Category: Technical

About software, hardware, and everything in between.

Few Good Utilities

It’s always exciting to come across some clever utility that resolves a long-standing (or sometimes a more recent) problem.  Sometimes such utility simply makes life easier by simplifying or speeding up a process.  Here are few such good utilities.  Some of these programs have been around for years, and in some cases I used their inferior competition for long while before stumbling across the improvement. Others have been the staple of my toolbox already for some time.

ExtractNow (freeware) replaced a program called “Unziplify” I had used for years but that became eventually abandonware.  Quite frequently an archive has been chopped into million segments and each segment zipped separately.  ExtractNow makes it super easy to unzip those archives in a jiffy.

AutoHotkey (freeware) is an excellent keyboard hotkey mapping utility.  It comes with a very versatile and easy to configure script language that allows mapping over Windows system hotkeys. This means that you can, for example, put your favorite file-search utility in place of Windows’ own search at Win+F. AutoHotkey also expands abbreviations so it might eventually replace another utility, ShortKeys, that I use frequently.

Roxip XStart ($30 shareware) is a very handy application launch utility. I like keyboard shortcuts, and XStart is an app launch utility that makes it easy to access frequently launched applications. Give it a try!

True Launch Bar ($19 shareware) takes the place of the Windows QuickLaunch, and adds pop-up menus, auto-sorting, differently-sized icons, and more.  Finally it’s possible to organize the QuickLaunch in a meaninful way. With True Launch Bar and XStart I rarely access Start > Programs anymore.

Directory Opus is not exactly cheap Explorer replacement at AU$85.00 (about US$80), but it’s worth every cent!  Directory Opus takes care of most every file operation you can think of.  However, for find and replace operations I often use Advanced Find and Replace (for file content find+replace, also multi-line), and Effective File Search (better file name search which I’ve also mapped to Win+F using AutoHotkey). For more complex regex-based file searches Directory Opus’ file search or PowerGREP give more flexibility.  To design and test the complex regular expressions for searches, nothing beats RegexBuddy.  Finally, a handy shell extension HashTab adds configurable file hashes tab to file properties and also provides Hash Comparison making it easy to check whether file A is exactly the same as file B.

Slots Are Dead… Long Live the Slots!

Some years ago slot-load CD and DVD drives were abound.  Plextor, Pioneer, Sony, Toshiba all made some models that lacked the tray.  Now if you try to find one you’re out of luck (except, perhaps, on eBay where you might still find a second hand slot-load drive).

So what happened? The slot-loaders clearly cannot be as fragile as the tray units – the trays are flimsy!  Especially laptop DVD-drive trays almost self-destruct on slightest breeze!  Perhaps there were issues with the alignment… but then a slot-load DVD-ROM drive that I have had in use from the early part of this decade is still working fine and I’ve never had any trouble with it.  Perhaps it’s difficult to make writers that are slot-load?  But there is still a place for read-only units.  Two of the three computers our kids use (each has their own) has currently a destroyed DVD-ROM drive. You guessed it, the tray’s been bent or ripped out.  If they were slot-load drives, perhaps some items would’ve been stuffed into them, but likely they would not have been destroyed.  Slot-load drives would also be perfect for laptops: no super-flimsy trays, just a slot where a disk would sleekly slide in.

Clearly it is possible to continue manufacturing reliable slot-load drives as, for example, the popular game-console Wii that was released less than two years ago, comes with a slot-load DVD-drive.  Wii drive reads both 4.7Gb and 9Gb DVD disks so clearly alignment can not be a major issue.

Manufacturers, please bring back the slot-load drives!

Joining domain during Windows logon using VPN

I didn’t know that this was even possible! I’m setting up a new laptop whose primary user account is also a domain account. I joined the laptop to the domain while at the office, but forgot to log in as the user and hence the user profile had not been created and the login credintials hadn’t been cached.  I needed to install software on the laptop and make it generally ready for use, but I needed the user account ready before then. What to do?

I came across an article in Tech Republic that provided the solution: Joining domain during Windows logon using VPN. Perfect! I got the user account created the logon credintials cached, and subsequently the software installed and the desktop made ready for the user!

CI Host: 40°C and Rising

I spent most of today dealing with server emergencies. Last night we had severe thunderstorms pummeling through the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area with high winds, even few tornado alerts. No tornadoes were officially spotted in the city area, but winds and the lightning were strong enough to do some damage to the power grid. Servers were still working normally at night (I was up, watching the weather radar at 4am), but by the morning the dedicated servers I manage were unreachable. A quick call to CI Host’s tech support produced no help: a busy tone. Dialing repeatedly for the next half an hour didn’t make any difference, so there didn’t seem to be support available today. According to the recorded “current network status” at the company’s main phone number there were “no current network outages or other issues”. Yeah, right. Being only 20 minutes or so away from the facility I decided to go to investigate.

At the hosting company’s Bedford facility (“CDC-01”) chaos reigned supreme. All the doors were open, diesel generators were spewing fumes into the air (while being cooled by rigged water-hoses), and a mixture of technicians and concerned looking nerds were running around. Being one of the nerds, I joined in. There was no usual security, I strolled in to the lobby and chatted with one of the CI Host’s admins. Mains power was down as I had gathered from the diesel generators running outside of the building. Since I was there, I decided to take a look at the co-located servers on two different floors. Elevators were not working, of course, so it was up the stairs. Approaching the 2nd floor server room the temperature was increasing on every step — the generators were able to provide electricity for the servers, but not for the A/C!. Inside the room, the thermometer on the wall was displaying 90°F (32°C), but someone who had been there for several hours working on their server swore the thermometer was pegged to not go over the 90°F mark. My server’s internal temperature sensors were indicating 43°C for the case temperature.

After a few moments I decided to shut down the servers to prevent hardware damage.. the CPU temperatures were reasonable but the hard drives were running rather hot — normally the server room is some 30-40 degrees (C) cooler.

After shutting down the servers I was ready to leave, and picked up the phone to have someone to come to let me out. Line busy! Was I trapped in the sauna? No… I forgot there was no security today; all the doors were unlocked. So I decided to pay a visit to the third floor co-lo room where the A/C was supposed to be running and where another of the servers I manage is located. Once I made it there (through a staircase), I found just another hot room full of concerned nerds and their baking computers. I switched off the server there, too, and left.

According to the case temperature sensors the A/C started working again around 10:30 in the evening. I switched the servers back online through remote access.

With the dust settled, I’m starting to look for alternative co-lo facilities. While the power outage was not the fault of CI Host, their level (or lack of) disaster preparedness is disheartening. Firstly, it is very irresponsible to let the clients’ servers run in that kind of “torture test” environment — I think they should not provide electricity for the servers if there is no electricity for the A/C. This exact same thing happened few years back after a major storm, but early summer rather than in the spring, so the temperatures were even higher. Clearly there has been no improvement in the emergency power since that time.

The strongest contender at the moment is Colo4Dallas. I’m going to tour their facility in the next few days, and likely start planning a move there.