Reed G. Porter at myITforum.com

Rod, 

HP never had hooks into Altiris Notification Server...something that bugged me to no end.  They were planning to add a solution back in 2001, but I believe they decided to go with an HP branded solution and force server admins that way.

HP's RDP for deploying servers is based on Altiris Deployment Server and many shops are heavily invested into those scripts.  It used to be the best way to deploy servers, but changes in deployment technologies (WDT, WIM, Altiris Hardware Independant Imaging, etc.) has made it pretty archaic these days.  I don't have any knowledge of changes from RDP to HP Config Manager.

 Config Manager. Good grief, do you think they could think up a name that would cause more confusion?)

Felt the need to revise my list of RSS Feeds today.

Tuesday at Altiris: Now a Part of Symantec's ManageFusion '07 was the official start of the conference.  The keynote opened with superstar conference host and V.P. Steve Morton doing his very entertaining show.  The guests were Greg Butterfield and  Dwain Kinghorn of Altiris, Subo Guha from Dell, and Steve Grobman from Intel.At the Las Vegas ManageFusion, the Altiris people were a little out of sorts having been acquired just a couple days earlier.   I was willing to bet many would be gone by the time the Orlando ManageFusion came around.  Not so!  They were much more relaxed and acted more like the fun-loving irreverent Altiris people we've all come to know and love.  

Former CEO and current Altiris Group President Greg Butterfield made his now traditional dramatic entrance on a Razor Scooter.  He told us that employees did not defect in droves, but in fact they have more employees now than they did 6 months ago.  Greg went on to talk about the ongoing integration of Symantec core products into the Notification Server architecture.  Endpoint Solution, PC Anywhere, and Ghost are all slated to have visibility from the NS console in version 7. 

Subo Gutha  of Dell apparently gets the rock star treatment when he goes to Lindon and visits with the Altiris Group.  At least what the video we were shown portrayed!  Dell continues to create solutions they need themselves and offering them to their customers.  If you have Dell clients and/or servers and you do not have Notification Server installed with the Dell client and server add-ons what are you waiting for?  The whole thing is free and offers more information about your Dell units than you ever dreamed of.

Steve Grobman's first comment was about how they have just finished working out their desktop strategy for 2011! Intel continues to make strides in giving administrators tools to keep managing their environment for minimal disruption and risk exposure to ensure maximum uptime.  Currently they are offering Advanced Management Technology which gives you the ability to administer a PC remotely even when it is turned off.  Looks really cool and they are just getting started with exploring the possibilities. 

Next came the demos with Steve Morton and Dwain Kinghorn trading barbs.`They (and others) demonstrated several products.  The coolest had to be the new Workflow Solution.  This simplifies and makes possible the automation of business processes.  I've seen other products claim to do this, but I have yet been anywhere where the tasks to do a process is fully automated.  Workflow Solution just might do it.  It is similar to a 4th generation modeling engine where you drag blocks into a workspace and then define them.  Definitely worth checking out when you get a chance.

Other demos were Norton Endpoint Security, Veritas Configuratiom Manager, and Backup Exec System Recovery (BESR pronounced beezer).  Endpoint Security Solution proposes to take antivirus software up from the barely effective model of file scanning into something much better.  I sure hope so.  Veritas Configuration Manager has just been integrated into the NS architecture and looks a little hacked still,  but there is a lot of promise there if it can deliver true state management to the data center.  BESR looks cool, but doesn't everything come with a physical to virtual (or vice versa) component these days - including Deployment Server / RDP?

More demos included CMDB solution 6.5 which is available now and Altiris IT Analytics Executive Reporting, both of which I will detail further in a later post.

After the Keynote I went to a session on the new CMDB.  Then I missed the afternoon sessions due to issues back at the office.  The day ended with a Central Region Reception followed by dinner at a very nice steak house.

I arrived at the Royal Pacific Resort Monday evening, checked-in, threw my bags in my room, and immediately headed for the boat to City Walk.  Why?  Article about Dell and Altiris Strategic Alliance was throwing a party and I didn't want to miss it!

After coming ashore in the CityWalk, I immediately proceeded to the party location at The Hard Rock Cafe Orlando.  It was pretty cool. The party occupied the entire second floor area at the west end of the complex.  I was greeted by dozens of adoring 'fans' requesting my autograph.  I'm a rock star!  Elvis greeted me at the bottom of the stairs and the Fab Four were taunting us at the top.  The Ringo sure is the cheeky sort! There was other famous look alikes roaming about as well.  They also provided plenty food, drink, as well as an Xbox 360 to play Guitar Hero with!

The music was great and the food and drinks wonderful. I met with many of the people I came to see and was introduced to all the right folk. Hats off and a hearty thank-you to Dell and any others responsible for this event.

I am in Florida for this fall's ManageFusion in at the Universal Studios site in Orlando, FL.  I'm excited to get more information about the relentlessly imminent release of version 7 of the Altiris suite of products.

I'm real excited to get to version 7 because Altiris comes up to meet more of the enterprise customer's needs with a hierarchical architecture in place.  This will allow Altiris engineers to go to a parent/child design rather than all the systems being peers requiring everything to be replicated across the different Notification Servers manually.

Can I get an alright!?

Jerry Honeycutt, the man who wrote the book about BDD: Microsoft Windows Desktop Deployment Resource Kit and probably knows as much as anyone about Microsoft deployment technologies, has put together a brand new web community at www.DeploymentForum.com .   It is brandy new and needs some content, so run over there, join up, post an article or ask a question.  

From Jerry's Blog:

I've been working on the Deployment Forum code for a long time now. Tonight, I feel comfortable saying that it's complete. I'm sure it will take a few weeks to stabilize and get all the kinks out, but the functionality is there.

Content is a different story. Everything I've done so far has been more of a framework. The hard part is filling Deployment Forum with quality content. The Deployment Forum MVPs and myself will be posting content to the Library and Webcasts sections over the next couple of weeks. Of course, this is a member-driven community, and so you are encouraged to the post Resources, Knowledgebase, and News sections as well as the forums.

Fortunately, Deployment Forum will never actually be content complete. My goal for this Web site is for the members to continually update this community with new content. I like to think of it as living guidance for Windows deployment. Let me know what you think by posting your comments here.

Www.DeploymentForum.com looks like a labor of love and I'm excited to see what will be produced over there. 

Ionut Alex Chitu over at Google Operating System has compiled a nice batch of rumors from various sources and titled it,  10 Questions and Answers About Google Phone

I agree with every point but the last one:

How much will it cost? Many sources indicate it won't be too expensive and it may be subsidized by advertising. It's unlikely it will be free, at least for now:
"Schmidt said Saturday that as mobile phones become more like handheld computers and consumers spend as much as eight to 10 hours a day talking, texting and using the Web on these devices, advertising becomes a viable form of subsidy. "Your mobile phone should be free," Schmidt told Reuters. "It just makes sense that subsidies should increase" as advertising rises on mobile phones."

Hey!  It's got to be free (except for a small monthly fee) or it ain't Google!

Now, let's get that Zune Phone out there so we can start comparing iPhones to gPhones to zPhones!

This month's KCRSMUG is Thursday, September 6th

Time - 5:00 Pm – 7:00 PM

Location – Centriq – Foss

We are hoping to have a demo of System Center Essentials.

Topic discussions – what would you like to see or hear about at future meetings.

Followed by open discussion with forum members on what tools you use to manage systems in your environment. Bring your ideas, and issues, and questions.

Next meeting will be October 4th.

================================================================

The KCRSMUG usually meets the first Thursday of each month from 5:00 - 7:00pm at:

Centriq-Foss University Offices
which are located at:
Leawood Training Center and Offices
8700 State Line Road
Suite 200
Leawood, KS 66206
Tel: 913.322.7000

Click Here For Directions And Accommodations
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For additional information please Contact one of the following officers:

Don Hite at: DonHite@Knoxy.Net
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 Group website and information page:

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Part II - Randomize Weekly and Monthly Inventories

In Part I we randomized daily inventories so they ran randomly within a 4 hour window rather than all at once to prevent overloading the Notification Server with NSE's.  In Part II we'll take that a step further by randomizing which day Weekly or Monthly inventories run and give them a 4 hour window to run randomly in so these larger inventories are spread out relieving the load on the Notification Server even further.

For our weekly example, we'll choose the Software Inventory.  I want AuditPlus to run once a week on a random day sometime between 9pm and 1am.  My daily job is running between 5pm and 9pm so for this job to run I have to wait for the daily window to close.

1. Clone the Software Inventory Task and name it Random Software Daily or the like.
2. Under the new task's General tab, click on the Go To Program link.
3. The Software definition file program should be showing.  Copy the command line to the clipboard and click New
4. Paste the command line in the New Program command line
5. Type Random Software Program or similar on the Name line
6. Under Description type: Runs Hardware Definition File randomly between 0 and 4 hours after the command is run. Task can only run once per week on a random day.
7. Edit the command line as such: AeXRuncontrol.exe /rndschedule  "Random Software"  "AeXInvSoln.exe /hidden /s AeXInvSolnAdm2.ini" WEEKLY 1 7 /d:1-14400
• There are a couple key changes from Part I (Complete Command Line Arguments are available in the Inventory Solution Users Guide )
• AeXRuncontrol.exe - is the same exe you copied to your Inventory Solution directory in Part I.
• /rndschedule is the switch that tells the command to randomize the day or the week of the month in which to run.
• "Random Software" - is the key where AeXRunControl stores the command and parameters.  Notice that each instance of AeXRunControl.exe scheduled on a client needs it's own unique registry key name. 
• "AeXInvSoln.exe /hidden /s AeXInvSolnAdm2.ini" - is the original command line you copied and pasted into this program.
• WEEKLY 1 7 This sets up weekly mode and allows the command to be run on any day between Sunday (1) and Saturday (7).
• /d:1-14400-  Once the inventory is allowed to run, this command tells the client to wait from 1 to 14400 seconds before executing the command.
8. Rest of program settings are similar to yesterday- Estimate disk space at 3000k, runs in 5 minutes, Terminate after 240 minutes (4 Hours), Run with System Account rights, Whether or not user is logged in, no input required, no network required.
9. Apply and Update Distribution Points then close the Inventory Agent Package window.
10. Back on the new Random Hardware Daily screen change the Program name to Random Software (you may need to refresh the screen in order to see the new program.)
11. Ensure you have the correct Collection selected, Run on a schedule, uncheck the as soon as notified box so program only runs when you want it to. Check Run on a schedule(All machines at the same time), 9pm every day. ASAP.  AeXRuncontrol only check to see if it is okay to run the inventory, so you need to run it every day so it can check.
12. Check the Enable box and hit apply
13. Be sure to disable the original Software Inventory.

For the monthly inventory, I chose the Recreate Full Inventory.  Everything is pretty much the same except the program command line contains the MONTHLY switch:

AeXRuncontrol.exe /rndschedule "Recreate Full"  "aexinvsoln.exe /cleanbeforerun /hidden /s AeXInvSolnAdm1.ini" MONTHLY 1 28 /d:1-14400

The MONTHLY 1 28 switch, as you may have guessed, will limit the program to executing once between the 1st and the 28th.  You will need to run the program daily at the beginning of the 4 hour window as above.

In Part III I will discuss ways to make the inventories tighter by inventorying only for what you actually need on a daily basis. hint: How often does a server or desktop change its name?

Again, if you know of a better way of noticed any errors, please contact me or comment below.

Part 1 - Randomizing Daily Inventories

 Depending upon your network infrastructure, how often you collect the various inventories, how many clients you service, and other factors there comes a point when there is more data coming in than the Notification Server can efficiently consume.  With us it happened when we had 6500 clients (all servers) doing a policy check every 4 hours, reporting 15 custom inventories and hardware inventory every day, patch scans every 2 days, server inventory weekly, software inventory weekly, and recreate fulls running monthly.  We don't need the exchange or user inventories in our environment.  All the inventories were set to run overnight so client discomfort would be minimal and we could have fresh data when we arrived every day. 

This caused deadlocks and increased incidents of bad NSE files during peak periods.  I also found out reporting to be nearly impossible during the busiest times. The way scheduling works in Altiris every client in a collection would run inventory at the same time causing a spike inventory data whenever a job was run. If at all possible, we did not want to add another server because we would then be required to duplicate everything we did on server 'a' over to server 'b' since the hierarchy feature is not due until Altiris NS 7.

The first thing I did was reduce the policy checks from every 4 hours to every 8 hours.  Then I split the 4 or so inventory collections into more than a dozen with each one running at different times.  As you can expect, this proved rather unwieldy and tough to maintain as any change to one caused me to have to check all of them. Plus, if there was an error in one it took longer to track down the error. So something else needed to be done.

Enter AeXRuncontrol. Located in your Altiris\Notification Server\NSCap\Bin\Win32\X86 directory, AeXRuncontrol will enable you to get every drop of efficiency you can from an Notification Server in anticipation of NS 7 Hierarchy when we can revert to the clients per child server model. As the daily custom and hardware inventories cause the biggest load, I'll implement it against them first and deal with the weekly and monthly inventories in a later post.

There are two ways to randomize your daily inventories.  First, you can add the AeXRuncontrol.exe to each line of the .ini file you call with aexinvsoln.exe or you can randomize the aexinvsoln.exe command line itself.  As my clients have no trouble running the inventories, but my server has trouble ingesting the flood of NSE's, the second serves my purposes just fine.

1.  Copy the AeXRuncontrol.exe to the source directory of your inventory package, in most cases Altiris\Notification Server\NSCap\Bin\Win32\X86\Inventory Solution. 
2. Clone the Hardware Inventory Task and name it Random Hardware Daily or some such. (In the 6.5 Console, Manage, Assets and Inventory, Tasks, Inventory Tasks - Windows, Right click the Hardware Inventory, clone).
3. Under the new task's General tab, click on the Go To Program link.
4. The Hardware definition file program should be showing.  Copy the command line to the clipboard and click New
5. Paste the command line in the New Program command line
6. Type Random Hardware Program or some such on the Name line
7. Under Description type: Runs Hardware Definition File randomly between 0 and 4 hours after the command is run. When the job is running, other tasks cannot start, so limit how wide a window you set.
8. Edit the command line as such: AeXRuncontrol.exe "Random Hardware" 20 "AeXInvSoln.exe /hidden /s AeXInvSolnAdm1.ini" /d:1-14400
9. • Let me break that down for you: (Complete Command Line Arguments are available in the Inventory Solution Users Guide )
   • AeXRuncontrol.exe - is the exe you copied to your Inventory Solution directory.
   • "Random Hardware" - is the key where AeXRunControl stores the command and parameters.  Whenever the client runs the new inventory program we are creating it looks here to see when the command can run again.
   • 20 -  is the minimum amount of time in hours before the command referenced in this key can be run again.  Work with the advertisement and delay parameter to set run time.  I set it to 20 to ensure the inventory can run every day. If I set it for 24, there is a possibility the command will not run that day.
   • "AeXInvSoln.exe /hidden /s AeXInvSolnAdm1.ini" - is the original command line you copied and pasted into this program.
   • /d:1-14400- this is it! This command tells the client to run the previous command randomly from 1 to 14400 seconds into the future.  14400 seconds equals 4 hours.
10. Rest of program settings - Estimate disk space at 3000k, runs in 5 minutes, Terminate after 240 (This value equals the upper bounds of your random window), Run with System Account rights, Whether or not user is logged in, no input requires, no network required.
11. Apply and Update Distribution Points then close the Inventory Agent Package window.
12. Back on the new Random Hardware Daily screen change the Program name to Random Hardware (you may need to refresh the screen in order to see the new program.)
13. Ensure you have the correct Collection selected, Run on a schedule, uncheck the as soon as notified box so program only runs after 5pm, Check Run on a schedule(All machines at the same time), 5pm every day.
14. Check the Enable box and hit apply
15. Be sure to disable the original Hardware Inventory.
16. Now apply the same process to your other daily inventories keeping in mind that only one of these command lines will run at a time..

Now the inventories will be spread out over a defined period greatly alleviating the load on your NS server. Next I'll walk through making some of the larger less frequent inventories random, too.  If you have any thoughts on ways to improve this process, or notice any errors, please let me know!

(Updated 8/30/2007 @ 9 am CDT to fix some errors in the process)

PC World has a neat collection of projects for PC's from creating cool videos with photos, to building a media server or making your own business phone system. Excerpt:

Make Your PC a Private Recording Studio

Most systems made in the past few years have the horsepower to serve as a home recording studio, though a dual-core CPU, 1GB of RAM, and a 250GB hard drive will ensure glitch-free performance. Out of the box, however, they lack the inputs needed to record real instruments and voices, so you'll have to upgrade your audio interface.

PC World - 12 Great Do-It-Yourself PC Projects

We've started meeting on the First Thursday each month from 5:00 - 7:00.  Tonight we will hear from Greg Grosser of Managed Planet makers of SMS extending software.

Interested in participating in KCRSMUG?  We are free and open to any IT professional who wants to know more about managing computer systems.  Besides the monthly meetings, we maintain an announcement list to disseminate information as well as a web page at MyItForum.

The KCRSMUG usually meets the first Thursday of each month from 5:00 - 7:00pm at:

Centriq-Foss University Offices
which are located at:
Leawood Training Center and Offices
8700 State Line Road
Suite 200
Leawood, KS 66206
Tel: 913.322.7000

Click Here For Directions And Accommodations


Join the list!
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Create a new email.

In the TO: line of the email, input the following email address: command@lists.myitforum.com

Now, in the BODY of the email (NOT the subject line), type the following command: Subscribe KCRSMSUG

Send the email.

I needed to find all the systems with a certain piece of software installed no matter the version.  I wanted the data from Software Inventory rather than Add?Remove Programs to make sure the product was really there.  This enabled us to contact system owners to justify or remove the application. 

 You can download the report xml here:

 

Just enter the product name with trailing and/or leading wildcards(%) as needed.

 

(Can someone clue me in as to how I can post SQL on this thing?)

Craig Cerino suggested this accent test, and it nailed me pretty good!  I was born in Oregon, but spent from age 6 until I left home at 18 in Southwest Ohio.  Since then I have spent a total 0f 15 years in Missouri (my current residence), 6 years in the San Francisco Bay area and 3 years in Charleston South Carolina,  Beyond that I've several months each in Chicago, Orlando, San Diego, and Seattle and traveled most of the way around the Northern Hemisphere. 

So, I think the following says all the above pretty well, don't you?

I received an IM from a coworker asking why certain new machines had not shown up in Altiris yet  If a machine does not make it to Altiris and an alarm come in on it, there is no (easy) way to find the computer having the problem. 

I asked for some node names and started investigating.  Sure enough, it  was not in the Altiris database, so I logged onto the computer.  Everything appeared fine: the Altiris Agent service was running, the client had all the most recent packages and policies, and the logs showed no connectivity issues.  I went ahead and 'tickled' the client by going into the 'About Applet' and clicking 'Update Configuration' and 'Send Basic Inventory.'  Sure enough the computer showed up in the console.

I though that  was a bit weird, but I was ready to attribute it to a permissions issue that was now cleared up or a hung client for whatever reason.  So, I went to the next node on the list.  It too, looked fine, so I tickled it, refreshed the console, and boom there it was. The only problem was the first computer was now gone!  A quick check of both computer's Agents showed them to have identical Altiris GUID's.

The way duplicate GUID's work in Altiris is the last computer that does a configuration request with that GUID is the computer the Altiris console will show.  If there are 300 computers with that GUID the NS Console still only shows one.  So a push in the  traditional sense to a collection of computers with the duplicated GUID will not work as you will only have one computer in the collection at any given time.  What's an Altiris Admin to do?

First you let the image architect know they let a GUID creep into the image, or the packaging team know they captured the GUID in one of their packages.  As far as I know, those are the only two ways the problem can occur. Refer the first group to Altiris: Now a part of Symantec KB Article 19323 on ways to include the client without causing duplicates. Now you can focus on cleaning up the machines already out there.

In this situation, we already know the offending GUID id, so we can deal with it directly.  If you just suspect you may have duplicates and possibly for on-going maintenance, you could follow the steps outlined in this Duplicate Diagnostics Utility.  However, I followed these steps:

1. I created a quick WiseScript package that simply has the following two lines in it:
   Execute C:\Program Files\Altiris\Altiris Agent\AeXAgentUtil.exe /resetguid
   Execute C:\Program Files\Altiris\Altiris Agent\AeXAgentUtil.exe /restart
   
2. Then I created a collection with a filter on Inv_AeX_AC_Client_Agent Resource GUID = the GUID of the clients exhibiting the problem.
   
3. Run the Software Delivery Wizard to:
   Send the above package to the above collection,
   Run as Soon as computer is notified,
   Run on a repeating schedule (set for a few minutes longer than the config request cycle),
   Run as soon as possible...,
   And I set Immediately Notify as there is only one client in the collection at a time

That's it! Over the next day, as clients check in, they will be told to delete their GUID. Then the next time they check in, the NS will issue them a new one.  Once they have a new, GUID, they will fall out of the collection, and return to normally functioning Altiris client once again.

The former Altiris/new Symantec employees tried from the git-go to learn to say the name right and use the name Symantec without an expletive preceding it.  I general they did a pretty good job.  Most seemed optimistic with what the future held out for them with only the slightest of reservations. 

There were a couple incidents of overeagerness, though.  I attended a lab that used Security Expressions to ensure Trend AV was installed and functioning on the lab VM.  Some enterprising person had uninstalled Trend from all the images, apparently in preparation to install the Symantec product at the first opportunity.

On the PR front, the first day's keynote was primarily focused on Altiris's new owners with the CEO of Symantec answering some questions as to why they wanted to bring in the Altiris product line.  Basically it was because they had a lot of the pieces of end-point security and ITIL basics, but no centralized CMDB, Help Desk, Service, or effective Change Management with Remediation. So Altiris would do good things for Symantec.   Yeah, but what about current Altiris users, what is in it for us?

The ' look what Altiris does for Symantec' theme continued later that day at the product road map panel led by Altiris CTO Dwaine Kinghorn, Altiris VP of Marketing Steve Morton, and Symantec CTO Rob Clyde.   They gave good info about preliminary product direction: PC Anywhere replacing Carbon Copy, Ghost added to Deployment server, Symantec's Enterprise Security Manager being dropped in favor of Security Expressions, Audit Express's end-of-life, switch to BackupExec for Recovery Solution, and the eventual integration of Symantec's product line either into the console or through connectors.  But, it was always couched in how good all this was going to be for Symantec.  I was definitely underwhelmed and felt some of those on the platform were only marginally more excited than myself.  Maybe that message would have sounded more appropriate at Symantec Investor World '07.

Another indicator of how well my peers accepted Symantec's incursion into the Systems Manage realm would be booth traffic.  ManageFusion sets up a row of booths outside the "Partner Expo" that belong to Altiris. The inside of the expo, which is where we eat and attend a couple events, is ringed by the 30 or so partner booths.  It is a good setup and allows for relaxed perusing of the various offerings.  This year was no different except the first two booths were occupied by Symantec's Backup Exec and EndPoint Security with the 6 or 7 Altiris booths following.  Now every attendee who wanted to win the 60" TV or any of the other prizes had to visit the Symantec booths for a stamp or punch, but that was it.  While every other booth both inside the hall and out was packed with attendees, I never saw more than one or two folks at the Symantec booths the whole week.

I do hope Symantec allows the Altiris product line to flourish, and I am sure there will be some benefit to us users that the conference organizers will be able to promote at the next ManageFusion.  Hopefully these missteps were just that and can be explained by the newness of the merger.  Altiris has moved itself to second place in the Systems Management space by doing things right, let's all hope they continue to do so.

I just returned from ManageFusion '07 in Las Vegas and I continue to be impressed by the way Altiris really caters to their customers.  They really seem to listen and work hard to understand the needs of the orginization.  I met many Altiris employees as well as a raft of resellers and users of their products.  The Altiris people went out of their way to remember my name and make me and people I was around feel important.  The resellers were very excited to be involved with Altiris.  The customers were, of course, a mixed bag. 

Unlike the impression of James Gaskin reported in his Network World blog, I did not find the preponderance of  attendees to be lovers of Altiris and their products.  In fact I found the attendees to be of three  distinct types:

1. The Altiris User looking for ways to better utilize the product.  Admittedly, there were probably more of these than the others, but they had differing levels of love ranging from a necessary evil to the greatest thing since the invention of the GUI.
2. The prospective/new customer.  These folks are looking at Systems Management product or just bought Altiris and are not sure of what to to with it.  I met quite a number of these.
3. Then there was the customer who bought and installed Altiris products and were having trouble getting them deployed and used in their organization.  These were fewer, but also fell into two camps.  Those who had not invested the proper up front time to plan and roll their implementation and those who continually run into political opposition from factions in their company who do not want to relinquish some perveived power to another group. 

All three groups were helped by the keynotes, seminars, personal attention and networking available at the conference.  I was truly impressed to see genuine customer care in action.

The January meeting of the Kansas City Regional last night (January 24th, 2007) saw a new member, a couple of old members who came by because, "eating pizza is better than work," and several of our usual attendees.   Centriq-Foss Training, our host and primary sponserthese last five years,  supplied us with pizza and refreshments. 

We caught up with each other while we ate and tracked each other's careers.  Most of us had changed companies over the last half decade, but there were a couple still working for the same employer.  Don Hite gave a great introduction to PowerShell and we gave away two copies of Windows Server courtesy of Culminus.

Here's to the next 5 years of the KCSMUG and Systems Management in general.  Who knows where the science will be!  Thanks to all who've made this group what it is and to MyITforum for giving us the place to come together and get it all started!

Save some money by buying Windows Vista on the family plan. Robert McLaws explains how it works over on Windows-Now.

A great community member and a man I consider a good friend lost his mother this week.  He has written a beautiful eulogy, but is in a lot of pain.

Though I still have both parents, I've seen cancer take too many wonderful folks these past few years way before their time. I'm glad you got to experience a good hospice.  They do help add dignity to the inevitable.

 Our thoughts and prayers are there for you, Craig.

And you, of tender years,
Can't know the fears that your elders grew by,
And so please help them with your youth,
They seek the truth before they can die.
Teach your parents well,
Their children's hell will slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you'll know by.
Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.

Crosby Stills Nash and Young

Jobby is a beta Job Search site written with Ajax goodness and looks very interesting.  You upload your resume, then add search tags to your profile.  Employers log in, search the tags they are looking for, eliminate or promote tags that match. then call the resultant list to either hire or get an RFP from.

It's pretty cool. Try this, look at  My profile .  See all the tags?  I could add more, and probably will.  Now search on SMS 2003.  You get some 5 applicants.  Now you can see the power for the employer.  I'm still trying to see if there is a similar search grid for those looking for positions, which would be real helpful!

I'm expecting the offers to start pouring in any moment now.

Update: Still waiting for those offers...

I hear 2006 2nd Quarter is going to be a SMS hiring bonanza! Not wanting to be left out, I've added my resume under articles on the bottom right of this page for your perusal and enjoyment.

Now that MyITForum has switched from .Text to Community Server 2.0, I had to figure out how to make it work with w.bloggar a freeware tool with fewer features than BlogJet, but definately useable for posting to your blogs. The newest version of w.bloggar actually has support for MSN Spaces!

To use w.bloggar with MyITforum blogs, use the following settings:

1. Select File | Add New Account
2. Choose Custom Blog Tool and an alias for this account, I entered Reed at MyTIForum
3. Click Next
4. Choose the MetaWeblog API under Posts
5. Choose MetaWeblog API - Multi under Categories
6. Under Templates, choos Not Supported
7. Click Next
8. Under Host, type in myitforum.com
9. Type /cs2/blogs/metablog.ashx in Path
10. Deselect HTTPS, port should revert to 80
11. Click Next
12. Enter your username and password
13. Click Finish

If you did everything right, you'll be able to post away! Be aware of two things, w.bloggar is not a WYSIWYG editor, so you will need to enter your own HTML tags. Also, if you are an Admin, you will have to select your blog from the drop down list. Those with access to a single blog will only see their blog in the drop down.

Now go post!

I believe it was Warren Buffet that said "The first rule of investing is don't lose money." Here I always thought it was "buy low then sell high!" The second rule would be great if you could figure out how while the first rule, rule #1 is something I can see myself doing.

I saw Phil Town a year ago at an all day event that included General Tommy Franks and Jerry Lewis. His was one of the product seminars, but I really liked the methods he used. I might have signed up for the training seminar, but TerryAnn and I went on a major debt diet shortly before that. We are paying down debt and not starting new debt until we are free. We are doing well, and hope to be back to a point where we have the debt retired and apply the money we used to use servicing it for saving and investments sometime this year. So I was real pleased to see and have pre-ordered his new book! I highly recommend it if you enjoy making money investing.

And if you need to go on a debt diet before you get started, then Dave Ramsey is the man with the down to earth, easy to understand, practical plan.

(Amazon Associate)

Tags: Investing Rule#1 debt PhilTown DaveRamsey

I just bought my 150th book in the Microsoft Reader format from Simon Says Shop. I love reading books on my Pocket PC as it is always with me and I get a well lit, easy to read typeface, and a good book where ever I go.

I do have a complaint about Simon Says Shop, though. They changed their entire user interface last October. Since then:

1. It is extremely hard to find older books. I am working my way through the Starfleet Corps of Engineers series and to get to where I am (#41 June 2004) I had to search on the title of the book I just finished, then work my way to the next book. (FYI I think this is fixed now, I was finally able to search for Starfleet Corps of Engineers and find the whole series in reverse order again).
2. Instant gratification has been removed. I used to be able to load up my cart with several books, go to the checkout, log in, pay, then download. Now they have inserted a processing step between the purchase and the download. It is as if the book haulers union said, "Hey, you can't deliver books without us handling them first! We'll have none of that!" As such I have to wait several minutes to an half an hour before I can download my purchase.
3. The download process is onerous. Once the books are available to be downloaded, I get this screen with pretty download buttons. Click the button of the book you want, up pops a page contains secure and unsecure info warning, then click yes to allow, another secure unsecure warning pops up, then another and you finally get your download. Have another book to download? No problem, you just have to work your way back through the secure/unsecure maze and select another. I finally started right-click new windowing it to reduce it to just three affirmations per download.

That said, I heartily recommend the Starfleet Corps of Engineers series. It reminds me a lot of what it is like to be a Systems Engineer on today's computers!

Ever since it came out that Microsoft owns this site speculation has been wild! When the Scobelizer flirted with the NDA police, I started to think it might be theMicrosoft's rumored iPod Killer.

But this post on LonghornBlogs. has my interest! This is the form factor I have been waiting for, and if it goes for $500, I'll be owning more than one!

Link to original story at LonghornBlogs.com