I should know better after 18 years in the biz. But every once in a while I guess I have to remind myself that shortcuts are rarely time savers. While installing a new firewall in my Disaster Recovery Center, I decided to take a "shortcut" and just uninstall the Checkpoint installation I had used for testing, instead of reinstalling the OS and everything. I saved about 20 minutes on the install. I then proceeded to waste an entire day chasing ghosts as a result of Checkpoint's unclean installation process on IPSO. In the end, I did what I should...

A review of Michael Moore's latest “documentary” that's actually worth reading: http://www.buzzmachine.com/archives/2004_06_24.html#007356

I ran across this database of applications that have a habit of putting themselves in the Startup folder.  This comes in handy when trying to find out what a particular executable is: http://windowsstartup.com/wso/  

I spent the day away from work today to attend the Microsoft Security Summit here in Seattle.  It was a decent event, with a good number of attendees.  I was surprised that so few vendors showed up, but that may have been due to the space constraints. I was disappointed with the keynote speaker.  I had assumed that with Seattle being MS' home town, they could rustle up someone higher up in the food chain than a VP of Marketing.  While Andy Lees gave an engaging and informative keynote, I couldn't help but wonder why Mike Nash, Scott Charney, or even Charlie McNerney...

A reader asked me to post a cfg file for the SQL example I referred to in my recent WMI on MRTG article.  Here is the relevant entry from the MRTG cfg file on one of my database servers (named “DB01“): Target[DB01.SQL.Connections.WMI]: `cscript //nologo \vbscripts\getSQL.vbs DB01`Title[DB01.SQL.Connections.WMI]: SQL Current Connections (WMI)Pagetop[DB01.SQL.Connections.WMI]: SQL Current Connections (WMI)MaxBytes[DB01.SQL.Connections.WMI]: 10000Options[DB01.SQL.Connections.WMI]: gauge, nopercent, growright, nooYLegend[DB01.SQL.Connections.WMI]: Current ConnectionsShortLegend[DB01.SQL.Connections.WMI]: Connections:LegendI[DB01.SQL.Connections.WMI]: Connections:Legend1[DB01.SQL.Connections.WMI]:  Current Connections

I got a few emails this week from readers concerned about my lack of blogging since I volunteered to help my friend Ron with his new shed.  Don't fret, gentle readers, my hammerin' arm and hammerin' hand are just fine.  Though I am just now returning to full flexibility in my legs. Oy was I sore. Truth be told, things haven't slowed down at work at all, and I've been trying to find time for the wife as well.  The result is that I have precious little time for writing, unless it's something I'm doing for work anyway (the MRTG articles...

I have posted a follow-up to my recent MRTG How-To.  This article goes into how to use WMI to fetch the metrics instead of relying on insecure SNMP.  I have included a number of ready-to-use scripts that should get you started.  Please feel free to email me, or comment within the article, if you discover any errors. New Article: MRTG and WMI

Stefan Lenz has translated my OpenSSH article into German and posted it on his site.  Thanks Stefan!