bt’s Weblog

Spent an hour or so earlier today trying to get our Exchange server to pass a favicon.ico to its Outlook Web Access clients. The first attempts were to put the icon in various directories and see if the clients picked it up. This approach did not work.

Next is something I tried months ago to manage the OWA using the Web. It is the OWA Administration application which is accessed as a Web client to configure the Exchange server. These Web tools are all over the place and this one looked like a good candidate for “insert favicon.ico” tasks.

It installed very easily, via a wizard. I put it on the Exchange server despite suggestions you devote a special front-end server just for this purpose. Like, sure, I got servers to burn, NOT.

The problem is getting past the login. The help sites I consulted had nothing to say on this.

Some of you may be familiar with the odd behavior of IE when you type in a user name and password and it responds with another login window with the server/username filled in and asking for a password. No password will work, period. Instead you get a “access denied” screen.

If you (perish the thought) use another browser FIREFOX you get multiple logins if you have a proxy. That is, the first dialog box is bogus. You escape it and get the real one which then usually works. In this case I got “page not found” rather than “access denied.” Go figger.

I installed the software on a workstation on the network with the same result. I don’t like having IIS running on workstations but I tried anyway. The respective browsers gave the respective results as above.

The software is once more removed and sitting in a directory for the day when I once more try to do a simple task without wasting an hour or more. Ooops, you did it again Dummy.

This is media jargon for DEAD SOLDIERS.

You see, our draft avoiding VP and deserting P and tons of other “join the army, are you kidding?” politicians and media blabbermouths don’t want to have folks hearing that soldiers are dying. “Fallen” is so civil, so easy to take, so unlike the reality of a bullet ripping off the back of your head.

So our soldiers, like the old lady in the commercial are portrayed as fallen (and can’t get up). Gee, that was a nasty spill you took there Private. Gotta watch those oil slicks.

Of course, these “fallen” are HEROS. Depending on emphasis you might say that they’re all heros and only some have fallen. By using the term the aforementioned shirks dare you to deny it, to disrespect the troops, to show you are a non-patriot, a traitor. Pretty clever.

Well, the GodBlessAmerica mothers with dead sons say the other mothers who lost sons are “whiners not winners.” Now I ask you, is that the way you expect a real mother with a fallen hero for a son to act? Madam, your child is dead. You call that winning?

It is difficult but necessary to admit that the 17,500 American casualties so far were suffered for nothing more than an incompetent president’s desire to show he could do something Daddy couldn’t - “git Saddam.”

Ladies and gentlemen, your children, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, grandchildren are DEAD. They will not be getting up and sadly for me, for you and for them the Gettysburg Address does not apply to their sacrifice.

For the numbers - start here.

I did not shop. I did not leave the house. I did sleep until nine or so, have a very liesurely breakfast with the NY Times and then do laundry as I puttered around with my computer. Installed Linux on another one (that was Wednesday). Also went to Barnes & Noble on Wed evening to start and complete my consumer thing for the season.

Chilled out totally on Thanksgiving day after a lovely noon meal. Spent some time in the morning and later afternoon taking photos of the first snowfall of the season. Evening was more computer browsing.

Today I finally got around to updating my online photo albums. Added number nineteen with five sets of photos. All told, I have four thousand photos arranged in 185 sets. Each “album” is an collection of related sets with background information and such for each set. As the sidebar says, “extensive and well organized.” There are also a large number of great photos among the otherwise good ones (if I do say so myself).

The banner photo for this blog is from the “Trees and Mists” set.

Today I energized yet another XP machine using the ill-named “out of the box” method. Yes, you take it out of the box and plug in a monitor, keyboard, mouse and ethernet cable. Yes, you turn it on and answer some questions and then some more questions and they you register with the company and then with Microsoft (not required and I don’t) and then you answer more questions to set up your network and your user name and password (not required).
Then a half- hour or so later you have a desktop that only grandma Gates would love and thus begins a very long and tedious process of getting it the way you want it to be, downloading the latest updates, downloading the virus software (good for three months), adding Firefox, deleting the IE and Windows Media Player icons from all the places they’ve been stuck, ditto for Outlook Express. Did I mention shutting off the Windows Firewall and setting the Windows Updates to “let me know and I’ll do what I choose” rather than “get whatever Redmond has at 3 am each morning and have it installed and my machine rebooted by the time I get to work.”
Oh, and don’t do the Windows Update using IE because you will be told you need an update which is called something like validation assurance module which is really a check to see if you STOLE this copy of Windows XP. Hell, it’s out of the freaking box, Bill. If anyone stole this stuff it was the computer maker, not me. Then there’s the trick of creating a configuration that you like and then logging in as someone else so you can copy that to the Default User and then throw out all the other configurations (after logging in and out a couple of times). The IE and Outlook Express icons may well rear their ugly heads again so I take the time to chop them off.
Now you’re two hours into the mission and have to install Office 2003 Professional which is suprisingly easy. Then comes Service Pack 1. I learned just today that there’s a Service Pack 2 for Office 2003 - oops. The SP installs rather quickly and wonder of wonders for both of them - you do not have to restart your computer as you did after the two Windows updates and one Norton install that you were hit with earlier.
Now you’re ready to transfer the current settings of User A to the machine you took out of the box over two hours ago. We have a network so it isn’t all that bad as long as User A didn’t stuff stuff all over the hard drive. Today’s User A gets an “A” for being organized and it took only ten minutes to get the Office settings moved. Outlook is the one that I worry about and it went well.
Now you haul the machine into the office of User A, remove the previous machine and many of the devices that were attached, and set up the new machine and wait for it to discover new hardware. XP does not discover printers that use USB ports, even as we speak. It has to be led through the process of sticking its nose in the USB port and saying “yo, what the hell do you think this is? Like maybe a printer????” Finally, User A can continue work and over the next few days will reinstall the special thingies that are needed to do his/her job. Am I PC or what?
This normal “out of the box” set-up took over three hours and I’ve done this a half dozen times since August. Thank Symantec for Ghost otherwise there are not enough hours in a week to get a couple of hundred machines ready for the students and staff who need them.

Just read that Kansas U is going to offer a course in intelligent design as myth. Sounds good to me. The article had this gem that I can’t resist commenting on:

proponents of intelligent design, [say] that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power.

Okay gang now we all know that Windows XP is extremely complex, yes? And we know that it will never be understood by anyone because its parts are too interconnected and their effects can not be determined absolutely, okay?

Ergo - Bill Gates is a HIGHER POWER - a DOG as the lysdexics say. Snarkle, snarkle. Gobble, gobble you turkey, or is it turnkey? Venite adoramus, Guillelmo Portalis.

I notice that in order to comment on an MSN blog post you have to have Microsoft’s Passport. I further noticed that the terms of service state that the applier is 18 or older.

“You are an individual person. You must be at least 18 years old and have attained the age of majority in the province, state or country in which you live.”

So how do Mike and Phil get Passports? Mum and Pop? Doesn’t seem that way.

I did a google (Google?, I googled?) and went to a site that promotes the thingie - accountservices.passport.net. The link is https (secure, like your online bank). I’m told that

” The Passport Network uses powerful online security technology and follows a comprehensive privacy policy to help protect your account information.”

Joke time - I clicked on a link to “Learn more about limited accounts.” and guess what??? I got a security certificate error. “Unable to verify the indentity of help.msn.com as a trusted site.” I kid you not!

So much for “powerful online security technology” whatever the fuck that is.

P.S. Don’t tell a soul but I’m going to see if I can get a Passport using a birthdate that makes me under 18. Might as well check out this “comprehensive privacy policy” while I’m at it.