Google Street Views does bambi Roadkill

Google took a hit today for flagging just about every site on the internet as harmful.. OK, that we can live with..

However, this article from The Guardian provides details about a google street views van hitting a fawn. Apparently, the views in Street View show the fawn ahead of the van, and then show it sprawled out dead on the road... Oh well, I guess they had venison at the Googleplex that week.

So,

Google Van Bambi
1 0


Hey, at least it wasn't a full grown moose.

Great Book on Computer Security AND it's easy to read

Here is a great book that will help beginners understand computer security. The book is about 30 years old but the information in it is still relevant.

Clifford Stohl is a Berkley Astronomy Professor who found a hacker entering his system. The book details some of the ways that the hacker was able to gain access.

The book is an easy read. Stohl manages to explain things in a way that most people can understand. This is an amazing feat for a guy whose hobbies include Mobius Strips and Klein Bottles. The book is in a narrative/novel format.

Repartitioning a Dell Poweredge T-300 Server using Gparted

One of our clients had purchased a Dell Poweredge T300 server. It came with the operating system partition sized at 12GB. The entire drive was 1 TB. 12Gb is hideously small.

Because of some legacy software they use, we had to re-letter the extended partition from D to G.

As an emergency measure, I had tried moving some of the log files to the extended partition.

The first Dell tech suggested downloading and running Extpart.ext from Dell after running complete backups.

They only had about 60 GB of data and apps but I did 4 sets of backups. (I realize that is a little paranoid but I did them to different media and used MS Backup and another backup app. )

When I called Dell Support again, that tech said that they were having issues with clients who had used extpart. Supposedly it was built for Server 2000 and the later releases of Server 2003 were experiencing instability after an Extpart repartition. He suggested trying Gparted which is the Gnu Partition Editor. It is a free download.

If you are running Windows, you need to download the iso image since that has a linux based OS on it. You then boot to the Gparted CD.

The app first goest through a bunch of command line displays. It asks for the language and then you put in a 0 for an auto launch.

Once the GUI was loaded, it was fairly easy to use. The first task was to move the extended partition to the right. The app said 1 1/2 hours.. OK.. Then when it finished the first pass, it came back with 4 1/2 hours remaining. OK, time to send out for Pizza.

At the end of 4 1/2 hours, it was time to reboot and run it again. I had to then lop off the left side of the extended partition which was unalocated. There was no telling how long that would take. Would it be another 4 hours or 1 second.. WOW.. it was 1 second.

The next step was to reboot and try to extend the primary OS partition. That was another 3 second operation.

Now for the moment of truth... Reboot and see if we get the OS back. During the reboot CHKDSK ran. OK. Reboot again... This time I got a "Directory services Error"

Back to dell support. We started working through things and suddently the light went off. Early in this post, I mentioned that I had re-lettered the extended partition and also moved the log files to that drive.

After the repartitioning, the G Drive had reverted back to being a D drive. I went into Computer Management/Disk Management and Relettered D to G.

One last reboot. The OS came up perfectly. It was the moving of the log files and re-lettering interaction that had screwed things up.

So, we now have a reasonable 150 GB for the primary operating system partition. Great.

If you are ordering a server from Dell, Make sure that you have them make the primary OS partition large enough. Their tendency is to make it as small as possible for some insane reason.

USPS online postage

We are starting to get back into ebay. One pain in doing ebay is mailing the items. We ship most of our items via Priority Mail.

The United States Postal Service has come a long way with their online printing. If you go to www.usps.com you can set up an online account that will allow you to purchase and print priority and express mail postage online.

Tha account is easy to set up. Once you are set up, you can then enter the data and print your labels. You can also do something similar through paypal, however, it appears that you get a bit of a discount when you go directly to the USPS.com site. You will have to copy and paste each address. So, if you are doing a smaller volume, it might be worth the effort to get the discount. You can either pocket the difference or pass the savings along to your customers.

Here are a couple of random thoughts on the process.

• We are printing to plain paper, not labels. The postage uses a full page which can get a little expensive if you are using full page labels. When you tape the label on, be sure not to tape over the barcodes
• With Priority Mail, you get free online tracking. You can set it up to send you an email when the item is delivered. However, that is redundant because you can log onto your account and then check the tracking status of all shipments (and download the data if you'd like)
• You can add insurance when you purchase the postage.
• If you add the customer's email address, you can have emails sent to them regarding tracking status. I began to think about this and decided to put something in my listing templates similar to "Unless otherwise directed, we will have the USPS send tracking information to your email address of record. If you do not want these notifications, please let us know when you win the bid and before payment" -or- "For USPS Priority Mail shipments, we will provide your email address for the postage so that you will receive emails notifying you of the status of your delivery". I don't think that getting the emails is a problem for most people but you can always get the one person who makes a stink about it.
• We are printing the labels on our laser printer. I'm a little paranoid about using the ink jet as some of the inks are water soluble. In other words, if the package gets wet, the lable could be rendered illegible.

The nice thing about the USPS online postage is that you can print the postage and then simply drop the packages at the mailbox at the post office. You can also indicate that you would like your carrier to pick up the packages.