I shoulda stood in bed today. I was contemplating taking the day off, but decided I had too much work to do. So I went in, but I really should have stayed home, as I didn't achieve a single thing, except to frustrate myself over microsoft. For example, how the f@#% do you do a dump of all the users in all the groups in AD? Dumpsec used to do it nicely in NT4 but doesn't seem to work in AD. That and other questions remained unanswered because while there may be a wealth of information out there on AD, sifting through it to find specific answers has overwhelmed me.

I did, however, find this little gem here:

"Group Policies can be used to define which programs are to be installed on which computers. This can be done by department, with web development getting Photoshop and Flash, sales getting Outlook and Excel, and technical support getting Quake."

Almost made my day worthwhile ... nahhhhh

Spent the last two days literally *fighting* with windows. Yesterday it took me all day to get an nt4 machine upgraded to 2003. When I finally got it working though, the active directory wizard took about 2 minutes to run through.

Today was spent trying to figure out what the errors in the event viewer meant. The web was useless and the only stuff I managed to find didn't seem to be applicable to us. The silly thing is, everything seems to work, so not sure if the errors are that important to try and fix.

sigh.

Successfully moved global catalog servers from AD DC to another on my test domain today. This was after stuffing around with dns last week doing some trials, and leaving it pointed at the wrong place, so the domain controllers wouldn't talk to each other. "frigging dns" is all I have to say about that.

Also successfully connected an OS X mac and an OS 7.6.1 mac to the servers, doing file and print sharing.

Now that those problems have been overcome I can go back to the original plan of having new print and dhcp servers setup by the weekend for a big changeover. *scary*

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ps, in case you were wondering what on earth I'm talking about.. I'm planning our work deployment of active directory. We're upgrading our windows NT 4 domain to 2003. You know those ads on at the moment that say "we're merging all these domains and making it all easier blah blah blah" to which the boss just looks at him, and so he says "we'll save $2 million a year" ... well we're nothing like that really, given that we only have one domain and two servers, but that's what we're doing. I've been thinking about it for a couple of months, but really working frantically on it for the past couple of weeks when we all suddenly realised that next year was only 6 weeks away, and we plan to go live with it mid January. fun fun fun!

Opened the blinds to my balcony this morning and was met with this spring's first azaleas bursting forth with petals. Then I opened the door and was met with a blast of deliciously warm air. So I opened all the windows in the place to let some of the warm air through.

<break>

Just went and bought some fishies - two new Juli cats. Cutest little things.

It also appears that Jeans West have changed the sizes of their jeans. I bought a couple of pairs a couple of years ago, so went in to buy another two the same size. When I tried them on (after getting them altered - I assumed they would be the same) they are actually looser than my old jeans. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean I could get fatter without noticing so much :( Looks like the story they did on one of those current affairs type shows is true - clothing manufacturers are making their clothes a little larger so that people can fit into a smaller size and feel good about it *sigh* Needless to say I'm "not happy, Jan".

So I get home and load up my blog, and it's a balmy 23C (it's mid winter) and my weather pixie is wearing her light pink dress. I open up all the windows in the flat because it's so warm and dry and there's a strong breeze going so a good chance to air out the place.

So then a few hours later I'm sitting on the loo and I hear rain. Not a lot, but it just seemed so strange when the air felt so dry. Reload my weather pixie, and only 37% humidity. Check the radar - yikes, big front coming over from the southwest with lots of rain. Check the lightning tracker, and well, that's the picture you see above.

So not only is the weather crazy, but Google has moved me up from number 4 to number 2 on a search for "kazza" .. woohoo!

So this is all after a mind-numbing day spent patching people's machines against the threat of the latest Microsoft exploit. One floor down, only about 8 to go :/

So according to the radar the rain is getting closer. May have to go close all the windows.

Had such a suck couple of days at work. Spent most of yesterday trying to get windows 2000 reinstalled on someone's machine after it looked like it had gotten corrupted and was blue screening. Handed it back and it was all good.

This morning I get a phone call that it's still blue screening >:(
Or when trying to login it would just hang. Tried to format the partition and reinstall, but it said the partition was damaged and couldn't be formatted. yay. Decided to abandon the disk and put in a replacement. Will dissect the other one some time to see if it's just a partition problem or a problem with the disk itself. So another day wasted.

That and everyone else was dumping crap onto me also. I'd thoroughly had enough by 10am.

Then my net connection was down for 2 1/2 hours tonight. Thanks Request. Not. Just when I had sat down to get some work done. I felt rather lost, although it did give me an opportunity to get my flat somewhat tidier :)

Service Pack 4 Setup Error

An error in updating your system has occurred.

Windows 2000 has been partially updated and may not work properly. It is recommended that you use your Emergency Repair disk to repair your system. To do this, insert the Windows 2000 Setup Boot Disk into the floppy drive, restart your computer, and then select the Emergency Repair option.

ok at this point you know it's going to be a long night. The mouth goes dry. The stomach feels queasy. All you can do is call James and beg for help. On ISP production servers downtime is not an option.

So I read out the error but there's really nothing out there about it. One post from someone who just tried reinstalling it and it worked. Another about some incompatibility with a piece of software we don't run.

So we tried just reinstalling the service pack. This time it decided it would install with no further errors. So we let it reboot. Two minutes later and it starts pinging again which is a good sign, however nothing is working. Web isn't responding, neither is anything else. This is where the real panic sets in. I was all set to go into the exchange to kick it, when suddenly it comes back (about 15 minutes later all up). According to the event log it had been running a consistency check on the web drive. Major sighs of relief are released. We rebooted it again to make sure it was all good, and it was.

Tempting fate, I then ran a quick backup of the system, then ran windows update to get the two post sp4 critical patches. Again it rebooted ok, and everything seems to be working. I think I can safely go to bed now.

In a weird mood at the moment. On strike until the little matter of a bonus is sorted out. It's not like it's even much - probably on the order of $50 if I've calculated correctly. But it's the recognition of a job well done that I want. Anyways, enough of that.

1. Strawberries or blueberries?
Both are good
2. "Legally Blonde 2" or "Terminator 3"?
Terminator 3 without a doubt. That reminds me, must go order the T2 Ultimate Edition brb
3. Hamburgers or hot dogs?
Hot dog, with tomato sauce and American mustard
4. Boating or hiking?
Both are good
5. Suntan lotion or sunblock?
I call it sunburn cream, go figure
6. "Big Brother" or "The Amazing Race"?
Amazing Race for sure
7. Beach Boys or Jimmy Buffett?
Beach Boys I guess
8. Grow your own produce or buy from supermarket/greengrocer/farm stand?
Grocer, I live in a flat!
9. Drive with car windows/top down, or with air-conditioning on?
Windows down unless it's really really hot (air conditioning takes a lot of power away from my little car and a lot of petrol)
10. Go away for vacation, or stay at home?
I love to travel, so I'd prefer to go away, but I also like getting things done at home, and used to adore the three month holidays I got at uni when I could do whatever I liked for weeks on end

Today *sucked*. A job that was meant to take two-three hours took *nine* :( I would seriously like to strangle the designers of Dell's old rack-mounting kits. We spent over an hour trying to mount one of the servers into a rack - the attachment to the rack itself was totally bizarre and non-intuative, and the locking mechanism prevented us from just sliding the server in. It proved to be a long, sweaty, frustrating battle. (This is stark contrast to their new rack-mount kits which clip in in three seconds and the servers slot straight into them).

On a somewhat lighter note, the new switchie box (kvm) worked well with the old one, and we had enough power sockets on the upses to cope with all the new machines. Unfortunately I didn't get time to configure powerchute on the machines that needed it or do some of the windows updates that needed doing. But at least the new rack looks very swishy, I'll post a photo when I have time to take one.

OK I'm thoroughly sick of cockroaches. Even though I've been pretty good lately about not leaving any food lying around, there seems to be no letup in the number of these little nasties running around. Worse is that they're coming into my study a lot more, perhaps because I have baits in the kitchen. The aquarium provides them with a source of water, so they've taken up residence in here >:(

So I'm now on a quest to find fish-friendly, chemical free methods of cockroach extermination. I've yet to try any of the following methods, so any comments on their successfulness would be appreciated!

Some methods I've found on the web include:

• A bowl of cheap wine placed under the sink will kill roaches; they drink, fall in and die
  
• Set out water and dry cement where roaches visit; they will ingest both and die
  
• Cedar, Japanese mint, scotch spearmint, and bay leaves are good natural repellents and make good barrier treatments
  
• Woodstream Corporation’s Victor Poison-Free Ant & Roach Killer� uses a 4% Japanese mint essential oil blend as an effective knockdown treatment for American and German roaches
  
• Ordinary soap sprays or solutions that use common dishwashing liquids can also be used against roaches for similar knockdown effects
  
• Dorsey Inc. (Shellshock�) is a desiccant made up of 85% diatomaceous earth and comes in a squeeze dust applicator. It is slower acting (six weeks or more), but roaches will stay away longer
  
• Desiccants such as silica gels and diatomaceous earth products stimulate roaches and other insects that come into contact with them to immediately seek out a moisture source. Without a water source, they will quickly dehydrate and die
  
• Dorsey Inc. (Repeel�) is a desiccant made up of diatomaceous earth and citrus oil from orange peel and is useful as a barrier treatment
  
• Silica gel and diatomaceous earth can both be used inside houses to treat cracks, wall crevices and voids, and attics to repel roaches and deny harborage in these areas
  
• Organic Plus Inc. (Organic Plus�) is a desiccant registered for home and garden use for roach control
  
• BioLogic produces a gel formulation (BioRoach™ and Roach Stopper™) which contains live nematodes in bait stations which can be used in areas where roaches frequent. Roaches are attracted to the water in these baits, and are then infected and killed by the nematodes. Nematodes are microscopic parasitic worms that are harmless to humans and animals, but are able to infect and kill insects
  
• Garlic oil is highly repellent to German roaches
  
• The use of talc with citrus oil soap sprays will facilitate cuticular penetration and control roaches more effectively
  
• Insects can be trapped and killed without resorting to dangerous chemicals: generally a poison nontoxic to humans is mixed with a food that insects find attractive, and spread in the infested area. Examples are oatmeal (attractive) and plaster-of-Paris (poisonous), and cocoa powder and flour (attractive) and borax (poisonous)
  
• Apparently if you mix a dish of plaster of paris with sugar the cockroaches head for it like bees to honey. You place next to it a small amount of water which the cockroaches drink (I didn't know that cockroaches drank personally), and then the water hardens the plaster of paris and they simply harden from the inside out
  
• Sanitation is the key to keeping cockroaches from taking over. Don't leave food uncovered. This includes pet dog food. Pour a little bleach down drains. Cockroaches keep away from the smell of chlorine. Keep drains covered--roaches love to use drains as watering holes.
  
• Diatomaceous earth is mined from the fossilized silica shell remains of diatoms, microscopic sea animals. The advantage to this substance is that it is virtually non-toxic to humans. Because it has an abrasive quality, diatomaceous earth degrades the waxy layer causing the insect to dry out and die. It is important that only natural diatomaceous earth be used for insect control not DE treated for swimming pool filter use, as this contains crystalline silica, a dangerous respiratory hazard. One source of DE may be found at feed stores for horses and cattle. A member of the staff here at EAD uses this and says that it is easy to use with good results.
  
• Silica aerogel is a non-abrasive, chemically inert substance that is used as a dehydrating agent because the small particles absorb moisture and oils. Sometimes small bags of silica aerogel are inserted in electrical equipment packages to prevent the accumulation of moisture during shipping or storage. Silica aerogel is also used in the florist trade and often can be purchased from a florist. The silica aerogel particle has a static charge that enables it to stick tightly to the cockroach body. Once on the body, the aerogel absorbs the waxy protective coating which desiccates and kills the cockroach.
  
• Prevention is the best protection - see the section on Prevention. Additionally, you can try mixing 1 part borax, 2 parts flour and 1 part icing sugar, add enough water to mix to a thick dough and then knead well. This can be used on cracks behind skirting boards and cupboards, but remember borax is poisonous. Clean thoroughly behind cupboards and stoves - cockroaches also love electrical equipment.
  
• An open bottle of eucalyptus oil or tea-tree oil can be very effective in cupboards or near susceptible areas. Non-Chemical Sticky traps are available commercially (try a health food shop first). A heat gun which emits very hot air can be used to flush out and kill cockroaches or alternatively close windows and doors, turn on lots of heaters to get the temperature of the house to 50�C for three hours - obviously the middle of summer is an ideal time to try this. Try a bait of icing sugar and borax in a jar placed near cockroach run. Fill a margarine container three quarters full of water: add a dessertspoon of cooking oil which will float on top of the water: the cockroach climbs into the container, but the floating oil makes it very difficult for it to escape. Place near cockroach sites.
  
• Make a non-toxic roach bait and set it out in roach infested areas:

  1/2 cup sugar
  1/4 cup shortening or bacon drippings
  1/2 cup chopped onion
  1/2 cup flour
  8 ounces baking soda

  Combine sugar and shortening. Add onion, flour, and baking soda. Mix in just enough water to make a dough-like consistency. Put small balls in plastic sandwich bags (other alternatives: spread some on margarine tub lids, or put in a lidded plastic container with small roach-sized holes cut in the bottom of the sides for the roaches to use to get in and out but that will keep pets out) and place in roach-infested areas. The bait creates gas in the roach when eaten. Because roaches can't belch, their digestive tracts explode.
  

Sites referenced:
http://www.symbios-witticism-page.com/bug.htm#6
http://www.darlingsindiapers.com/Mothers2Mothers/dangeroushomes02_iaw.htm
http://www.web-therapy.com/cockroach.htm
http://www.co.forsyth.nc.us/EnvAffairs/wqts/pest.htm#COCKROACHES
http://www.ecwa.asn.au/info/altpest.html#cockroaches
http://www.anapsid.org/pestcontrol.html#roaches

If anyone has any more creative solutions for killing cockroaches, and that's safe to use around tropical fish, post a comment! :)