

print ''

exec(@str)

END

FETCH NEXT FROM DropSchema INTO @DB

END

CLOSE DropSchema

DEALLOCATE DropSchema

Microsoft Word Trick Helps Users Move Content

Just something I found online and did not want to forget. Like hitting F2 to edit a cell in Excel.

ARTICLE
Microsoft Word Trick Helps Users Move Content Help your users help themselves with this Microsoft Office Word trick to move paragraphs or lists.

Find this article at:

http://www.windowsitpro.com/Articles/ArticleID/98907/98907.html

Last Night's Dinner/ Today's Lunch: Lazy Day Peanut Noodle Salad

Last Night's Dinner/ Today's Lunch: Lazy Day Peanut Noodle Salad
http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/

lazy-day-peanut-noodle-salad-recipe.html

Just a reminder for me....

Made this last night, used Whole Wheat Spaghetti and the pasta water to thin the sauce.

Added Mushrooms, Red Peppers...

Backup Systems/Install Leopard : Part 1

Disclaimer: I will freely admit that I don't know want I am doing 60% of the time. I personally find it disingenuous (although efficient) when you read and online tutorial that has two steps but it takes you ten. So you spend twenty minutes digging through the comments sections to see how many other people had problems and ultimately solved it differently. With that disclaimer, I am documenting my own learning process as fully as possible. You may find it cumbersome, illogical, and amateurish, but as vast as the Internet is, you will likely never find it.

The plan for the weekend was as follows:

• Buy Leopard Family Pack
• Perform full backups of: iMac G5 and Intel Based Macbook (Baby J's Computer)
• Install Leopard
• Setup Time Machine to make full backups to External Disk

Buying Leopard was easy enough, but there was not education staff discount on the Family Pack. (US $199)

External HD Up until now my backup strategy has been to simple copy Documents, Music, and Pictures folders to an external HD. The Hard Drive that I had been using a 120 GB Western Digital Passport was too small for a full backup of my systems. I hoped over to Best Buy and bought a Seagate Free Agent Pro 750 GB External on Clearance. My version does not support Firewire 400, just USB and eSATA. The wife approved of the Espresso case with Amber lighting and it actually matches lamp in guest bedroom.

Disk Utility Using Disk Utility App, reformatted and repartitioned drive into two partitions. Each to act as Startup Disk and Archive locations for the two computers in the house.

RsyncX Simple RsyncX to USB Backup is slow. Slow to catalog. Slow to backup. It took 8 hours to backup 133 GB. A further study is definitely warranted and I just hope Time Machine is faster.

Notes:

• Files are accessible.

• Back to Disk Utility to verify the Archive Volume.

• Disk Verified Ok.

• Rebooted and held down the Option Key and the External Disk was not available as Startup Disk.

• Repaired Permissions on Archive Volume and Macintosh HD

• Things to try - Stop Spotlight Indexing http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/stopspotlightindex.html

Creating Startup Disk I tried to simply copy the Sysytem folder on to the Archive Volume. This resulted in the following error. In the spirit of full disclosure, some time ago, I moved the Library folder by accident and tried to move it back. Since that time then I have had permission and driver issues that have been regularly ignored. So this error is disappointing but not altogether unexpected. So with no Bootable Disk and unable to create a Startup Disk, but a full backup of folders and files. I needed a way to ensure I would be able to access the files and folders after I installed Leopard. A quick check of the Users folder showed me that I could not access the folders of other
users while logged in as me.

So I enabled Root Login. Logged in as root and copied all user folders to an all user backup folder on the external disk. Why? Because I do not understand file permissions and I was afraid I would not be able to recover all users folders if I had to rebuild the machine. FYI: It took a long time and was unnecessary. Once I attached Baby J's laptop to the Ext HD, it was able to access all folders on it. Demonstrating that I would have access to the data without changes any permissions or making special backups. Although, it still did not see it as a Startup Disk.

Actual Installation of Leopard It took just under 2 hours and was easier than anything I have ever done on a computer. I was hoping for more hassle or the need to tweak a few things, but nothing was necessary for non power user like me. It asks a few questions, which are documented in some many places I will not post link. I will say I did the default Upgrade Install, instead of a Erase or Archive and Install. I had already burned half my weekend in practical but luckily unnecessary backups.

Time Machine The time machine setup was simple as well. I changed my backup plan to keep going to and get a good backup using Time Machine. I kept the New External HD attached and used the partition marked Extra as the destination. I will use the WD as the backup drive to Archive the Tiger install on the MacBook before I load Leopard. I still need to come up with more thought out way of dealing with backups considering the additional computers in the house and differing OSes they run on. It took a couple hours to fully backup the system. I do not advise working on your computer during the initial backup as performance was okay at best. So I will have to do a full App compatibility inventory at a later time.

So, Part 1, almost done. I still need to figure out why I could not create a startup disk and test Time Machine. Baby J's laptop is next so maybe I will have better luck there.

Note on Documentation: It was my intention to use Evernote for this post as I am evaluating it as my default note taking program. I tried using Evernote, (review to follow) on the web, but it will not let you insert pictures and now I realize I cannot install the app on the iMac because it is for Leopard only. I have to start reading the fine print. So I used my old standby Google Docs, which works okay but you have to reformat everything to get it to post. Also, here is a helpful Mac OS screen capture post - Screen Capture Tutorial. I told you I knew very little.

Stone Mountain Revisited (03/28/2008)

Two hour road trip to Stone Mountain State Park, between Elkin and Sparta, was a little disappointing. Like so many other natural things that we hypocritically want to be the only one to intrude upon, it has been made more accessible and safe. The summit trail begins with its usual set of switchbacks then turn into a staircase. It was really a let down. I was expecting the rugged hike I slipped on years ago, but it was not to be. After a what seemed 400 steps, my calves were burning. At the top, we found a steel cable handrail/fence separating the rocky outcrop into two sides. There were no signs posted but the intention was clear to stay on the right of the railing. It was a bad day for sightseeing so we kept moving. We hung around at the top for bit but the weather began to change for the worse so we headed down. I did not think holding a steel cable on top of a mountian during a thunderstorm was the best idea. The dogs had a great time and it was good much needed exercise but we will probably hike it again only for the distance and the work out not to get back to nature. We will always have Pisgah for unspoiled hiking, hopefully.

On the road to riches and diamond rings...

Sitting on my duff here at the beach in Edisto Island, SC, stealing wifi from the neighbors. It is so blinkin' hot. I do like the tan though. I feel especially African when I get this dark. Good feeling. I figured I had not posted anything recently and would catch my reader up on what was going on. I had to drop out of training for the Richmond Marathon for health issues. The summer heat and air quality in Charlotte was too much for me to keep running in. I actually had to visit a physician and get medicine. I am felling much better now. I was in Boulder, CO last week and drank to much beer but I was able to run like the wind(slow, steady wind) because the air was so clear. Boulder is a cool little town that my fellow Chapel Hillians would appreciate as a snooty college town. So I cut the mileage back to about 3 per day and cannot seem to fit in a long run weekly. So I am keeping it real and I am looking for half marathons that do in the winter and maybe a full in the spring. On a more athletic front, the wife is training for a sprint triathlon. So at least the motivation in the house will stay up. Maybe this summer will end soon and I can breathe again. Just a quick clarification to all SC dwellers: Palmetto bugs = Roaches.

Running for myself and others

I started training for a marathon. I ran a half marathon a couple years ago. I thought it was time to get the whole thing over with so I could get rid of my masochistic fascination with running long distances on stubby legs with bad lungs. Also I needed something to blog.

I chose the SunTrust Richmond Marathon. I run in Richmond a couple times a year when I visit my in laws and the run down Monument Drive is all historic and such. Until you hit the river, it is a graceful hill either up or down. Of course ,26.2 miles is lot longer than the 5 mile runs I have been on in on my long weekends so training has begun. In addition to the location, the SunTrust Richmond Marathon has Donate Life as its official charity.

"Donate Life is a program of the non-profit agencies UNOS and LifeNet."

These are charities that support organ and tissue donation. I have been listed as an organ donor since getting my drivers license and never thought much about it. I assumed everyone did this. After speaking to several people, I realized that there are strong albeit irrational opinions about not donating. I think it is a waste to not donate something that you are no longer using to someone who cannot live without it. If you would like to contribute to my effort, here is the link to help raise money. Based on my web traffic, this is not going to amount to much, but, as I learning by running 4 times a week, every little bit helps.

FundRaiser/Donation Link: Click here to help support Donate Life

Old and fat...

So there comes a time in every man's life when you realize that:

"No, she was not checking you out. "
You cannot bench press your body weight.
You are not the young, hip guy at work. (Note: Never was hip. Who says they are hip? Unhip people.)
And you are not just a month-of-working-out-away from running a sub 6min mile.

Today is that day for me. I do not plan to use this post to gripe or resolve, just to state:

"I am old and fat. Hello world."

I don't plan to stay this way just as I did not plan to get this way. Yet here I sit without the strength to move. Because after months and months of inactivity, I decided to go mountain biking. I rushed out right after work to hit the trail. A trail ranked 4 of 5 in difficulty. A trail I swore to get better before I went on again - two years ago. It started out okay. I was darting between trees, with birds chirping, thinking, "I will do this every sunny day until I die." Then after a scary downhill and a couple quick uphill climbs, I lose my momentum and just want to make it back to the car. All in all, I managed to fall twice (over the handlebars) and walked my bike a lot. (Yep, bleeding as I type this.) But I did get up, and I did pedal out. So there.

I think the biggest disappointment was my stamina, I can usually blame childhood asthma or my stumpy legs, but this time I just plain gave out. Someday I will look back on this and smile that I was impetuous enough to even ride a bike in the woods. Today, though, I simply feel humble and weak.

I don't post often and this post is also pretty weak. I do know my audience and he will think this is hilarious.

Place:
Renny Park on Tyvola Rd., Charlotte, NC

Enjoy.

Resetting MYSQL Passwords

The site linked in the title is good but the comments below are invaluable.

MS Windows Key Post

I know this a weak post to start off the year. I wanted to remind myself of something useful that I can use to look cool in front of people when I work on their computer. You are now cooler because you read this. Happy New Year and click the link for Windows Shortcut Keys.

"Music Only" for your iTunes playlists

iTunes smart playlists 101.

read more digg story

Blood Elf and Draenei Char Screens

All the modifications you can make to the 2 new races.