BraimeeDotCom

In college, some of my friends bought into the theory that listening to classical music boosted your IQ (at least temporarily), reduced stress and sharpened your concentration. I poo-pooed that idea for years, but decided to put it to practice after I didn’t pass my first CCNA test several months ago.

When I decided to give the test another go, I headed to Borders and talked to the classical music guru there, who recommended that I pick up The Essential Yo-Yo Ma and listen to it religiously anytime I sat down to study. And I have to say the effects were noticeable – I felt I was absorbing more of the material and remembering it more consistently during the practice quizzes. And on a musical level, I decided I could listen to the Butterfly’s Day Out tune for hours, and that I’d cut off my nose if I could play mandolin that well. Oh, and also, I want God to play the Gabriel’s Oboe selection when I walk through the pearly gates.

Anyway, last week I passed the test! I don’t know how much credit I can give to Yo-Yo, but if I ever see him on the street I’m going to give him a hug and ask him if he’d be willing to give me cello lessons.

If anybody out there has some other classical music recommendations, I need a new CD to tackle the second CCNA test with!

In this article I talked about a simple script that allows you to install IP printers automatically on a local machine. There’s one tweak you can make to do a push install if you have admin rights on the machine receiving the install. Check it out – the changes from the original script are in bold:

cscript \\path\to\prnport.vbs -s DNS-name-of-machine-or-an-ip-address -a -r ip_10.1.1.50 -h 10.1.1.50 -o raw -n 9100

rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /c\\DNS-name-of-machine-or-an-ip-address /if /b “Whatever you want to name the printer” /f “\\path\to\hpbf222i. inf” /r “IP_10.1.1.50″ /m “HP LaserJet 4000 Series PCL 6″

Again, this is a little tedious to explain on a blog. If you have questions, drop them in the comments for this post.

Here’s an article I wrote for my company’s intranet that discusses automatic pushes and pulls of IP printer installs. Thought some geeks might find it interesting:

I installed my 6 millionth IP printer yesterday, and decided I’d had enough. I did some Web research and found out that with some simple batch files and built-in Microsoft tools (prnport.vbs, rundll32 and cscript utility), you can make this process really easy! The articles I used are:

• Prnport.vbs usage
• How to add printers with no user interaction in Windows

For example, let’s say I wanted to auto-install a HP4000 series printer with IP of 10.1.1.50. I’d write a batch file with these two lines:

cscript \\path\to\prnport.vbs -a -r ip_10.1.1.50 -h 10.1.1.50 -o raw -n 9100

rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /if /b “John’s awesome printer” /f “\\path\to\hpbf222i.inf” /r “IP_10.1.1.50″ /m “HP LaserJet 4000 Series PCL 6″

The first line creates the IP port, and the second installs a printer and assigns the IP. Here are those commands again, with comments in bold:

cscript (built-in Microsoft exe that lives in c:\windows\system32\) \\path\to\prnport.vbs (this script should actually live in c:\windows\system32 but I stuck it on a file server to be safe) -a -r ip_10.1.1.50 (the “-a” specifies you want to add a standard TCP/IP port, and the “–r ip_10.1.1.50” specifies the port name) -h 10.1.1.50 (this specifies the IP address you want assigned to the port) -o raw -n 9100 (this specifies whether you are going to use RAW or LPR, and also assigns a port number)

rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /if /b (the majority of this is all standard code from the “How to add printers with no user interaction in Windows” article I link to above) “John’s awesome printer” (whatever you want to name the printer) /f “\\path\to\hpbf222i. inf” (location of printer driver INF file) /r “IP_10.1.1.50″ (IP port name) /m “HP LaserJet 4000 Series PCL 6″ (exact name of the printer you want to install, which is found within the INF file)

This script has been an absolute lifesaver, and it has eliminated an extremely monotonous process in my job. My goal is to automate my job so much that I can play Half-Life 2 all day and get paid for it. If any of this doesn’t make sense or you want me to email you some more specific examples for different devices, just jot a comment here and I’ll get back to you.

If you are reading these words, you should be backing up the important data on your computer. So please, stop reading this post and make a backup CD/DVD of your crucial files, ok? If not, I will snicker and point when you tell me about how your hard drive blew up without a backup.

You’re probably (not) asking, “Hey, snotty pants, you talk so big and everything, but what backup strategy do you utilize at home? I’m glad you asked. Here’s my backup routine, step by step:

1. Every morning at 1 a.m., my SuperDuper software makes a copy of my entire user folder into an image file, compares it to the previous night’s backup image, and writes new changes.

    

    

2. At 2 a.m., SuperDuper gathers a mixed bag of other important folders and files into an image file, compares it to the previous night’s image, and writes new changes.

    

    

3. These two image files are placed on a mirrored array of 320 gig drives.

    

    

4. Friday mornings at 3 a.m., the two image files are copied to an external USB drive.

    

    

5. Friday at 7:30 a.m. sharp I take the drive with me to a secure off-site location, and that afternoon I bring back a secondary USB drive, and the whole process starts all over again.

Oh, what? You’re pointing and snickering at me for my nerdiness? That’s ok. Nerd is a title I wear with pride. But if you haven’t backed up your data by the time you’re reading this sentence, it is I who may soon have the last laugh.

Insert maniacal laugh here: Moohooohuwahhuwahohooahwuahahoohohohoauwah!

Oh my lovely RAID

Why can’t you be redundant?

You will bathe in fire

A few weeks after posting my little rant/tease about one of Dell’s customer service reps trying to tell me a “jiggabyte” drive, I received this comment:

Debbie – if you’re out there, I gotta give your company huge props. I don’t know how you came across this site, or if Dell regularly trolls the Web for negative comments, but I sure appreciate this effort and am pleased to say everything with the drive turned out just fine.

Just a quick rant. I called Dell tech support to get a quote on a new hard drive for our PowerEdge server. The customer service rep I spoke to had a thick accent, which made communication difficult. I was able to follow our conversation pretty closely until he started inventing words:

“Yes, yes…the drive you want has many jiggabytes. As many jiggabytes as you need.” This was not a mispronunciation, because I asked him if he meant gigabyte.

“No sir,” he said. “Jiggabytes.”

Jiggabyte? What the flip is that? More than a gigabyte? Less? And whatever measurement of disk space that is, there’s no such thing as a hard drive that has “as many as I’ll need.” As many as I need would be unlimited!

Anyway, the quote he sent was much more realistic: 150 gigabyte drive for a few hundred bucks. I’m going to call him back and ask if I can pay for the drive in the currency of U.S. jollars.

Ever wanted to see your name in (church) lights? Just head to ChurchSignGenerator.com and make your very own church sign for free.

Ok, I’m a jerk. All this week I’ve been boasting about how excited I am for my vacation next week. I even decided to use technology to make the situation more annoying for the people around me. I found a neat little tool called iChatState that allowed me to make my iChat status be a Caribbean cruise countdown – accurate down to the minute! I say, if you’re going to be a jerk, be a big one and go the extra mile.

Of all the technical questions I get asked during the day, one of the most common is this: “Is the server down?” Ah, how blissful it must be to believe that all file, email, Web, database, application and backup computers all live in one tidy little box. Some people, whether their issue be a bad floppy disk or a flare-up of hemorrhoids, they love to blame “the server.”

In some ways I feel like Keanu Reeves from the Matrix. I must seek out the the helpless, and lift the veil of deception from their eyes and tell them of my world…a world of frantic electronic hell that is…the server room. A place where several servers live. But people are not ready to be set free. Last time I set a person free, his eyeballs exploded and his face melted into a pile of skin pudding. It wasn’t pretty, folks.