Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Windows 2003 Service Pack failure

We were running into several of our 2003 installations that were not installing SP2 from the WSUS server. I tried to download directly from Microsoft's website thinking something was hosed on my WSUS copy. No luck. That was where the issue lay for a couple of weeks because I'm such a busy (lazy) guy I couldn't get around to fixing it.

Sometime later......after scouring google for the error message I was getting (0X8007f0f4), getting sent on a small goosechase, I finally found the answer. Some guy out there was getting the same error on a machine of his that was running with an ISCSI HBA. Apparently his ISCSI driver wasn't compatible with Service Pack 2. Ding....the light bulb turned on. We are running our machines with QLOGIC HBAs. I updated the driver and the update installed with no problems.

Move on to the next problem.

Friday, January 25, 2008

Human Aging

What with taking on some of the workstation monkey responsibilities at my job (unwisely), having my MDF turned into a declared disaster area and generally having too little coffee to keep me going for a full 8 hours (8 hours of work.....right!!!), I have been neglecting my posts and for that I ask your humble forgiveness.
A friend of mine, Don Hilliard, forwarded me a copy of a paper he did on human aging which I now post here in lieu of an actual network administrator post. I hope you enjoy. Even if you don't put any stock into the biblical account (which means you have more problems than worrying about aging), I found the biological portion just down right interesting.

Friday, January 18, 2008

This thing is wide open

Why is it this guy says everything I and everyone around me wants to hear, but all I hear in the news media is the Clinton/Obama catfight or the Romney/Huckabee/McCain ménage à trois. Spread the word.....this guys seems like the real deal.
-PC

--UPDATE

I just came home from a campout with my son and heard the depressing news that Duncan Hunter has bowed out of the race. With his exit we are left with
1. A Mass. Governor who likes to buddy up to Ted Kennedy and who may or may not be a conservative at heart
2. An Arkansas Governor who has all the social issues down pat but ran his state in such a way as to make Bill Clinton look like a conservative
3. An Arizona Senator who is such a maverick that he unfortunately in my opinion can not be trusted.
4. A former Tennessee Senator who doesn't seem to want to win and the voters are obliging him with appropriate polls to represent his non-campaign.
5. A former NY city mayor who just doesn't do it for me.
6. Oh yeah....Ron Paul. Wingnut, racist, extraordinaire.

I'm depressed.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Dell Service Tag


I finally got fed up and decided to get more involved in the workstation side of my company simply because it seemed like nobody knew what was going on and what machine was what.  I figured the first step I should take would be an inventory of systems.  Since we are a Dell house I figured the first place would be get the service tag and download from Dell the packing slips.  I needed a quick way to get all of my machines tags without installing SNMP.  I found this script at rokus.net.  It works like a charm.
-PC



First, this basic script will get it from "localhost" (please note the second line strComputer = ".")

'------START/Don't include this line------------
'
on error resume next
strComputer = "."
Set objWMIservice = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
set colitems = objWMIservice.ExecQuery("Select * from Win32_BIOS",,48)
For each objitem in colitems
     Wscript.echo "Dell Service Tag: " & objitem.serialnumber
Next
'
'------END/Don't include this line---------------



---------------
If you want a pop-up box to input the name of a remote host, you can modify the second line to:
    strComputer=InputBox ("Enter the computer name of the server you'd like to query for Service Tag")

Both versions above can be run like this: "cscript servicetag.vbs"

---------------
If you want to use the command line, you can change the second line to:
    strComputer=WScript.Arguments.Item(0)

...and run like this instead: "cscript servicetag.vbs machinename"

---------------
If running this against multiple machines (and redirecting output to a text file), you can change the output line (Wscript.echo) to:
    Wscript.echo strComputer & ": " & objitem.serialnumber

...and run like this:
C:\myscripts\> cscript servicetag.vbs machine1 >> outputfile.txt
C:\myscripts\> cscript servicetag.vbs machine2 >> outputfile.txt
C:\myscripts\> cscript servicetag.vbs machine3 >> outputfile.txt
C:\myscripts\> cscript servicetag.vbs machine4 >> outputfile.txt

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Duncan Hunter


I just received an email letting me know that Duncan Hunter would be appearing with Wolf Blitzer on Feb. 25th @ 12:10 EST.  I'm not a political genius but the man needs to be out in the spotlight more than once every two months. It sickens my heart that in this nation, an honorable man like Mr. Hunter, is not given a quality chance to share his ideas for the nation, but wingnuts like Ron Paul can still attend debates.  I still believe it is not too late.  Once values voters realize that Mike Huckabee is a economic and foreign policy liberal in hiding and ran his own state into the ground, they will look back in the second tier and find a replacement standard bearer.  Hopefully they choose Duncan Hunter.

Generic logins


After fighting tooth and nail to eliminate generic login accounts from our system, I relented and allowed two accounts to be made for some temps in our accounting department.  Suddenly I look around and I have generic accounts being created for temps in our claims department and accounts being created for auditors from the D of I.  I'm beginning to think I created a monster.
-PC

Monday, January 7, 2008

My kids are cuter than yours

I just found this picture of my kids on Zoomer. It seems that Mr. Carranza snapped my adorable kids at our churches Halloween alternative. Just to put in a little plug for my wife, those costumes are all hand-made.....including the wigs. My wife is more talented than yours and my kids are still cuter than yours.

Raggedy Anne and Andy