Monthly Archives: January 2008
Free Active Directory Reporting Tool
This should come in handy for lots of people. Need to get some reports out of your Active Directory system? Then this tool can help, its a called SmartR from Imanami, and its free. There are additional report packs you could buy, but I’ve found it comes with just about everything I would need. It has a good wizard interface and can generate nicely formatted reports in a flash. Output options are HTMl, XLS and XML.
I needed to generate a report of all my AD users and find which groups they belonged to. To be more specific, I was trying to get a list of all our Distribution lists and find out who was in each one. I was able to accomplish both reports quickly and easily with this tool.
RSS feed post limits
This is something that both annoys me and and yet I can understand its reason for existing. Have you ever subscribed to an RSS feed and its limited to only a few posts/items (lets say 15 is a standard)? I can certainly understand the need to limit RSS feeds content, there are plenty of reasons why a reasonable number for the history limit is a good idea. However, 15 is a bit low, especially on sites that offer news or updates. I recently subscribed to a feed that had posts of a humorous nature, and it limtied me to the last 15 entries. If I want to see more of the history, I have to go to their website. 15 is also a low number, for a site that may post a few times as week, it won’t take long and I’ll start to miss posts if I don’t frequently check that feed. On my blog, I allow the last 100 posts to be downloaded, and don’t mis-read me here, that is way too high, especially for a personal blog. I’d suggest something like 25 or higher for personal feeds, 50 or higher for a site that posts a few times as week in any category, and more if the site posts many times a week, or even per day.
Geeky Wedding Cakes
I was stumbling around and came across this link, for geeky wedding cakes. I just wish I had thought about this and used one at my wedding… Although I was just getting into geekdom at that time…
Free Light-Weight PDF Reader
I highly recommend this PDF reader. Its light weight, less than 3MB total, its free, and works great. It can easily let you quickly view PDF files on any Windows PC. This is a lot better than the Adobe client which is bulky and slow. Give it a try and speed up your PDF viewing.
Quirky thing with my TILT
I noticed recently that if you press the PDA power button on an at&t TILT during a sound event (such as the slider sound or new message sound alert), the sound will immediately stop where it is, but when you press the power button again, the PDA will resume right where it left off, sounds and all. I have a habbit of sliding my TILT closed quickly and immediately pressing the power button. When I do this, the PDA powers off mid-sound, and then when I press the button again, it powers on and plays the remaining part of the sound. This is not a problem by any means, it just interests me and gives me some insight into how this software was designed.
Have fun destroying any website
I came across this link over the weekend, and it lets you have a lot of fun destroying any website you choose. I like the demonstration and mars attacks. Give it a try for a quick chuckle.
Better fitness
On Saturday I joined a local fitness club. I have been entertaining the idea of getting a membership to a fitness club for a while now, but when I started out looking for one, I didn’t want one of those professional performance places where its a bunch of hulk hogans running around and all that. So I found a family oriented club and went to check it out on Saturday morning. I was a little intimidated by the size of the place, but once the manager started showing me around, it was really quite nice. Everyone was friendly and they offer a lot of cool programs that come as part of the membership. It is a bit expensive, but my plan is to stick with the club for about a year, get myself in better shape and then try to get some equipment that I can use to maintain my fitness level at home. I need to go at least 3 times a week which is going to be tough with my schedule. I realize that if I am going to do this, its going to cost something besides money, and that is my family time. I’m going to have to go at night twice a week and once on Saturday morning.
Communicator 2007 custom presence tool
I just came across this artile about a tool that automates the little known feature of custom presence in Communicator 2007. Those of you familiar with other IM platforms will appreciate the incorporation of this feature in Communicator 2007. Although as nice as this is, tell me Microsoft…why aren’t you building this into the GUI in the first place?
My IT Annaversary
I didn’t realize it until recently, but 2008 marks my 10th annaversary being in the IT industry. It just kind of snuck up on me really, but when someone asked me how long I’ve been doing what I do, I had to count twice to verify it has been 10 years.
I’m not quite sure yet how I would envision the next 10 years, since technology changes so rapidly. I will probably slow down a bit one day soon and try to map out some plans for the coming years.
It was 10 years ago now that I got my first IT job, a lowly rebate programming position using PICK. From there what I consider to be a real IT position came along where I worked kind of like an apprentice for a local IT services shop. I learend a lot from the other techs and eventually became the technician of choice for several clients. I went on to work for state and local government and to obtain my certifications in 2004 after about 6 years in the field.
Re-Connecting
Lately I’ve been trying to re-connect with some old friends, acquaintences and collegues. I have successfully re-connected with Kerry who was the first IT person I worked with when I got into the tech world. We worked on lots of stuff together, computers, running cable, climbing in attics and busting through concrete… I also got back in touch with Carol who was another of the first IT people I met when I first got into tech. We worked at the same little IT shop for over a year and did a lot of work for state and local government offices in the area.
Other contacts I’ve reached are Jim who is an IT director for my home county, and Eddie who was an intern when I worked for county government. I am still trying to hunt down the IT Director I worked for in my last county job. I haven’t been able to track down contact info for my old boss, the guy I first started working for at my first IT job, but I’ll find him eventually. I also recently talked to Jenni who was also in our IT department in my last county job. I’m still waiting on the low down on whats been going on since I’ve been gone. Also heard to Chris and a few others.
Its nice to catch up with people and see what everyone’s been doing. If you are reading this and know me or used to work with me, please leave me some comments here and re-connect!
Joe’s blog about technology, life, etc! 