wyckedone.net

ChromePlus browser

I am a huge fan of SRWare’s Iron browser. It’s based on Google Chromium but without all the Google reporting going on in the background. It’s fast but it has it’s quirks. Namely, in order to use any of the plugins, you have to use a buggy beta build.

Another Chromium based browser I found that seems to do a better job with plugins is called ChromePlus. Like Iron, it has all of the background Google communications stripped out. By default, it comes with the following plugins:

Super Drag & Drop
IE Tab
Mouse Gestures

Info about these addons, as well as a couple of other special settings, can be found on their product page. So far, all of the themes and addons that I’ve tried have worked without having to do any kind of configuration editing like I did with Iron.

I have been testing this browser out for a couple of days now. In that short amount of time I’ve found that the only thing keeping me from making it my number one browser is the lack of plugins that I enjoy using in Firefox. This is based mainly on the fact that almost all sites feel as though they load faster compared to IE and Firefox. I’ll post a comparison if I can find a good way to show if ChromePlus actually is faster (and by how much).

09.Jan.10 Browsers, Internet Comments (2)

Phantom DHCP servers

I recently came across this issue when working with the DHCP servers on the domain at work. Instead of 41 DHCP servers, one for each remote location, the DHCP administration snap-in was showing we had 93! That’s just a few too many.

In order to clean up the DHCP server list, I first opened Active Directory Sites & Services. You have to click View and then Show services node in order to see the available AD services. Then, I expanded Services and clicked on NetServices to see what DHCP servers (dHCPClass records) were listed. I removed all of the invalid records (but not the DhcpRoot record) and then checked the DHCP admin utility. All of the invalid servers were still listed.

The next step was to use ADSI Edit in order to edit the DhcpRoot record found in the NetServices container. Using ADSI Edit, I browsed to the CN=NetServices,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=Domain,DC=Domain container, substitute your domain name after DC=, right clicked on DhcpRoot and chose Properties. I found another list of invalid DHCP servers when I opened the dhcpServers property of the DhcpRoot record. Once I deleted the invalid servers there, the DHCP admin utility only listed the valid DHCP servers.

It was odd that the list was wrong to begin with. Any time a DHCP server is taken off line it is unauthorized first. Only one or two of the invalid servers were servers that had been replaced due to a server crash that resulted in reloading Windows Server 2003. I may need to set up a DHCP server, authorize on the domain and then decommission it to see if AD is removing them properly. I hope it was just a minor glitch carried over from when the domain controllers were Windows 2000 based.

Patience is something you admire in the driver behind you and scorn in the one ahead. – Mac McCleary

23.Nov.09 Active Directory, DHCP, Networking, Server 2003, Windows Comments (0)

Where to begin?

Yeahhhhhhh….I’ve really done well keeping up the site. Six months without a single update. Wow.

The short answer to “Why the hell hasn’t this site been updated?” is: Work and Facebook.

After working all summer, putting in a little overtime and tweaking a few settings, the Cisco NAC is finally working (for the most part) as it should. I now have 16 locations being monitored and very few issues. I get a few other projects thrown my way but it’s still not as bad as when I was first trying to get the NAC working.

Facebook, on the other hand, may cause me to go to Internet rehab. Mafia Wars and Yoville sucked me in and haven’t let me out. If you want to friend me, just search for my email address. If you know me, you know what my email address is.

I won’t promise frequent updates but I will try. Maybe keeping up my own site will help me break out of Facebook.

30.Oct.09 General Comments (2)

It’s been a day or two

It’s been a while since I last updated this site. Between my professional and personal life, I’ve had ZERO time to post any updates. Thankfully, that has changed and I am going to be updating on a regular basis.

I miss writing the How-To’s the most. The problem with How-To’s is that there are so many already out there. I’ll just have to find a way to make mine stand out.