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Rob Marshall @ MyItForum.com
... my god, it's full of stars

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Delivering sand via bucket-based DP

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What Video Game Character Are You? I am Kung Fu Master.
I am Kung Fu Master.

<tt>I like to be in control of myself. I dislike crowds, especially crowds containing people trying to kill me. Even though I always win, I prefer to avoid fights if possible.

What Video Game Character Are You? </tt>

VMWare and Virtual Server

Rob Marshall @ MyItForum.com


... my god, it's full of stars

August 2005 - Posts

  • Classic movies to curl up on the sofa and watch

    Watched a classic movie last night, The Sting. Paul Newman with his twinkly blue eyes, a very young Robert Redford and Robert Shaw (who played Quint in Jaws) ... really enjoyed it.

    I expect Hollywood to reinvent\redo this movie soon ... let's hope they don't ruin it like they did War of the Worlds and the recent slew of remakes that they just keep pouring out

    Got any classics you like?

    I'm hoping to get a few classics together to watch over the Xmas break, put up your list or email it to me ;-)

    Posted Aug 30 2005, 02:08 PM by RobM with 1 comment(s)
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  • WinFS Beta - on MSDN

    Posted Aug 30 2005, 01:58 PM by RobM with 2 comment(s)
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  • Jacks Back !

    It's been such a busy week!

    And i've been in read-only mode all week. No MSN Messenger at work, and no down time to blog :<

    How sad is that, when you don't have time to Blog?!?

    Seen a lots of SMS2003 problems and involved in a lot of Ops work to keep me occupied, but managed to squeeze out some time to post on the SMS2003 forum. Just so glad i'm back in work again, ah lifes good :>

    Liked Brian tuckers approach to learning ITMU, share the experiences, great idea.

    I've got a copy of MS DPM to play with this weekend, will try and post something up about it ... I see there is even an MOM2005 MP for it too yummy :-)

    Laughed at Rod Trents post about finally reaching the business department and getting his email switched on in minutes, class :>

    Not going anywhere near that Google IM, dropped IRC and ICQ for MSN and refuse to budge hehe

    Posted Aug 26 2005, 08:04 PM by RobM with 1 comment(s)
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  • DIY Endoscope

    Hat of to this guy ...

    He didn't need a legion of computer and electrical engineers, runs his stuff on the Microsoft OS, didn't need expensive equipment costing up to $30k - just a few lenses, a webcab, a Pent4 and an £800 scope. Cool :>

    Be funny if he's half way through a session and it BSOD's ... oops heh course it won't ;-)

    Posted Aug 23 2005, 10:26 PM by RobM with 2 comment(s)
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  • New Job - First day

    Tomorrow, the 22nd August will be my first day working for www.marsh.com, an insanely large Insurance company. Will be supporting them while we deploy SMS2003 throughout the EMEA region. Have two alarm clocks set to wake me up for a 2hr commute right in to the heart of the beast, also know as the City of London.

    This is going to be fun, wish me luck :-)

    I'm also accepting donations, to assist with the ongoing development of teleportation technology. Please visit http://www.IneedATeleporterASAP.com to contribute ;-)

    Posted Aug 21 2005, 09:59 PM by RobM with 2 comment(s)
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  • What Video game character are you?

    Posted Aug 20 2005, 12:07 PM by RobM with 2 comment(s)
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  • The Office

    You guys in america watching The Office, well you owe it to yourself to get hold of the original UK version with Ricky Gervais. Ignore all that twaddle about "Americans just not getting it", the shows awesomely universal. Your nerves feel red raw, your face aches from laughing, it is the essence of office life :>

    Not that I'm knocking the remake for american consumption, i've not seen it, but the original actors are so funny, well ... it'd be like redoing Faulty Towers where you'd loose the punchyness from the original actors john cleese and connie booth.

    Posted Aug 19 2005, 03:37 PM by RobM with 2 comment(s)
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  • Inks on the contract

    Great news. I've got a job as an SMS2003 Admin. Working for an insurance firm as a contractor, 4 months, healthy day rate, slap bang in the middle of London. Start this Monday.

    Ecstatic about this ... I love SMS2003, and i'll be working with the little beauty again. Who could possibly ask for more?!

    Superb :>

    Posted Aug 19 2005, 11:48 AM by RobM with 1 comment(s)
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  • First virtual mugging

    Sourced from Slashdot:

    electro-donkey writes "A man has been arrested in Japan after on suspicion using a bot to beat up and rob characters in the online computer game Lineage II. The stolen virtual possessions were then exchanged for real cash, according to this report from NewScienist.com. "I regularly say that every form of theft and fraud in the real world will eventually be duplicated in cyberspace," says Bruce Schneier."

    Keep your virtual wallet tucked away guys, nothings safe anymore!

    "I was walking down the path in to the town of Dereth, taking in the ambience of the trees of K'luth when this dodgy looking fellow with a big bag with "SWAG" written on it walked up to me. Before I new it half my Inventory disappeared, I was on the floor, and I realsed my Mace of Holy Smiting was gone."

    Posted Aug 18 2005, 11:53 PM by RobM with 1 comment(s)
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  • Word lookup

    Now and then I stumble in to a word I don't know, quick trip to www.dictionary.com and i'm enlightened. So, I wrote this simple script, tucked it away on the filesystem and shortcutted it to my start menu ... for instant access I added a keyboard shortcut.

    -----

    Dim TheWord, objShell

    TheWord = inputbox("Enter the word you want to lookup")

    If TheWord <> "" Then

     Set objShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

    ' Edit the path if you've installed away from the default area, or are using a non-ie browser

     objShell.Run "%SYSTEMDRIVE%\PROGRA~1\INTERN~1\Iexplore.exe http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=" & TheWord

     Set objShell = Nothing
     Set TheWord = Nothing

    End If

     

    Posted Aug 18 2005, 11:38 PM by RobM with no comments
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  • Links ...

    Doug Engelbart demo'ing Microsoft Sharepoint in 1968 heh ... You have to check this out, truely ahead of it's time.

    And this movie clip of a guy being put in a trance while playing a zombie arcade game and then being transported to a specially setup room has to be seen to be believed. Usual disclaimer, NSFW.

     

     

    Posted Aug 18 2005, 10:33 PM by RobM with 1 comment(s)
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  • Why I blog ...

    Why do I blog ...

    Well, more to the point, who am I?

    I'm an english computer engineer, in my mid-thirties currently living in Hampshire. A totally natural born computer geek.

    A truncated run through my life would be ... started with a Sinclair ZX80 as a 12yr old, lucky me, and learnt its' equivilient of BASIC from troubleshooting program listings in the weekly Sinclair specific magazines. Next up was the Sinclair Spectrum and more debugging and programming. Those where the days, a 64k game took half an hour to load lol. Then skipped to the Commodore 64 (eek) and ultimately arrived at the Commodore Amiga 500. What a beast, linear address range (cor), it had a custom gfx chipset (Blitter) way before GPU was uttered by the chaps and chapettes at Nvidia and just rocked. Spent a long time coding 68000 Assembler language on that platform, and enjoyed every minute of it. Then was given a 286 by a friend and dropped the amiga in favour of Microsoft DOS and Turbo Pascal. And then my plans to develop an evil empire where set in motion, I changed my name to Bill Gates and ... ooops no that's not right ... Jumping forward several years the fun really started, and I got my first computing job supporting 15 users and a Novell 3.12 server which I managed to replace with Windows NT 4 (hoorah?). Then tried a rollout job deploying Windows 9x in a pharmaceutical company. That led in to a Desktop Engineering role for another pharmaceutical for a few years before I took the natural progression in to the server space within the same company. After just under 9 years of soaking up all that I could in both spaces, and getting tired of the scene, I moved in to a small group, still within the same company, as a contractor, managing SMS2003 for the EMEA region. That was probably one of the best decisions i've made in a long time. Such fun, the team was cool, the manager was cool, the technology was cool! the budget ran out, thus so did the job. Another bombshell arrived, me and the wife split up so I decided to move closer to London. Practically ten years as a contractor in the same company, thats rare :-)

    I've dabbled with so much in the past, tried my hand at being a commercial game developer (nothing got published, did say tried), goofed around with tons of products and oddities, that I feel I have a satisified mind. I also count myself lucky in that I just enjoy playing with computers. Others switch their office PC off at night and that's it until the morning. Not me, I'm straight on my PC when I get home, either gaming (i'm an FPS fiend!) or soaking something or other up. Just like now, been for an interview today and after making a cup of nice english tea i'm straight on the computer. What a geek lol. So, that is essentially me. Eager to learn new stuff out of curiosity rather than planning a career track, friendly, and always on a natural high. One of the sweetest women I know recently said "you are so funny, and great company to be around". Yeah thats me.

    So why do I blog?

    I like sharing. Period. I try to keep in the spirit of my current technological focus, but It doesn't matter to me. If it's technical or non-technical, if it interests me then I blog about it. I hope that my posts interest at least some of you, and now that i'm blogging on the best Systems Management website, MyITForum Inc I feel even more fortunate.

    Here's to many more wild and whacky, as well as serious, and technically tedious postings ;-)

    Thanks Rod for creating this fine cradle to grow in :-)

    Posted Aug 18 2005, 07:08 PM by RobM with no comments
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  • SMS2003 and Publishing data to the A/D

    I wrote this article up one night recently.

    Its one of many ways to skin the proverbial cat, and get SMS2003 publishing to the A/D with SMS2003 creating the Systems Management A/D container for completeness.

    It's a community document, for the community. But feel free to punch holes, throw mud, put me in the stocks (i could kinda like that) if you find anything wrong with it (But most important fire me an email if it needs additions\corrections ;-).

    Enjoy folks,

    Posted Aug 17 2005, 05:21 PM by RobM with no comments
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  • ...

    If you pay attention and listen hard enough ... you can hear loads of W2K servers bouncing all around the world and admins rushing around applying patches lol

    Stupid virii

    Posted Aug 17 2005, 05:08 PM by RobM with no comments
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  • Microsoft PSS discovers a rootkit on an exchange server

    Good read on rookit discovery during an MS PSS troubleshooting session of a customers Exchange box ... JeremyK's [MSFT] WebLog

    Posted Aug 17 2005, 02:45 PM by RobM with no comments
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  • Dead HDDS

    I woke up, came down like a proper little geek and powered on my machine. Few minutes later my mate who i'm living with at the moment came down and did the same, sigh geeks. Coffee, computer, news, real life. Few moments later he realises his IBM 120GXP PATA (C:) is truely dead. You know those moments where you stare in to the distance and silently scream? lol

    He's up a level in terms of geekness compared to me, rob the brave, and as a result he keeps most if not all of his personal data on a network share (which sits on disks which are mirrored) so all is not lost. Just the grief of rebuilding the OS, customising it, settling in ALL those applications and getting it "just right".

    I mitigate a HDD failure by using Volume Mount Points. Not many people use them or even know about them. My C: drive is pretty much spread across several disks so if I lost my C: drive i'd only loose Windows\Documents and Settings and Program Files and anything lingering around on the root. Everything else is spread around 3 other disks but mounted on to folders on the C: drive.

    I know I know, DLT, Mirrors, backup to CDROM\DVD ... I should at least have a backup strategy, but working inside a corporate for just short of a decade I felt I needed to live dangerously at home. Rob the brave ;-)

    Expect a post from me soon whining about my dead disks ... lol

    Posted Aug 17 2005, 09:07 AM by RobM with no comments
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  • 3D Web browsing - Bring it on!

    This gets me excited: 3D Web Browsing from a Japanese software company called NTT

    I remember when VRML made it's debut, didn't last long. Most of the technology seemed to just die a death. So now, i'm glad to read about a Japanese firm taking the bold step of actually releasing something with 3D and Web Browser in the title. This may get those companies that are sitting on great ideas to create great products.

    Remember Minority Report? Imagine doing that with a few hundred Site servers and hundreds of thousands of clients .. reach out, pull in, tweak and twiddle .... awww nice.

    http://www.gamespy.com/articles/584/584744p1.html

     

    Posted Aug 17 2005, 08:57 AM by RobM with no comments
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  • general news ...

    Posted Aug 16 2005, 07:21 PM by RobM with no comments
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  • Study group - UK

    Anyone from the UK interested in setting up a study group or even a user group (one already exist?) with me?

    We have healthy examples of how to go about this, and examples of content from our USA\Canadian\non-UK counterparts.

    Posted Aug 16 2005, 06:57 PM by RobM with 2 comment(s)
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  • This time top 10 games

    i like this top five business that Craig Cerino started ...

    Heres my top 10 games:

    1. Quake 3 mod Rocket Arena 3 (you have to play it to understand the need to play more ;-)
    2. Call of Duty (priceless fps)
    3. Serious Sam (insane amount of monsters onscreen at any single time!)
    4. Temple of Elemental Evil (top RPG game, follows the D&D rules)
    5. Battlefield 1942 (tank battles ruled)
    6. Medieval Total War (line up those soldiers and let 'em have it ...)
    7. Far Cry (pure eye candy)
    8. Freelancer (fly around an entire galaxy being a bad boy!)
    9. Mame32 (for total retro'ism)
    10. and of course ... Doom !

    I might get around to doing a top ten tunez i like!?!

    Posted Aug 16 2005, 05:54 PM by RobM with no comments
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  • Parkour

    If you know what the word Parkour means then watch this then jump out your office window, scale up the wall, a few high jumps later your crossing the roof, maybe a quick hop over to another building ... who knows. But first, make sure your medical insurance is up to date ;-)

    As TJ Hooker would say "ooo my hemorroids"

    This ones work safe - - but don't go cruising the rest of the links.

    Posted Aug 16 2005, 03:03 PM by RobM with no comments
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  • PigCon 2005

    They sure do now how to live it up over in France
    Posted Aug 16 2005, 02:47 PM by RobM with no comments
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  • Another plane crashes ...

    Posted Aug 16 2005, 02:35 PM by RobM with no comments
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  • Trajic Boeing 737 crash in Greece

    Posted Aug 14 2005, 10:35 PM by RobM with no comments
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  • King of New York

    Craig Cerino linked to Christopher Walkens campaign website. He's one of my favourite actors of all time ;-)

    I couldn't imagine him as your President. Simply because the King of New York movie comes to mind and I see him in the Oval office as "Frank White" with his "Crew" high on coke and running the towns (cough countries) drug scene ... maybe Arnie and Walken can Face Off in a kind of Celebrity Deathmatch fight lol

    Posted Aug 14 2005, 07:33 PM by RobM with no comments
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  • Power of the mind ;-)

    I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uestnatnrd waht I was rdgnieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny improatnt tihng is taht the frist ans lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlhoe. Amzanig huh?? Yaeh and I awlyas tghouht slpeilng wa ipmorant!!!!!!

    Text provided by Web Based Lifeform

    Posted Aug 14 2005, 10:32 AM by RobM with no comments
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  • Lab meat yummy!

    Sign of changing times ...

    BBC News running an interesting article on Meat grown in a lab. I remember reading years back, about Bio-printers that where printing thin layers of proteins on to an organic substrate. But, the end product yielded did not equal the taste, and most importantly the texture of naturally grown beef. As a result the approach dropped off the news radar.

    What's next? A pill you pop in the microwave that comes out as a 3 course sunday roast? (5th Element)

    I'd be interested in feedback on whether you prefer natures approach to manufacturing your 6oz steak or grown-in-a-lab meat?

    Posted Aug 14 2005, 10:27 AM by RobM with no comments
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  • Smoothwall - Hard firewall

    I'm living at a friends, he has a hardwall in the shape of a small and noiseless AMD chassis running Smoothwall. Been getting use to this toy, it's got some incredible features, mods and a great lively community on the forums ... most of all, it's free!

    Got a piece of old junk sitting there? Fire it up and slap on Smoothwall and produce manic laughter when you realise how much control you now have over your lan and those script kiddies pluggin away at your public facing interface (muhahahahaha)

    Posted Aug 14 2005, 09:25 AM by RobM with no comments
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  • Hybrid car makes 250MPG

    Late breaking news: Geeks have heavily modded a Skyline GTR and can barely managed to make 10MPG.

    "Politicians and automakers say a car that can both reduce greenhouse gases and free America from its reliance on foreign oil is years or even decades away. Ron Gremban says such a car is parked in his garage. It looks like a typical Toyota Prius hybrid, but in the trunk sits an 80-miles-per-gallon secret -- a stack of 18 brick-sized batteries that boosts the car's high mileage with an extra electrical charge so it can burn even less fuel. Gremban, an electrical engineer and committed environmentalist, spent several months and $3,000 tinkering with his car."

    I wonder if the Politicians and automakers know that Ron Gremban has their new toy in his garage?!

    Posted Aug 14 2005, 08:33 AM by RobM with no comments
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  • Newz

    /. has plenty of news today :>

    Hardware: Pentium 4 Overclocked to 7.1GHz, Sets World Record

    IT: Spammer Scott Levine Convicted

    Quake 3 Source Code to be Released

    "QuakeCon has just kicked off and at the end of the keynote speech, John Carmack made an announcement saying that the Quake 3 sourcecode will be released shortly. "

    Did Microsoft Invent The iPod?

    Posted Aug 13 2005, 05:52 PM by RobM with no comments
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