Monthly Archive for July, 2006

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Security articles from TFWM

Published on July 23, 2006 in Security. 0 Comments

I came across some articles on church security from Technologies For Worship Magazine, and they are mildly informative. They are, however just like what most magazines end up doing with their articles on practical areas. They avoid real useful information.

It isn’t as bad as the security and procedures articles where they focus on trying to make you feel bad about yourself rather than actually help you accomplish anything, but it isn’t much better. They are a more cursory overview of things you really MUST look over, but in a vague sort of way.

This is why I do a security section in my blog and am looking for others who do as well. Nothing brings anybody into practicality than working in the trenches (so to speak).

I am looking through some of their other stuff, but you might as well steer of the Internet technology section unless you need an internet glossary from 1996. There is some good stuff around, but mainly in areas where I am not up for input.

While I am posting this I ought to add another link to my church security director bait post ;)

The Gaffer Tape Cams

Published on July 22, 2006 in Security. 0 Comments

I have 2 cameras mounted on their holders but just setting on high platforms (the mounts give them better aiming and let them dissipate heat better). Another one is screwed down into a high platform. I have several mounted to walls (you can see examples here). We even have a DCS-900w mounted to a ceiling tile (the 900 series has a mounting hole on the top in addition to the standard bottom mounting hole to make this very easy). However, there are two camera mounts that seem to elicit the most interest.

We have a large worship center. The ceiling of the room is not really accessible nor available for camera mounting. The walls are foot thick steel reinforced concrete and I am not mounting anything into them. Most other mountable areas would cause the cameras to be distracting. There is, however, a catwalk. That is where I decided to mount these cameras.

GafferTapeCams.jpg

Continue reading ‘The Gaffer Tape Cams’

The “End of Summer” Crunch

Published on July 22, 2006 in Misc Othr Stuf. 0 Comments

I just read Stuart Cowen’s post about his list of tasks before school starts.

Most of our activities happening right now are just the typical background noise of our regular tasks.

Several on staff have finally given up on living off of laptops (I use my laptop constantly, but it is no match for a desk system to fall home) and are requesting PCs.
We are finishing up tasks before the Daycare and Mother’s Morning Out programs in the church building start up again.

We have the Administrative office annex running off of a long range wireless system and are looking at connecting the school (3mi by direct shot) and the satellite campus (10.5 mi by direct shot) by 100Mb wireless connections.

We need to get the rest of the smart switches configured and installed toreplace the old switches. We actually had to buy USB to Serial adapters so we could configure them. Who uses serial cables anymore, especially on laptops? Yet all this equipment still requires them.

We have 25 new laptops coming in for the school and they all need configured.

We need to reconfigure the school’s mail server since its C: drive is filling up.

Just received the replacement parts for one of the projectors.

Who else has a big list of stuff to finish before the kids head back to school?

Your printer is bothering my camera

Published on July 21, 2006 in Techie. 1 Comment

You would normally think that the only arguments a printer would have with a camera would be over color depth or image quality. Not so.

I have been taking some time lately to better document our network. Lanspy has been a very helpful tool for this, as have Excel and my tendency to be a bit of an anal neat freak when it comes to organizing information.

One of the DCS-900w cameras suffered a blow recently, and I believe it was from a severe power hit we took at the church. The camera still works when cabled, but the wireless connection is most likely toast. We have other locations where it can be used with an ethernet cable so even if we are unable to fix it I can still put it to use.

The interesting part of the problem was that when I went to test it by visiting its IP address with my browser I found a printer there instead. The printer had been used by an employee who left back in November and apparently nobody had been using it since then. It was hooked up to a new employee’s computer earlier this week and its wireless capabilities were unkowingly activated and it took its place on the same IP address as my camera. I reconfigured it to another address until I could determine whether it needed network address and then moved the camera as well.

A similar event happened today as a computer on the system was assigned the IP of another camera that was being worked on. I had to wait until the person left for the day before I could pull that camera out into a better IP range.

It is amazing how quickly the IP range has been filling. We have several VOIP phones at the office annex, our new smart switches to maintain VOIP QOS, wireless access points, network based security cameras, network printers, network routers and server, and of course all those workstations.

On another note. While scanning the network for a piece of equipment not found on the IP list I was surprised to find a new computer on the system names “christ.” I know we want to have Jesus at the center of our church, but I didn’t think he needed a work station. If he did then I am sure it would be an XP, and definitely not an Apple. A moment later I realized that it was the computer of a new employee. Because we base email addresses and computer names off of first name and first letter of last name there will be a little confusion with Chris T.

When “love thy neighbor” gets personal.

Published on July 17, 2006 in Religion. 0 Comments

Back in March I posted a video about the Ashram Project being done in India by Christ’s Church. You can see the post here. Watche the video at the bottom. It is 15MB, but you can watch a lower quality 1.7MB version here. After watching the low quality one again I do recommend the big one if you are on a high speed connection.
It just takes about 5 minutes to watch (depending on your connection).

This video really caught my heart. Especially to see the change that had happened to those children. The mission trip several years ago that led to the creation of this project was eye opening for several people. While Christ’s Church had always been active in missions, this was the first trip that our senior minister had ever taken. He saw poverty he had never seen before, and as he pointed things out to the local missionary (Vivek) (someone I have known for nearly 18 years now and long supported by the church) he began to see the poverty differently from before. Vivek had grown up there and it was common life for him to see the throw away people.

When you are accustomed to the problem you can become blind to it. That is why the child beggar campaign mentioned in the second half of this post is important. It calls attention once again to people who have been overlooked.

This post is not about people in India overlooking the crippled and destitute around them, it is about people in America turning their backs on them for selfish reasons.

Soon after that video was shown in church, I overheard a conversation between two church members. I didn’t want to post this too close to the time I heard it so that it would be more difficult for people to figure out who I was talking about. The man I heard talking is middle aged, he works in the tech industry, and is a committed Christian and long time member. That is why this shocked me.

He said something like the following:

“I know Dennis and the church leadership has a bee in their bonnet over this project in India, but I don’t like it. With how those Indians are stealing our jobs they should be taking care of their own people. This is their problem and I can’t care about it as long as our jobs are going over to their country.”

I have discussed outsourcing with lots of people online. Some Christian, some not. This is not pointed at any of them, but at all of us. Why is it that we let petty issues come between us and our real purpose here in God’s Kingdom.

Those are God’s children, and even if I was losing my job to an overseas labor force I don’t think I could look at children that deep in poverty and say I don’t care. You know the story of the Good Samaritan, you know that Paul celebrated those who had nothing yet gave more than anyone else so that their poverty welled up in rich generosity, you know that we are to care for the poor and bring them the good news. Why do we hate others who may need a little bit of money more than we can imagine needing anything?

How to help a computer user

Published on July 14, 2006 in Techie. 0 Comments

Perhaps you recognize this scenario.

One person is transitioning a set of responsibilities to another person in the organization. Part of the transition involves a lot of important files. They grab the directory the files are in and email that to another individual then they delete all their files. The receiving person clicks on the attachment and it doesn’t work! Individual #1 had emailed a SHORTCUT for the files to Individual #2 and deleted everything.

Fortunately the files were on the network and were backed up so I grabbed the files, moved them into Individual #2’s directory and provided a shortcut for Individual #1 to still access them so he could see and add to the files without us having multiple versions floating around.

I deal with users of differing experience all the time, and I believe that it is important to not be a Nick Burns. You don’t want to become something like The IT Crowd either (renewed for next year, YAY!).

But then we tend to forget how it was like to be new to the systems we have become very experienced and fixing the same problems daily makes us a little less patient when it happens yet another time.
So, you may need to learn some if this for a first time or review it yet again. Here are some good tips on how to help someone use a computer.

First you have to tell yourself some things:

  • Nobody is born knowing this stuff.
  • You’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a beginner.
  • If it’s not obvious to them, it’s not obvious.
  • A computer is a means to an end. The person you’re helping probably cares mostly about the end. This is reasonable.

Almost forgot. Found via Lifehacker.

Room Defender

Published on July 14, 2006 in Security. 0 Comments

roomDefender.jpg

I’m tired of passive security. I think we need to get a few of these installed.
The Room Defender

It just needs more Ammo.

I told you about that 6 months ago

Published on July 13, 2006 in Misc Othr Stuf. 0 Comments

I’m not sure if you hear this a lot, but I sure do.

It is not typically directed to me personally, but I hear some version of that regularly.

Let me give you a scenario:

Person 1: I need you to fix something.

Person 2: I’ll add that to my list.

*** Time Marches On ***

*** 6 Months later ***

Person 1 to Person 3: I wish person 2 would take care of this problem, I told them about it 6 months ago surely they should have it done by now.

I just received one of these. I had been waiting for some additional information on something and it dropped off my list. The person just contacted me saying that they want it done and I reply that I still need the information I requested before. They replied that not only had they sent me the information, but someone else expounded on it.
Fortunately I don’t clean out my email very often (although I did trash 900 messages last week) for this very reason, and I think I found one email with a little bit of the information and I can not find the other details mentioned.

The perspective of the person complaining about the project not being finished is that they have been thinking about this every day for 6 months. The perspective of the other person is that they forgot it was even mentioned within the week it was first discussed. Griping another 6 months will never help that.

Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 for Free

Published on July 12, 2006 in Techie. 0 Comments

I mentioned using VirtualPC for Microsoft training a short while back and it looks as though Microsoft is releasing Virtual PC 2004 for free. According to Tom’s Hardware they will also be releasing Virtual PC 2007 with support for Vista around the time that Vista is released (2009?).

You will need to have a full copy of XP to create the Virtual PC. At the church this is not a problem due to the license we have (we have fewer computers than we have XP licenses). However, you can use it for Linux installs as well.

I am interested in trying this out. I have been trying Virtual Server 2005, but I would definitely prefer Virtual PC for what I am doing with it.

Using Synergy to Control Multiple Computers

Published on July 12, 2006 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment

Sometimes a KVM just doesn’t cut it. It is nice to be able to share a keyboard, Video device (monitor), and a Mouse between 2 computers and I actually do this at my desk. However I have some computers which are better off with their own monitors, but I would prefer not having 2 sets of input devices to work with.

There are a couple options for this, but right now I am using Synergy because it is free.

My setup is simple. I have twocomputers set up next to each other and each system has its own keyboard, mouse, and monitor. I set up one machine as the server and the other one as the client. I can use the server’s keyboard and mouse to control both computers. Wherever the mouse is, that is the computer I am controlling. I can do cut & paste across the computers, but I cannot copy files (Multiplicity Pro can do that for $50 though).

I keep the keyboard and mouse for the second computer on hand since I do need them for logging on to the second computer. I am right handed so the computer I use for the synergy server has the keyboard to the left and the mouse to the right, but the second computer has its mouse right next to the server mouse to make it more accessible if needed.

To improve file sharing across the computers I have a shared folder on each desktop and then a shortcut to the other computer’s shared folder as well.

Moving between computers is simple. I have configured it so that if I take the mouse to any edge of one of the monitors it goes over to the other computer/monitor top to bottom, left to right. I dould add multiple computers to the arrangement and logically connect them like multiple screens on a regular computer, but they are really multiple systems.

You can configure it like I did so that it does not just flow straight between screens, that makes it to easy to end up on the wrong system. I set it so that I have to tap the pointer twice (within 250ms) against the side of the view area for it to go across. You can also have it require that you leave the mouse against the edge for a particular amount of time for it to go across.

Good Stuff

  • Better manage mulitple computers
  • While one computer is doing a lot of work you can keep “occupied” on the other system.
  • Better than just dual screening since you have two separate computers working instead of one.
  • Unlike a KVM you can watch both computers at the same time
  • No reaching to hit the switch to go between computers.
  • You can Copy & Paste text across the computers
  • Works with Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and other *nix varieties
  • If you only have one computer then you can set this so that moving the mouse to the top of the screen will make it reappear at the bottom, going to the left will have it appear at the right, and vice versa on both.

Not So Good Stuff

  • As I mentioned before, Synergy does currently allow you to move files.
  • The clipboard currently only handles plain text.
  • I have had trouble with logging on to the client system from the server system. That is the main reason why I have both keyboards and mice.
  • Network intensive tasks (like doing the system handshakes with the network security cameras when starting the monitoring program) will interrupt your use of the other computer. Of course, I have trouble accessing the camera computer without Synergy running so it is beyond the reach of Synergy anyway.

All in all, I like this program and it is a good price (free).