Election

Wow - what a night...

First let me say that i'm a republican from way back, but i've never been a goose-stepping moron who votes the party regardless of its direction. i believe in the fundamental ability of individuals to change themselves and, in so doing, change the world.

however, i have never been comfortable with the marriage of the "old" republican party with the ideals of the social conservative movement. i am a fiscal conservative and a social liberal - end of story. as a result, over the past two and a half decades i have been increasingly at odds with my own party. Never more so than with "W". I think that on a personal level, if i ever had the chance to get to know him, i would like the guy. but i abhor his management style, his outlook and his policies. i think they represent the worst of America.

When the election cycle started, i'd never heard of Barack Obama. I knew that Hillary Clinton was an intelligent, driven person with a tremendous potential - but i also knew that she was a polarizing figure - and that was the last thing i felt the country needed. Thanks to "W", the country was at odds with itself enough as it was. So, in the primary i voted for Edwards - for any number of reasons which i wont detail here.

My oldest son, at 20, saw things much differently. He read everything he could on the candidates, with all the enthusiasm of youth and their first chance to exercise their civic duty at the voting booth. And for months he's been telling me - Obama's the guy.

Like so many other Americans, i watched the debates and when i did, i saw what my son saw - an intelligent, thoughtful man with the enthusiasm and determination of youth and the wisdom of experience, with a dash of "calm, cool and collected" thrown in for good measure. Oh, yeah, and who happened to be african american...

As the days led up to the election, i became increasingly involved, actually donating money to a candidate for the first time in my life - following my oldest son's example. As we sat around the dinner table Monday night, i was was talking to my wife, and my three boys and i looked at my oldest son and said "your generation will decide this election"

they did.

they and millions of others, who were tired of fear, tired of division, tired of discord. and as i watched the election results along with my family, we knew that history was being written before our eyes. we talked about how that two generations ago, an african american man in Virginia couldnt drink out of the water fountain as a white american and that today Virginia elected an african american man president.

i'm old and with age comes a certain amount of cyncism. but last night, as i listened to the words of our president elect, i was filled with hope for our nation and our world. for the first time in a long while, i was proud to be an american. This morning, as i watched Squawk Box on CNBC, i heard Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE, talk of being proud to be an american.

today and in the days ahead, i think we can all be proud that we are americans. not because we're somehow better than everyone else, not because we have the biggest military, not because we're the wealthiest country on earth, but because we once again proved that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth..."

Setting a Virtual Machine's MAC Address

If you ever have the need to manually set the MAC address for a virtual machine, be aware that there is a limitation. There are two pools of potential MAC addresses - one for automatic assignment and one for manual assignment.

we had a situation where - because we were using software that generated its key based on MAC address - we wanted to migrate to from a physical machine that had died to a vm and the software was so old that the company was no longer in business. the rub was that the licensing was based on MAC address.

our initial thought was to re-assign the existing MAC address as we were never going to use the old server as it was being trashed. however, when i built the new vm i and then tried to assign the MAC address (Virtual Center --> Edit Settings --> Network Adapter 1), i received the following warning:

The MAC Address entered is not in the valid range. Valid values are between XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX and XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX

this appears to be due to the fact that different ranges of MAC addresses are used depending on whether the address was generated with the vm or manually assigned.

So how to address - no pun intended?

well, i chose to edit the vm's vmx file directly. in the file there is a reference to the MAC address for the virtual NIC. Simply edit this value - with all the obvious warnings taken to heart about duplicate values - and restart the vm:

ethernet0.generatedAddress = "XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX"

You should be good to go from there...

Creating a User Defined Service on Windows 2000/2003

1. Login to the target server

2. Install the appropriate resource kit (WIN2K, WIN2K3, etc.)

3. Navigate to the installation directory

a. Default is C:\Program Files\Windows Resource Kits\Tools

4. Run the following command

a. >instsrv.exe "C:\Program Files\Windows Resource Kits\Tools\srvany.exe"

b. Where

i. Instsrv is the resource kit tool to setup the service

ii. is the name that will appear in Services

iii. "C:\Program Files\Windows Resource Kits\Tools\srvany.exe" is the complete path to the SRVANY.EXE resource kit tool

5. Once the command has been issued, a successful installation will receive the following result:

a. The service was successfuly added!

6. Next, open REGEDIT and navigate to the following location:

a. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\

7. From the Edit menu, click Add Key and name it Parameters

8. Next from the Edit menu, click Add Value and type this information.

a. Value Name: Application

b. Data Type : REG_SZ

c. String : \

9. Now, in the Services Applet

a. Optional - modify the login information for the service

b. Optional - change the startup type

c. Start the service

vmware-cmd fails

i moved a virtual machine from one host to another today and since it resided on local storage, i used our trusty vRanger to back it up to the new machine and then restore it. Once there, all i should have had to do was run the following command:

vmware-cmd -s register vmfs/volume///.vmx

however, when i did this, the command failed complaining about Perl

i then tried to run the configuration for perl using the following command

vmware-config.pl

but this errored out as well. found that there are issues with the vmware-config.pl command when the ESX server's time is considerably at odds with the actual time. This was the case for me as i had just installed this host.

1. i reset the time to the current value
2. re-ran vmware-config.pl (success this time)
3. re-ran vmware-cmd -s register vmfs/volume///.vmx (success)

Moral of the story - if you get strange errors with perl, make sure your host time is correct...

SQL Server 2005 Installation Issues

I've installed SQL Server 2000 at least 200 times in my career and its seldom ever given me any heartburn. Then along comes SQL Server 2005 and its installation is the biggest consistent pain in the neck i've ever worked with. Why exactly did they have to rework something that was already working?

Today I had to install 2005 for another component installation and after at least an hour it finally reached the point where it was installing the workstation components...and it sat there...and sat there...and sat there - for at least an hour. I didnt want to kill the installation, because i've done that before and that caused 2-3 days of hacking and cleanup.

So, i started searching and eventually ran across something i had forgotten - that if the 2005 installation hangs, try disconnecting the network cable - which, after another 20 minutes, caused the install to pick up and finally finish.

What kind of ridiculous solution is that for a something that's supposed to be enterprise-class software?

good grief

DotNet30 Install Hangs

If you try to install the DotNet30 framework (dotnetfx3setup.exe) and it hangs around 80% with a dialog similar to

"The setup program is loading the components of the setup program. This can take a few minutes"

then you're most likely trying to install from the bootstrap. The work around is to download the full installation file

then run it. the installation should proceed as expected...

Halloween

Halloween

In the golden red light of autumn afternoons

The wind rustles fallen leaves across lawn and street

In fields of cornstalks, dead leaves whisper in the wind

As the sun sinks beyond concrete canyons

Along hidden country fence rows,

Black cats gather in their covens

To dance and sing to their ancient goddess

Around a secret, guttering firelight

Along shaded, tree covered roads

Spirits float with aimless ease

As the barrier between our worlds

Thins to nothingness and disappears

Along darkened streets and alleyways

Under fire escape and air conditioner

Demons from the deep craw up

From sewer and sub basement

In the gathering gloom, fiend and friend

will walk our paths, our roads and our streets

Searching, searching, always searching

Driven, as are we all, by lusts of the flesh

In the darkness we will sit and wait

For them to find us in the rustling dark

Drawn to us like bats to blood

Like the undead to the living

Under porch light and street light

They will summon us from our musings

And await the satiation of their desires

Demanding the cornucopia that is their due

We must feed them or suffer they say

And feed them we must, I say

For on this night of all nights – Halloween

We must embrace the dark, and appease its servants

Mark F. Cook

Copyright 2008

All Rights Reserved

logged into one of our servers this morning and found svchost process eating 90+ % of CPU. dug a littel deeper with Process Explorer and found that it was the wuaueng.dll that was the culprit. after googling, found the following URL: http://ask-leo.com/c011472.html

Thanks to Leo for his posting. Here's the text of one possible resolution from the link above:

1. Click Start, click Run, and then type net stop wuauserv .
2. On the desktop, double-click My Computer, and then delete the drive :\WuTemp folder.
3. Delete the drive:\Windows \System32\Catroot2 folder.
4. Open the drive:\Windows folder, and then rename the SoftwareDistribution folder as SoftwareDistributionOLD.
5. Open the drive:\Windows \system32 folder, and then follow these steps:
a. Rename the Wuweb.dll file as Wuweb.dll.old.
b. Rename the Wuapi.dll file as Wuapi.dll.old.
c. Rename the Wuauclt.exe file as Wuauclt.exe.old.
d. Rename the Wuaucpl.cpl file as Wuaucpl.cpl.old.
e. Rename the Wuaueng1.dll file as Wuaueng1.dll.old.
f. Rename the Wuaueng.dll file as Wuaueng.dll.old.
g. Rename the Wuauserv.dll file as Wuauserv.dll.old.
h. Rename the Wucltui.dll file as Wucltui.dll.old.
i. Rename the Wups2.dll file as Wups2.dll.old.
j. Rename the Wups.dll file as Wups.dll.old.
6. Restart the computer.

Strangely though, just as i was getting ready to implement Leo's fix, svchost CPU utilization dropped back do to zero. not sure what's happening, but i will be monitoring as the day goes on....

Stock Market

things are looking a little better this morning. we'll see where the day goes...

Stock Market

Man - this morning i come into work and check my 401K, which by now should more truthfully be called a 200.5K. I know that all the pundits say to stay the course, if you sell now you'll loose real money - not just the paper money you've lost so far, etc. but boy is it painful.

I read a post that said that if you have more than 10 years until retirement - me - then you shouldn't be worried. the problem is that in 10 years, i wont be to find the author of the post to kick his ass...

Grace

Grace

We walk for a time, among those
who, of different gods, share this earth with us
in war and in peace, we are brothers after all
by grace have we walked among them

We walk for a time, among those
ghosts call to us from ten thousand patriot graves
beseeching us to stewardship worthy of their blood and devotion
by grace have we walked among them

We walk for a time, with those
who loved us first, who connect us to our ancestors,
back to the first man and first woman
by grace have we walked with them

We walk for a time, with those
whose small hands we held in our own
who leave our homes, but never our hearts
by grace have we walked with them

We walk for a time, with those
who are the better part of ourselves who bring us
the gifts of passion and forgiveness, tears and bliss
by grace have we walked with them

We walk for a time in grace
in sunlight, in moonlight and in shadow
let us remember the bounty of our lives
for it is by grace that we have walked this earth at all

Mark F. Cook
Copyright 2005
All rights reserved

WinLims

In our WinLims database, we will occaisionally have to make data changes to samples. There are 2 tables involved:

SAMPLE
- holds sample header data

SAMPLEPARAM
- holds details about each sample

SAMPLE_ID relates the two tables together

we sometimes get requests to change sample data that was incorrectly added.

Stardate 20081007

first entry, interested in seeing if this really helps me or is a major waste of time and effort. we'll see.