I’m always reading up on career related information when it comes along. Given that my chosen field of work/study is in Information Technology (IT), things change as quick as the Florida weather and I try and keep up with career related information to ensure I’m not heading off the deep end and I’m keeping up with skills that are needed out there ( as well as the salary - can’t be left behind there!). No sense in sharpening skills that aren’t needed anymore (time is of the essence, better spent on what is needed)!

Here are some links to some useful current career information (I’m still reading through them myself - this post is my placeholder):

2008 Salary Report
- This is great for employees and managers/business executives/owners. If you lack time, hop straight to the summary (page 11) which gives a good overview of the article.

Business Skills for the Technical Professional
Planning to climb up the food chain? Good information here. Speaking of climbing the food chain, here’s good joke I read the other day:

A pheasant was standing in a field chatting with a bull.
“I would love to be able to get to the top of that tree,”
sighed the pheasant, “but I haven’t got the energy.”
“Well, why don’t you nibble on some of my droppings?”
replied the bull. “They’re packed with nutrients.” The
pheasant pecked at a lump of dung and found that it
actually gave him enough strength to reach the first
branch of the tree. The next day, after eating some more
dung, he reached the second branch. And so on.
Finally, after a fourth night, there he was proudly perched
at the top of the tree, whereupon he was spotted by a
farmer who dashed into the farmhouse, emerged with a
shotgun, and shot the pheasant right out of the tree.

Moral of the story: Bullshit might get you to the top,
but it won’t keep you there.

Ha!, so true…

Update : Found a couple more that were interesting reads:
Network World: High-tech jobs growing across U.S.

PARADE: What People Earn, our annual report.
- Interesting to skim through and also puts things into perspective (all things relative). Mentioned as ‘good jobs for now’: Wireless, Security, Energy, Accounting, Database Admin. Mentioned as ‘good jobs for the future’: IT, Law, and New Media.

Feel free to email me or post a reply.
Email: c h u c k (at) g o f i x i t (dot) c o m
_____________________________________________
Comments on this web site are moderated, so feel free to post - just don’t sweat it when it takes me a few hours to approve

Copyright gofixit.com 2005 - 2008

I guess the real reason I don’t agree with this is best summed up by a posting I read on this issue over at rgov.org:

“It offends me that Road Runner is trying to profit off of its customers’ typos, especially at the risk of interrupting customers’ software that may rely on NXDOMAIN DNS requests.”

If I wanted this service, I should have been asked to opt-in! Instead we’re thrown into it and have to search the web for answers. Turns out, there is supposedly a way to opt out from the service: link. I’ve disabled the service - just waiting to see if it takes or not.

If I had wanted this functionality, I would have configured opendns or similar. Sheesh…

References:
rgov
slashdot

Update : Google is doing this as well - with their toolbar version 5. To remove it
- Click the wrench icon on the Google Toolbar.
- In the Options window, select the Search tab.
- Uncheck the box next to Browse by name in the address bar.
- Click Save.

Feel free to email me or post a reply.
Email: c h u c k (at) g o f i x i t (dot) c o m
_____________________________________________
Comments on this web site are moderated, so feel free to post - just don’t sweat it when it takes me a few hours to approve

Copyright gofixit.com 2005 - 2008

View Event Logs in Linux. How?

Download and install Snare Agent for Windows (I like Snare but there are other apps that send your event logs via syslogs so pick your fav).

On Windows Machine:
Configure Snare (if you use something else configure it- these parameters are basic to any agent that sends syslogs over the network).
– Click start, programs, Intersect Alliance, Snare for Windows
– Network Configuration
– Destination Snare Server address (set this to the linux server ip address).
– Destination Port: 514
– SYSLOG Facility: Local1
– SYSLOG Priority: Information

Click Change Configuration.

Click Apply the Latest Audit Configuration (on the left hand nav bar).
Ok, the Windows part is done.

Linux Configuration (assuming you are using a redhat-ish system; mine is CentOS):
cd /var/log
mkdir win2k3vm1-logs
cd win2k3vm1-logs
touch win2kvm1.log
Add this line to your /etc/syslog.conf
local1.* /var/log/win2k3vm1-logs/
Modify SYSLOGD_OPTIONS in /etc/sysconfig/syslog with the following:
SYSLOGD_OPTIONS=”-m 0 -r -x” (this allows for remote syslogs to head your way)
/etc/init.d/syslog restart

Ok. We are done. Log on and log out of the Windows machine.

On your linux machine, check the file in your log directory to see if it filled up a little:
ls -l /var/log/win2k3vm1-logs/win2kvm1.log
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 11044 Mar 19 10:57 /var/log/win2k3vm1-logs/win2kvm1.log
Looking good. (if it shows zero bytes then up arrow and return and see if it populates -it should)
cat /var/log/win2k3vm1-logs/win2kvm1.log
Mar 19 10:55:55 10.10.1.20 win2k3vm1 MSWinEventLog 1 Security 28 Wed Mar 19 10:55:53 2008 528 Security AdministratorUser Success Audit WIN2K3VM1 Logon/Logoff Successful Logon: User Name: Administrator Domain: WIN2K3VM1 Logon ID: (0×0,0×33117A) Logon Type: 10 Logon Process: User32 Authentication Package: Negotiate Workstation Name: WIN2K3VM1 Logon GUID: - Caller User Name: WIN2K3VM1$ Caller Domain: WORKGROUP Caller Logon ID: (0×0,0×3E7) Caller Process ID: 2088 Transited Services: - Source Network Address: 10.10.1.136 Source Port: 10498 14
[Logs were clipped purposefully]

Very cool - indeed. I did this sometime ago at one of my old jobs and had the need to do it again. So to help me out in the future, I’ve posted it here and hope it helps some of you too!

You can see how helpful this information is. The log above is a Logon/Logoff Security event. Since my Windows server has a public facing NIC (kind of, it’s fronted by a NAT device with port forwarding on it for some protection) I like to have these logs available to me for searching, security purposes, etc.

Next, I plan to create a logwatch filter that will summarize this information into my once a day logwatch emails I receive so the information gets pushed to me and I don’t have to check these manually (ugh..).

Regards..
cjs

Source(s):
http://troy.jdmz.net/syslogwin/ - I had forgotten the trick to modify the syslogd options and found the information on this page to be helpful.
http://www.intersectalliance.com/projects/index.html - Snare

Feel free to email me or post a reply.
Email: c h u c k (at) g o f i x i t (dot) c o m
_____________________________________________
Comments on this web site are moderated, so feel free to post - just don’t sweat it when it takes me a few hours to approve

Copyright gofixit.com 2005 - 2008

I had a basic need to convert a WebEx recording (wrf) to any video type (I was hoping for avi) but any will do. After searching the internet high and low I found a small tidbit of info that I’m posting here as a placeholder for myself - but sharing in case anyone else has this same issue.

Anyhow, to convert a wrf to wmv, download WebEx’s Recording Editor. Click here for the direct link to the file or Click here for the page that hosts the file (in case the file is renamed, etc.). After you install the WebEx Recording Editor, open your target wrf file and allow it to load in. Then, Click File ‘Export to’ and then select a file name. There’s a few options available but they were of little importance to me (like Windows Media version, audio codec, etc.) so I went with the defaults. The conversion worked like a champ for me.

My main purpose for converting the files is so that I can take the WebEx proprietary files and make them portable. I’ll be placing the converted wmv files on my portable media player (which currently is a Creative Zen Vision M 30gb). Then after they are on the player, I’ll be watching the presentations anytime I have some spare cycles in the next few days - actually increasing my productivity

For those of you who were hoping to find a conversion to avi or mp4, you can now (using the wmv file) convert it one step further (as there are a million wmv to avi or mp4 utilities out there). I’ve listed a couple items below to get you the mp4 or avi:
For an mp4 file, here’s a list of software.
For an avi file, here’s a list of software.

Feel free to email me or post a reply.
Email: c h u c k (at) g o f i x i t (dot) c o m
_____________________________________________
Comments on this web site are moderated, so feel free to post - just don’t sweat it when it takes me a few hours to approve

Copyright gofixit.com 2005 - 2008

Recently I modified a wireless router by splashing ddwrt on to it. That wasn’t enough for me though! I was looking through the Sunday ads and noted that Circuit City had the WHR-G125 on sale for 25 bucks (after rebates) 50 bucks (before rebates). I rolled the dice and went and acquired one.

I got home and pretty much followed the same steps in my original post. The only mods to that plan were that I used ddwrt’s special code specific for the WHR-G125 ( found here ) and I also downloaded a different version of firmware since I wanted to tinker with vpn capabilities (file named “dd-wrt.v24_vpn_whr-g125.bin”). If you visited the ddwrt firmware site using my link above, you’ll notice that it’s beta code. I wasn’t all that thrilled about using beta code for this but since it’s a side project to my previous pet project, I figured I’d I’ll roll with it. The firmware upgrade was just as easy as the first. I also made the same changes as done in my first project.

With that out of the way I was ready to tackle vpn. I had a big decision to make - pptp or openssl. For now, I went with pptp because I wanted to tinker with my Windows Mobile 5 phone using pptp and see how that went. I also wanted to test my wife’s Iphone using pptp and see how these devices work using the common protocol. I do understand that pptp is weak for vpn but that is what is available on all the components I wish to test with. Next I may upgrade to openssl but I had the itch to try pptp first. Just had to get that sidebar out of the way.

This leads me to one other item that is a little different that I haven’t explained yet and will now. My isp is a cable provider. I get X number of ip addresses available to me to use. So, my physical architecture is
(X below is private network address space; on the wan side of each connected router and pc, I receive a public dhcp address from my provider)
cable modem ->
hub -> (each item below plugs into the hub**)
-> WHR-G125 LAN -> x.x.2.x/24
-> WHR-HP-G54 -> x.x.1.x/24
-> PC (with dual nics; the other nic plugs into subnet 1 above - I have a couple different routing configs for the pc depending on what I am testing that determine whether I route through the private network or out the public network). This works out nice if you need to do some testing. I also have a virtual machine that is latched on to the public nic for additional testing. Ok, so I got a little off topic, but I wanted to give you an idea of what my network layout is.
** hubs are great for packet sniffing and I tend to do that from time to time to troubleshoot problems or just have a little look.

With that out of the way, now you understand that on the wan of this router I receive a completely different ip address and on the lan side I have assigned subnet 2. Subnet 2 and Subnet 1 do not currently communicate and that is more for a couple reasons. First, security - this is somethig I am toying with and it may be unsecure at times. Second, it’s lab work (play time, whatever you wish to call it) so I’d rather not interfere with my production traffic, if you will. I don’t need my wife opening sev 1 tickets with me - I already have plenty of tickets open and unresolved they are in workaround though

Back to the router. I configured PPTP on the router using the following guide.
PPTP Server Configuration
It’s r-e-a-l-l-y simple to follow so no need to duplicate here.

I then configured my mobile phone using these instructions:
Windows Mobile 5 pptp configuration instructions

I was then able to vpn in from my cell phone (Windows Mobile 5 Treo) and hit the login page of the router! Sweet! I then configured my wife’s Iphone and it was also able to hit the login page of the router. Of course, I also tried a windows xp machine and that worked too! That was too simple to setup!

Next, I’ll most likely be tackling OpenSSL VPN. Before doing that, I’m going to save a backup of my current configuration so I can roll back to this one since I know it works and I know I’ll be using it with my cell phone to tinker.

References:
Buffalo WHR-G125
ddwrt
pptp

Feel free to email me or post a reply.
Email: c h u c k (at) g o f i x i t (dot) c o m
_____________________________________________
Comments on this web site are moderated, so feel free to post - just don’t sweat it when it takes me a few hours to approve

Copyright gofixit.com 2005 - 2008