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Personal Rants Technology WTF

2014 – Year in Review – The Darker Side

Matthew 3 Comments

Normally when people do a recap of the year they mention all the positive aspects. And in most people’s live those are the memories we remember most. My own personal year in review has been great, at that personal level. I mean I went back to school and got a new and exciting job. But what happens when you go past the personal level, past the family level and past the close knit friend level… What I mean by this is as a Society, as a Species, was 2014 really that great of a year? Or, was it possibly one of the worse years ever for Human Kind?…

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Personal Technology WTF

Texting/Emailing on a Public Payphone… What?

Matthew 3 Comments

Phone with full keyboardThis is new to me… Since when can you text, nay, email… from a public phone.  I am not kidding.  Leaving work today I wanted to head to Alexis Neon to grab a few groceries before heading home…  Seeing as it is winder outside I wanted to stick to the tunnels as much as possible.  While waiting for the metro at Square-Victoria, I happened to notice a keypad embedded into the front side of the phone… Not just the 0-9 * # keypad… a full-blown alpha numeric keypad (see photo).  So i decided to take a close look.  The top instructions are in french (Duh, I live in Montreal, 90% of instructions have French Only), and looks like it had some graffiti sticker attached to it previously, so a lot of the instructions are blocked… but it leaves just enough to decider at least some part of the instructions:

Translation:

  1. Dial **01 , deposit 10¢ to send 1 (text) message, or
    Dial **05, deposit 25¢ to send 5 (text) messages
    Dial **02, deposit 10¢ to send 1 email
  2. Enter the 10 digit receiving phone number (or email) using the numeric keypad (obviously using the full keyboard for the email)
  3. Press *9 on the numeric keypad and type your message (rest is blocked by paper residue from possible graffiti sticker)
  4. Press *9 using the numeric keypad to send your message
  5. Wait for sent confirmation then hang up to terminate.
…
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Personal Technology Windows

[FIX] When Deep Freeze won’t thaw – VHD Style

Matthew 4 Comments

If you are a follower of my blog you know that recently I have done a lot of work with Virtual Hard Drives.  I have made the decision to convert our Computer Centre and Classroom PCs over to VHDs so that they would be easier to maintain.  We use a nice piece of software (I think its pretty cool, most people on the net don’t) and thus far it has worked without issue.

So here is the new set up I have laid out for the Lab, and I got it running on a test system after some trial and error when it came to the Windows 7 side:

  • 1 physical hard drive with 2 partitions
  • First Partition has 2 VHD Files which are configured to be bootable (see how)
  • Second Partition used as a “Thawspace” to transfer files between the two OSes
  • Physical Hard Drive does NOT contain an OS
  • First Partition (becomes D: when booted) has access removed via GPO so no ones messes with the VHD files.
…
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Personal Technology Windows

[FIX] Booting from a Windows 7 VHD – The problems encountered and the Solutions.

Matthew 3 Comments

As many of you know I am a Manager of a Computer Centre and Server/Network Administrator for a small library in Montreal Canada.  Every so often I get tasked with a project that makes my life hell for few days/weeks.  This time round, its Microsoft that’s the culprit of my frustrations.  And since I had to search the internet for multiple solutions, I figured I would write a post to help others who are in the same situation.

Topics Covered

How to boot from a clean system solely to a VHD

SO my first task was to reimage a test machine.…

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Technology Windows

Resizing VHD Files, the easy way.

Matthew 3 Comments

I have looked all over the net for easy ways to resize VHDs.  For those of you who don’t know what a VHD file is, it’s a Virtual Hard Drive.  Now for years I have played with virtualization, normally with VMWare or Virtual Box (The latter being free) which has always dealt with some form of virtual hard drive, however the VHD (and now VHDX) has become a standard with virtualization, so much so that you can actually boot Windows off of a VHD without virtualization software.  Both Windows 7 and 8 flavours of Windows support this feature.…

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Lack of Posts, Bell Canada, Windows 8 and Exchange 2013.

Matthew 2 Comments

Sorry for the lack of posts, I try and get one in at least once a week, but as you can tell I haven’t posted in over a month.  I have been extremely busy with Work and School that this site has escaped me.  So I decided to make a rant post.  There will be 3 main topics, Bell Canada, Windows 8(.1) and Exchange Server 2013.  There may be more, depending on how I feel after the rant.

Round 1: Bell Canada

So anyone who has me as a friend on Facebook knows the story about the issues I have been having with Bell.  …

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Refresh failed with the following error: The RPC server is unavailable.

Matthew 0 Comments

TL/DNR:

Verify your DNS info is correct for each system

Full Story

During my studies at Dawson College I ran into his issue a lot while trying to set up my virtual lab environment.  Using both VirtualBox and VMWare.  Here is a basic layout of my virtual lab environment:

Domain: SME.zlocal

System Name IP Address Function OS
OLYMPUS 192.168.12.250 DC. AD, DNS Server 2012 Datacenter
ARES 192.168.12.251 TBD Server 2012 Datacenter
HERMES 192.168.12.5, 196.168.1.119 Gateway, IIS Server 2012 Datacenter
ZEUS 192.168.12.10 Remote Service Control Windows 8.1 Enterprise

I chose the Greek Gods as they are of interest to me.  OLYMPUS, Home of the Gods,  being the Domain Controller, Active Directory and DNS, where everything is stored.  …

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Rooting the Nexus 5 (The easy way)

Matthew 0 Comments

Nexus-5-Press-Image-001-1280x874As my original Samsung Galaxy Nexus now has a Multi-Crack Screen I decided to upgrade to the latest and greatest.  Now the LG Nexus 5 may not be the best top of the line phone that’s out there, as the Galaxy S4 and other latest tech phones do have a bit higher rating, however nothing can beat the Nexus 5 when it comes to being PURE Android.  It’s the reason I only get the Google’s Nexus line of phones, they are 100% Pure Android.  This means no Manufacturer or Carrier “BloatWare” and no special proprietary customizations.

And as with my previous Galaxy Nexus, the first thing I did when I fully charged my Nexus 5 and upgraded it to Android Kitkat 4.4.2 (KOT49H), was root it.…

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Rants Technology

Taken from The Verge: Should a robot decide when to kill?

Matthew 0 Comments

Taken from The Verge
Late last year I posted an article about a 6ft, 330lbs robot that was built to save us.  It was to partake in the DARPA  trials in December, along with several other robots.  The article, based off of some info I found on Reddit, covered my views of how easily the DARPA Trials could be a front for more sinister means.  The trials would include several tasks for the robots to complete including navigating deteriorated landscapes, entering buildings, and driving vehicles.  This was to simulate situations that a robot may encounter during a rescue mission.  However, once you add a gun into the situation, the robot could be come combat ready, where these tasks would also come in handy.…

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Fun Technology

PCG – PHP Code Generator for CodeIgniter

Matthew 0 Comments

If you are like me, you hate coding the basics, the add, delete, modify, view commands that are the basis of all applications, also known as CRUD (create, read, update and delete).  It’s the first thing you do when creating an application, then you create your custom views, and forms.  For me, its a keystone step in creating any application, and I hate it.

In walks PCG, the PHP Code Generator, which is CodeIgniter based.  I have been using CodeIgniter for over a year now because I find it quite simple to use. PCG takes the simplicity one step further by allowing you to create the CRUD portion of you script in 5 easy steps:

Step 1: Settings

pcg1
Simply Name your project (Website Title)
Give the URL (Must be a fully qualified domain name, IPs don’t work, I tried)
Supply your admin login and password

Step 2: Design

pcg2
This is where you get to create your modules, it creates all the pages you need to complete the CRUM for each module.…

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