Archer, I barely know 'er

Last year around the time of the BP oil spill I was feeling a lot of anger toward them. I printed this out and drove to the archery range to show them. 

The thing about it

So Thing-a-day is already a bust.  I don't have the time or projects to sustain this adventure right now.

I really should be studying.

Another time.

Nice Rack

I aquired this little AV half rack from work a couple of months ago and have slowly been consolidating my tech into it ever since. It's not a perfect fit for everything, the PE 1950 sticks out the back about 8" or so and is sitting on a shelf because Dell rails don't fit threaded holes. The printer is too big.

The Cisco gear is:

• Catalyst 2950 switch
• Catalyst 2960 switch
• Cisco 2600 router

It's a beginner CCNA lab. I'd like to have at least one more router and another switch but this is working for now. It's nice to walk through the CBT Nuggets videos with and that's what matters.

The before picture is no gem, but the after picture is not much better.  I reorganized the shelf but to what end?  

a clean desk is a sign of a sick mind

Thing a Day v2 begins.  An easy first one because I'm already balancing several large projects in life and at work.

My desk has two monitors! Yep, that's a mismatched Samsung 226BW and a Dell 2007FP in portrait. A Dell keyboard with media controls, the audio knob being its best feature, as the two USB ports on it are only 1.1.

I cleaned paperwork that was 3 months old. The only remaining paperwork is taxes which will be sent out in the next few days I guess.  The Cisco book can't go far as I'm knee deep in studying for the ICND2.

Forgiveness

Someone broke into my car a while back. It was an frustrating experience: $3,000 worth of damage, 6 weeks in a rental.

A coworker felt really bad. He felt a little responsible, as he confided in me that when he was young he had broken in a few cars.  There is no direct way to undo the damage for that.  But I think he did the best thing possible: he cleaned up his act.  He is working in an IT department, has a beautiful wife, home and cats. He's honest and loyal and he has completely changed his life away from his old ways.

Because of that, I am able to forgive the jokers that broke into my car. Hopefully they'll be motivated to change their life one day.  All things considered, I was probably the best one to be broken into, too. I have insurance, I have a job. It was an inconvenience to me but my life was not permanently changed for the worse. Nothing was seriously destroyed or stolen.

Wiring

 I keep an eye on /r/cableporn, and this isn't enough to post there but I still want to document it.

You can see the fibre to copper media converter suspended by its power cable.  The cables are a mess. The patch panel is bent and bolted to a board that is not even securely fastened to the wall.

A little bit of hook and loop tape helped clean this up. This was the best I could do.

Remember, always hook and loop tape, never zip-ties. Zip-ties cinch, are difficult to undo and non-reusable. Electrical tape deteriorates and gets sticky.

Friday night

Culture, not just science.

Hyper-V Server core

I found a Poweredge 1950 on eBay for $130.  Bells and whistles include:

• DRAC
• PERC/i5
• redundant PSUs
• Dual CPUs

It does not come with drives or caddies. Caddies I borrowed from work, drives I had.  I installed Hyper-V Server via USB drive by designating it a Virtual Floppy drive in the BIOS (also a good time to verify Intel VT is enabled). Initial config of HyperV server can be done from the console and is pretty straight forward. I verified some of my steps with a Dell Youtube video.

The first issue I had was connecting the Hyper-V Manager from the RSAT tools on my client to to the Hyper-V Server. I received the error: [Hyper-V Manager: Access denied. Unable to establish communication between ‘Hyper-V Server’ and ‘Hyper-V Manager]:

http://blog.mpecsinc.ca/2009/06/hyper-v-error-access-denied-unable-to.html


Settings firewall rules:

C:\>netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group="Windows Management Instrumentatio
n (WMI)" new enable=yes

Open Component Services [dcomcnfg.exe] on client. This allows HyperV server in Workgroup mode to connect to my client and mount an ISO.  I think in a domain the trust is already there.

1. Choose Component Services
2. Computers
3. Right Click My Computer
1. Select COM Security tab
2. Under Access Permissions, click Edit Limits
1. Select ANONYMOUS LOGON
1. Allow Remote Access

Navigating drives in DOS
c:\fsutil fsinfo drives

Downloading Broadcom drivers and BACS

Installing BACS

During installation I was prompted to enable TCP Chimney Offload.  An unusual name for a useful technology. Offload some of the processing to the NICs from the CPU.

Dell has a nice procedure for Installing BACS from DOS (for me BACS installed to Program Files\Broadcom\BACS\BACS.exe)


Most of this is just for my own notes. At this point I've built my first 2008R2 VM and about to run dcpromo to build my first domain controller.
I'd rather be working on this than CCNA, maybe I'll feel diferently when I'm working on the next cert.