Journey to Life: A Story Which Makes Sense

You Can't Send a Duck to Eagle School by Mac Anderson A few years ago I had lunch with a top executive from a company known for their legendary retail service. My wife and I are both big fans, and over lunch I shared with him some of the great service stories his people had provided the Anderson family. I said, "With the service your people give...you must have training manual 2 inches thick." He looked up and said, "Mac, we don't have a training manual. What we do is find the best people we can find and we empower them to do whatever it takes to satisfy the customer." Then he said something I'll never forget. He said, "We learned a long time ago that you can't send a duck to eagle school." "Excuse me," I said. He repeated... "You can't send a duck to eagle school." He said, "You can't teach someone to smile, you can't teach someone to want to serve, you can't teach personality. What we can do, howev...

Today I was working on an issue where an local user account getting locked out with the following event ID: Event Type: Failure Audit Event Source: Security Event Category: Logon/Logoff Event ID: 529 Date: 5/17/2008 Time: 6:45:00 PM User: NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM Computer: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Description: Logon Failure: Reason: Unknown user name or bad password User Name: XXXXXXX Domain: XXXXXXXXXXXX Logon Type: 4 Logon Process: Advapi Authentication Package: MICROSOFT_AUTHENTICATION_PACKAGE_V1_0 Workstation Name: XxXXXXXXXXXXXX Event IDs 528 and 540 signify a successful logon, event ID 538 a logoff and all the other events in this category identify different reasons for a logon failure. However, just knowing about a successful or failed logon attempt doesn’t fill in the ...

Last week my cousin came to me and said that he has problem installing Windows XP on his brand new Toshiba L40 notebook. I noticed that XP doesn't recognises its SATA drive. And then the project started: A USB floppy drive will not work in this case as setup doesn't recognise it. Finally I went for help to my loved one (Internet) and found really nice tool (I got fond of it); NLite which allow you to integrate any external or 3rd party driver to the inbox XP installation suite. Here are the steps I used: run nLite, Welcome Screen appear, click Next. Locating the Windows installation .. insert you original Windows XP Installation CD (which I use OEM version of Windows XP Home with Service Pack 2) to you optical drive, and click Browse. Pick a location on your harddrive (or make a new folder) to store your Windows XP Installation files befoe making ISO file . Click Next. Preset. delete all preset (if exist).. click Next Task Selection, Only select to options, Driver and Bootab...

Last time when I had a hard time writing an ISO to a CD, I found two good resource kit utility (CLU); CDBURM.exe and DVDburn.exe. These are again two great tool (freely available) to burn ISO images to CD directly. Here is the command line syntax to use the tools: The cdburn.exe and dvdburn.exe Resource Kit utilities. (07-Apr-06)The cdburn.exe and dvdburn.exe Windows XP and Windows Server Resource Kit utilities will burn an ISO image to writeable media. When you type cdburn /?, you receive:Usage: cdburn -erase [image [options]] cdburn image [options] Options: -erase Erases the disk before burning (valid for R/W only) -sao Writes the image out in "session at once", or cue sheet, mode (default is "track at once") -speed Speed of burn, or 'max' for maximum speed -imagehaspostgap Use if your image already contains a 150 sector postgap The [image] must be provided unless the -erase flag is set. If both an image and -erase are provided, the media will be erase...

Woohoo!!! Today I passed the 70-647 exam, Windows Server 2008, Enterprise Administrator. Now I get to add some more alphabet soup to my signature (MCITP 2008 Enterprise Administrator). My unbroken streak of passed exams continues! This MCITP certification is equivilent to the MCSE credential for Windows 2003.If you're interested in the certification path, see this link: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/windowsserver/2008/default.mspx .

Q. What is really new about Failover Clustering in Windows Server 2008? No service account - now uses a local system account No support for Parallel Attached SCSI (PAS), this allows for better hardware control and failover 16 nodes if you use a 64-bit edition of Windows Server 2008 Support for GPT disks, yes larger than 2TB disks are now supported natively Validate - ensure your systems are cluster ready and help you follow best practices 4 Quorum models, no more single point of failure for the quorum Majority quorum model Majority of Nodes Witness disk File Share Witness Improved IPSec, no more 7 minute timeout when failed over! Stretched clusters can have nodes in different network segments with various speeds Cluster Migration Tool - to help you migrate MMC 3.0 snap-in, no longer a seperate application Setup/install 2003 was 23 steps, now 3 steps. Yes I said 3 steps

This is the good one I found on one of the MVP blog: Clustering terms made easy Clusters are Highly Available and should never be considered Fault Tolerant. Highly Available = is when I come anytime my wife calls me. Fault Tolerant = Marriage. You don't want to be married to you SQL/Exchange Cluster :) You do want it around whenever you need it though. Active/Active = when your cluster is too busy for its own good. Active/Passive = one worker, one manager, you decide which is which. Node = Clustered computer, could also be the worker who sits in a cube, not to be confused with Dude. Virtual Server = this is kind of like be on a telecom at work, only you are calling in from Hawaii and nobody knows. Quorum = Cluster=Quorum, Quorum=Clustering. Failover = the only time at work that you can fail and still be a hero. Failback = great way to get fired, let your server failover without you controlling it (Don't confuse with the above term). Cluster = when it fails, also known as a Clus...