Some kinds of mice you DO want in your house

I have to say a word here about my favorite mouse ever: the Microsoft Laser 6000. Now, I am not a Microsoft fanboy, by a long shot. In fact this may be the only Microsoft product I like.

I built my computer in February 2006, three years ago next month. At that time I bought a Microsoft Laser 6000 as my mouse, because the reviews were decent and I wanted a laser mouse, it being a step up from that old optical technology. Not that there are many situations that I woudl be moving my hand too fast for an optical mouse to register it, but three years later I certainly don't regret this purchase. My brother has gone through at least three mice during the time I have had this Laser 6000, and mine still performs flawlessly. When my sister got a laptop, she bought the same mouse for it due to my recommendation. Three years is a long time for any piece of hardware to be on the market, so she had to order it online - it couldn't be found in any stores. However, the extra trouble she went through to acquire one was worth it.

Should my own Laser 6000 ever break down, I will scour the internet to find another one just like it. If I could pull it off, I would never buy another mouse design for the rest of my life.

Edit: My #1 blog fan, Jerk, has drawn me a picture of my adorance of this mouse. Here it is.

Buy the Laser 6000 from Amazon (only available in Pack of 3)

Google Chrome - More than just Shiny!

Recently in class, during our install of Server 2008, our instructor mentioned that we should install an alternate browser on our 2008's, because for reasons unknown to me Server 2008's version of Internet Explorer is virtually unusable. He specifically mentioned Firefox and Google Chrome. I have long been a Firefox addict (I love the extensions!) and also a Google fan (very innovative company, quality products), but had not as yet tried Google Chrome, the new browser they had developed. So I decided to give it a try.

Our instructor wasn't sure that Google Chrome would even install on our new Server 2008 virtual machines, but it worked just fine for me. Being used to Firefox's layout, my first response to the browser was, "whoa, the tabs are at the top!". It's not really a very chrome-looking interface, but it is clean and minimalistic, which I can appreciate.

Since I didn't really know anything about Chrome or what set it apart from other browsers, I read this comic that I found on the Chrome introduction page. It is very informative, easy to read and understand, and a bit entertaining as well. I recommend spending the time to read it if you have ever wondered how Chrome works.

After seeing how Chrome performed on Server 2008, I thought I would put it through some more rigorous testing at home. I installed it, and then began abusing it as much as I do Firefox. It took everything I threw at it, and I was delighted to discover that it had some functionality that is fairly close to one of my favorite Firefox addons, QuickDrag. QuickDrag allows you to highlight a plaintext URL and drag and drop it on the page to open a new tab of the address you highlighted. Chrome allows you to select a plaintext URL and drag it to the tab bar to do the same thing. The only difference in the functionality that I used was that I had to drag it farther.

Being new, Chrome does still crash sometimes. Bugs still exist. But due to the way Chrome is built, one thing going wrong won't kill the whole browser - only the part where the error occurred. If you read the comic I mentioned earlier, you will understand how this works. Sometimes Windows would pop up saying Chrome had crashed, I would click End Program, and Chrome would continue on as it had been, seemingly unaffected by the crash. In essence, it does what Google says it does.

When I first heard about Chrome being a Java executable, I was quite apprehensive. All of my previous interactions with Java had left me feeling that it was a slow, clunky language that was only useful for extreme portability. However, the way Chrome has been intelligently designed, it actually runs very smoothly and hesitates not at all.

All in all, I was very impressed with Chrome, and I think it safe to say that my Firefoxing days are pretty much over.

ServerManagerCmd failure to launch

While doing an activity assigned to me, I ran across this error while running ServerManagerCmd:

Being new to Server 2008 and the server manager command, I had no idea what that meant, and rather than trying to spend the time to figure out what was wrong, I moved on to the next excercise. A few excercises later, I needed to open the server manager window. When I did, it popped up with the add / remove roles wizard and displayed a statusbar that said "Resuming configuration...". It was at this point that I realized that a configuration that I had been doing earlier had not finished for some reason. After the previous configuration completed, I went back to the command prompt and tried again, and saw this:

Much better. This is the kind of result I was looking for the first time.

Creating a lot of sheep

In many IT environments, there is a need to install the same operating system on multiple computers. Manually installing an OS on several computers is simply not efficient, and with all the other options out there, why would you?

Perhaps the most fundamental way is to use Windows Deployment Services. This requires that you already have one server set up, with all the computers you want to install the OS on hooked into the same network. I have yet to try WDS, but from what I've read it seems quick and easy. The setup can be further hastened by the creation of an unattended install, as long as you remember to configure WDS to use the unattended file.

Another popular option is cloning, also known as ghosting. This involves setting up the OS on one operating system, configuring it the way you want, even installing drivers, service packs, and third-party software, and then using cloning software to make an image of the installation and then copy it to a hard disk on another computer, or hundreds of other computers. This can be done with a DVD or USB drive, another hard drive, or even through a network.

Examples of cloning software include Symantec's Ghost and Acronis True Image (both commercial software) or the free FOG.