Jro's Random Thoughts

Finally broke down and adopted a dog

admin — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 01:00:10 +0000

Much like the title says we finally adopted a dog from Angels for Animals. We put it off for a while until we were sure we could manage a dog. Dogs take a lot more time to take care of than cats and we didn’t want to have a dog that was always home alone. While our schedules aren’t perfect Melinda’s friend Misty unknowingly pushed us. They have two dogs that are well adjusted even thought they both work, it’s the quality time you spend with them when your home that makes the difference. I think our dog Lexi is going to be a great addition to our family.

Pets are Part of the Family

admin — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 00:04:04 +0000

It’s amazing how attached we become to our pets. Those people with pets know exactly what I am referring to. Today I had to put one of my cats to sleep. He had been losing weight for the last few weeks the veterinarian didn’t know what was wrong, and last night he took a turn for the worse. Today another trip to the veterinarian and he is gone. He was one of the best pets I have ever had. He would come running anytime I called his name. He will be missed.

In memory of Jalapeno:

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My blackberry needs a reset button

admin — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:43:08 +0000

Is it just me or has my blackberry device become the equivalent to Windows ME. I reboot my storm more than I reboot any of my windows PCs. And it takes entirely too long for it to boot up – Vista boots faster. So I have come to the conclusion that RIM is too slow to fix the problem so they should just put a reset button on the phone so I can quit pulling the battery and wearing out my back plate. And I just love telling all of my blackberry users to pull the batter and then call me back. It has just come down to the reboot and see if that fixes it solution.

But I’m a tech geek so I put up with it. Until some better windows mobile phones come out. As for the iPhone, just can’t do it; maybe when it’s on Verizon.

ISA 2006 Doesn’t Accept HTTPS Traffic

admin — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 15:35:26 +0000

Wanted to make a note about this just in case someone else ever runs into this problem.

ISSUE: ISA drops traffic to port 443 (HTTPS) based on the system rule allow HTTPS Traffic to specific sites. None of the publishing rules for ISA on HTTPS ports seem to get processed and then the traffic is dropped by the default rule.

I have to say I spent too much time trying to figure this one out. Nothing on the system pointed as to why this traffic would get processed like this. running the ISA troubleshooter didn’t point to anything that would cause this. It seemed like the ISA server was just ignoring the traffic.

The ISA analyzer did provide some insight on the issue. It made mention to the web proxy filter failing to bind to port 443. This seemed strange as I didn’t remember installing anything that would bind to port 443. that is when it hit me. Windows Remote Management.

So what had happened is I was installing Dell Openmanage on Windows Server 2003 R2, for Openmange to work it required windows remote management. According to the documentation I had to bind WinRM to HTTPS, the command it recommended was like this

winrm create winrm/config/Listener?Address=*+Transport=HTTPS @{Hostname="";CertificateThumbprint=""}

The problem lies in the “Address=*” part of the command. Of course I realize this now.

To correct the problem I had to delete this entry in winrm with the command:

winrm delete winrm/config/Listener?Address=*+Transport=HTTP

And then run the command and bind it only to the internal IP address.

winrm create winrm/config/Listener?Address=a.b.c.d+Transport=HTTPS @{Hostname=”servername";CertificateThumbprint="……."}

Once this was complete and I restarted the ISA services web proxy filter service didn’t report any errors binding to external ip addresses. The external sites were now available.

Car show today at Woodlands Park, McDonald, Ohio

admin — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 22:37:05 +0000

I spent the afternoon today with some good friends at a car show, road up in my father-in-law’s 29 – Old School Rod, what a fun ride. James brought his 65 Monaco that he has owned most of his life. Scott brought his 86 Trans Am that he just bought

People are really amazed by the 29’ and the amount of work that was put into every little detail. Pictures don’t really do it much justice. I would have to take 100 pictures of each little part that he spent hours and sometimes days creating, fabricating and installing.

Hear is a couple pictures of their cars.

29’ Ford, with 354 Hemi

65 Monaco

86 Trans Am

One of the best hot sauces I have ever had.

admin — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 20:30:27 +0000

I have found many interesting things on Twitter and have had the opportunity to follow interesting people. The people that I like to follow all seem to share information that really has value, they aren’t the boring posts about how many chips they just ate. While I don’t post many updates to twitter (my life just isn’t that interesting). I always seem to find something interesting to read, a few weeks ago I stumbled upon conversation from a person who goes by mmwine. He was discussing a need for some hot sauces (I think that is how it started) and someone recommend a company near him called Intensity Academy. I love to find new hot sauces so I was intrigued, I went to the web site to check out the sauces and was impressed by the all natural ingredients and I just had to order some. So I ordered three sauces, Hot squared, Hot Cubed and Chai Chipotle.

Intensity Academy is also on Twitter as MicheleNorthrup, I let her know that I just ordered some of her sauces because of a twitter post and couldn’t wait to get them. She let me know that I would have a surprise when the shipment arrived.

The sauces arrived a few days later I found that she threw in a bottle of Chai Thai Teriyaki to go along with the sauces I ordered, I just couldn’t wait to try each one of them.

These have to be some of the best hot sauces that I have ever tasted. They all haven heat, but they also have a tremendous amount of flavor. As you can suspect the Hot Cubed is hotter than the Hot Squared. I wouldn’t give either to anyone who can’t handle a little heat (like my wife).

I most definitely will be ordering some more of the sauces in the future and can’t wait to cook with the Chai Thai Teriyaki. If you want some great tasting sauces try these out.

Google Voice

admin — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 20:07:34 +0000

Last week I finally received an invite to join Google voice. So far I am impressed by the features and the ease of use. I especially like the fact that a blackberry app is available to use the service on my blackberry. I can tell that this app was designed for a blackberry with a pearl and not the storm. Moving around the tabs is a difficult, but still worth it. I will be canceling my TW home phone service and starting to use the GV account exclusively for my “home” number. One thing I love is the ability to have a caller say there name before it finds me, that way I know who it might be.

It is interesting that I have these features on my business phone system and use them regularly; but phone companies and even cell companies have never thought to use this. Hopefully as some researchers say, GV might make these features more widely available as people come to expect them.

Glad I’m not a customer

admin — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:21:00 +0000

I guess there goes another company with a bad business model? I guess this will be interesting as an Avaya customer; that they will acquire networking gear – to compete with Cisco – but on the other side of that will it mean the relationship with Extreme will fade, I hope not I’m also an Extreme Networks customer and love their gear.
I guess we will have to wait and see. Kind of like the Oracle – Sun deal. I still think they will sell of the hardware.

Finally getting started

admin — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:01:26 +0000

Well I guess this makes it official, I finally setup a web site for myself. It is funny how many different times I have helped other people and businesses get started on the web and find a hosting provider and even setup simple pages. But yet I avoided it, blamed it on not having enough time. In reality I didn’t have that much time between work and family – I still don’t – but I wanted to dedicate some time each week to make some notes about what I’m thinking.
Posts will probably revolve around technology because this is my favorite topic.
These posts will only be my opinion and anyone is welcome to comment, I don’t take offense to anything that people say.

Thanks,

Jro