I’ve been receiving a lot of e-mail lately from people who have continued to follow Daily Cup of Tech, even though there have been very little in the way of updates. I’ve noticed through the feeds and the logs that a lot of you continued to subscribe and check in regularly.

I’d just like to put out a big THANKS to everyone for your loyalty. I’ve gotten settled into my new city, my new house, and my new job. There are still a number of challenges ahead of me and the changes are far from over but I’m going try and put some more effort toward the blog.

I’m also working on a number of new personal projects that I will be talking about in the near future but I’m not ready to release any information about them just yet.

Trackback link - http://www.DailyCupOfTech.com/2008/05/15/yes-im-back/trackback/

Every few months, I like to completely blow away my Windows system and reinstall it. This is primarily because I install so much junk on the system that it just starts to clog everything up. A freshly installed copy of Windows always runs so much quicker and has that “new OS smell”!

I firmly believe that more people would do the same if it wasn’t such a pain to do! Most people figure that you simply need to set aside a full day to do the job right.

So, I’ve put together a two part checklist of things that you should do before and after you completely reformat your system to start over.

Before You Reformat

1. Move all of your data off the computer and put it on a different system or drive. The most important folder to backup is the user profile (%USERPROFILE%) folder. This will usually back up 95% of what you want including your My Documents, music, pictures, favorites (for Internet Explorer), e-mail, etc.
2. Backup all of the device drivers that are being used on the system and store them somewhere else. I use a freeware program called DriverMax but I am sure that there are several other good ones out there.
3. Make sure you have a copy of all the software installed on your computer along with all of the license keys. A quick way to get a list of all installed software is to use something like Belarc Advisor. If you do not have the license keys, a program like Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder might be of help. This includes operating system and software that you bought by download. I usually start making this list a few weeks before I decide to rebuild my system.
4. Download AutoPatcher and prepare a Windows/Office update CD/DVD.
5. Create an image of the system just in case you missed/forgot something. There are a number of free imaging programs available. This way, even if there is something that you forgot to backup, you will still be able to get it back from the image.
6. Perform a thorough check of your hard drive. If your drive has errors or problems (r you just want a bigger hard drive), now would be a really good time to replace the drive. Some tools include:
• Seagate SeaTools
• Hitachi Drive Fitness Test
• Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostic
7. Make sure that you have all of your account information for your Internet provider, including e-mail. Have their phone number handy in case you run into trouble.
8. If you do not have all of your online accounts information memorized, now is a good time to write record them so that you do not destroy the information when you reformat your drive.
9. Make sure that you have your wireless network information recorded and available.

If you have lost your passwords that are stored on your computer, here are some tools that may be able to help you out:

• MessenPass
• Mail PassView
• IE PassView
• Protected Storage PassView
• Dialupass
• Asterisk Logger
• AsterWin IE
• Network Password Recovery
• SniffPass Password Sniffer
• PstPassword
• WirelessKeyView
• Remote Desktop PassView
• PocketAsterisk
• RemotePocketAsterisk
• Unhide Passwords (Firefox)

After You Reformat

Well, you’ve reformatted your disk so there is no turning back. Here is a general overview of the process:

1. Make sure only the bare necessaries are plugged into the computer (monitor, keyboard, and mouse).
2. Boot from the Windows CD and install Windows.
3. Install all of the drivers that you backed up earlier.
4. Plug in all of your peripherals and ensure that they are all working correctly.
5. Install Office if you had it on your computer.
6. Install all of the updates from your AutoPatcher CD/DVD.
7. Run a disk clean and defragment on the drive.
8. Reconnect your systems to the Internet.
9. Install all of the applications that you want installed on the system.
10. Migrate all of your files to your newly built system.
11. Setup all of your accounts again.

I’m sure that there are a few things that I have forgotten but this is a really good start. Let me know what I’ve missed or if there is something that you do that I do not and I will add it to the list.

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UPS devices have become so cheap these days that everyone should have one on all of their computers. What surprises me is that nobody has designed a standard computer power supply with built-in UPS capabilities.

Some of the advantages of such a design include:

1. Continued running even when power goes out.
2. Can (carefully) move a computer to a different room or location without shutting it down.
3. Laptops do it, why not desktops?
4. Only the critical devices (i.e. the computer) are on the UPS and not other non-essentials like monitors and printers. This will allow for a longer running system without power.
5. The ability to gently shut down the system from a hardware (not OS) perspective.

If any of the readers out there are hardware developers and would like to pick up on this idea, feel free. Just drop me a line to let me know how the idea pans out!

Trackback link - http://www.DailyCupOfTech.com/2008/05/08/gadget-idea-standard-computer-power-supply-with-built-in-ups/trackback/

It is only a matter of time before most IT professionals find themselves having to do some sort of a forensic analysis on a computer. The problem that most people come are then faced with is their lack of experience in performing these tasks.

And all of the pressure does not help either because there are often some pretty high staked involved.

This is where Helix comes in. Helix is a live CD that is designed to find out exactly what is on that computer and what individuals have done with it. From their website:

Helix is a customized distribution of the Knoppix Live Linux CD. Helix is more than just a bootable live CD. You can still boot into a customized Linux environment that includes customized linux kernels, excellent hardware detection and many applications dedicated to Incident Response and Forensics.

Helix has been modified very carefully to NOT touch the host computer in any way and it is forensically sound. Helix wil not auto mount swap space, or auto mount any attached devices. Helix also has a special Windows autorun side for Incident Response and Forensics.

Helix focuses on Incident Response & Forensics tools. It is meant to be used by individuals who have a sound understanding of Incident Response and Forensic techniques. That said Helix is used by the following organizations for Incident Response/Forensics Training:

• e-fense: Helix Incident Response & Computer Forensics
• NW3C: Linux Forensics
• SANS Track 508: System Forensics, Investigation and Response
• InfoSec Institute: Computer Forensics Training
• SEARCH: Basic Investigators Training

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It is quite popular these days to hire a headhunter when looking for work. And, on the surface, I thought it was a great idea. Why should I pound the pavement looking for jobs when these people do this full time and are willing to find me work without charging me? They get paid by the companies who are looking for employees and they get a percentage of my first year’s salary.  This means that they would get me the largest possible salary and it doesn’t cost me a dime!

Or does it?

When speaking with the two headhunters that I was working with, I made it very clear that I was looking for a management position.  It was also very clearly stated in my cover letter and in my resume that, while I was also very technical, I was definitely looking for a career in IT management.

At this point, the blinders went on.  Both headhunters wanted me to rewrite my resume to emphasis my technical side.  One headhunter even called me up later in the day and told me that she had a great leadership position for me.  The position ended up being a tech lead, something that I did almost a decade ago!

Based off my, albeit limited, experience with headhunters, I have made some observations which may or may not apply to other headhunters:

1. Headhunters are not actually working for you.  Rather, they are working for the employers and themselves.  You are really nothing more than a trading commodity akin to cattle.
2. Headhunters are not motivated to find me the best job.  Rather, they are motivated to fill as many open positions as possible.  This keeps their bosses happy by keeping the actual clients (the employers) happy.
3. Headhunters are not motivated to get me the highest possible salary.  If a headhunter can spend half an hour to get me a $40,000 per year job, do you really think that they are going to work to get me an extra $10,000 if it takes an extra five hours?  Especially when they can place ten more $40,000 people in that time frame.  This is typically referred to as the law of diminishing returns.
4. Headhunts will try to make you fit the job, not find the job that fits you.  I was told that I would never get the type of job I wanted with my resume (even though I already had the type of job I wanted already) but that she had the perfect job for me.  I was also told that my salary expectations were too high and that I would have to be more realistic, even though I was already making more that I was asking for and in a tougher market.
5. If you don’t fall in line, they will drop you.  Once I made it clear what I was looking for and that I was not willing to settle for a job similar to what I had done ten years ago, I never heard back from my two headhunters again. I am assuming that the effort wasn’t worth it.

Now, as I stated, this is based off a relatively short time with two headhunters and I could be completely off base.  Maybe I just got the two bad headhunters in the entire world.  Let us know about your headhunter experiences, good or bad.

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I have been getting a number of e-mail and posts asking how the job hunt is going.

Yesterday, I accepted a position with a consulting firm as Manager of IT Services (at least that is my working title).  Now comes the fun part of house hunting, selling our house, packing, moving, etc.

I am really excited about this new challenge as I will have the opportunity to help shape and grow an entire company!  So, if you are looking for a good IT consulting company in the Edmonton area, feel free to drop me a line and I’m sure we can help you out!

Trackback link - http://www.DailyCupOfTech.com/2008/02/06/employment-update/trackback/

Now fixing a BWM is easier than ever:

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While DVDs are relatively small, if you have a large library like I do, it can quickly consume a lot of space. So, I decided to put my entire DVD collection on my home network and get rid of the DVDs altogether. This was a relatively simple process even though it was fairly time consuming. But, in the end, I ended up with a complete set of all my movies which I could watch on demand (read, “I can change disks without getting off the couch!”) that fit nicely on a small home NAS.

Software You Need

I used two pieces of software to put my DVDs on my computer and shrink them down to a size that is useable:

• RipIt4Me - used to make a copy of the DVD to your computer’s hard drive.
• Handbrake - shrinks the movie down to a manageable size. DVDs can use up to 8 GB of disk space. Handbrake will shrink a typical 2 hour movie down to about 750 MB (a saving of about 90%!)

Hardware You May Want

In order to make things truly “on-demand”, you will want a few pieces of hardware. Technically, these are not needed as you could easily store all of your movies on your hard drive and watch them on your computer but it is way better to be able to sit on your couch and watch your movies with nothing more than a remote.

Here is what I have set up:

• Home network (’nuff said!)
• NAS - a home made FreeNAS server fits the bill perfectly as it is easy to set up and lets you use some of your old hardware. When you are building your NAS, make sure that you estimate the correct amount of disk space by multiplying the number of movies you have by 750 MB. If you want to make sure you never lose you movies, double your hard disk space and put in a RAID configuration
• Networked multimedia player - this can be a home made DIY setup such as MythTV or Freevo, or a full blown stand alone device such as the Archos 705 WiFi or the TViX HD M-5100 SH (I have both of these devices and they just rock!)

What To Do

I’m assuming that most of the readers are relatively technical so I’m not going to go into extreme details as to how to do every little step of the process. If there is enough interest, I might create some step by step tutorials at a later date. For now, here are the basic steps:

1. Using RipIt4Me, rip a DVD to your hard drive. You will only need the actual movie, not all of the movies and menus. Make sure that you have enough disk space because this can take up as much as 8GB on your drive.
2. Use Handbrake to now convert the ripped DVD to an Xvid encoded single file. This should reduce the movie size down significantly (about 750 MB). Do not be alarmed if this takes some time to do. It could easily take over an hour to encode the file.
3. Move the movie file to your NAS.
4. Delete the movie files on your hard drive that were created by RipIt4Me and Handbrake (you will need the space later).
5. Point your multimedia player hardware at your NAS. How you do this will vary depending on hardware.
6. Enjoy the show!

Trackback link - http://www.DailyCupOfTech.com/2008/01/19/make-your-dvds-view-on-demand-and-save-space-too/trackback/

As my wife and I are in the process of packing, we have discovered that there are tons of documents that we have which are in binders.  Binders are great if they are on the shelf or if their contents are being accessed on a regular basis but when you are moving and space is a key factor, they sure become a pain.

We decided to use Chicago screws to save some space. They are flat and allow you to get rid of the extra space that is taken up by partially empty binders, covers, etc.  We figure that we have reduced the amount of space that our documents use by about 60%.

Sorry that this isn’t really a techie post but this was such a cool idea, I needed to share it.

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It happened again to me this morning. A user requested that we put “some kind of web survey software” on out Intranet. This is a trial so we do not know whether or not this will be in place long term or if it will even work.

Outside the fact that we do not have an Intranet in our office, normally a tech person would either flat out say, “No!” or start looking for something that would specifically work in their environment.

Depending on the environment that you are working in, this could end up being a very costly test.

But, what if you were to have a number of servers with various configurations sitting in a massive closet somewhere ready to plug into your network and get you up and running? This would cut down your build time and your would be able to use whatever software you want.

This is precisely what I do in order to create test systems in a really quick turn-around using VMware and virtual servers/appliances.

Get the Software

In order to do this, I downloaded the free VMware server software and installed it on a spare workstation. If you do not have a spare workstation, you can install it on your own workstation. Since these are virtual servers, you can move them to another computer running VMware server at any time without having to rebuild the entire system.

Select Your Software

It is now time to find the perfect software for what you would like to do. Once you have done this, you can then create the proper virtual server to support this software.

This may seem to be a bit backwards for many people because most are accustomed to being constrained to the network resources that they are presently working with. This way completely opens up for you what you can use.

Create Your Templates

Once you have created a base system, do not immediately install the software on it that you want to use. Rather, create a snapshot of the server and then shut it down. Go to your virtual machines folder and create a folder called Templates. Copy (don’t move) all of the files that you have just created for your virtual machine to the Templates folder.

You now have a copy of your new server that you can duplicate at any time and add the duplicate to your inventory for customization.

Whenever you need a base system that is significantly different from any of the template systems that you already have, simply build it from scratch and then add it to your templates for later use.

Use Prebuilt Virtual Appliances

On the VMware website, there are a large number of prebuilt virtual serve appliances that may save you a ton of work. These are systems that have been created by various people that are ready to go as is. This means that you could have a complete system ready to go in the time that it takes you to download the appliance!

Track Your Server Templates

It is important to know what is on each of your server templates so that you do not duplicate effort. This can be something as simple as an Excel spreadsheet that looks something like this:

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