Remote Tech Support

If you’re reading this, chances are friends and family ask you for tech support. Even worse, they usually call you from 100 miles away and want you do talk them through something over the phone (like finding the any key). I find it much easier to tell them to get out of the way and let me fix whatever is broken.  But when they do call from 100+ miles away, what do you do? Here are some viable options I have come across recently.

Last Day on the Job

As of April 4th, I’m back at Computer Science.  With a kid on the way and a declining economy, the stability & benefits at the university are hard to beat.

First day on the job

Started my new job today at PivotPoint Solutions.  I’m the first one here, most of the lights are still off, and I don’t have a login to my work computer.  That’s par for first day on the job.  Most of my co-workers are on LinkedIn if you want to see who else works for the company.  At least I have an Internet connection that works.  I’ll see how long I can be entertained by Dilbert cartoons and YouTube videos.
On a totally unrelated note, a new, and often comical YouTube fad is videotaping (or cameraphoning) cops who take their job way too seriously.  Example: http://youtube.com/watch?v=9GgWrV8TcUc.  This proves that the words “dude” and “man” can be considered assult and are punishable by an immediate headlock & wrestling to the ground.

March 2005 XP & GP Presentation

I was reminded last night that I”ve had a good idea or 2 in the past.  Watch my March 2005 presentation about using Group Policy to secure Windows machines here.  Original link to the presentation, and presentations by others can be found here.  Files have been archived below for future reference:
Meeting Notes
PowerPoint Presentation
Video of the presentation

Can a bone stock Acura RSX do a decent burnout?

Yes.

My second set of tires were going bald in May 2005, so I decided to have some fun with what was left. The car is a stock 2002 Acura RSX, not the Type-S model.  Enjoy the pictures.

arrMyData(5,5) arrMyData(5)(5)

Tags

2 dimensional, 2D, array, arrays, multi dimensional, ragged, redim, redim preserve, sparse, ubound, vbscript

After wasting lots of time on trial and error, I decided to find out what the low-level difference was between vbscript arrays addressed as (x,y) and (x)(y).  Eric Lippert explained it better than I can, so just read his explanation.  If you want some code to demonstrate how things work, download my 2D array test.  It has a lot of in-line comments and should give you an idea of when you should use (x)(y) and when you should use (x,y).

Using a non-MS CA to create EFS and File Recovery certificates

Tags

efs, makecert, oid, openssl

Answers to this quandary, and how I found/derived them below.
Third-party certification authority support for encrypting file system
Encrypting File System in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003
There are two ways to do this: makecert.exe and using openssl.

Look who finally learned how to use the Internet.

This isn’t so much a blog as it is a lazy way to update my website once a year. Don’t count on seeing anything current here.