I don't know if anyone caught the 48 Hours CBS show tonight (Six Miracles for Christmas), but boy this sure brought back some memories for me. Most people reading this blog won't know that my wife, daughter and I overcame the very challenge which was depicted in the section about the premature birth and hospital stay.
I give thanks to God for giving my family the means to overcome the challenges we regularly face. It is truely amazing to see how well my daughter is doing after coming into this world 3 months early and at a feathery 1lb 5oz.
Also, many thanks go out to John's Hopkins Hospital, Anne Arundel Medical Center, physical therapists, family, and most important...my wife.
Feel free to contact me if you are going through a scenario regarding premature birth and need to talk to someone.
Posted Friday, December 24, 2004 11:10 PM by dthomson | 1 comment(s)
This was shared on the NT SYS Admin email list today.
It seemed cute, so I thought I'd share it.
The Night Before Startup
'Twas the night before startup and all through the house not a program was working, there clicked not a mouse The users were nestled all snug in their beds with visions of systems alive in their heads. The programmers slumped round their screens in despair and felt that a miracle now would be fair. Then from the back office there rose such a chatter I sprang from my desk to see what was the matter and there to my marveling eyes did appear a wonder programmer with a six pack of beer.
Visit the Annoyances.org site and read the rest of the article
Posted Tuesday, December 21, 2004 5:58 PM by dthomson | with no comments
I have yet to find a webpage that is designed to help system administrators quickly find quality resources and tools which are available on the Internet. To answer my own call, I've been putting my collection of Internet bookmarks and tools into an article within this blog. It's probably a bit more than what blogging is about, but putting it here keeps it under the myITforum umbrella and I don't have to maintain my own web space.
The page is rough and very much a work in progress, but I thought I'd go ahead and share it so I can get back to my SMS Admin Console Replacement project.
Here's the link: Useful Resources and Tools
The page is currently sorted by site/author with hopes that I can provide other dynamic searching/sorting methods in the future. I have a lot more stuff to add, but please contact me if you think I'm missing something or if you want to give me some feedback.
Posted Friday, December 17, 2004 11:13 AM by dthomson | with no comments
Ever wonder what application created a certain file type? Here's a page which lists most of the file types you'll come across. I don't know how often it's updated, but it's pretty awesome nonetheless.
Almost Every file format in the world!
Posted Thursday, December 16, 2004 8:27 PM by dthomson | with no comments
My daughter has discovered the joy of playing with the power buttons on my computer equipment. Two days in a row, I'd have a ton of stuff in the works only to have my daughter push the power button on my workstation, KVM switch or the UPS. To make it difficult for her to do this again, I took Red Green's tip on Duct Tape and taped metal washers over all the power buttons. The end result is that my daughter can no longer turn off my computer stuff.
Maybe now I can go back to getting some work done :)
Posted Thursday, December 16, 2004 1:15 PM by dthomson | 2 comment(s)
It's been over a year since Ron Crumbaker and I released the Code Repository and we've been thinking it could use some updating.
To best meet YOUR needs, we are very interested in hearing your recommendations and what you do and don't like about the current release.
Feel free to contact Dan or Ron with your comments and suggestions.
Posted Thursday, December 16, 2004 11:32 AM by dthomson | 2 comment(s)
Everyone has some sort of wish list of tools that they feel would be nice to have. I'm curious to know what's on your list.
Feel free to mail me directly
Posted Friday, December 03, 2004 8:17 AM by dthomson | 2 comment(s)
My family decided that we would go camping this last Memorial Day holiday weekend. When the time came, I packed up my old 1979 Ford F250 4x4 Supercab with all the required gear and we headed off to Tom's Cove Park in Chincoteague, Va. We stopped off in Cambridge, MD to try some of those new sandwiches that Arbie's has now. After a great lunch, my wife, daughter and I loaded ourselves back up into the truck. It wouldn't start. The starter had that old slow grinding noise that told me it had gotten too hot. I went out and cautiously touched it...yup, it was too hot and was locked up. This had happened to me once before and I had to just wait a bit for it to cool down and then it should be ok. I waited patiently for an hour or so while my wife and daughter went into a nearby superstore. The truck would still not start. I found a car dealer around the corner and they were very generous and replaced the starter for me (this was a mini story unto itself, but we'll skip that). We returned to our journey and arrived safely. We setup our campsite in the dark. This was the first time we had taken my 17 month old daughter out camping and she had a hard time getting to sleep. We finally gave up at midnight and packed her up in the truck and drove around a bit so that she could fall asleep. We got back to the campsite and all were asleep by 1AM.
Since tents do nothing to abate sound, my daughter was up bright and early at 5AM listening to all the new sounds such as sea gulls and the water lapping on the beach. Sometimes she can go back to sleep after a bit, but that wasn't happening this morning. We decided to get up and have breakfast. Since it was so early, we didn't want to disturb anyone and decided to load up and check out the local morning eatery. We had a great breakfast.
Since this was Memorial Day weekend, there were a TON of yard sales on the island. My wife loves To yard sale, so we began to stop off at each one which looked interesting. I'd stay in the truck with my daughter while my wife made rounds through each sale. We came upon one sale which was fairly large and I knew my wife would be there for a while. I decided that it would be a good idea to turn off the truck (uh oh) because my temperature sender was not functioning and the engine has a tendency to get pretty warm when air isn't moving over it. My wife finished her purchases and hopped back in the truck. I went to start the engine, but the starter would only click. I got out and did the usual checks. While I did this, my wife went up to the owner of the house and used their phone to try to call our friends. Here's a note to everyone: Cells phones are NO good if they aren't with you AND turned on. I found that the starter was cool so that didn't seem to be a problem. I now thought that the starter solenoid or battery has gone bad. I loosened all the wires, scrapped them shinny and then tightened them up tight. This truck has two batteries, so I tried swapping the batteries. Nothing worked.
Since we couldn't get a hold of our friends, we decided that it was a nice day out and we would walk 6 miles back to the campground. Thank God we still had the baby's stroller. Everyone saw us walking into the campsite without our truck being anywhere in sight. They knew instantly that we had trouble. A good friend helped me wander around the island vainly searching for an automotive parts store. Of course this was a holiday weekend at nearly 12 noon. The chances of finding an open store was slim to none. We did find one, but not only was it closed...it was for sale. The local RV guy was equally worthless. We decided to go back to the truck to see if things had miraculously fixed themselves. We poked and prodded some more, but soon gave up. We packed what remained in my truck into my friends pickup and headed back to the campsite. It was apparent that I will most likely have to go home without my truck and return at a later time with the flatbed trailer to get it home.
Another friend offered the use of their Suburban for the day in case we wanted to try to locate competent help. I graciously accepted. They went for a bike ride on Assateague Island. My other friends went to Assateague Island to spend time on the beach. We on the other hand went out playing Star Trek in search of the great unknown. We happened upon a mom & pop RV place. I stopped in and found the lights were out, but the door was not locked. I propped the door open a bit a yelled in to see if someone was around. Sure enough, the old gent had been out back washing the misses car. He was very kind in helping me find a starter solenoid, a battery terminal and battery cable (these last two items had been pretty well fried back at Arbie's).
My wife and I regained a positive consciousness and headed back to the truck to get it going. Since we were feeling good, we decided to stop off at McDonald's for an ice cream cone treat.
We arrived back at the truck and I installed all the new parts. I got into the drivers seat, said a quick prayer and turned the key. Nope, the starter just clicked. I hung my head down in defeat, but found my answer to the problem when I picked my head up. Please recall the title of this post Don't overlook the basics. I put the truck in PARK, turned the key, and it started right up.
So, the moral of this story is to remind everyone to be diligent when trying to overcome an obstacle. Be sure that the basics have been ruled out before moving on to investigate other solutions to the problem.
My family ended up rounding out the holiday spending time with some great friends and coming away with an embarrassing, but nonetheless interesting story.
Posted Friday, December 03, 2004 7:35 AM by dthomson | with no comments
I've been spending quite a bit of time working on a very ambitious project that will allow an SMS admin to interact with SMS clients and perform other SMS related tasks without having to use the mmc. In its current form, the project is developed using DHTML as an HTA application. What this means is that the SMS admin no longer needs the mmc to be installed in order to perform certain functions. Which in turn means that the SMS admin can perform tasks from anywhere that has access to this application (freedom from the mmc).
Here's a brief rundown on some of the features:
Client
Current features
Soon to be added features
Collections
Queries
Coming attractions
Conclusion
Please let me know your thoughts on this project (Is it something that you are interested in, Do the features listed above meet your needs, ...).
If you're interested, here's some links to a few screen shots.
Feel free to contact me
Posted Thursday, December 02, 2004 2:20 PM by dthomson | 6 comment(s)