Beauty and a Geek

Recently the company I work for began a rather large project that I am now the project manager for.  As we have begun working on this project over the last couple weeks, there as an administrative decision made (not by me) to use Sharepoint 3.0 to manage the documents, project timeline, and tasks.  Now, I should admit that at first, I was apprehensive to use Sharepoint for such a large part of our project, especially since it meant training my end-users on VPN connections, document versioning, proper folder structures, standard filenames, and using their outlook for more than just email and calendaring.  Now into our third week of the project, I’m realizing that using Sharepoint was probably a blessing in disguise, albeit with a few hiccups here and there.  

As with any company, my end-users are varied with their knowledge and experience with computers, but I am well experienced with technical training and documentation so getting everyone on the same page, while a bit time consuming, has been a fairly easy task.  I have found that versioning can be a very confusing topic to some people, but I think the knowledge of that just comes with regular use.  One thing I am slightly annoyed about is the inability to setup reminders on tasks from our project timeline.  I have found a couple third party applications that can provide this feature, but I guess the PM in me assumed that would be a feature out of the box since it would be so useful.  One feature that my team has found very useful is the alerts.  They no longer have to regularly check back to the Sharepoint site for the project just to check if anything has changed – instead they immediately get alerted via email when changes are made to document libraries or specific documents that they have selected to receive alerts on.  Also, the ability to link a task directly to an issue in the issue log is a handy feature for me.

Judging from the experience with Sharepoint with the project so far, we will probably continue to use Sharepoint for future projects, although I am hoping that either we will be able to search the Sharepoint site (a limitation with upgrading to WSS 3.0 on SBS 2003) or that we will have migrated to SBS 2008 before another substantial project comes along as I’m assuming they will have fully integrated WSS 3.0 with SBS 2008 just like they did with WSS 2.0 and SBS 2003.

It has been a while since I’ve posted, but a slew of projects have been keeping me busy, including writing the first draft of our Disaster Response and Recovery Plan.  I’m finding as I write it that I’m reaching out quite a bit to other geeks to pick their brains as to what possible things they think they would need included in the areas of their expertise.  Interesting how the answers vary from telephony to network to servers.

Anyway, after a delay on the end of my old cell phone provider, I have finally switched providers and now I have a new cell phone to geek out with.  Now, I know I’m late on the train on this one, but I can only do so much with stubborn cell companies. So I’m now officially on the Sprint network (who have merged with Nextel) and am using a Motorola Q.

Now, I must confess that this device took me a bit longer than I expected to get fully comfortable with.  I have it syncing with my Exchange account as well as my personal Gmail account and while I like the ability to do both, it is sometimes annoying that my exchange sync is instantaneous while the fastest IMAP sync option is 15 min.  Another thing that can be slightly confusing is when it shows a new email icon, yet says Email (0) because the email is not in the last account you accessed, it is in the other one.  Lastly, I miss the ability to text message pics as I could on my old Motorola.

Overall though, I do quite like this phone.  I have small fingers so while I do occasionally miss a key, it’s not terribly often and as I get more used to the phone, I’m also becoming more accurate without much effort.   The voice quality seems to be quite good with the occasional complaint of muffled sound when I have it cradled on my left shoulder since the microphone is on the left side.  I also much prefer the slightly rubberized feel of the Sprint version of the Q to the Verizon version.  It seems to mark and scratch less and is easier to keep a hold of.  Now I’m just on the search for a holster that I like - as a geek I like to have my phone on me at all times, but being a petite female, most holsters are too bulky on my hip.  I used to have an iSkin for my iPod that had a very slim metal clip on the back and I wish I could find something similar for my Q.

About a week ago, I finished that development environment that I had previously mentioned. I’ve put together a total of three servers: The first, a Centos 5 VMware server which serves as the host for the development servers. I then have one virtual server running Centos 5 which is setup as a terminal server via No Machine with Eclipse and Subclipse. The last server is also running Centos 5 with Subversion and Trac.

The first problem I ran into was not being able to successfully install VMWare server - the install seemed to run fine until it didn’t like my kernel and complained about needing my C header files. Problem was caused by installing the “Virtualization” option during the Centos install which installed Xen. Due to the fact that we need our virtualized servers to be mobile, we chose to use VMWare over Xen. After downloading the kernel source for the non-Xen Centos 5 and switching to that kernel at boot, voila, VMWare server installed perfectly.

Second problem I ran into was when I installed Trac and Subversion on the third server. Everything seemed to go fine up until I attempted to start the httpd service and it would just give me the [FAILED] error. Turns out the instructions I was going by to install Trac since I’m not familiar with it were not as up to date on the latest Apache permission customizations, made a few adjustments to match my version of Apache and httpd started right up.

In other news, I just received some sweet swag from Symantec and HP. Does it show just how geeky I am that I love this stuff? Now if only those t-shirts geeks get didn’t always come in L and XL - where is the love for geeky women?

Currently I am in the throws of creating a development environment - Linux based using Eclipse, Subversion, and Subclipse to connect the two. Linux flavor is CentOS for the time being, will be Red Hat in the end product. Things were going good on the terminal server/Eclipse end of things, but for some reason, Subversion and CentOS 5 don’t seem to want to play well together. Suddenly I received FAILED errors when trying to start httpd and I need that to get subversion going. It would be nice to find a detailed doc on using subversion on CentOS but the only docs I can find are outdated. Back to the failed service land I go.

Yesterday, quite a few of my geeky friends were hurriedly emailing me to tell me about Microsoft Surface. Now, I must admit, at first I figured it was just another run of the mill product from Microsoft, but I’m very impressed with this latest product. So often, end users get frustrated with computers because of the ever changing interfaces, seemingly endless amounts of different cables, and the high learning curve of some programs. With Surface, they can easily resize, move, transfer, and delete photos, navigate maps, and view information all with just their own two hands. It’s a step beyond touchscreen and a welcome advance in the world of technology.

I just had my hardware vendor ask me what the Microsoft HCL is.  I don’t have time right now to find an SBS 2003 compatible PCI-E x8, x4, x2, or x1 fax modem so I simply asked that he find one that will work and quote me on it.  Frustrating.

The other day I was watching TV when an ad came on for Go To My PC, encouraging office workers to use their product so that they can work remotely from home. Now, while I agree that working from home is a fantastic thing, third party remote access providers like Go To My PC and Log Me In concern me because as a system administrator, I’ve worked hard to secure my network and ensure that I have a log of every time anyone tries to login to my domain. Many geeks have known that this third party remote access programs are a great way to circumvent firewalls if needed, but to be actively targeting non-tech workers is a concern. Now, I monitor my domain for any new software that is installed on the clients, but what about businesses without software install monitoring? If I’ve chosen to not allow remote access into my network except via VPN access for certain users, I’d like it to stay that way, not have random colleagues granting them access to their computer system from home. Granted most of these third party apps require you to enter your domain credentials once you are remoted in which provides somewhat of a log, but the opportunity for coworkers to give themself remote access could pose quite a problem for system and security admins.

So you’ve decided to use a third party SSL certification for Exchange but now are having trouble with the mobile device not accepting the certificate? While Windows Mobile devices do have some third party certs built in (Cyber Trust, Entrust.net, Geotrust, GlobalSign, GoDaddy, Thawte, and Verisign), there are also a whole host of other third party certs out there that you may run across. If you use a cert that is not already built in, the easiest way to add your root certificate to your Windows Mobile devices is to create a custom CAB file.

Open up the certificate with Explorer.
Click on the “Certification Path” tab and make sure to click on the root certificate.
Click on the “Details” tab, click on “Thumbprint” and copy the thumbprint string
Export the certificate in Base-64 encoded X.509

Create the certificate XML using the store, thumbprint, and base64 encoded certificate:

<wap-provisioningdoc>
<characteristic type=”CertificateStore”>
<characteristic type=”ROOT” >
<characteristic type=”thumbprint-goes-here“>
<parm name=”EncodedCertificate” value=”
Certificate-goes-here>
</characteristic>
</characteristic>
</characteristic>
</wap-provisioningdoc>

Save the XML file as _setup.xml and make it into a cab file: makecab _setup.xml rootcert.cab

Just be sure to copy the thumbprint of the certificate after the “characteristic type =”.

Copy the CAB to your mobile device and run it.  This will automatically install the correct certificate.

Save the CAB to your server for future use and adding exchange access to additional mobile devices will be a breeze!

1. go to www.google.com
2. click on “maps”
3. click on “get directions”
4. type “New York” in the first box (the “from” box)
5. type “London” in the second box (the “to” box)
6. scroll down to step #23