2x4 work bench

I have been needing to build a wood working bench in my garage. My original thought was to use old wood pallet to build a frame and top it. While this worked I found that it was unstable when attempting to work with heavy material. So I deconstructed the wood pallet, to try again at a later date. 

Fast forward 9 months and using a temporary work bench that consistent of two 15" lament shelves sitting on top of my garage cart. This gave me an idea to utilize the mobility of my shop cart yet gain 4 feet of space on top of my cart. 

So down to the local Home Depot, I went to pick up some 2x4's. I purchased 12 foot Douglas fir 2x4 so that I could cut them in half. 

My shop cart was 31 ³/⁴" by 22 ³/⁴" with a 3” well ontop. I used a left over 2x4 from another project to frame out the 3" well ontop of the cart. This left about ½" of lip above the metal well side of the cart. 

After I ran the cut 2x4 through my "Bertha" a powermatic 9" jointer. I glued and screwed each of the boards together. This created a 34" x 72" top that was flat and Semi smooth. 

Once the glue and dried I took a belt sander with 80 grit and sanded the top to smooth out any unevenness. Then I stepped up to 120 grit to give it a smooth surface. 

Once I was good with the sanding I took the top out side and began the Shou Sugi Ban process to treat the top and give it a nice finished look. Using a 40k BTU propane burner I burned the top until it was surface looked like a hide to a alligator. 

I then hit the surface with a sprinkle of water to put out any burning wood. I let it dry for an hour or so since I live in AZ and the temp is hanging around 80 and it is dry this was long enough. 

Once it was dry I wire brushed the surface until I had a nice smooth dark colored wood surface.

I then took the top back into the garage and flipped it on its top to mount the well insert. Using four 5" 1/2 lag bolts I predrilled the 2x4 well insert. 

I offset the insert to the back of the top and center of the top. Then drilled into the bottom of the top for the lag bolts to hold the well insert onto the bench top. 

With the help if my two boys we rolled the top over and set it into the metal shop cart. We checked fitting if the well insert several time and Making sure pulling the too would be simple if needed. 

With that working well I moved on to vacuuming and dusting the surface of the bench top. Then applied two coats of danish oil. Allowing an hour and half between application. 

I let the top dry over night... 

With the top dry I moved on to mounting a 6" vise to the left side of the bench top. 

Customer Technology Site Survey

Okay for those of you who are in a similar job function as me will find this a useful tool. We have been attempting to create a step by step guide to first visit to a client site. This would be what we are gathering for all information about the clients current network environment. I would like to get some feed back from people to see what they think. Below are a list of questions that need to answered prior to creating a proposal.

• Client Name
• Client Address
• Contact Name, Email, Phone "Hours they are available"
• Do they rent or own the building
• Primary site (Remote site)
• Site hours of operation
• If multiple sites their hours, location and contact personel
• Number of Servers (Operating systems installed)
• Hardware configuration for each server
• Switches and configurations of switches
• Pictures
• Log in credentials for all servers
• Verification of backup's
• Test backup's to ensure all data is being backed up
• Number of users
• Number of computers
• Voice communication is digital/analog/VoIP
• Wireless configuration (if applicable)
• ISP (contact information and Account info)
• Firewall configuration / Access and backup configuration
• Any additional notes not covered in documentation

This is a start towards a complete and overall view of a clients network. As each site is assessed we will be making changes and I will make those changes here for everyone to view.

Please send me some feed back of additional information that should be added or deleted.

Clustering using Domain controllers as Nodes! NO!

OK so I was approached by a client that wants total redundancy throughout his environment. I design a network to his request having duplicate systems clustered together. He likes the design and says let start piecing out the parts we need and start to replace some servers. He then asks his onsite developer for his opinion of the design.

Let’s call this guy Joe says why are we having two file servers clustered together and separate servers? I have always seen the domain controller act as the file / profile storage servers. I respond well if we want a fully redundant environment we must run clustering on a file server. Yes Microsoft says it is possible but that does not mean that is the correct way of doing this.

So over a couple more emails about other features of this server environment he gets back on his kick of have the domain controllers act as the cluster nodes for a file share. At this point I am ready to drop the project tell him to have his buddy that obviously knows more than me build his environment for him. As I refuse to build a crap network that I have to support.

Now I want to but since this is my job I wait to respond to him so I can find all of the resources to prove my point without any doubt. This is way I am writing this blog as finding this information is not a one stop shop. Here is where Microsoft states it is possible to run a domain controller as a node in a cluster.

Microsoft’s main reason behind recommending that a domain controller is a node in the cluster is so that the cluster is guaranteed to start every time. There is no chance of failure with not being able to contact a domain controller.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/171390

Why Microsoft would you even think that is funny. Now you make all of those unknowing IT gurus think this is the proper way to build a cluster. Without even doing further research as many of them will find one KB say yes this can be done. Lacking all common logic behind having a domain controller as a cluster node they will attempt this. Why can’t Microsoft make this easy on us all and disable clustering on a domain controller. Not only do you make a mess of a situation that has the potential of data loss but also make the lives of techies that know this is wrong much more difficult. Since we will be the ones who have to go behind these so called gurus and clean up their mess. Some things just don’t belong on a domain controller.

http://www.computer-network.net/server-redundancy

In this next article Microsoft recommends against having clustering service and domain controller services running on the same server.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/281662/en-us

This is located about half way down the page next to the second bullet point. If this is the case why would Microsoft even let these two services run on the same system? They are the developers and I understand that they want to keep everything open to multiple environments but if you need clustering services. Then you should be able to afford multiple systems to implement this kind of design.

I could continue going on about this but bottom line just because it is possible to run clustering services on a domain controller does not mean it is a best practice. The main point of clustering is so that those resources are up and available regardless if a server fails. Having these services running on a domain controller is just bad practice and can open additional vulnerabilities to system failures. Not only that but he goes against the idea behind having a high availability environment.

Here is a good link to a site that has additional information on why Domain controllers should not be Cluster nodes. Cluster Help

Exchange 2010 Could Not find default Administrative Group

A co-worker asked me to install Exchange 2010 in one of our client environments today. He stated that their old managed services team attempted to migrate this client to Exchange 2010 but failed. They had already installed Exchange 2010 but it was not working properly. He had used ADSIedit to remove all existence of any Exchange 2010.

Trusting this I dove head first into the project of installing Exchange 2010 into their environment. I deployed two new VM servers that will host the CAS and HUB role. I installed all the prerequisites for Exchange 2010. Everything cleared the system check and I had all green check marks. So I assumed all would be a snap install. I was sadly mistaken! =(
I received this error below.


Error:
The following error was generated when “$error.Clear();
If ($server –eq $null)
{
New-exchangeserver –DomainController $RoleDomainController –

Name$RoleNetBIOSName
}
“was run: “Could not find the default Administrative Group ‘Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)’.”.

Could not find the default Administrative Group ‘Exchange Administrative

Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)’.


Click here for help…


So I clicked here for help and I got a page from Microsoft there is a “Help Resources for Errors!” no help here but don’t fret you can post on our forums and someone can help you. Now what kind of answer is this from Microsoft REALLY! Someone has to have an answer to my problem. So I hit my best friend in the world Google! Cause well that’s were all the answers are found. (I have tried Bing! And I find I get better results from Google).

Low in behold there is some prep work that needs to be done! So what is happening is that the old Exchange environment is still showing up in the schema and forest setting. What needs to happen is a prep step to clear out and reset those settings. Since this installation is attempting to connect to ‘Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)’. Which does not exist as it was removed with ADSIEdit.

So you need to run the following commands to prepare your domain for a new Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT).

From the root of the exchange installation CD run

'SETUP.COM /ps' – Prepares the Active Directory Schema for the Exchange Installation
'SETUP.COM /p' - Prepares the Active Directory forest for the Exchange installation
'SETUP.COM /pd' – Prepares the local domain for the exchange installation

Once these commands have been run at a command prompt you can continue on with your Exchange 2010 installation. Everything should function and install correctly without any errors.

I would like to thanks Microsoft for having some quality documentation that helped me find this solution! (Sarcasm!)

Cool stuff...

OK its been a while since I last posted on my blog so here goes. I haven't a ton of time so this will be short and sweet.

Do you need cloud storage well check out Drop Box. You get 2 GB of free storage similar to Google docs but you have a folder in you documents folder and in the task bar that you can gain access to any of you items stored there. What is great is they have a client for both Windows, Mac, Linux and mobile devices. Since I have moved to a broader base of devices I like this service as I have all four of the listed devices. The nice thing is I do not have to worry about my flash drive as all data is synced to my devices. Once I am connected to an internet connection the changes go into affect. No loss of data if my drive gets corrupted either. Check them out as I have found similar but they fall a little short in my mind of this service.

They have upgrades so you can get as much as 100 GB of storage. I do not know who would want to sync a 100 GB of storage all the time but you never know now a days. The price is a little high for my likes but I am one who votes for free not a fee.

Check them out its a great service for 2GB and its free so you might as well take the free stuff while you can.

dropbox.com

Sir Jon's Blog

So I just got an email from a friend who is starting his own blog! That is awesome for him I am glad he is doing so because he has a lot of information to share with all of us.

Here is he blog check him out

http://www.sirjon357.blogspot.com/

He is currently working on his PhD at Capella University when he is finished he will be a Doctor of Information Security. So please drop by and look at what he is researching for his PhD.

On another note I just enrolled at Devry University so I will be transferring from University of Phoenix online. I look forward to this transition in July as I feel like I am missing out on the fellow classmates comradely. Plus I want a little more hands on experience with experienced instructors to bounce ideas off of.

I know I have enough equipment at home to do all this stuff I will be doing at Devry but it really is just an experience that I must not miss in my life. I have spoken to my wife about this and she is all for the transfer she thinks it will be good for me to get some social interaction with my fellow classmates.

It was comical though today as we were taking a tour of the school I was speak to the student adviser about fraternities. As I was speak she popped into and asked if I was going to attend a state college? Then she added like frat parties and drinking kind of stuff! I almost died laughing as we sat in the hall laughing about what she said I was like no not that kind of frat. I was thinking more like IEEE organization for students in the Information Technology field.

It was rather funny the way she looked and my wife and I.

Anyways after 2 hours at Devry University I am well on my way to attending school there and look forward to my start day in July...

How to delete Linux files via command line

Well if your like me you want to tweak your Linux operating system to your needs. Using the following commands will let you delete files and directories.

"rm file-name" this will delete the file named file-name

Now try if you try to use this on a folder you will get an error.

To delete a directory there is a switch that is need to remove it.

rm -R folder-name
You can now do ls to see the directory gone.

that all it takes
happy tweaking