This comment on TheDailyWTF.Com forums made me laugh. It’s either too early in the morning or I’m a geek. Or, I suspect, both.

So somewhere or other on the interwebs I found a link to Crystal Disk Info and downloaded it. Ran it at work on my work laptop and everything was A-OK. I thought to myself, neat little utility, need to remember that for the home computers.

So I brought it home and ran it on my Dell. This is what it told me:

So I wonder how bad this is, and if Dell will send me a new laptop. I dumped it all to an external drive thanks to SyncBack, but just to be safe I think I should call it in.

It says I have 100 reallocated sectors. According to this website a reallocated sector is when the hard drive finds a bad spot on the drive and moves everything off of it to another “reserved” sector. It seems like the other 2 attributes (”Current Pending Sector Count” and “Uncorrectable Sector Count”) are related to it. Just not sure how bad it is. I’m used to server hardware, not consumer stuff. I’m fairly certain that Dell will say it’s ‘within limits’ - I’ll find out. I’m used to server level 3rd tier support - if I felt something looked at me funny I could tell them to send me a new one. I get a feeling it doesn’t work this way for run of the mill consumers

Anyway, to lighten the mood some here’s a picture I ran across. The “Friends with Benefits” benefit summar prospectus. Click to see it full size.

Kevin Holman, who writes a lot about SCOM2007, posted an article some time ago with a bunch of extremely useful SQL queries to use with SCOM2007. Over several installments, I’ll take that file and show you some useful SCOM PoSh tools you can use to - including a set of cmdlets I wrote to help the process out.

First, let’s take the actual file itself. I’ve taken it and cleaned it up some, changing formats and fixing errors I found, and made it into an actual .SQL file you can use inside of SQL Studio.

Download the file, and save it somewhere useful. SQL Studio 2005 likes to save query files in My Documents\SQL Server Management Studio\Projects, and it’s the first place it goes when you select open, so that makes a great choice.

If you’re not used to SQL server, you might want to know how to use this file. When you open up the file, you’ll notice a ton of different queries - surely you don’t want to run them all at once¹ - and you don’t have to. To run an individual query, simply highlight it and either hit F5, or click on the execute button.

That’s all there is to it. If you wanted to take it a step further, you could hardcode the database name and user before the table name (So instead of “from ManagedEntityGenericView” you’d alter it to (In my case, yours may be different) “from OperationsManager.dbo.ManagedEntityGenericView”. That way, you don’t even have to worry about switching which database to use before running it.

Next up, how to make these more useful to you on an every day basis. And if you’re not one to blindly download things, read on for the pasted SQL file.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. And don’t call me Shirley [↩]

System Center Operations Manager 2007 is great, don’t get me wrong. But it does have it’s oddities - and one of those are messages such as these:

Details:Health service ( A63BAA7B-20B1-D6C0-75B9-8A8CE3DD7E02 ) should not generate data about this managed object ( 021971E6-1EFB-E123-7E2A-452ADB511016 ).

Now, we know that Health Service ID is referring to a specific agent, but which one? Luckily, this is fairly easy to figure out. Just hop onto the database server and run the following query:

It should return the DisplayName property of said ID, which is the agent you’re looking for.

In fact, to go a step further - if you have many queries like this, you could write a PowerShell function to simplify things for you - here’s a real rough outline:

Like I said, the script is fairly basic and assumes a trust relationship with the database. It also expects a valid HSID - I’ll clean it up later. Edit the script, entering in your SCOM DB and DB Name if necessary, then add it to your $PROFILE. Then it’s as simple as Get-AgentByHSID “long health service guid” and it does all the heavy lifting.

Just a reminder, when you’re NT account keeps getting locked out every 20 minutes, and you’ve found the server name that is the culprit, but you’ve looked and looked and have absolutely no idea exactly what is causing it.

If it’s a SQL Reporting Services server, make sure you go to http://<ServerName>/Reports, then click on the “My Subscriptions” in the upper right hand corner. Then see the test report you created, 6 months ago, and set to run every 5 minutes. Then see that the delivery method is Windows File Share, and that you’ve entered you’re own credentials, and not those of a service account.

Then smack your forehead, and wonder why you went through 2 days of hell before an offhand remark from a coworker helped you resolve it. Then, go buy him a Twix (I haven’t done that yet, but I will) as thanks.

ARGH!

In the MS Press book “Windows PowerShell Scripting Guide” one of the first scripts listed is how to detect, via WMI & VBScript, whether or not PowerShell is installed.

In the book, it says that the best way to locate PowerShell is to use it’s QFE hotfix ID, which is listed as “928439″. This will only work with Windows Vista. If you’re using Windows XP or Windows 2003, the hotfix number if PowerShell is installed will be “926139″.

I’ve edited the original script included with the MS Press book and have added a function to determine which OS we’re looking at, then search for the corresponding hotfix ID.

In the book, it says that the best way to locate PS is to use it’s QFE hotfix ID, which is “928439″. This is, however, an incorrect hotfix ID, at least now. The most current one is 926139, which is listed as SP3. I assume 928439 was the original number, before SP3 was thought of. Not to mention, they improperly format the WMI query, so even if you used the correct number, it wouldn’t show. Note: This is on Windows XP SP2, I’m unsure if this is on other versions as well.

Although the pendulum of my career goal in life has swung another direction¹ I still need to keep up with my current career and as such I just dropped $160 on Collection 3386: Implementing Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007. Its a self-paced E-learning course from Microsoft - I’ve never taken one of them before, but I really need to get more up to speed with the product - there are huge changes from 2005 and I’m getting lost on what in the old one is what in the new one.

Course is slated to last 10 hours total - I’ll run through it and see what I think, then probably setup a time to take the test for 070-400. I’m a tad nervous - I was an MCSE back in the NT 4.0 days, but never kept current with my certs. Now that I’m a full time IT consultant, I figure it’s in my best interest to re-certify and grab some new certs along the way. The only thing I hate is the $125.00 price of each MS test. But hey, at least it’s all tax-deductible, eh? Normally I wouldn’t care about the certs at all, but if I’m paying for the course I might as well see it through to the end.

I’ll let you know what I think about it.

1. I kinda want to be a truck driver again, it was an insane amount of fun. I loved it - though I didn’t realize until after it was over [↩]

So, I’m waiting for the lovely Mishka to bring me my new laptop, since DHL can’t read and apparently none of them own a cell phone. So I’m kicking around the internet and I happened upon an article called 12 essential blogwriting tips for building a  successful blog - and it got me thinking. I halfass update my main site for my photography. I have an entire domain for that, so I don’t think I need to keep it there.

Maybe it’s time I drop the photo site and instead drop in something helpful - I’ve been messing around with a few ideas, and I think I’ll just go with them and see what happens.

See, I’ve owned Pavleck.Com for 11 years now (Even though the registry says 8. I accidentally let it drop for a few months around 2000, then got it back) and I’ve been changing it here there and everywhere. I think I should see if I can’t do something interesting with it - something that takes my hobbies and puts em out there. But I dunno. We’ll see.

Some people have to re-arrange the furniture every year or so to keep things interesting, I seem to have to re-write my website every year.

Ah, alas, IT is a harsh mistress. She’s never happy with your progress. In a survival situation, such as being lost in the woods, they always tell you to “Remain where you are, that’s the best chance of being rescued”. But in the world that is Information Technology, standing still will cause you to be eaten by the Great Nothing of stale skills - and there’s no Sebastian to save you.¹

In the real world I’m known as an Application, Network, and System Monitoring Architect. I design, test, implement and maintain solutions for both Windows and Unix that help organizations monitor their crucial applications and processes. It’s one of the last great frontiers in IT - I’m a bit of a cowboy, sent out on my own with the community trusting I know how to get the bad guy. I like it, and it works well. For the last few years, I’ve been specializing in Windows technologies - most specifically Operations Manager.

Operations Manager 2000 was the first one, based off of a NetIQ application, and it sucked. Then came Operations Manager 2005 - it sucked much less, but still sucked and use MOM guys were forced as a collective whole to create some very ‘interesting’ solutions to problems. One of the issues with having a fairly open ended script based system is that you’re at the mercy of the admin.

Now, though, MS has released System Center Operations Manager 2007, and I’ve been deep into it for the past few months - and it’s a breath of friggin fresh air.

And I’m just in time too - according to Indeed.Com these new skills will be in a lot more demand then the old:

Another reason I need to up those skills is because it appears that being awesome is in a lot more demand then being decent:

Additionally on the job front I have good news, I was offered a full time position with the consulting firm I’m currently with - which is a wonderful thing. No longer do I have to worry about a current assignment ending early and leaving me high and dry. I get the full benefits of working for a company as an actual employee, but I get to go all over the twin cities and save the day! And more importantly, I have a training budget, so I can update my skillsets and not do it on my own dime. I don’t mind paying for some of it, but I like being able to get paid to learn at least!

Speaking of which, specializing in monitoring is a good way to work yourself out of a job. It takes about 2-3 years tops to come into a new organization, tear their existing solution apart and rebuild a new one from the ground up. When you’re done, you have next to nothing to do but surf the web all day and perform the tiny day to day maintenance tasks - if you’ve done it right, you won’t have a lot to do.  Being a full time consultant now ensures that I don’t have to worry - when it’s time to move on I’ll move on, without a 6 month + job search. When my skills are in demand, they need someone ‘now’, but the problem is it doesn’t creep up all that often.

1. Holy crap, I just made a Neverending Story reference. [↩]

This weekend in St. Paul will be cold. Bitterly cold. How cold is it? Look for yourself - Saturday’s high is expected to be -5 to 0. The high isn’t even going to hit one! Oi! Combine that with the fact my beloved Mishka will be away at some conference or another most of the time and I have a nice chunk of time to dedicate to myself.

So what to do? Play Team Fortress 2 the entire time while eating pizza from Pizza Luce? Only half right! The pizza I shall have, the video game though - I think I’ll be taking a break.

Most people know about the website/blog called PostSecret. Post Secret takes in postcards you send them with your secrets written down and publishes it to the world. It’s a way of getting things off your chest and being a bit of a voyeur into the deep dark secrets help by people. I check it out every Sunday to see the new ones.

But, I thought to myself, I’d love to see a site about breakups. A site that contains letters of anger, hurt, fear, regret and all that negativity that is contained within the human condition. And to that answer, I registered a website called LoatheLetters.Com. Loathe as in “To find repugnant“. Letters as in “Something one person left for another person with writing on it”. I bought the domains, and have been sitting on them for awhile, this weekend I’ll see if I can’t develop them into something.¹

I’ve been mulling over a few things design wise and have settled on something I think will be simplistic, but intuitive. And instead of taking a blog engine, I’ll see if I can’t write the entire system myself in something like ASP.Net. Why? Because it’s what I know - I’m sure Robert will be chastising me soon for not using RoR but hey, he’s the expert on that, not me. So that’s what I’ll be messing with this weekend - trying to get the backend written.

And, if I can find the proper number of layers required to stave off the arctic like cold hanging around I might head out to Medicine Lake to see this years Art Shantys.²I hope you can join me! Or, even better, go instead of me and film it and let me know what it’s like.

1. I also need to work on my DIY Electronic Engineer portal ShadeTreeEE.Com, too [↩]
2. On Sunday Shanty from Misfit Toys will be having a soup kitchen - woot! [↩]