Not long ago I got the task of setting up a small server for an engineer in our building. He has a small office with one other person working for him. The idea was for him to have a central repository for files, a system backing up those files, and the ability to remotely access all of those files.

I recommended a Windows SBS 2003 box. The client obliged.

All was fine until the issue of VPN came up. I’ve done VPN’s before, but usually it’s through hardware, not through the OS. The client eventually was paid in full, and the issue still wasn’t completely resolved. I felt terrible about it, so I made it my priority to fix. The client was really cool, and I didn’t want them to feel cheated or upset in any way.

I won’t go through the whole tutorial on how to setup an SBS box, but I will say that usually, it’s very intuitive. Well, when I set up the box, I configured it to work on one subnet. However, the modem supplied to the client wouldn’t allow GRE packets through, so they needed to get a new modem.

When that modem arrived, it didn’t work with their existing Linksys wireless router. So I used the modem as the router, and plugged the wireless box into it, and ran it as a separate subnet. Keep in mind, this was after I had already configured the SBS box for the previous subnet.

I thought I had configured the server to work with the new network settings, but I missed a couple of items.

Clear ARP cache.

Since RRAS was started, you couldn’t clear the ARP cache (the table with the addresses of machines according to the old subnet). I had to stop the RRAS service to clear the ARP cache. Keep that in mind if you have to move an SBS box from one network to another.

Change ALL network settings. When I changed the TCP/IP information for the network adapter (only one), I only changed the information on the front dialog box. Which means I forgot to change the WINS information! Since the client was using VPN so he could navigate to files on the network, that was pretty important.

Also, I needed to add the dns suffix to the DNS settings area as well.

The moral of the story, take the time to get it done right the first time.

I’ve been a Network Administrator for several years now. One of my favorite features on Windows Server 2003 is Shadow Copy. Shadow Copy is a backup feature that allows you to right click a file, and restore that file to a previous version. If the file is missing, you can right click it’s folder, find the file, and put it back!

Shadow Copy is a snapshot of a drive, at a particular moment in time. It’s comparable to incremental backups, kinda.

While Shadow Copy is not intended to replace regular backups, it’s a very handy tool to quickly find files that users lose all of the time. Note, this is only available on Windows Server machines. Your XP and Vista machines aren’t going to do this.

Heres how to use it:

First, make sure the Shadow Copy service is running in the services mmc. You’re looking for the service called ‘Volume Shadow Copy’. Make sure it’s started, and it’s set to Automatically start. Once you have that covered, you can move on.

On the server you wish to use Shadow Copy on, navigate to ‘My Computer’.

Right Click the Drive (usually ‘C:’) that you want to use Shadow Copy on.

Click Properties

Click the tab ‘Shadow Copies’

Click the enable button if it’s not grayed out. If the button is grayed out, then you’re already running Shadow Copy. We’ll assume you’re not, so at least pretend to click the enable button.

Now, click the ‘Settings’ button. You should see the following dialog box:

This is where you set the maxium size you want your shadow copy database to be. As a general rule of thumb, you should never use less than 10% of what your max storage capacity is.

You can also set how often you make Shadow Copies. Keep in mind that the more often you make a Shadow Copy, the more space you will need. The default settings are twice a day, at 7:00am, and 12:00pm. I’ve never found a reason to change this, but I’m sure some of you out there will find plenty of reasons.

Now that Shadow Copy is setup, it’s time to see it in action. Back in the first dialog box we saw , click the ‘Create Now’ button to manually create your first Shadow Copy. Don’t worry, you won’t have to do this again.

Now here’s the sort of tricky part. In order to access the shadow copies that have been created via file or folder, you have to view the folders via net connection.

You can either type in the UNC name of the server (i.e. \\YOUR-SERVER-NAME) and navigate to the folder or file you want, or you can view them over a mapped network drive

Once you do that, THEN you can right click your file, or folder, click on properties, and then click on the ‘Previous Versions’ tab.

From here, you can view a previous version, copy or restore. Usually, your best bet is to view the files you want to restore first. It doesn’t help anyone to restore old files that were wrong to begin with. Get someone else’s (think management) OK before restoring files.

My wife and I went on vacation last week to Washington DC . We got cheap plane tickets there, and we were staying with a friend of hers. I was a little hesitant to go, but I know how she loves vacations.

A friend of ours drove us to the airport, after our flight was delayed an hour. We checked our bags with no problem headed to security. After we got in line in security, we noticed an ominous sound coming from the roof above us; hail. We rode the monorail to our terminal, and were amazed to see hail coming inside of our train car.

Of course, our plane was delayed even more, so we went to the bar. By night’s end, we had gone to the bar twice, and arrived in DC 5 hours late. To add insult to injury, there was a technical malfunction at DC and we were stuck on the plane for an additional hour.

Our friend there (who was an amazing host, she’s very gracious) drove us back to her house. It was a long day, and we were ready to get some much needed sleep.

The next morning Melissa and I got up, and was stunned to see that our friend didn’t have a computer. The only computer there was her roomate’s, which she gave permission to use. So I installed Apache and PHP on the machine, and started testing some of the ideas I had brainstormed while waiting to get to DC the night before.

That’s the sort of thing you do when you’re married. You spend countess hours waiting for the woman to get ready, so you might as well keep your mind busy.

After Melissa was ready, we headed out on our first full day on vacation! We went to Smithsonian first. Specifically, we went to the Museum of Science & Natural History. I didn’t realize how much that would be like going to Disney World, so we didn’t stay very long. Aftewards, we went walking around that area. The weather was nice, so it was good to be outside.

We checked out the Capitol, the White House, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and the WW2 Memorial. All of which are really awesome to see. There’s tons of history behind all of them, and it’s humbling to stand in front of the monument’s to our country’s greatest leaders and most somber times.

The next day, I was woken up by my phone. It was a company I consult for, and they were having issues with their Blackberry devices not being able to send. I tried to fix the issue with my phone, which I was able to do with a degree of success, but I needed a computer. My phone was almost out of battery life, so I really needed a phone charger too.

I looked all over for that computer I had used the day before, as well as the phone charger. I hesitantly peeked in the roomate’s room to see if it was in there, and sure enough, both the computer and the phone charger were in there. I grabbed both.

I started charging my phone, while I went to work on the Blackberry issue. I was almost done with the issue when the roomate came home, and began searching for her cell phone charger. I told her where it was, and she was apparently upset that I had entered her room.

My mistake. However, she was awfully rude about the issue.

I looked up hotels.com to see if I could get a good hotel room close by. I didn’t want to be uncomfortable on my vacation. Melissa had me wait to book anything, as not to make a rash decision. Ultimately, we didn’t get a hotel room, but the rest of the time in that house was awkward (at least it was for me). It’s funny how one person can ruin things for you. I should be bigger than that, but hey, I was pissed.

We did a bunch of hanging out after that. We did all the nightlife stuff . We drove up to Gettysburg. We met some really cool people. I don’t think there was anything left of DC that we still wanted to do. We even hit the International Spy Museum. I would have liked it more if I wasn’t so hungover when I was there.

The one thing that got to me though, was the amazing lack of manners by people there. I can’t count how many times I thought “The nerve!”. I guess that’s what happens to a city when it gets to be that big. All I can say is that I hope Orlando never gets that big.

To round out the trip, Southwest lost my luggage on the way back home. So I went to work the next day in an old pair of jeans and the sandals I had worn traveling home. After all of the nasty food and beer we had while on vacation, all I could think of was getting back to the gym. Too bad my gym shoes were with my luggage.

After we got home, I had to drive to Lakeland to get my dog. My buddy had generously watched her while I was on vacation. I can’t tell you how much it sucked to have to make a 2 hour drive after all of that.

Don’t get me wrong, it was good to get a vacation, but now I feel like I need a vacation from my vacation. Perhaps that’s why it’s good to be home.

I can’t begin to talk about how exited I am that Cannibal Corpse is going to be at the House of Blues here in Orlando on October 11. I’m letting all of my friends know. It’s there 25th Anniversary Tour.

25 years in a field that doesn’t appreciate what you do is the definition of endurance. These guys are amazing.

The Black Dahlia Murder is the opener. They’re not Cannibal Corpse, but I haven’t seen them before, and they’re album is pretty cool.

Today Apple announced the immediately available Safari 3 Beta. It’s also available for Windows users. This is a huge development for Apple, which seems to enjoy invading Microsoft’s space every chance they can get. There are other new features, which bear good reason to talk about.

First, there are all of the announced changes from Apple:

1. Blazing Performance
2. Elegant User Interface
3. Easy Bookmarks
4. Pop-up Blocking
5. Inline Find
6. Tabbed Browsing
7. SnapBack
8. Forms AutoFill
9. Built-in RSS
10. Resizable Text Fields
11. Private Browsing
12. Security

These are all debatable, especially the ‘Blazing Performance’, but a few of these really stand out.

Namely, Resizable Text Fields. I checked on this, and sure enough, users can resize textarea elements in a form. Your layouts will be critical now, that the user can change the size of the containing element(s) well after your page has rendered. I wonder how many AJAX apps are going to be broken because of this.

Also, all of the form elements can be styled now! That’s a big departure from previous versions of Safari. I’m glad the ‘Safari form elements are perfect’ snobbery has been replaced with an attitude more conscientious the of needs of web developers

The next big development is the find feature. Typing in the find area dynamically pops up results on the page, as they’re found. The UI for this is amazing, and really shows the talent at Apple.

Of course the big question on everyone’s mind is, ‘How is all of this going to work on Windows?!’

Well the executive summary is: It does work, and it works well.

Tom and I loaded up Safari 3 though Parallels 3.0 on his machine running Windows XP Pro. The installer was typical Windows stuff. We were prompted to install the Bonjour Service and Apple Software Update Service for Windows.

This is another big development that I don’t think a lot of other people have mentioned yet. Bonjour is a great program for Mac, that now will be available for Windows too!?! Apple Software Update will also run on Windows?!? We’re going to be talking about this for a long time.

After we installed Safari, we encountered our first problem. For some reason (we don’t know why yet), after we installed Safari, the network adapter for Windows stopped working. We used Parallels to specify the shared adapter, and everything worked again.

The app itself looks great on windows. It’s not bound by the typical Windows frame. Safari 3 basically looks the same as iTunes already does.

It was really strange to see Safari as an option in the Start Menu:

One thing that is still frustratingly still an issue is HTTP_AUTH between Safari and Microsoft IIS servers. Even if this is a problem with Microsoft, I think the developers could figure some type of workaround for this.

Another problem I have with Safari, is lack of code-coloring in the view source window. I have yet to see a developer toolbar built for Safari (I live by Firebug), and until there is one, I’m not leaving Firefox.

Finally, Blizzard has given us Starcraft geeks something to be excited about: A full-fledged new release. I can’t begin to mention the countless hours I spent playing Starcraft when I was in college. I remember my girlfriend (now my wife) would go to bed while I was playing, wake up and I was still playing, and come home from work before I’d stop playing.

The initial trailers from the site starcraft2.com/ look amazing. The story is evolving, and new characters have been introduced. I guess the guys at Blizzard aren’t too far along, since the only race they’re announcing characters for are the Protoss. There have been plenty of newer games to come out since the orginal was introduced. However, I still find myself playing Starcraft, even to this day.

I haven’t been this excited since Terminator 2 was announced.

There is one thing that concerns me about the actual site. I quick view at the source code reveals only an xml doc with a root node of ‘page’ and a child node of the page being displayed. I checked Firebug, which usually picks up on the DOM scripted stufff, and that comes out blank too! I right clicked to see if the whole site was in Flash, but no dice.

I’ll have to do a little digging, but I intend to find out how these guys are writing their sites. It’s my business, and I should know.