Diary of a Network Geek

Yeah, I know, I'm not really a huge fan of Micro$oft Office either, but, what can you do when it's become the defacto standard?

Make the most of it!
So, back in the day, the reason I originally got into computers at all was due to writing.  I know, crazy, right?  Well, I discovered how much easier it was to edit documents without having to retype the whole thing and I was hooked.  Then, as I wrote more, I got really into moving whole sentences and paragraphs and, yes, even entire, multi-page sections of text from one part of my work to another.  It was pretty fantastic, really.  In any case, copying and moving text is one of the things that Word is really good for and there's even a secret feature to make your editing job easier; The Spike.
With the Spike, you can copy or cut multiple sections of text and then paste them all into the same section all at once!  You can even take text from multiple documents and copy it to the Clipboard and then paste it into a new document with the Spike!  How fantastic is that?

So, go check out the link and see how to leverage all that power for yourself.
Enjoy!

Most of you don't realize that I'm a closet survivalist.

No, really, it's true.
Back in high-school I read books about surviving the coming nuclear apocalypse.  For real!  All about how to hide in the sewers until after the fallout was safe and all that stuff.  Oddly, much of that comes in handy during hurricane season here in Texas.  Strange, but true.  Okay, not so much the part about hiding in the sewers, but a lot of the other stuff.  Like how to get drinkable water and stocking up on canned goods and the like.
Which brings me to the links I'm about to share with you.  If you're from disaster prone areas, you probably hear all sorts of things about making sure you have enough survival rations to last for at least seven days, until help can arrive.  So, how about longer?  I mean, what if the zombie plague pops up one day and you, thinking strategically, don't really want to leave the house for groceries?  What's a survivalist to do?  Apparently, go to Costco, where they offer a 1-year supply of dehydrated and freeze-dried food, with a shelf-life of roughly 25 years, for $799, plus tax.  No, I'm not kidding.  In fact, Costco knows their market so well they offer an entire range of emergency food kits and supplies.  For real.  And, honestly, the pseudo-survivalist in me really wants to buy some of this stuff, just in case.  I especially like that 55-gallon emergency water drum.
And, if you don't like the look of what you're getting for your money, just compare them to what the troops are eating in Afghanistan in their MREs!  Trust me, this selection is way better than mil-spec!

Well, hurricane season is basically over for us here in the Gulf Coast, but, it never hurts to stock up for next year!
Also?  There is no season for zombie plagues.
I'm just sayin'...

I spent two days trying to teach someone just part of this once.

Now, you may think my failure in this regard is due to me being a bad teacher.  Sadly, it was not.  Two other people, one of whom I had already taught about RAID, and more specifically, SCSI RAID configurations, couldn't teach this to my failed student either.  Shockingly, when I was "encouraged to find other opportunities to excel", outside that company, naturally, that student took over my job.  Oddly enough, a few years later, I heard the person who had made that organizational choice had also been encourage to find other opportunities to excel.  Funny how that works.

So, now, in part to make up for not being able to educate that person, and also to spare someone the same teaching fate I faced, here are two articles about RAID.
First, from ExtremeTech, RAID 101, Understanding Multiple Drive Storage.
And, secondly, from TechRepublic, Choose A RAID Level that works for you!

You can go to those articles and get lots of detail, but I'll break it down for you in brief here.
Something that people tend to forget, for some reason, is that RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks.  That's not as true as it used to be, thanks to server pricing and how cheap SATA drives have become compared to SCSI drives.  Back in the day, we always used SCSI and I still do for server systems, mostly, because it tends to be faster and more reliable than anything else.  That's not as true as it used to be thanks to improvements in SATA, but if you still want to do a BIG array of disks, SCSI is pretty much the only real option.
There are a bunch of RAID "levels", but, realistically, you're mostly going to deal with three or four: RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5 and, maybe, RAID 10.

RAID 0 is generally referred to as "disk striping".
In a nutshell, what this configuration does is stripe data across multiple drives.  Generally, this is done to make more available disk space and improve performance.  The down-side is that there is no redundancy.  In other words, with RAID 0, you can take several disks and make them perform like one larger, faster drive, but if one disk crashes, they all do.

RAID 1 is generally referred to as "disk mirroring."
And, that's essentially what it is, a system which saves everything to a duplicate drive or drives.  Most often in server configurations, you'll find the operating system on two drives that are mirrored.  That means that if one drive goes bad, the admin can reconfigure the other drive to take over running the server.  In theory, this works pretty well.  In practice, it takes a little finagling sometimes to get that mirror drive reconfigured as the primary.  The other thing to remember is that the second drive is essentially lost storage.  In other words, if you put two 1 terabyte drives in a RAID 1 array, you only have 1 terabyte of available storage when the system is running.
This is pretty much bare-bones, bottom-of-the-barrel redundancy.

RAID 5 is what most people think of when you talk about RAID arrays.
In RAID 5, data bits and "pairity" bits are striped across three or more drives.  Basically, data is broken up and written to multiple drives and then another, sort of "record-keeping" bit of data is written, too, so that the RAID 5 system knows where all the pieces of the data are.  Now, that's a bit of an oversimplification, but, what it means is that if one of the drives in a RAID 5 array fails, the array keeps running and no data is lost.  Also, when a replacement drive is put into place, the RAID 5 array automatically rebuilds the missing drive on the replacement!  This, my friends, is like system administration magic!  Somehow, with a lot of really big math, that I frankly don't understand, they can tell what the missing bit is based on the stuff they do have and fill it in.  This is the best invention since sliced bread!
Also, an option on many RAID 5 systems is something called the "hot spare".  The hot spare is a drive that is part of the array but not active, until one of the other drives fails.  Then, the hot spare becomes active and will automatically start to rebuild the missing data on that new drive.  That means that the system admin and order a new replacement drive at their leisure and actually schedule down-time to replace it.  What a concept!  Not always doing things at the last minute or under fire, but planning ahead and taking your time.  It's unheard of!
Finally, the best option available on many RAID arrays is the "hot swapable" drive.  In that case, you don't need to schedule downtime at all, but only need to pull the damaged drive out of the array and pop the replacement right in.  All without even shutting the production system down for even a minute!  Again, this is like magic!

The last "common" RAID level is RAID 10.
Basically, this is a combination of RAID 1 and RAID 0.  In other words, it's a set of mirrored arrays.  This setup requires at least four drives and is fairly pricey.  It's mainly used for redundancy and speed and, realistically, is almost only used for database servers.  In fact, I can't think of any other instance that I've heard of this being used, outside of database servers.

There are other levels, too, of course, but you can hit the articles for more info about them.  They're pretty uncommon outside of really high-end or experimental configurations of one kind or another.
Oh, one last thing...  RAID can be implemented either via hardware or software.  In general, software RAID, such as you might find in Linux, is cheaper, but is slower and more prone to having issues if something goes wrong.  Hardware RAID is faster, a little more expensive, but a far more robust solution.

So, there you have it, RAID in a nutshell.
And, yes, for those of you who have noticed, articles like this are me turning this blog back toward its roots as a technical blog.  I hope to have more basic info like this as well as some new projects over the next 18 months or so.  Certainly, more than there have been in the past two or three years.
I hope you'll keep coming back for more!

Though I rarely post twice in one day, and frankly I post more than once a week these days, I present this link:
Extruding Chicken Nuggets at Gizmodo

Go look, and remember, that's not bubble gum they're making.  That your future chicken nuggets and chicken patties.
Enjoy your lunch!

...for teens?

Okay, so according to LifeHacker, Microsoft has released an on-line book about internet safety and security aimed at kids and teens.  It's called "Own Your Space - Keep Yourself and Your Stuff Safe Online".  No, seriously.  They describe it as a way to "...[h]elp teens ‘own their space’ online."  Apparently, also meant for adults to help their "tweens" and teens "... keep up with the latest computer and online safety issues and help kids learn to avoid them."  The book was written in "partnership" with security expert and author Linda McCarthy, who I honestly have never heard of before.

So, it's hard to argue with the alleged intent behind this free, downloadable book, but I'm wary of anything from Microsoft that claims to be related to "security".  On the other hand, what little I actually saw of the book was okay and had fun illustrations, so it may not be all bad.  I mean, at least it's a starting point for parents to talk to their kids about on-line safety and security.  But, Microsoft has a long way to go to make up for Internet Explorer and holes it created in so many systems over the years.

In any case, it's a fun looking book and you're obviously not doing anything important or you wouldn't be here reading my blog this Friday, so why not check it out for yourself?

Wow, even computer crime is a "family" business these days!

Hey, look, I'm from Chicago, where you can't hardly swing a dead cat and not hit a mobster, but this surprised even me!  Apparently, according to an article that ran on CNet, 85% of all stolen data last year was linked to some kind of organized crime.  And, 38% of data breaches used stolen credentials.

But, also, people are getting rich protecting us from the threats they create!  Seriously!  According to this article at eWeek, that's just what some of the botnet crooks are doing.  And, remember, this is BIG business.  We're not talking about a couple hundred infected PCs, we're talking about tens of thousands.  There are websites dedicated to the buying and selling of the data these things collect and renting out the zombie PCs to do your dirty work, like send spam.  It's big business and where there is big money to be made doing illegal things, there's always been organized crime.

More and more, life is becoming like a William Gibson novel...

No, this is not a surreal, drug-induced alternate reality.

No, seriously, back in the late 60's, before the term "graphic novel" had even been coined, William S. Burroughs worked with artist Malcolm McNeill to make the experimental Ah, Pook Is Here.  It was a multi-year collaboration that flashed briefly on the literary scene of the time, then disappeared.  However, Fantagraphics has plans to resurrect this lost treasure as a two volume set.

I'm not familiar with the artist, though there are some samples at that link above, and the book itself seems to be yet another of Burroughs' experiments.  In fact, the article describes it as an extension of the "cut-up method" that Burroughs is famous for and liked so well.  Personally, I think it's just interesting as a piece of history.  Alan Moore may have all the pretensions he cares to about his graphic novel work, but he can't possibly hold a candle to this genius.

Anyway, it's Friday, so take a mental health break and go read about this crazy experiment that was well before its time.

Remember, these are "administrator utilities" not "hacker tools".

In my business, it pays to make the distinction.
When people call me for help outside the office, the calls usually fall into a couple categories; a virus, a slow computer, a lost password and "how do I do X?"  Sadly, I've been doing a lot of virus and spyware removal, but, also, lately, I've had a couple of "lost password" calls.  I actually love getting those, for a couple reasons.
First, lost passwords are surprisingly easy to recover if you have physical access to the machine.  It's funny to me how few people get that.
Secondly, I find recovering passwords fun.  In a way, it was one of the first things that drew me into the business.  I was one of those guys who got hooked by the security bug not by War Games, but by Sneakers.  Yeah, I know, most guys my age especially will tell you it was War Games that really got them hooked.  What can I tell you?  I've always been kind of a late bloomer.  And, my dirty, little secret is that after seeing Sneakers, I wanted to be Marty Bishop.  Seriously.

Anyway, my recent experience with Windows password recovery requests gave me an opportunity to refresh my tools.  After Googling a bit, I found a handy About.com page titled "Top 6 Free Windows Password Recovery Tools".  I downloaded several, most of which were based on bootable CDs of one kind or another.  I like those kinds of toolkits because they don't require even limited access to operating system, just the ability to reboot the machine from the CD toolkit.
In the end, I tried two; 0phcrack and the Offline NT Password & Registry Editor.

Now, I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure that 0phcrack is the free, opensource fork of l0phtcrack.  Now, for an old-timer like me, l0phtcrack was THE password cracker to have, back in the day.  Created by a group of well-known hackers, some of whom famously testified before Congress, it was not free.  At least, theoretically.  If you knew where to look, you could get copies.  And, yes, I  them.  But, this version IS free and seems like it had some improvements.
For one thing, the old version had a slightly clumsy text-based interface.  This version has a much nicer interface that seems to use X-Windows.  It's also far more intuitive to use.  It ran pretty fast, really, though, sadly, didn't seem to be able to crack the non-dictionary word used as a password on the Windows 7 box I was using it against.

On the other hand, the Offline NT Password & Registry Editor has been around for several years, and had several updates, though it retains the text-based interface.  I don't remember when I used this the first time, but, so far, it hasn't let me down in a pinch.  This time was no different.  So, yes, even though it has "NT" in the name, I've used it on everything from Windows 2000 through Windows 7 without a hitch.  Of course, your results may vary.  The bonus of this product is also it's most potentially dangerous drawback; it directly edits the registry and password files.  This is dangerous, in a way, because if something goes wrong, this could, theoretically, lock you out of your machine permanently.  In practice, this has never actually happened to me.
One advantage of this utility is that you can change or simply remove the password for any active user on the system.  Also, you can use it to promote an active user to being an administrator equivalent.  Now, by "active user" what the developers mean is any account that is not disabled.  Though, I think there may be the option to activate a deactivated account.  I'm not positive, though, because I've never had to look for it or try to use it.  And, yes, this worked like a charm to simply blank the password on the Windows 7 machine that had apparently forgotten its own password.

So, there you have it.  Two tools to recover lost Windows passwords.
Oh, and, just a quick disclaimer here.  I'm not responsible for any damage you might accidentally do to your machines with these utilities.  Nor am I advocating using them to break into your ex-spouse's computer to read their adulterous e-mail to their lover.
I'm just sayin'....

I likes me some games!

I would imagine many of my readers do, too.  Also, I suspect that you all are more than a little fond of words, as am I.  So, naturally, when I stole this link, er, saw this link on another site, I knew you'd love to see it, too.  The site is called Word Games and that pretty well sums up what that site is all about.

Hey, it's Friday and if you were reading this, you obviously weren't working anyway, so you might as well check it out!

Right, who didn't want to be a superhero when they were a kid?

Whether it was Batman or Superman or Spiderman or, yes, even Wonder Woman, surely, anyone my age and younger wanted to be some kind of superhero when they were a kid.  Those costumed crusaders inspired us all, to some level, as kids, didn't they?  Well, apparently, some of us never grew up because, yes, there are still people dressing up in costumes trying to inspire people.  In this case, it's the Real Life Superhero Project.

They all have different motivations, but they all share some common ideals and, of course, they all have costumes.  The site says it started as a gallery and has become a much larger project.  From it's tone, it seems like they're almost trying to be a Justice League or Avengers kind of team, though maybe not so organized or unified in their fight against crime.  Not sure if they're gaining popularity since Kick-Ass was made into a film or not, but I wonder how they'd do fighting, you know, actual crime and actual criminals.

Well, I'm not going to start hatin' on a Friday, so, go check it out for yourself and see if you think they're for "real" or not.