One of the coolest features of Firefox, the open source web browser by the folks at the Mozilla Foundation is the Search Box located in the up right hand corner of the browser window. That in itself isn’t amazing. Many cool browsers, like Safari, also have a search box. What makes the Firefox search box cool is that you can change which search engine it uses to submit the searches. By default it will search using Google, but there are plug-ins that have been written to make it search using just about any search engine you can name. Even cooler is that you can write your own plug-in make it utilize the search engine of many different websites.

In our district, my colleague Tim Wilson wrote a plug-in that we can use to search for tickets in our Request Tracker trouble ticketing system. To read how he did, click here.

–Pete

I’ve been setting up a Windows 2003 server at work for use by our high school students. One of the problems with setting up the server has been that the home folders that are created either by a script or by the Active Directory Users and Computers tool end up being owned by Administrator. Normally this isn’t a bad thing, but if you want to use the disk quota system built into Windows 2003 server, then it is imperative that the owner of the folder is the user you are trying to quota.

While researching how to quickly change the ownership of a large group of folders, I discovered a tool that all Windows System Administrators should install. It is called subinacl.exe and it is a command line tool that can be used to change ownership of objects (including files and folders) within an Active Directory environment. After installing that tool (which is a free download from Microsoft), I was able to add one line to the script I’m using to create the users folders that also changes the ownership of the folder to the user rather than the Administrator. Very slick and a big time saver for me.

–Pete

For quite a while now I’ve been interested in switching from Entourage to Thunderbird for my mail client on my Mac. The difficulty has been that I store a lot of mail in folders in Entourage and could not figure out a way to move the mail to Thunderbird, since Thunderbird cannot do a direct import from Entourage. Until I figured out a way to do that, I couldn’t make the switch.

Yesterday I was doing a little Googling on the subject and ran across a weblog post describing exactly how to deal with the problem. It seems that you can take the folders in Entourage and drag them to your desktop, which turns them into mbox files. These mbox files can then be dropped into your Mail folder in your Thunderbird preferences folder and then they will show up as folders in Thunderbird. Very slick and easy!

I’ve now begun the process of switching to Thunderbird. I’ll let you all know what I think. If any of the other reviews I’ve read about it are true, then I’m sure I’m going to love it!

–Pete

Today, January 24, is the 21 birthday of Apple’s Macintosh computer. It is hard to believe that the Mac has been around that long. An article on Mac OS X Rumors this morning also talks about the Mac’s birthday, and links a movie file that shows Steve Jobs announcing the Mac for the first time. Two things struck me about this video: 1. How revolutionary the Mac was at the time it was released. 2. How enthusiastic a bunch of geeks can be when you show them a cool new “toy”. Check out the video here.

Synopsis
A series of stories showing the different faces of love and relationships.

The Good
Lot’s of friendly and familiar faces in the cast, including Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, and Liam Neeson.

The Bad
Because of the large number of stories going on simultaneously, it was sometimes hard to follow the story. I often found myself struggling to remember who a particular character was and how he/she fit into the story.

The Ugly
Hugh Grant as the Prime Minister of Great Britain. Definitely NOT believable. Even worse: Billy Bob Thornton as the President of the US. Come on. Billy Bob? Presidential? Give me a break!

Daisy’s recovery continues. She now seems to be 100% recovered from her illness on Sunday. Who would have thought? I guess God isn’t quite ready for her yet. Thanks for your support and prayers. Daisy and I both appreciate it.

–Pete

If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend taking a look at the website Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a wiki, a sort of free form website that everyone can contribute to and edit at will. It is formatted as a giant encyclopedia. There are articles about all kinds of interesting things. If there isn’t an article about a topic your are interested in, they encourage you to write one.

Not to brag, but I’ve enjoyed contributing a couple of articles to Wikipedia. One is about the United States Coast Guard Cutter Sundew and another is about service dogs. The one about service dogs has already been added to and edited by others. The one about the Sundew hasn’t yet, but I’m sure it will, which is fine by me.

Check it out!

–Pete

Daisy is an amazing dog! By around 4:00 this afternoon Daisy finally got up and went outside with the other dogs. She staggered around for a bit, but as the evening progressed, she continued to look and act much better. She still has trouble getting up, but once she’s up, she seems much better and she even ate a full meal. It looks like we might get more time with her after all.

–Pete

In a previous post (that was lost due to a spam attack when this blog was being run by MoveableType), I mentioned that Daisy Mae, a retired Helping Paws service dog that my wife trained 10 years ago, came to live with us again in July of this year. It was in late September that Daisy was diagnosed with hemangiosarcoma, a type of cancer that in Daisy’s case was produced a tumor in her spleen. While it is sometimes possible to prolong the dog’s life by removing the spleen, it was discovered that this wasn’t an option for Daisy since the disease was already depressing her liver function.

The death that is typical of this disease is that the tumor will rupture, and the dog will bleed to death internally in a matter of minutes or hours. On November 26 of 2004, Daisy’s tumor ruptured for the first time. She went from being a happy energetic dog, to a dog that could barely get up. She refused to drink or eat. Amazingly, with in a day, she began to get better and within four days she was back to normal. Our vet told us that occasionally when the tumors rupture, they only rupture partially and then heal up again, sparing the dogs life. That is what apparently happened in that case. He warned us that it would happen again.

This morning it looks like it has happened again. When I got out of bed the dogs raced downstairs to be let out and to be fed. I noticed as the dogs were going out that Daisy wasn’t with them. I knew when I got up that she had been laying on the bed next to me, so I was afraid I was going to go up and find her dead on my bed. Thankfully, she wasn’t dead, but it is clear that she isn’t well. While I was downstairs, she moved from the bed to top of the stairs. When I invited her to come with me downstairs she wagged her tail, but refused to get up, or even lift her head. I brought her some food, which she ate. After she ate, I watched her struggle to her feet and stagger into the bedroom again where she collapsed next to the bed. Using a towel, my wife and I picked her up and placed her back on our bed. She is laying there now.

I’ve already talked to my vet. He thinks she probably ruptured the tumor again and is bleeding internally. For now, we’re going to watch and see if she gets any better, like she did last time. Pray for Daisy. I think she’ll be with God soon.

–Pete

There was an interesting article this morning on fortune.com about the phenomenon called “tin whiskers”. (No. I don’t normally read fortune.com. There was a link to the article on Slashdot.) I know that sounds like a made up phrase, but it isn’t. Tin whiskers are just what the name implies — little thin strands of tin that arise off of tin solder joints in electronic components. These whiskers, being metal, can wreak havoc if they bridge two electronic circuits and create a short.

According to the article, they were discovered in the 1940s and the solution was to mix a very small amount of lead into the solder. The lead inhibited the formation of the whiskers. This worked fine until it was discovered that lead is neuro-toxic to humans and other animals. Now many governments, including the European Union are outlawing lead in electronics. Of course, this is being done with having found a sure-fire replacement to it. What does that mean? The author of the article argues that it means a resurgence in electronics problems due to tin whiskers. He believes it is the new Y2K. What do you think?

–Pete

I know I’ve already reviewed this once, but tonight I took the time to watch most of the first of two DVDs of “Appendices” that were included with the Extended Edition of Return of the King. The contents of this DVD was mostly documentary style programs that talked about the various aspects of creating this amazing film. The documentaries were absolutely fascinating. The included a great deal of background about Tolkein himself, in addition to things like how they built their sets, the use of miniatures, and more. I highly recommend watching them.

–Pete

My colleague Tim Wilson wrote about the newest beta version of NetNewsWire in his blog today. Tim is a huge fan of the relatively new phenomenon of podcasting, as am I. The newest beta of NetNewsWire, which is THE RSS aggregator on the Mac now supports podcasting.

Podcasting deserves an entry all by itself, but I’m out of time for tonight. To see one of the things you can do with podcasting, check out the outstanding website IT Conversations.

This one is going to be a bit “geeky” folks….. Sorry!

I’ve been working on a project at work involving LDAP. This summer we began the process of centralizing our directory services using the Open Directory LDAP server that is part of Mac OS X Server. For my project, I needed to do an LDIF (LDAP Interchange Format) export out of our directory server so I could import it into another server’s LDAP Directory system. Don’t ask why I need to do this, I just do, okay?

Here is the problem: I only needed a subset of the users listed in the directory. That sounds simple, but it turned out to be more difficult than I thought it would be.

After using Apple’s tools built into Workgroup Manager, I found I could select the users I wanted, but I could actually do the export in LDIF format. I also tried several open source LDAP browsing and searching tools. In one case I was only able to download the ENTIRE user list and all of their attributes, which was WAY more then I needed. In the other case, I could select my users, but it would only give me a couple of the attributes for the user and I had no control over which attributes.

Enter the command line tool ldapsearch.

ldapsearch is built in to Mac OS X. You can get an amazing amount of info about it by just reading the man page. The end result for me was that I could use ldapsearch to query the directory server for all of the users that had a particular attribute and the export that list of users, giving me only the attributes that I specifically ask for. It was EXACTLY what the doctor ordered for me.

2005 started out with a memorable ice storm. This wasn’t the typical storm that most of your are thinking of where you have freezing rain and inches of ice coating the trees and powerlines. This storm was a little different. While there was freezing rain, there was also falling ice, which is something you don’t see every day. For several hours ice pellets were falling from the sky, along with some rumbles and cracks of thunder. Weird, huh? When all was said and done, we got about an inch of snow mixed with it, but that snow mixed with the freezing rain and ice pellets really did a number on the roads for the day.

My wife and I were out at our friends farm visiting our horses and mini donkey during the storm. Sheba, the donkey, clearly wasn’t too happy with the storm. When we got her into the barn she was coated with ice. Yes. Those are icicles hanging from her eyebrows. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that before.

Happy 2005 everyone!

–Pete

The Synopsis
Drew Barrymore plays a woman named Lucy, who due to a head injury is unable to process short term memory into long term memory. Adam Sandler plays Henry, a vet at an aquatic animals park that falls in love with her and has to figure out how to win her love again every day because she doesn’t remember the previous day.

The Good
This is a silly, funny, light-hearted romantic comedy that will brighten any evening. The cast of characters is entertaining and the story is fun.

The Bad
Typical of Adam Sandler, he tends to over-act some of his scenes and they end up looking like many of the other scenes you see in a typical Adam Sandler movie. If you like Adam Sandler, that isn’t the worst thing, but it does detract from the quality of the movie.

The Ugly
The androgenous character that works with Henry at the animal park. His (her?) comment about not being sure whether he preferred tacos or sausage left a lot to be desired.

The Bottom Line
This movie is good light-hearted movie to watch with a couple for a quiet, uplifting movie. I definitely recommend it. Incidentally, Sean Astin plays Lucy’s brother. His character is hilarious — a body building obsessed wimp who does steroids and talks with a pronounced lisp.

My friend Brian often reviews movies, CDs, concerts, and other stuff on his blog. I’ve always thought that was pretty cool, so I think I’ll do some of the same here.

The Good
This movie is another masterpiece of cinematography and story telling. If you liked the original movie, you’ll love the extended edition. The extra scenes add quite a bit to the film, especially the parts about the dead men that Aragorn recruits to fight for him.

The Bad
With the added scenes, this is an extremely long movie. It actually spans two DVDs now. Be prepared to spend a long evening watching it.

The Ugly
There were no ugly parts of this film, except of course for the ugly creatures that they were fighting.

The Bottom Line
If you liked the original Return of the King, this one is a must see. If you didn’t like the original Return of the King, what’s wrong with you?

I’m really bummed. Over the last few days, someone has attacked my blog. I’ve been running a slightly out-of-date version of MoveableType, and a comment spammer managed to figure out a way to replace my POSTS with comment spam on a bunch of my entries. ARGH!! Don’t worry though, it was all backed up. Err. Ummm…. OK. Maybe not ALL of it. 🙁 A bunch of it though. I hadn’t backed up in a month or two, and most of those posts are now toast. I even checked Google to see if there were cached versions of the post. There weren’t. Oh well. Lesson learned.

I am taking this opportunity to switch to a new blogging platform. The new system is called WordPress. So far, I really like it. One of the nicest features is the comment moderation. That will help cut down on the comment spamming that has been troubling me for a while now. You’ll have to bear with me a bit as I get WordPress tweaked to the way I want it, but that shouldn’t take too long. Thanks for your patience.

Daisy is our miracle dog! After her last episode, we thought we’d lose her in a matter of days. She is back to near normal again and is doing well. What an amazing dog! She is definitely a Christmas miracle.

There is a nifty little command line utility program that works with Mac OS X, Unix, Linux, and Windows called wget. To quote from SourceForge, “GNU wget is a free software package for retrieving files using HTTP, HTTPS and FTP, the most widely-used Internet protocols. It is a non-interactive commandline tool, so it may easily be called from scripts, cron jobs, terminals without X-Windows support, etc.”

Here in Hopkins, we’re going to use it to help us with our 1 to 1 laptop initiative. All of our students will have access to a website full of help sheets that will have information on all kinds of things about their laptops. We know that some of the kids won’t have Internet access at home, but we still wanted them to have access to those help sheets. This is where wget comes in to the picture.

We have set up the laptops so that once a day, the cron utility will run a shell script that will synchronize a local directory on the laptop with the website that will contain all of the help files. The program that the shell script calls to do the work is wget. wget is smart enough to even compare the dates and file sizes of what it currently has stored locally to what is on the server and then only download files that have changed. Cool huh? You may be thinking, why use a shell script? Why not have cron call wget directly? The answer lies in server load. Since all of these laptops are based off of the same image, if they were all turned on at that same time, it is conceivable that all 650 of them might try to synchronize their directories with the web server simultaneously. In order to keep them from doing that, I have the shell script sleep for a random number of seconds BEFORE it calls wget. That way, they all won’t be hitting the server at the same time.

–Pete

This is a fairly obvious tip, but I’ll post it anyway. I use Apple’s Safari web browser for most of my web browsing needs these days. I also spend a lot of time writing into web based forms, blogs, and web based email. One of the great things about Safari is that is has a built in spell checker, and can do spell checking as you type if you configure it that way. That is very handy for a guy like me.

If you are using Mac OS X Panther, you can turn on Safari’s spell check features by going to the Edit menu and pulling it down to Spelling. You’ll see a check box for turning on spelling as you type.

Happy spell check everyone!

–Pete