Diary of a Network Geek

Speaking of free software…

Many of you know that I’ve long been a proponent of the spectacular free office suite, Open Office.  Well, there’ve been some shake-ups in the free software world and Oracle and the developers of Open Office have had a bit of a falling-out.  Nothing too serious, really, but enough of a difference of opinion about the future of Open Office that they forked the project.  Now, what that means to you and me is that they’ve taken the open source code to date and started their open development of it under a new name.  The new project is called “LibreOffice” and is being supported by the Document Foundation, who’s sole purpose seems to be continuing development of this fantastic office suite.
Follow that link and you can download the latest version to try for yourself.  I suggest you do because you may never buy another revision of Microsoft Office again.
Seriously.

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!

…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?

Tired of boring CD cases for your self-produced work?

Try Jewelboxes.
They’re easy to assemble and fully customizable.  Not quite on par with the big-budget commercial printing runs that someone like Microsoft or Sony or someone like that would do, but a whole lot better than a Post-It and a Sharpie!
Seriously, they’re pretty cool, so check them out.

Wow, maybe Novell isn’t quite dead yet after all!

According to this story at Computer World, the New York-based Elliot Associates, LP, a hedge fund that is already Novell’s largest stock-holder, has made a public bid for the company.  They claim to have extensive experience and good fortune turning around tech companies, and they see the potential in the once great Novell.

I’m not holding my breath, but I hope it works.
It’d be nice to see a company like Novell get turned around.  Their products consistently win awards, but their marketing never seems to get them where they need to be.  Novell basically started the local area network market, but now they’re very much the “also ran” in that category, coming in far, far behind Microsoft.
Again, I’m not holding my breath here, but I hope they can do it.

Okay, maybe it’s more than a little random…

Here’s the thing, see, I spend a lot of time doing all kinds of weird stuff at the office.  I mean, I almost never have the same kind of day twice.  Really, the most consistent thing I do is go to lunch at more or less the same time every day.  Seriously.
But, along the way, I end up with some strange things in my browser.  All work related, of course, but, still an odd collection.  Here are a few things I found hanging around this week:

First, an article from TechRepublic about monitoring your network with a utility built into most, if not all, Linux distros called “ntop”.  Basically, it runs in the command shell and shows you were the network traffic your Linux machine can see is going.  Obviously, this is most useful if you use Linux for a firewall or gateway machine, since that would let you monitor pretty much all internet traffic.  Also?  Once you start it on that machine, you can get to it remotely via a browser to check the stats.  All for free.  Pretty cool.

Next, there’s another article on TechRepublic about resolving all those mysterious IP addresses into a physical location.  So, when you see that “special someone” trying to crack your home router, you can trace back to pretty close to where ever they are.  And, yes, for those of you who were readers back when I went through my divorce, that’s how I found out my ex-wife and her latest victim were following my blog.

But, if that wasn’t enough, here’s a third article from TechRepublic about a peer network monitoring tool that looks good.  One thing I liked about this was that it didn’t seem to need much special to run it, but it still had what looked like good notification tools.  If anyone has any opinions on it, or any of the other tools I’ve listed, please, feel free to add them into the comments.

And, last, but certainly not least, is a page of free web development tools from Microsoft.  Honestly, I have no idea how good these things are, but, hey, they’re free and they come from Microsoft, so, I figure they’re worth downloading.  I’ll probably never use them myself, but there’s no reason I shouldn’t share them with my readers.

So, yeah, these are all things that have been flying around in my browser at work for the past week or so.  Sometimes it’s great to be a generalist, because I never know what challenge I’ll be asked to meet next, but sometimes, it’s just exhausting!

Anyway, happy Wednesday and enjoy the links!

This is a quick and clever idea!

Okay, so you remember a week ago the Internet was supposed to melt because of all the problems with this Conficker worm? Did you even notice anything amiss at all? Yeah, me neither.
But, still, if you’re like me, you stay awake at night worrying about all the potential worms and virii that might be sitting on your computer, waiting silently, hiding from the security software that you most certainly keep updated, waiting until your guard is down to pounce! Well, okay, maybe it’s just the full-time, professional geeks like me that worry about that. And, yeah, maybe I worry about it happening on my work network more than I do at home, but, still, you get my point. So, how can you know? Well, thanks to Lifehacker, I bring you the Conficker “Eye Chart”.

The principal is simple, really. Conficker blocks access to several security sites so you can’t download updates or removal tools that would clean it from your system. The Eye Chart simply links to graphics from those sites, and several others as a control set. So, if you can’t see images from the security sites, you know that you most likely have Conficker and have to get the removal tool from somewhere else to clean your system. Pretty neat idea, I think. So, go ahead and click the link to the Conficker “Eye Chart” and check for yourself.

Now, if you do have it, I suggest going to either the Microsoft page about Conficker and its removal, or download the Symantec removal tool from another PC and then take that to your infected PC via a USB drive and run it. Though, to be honest, I think the whole thing was blown out of proportion by a few alarmists in the media. (Though not Houston’s Dwight Silverman, I might note! Which is one of the reasons I follow his blog!)

No, really, it’s way, way too easy.

Why do I say that? Because an eight-year old has just become an MCSE.
Look, there’s a lot of debate in the industry around how valuable certifications really are. Most of us know that the only real value that certifications have are to get you past Human Resources and in front of a hiring manager who actually knows the technical side well enough to know if you’re really qualified. Sure, I’ve got my Novell and a Linux certification and, yes, that attracts Headhunters who have to sort us some way, but they’re not an accurate measure of what I can really do. I’ve never bothered to get my Microsoft certifications, though I probably should. I haven’t bothered because they’ve got the worst reputation for being so-called paper certifications. It’s possible to get them without ever having touched a machine with Microsoft systems installed on it at all. A point proven by an eight-year old completing the certification.
What is wrong with that picture Microsoft?

Even though I use Microsoft Windows Server 2003 at work, I’m an unabashed Novell fan.

This is a total geek-out post, so if you’re not into server operating systems or e-mail systems or if up-time doesn’t matter in your world, ignore it, okay?

Now, for the few of you who are left, let me emphasize, I am a total Novell fanboy.  I mean, I totally drank the Kool-Aid on this one, okay?  I don’t have a Novell tattoo or anything, but I have been a Novell Certified Engineer since Jesus was a baby.  And, I’ve maintained that certification through the years, even though I have to admit, we’re kind of hitting the law of diminishing returns here.
Novell’s e-mail solution is called Groupwise.  It started out life as something else, but it’s been improved to a very reliable, stable platform that was actually pretty easy to maintain.  Of course, that’s relative when it comes to e-mail packages, but it was a good trade off between ease-of-use and robustness that made it a really nice solution.  And, obviously, it integrated very cleanly into the rest of Novell’s network management systems.  So, once it was all setup right, you could make a user and a new e-mail account in pretty much the same step.  I loved it.

Naturally, there was always a rivalry between Novell and Microsoft.  They each fired shots back and forth about who had the better, more reliable product.  Die-hards like me always argued in favor of Groupwise.  Guess what?  It turns out, we were right!  Google did some testing and polling and compared e-mail packages.  Naturally, they came out as the most reliable system, though, if they lock your account, good luck getting it unlocked again.  But, go to their blog entry about their e-mail findings and scroll down until you get to the graphic.  Go ahead, click the link and look at the graphic.  I’ll wait.
Did you notice the shortest bar, next to Gmail?  Yeah, Novell’s Groupwise.
Groupwise, on average, has half the down-time of a Microsoft Exchange system.  Half!  And, I bet if you loaded it in a multiserver configuration, or even a Linux server, that number would drop even more.  But, still, half as much downtime as Exchange!

So, why don’t more people use it?

No, not the key to install Microsoft Office!

One of the many features of Microsoft Office is the ability to password protect your files. It’s not very strong encryption, but, then again, how many people in your office are programmers who specialize in cryptographic algorithms? Right.
On the other hand, it sure is a pain in the butt when you lose the password for some super important file. Well, the Wired HowTo Wiki has a page titled Recover Your Password-Protected MS Office Docs that can help you out. I especially liked the idea of the e-mail service that let you preview part of the document before paying to have it unlocked. As an IT person, it’s nice to know if I’m paying to unlock the right files for someone at the office before I shell out the cash!