Matt Broadstock

February 2006 - Posts

• Rock Chalk Jayhawk!

  Well, I didn't think it would happen after their 3-4 start but my KU Jayhawks are in the Top 25 for the first time this year. They have rattled off 7 straght wins (including a fantastic come-from-behind win against Oklahoma) and are 14-2 after their rough start.  And they practically gave away those two losses in the last few minutes. I guess a season like this is to be expected when your top 7 scorers are freshmen and sophmores. Hopefully they are getting their act together so they'll be ready come tourney time. I'm not sure I can handle another Bucknell debacle... Share this post:                                        Posted Feb 13 2006, 03:22 PM by Matt Broadstock with no comments Filed under: Misc

• Gmail Chat??

  I found this article on Betanews about IM integration with Gmail but I haven't been able to actually find the download yet. It sounds like it will operate 100% via the web so nothing to install locally. It almost sounds like this adds Google Talk functionality directly into Gmail. When I find a download for it I will try it out and post on how it works. I've had Google Talk installed for a while but still use MSN Messenger 99% of the time.  Update: apparently Google Talk upgraded itself this morning on my system (I vaguely remember some popup coming up when I logged on this morning) and everything is setup already. I now see all of my GMail contacts in Google Talk (which was not the way it was before). Also, I now have a Chats folder in GMail that is used to store any Google Talk conversations that I have. Share this post:                                        Posted Feb 07 2006, 06:36 PM by Matt Broadstock with no comments Filed under: Misc

• Published issues list of IE7 Beta2

  I'm just glad to know that I'm not the only one who can't get FTP to work. I tried their fix (putting the username/password directly in the URL) with no success. My issue with editing my blogs in a WYSIWYG window are apparently a known issue as well. http://msdn.microsoft.com/ie/releasenotes/default.aspx Update: I was able to connect via FTP uby specifying it in the URL but I still can't transfer files like I can with IE6. No matter what option I select for "Enable Folder view for FTP sites" it looks the same. Share this post:                                        Posted Feb 06 2006, 07:31 PM by Matt Broadstock with 1 comment(s)

• Problems embedding pictures in my blog

  I was going to post on some of the new File Server Management features available in R2 but I can't get any picture embedded in my post. I'll keep messing around with it and see if I can get it working. I'm going to post a test attachment to this blogpost to see how that works compared to embedded pics. Share this post:                                        Posted Feb 06 2006, 04:31 PM by Matt Broadstock with no comments Filed under: Active Directory

• VMWare GSX is free now!

  VMWare is replacing their GSX line with a product called "VMWare Server" and it will now be free. I'm planning to build a new test server at home before too long and I think I'll give it a go. I was planning to use MS Virtual Server 2005 but I want to give this a try and see how it goes. If you don't want to run VMWare on a host operating system, you will still need to purchase ESX. I'm guessing VMWare is starting to feel some pressure from Microsoft in the virtual server market. Share this post:                                        Posted Feb 06 2006, 01:15 PM by Matt Broadstock with no comments

• Interesting article on what to really worry about concerning viruses

  I've thought this for a while. There is more cost for companies in the panic associated with a new virus than damage done by the viruses themselves. http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/02/03/sophos_graham_cluley_end_of_virus_era/ Share this post:                                        Posted Feb 06 2006, 12:19 AM by Matt Broadstock with no comments

• Advantage of IE over Firefox

  One of the things that I really like about IE compared to Firefox is the fact that I am able to spawn multiple processes of IE at the same time. With Firefox, even if you have multiple windows open at one time they are all loaded into a single process. There are a couple of advantages to this: If a webpage locks up the browser and I need to kill the process, I only lose the pages in that current window. Authentication - This is especially useful while doing website development. I can have one window that is logged onto a website and another that is unauthenticated. Or, I can logon to the same website as different users with different priviledge levels. One thing to keep in mind, if you do a "Open New Window" in IE, that new window will be part of the same process as the window it was started from. So, if you want to launch IE in a separate process you need to relaunch it from your IE shortcut. Depending on what I am doing I may or may not want the new window to be part of an existing IE process. It's nice to have that flexibility. Now, I still love Firefox and will continue to use it until IE7 is fully released. Unless Microsoft really screws things up with IE7, it is going to be a no-brainer for me to use it exclusively. Whether at work or at home, I probably have an average of 20-25 webpages open at a given time. I know a lot of people that find this excessive but I spend a lot of time doing research on coding or utilities and I find it handy to get all of the relevant info open at one time so I can make comparisons on what is available. Share this post:                                        Posted Feb 05 2006, 10:32 AM by Matt Broadstock with no comments

• Is this blog skin ok?

  Just wondering if anyone has any feedback on whether the dark colors on this blog make it difficult to read... I tried out a few of the skins and figured I'd give this one a go for a while. Share this post:                                        Posted Feb 03 2006, 03:14 AM by Matt Broadstock with 2 comment(s)

• Fun with dotnetnuke

  Welp, I'm in the process of moving my business website (www.smsutils.com) to a new web provider and upgrading from DNN 2.1.1 to DNN 4.0.2. Unfortunately they weren't able to perform an upgrade so I've been spending a lot of time rebuilding the site from scratch. Moving the web content is a bit of a pain but I think getting all of the user accounts recreated is going to be the biggest pain. I may get lazy and just send a message to everyone asking them to recreate their account themselves.... I am really looking forward to getting the new site complete because I have a bunch of VBScripts that I plan to post on the new site (I'll blog about them here and provide links). Most of them are SMS related but I have a bunch of scripts that do stuff all over the board. Here are some examples of a few scripts I have ready to post: SMS Collection/AD Group creation HTA - If you have your SMS heirarchy split up into separate sites and use AD groups for collection membership, this will save you a tons of time. At one client, the time to setup all the new collections and groups for a new advertisement went from about 2 hours to about 30 seconds. SMS Advert/Coll/Package finder - Ever spend 10 minutes navigating through the SMS console trying to find a collection that got buried deep in the collection heirarchy? This HTA will allow you to enter a Advertisement, Collection, or Package by either name or ID and it will show you the full path to it. Distribution Point Package summarizer - This HTA will find any cases where a package has failed to deploy to a DP for some reason. Find "bad" Packages/Programs - This VBScript will process every Program that you have setup in SMS and find the source folder for the Package that it associated with. It will then parse the command-line for the Program and make sure that all of the files are actually *in* the source folder (MSI, MST, MSP, BAT, VBS, EXE, etc). Hopefully I get the new website up within the next week or two so I can get everything posted and put together some documentation on each of the scripts. Like I said, I have a bunch of other ones that I think people will find very useful as well (i.e generic functions for XML parsing). Share this post:                                        Posted Feb 03 2006, 02:58 AM by Matt Broadstock with no comments Filed under: Active Directory, SMS, Scripting - VBScript, Web, SMSUtils

• Awesome that so many people are hitting the site

  Brian has had a few posts recently about how well the website is doing. I'm pumped that things are looking so good. Brian has put a lot of time into the site without asking for anything in return. I think it is fantastic that so many people out there are willing to take the time to create a blogcast so they can share their specialized knowledge with everyone. I myself have become more active in blogging but (I must admit) I have yet to post an actual blogcast on the site. I *must* remedy this soon!! I plan to move my technical articles that I posted on my myitforum blog over to Brian's site in the next few days and I will be doing the majority of my blogging here from now on. I know the site is primarily for blogcasts but I'm going to help out however I can in the meantime. Share this post:                                        Posted Feb 03 2006, 02:52 AM by Matt Broadstock with no comments

• IE7 update

  So far everything is going very will with my IE7 testing. I have run into 4 annoyances so far but I guess that's to be expected from a beta. 1. I can't get into my blog admin page on myitforum. Whenever I log in, I can only get the the page to do a new blog post--I can't get to my articles or any of the other admin tabs. Everything is working fine on this site so it must be some sort of incompatibility with the blog engine on that site. They are using a nice blogging engine but there must be some issue with it. 2. I'm not seeing it as bad right now but I've run into some weird display issues when posting new blogs on both this blog and on myitforum. If I do a backspace because I mistype something (which I do a lot!) the display isn't updated properly for quite some time. So, I am having to count the number of backspaces that I do so I know where I am actually typing. 3. I keep getting the following message in gmail. Everything is working fine though. I've cleared out my cache a few times but the message keeps coming back. Your browser's cache is full and may interfere with your Gmail experience. 4. FTP doesn't seem to work in the browser. I've only tried one site but I can get to it via IE6 or Firefox without any problems. I haven't done a lot of digging into the IE options yet so maybe there is just something that I haveto reconfigure. I know that IE7 is supposed to be a lot more locked down by default so maybe that is the problem. Here is the FTP error I am getting. I'll try to dig into a bit: Microsoft FTP Service You have reached an invalid ftp location. You do not have access to this folder. Please correct your ftp address and try again. Share this post:                                        Posted Feb 01 2006, 01:41 PM by Matt Broadstock with no comments Filed under: Windows - Workstation