IBlogger<MuteThis>.Blog();

Advanced Windows Vista Firewall Configuration

mutethis@gmail.com — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 13:46:00 GMT

How would you like to be able to turn your Windows firewall off when your on the domain and then on when your in public or private networks? Seems pretty easy, just open up and turn on/off at will, nope, it's easier than that, this can be automated. Wouldn't it be neat if you could step on program (iTunes maybe) at the office, but allow it access from public and private networks? Would you like to be able to configure some inbound and outbound firewall rules and you think the home user interface bites???

Wf.msc to the rescue! This is one snap-inthat makes me think that the Windows Firewall might not be as bad as it looks. Instead of only have rules on a per interface basis, you can set rules on a per network type basis. You can have simple stuff like, "when I'm on the domain, turn the firewall off", or you can be trickier and say "when I'm on the domain, deny iTunes access to the network". You can separately configure inbound and outbound on a per network type basis.

From this snap-in, you can also do exciting things like make rules that specify "only on domain and wireless", "only for this source and that destination address" and "only from this comptuer or user".

How cool is that?? Needless to say, the Windows Firewall is looking pretty stout to me right now. I'm still digging around in the firewall snap-in, but I also see a Monitoring node that needs to be explored!

New Version of iTunes!!!

mutethis@gmail.com — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 02:43:00 GMT

Great news everyone, iTunes 7.1 is now available for download. Good thing too, 7.0 had issues on Vista.

Vista Ultimate Extras

mutethis@gmail.com — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 03:54:00 GMT

They're finally here, Vista Ultimate Extras!!!

Quickly everyone, the action figures are back!

mutethis@gmail.com — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 14:34:00 GMT

Nope, you didn't guess it... Microsoft has previously released four limited-edition developer action figures, the "Source Fource". In order to receive one of these highly coveted action figures, you must be one of the first five thousand people to attend two live web casts in a given month. I have all of the original four. It looks like Microsoft snuck three more into play without my noticing (that didn't take much effort).

The first of the new action figures is "ISV Super Gal" who has been placed into eligibility for two months, December 06 and January 07. I doubt I'll be getting her, but hopefully I'll be able to get the other two. Yes, I'm collecting dolls0... Wait, theses are action figures :)

Here is the homepage:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/events/hero/default.aspx

For those that are really interested, here is the Source Fource bio page:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/events/hero/sfbio/

To find a live webcast, here is the MSDN Live Webcast Calendar:
http://www.microsoft.com/events/webcasts/calendar/monthview.aspx

I believe that any live webcast counts, but I only watch the Developer track.

Happy hunting!

Battle of the office signatures

mutethis@gmail.com — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 15:53:00 GMT

Yesterday I received an email from a colleague with a rather long signature. This prompted me to create my own signature, a better and longer signature!
Here it is :-)

------------
Bennett Dill
Application Architect
Interactive Solutions
Technology Solutions
Foo, Inc.
Microsoft MCAD.Net
Email - bennett.dill@foo.com
Office - (513) 555-7577
Fax - (513) 555-7733
Supervisor - Mike Bar
Supervisors Email - mike.bar@foo.com
Supervisors Supervisor - Jeff BigWig
Supervisors Supervisor Email - jeff.bigwig@foo.com
Irc - MuteThis
www.foo.com
www.foowidgets.com
irc.efnet.net: #asp, #asp.net, #c#, #sql, #css, #mscorlib
Favorite Color: Blue
6'3" Hazel Eyes, Married not dead
I enjoy running and walks in the park, I'm a dog lover and enjoy music
How am I doing? noreply@foo.com

Windows Vista Sync, Cool yet lacking

mutethis@gmail.com — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 00:55:00 GMT

At my house I have a file server and a couple laptops. Both laptops are running Windows Vista Ultimate. I wanted to be cool and post the build or something cool like that, but Control Panel -> System and Maintenance -> Find which version of Windows you are using (this appears to be the same link as "Welcome Center") yielded nothing more than "Windows Vista Ultimate" with my CPU, ram, video card and computer name. I tried the handy "Show more details" arrow and landed on "Control Panel\System and Maintenance\System" with a heading of "View basic information about your computer". Nothing more about the OS version there, but a friendly note was present asking me to refresh my "Windows Experience Index" because "New hardware detected".

Anyway, I digress... On my wife's laptop, I was setting up iTunes (don't get me started), and had to map a network drive. Once I was mapped iTunes started cranking away. I saw the handy "Sync" option when setting up the network drive, so I went back to look at it. Looks like off line files. Ok, I'll bite. I set it up with a few clicks and everything looks good. My large library took a while to sync, but after that the files were totally available offline.

Man, that's good stuff. I take the wife's iPod and prepare it for a sync, plug it in and go... go... go!!! What's going on, this is taking forever... I pop open the task manager and look at the network traffic, Vista has decided that even though the library is a synced folder, that it wants to copy each file from the network instead of using the local version since the network is currently online. As soon as I saw this, I killed the wireless connection and Vista seamlessly switched to the synced files mid copy (yes, I like to push my luck and I don't dare cancel an iTunes sync). After doing this the sync ran at full speed :)

Why am I rambling on? It just seems to me that Vista would favor the local copy over the network copy and if it "must", that it should simply do a version check before each transfer and if the network version is newer, update the cache before using the local version. Maybe that's a pipe dream though...

One more thing, where are my synced files located? This is a two part question:

Part 1: My wife’s machine had a mapped drive to get to the synced files, so it was easy to drill down to them via "Computer" (I miss My Computer). What is the significance of this? If I have synced files on a non-mapped drive, which you can do easily, they don't show up anywhere but in the sync center "Control Panel\Network and Internet\Sync Center\Offline Files". You can access the synced files by typing in \\server\share while offline, but it seems to me that all synced paths should somehow be conveniently anchored in a section in "Computer"?

Part 2: Where is Vista storing the network files on my local machine? I know this is stupid, but I like to know these things. I poked around the sync center and didn't see anything, so I gave up because I didn't feel like googling it :)

What tables don't have any foreign keys?

mutethis@gmail.com — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 19:40:00 GMT

Using MSSQL 2005 INFORMATION_SCHEMA system views to access underlying table information.

IRC

mutethis@gmail.com — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 23:21:00 GMT

IRC is a great resource for developers if they can get past the surface.