Out with the old, in with the new! (Windows Server that is!)

Over the past few days my company Ubertechs Ltd has been working on a clients Windows 2000 server migration. Our customer has had the same Dell server since the year 2000! It has served them well and has certainly earned it's keep. At the time it was over £4500 and about 5 years ago we installed a second raid 5 array and some additional memory.
However the time came to replace the whole unit with a much faster and more efficient server.

The new Dell box is based on Windows Server 2008, it operates as file and print server also hosting the usual DNS, DHCP and Windows Active Directory.
We successfully migrated all server roles from the old Windows 2000 server to the new server, including about 50 group policy objects (which needed some modification), 40+ user account and about 80 workstations.

It's been an interesting few days and now thankfully things are once again running as normal, albeit much faster!

Ubertechs Special Offers!

About 4 years ago I had a smaller batch of door to door cards printed, these worked well, so I thought it about time I did a slight re-design on them and had some more printed!
As usual I used the Lancaster branch of Printing.com, who have always produced great results for me!
Here is a pile of some of the cards ready for delivery. I have a few people standing by to deliver them in different areas!
So if you need your PC or Mac computer or laptop repairing, look no further than Ubertechs Ltd.
Serving Lancaster and surrounding areas.
I've also started a customer referral discount scheme, details of this are here. And finally in my shameless plug! You can follow Ubertechs on twitter at http://twitter.com/ubertechs .

Some missing Android features.

Android is Google's operating system for mobile devices, initially smartphones but perhaps others. There are several very big over sights in my opinion.:-

Firstly is the inability to search your calendar. Surely not! I hear you gasp. Oh yes, it's true, unless you have a HTC Hero, with HTC's modified android applications, you are unable to search your calendar.

So, here is the link to the google code bug I filed about it. When I filed this bug , Android was at version 1.1 so perhaps it was fine for it not to be included. Now we are at version 2.1 on some devices! If Android want to compete with the Blackberry or iPhones of this world then they must include this basic feature very quickly.
Please check it out, comment and be sure to 'star' the issue so it gets the attention it deserves from the android developers.
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2518&can=5&colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Owner%20Summary%20Stars
By the way, the search facility is implemented in iPhone version 3.0 and above software.
(23 stars @ 12/2/2010)
(49 stars @ 01/04/2010)
(56 stars @ 13/04/2010)

Next up, not as serious but still very inconvenient is the lack of 'click-to-dial' in email messages.
One of the reasons I switched from iPhone to Android was because I use the calendar application a lot and found it was not possible on the iPhone to click on a phone number in the description or body of a calendar entry and have the phone dial for you. This feature was already there in the early version of Android 1.1 and so this was one of the factors that made me move.
Now further down the line, I realise that a phone number sent to you in an email, is not 'click able' in Android!
This was possible on the early version of the iPhone, pre version 3.0 software. Now the iPhone wins, you are able to click-to-dial on numbers both in email and calendar.
Yes you guessed it, I have an android bug filed.
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2383&can=5&colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Owner%20Summary%20Stars
Please visit that link, comment or at least 'star' it, thanks.
[Update. Just checked this on a HTC Hero and it seems to work! It does not work on my G1 though.)
(5 stars @ 12/2/2010)

Garstang Booths.

Having a coffee in the Booths cafe after doing some shopping. Free WiFi with your drink and 50p off each drink for every £10 you spend. Not too shabby.

[Uploaded from mobile]

Dent Family History.

My Gradnfather Alan E (left) with his brother William H.

Over the past few months I've been working on finding out as much as possible about my family history. I've been mainly concentrating on my fathers side. I've had a good start with it as my aunt had done a lot of work on this many years ago.
Most of my work revolved around using the Ancestry.com website. This has proved very useful and has allowed me to fill in many gaps and even find relatives that my father did not know about in the USA.
Last night I received two unconnected emails from Dent relatives in the USA. I'd not made contact with these people before and I was very surprised when I found out that neither of them knew the other had written to me!

Things I've discovered so far include:-

• My family originates from Burnley in Lancashire where they were stonemasons and later brick-makers.
• My great grandfather moved to Lancaster area to manage a brickworks near to Caton.
• My grandfather was a carpenter for Waring & Gillows, he was in the Royal Engineers and I have been able to find all his military papers.
• My grandfather worked for just over a year in Buenos Aires, South America on the woodwork in the prestigious Plaza Hotel. This was 1913 to 1914.
• My grandfather came back from Buenos Aires and within 6 months he was in the Royal Engineers until the end of the war when he returned to Waring & Gillow.
• Lots more...

I'm currently waiting for the will of my great, great, great grandfather to arrive, he died in 1835.

Router/Firewall upgrade - or - Xbox peace at last!

Last night I switched my Soekeris net4801 router from m0n0wall to pfSense. I'd been running m0n0wall for several years and it had served me well. However recently I upgraded it to 1.3 and noticed that I had trouble getting NAT to work correctly for my 2 Son's XBOX 360. As the days past this had been causing more and more 'fun' with the eldest.

Before I upgraded their nat type would display as moderate and this would work fine for most things. After I upgraded to 1.3 the nat setting on their xbox dropped to strict. I tried several nat rules and short of putting their xbox's in the DMZ, and re-wiring their rooms, I was stumped.

I read up on alternatives that I could load on to my embedded Soekris box and it seemed pfSense, a fork from m0n0wall, looked a good candidate. It supported UPnP, which would allow the correct opening and closing of ports to forward traffic to their xboxes.

I downloaded the latest non-beta version and wrote it to the compact flash card in the router, not before having taken a backup of the latest m0n0wall config! I had to dig out my null modem cable and connect in to the router via serial interface to do the first configuration but after that it can all be looked after by a web interface or ssh.

All went well, I was even able to import my last m0n0wall config, after making some changes, to have it setup pretty much as I previously had. Only now I had the option to turn on UPnP and even configure it so that it would only affect certain hosts.
Ahhhh peace at last....

[5th Feb 2010 Here is a link to the network bunny site that has some more details on the xbox nat issue]
[9th Feb 2010 Had a reply on the m0n0wall mailing list. Here is a link to the authors page with details on how he got open nat working with m0n0wall]