Recorded: June 17, 2008
Your Hosts: Rich Niemeier, Steve Murawski and Keith Albright
Show Length: 55:28

The logo contest is running until June 30th. Submit your entries to Contest [at] MindOfRoot.com. The winner gets their choice of either a full retail copy of Microsoft Office 2007 Standard or $25 cash.

Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy.

Links mentioned in this show:

• Some follow-ups from the Scripting/SysAdmin Meme Started by Steve
• Orca MSI Editor - Download here
• Full MS SDK Download
• 50 micron vs.62.5 micron fiber optic cabling
• 50 micron cable bend radius sensitivity
• Greg Shields List of EXE’s in Vista (A-L)
• Greg Shields List of EXE’s in Vista (M-Z)
• Recreating core AD DNS entries
• Sysinternals live on the web
• DHCP Import/Export utility
• Using LINQ on PowerShell
• Printer Migrator Utility
• MSDN Virtual Lab

See the full show notes here.

Other sites or podcasts mentioned in this show:

• Listener Dave’s WinDiagnostics website

Website Picks:

Rich - Macrium online imaging app and Download Squad

Keith - R2D2 Translator

Download Here

OK, here it goes.

How old were you when you started using computers?

I was around 12 or 13 when I started playing with computers. I saw them in Popular Science and was fascinated with them. I then pestered my parents for my first PC for Christmas and my dad finally took me to K-Mart where I had to choose between the Texas Instruments TI/99-4A, the Timex Sinclair 1000, and either the Commodore Vic-20 or C-64.

What was your first machine?

My first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000. I remember my friend getting a Commodore and being jealous of the color graphics. My second and real springboard PC was a Radio Shack/Tandy TRS-80 Model 4 with 64 kb RAM and dual 5.25 floppy drives (360k each!) We had Tandy TRS-80 Model II and 3’s in my school district so I went with what I knew. My dad had IBM PC’s at work and showed me an ad for an IBM (Peanut, I think) and I decided to stick to the Radio Shack brand. I still have both of these units somewhere in my parents attic….along with all the other old stuff I’ve talked about on the show. My first x86 PC was a Bondwell B210 286 laptop with a 40 MB hard drive.

What was the first real script you wrote?

Hello World loop in Basic on the Timex Sinclair 1000……Isn’t that what everyone writes? I went on to write an inventory control system in BASIC for the company my dad worked for. I coded on the TRS-80 and then printed it out. A typist transcribed my code onto an IBM PC and then I came in to troubleshoot the problems. No reading floppies cross-platform in those days. There were subtle differences in the BASIC compilers back than for disk I/O and file handling. Sadly, this old geek can still remember that BASIC stood for Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.

What scripting languages have you used?

Basic (No, not visual), Pascal, COBOL, and Fortran. Pascal will always be my favorite. Top down design rocks. If you haven’t declared it….you can’t freakin’ call it. That’s probably why I’ve had so much trouble grasping the object-oriented languages. Later on into today, it’s been DOS batch file scripts, SQL, Kixtart, and the occasional dabble into PowerShell.

What was your first professional sysadmin gig?I took a part-time job in 1987 doing data entry for free magazine subscriptions (International Computer Network) while going to community college for Comp Sci. When they found I had a tech bent, they started using me to do after-hours system tasks on the two mainframes we had (Tandem System I and Tandem System II). Load tapes for backups, load printers for labels or other print jobs, etc. The one thing I remember is the wide carriage printers in the data center. Before each type of print job, I had to run a paper tape with a series of holes punched in it through a reader on the printer. This would set up the printer for the type of job to be printed.

If you knew then what you know now, would have started in IT?

Definitely. During my college years, after I gave up on programming as a major, I focused on being in the financial markets. After a couple of years, however, things changed and I took on MIS as a second major and veered back towards IT. Mostly the change was in the industry. I wasn’t cut out to be a programmer locked in a hermetically sealed mainframe room, but that was the only college curriculum at that time. Once MIS and broader IS/IT curriculums came around it fit me better.

If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new sysadmins, what would it be?

Everybody knows something you don’t. Talking to them and asking them is the only way to find out what it is. In return, share everything you know. Nothing is more counterproductive than having knowledge and not sharing it.

If I could add a second item, it would be; Nobody knows everything. If you think you do, it is time to get out of this field. You need to enjoy constantly learning new things because this is an ever changing field.

What’s the most fun you’ve ever had scripting?

I guess the scripts I am most proud of are the ones I did for Y2K at my old job. They had these old scripts using this Novell Netware add-on pack that allowed them to transfer files between a Novell NetWare server and a SCO Unix server. The Add-on pack was not Y2K compliant, so I replicated the scripts using FTP and DOS batch files. There are only one or two facilities still using these scripts, but thy are still there 10 years later.

Who am I calling out?

Paul Rj Muller at the Caffination Podcast

Justo Morales at the Pepe Show Podcast

Rick Savoia of the The Force Field Podcast

UPDATE: Paul and Rick have both responded. I’ll have to reach out to Justo and kick him in the asterisk. You can find Paul and Rick’s responses at the following links:

Paul’s Response

Rick’s Response

Recorded: June 3, 2008
Your Hosts: Steve Murawski and Keith Albright
Show Length: 32:54

The logo contest is running until June 30th. Submit your entries to Contest [at] MindOfRoot.com. The winner gets their choice of either a full retail copy of Microsoft Office 2007 Standard or $25 cash.

Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy.

Links mentioned in this show:

• Polymon - New version released
• Stored Procedures for PolyMon
• FAT File System Directory Limitations
• File System Specifications on Wikipedia

Read the full show notes here.

Download Here

Recorded: May 20, 2008
Your Hosts: Keith Albright
Show Length: 19:44

The logo contest is running until June 30th. Submit your entries to Contest [at] MindOfRoot.com. The winner gets their choice of either a full retail copy of Microsoft Office 2007 Standard or $25 cash.

Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy.

Links mentioned in this show:

• Microsoft Group Policy Management Console
• L Root Server Changed IP Address
• ICANN Info on L Root Server Change
• Renesys Investigates Someone Answer Root server requests
• Microsoft Sets Filter on SP3 rollout
• Jesper Johansson’s VB script to prevent the SP3 on AMD reboot problem
• Listener Jason’s Blog

Read the full show notes here.

Website Picks

Keith - List of commercial games that have been released as freeware

Download Here

Recorded: May 13, 2008
Your Hosts: Rich Niemeier and Keith Albright
Show Length: 37:49

The logo contest is running until June 30th. Submit your entries to Contest [at] MindOfRoot.com. The winner gets their choice of either a full retail copy of Microsoft Office 2007 Standard or $25 cash.

Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy.

Links mentioned in this show:

• ServiWin device driver and service manager
• XP SP3 problems on AMD-based systems (Another related article here)
• AD FSMO roles - How to allocate roles among servers
• AD FSMO roles - How to transfer roles
• Active Directory Topology Diagrammer
• Philly WiFi project is dead

View the full show notes here.

Website Picks

Keith - Uniform Commercial Code online

Download Here

Recorded: May 6, 2008
Your Hosts: Keith Albright
Show Length: 26:53

Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy.

Links mentioned in this show:

• Microsoft delays XP SP3 (Sorta)
• nLite
• UBCD for Windows
• Microsoft Pursuing the IT Consumer vs. Enterprise Strategy? Listen to this discussion on Window Weekly Ep. 57

View the full show notes here.

Website Picks:

MrB4D - TheInfoBox portable applications site

Keith - Cool Mac history site and Cornell ECE student final projects

Download Here

Recorded: April 29, 2008
Your Hosts: Steve Murawski, Rich Niemeier, and Keith Albright
Show Length: 47:45

iStream, uStream, we all Stream on UStream.tv. Well, we successfully broadcast on UStream for this show….sort of. We had a lot of sound problems so the audio is probably unbearable. With the assistance of someone in the forum we were able to test after the show and I found the setting I had on my laptop that was causing the problem. Look for us next Tuesday 9PM ET when we’ll be recording again.

Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy.

Links mentioned in this show:

• Our UStream Channel page
• Techies Get a Pay Cut (Discussion article)
• Auditing in Server 2008

View the full show notes here.

Website Picks:

Steve - Microsoft Mesh

Keith - Buy your Jell-O in bulk ;^) and Internet Acronym Server.

Download Here

This is our second experiment with a live forum.  Things didn’t work so well with the Skype conference call and we don’t know why.  I figured I’d give UStream a try since so many others use it.  Since this is a test, we cannot guarantee it’s success.  Also, as of now I’m the only one you will see but you will be able to hear everything.

Barring any problems; we will be on around 9:30PM Eastern time.  We usually start show prep around 9PM, so we should be live by 9:30PM.

You can access the stream here and we are going to record the broadcasts for people to find via UStream.  We hope to see you there.

Keith

Recorded: April 22, 2008
Your Hosts: Steve Murawski and Keith Albright
Show Length: 47:29

Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy.

Links mentioned in this show:

• Vista SP1 now available via Windows Update
• WindowsXP SP3 RTM
• Hiren’s BootCD onUSB Flash Drive
• USB Format Utility (Download link)
• Ultimate Boot CD on USB Flash Drive
• VB6 Support to end
• TicketDesk Application
• Loopback IP’s - RFC3330
• Spamhaus - Great resource on RBL’s
• Microsoft Office Genuine Advantage “patch” accidentally released through WSUS
• Article: How to stop worrying and love your superusers
• Listener Lucifists PowerShell Script to force client to query WSUS server

Read the full show notes here.

Website Picks:

Keith - Domain Name Appraisal

Download Here

Recorded: April 8, 2008
Your Hosts: Rich Niemeier and Keith Albright
Show Length: 43:01

Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy.

Links mentioned in this show:

• Resource Hacker Utility
• Wireshark 1.0 Released
• ISO approves Microsofts OOXML Document format
• Long-Range Ethernet
• Boson Pass Crack and other Cisco Utilities

Read the full show notes here.

Wesbite Picks:

Keith - Funny Public Service Ad and Great blog showcasing Photoshop disasters.

Download Here