Chris Stauffer at myITForum.com

I added Red LED’s to the legs of my telescope so that could see where I put it on a dark (no moon night). This was done so that I wouldn’t have to always have a flashlight in hand and because I was bored and needed a project and the wife let me spend the money cause it only cost about 20 bucks 

 
So here is what I did.

You will need the following and all can be purchased from your local radio shack.

3 LED’s at 1.7 volts (max 2.4 volts) = 5.1 volts max 7.2

connected to a 4AA battery pack 6 volts works nice.

 
3 LED Holder

3 Red LED (can use ones with less light output but I wanted these  )

You will need to remove the legs from your tripod. If they are aluminum like mine then they should be hollow. If they are wood well then you will have to figure out how to add the lights. Once the legs are removed you will need to drill a hole near the base of the legs, large enough to hold the metal LED holders. Then drill a hole about 3-4 inches from the top of the legs.

            You will need to solder the LED  to the wire that you are going to use. I had phone cord (white with 4 wires) laying around from my last project so I used this and just twisted 2 wires together this gave me a positive and negative line. Make sure that you solder all of the LED s to the wire the same way. One leg is longer then the other on the LED so you can tell what is negative and what is positive. I used shrink tube to make it look clean. Give yourself about 3 times the length of the legs in wire so you can fully extend the legs and still reach where you put your battery box.

            Once you have all of the LED’s wired run the wires though the holes that you drilled so that the LED s are at the base of each leg. Once you get the wire to the top of the leg run it back out of the hole you drilled at the top of the legs. Now stuff half of the extra wire into the legs so that you can move the legs up and down freely.

            Reattach the legs. Run the wire however you need to so that it all meets at one leg. I had a peace of metal conduit left from yet another project so I zip tied it to one of the legs and ran all of my wires down though it. Once at the bottom of the outermost leg I finished the wiring.

            The wiring is real simple. Just connect the positive of the battery pack to the positive of the first led. Then connect the negative of the first LED to the positive of the second led. Then the negative of the second LED to the positive of the third LED. Lastly connect the negative of the third led to the negative of the battery pack. Real simple. I recommend twisting everything together and testing that it all works before making anything permanent. Once you know that all of your LED’s work then you can solder and shrink tube everything. Lastly used zip ties to hold everything to the leg and make it look neat.

Here are some picks of the finished product. See Attachment.

Have Fun 

My wife got me my first telescope for Christmas last year and I finally figured out how to use it. It is a Meade DS114 ATA. This means that it is a 4.5 inch telescope with a GOTO computer. So basically it can find almost anything in the night sky provided that I get it lined up right when I turn it on. Once it finds an object it tries to keep it centered and on track. This is good because well I just am to lazy to learn everything I need to learn about the stars in order to get this new hobby going. Anyway this section will be to catalog my adventures in the night sky.

 Here is what I have seen so far:

Jupiter and 4 moons

Saturn

The moon 

The Andromeda Galaxy

The Dumbbell Nebula

M27

M34

M11

Enif

Altair

C14 

The Commonwealth Of Pennsylvania is now going to be using the health checks first introduced by Chris Sugdinis. Attached is the documentation I put together based on what I did and will be doing here. Please feel free to review it and use in as a template for your own site.

If you are a Commonwealth Of Pennsylvania SMS admin reading this post I will be releasing the Doc to you guys on the Portal. we will be going over it in detail at the SMUG meeting on October 9th.

 Note: Subnets and other security things where removed but they shouldn't affect the document.

Thanks to everyone that assisted in this.

Chirs Stauffer <><

 Nice Job Rick.

http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/rjones/archive/2007/09/14/custom-updates-scan-tool-inventory-for-ms07-054.aspx

 This report will show you all of the machines that are not assigned to a Site. This will allow you to figure out what boundaries are missing. Just change the collection ID to the collection you need the info from.

SELECT DISTINCT
Sys.Netbios_Name0
, Sys.Client0
, Sys.Operating_System_Name_and0
, v_RA_System_IPAddresses.IP_Addresses0
, v_RA_System_IPSubnets.IP_Subnets0
FROM         v_R_System Sys INNER JOIN
                      v_FullCollectionMembership ON Sys.ResourceID = v_FullCollectionMembership.ResourceID INNER JOIN
                      v_RA_System_IPSubnets ON Sys.ResourceID = v_RA_System_IPSubnets.ResourceID INNER JOIN
                      v_RA_System_IPAddresses ON Sys.ResourceID = v_RA_System_IPAddresses.ResourceID
WHERE     (v_FullCollectionMembership.CollectionID LIKE 'PAC00094')
ORDER BY Sys.Netbios_Name0

Here is a report that will show you any patches released or re-released in the last 30 days.

I dont like that it is showing old patches but it is a starting point. Maybe someone can add to it :-)

You will need to create the table and stored procedure I used in my previous ITMU reports to get the v_ms_patch_list.

SET NOCOUNT ON

(SELECT DISTINCT
 ps.Bulletin AS Bulletin_No,
 ps.Retrying + ps.PreSuccess + ps.Uninstalled + ps.PendReboot + ps.Verified + ps.NoStatus + ps.Failed - ps.Verified AS Unpatched
 , ps.Verified as Patched,
 ps.Retrying + ps.PreSuccess + ps.Uninstalled + ps.PendReboot + ps.Verified + ps.NoStatus + ps.Failed AS TWS,
        ROUND((100 * (ps.Verified + .00000001)) / (.00000001 + ps.Retrying + ps.PreSuccess + ps.Uninstalled + ps.PendReboot + ps.Verified + ps.NoStatus + ps.Failed), 0) AS '% Compliant',
 real_total.total as 'CR'
into #SMSITMU1
FROM         (SELECT     fcm.CollectionID,
   pse.ID AS Bulletin,
   SUM(CASE WHEN pse.LastStateName = 'No Status' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS NoStatus,
   SUM(CASE WHEN pse.LastStateName = 'Install Verified' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) / 2 AS Verified,
   SUM(CASE WHEN pse.LastStateName = 'Retrying' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS Retrying,
   SUM(CASE WHEN pse.LastStateName = 'Preliminary Success' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS PreSuccess,
   SUM(CASE WHEN pse.LastStateName = 'Uninstalled' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS Uninstalled,
   SUM(CASE WHEN pse.LastStateName = 'Reboot pending' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS PendReboot,
   SUM(CASE WHEN pse.LastStateName = 'Failed' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS Failed
  FROM         
   v_ApplicableUpdatesSummaryEx INNER JOIN
                        v_GS_PatchStatusEx pse ON v_ApplicableUpdatesSummaryEx.UpdateID = pse.UpdateID RIGHT OUTER JOIN
                        v_FullCollectionMembership fcm ON pse.ResourceID = fcm.ResourceID
                WHERE
   (pse.LocaleID In ('0','9'))
   AND (pse.QNumbers NOT LIKE 'None')
   AND (pse.ID NOT LIKE 'None')
   AND (fcm.CollectionID = @collid )
   GROUP BY pse.ID
   , v_ApplicableUpdatesSummaryEx.Type
   , fcm.CollectionID
                HAVING 
   (v_ApplicableUpdatesSummaryEx.Type = 'Microsoft Update')) ps
INNER JOIN
 (
 SELECT DISTINCT MS_ID as 'ID0'
FROM         v_ms_patch_list
WHERE    
--(Patch_Severity = 'critical') AND
(Date_Revised >= DATEADD([DAY], - 30, GETDATE()))

 ) As PatchList
ON ps.Bulletin = PatchList.ID0

 CROSS JOIN

                          (SELECT     CollectionID, COUNT(ResourceID) AS total

                            FROM          v_FullCollectionMembership

                            GROUP BY CollectionID

                            HAVING      (CollectionID = @collid )) real_total)

SELECT     Name as Agency
FROM         v_Collection
WHERE     (CollectionID = @collid )
ORDER BY Name

Select Sum (#SMSITMU1.Patched) as 'patched'
, Sum (#SMSITMU1.TWS) As 'total'
,
ROUND((100 * (Sum (#SMSITMU1.Patched) + .00000001)) / (.00000001 + Sum (#SMSITMU1.TWS)), 0) AS '% Compliant' 

From
#SMSITMU1
 
Select #SMSITMU1.Bulletin_No AS 'MS Number'
, #SMSITMU1.Patched As 'Patched'
, #SMSITMU1.TWS As 'Total Requested'
, #SMSITMU1.CR as 'Clients Reporting'
from #SMSITMU1
order by #SMSITMU1.Bulletin_No DESC

drop table #SMSITMU1

Link um if you got um :-P 

http://www.linkedin.com/in/chrstauffer

I'll finish filling in my Profile when i get time  

looks like MS updated there website for daylight savings

 http://support.microsoft.com/gp/cp_dst 

Looks like more countries decided to jump on the time zone change bandwagon and inturn MS released a new patch on August 30th.

August 2007 cumulative time zone update for Microsoft Windows operating systems

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/933360/en-us

Firewall Ports

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb632618.aspx

 If you are going to run SCCM on the internet you will also need this.

Prerequisites for Internet-Based Client Management

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb633122.aspx

Does your head hurt yet? i know mine does.

I finally finished building my Lab on Thursady before taking a 4 day weekend. Now if I can just figure out how to configure this thing :-P

I see already this software is going to be a major learning issue for some people.