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Why fight it?

Sometimes you just can’t fight the current. I am desperately trying to produce some results for a client but now Amy is home so I’m refereeing the fights between Evan and Amy. Dinner tonight is pork roast and homemade mashed potatoes so I type a line of code and check the stove. Type a line of code, answer a question for Tommy ("When did the walls get painted?") Type a line of code, install a Firefox plugin I need for faster development (Firebug wasn’t on this machine).

This is not much different than working in a cube farm on a Friday before a holiday and having constant interruptions from fellow employees. It is a difficult way to work and far from ideal but if I remember to stay calm, not eat any children, and breathe, the work will get done.

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Sarah Palin Slaughtered

Russ made my eyes water with this homage to the WKRP Thanksgiving Turkey Drop. I don’t think Saturday Night Live could have written this interview with Sarah Palin and her other brother Daryl in the background any better. Her closing line nailed it. Just what was the cameraman thinking?

Sources: Original post from The Huffington Post and the direct link to the Youtube video.

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Feeling Old

Feeling old is when taking three steps across the kitchen to the coffee maker causes you to wince. For the past couple of days, I have had excruciating pain in my lower back. The pain is concentrated in my lower left back just above my buttocks but I also feel it in my left shoulder blade. I thought it was related to sleeping on that horrid air mattress at Frozen Head since I could not find my RidgeRest. I thought my back would improve but it seems to be worsening. I don’t exercise. I don’t stretch. All I do is sit all day long typing. The dogs and Evan make it difficult to stretch but I think that I must return to 20 minutes in the evening and 20 minutes in the morning. I never felt better than I did when I was stretching in the morning and evening.

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Vista Fails to Connect to Samba

I was (still am) a huge fan of the e-smith gateway server (now SME Server see also http://contribs.org) which was a very simplistic way to take almost any computer and have it up and running as a email, web, database server and more in under 2 hours. It has reliably been my development server of choice for years although my next nix server is likely to be Ubuntu.

I am having a problem getting Vista to authenticate across the network to allow me to browse directories and work on my development files. As it turns out, the default Vista security is set to use only NTLMv2 authentication. Samba can’t handle this. One solution is:

To solve the problem run secpol.msc to get into the Local Security Policy screen. Goto "Security Options" then find "Network Security: LAN Manager authentcation level." Change it from "NTVLM2 responses only" to "LM and NTLM – use NTLMv2 session security if negociated”.

Now, to exasperate the problem, Vista Home Premium does not have secpol.msc. Instead you must manually edit the registry. Use caution when editing the registry! Run regedit. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa. Look for the key LmCompatibilityLevel, right click, choose modify, and change the number to the appropriate value of 0 to 5.

0 – Clients use LM and NTLM authentication, but they never use NTLMv2 session security. Domain controllers accept LM, NTLM, and NTLMv2 authentication.

1 – Clients use LM and NTLM authentication, and they use NTLMv2 session security if the server supports it. Domain controllers accept LM, NTLM, and NTLMv2 authentication.

2 – Clients use only NTLM authentication, and they use NTLMv2 session security if the server supports it. Domain controller accepts LM, NTLM, and NTLMv2 authentication.

3 – Clients use only NTLMv2 authentication, and they use NTLMv2 session security if the server supports it. Domain controllers accept LM, NTLM, and NTLMv2 authentication.

4 – Clients use only NTLMv2 authentication, and they use NTLMv2 session security if the server supports it. Domain controller refuses LM authentication responses, but it accepts NTLM and NTLMv2.

5 – Clients use only NTLMv2 authentication, and they use NTLMv2 session security if the server supports it. Domain controller refuses LM and NTLM authentication responses, but it accepts NTLMv2.

[Source, Microsoft TechNet, LmCompatibilityLevel]

In this case, to support Samba, I want the value to change from the default of 3 to 1.

After doing this, reboot for the change to take affect. Next, read Security Watch The Most Misunderstood Windows Security Setting of All Time.

See also.

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On Hold Friday

I’m trying desperately to get some major code knocked out today. But the day has begun with me listening to hold music which cuts my coding rate in half. I hate having to sit on the phone.

Late this afternoon, in a panic, I will pack for a weekend of camping with Noah and Sarah. This weekend is our Scout troop’s Thanksgiving camping trip. Families are invited and we will cook a turkey and ham in a cardboard box oven. The scouts will build catapults and play games including shooting water balloons at the adult leaders. I have skipped the past 4 months of events. Since my daughter is attending and I think I have taken a bit of ownership on the catapults, I have to be on this trip. Besides, I really miss the camping plus getting into nature dramatically improves improves cognitive function in the brain.

Update: Important phone calls complete. Important email sent. Distracting Internet outage resolved. Cat about to be flung across room. Bug in my code fixed. Moving onto feature requests.