Archive for category Journal

MCSA: Messaging

Posted by Ken Thompson in I.T. Certification, Journal on July 2, 2009

MCSA-Messaging

I sat my 70-291 (Implementing, Managing, and Maintaining a Windows Server 2003 Network Infrastructure) exam on Tuesday. I was very confident of doing well as I’ve been using the skills in this cert for over 6 months now. I wasn’t expecting to score 984/1000 though, but obviously very happy with the result.

The best thing is, I have reached a mini-milestone in my Microsoft certifications now. With the 4 certifications I have thus far, I am now a “Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator : Messaging Specialist”. It feels good to have acquired a milestone and looking forward to studying the rest and obtaining the MCSE in the next half of the year.

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Pixsoul.com.au Complete

Posted by Ken Thompson in Design, Journal on July 2, 2009

Well, I’ve been hard at work on the site this past week. I’ve finished the Design page, created a Photography page, installed some widgets (most obvious is the Twitter feed) and some changes to the layout and design. I’m very happy with the result, even if it is all a bit self-indulgent and wanky…but it’s a self promotional, professional blog; so why not!?

Now that I have finished the site and I have Windows Live Writer working with WordPress again, it’s time to get back to blogging. I’ve got some good posts stacking up about how to customise your iPhone ringtones without hacking it, activating tethering on an iPhone 3.0 without paying your provider or hacking it as well as a bunch of problems and fixes I have come across.

Check out the new pages above in the navigation tabs.

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Twitterfying Pixsoul

Posted by Ken Thompson in Journal on June 28, 2009

I’ve just added a Twitter widget which displays my latest posts here on the site, as I tend to post quite a lot on that and not enough here. Also hooked up a plug-in which should automatically post a link on Twitter; this is the first test…

Meanwhile I am collating some old design pieces to add the design page as a mini portfolio. After that I will start putting up my photography…this is way overdue!

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Windows Live Writer LIBXML2 Problem Solved

Posted by Ken Thompson in Brain Busters, Journal on June 22, 2009

So, Brandon from the Windows Live Writer team got back to me super quick, thanks Brandon! He let me know that the problem I am encountering is actually because of the LIBXML2 XML parsing library stripping the opening “<” off code it parses. You can fix it by upgrading LIBXML2 on your server or install a plugin:

You can upgrade your libxml2 (on your server if you have control) as well WordPress, or you can install this plugin by one of the WordPress team members.
http://josephscott.org/code/wordpress/plugin-libxml2-fix/
Then you should be back in business!

And sure enough, the plugin works a treat! Thanks Brandon (and Joseph for making it!)!

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Windows 7 Teething Issues

Posted by Ken Thompson in Brain Busters, Journal, The PCs That Kevin Built, Work on June 21, 2009

Well now I have really jumped in the deep end with Windows 7, I’m starting to run into some stumbling blocks. Nothing major, but some teething issues none-the-less. So far I only have 2 issues that are bothering me enough to remember:

(Something to note it is that I am now using 7137 x64 or x86 on all of the PCs)

  1. VPN Connections not saving passwords: When I create a VPN connection to dial in to work, it will never remember the user name or password, even when the box is checked to remember it. I just can’t work it out and it is definitely a bug which I have reported with feedback. It’s a bit of a pain in the ass having to put it in every time (randomly generated password), but it’s doable. It remembers all the other settings, including security parameters though, so not all lost.
  2. Issues accessing domain resources on Windows 2003 Domains: I haven’t looked at this issue too much yet, but now that my work laptop is setup with Windows 7 it is becoming a more prevalent issue. Both at work and home, the domains are setup with roaming profiles and redirected folders (my documents). There seems to be an issue with Windows 7 accessing these resources in a timely manner, there is quite a delay and I am not sure what the issue is, with the Windows XP PCs it works just fine. With my home network, the problem even crashes my server; with lots of traffic from bit torrents etc. I’m suspecting some kind of DNS related problem at the moment, but still investigating.

If anyone has any ideas, I’m all ears!

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Exchange Certified & Jumping In The Deep End of the Win 7 Pool

Posted by Ken Thompson in Brain Busters, I.T. Certification, Journal on June 8, 2009

Windows 7 Mania

Well it has been a while in between posts as I have been trying to work out why the hell posts using Windows Live Writer are now putting in weird formatting. Starting to think it’s something going on with the site rather than Windows 7 now as have tested on numourous Win 7 PCs (could be a Live Writer specific problem also though). Going to hang out until WordPress 2.8 is released this week and do a fresh install of the website and see if that knocks it on the head.

Well I successfully passed my 70-284 exam last week, Implementing and Managing Exchange Server 2003. From memory I got 843/1000, so happy with the result, even if it did take me 2 goes. But it has sparked a new motivation to get my next certification as I released that I only need 1 more (70-291) and I will be a Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA). So getting back on the books in a big way as I am very keen to acquire that title on my way to MCSE and other certifications in the later half of the year.

This week I jumped in the deep end of the Windows 7 pool and installed it on both my netbook and my work laptop. I did it via USB and it was super simple (I’ll post a how to this week sometime, I promise!). I’m having some issues on my work laptop connecting to the Windows 2003 domain at work, the same symptom I had at home with slow folder redirection for My Docs etc to a Windows 2003 server. At home I ended up just turning folder redirection off for the moment, but definitely need to get on top of it at work soon as it won’t be too long until we are getting new PC’s shipping with Windows 7. I’m looking forward to the potential problems ahead though so that after using it so much on a variety of systems I will really get a handle on it for successful implementation at work.

Daemon Tools have released a Win 7 compatible version of their program also which I am wrapped about as PowerISO which I have been using slowly decides that one virtual drive will never work again; you create another which works; same thing happens eventually and so on!

Anyway, back to basking in the glory of 3 Windows 7 PC’s and behaving like a Octupus multitasking on all of them!

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Life's Lessons

Posted by Ken Thompson in Journal on May 25, 2009

Well, the Pixsoul airwaves have been rather quiet the past couple of weeks because I have been super busy at work and the rest of the time studying for the Microsoft Exchange 2003 certification. I sat the exam last Monday and knew perfectly well that I lacked knowledge on some key areas that I don’t utilise in real world practice (Security and Routing Groups). But Microsoft have their Second Shot offer still running, so I figured I had nothing to lose by sitting it; at worst I would get a gauge of where I am at.

So I went in, knowing that my current preparation was half-baked but I still had a chance of passing. After the test, as I was running through my answers and figured out from the questions I had no idea about in comparison to the ones I was confident that I was going to be cutting it close to passing or failing, it could go either way.

So I pressed submit and waited for the words to flash up on the screen…”EPIC FAIL!”. Ok, so it didn’t say that, but it was still disappointing! As expected I came close, getting 648/1000, 52 shy of passing. But I know where I need to work on and I am already back on the books and mucking around on my exchange server, ready to dish out some punishment to the exam PC in a week when I re-sit.

It kind of woke me up a bit though, I need to get focussed on the study and not sit an exam until I know I am ready; rather than when I want to achieve each certification. I’ve been too focussed on time and not on quality and it would be good to hold on to my current GPA of 91% rather than throw it away in order to get some certifications more quickly.

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28 Days for the Body and Mind

Posted by Ken Thompson in I.T. Certification, Journal on May 11, 2009

Well this year is absolutely zipping on by, I can’t believe it is almost half way already! It has been a great year thus far, but I am falling behind in my certification and education warpath. So this morning I have set myself a target to achieve my next 2 certifications in the next 28 days. I have also decided to tie in a de-tox for this period as it surely can’t hurt the study efforts and my body has definitely earned a break.

The rules are simple, in the next 28 days:

  • Obtain 70-284: Implementing and Managing Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Certification (I have already booked in my exam for next Monday morning and have got Friday off for a 3 day study-a-thon weekend)
  • Obtain 70-291: Implementing, Managing, and Maintaining a Windows Server 2003 Network Infrastructure Certification
  • No Alcohol
  • No Junk Food

This will bring me back on track reasonably well and I plan to do my 70-293 before the end of the financial at least, maybe another…but the de-tox will definitely end at 28 days…it’s going to be a long 4 weeks!

Back to the study….

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Windows 7 RC Blamed for Internet Slow Downs

Posted by Ken Thompson in Journal on May 7, 2009

iTnews Australia has reported that there have been slow-downs for Australian internet users as a result of the Windows 7 RC release. There has been a 50% spike in traffic from the Akamai server farm which is believe to host the files for download; as they host and deliver (amongst many other things) Windows Updates. It’s really great to see such a positive take up of Windows 7 RC, obviously they have made a fantastic product but their marketting efforts are obviously really hitting home. From the reaction of the general public, hopefully we will see a large take up of Windows 7 and related technologies and won’t be dealing with any laggards or haters stilling clinching on to their Windows XP machines after a couple of years.

But then again, maybe that increase in traffic from Akamai was just me furiously downloading updates on our freshly setup WSUS servers…we definitely got throttled because of that, Internode data blocks to the rescue though!

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Exchange 2003 – All Systems Go

Posted by Ken Thompson in I.T. Certification, Journal, Projects, The PCs That Kevin Built on May 4, 2009

ms-exchange-2003

Well it has been a few weeks now since I got my server going and I had yet to get Exchange fully functional. I had only got as far as installing it and having all the services running, but hadn’t hooked it up to my websites or started using it rather than my web server’s POP3 email accounts.

I have started studying for my 70-284 (Implementing and Managing Microsoft Exchange Server 2003), so that inspired me to get everything going; especially as it’s exactly what I am learning about right now. I have actually decided that I will sit this exam next as I am finding it very interest (and a little easy!) and it will break up the studies a bit. I want to do the exam within the next 2 weeks as I really need to get some of these exams out of the way and get back on my certification war path.

I really didn’t have that much to do, and I’m pleased to say everything went exactly to plan and I had everything hooked up and working in no time at all; a pleasant surprise to the norm. So I changed my domain’s MX records to point to my FQDN address, which is a dynamic forwarder (as I have a dynamic IP from my ISP, the router updates this FQDN any time it changes). Then I setup the following port forwards to my server:

    • 80 – HTTP (already activated for other services)
    • 25 – SMTP
    • 110 – POP3
    • 443 – Outlook Web Access
    • 389 – LDAP (required for remote access user authentication)
    • 143 – IMAP4

Then I enabled and started the POP3 and IMAP services (for access on PC’s I have linked to other Domains & Exchange Accounts) and I was in business. Too easy!

I did hit one stumbling block though. I want to use one exchange account which is configured with 2 SMTP accounts for different domain names (Pixsoul and XXIV) which works perfectly for receiving email from either account. However when you send email it address it from the default SMTP account, so you can only send email from one of the accounts – no choice. I have done a lot of playing and poking around but it appears the only way to have this work is to create 2 separate user accounts in AD, linking each individual email to their accounts…I will keep searching though and post up on the success / failure of that tomorrow.

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