Geeky Ramblings

If you’re like me, you probably install & uninstall software on your system on a a fairly frequent basis.

One of the things that really annoys me when I install software is when it automatically takes over a file extension association that was previously registered with the system.

This happened a while ago when I installed some IBM software for work … the .scr extension was taken over completely. ‘.scr’ is normally associated with windows screen savers, but now it’s associated with the IBM CODE/400 editor (which I don’t use).

After digging around a bit, I found an easy way to fix this. Just execute the following command: ‘assoc .scr scrfile‘

This restores the association of .scr files to the system’s screen saver mechanism.

This video was found on YouTube by someone who subscribes to my CPF0000 mailing list. Quite enlightening, don’t you think?

Here’s my contribution to spreading the word.

Picture this … you’re going through the security checkpoint at an airport … you’ve taken your laptop out of your bag and sent it through the x-ray machine.

You get through the metal detector … and find TWO laptops, identical in appearance, at the end of the x-ray machine.

Which one is yours?

Something like this happened a number of years ago … I was traveling for business, went through security, and there were two Dell Inspiron 8100’s at the end of the x-ray machine. Another guy and I were looking at both laptops trying to figure out which one was ours. The other guy noticed that one of the laptops didn’t have a floppy drive … and he knew that his did have a floppy (mine had a spare 2^nd battery). Just to be on the safe side, he booted his up and determined that the one he had was indeed his own. We laughed about it briefly and went to our respective flights.

An acquaintance of mine wasn’t so lucky once … he was on a business trip to Europe … he went through security, grabbed the first laptop that looked like his, and headed over to his flight … but it turns out the laptop he grabbed wasn’t his. When he was on the plane, already over open ocean, he booted his laptop up and tried to login … but couldn’t. Then he noticed it wasn’t his name on the Windows XP login box. Talk about a panic. He ended up having to buy a new laptop at his destination, and getting his reference material sent to him via overnight shipment.

Want a proof positive way to avoid this kind of problem? Take your business card and tape it to the inside of your removable battery (or the bottom of a removable CD/DVD drive).

It’s important that the business card be taped … so it doesn’t fall off and it’s clear that it couldn’t have just been slipped there.

It’s also not a bad idea to put something identifiable on the outside of the case, so you know you’re grabbing the right laptop. This could be something as simple as a piece of colored tape.

Now, if there is ever confusion about who owns a laptop, you just pop out the battery and you can quickly determine which laptop is yours.

Sometimes I find that the message list in Thunderbird gets out of sync with the message bodies. When this happens, if I click on a message in the list, the message body that is brought up doesn’t match the subject.

I found a easy solution … just shut down Thunderbird, delete the corresponding .msf file from the accounts data directory, and start Thunderbird back up. Thunderbird will rebuild the .msf file and everything should be fine again.

To find accounts data directory, click on the “Server Settings” category of the effected account and look at the “Local directory” field.

[tags]thunderbird, mozilla, email[/tags]

Spring forward and fall back.

Don’t forget to set your clocks ahead one hour (like I have on more than one occasion).

I’m off to change the clocks RIGHT NOW.

Another entry in the ‘Things to remember’ category:

When going on a photo safari, make sure you have a memory card in the digital camera.

Ginny and I went out to the Morton Arboretum today to wander around and take some pictures.

After walking about 3/4’s of a mile on one of the paths, I wondered why my camera didn’t have the normal ‘number of shots left’ display.

I tried to preview the shots I had taken and I got the disheartening message “NO CF CARD”.

<sigh>

I had thought I had taken about 30 pictures already … some of which I had high hopes for. Sadly, the camera transfered them to /dev/null.

Luckily Ginny had a spare 256mb card with her … so I was able to get SOME shots.

Ryan told me that my blogs (both this one and IMHO) were not displaying properly when viewed with Internet Explorer. Every time they visited a page, IE wanted to download the page instead of displaying it.

I had just made some tweaks to the web server, so I figured I had screwed something up.

I searched and searched, but couldn’t figure out what I had broken.

I decided the best way to figure out the problem would be to sniff the line with an ethernet sniffer program to see what was actually being sent down the wire.

When I did, I noticed the http ‘content-type’ header was blank.

Turns out the Wordpress configuration option that contains the content-type value was empty. I had neglected to run the upgrade script on the Wordpress database when I finished the upgrade to version 1.5!

Oopsie.

After I ran the upgrade script, the pages displayed fine in IE.

Had a minor emergency today … my main linux machine completely hung up (for no apparent reason at the time).

My first indication that a problem was a foot was when Ginny asked me if there were any problems with our internet connection.

I didn’t think so, but I checked … I could get to DSLReports without a problem … I was even able to run a speed test (with respectable results).

Ginny told me she wasn’t able to get to her blog. So I went over to the actual machines and checked out TheShire to see if something was wrong. Something was. I wasn’t able to logon as root.
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This is in the ‘things to remember’ category … turn the hot water back on after doing plumbing work.

I had to replace the saddle valve, that feeds the humidifier, on the hot water heater yesterday. When I opened it up in the morning, it started leeking bad. Luckily when I closed it it stopped leaking.

Getting a new valve wasn’t hard … and instsallation wasn’t a big deal either (although I had to open up the hole in the pipe to 1/4″). I did, however, turn the hot water heater temp down since I also turned the water feed off.

I replaced the valve, no leaks, no broken bones, no floods (all things good).

This morning, however, I got into the shower and had to turn the water temp up very high… then I realized I had forgotten to turn the temp on the water heater back up.

Oh well. There was enough hot water to get clean … and now the temp is back up to normal.

Found this on Search400 …

… how to change your FTP server to use a port other than the default port of 21. Ports in the range of 0-1023 are reserved and well-known ports, with port 21 being the established standard for FTP. The reason most people want to do this is to make it harder for someone to gain unauthorized access to your FTP server.

Although this may make it more difficult for someone to discover that you are running an FTP server, this by itself will not prevent someone from being able to discover and potentially hack into your FTP server. If you decide to use this technique, keep in mind that this is no substitute for other types of security and should be viewed as only a very small piece of your security infrastructure. If you have existing FTP programs or scripts, you will need to change them to access your new FTP port.

For anyone who has tried to do this, you may have noticed that the port can’t be changed using the CHGFTPA command. Here is how to make the changes.

1. Enter the command WRKSRVTBLE and scroll down to the services that are labeled ftp-control.
2. Display and print these entries.
3. Use the command ADDSRVTBLE to duplicate these entries exactly as they appear, with the exception that you will specify a new port number. To get lowercase values to stay lowercase, make sure they are enclosed in single quotes. When you specify your new FTP port, you should avoid using the reserved ports of 0-1023. You should also try to avoid using other ports that are already defined.
4. Compare your new entries to the existing entries that are on port 21 to ensure that everything is an exact match.
5. Delete your existing entries for service ftp-control that is on port 21.
6. End and restart TCP/IP.
7. If you wish, entries labeled ftp-data can also be changed in a similar manner.

When you access FTP from the AS/400, you will now have to specify the port. From the AS/400 the FTP command would look like this:

FTP RMTSYS(’10.10.10.10′) PORT(21021)
From the DOS prompt, it would look like this:

C:WINDOWS>ftp
ftp> open 10.10.10.10 21021