Category: IT Blog

A Blog on Information Technology as I call it

Internet Explorer: not as terrible as you might think

Posted on July 7, 2012 by Dexter

Internet Explorer has come long way since version 6, the super buggy security nightmare. Being a free browser it wasn’t considered edgy or avante garde enough for most IT geeks tastes.  Most of you probably made the jump to Mozilla Firefox and never looked back.

As most IT savvy consumers, IT administrators and professionals would agree; none would be caught dead using a built in browser.  Because there’s so much it can’t do compared to the free browsers out there.

So I’m here to point out a few things about Internet Explorer that most folks gloss over:

 

1. Internet explorer is the most prevalent browser for business.

Most companies use IE because it can be customized from a GPO (Group Policy Object) at the domain level.  This means custom safe zones, ability to pop in proxy servers, and control over who can install active X components.  It’s no surprise that IE is the go to browser for business, it offers customization and tracking.  What company doesn’t want that?

 

2. Most web development firms use IE as their display of choice.

Web firms and design companies also understand that most businesses use IE, which means they have to program a friendly website that’s IE compatible.  Mozilla Firefox, even offers a built in “IE tab” emulator for PC’s.  Some code simply will not compile nicely with other browsers, so you’re back to IE when you want to see how a website is supposed to be natively displayed.

 

3. There’s more security updates for IE than any other browser.

Opera, Firefox, Chrome (and derivatives) and sometimes Safari are months behind when it comes to security updates and exploits.  Internet Explorer certainly isn’t bulletproof, but it offers built in updates with the Windows operating system updates; so you get to kill two birds with one stone.

 

4. There’s quite a bit of functionality behind IE

Internet Explorer has a nice tab feature that’s color coded: with each new tab opened under a ‘parent’ tab, the child tabs are color coded so you know which tab is related.  Pretty cool?  How about the ability to pin Favicons to your taskbar?

 

5. With HTML5, IE will get a fresh start

HTML5 promises to do many things; among them is replacing Adobe’s flash player.  HTML5 also can do a multitude of other things such as enable DirectX video acceleration and full text rendering.  Javascripting and and CSS are and will be faster than the free browsers.  IE is embracing modern web standards, and is helping to make the internet a prettier place to be.

 

What does this mean to you?  Internet Explorer was once the poor man’s choice for browsers – you want something for business with built in support for such things such as Citrix Xenapp clients, VPN Active X runtimes, Java integration and web design comfort, IE is your best bet.

Expectations for your IT guy

Posted on July 2, 2012 by Dexter

If you’re in the IT industry, there’s a certain expectation of you. This expectation trickles down to all the folks of a company, and evetually the questions start to surface. At one point, I’m sure I was even guilty of these things, assuming my IT administrator knew what to do. But at the end of the day, I’m just another Joe, just like you. And I’m not a genius. But I have to act like one sometimes.

 

Knowing every little facet of every software product. EVER made.

This one is annoying because some client will walk up to me, start blabbering about why their real player files won’t convert properly into iTunes, then ask me to convert those files for them. Usually for free, because, “hey, this is the IT guy, he probably knows what I’m talking about”. This isn’t the case folks. I don’t use the same software as everyone, in fact I like using software that’s easy to manage, easy to understand and doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles. In other words, I don’t obfuscate matters by getting some mundane software that requires a new plugin for every file, or visualization feature. And there’s no way I could understand why or what you’re doing with whatever freeware you’ve downloaded online will do with your machine, or how it will perform with your other programs. Seriously, most reputable freeware downloads offer a Q+A section, or a forum, or a ‘How To’ portion of their website, dedicated to click-happy people. This leads back to “If you don’t know, what makes you think I do?”

 

Backups happen MAGICALLY

I can get my word doc’s off this, right?

Situation: you create a word document on the server at 8:00AM. You nuke it at 8:30PM because you didn’t like it. You come to me at 9:00AM asking me to restore it. This is where my frustration begins, because people can’t seem to fathom the idea that Backups and storage space is somewhat limited. There are times when backups happen, say at night when things are slow or when you’re supposedly not working. Shadow copy is an option, and for the most part I can get what you need, but c’mon. It’s not like I have my finger precariously hovering over a button marked ‘restore’.

 

Not understanding Scope of IT contract

Where’s the section for hookers and blow?

It’s Sunday night, you get a virus pop up onto your computer. You call your IT guy in a panic. You describe the situation in great detail, something akin to: I was innocently surfing this particular website with slave Leia costumes when BAM! You just downloaded a virus. Now you can’t go onto Ebay to check hockey ticket prices because your IE only has pop ups instead of the usual dicking around you do. After the lengthy explanation, I log into your Antivirus server and notice there’s no new infections on your work machine. I do a lengthy check, update dictionaries, run a malware scanner in the background and you’re still okay. It is around this point that you mention this is your home computer. I somehow gather the strength to bite the insides of my lips in silent rage and calmly tell you that just because you do work on your home computer, it does not mean that I am, in any way, an adminstrator of your home media machine. There is a very clear example I want to use: If your Ford car breaks down, do you take it into the Chevrolet dealership and demand they fix it for free?

 

Using your gray matter effectively

“Please push all buttons at once”

It’s no secret that some people are just a little more gifted than others. At one point in time I seriously thought the ‘lights out’ conversation between a support guy and a less than intelligent lady was false. Boy was I wrong. If something isn’t working properly, or isn’t starting like it usually does, do a little detective work. It certain saves the time it takes for me to respond, by coming down and turning on your fucking monitor or hitting the red button on your power bar. Just little things like that, or if your mouse isn’t working, try plugging it back in.

 

Expecting change to happen instantaneously

Is it hammertime yet?

Machines are built to do one thing: take instructions. But that instruction set is bogged down by many contraints: such as availability of memory and hard disk space. Clicking a thousand times in the same ‘OKAY’ box doesn’t help. When your screen doesn’t refresh and dragging a window creates a ghost image, what else do you do? You panic. If you bothered to look at your task manager and found out that itunes was chewing through all your memory, you’d realize if you stopped a few programs you’d actually be able to get some work done. Just give your computer a minute to catch up; take this moment to stare outside or refocus your eyes on something that’s not refreshing every .05 of a milisecond.

Google Chrome – millions of .sst files!

Posted on June 29, 2012 by Dexter

If you’re a Chrome user like me, beware of the latest Google Chrome update preceeding 16.0.912.63.  This version has a problem with the way the database is sorting through web traffic.  It was putting over 20 GB of data of .sst files in

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\IndexedDB\ directory.

SST files from my experience is like a developer’s placeholder file.   Something that acts like cache and gets destroyed as soon as you’re done with it.  However, in this case the file never gets destroyed and actually multiplies.

Personally I didn’t even notice until my antivirus seemed like it was stuck in the same directory for over 4 hours.  It was then that I noticed the size it was chewing up on my hard drive.

Here’s what didn’t work:

1. Uninstalling – even removing the registry keys with Revo uninstaller for 64 bit machines

2. removing Google sync services and re-applying as I figured it was trying to grab my bookmarks and history

3. Moving the directory elsewhere -it’s not the size of the volume that’ the problem it’s the number of files.  Each one being around 2KB, it calculated it would take close to 8 hours to move.

 

Here’s what did work:

1. Uninstalling Google Chrome

2. Manually deleting the files via an elevated command line (akin to del *.sst)

 

It does take some time, mine was little more than 4 hours on a Solid State Drive, but it did all eventually disappear.  On the new Chrome releases it appears okay.  So hopefully this fix saves your bacon and hard disk space.

 

-Dexter

 

 

RIM: more than a funny acronym

Posted on June 29, 2012 by Dexter

 

RIM is in hot water, failing stocks, an aging OS, formerly fighting co-CEO’s, and outdated app store that even developers hate developing for, billions worth of inventory sitting around cuz no one wants to buy it.

It would so seem the writing is on the wall for the once cutting edge company.  I could cite numerous times the company tried to climb out of the hole, only to fail hilariously.  But I’m not.  I’m here to actually say some good things about the company.

I”m certainly not a life long blackberry user.  I only use one because the company I work for provides one to us at no additional cost.  It’s not a terrible phone, but it’s lacking in a few areas that the ‘other’ guys are pioneering.

RIM put smart phones on the market, and at one point were the go-to guys for mobile communications for business; at a time when data on phones was more of a novelty, they took the idea and gave the power to the masses.  Data for Blackberry unfortunately only meant emails and eschewed things like texting in favor of updating their Blackberry Email Server for the I.T Manager at all the small to enterprise level companies.

RIM also put Canada on the map as a tech leader – save for Nortel’s stock busting turns at technology.

Their service offering for government and legistative bodies was great (back then) as well.  Offering management of devices that really no one understood was a blessing – the ability to brick a device with a keystroke was like a wand of power.  RIM was paving the road for future mobile technologies.

Then Apple came around with something that changed the face of mobile tech forever.  A smart, saavy phone that gave the user something Blackberry never could: an enjoyable experience.  Then Blackberry tried to do something it had never done before either: Adapt to a market that was changing too quickly, that was so radically different from what their phones could do, and put more power to the user, than it did the Administrator.

Unfortunately, RIM can’t handle change all that well.  So that’s where we are today;  A former giant that’s making last minute plays in an attempt to save itself from a marketplace it once dominated.

If it weren’t for Apple making it’s venture into Blackberry’s territory, we’d all be having a very different conversation right now.

 

 

Source taken from:
http://gizmodo.com/5812832/ten-reasons-why-blackberry-is-screwed

A love letter to Winamp

Posted on June 25, 2012 by Dexter

Winamp - Still Awesome

 

Digital media is difficult to manage on the best of days. Organizing it in whatever format you decide to store, be it a Windoze box, a linux distro, or even a Macintosh is all your choice.

But what I’m asking for is how you play your files? The new de-facto standard seems to be itunes. Now, itunes has become the standard for mainly one reason: ipods and iphones automatically open that particular application because they were designed to work together. And because the parent company Apple likes it when their hardware and software talk with each other.

What everyone doesn’t realize is this: itunes eats up memory. LOTS of memory. When you think it’s just playing your songs, it’s doing other stuff in the background: if you’re using a smart playlist, it’s categorizing all other songs that fit whatever particular mood music you’re listening to. It’s caching all itunes store information in the background, putting up banner ads suited for you, checking and re-checking DRM purchases. It’s doing all this even when you put it into mini-player mode.

Here’s a solution: Use Winamp.  I never stopped using this thing since my University days because it was free, and my ancient PC could still run it with little to no problems.  And I always like the small footprint, it could sit at the very top of my screen taking up only a few pixels, yet managed to place as much useful information as a good old fashioned CD player could – with some added bonuses when you put the playlist  beside it.

And there’s some really good content on the Winamp startup wizard; the store while lacking some features we’ve all grown accustomed to has the basic packages you’re looking for: including some podcast features!

So rage against the machine, find your old music roots in Winamp and take back that extra Gig of memory and play your music with something that’s small, easy to use and has more features today than most other crappy music players.

Here’s a quick handy pro/con list for anyone that doesn’t want to read the top 6 paragraphs:

 

  Itunes Winamp
Ipod / Iphone support Yes Some versions support it
Average memory usage 1.0 GB – 1.8 GB Less than 10 MB
Playlists Yes Yes
Works on mobile devices All IOS (naturally) *All Droid phones
Wide Range of codecs Yes (kinda) Check out the forums – almost unlimited
Customizable? Kinda You betcha – Themes ahoy!
Video playback Yes Yes
Size of installer 170 MB + growing each update 10MB for full features, < 5MB for most basic pack
Annoying update engine? Yes Yes
Still better than RealPlayer? Yes Yes

*too bad for us blackberry users.  Then again, RIM is in trouble anyway for missing the boat on every consumer front possible.

OS X versus Vista

Posted on November 25, 2008 by Dexter

Did you ever wonder why choosing an operating system seems to be like choosing the right religion? There are pros and cons to each, there’s a certain amount of work required for each, and each one has their own selling points. I’m talking about the big differences between Windows Vista and Macintosh OS X. Currently, I’m looking over Vista because I’ve been using XP Pro SP2 for well over 5 years and the industry seems to be adopting it with all its idiosyncrasies. On the other side of the spectrum, Apple’s offering up a laptop MacBook Pro that’s meant to be a stealth business machine. Most office productivity software is offered for both style kernels, so it’s not the ability to do work, rather it’s how you want it to present itself.
One of these things is not like the other

So, for an IT geek, what are the big differences? I’ve seen the blogs that break down everything from hardware to display to even the shallowness of keystrokes on Apple boards, and that’s not what I’m interested in. I’m interested in knowing exactly the kinds of functionality and applications I use on a daily basis, and how they differ. So, from IT geek’s point of view:

Presentation upon Initial Boot

Both Windows and Mac need a little tweaking in order to get things moving at the right pace. This is especially the case if you’re a control freak like me and need to have everything in a familiar type of way. For Vista machine, I wasn’t completely unimpressed, but I can understand the change in structure. From the first boot you’ll notice the desktop is bare, all the icons are now arranged alphabetically in the Start menu, I certainly liked the Search ability as I was able to run applications by using it as a command line, and a search engine. After adding My Computer back to its stationary upper left hand side, I felt comfortable. I was always familiar with having the C:\windows directory at the ready should I need to add in fonts or service pack backups, and the C:\Program Files directory was where all applications lived. That’s just what I was used to.

Now, on the other hand, the Mac OS X is a different beast. All applications live in the aptly named ‘Applications’ folder. The side bar in each folder presents itself very much the same as Vista; there are direct links to Desktop, home directory, applications, documents, movies, music, and pictures. I also had the ability to add or remove links from the side that would apply across the board – very nice. The real treat is not having a folder that contained all my program access settings. Instead of going to C:\documents and settings\administrator\program files\startup, Mac OS opts to use chmod access rights rather than actually creating new directories each time. Very nice indeed. Between the two, I have to give it to Mac’s OS; it was clean, easy to use and didn’t require any tweaking time.

Winner: OS X
OS X takes the cake this time around

Windows Live Search Vs. Mac Spotlight

Most of my experience with Mac stems from a previous job where the software platform was able to run on either Mac or PC. Since most of our clients were Mac based, I had to get around using the OS from a beginner level. If I think back, my exposure consisted of OS 9 back in high school. So it was refreshing to get to do something brand new and different. One of the things I really enjoyed with the Mac spotlight feature was instantaneous search ability: rather than having to type in the whole name of a file then hitting ‘search’, you just type and it finds that string of text for you. Heck, it was so well put together that the string of text was sub-searched inside text based documents. So if you had put together a proposal for company and didn’t have their name as the title you’d still be able to find it.

I haven’t spent a great deal of time working with Windows Live search, but from my exposure to it, I find it’s attempting to do the same thing. Not only that, it does a respectable job. Typing in ‘ping’ I happily received 15 top hits, some parts some old html and php coding picked up, even an old compiler file I hadn’t touched in ages was sitting second from the bottom. Bravo Microsoft, I do say you got it right.

Winner: Tie.
They both work magnificently well, just not together

AeroGlass Vs. Mac’s standard look

Mac’s glassy sheen was always nice looking, it was glossy and bubble like quality that made everything just a little more child-like and friendly. Windows take makes sure to keep a slight business edge with a slighter darker palette to paint from. The icons make sense, but third party applications still look a little impoverished in comparison. Not a big deal, but when you install any third party app into a Mac, it automatically puts shading to the icon. Unlike the Macintosh, Vista requires a kicked up video card in order to properly run AeroGlass. It’s nice and fancy using Windows+Alt to get around, I don’t know if it’s worth 10% of system operation to achieve that.

Winner: OS X
OS X was designed for the design-centric

Remote Desktop Connection Vs. Apple Remote Desktop

With XP Professional, you got remote desktop right out of the box with little hassle. Connecting to any properly configured windows box with terminal service was easy and best of all it was free. Compared to Apple remote desktop, you had to shell out a couple hundred dollars in order to see what was going on. If you were a system admin not used to a SSH Shell (which there are plenty, believe me) you needed some sort of GUI see what was going on in OS X. Connection with remote desktop just seems intuitive, and you can choose particular options for certain types of environments: such as only 16 colors, or not having sound or connection of local disk drives.

Apple Remote has the same optimizations for audio and video, but I didn’t see the option for reconnect on disconnection option available. Plus, I always found the forwarding of ports more difficult with ARD. More often than not, I had to create a VPN tunnel first, and then use ARD once inside and it was still pretty slow. I also found I had to be on site in order to make full use of the multiple ARD sessions with dragging and dropping files. Unlike Microsoft Remote Desktop, I could remote into the AD server, then remote to another machine and so on and so forth.

Winner: VISTA
VISTA wins…just barely

Price Points

We all know VISTA has many different versions available. Each has their own little features and bits and pieces of each, or the best portions are all encompassed in the ULTIMATE edition. I was never a big fan of the ‘multiple scenarios’ based operating system. Why does a home owner need to purchase a certain kind of O/S, when they could have the full version in the first place? All of the OS X versions of big cats only have one specific version: this applies if you’re a college student or some fancy business owner who likes Starbucks coffee. I can understand the division of OS on Microsoft’s part, but in the end it’s just a cash cow meant to drive up more sales. This is sort of the same principle as repacking crappy DVD’s into ‘Special Editions’. It was also a smart move on Mac’s part to have a full copy of the software with each machine they sell.

Winner: OS X
Mac’s simple one version makes purchasing that much easier

Availability of Applications

Hop onto any bitorrent site, and you’ll see an entire section for downloading Windows Software. Not so much for Mac. I’ll admit, I’d jumped on getting some ‘freeware’ from time to time because I’m in a bind, I want to accomplish something, or let’s face it: because I didn’t want to pay for it. This can apply to enterprise level software, antivirus applications, video, audio, games and photo editing software all for free on the World Wide Web. And that’s the thing: I don’t see a great deal out there for Apple, well, there’s probably a great deal for the honest user who goes out looking to purchase these software packages, but I’m sure there’s a growing group of Apple users looking for a free ride, who will eventually become frustrated over certain things: such as video games unavailability or incompatibility. As borderline illegal as this sounds, I think this is big selling point between the two systems.

Winner: VISTA
VISTA’s applications out of the box suck, but at least you get free apps online.

FINAL TALLY

OS X – 3
VISTA – 2
Tie – 1

Final thoughts:
If I had to pick a pony to win, I’d stick with OS X. For the ease of use, the lack of defragging, and they way the kernel was put together, it just makes sense. VISTA still has a ways to go, especially with it’s over zealous security system of ‘confirm or deny’ access rights, which doesn’t get saved anywhere, it’s just plain annoying. Plus, it’s great to have a machine I don’t have run an antivirus application that eats up system memory.

6 Things Microsoft has done to make my life hell

Posted on October 30, 2008 by Dexter

Windows Live One Care
Thanks a bunch to the DIY IT guy at the office. You know who I’m talking about, the guy in charge of the IT stuff, but he was just put into that role because contracting a real IT guy was too expensive. I have to thank that guy for keeping me in business, mainly because he installed Windows OneCare, but didn’t know how to properly configure a firewall. What does this mean? Imagine an entire department of accountants, that live and die by using Simply Accounting, and all the files live on a share on a UNIX machine with a masked IP address. Now, install Windows One Care, don’t configure the firewall and wait for the first phone call. Now, since that share was mapped by a network name, rather than the IP, and the IP is masked in the first place, how are you going to get back to that share? Think about that, the next time you install something stamped with Microsoft’s approval.

Making Security more difficult and more frustrating for everyone

Office Assistant
Why else would you need a paperclip to tell you what to do or help you make a document? You’ve only seen the same screen a thousand times and if you’re at all familiar with any word processor product you didn’t need an assistant. “Clippy” was supposed to help the less informed how to actually save a file or center text, but wasn’t very helpful to anyone else as you had to wait for his animation to finish before closing him. And back when animated .gif’s ran on system video memory, it could take a while. And he appeared EVERY. DAMN. TIME you opened a new Word document. Microsoft finally did away with Clippy once people started figuring out you can accomplish the same thing by hitting the F1 key.

Leave me alone dammit!

Internet Explorer 6
When you think of why we have free browsers, you have to point back to the culprit. Opera, Firefox, Netscape Navigator all owe a huge debt to Microsoft here, if IE6 wasn’t so full of security holes, the other browser companies ought to be sending royalties to Microsoft. Thanks to IE6, my day was crammed full of idiots trying to figure if all their bank and credit card numbers entered that morning ended up in someone else’s hands. In true Microsoft fashion, no updates were made readily available until all the damage was done. Thanks a lot, guys.

Hitting open introduces you to the Wide World of PAIN

Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA)
Scenario: one of your clients actually fried her home computer and needs to install the same copy of Office on her laptop. WGA to the rescue! Right on the Office box it Specifically says it can be installed on up to 2 machines you own. Yet you have to run through the WGA wizard installation and it was so buggy when it attempts to “decide” if you actually have a pirated copy or not that you have to call the support line anyway. The real cheeser? Hop online and you’ll find numerous amounts of cracks at your disposal, some of them written by system Admin’s to get around the WGA program in the first place.

That about sums it up

Windows ME
I’ll start off with the good, Windows ME, unlike any other offering before it, had a built in restore system: that didn’t work most of the time. Okay, now then: Consumers were to expect that ME, or Millennium Edition was what we had to look forward to for the new century. What a horrible mistake. Full of bugs, prone to freezing and offering something like 3 upgrades from Windows 98SE, it’s no wonder ME had the distinction of being named the “Mistake Edition”. Add all this, the removal of real mode DOS to create a ‘faster boot up’, if it booted into a real environment rather than a blue screen, and the removal of the ability to run a Personal Web server, when the product was aimed at the HOME MARKET. Windows ME would have taken home the grand prize distinction of being the top item to make my work life a living hell, but the next one takes the cake.

In the afterlife, all the corporate execs use this O/S

Windows Vista
When Windows XP rolled out, it was during a time when Windows ME was unleashed upon the world. So, it wasn’t exactly an unwelcome change. Quite a bit was revamped and right from the get go, the Microsoft coders were hard at work making service packs so you didn’t have to end up pulling out your hair over dumb, obvious security flaws. Between that, and Vista, those same programmers decided to up the notch and actually put so much damn security you need some sort of degree in deciphering all the junk out. Granted, Vista has been out on the market for a while, so there are actually useful articles and blogs that can help you. But when no one had seen or used the product before and tried doing something extremely complicated, say, print a file to a plotter, well, things got pretty interesting. Missing multiple print drivers for enterprise companies, putting in SAMBA protocols that were never heard of and thus making UNIX shared network drives usable was just the beginning of my headaches. Add to all this a revamping of the IPV 4 and 6 modules, customers that needed to ‘accept or deny’ every single little action and you get the idea the kind of fresh hell I had stepped into. Even today, I’m still finding stupid things that VISTA is doing that my XP machine can run with no difficulties.

Worthy of all my frustrations, and physical abuse