Back in 2007, I passed the CompTIA A+ exams. Since then, there have been a few changes to the way these exams work. Unfortunately, CompTIA haven’t done a very good job of explaining it all; it makes volume licensing seem clear and simple by comparison!
In brief, if you currently have the A+, Network+, or Security+ qualification, you should enroll in the CE program. The deadline for enrollment is 31st December, so there’s not much time left. (If this applies to anyone you know, please pass this info on to them.)
Continue reading “CompTIA exams”
I’ve recently swapped ISP, from Zen to Andrew & Arnold. More specifically, I had an ADSL line from Zen, and I now have a VDSL line from A&A; this uses FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet), which BT have just deployed in my local exchange. I’m happy with the new service, and it’s definitely faster than what I had before: according to Broadband Speed Checker my download speed is 24368 Kbps, whereas it was about 3500 Kbps before. Unfortunately, the transfer didn’t go smoothly, and I wound up with no internet connection for eight days; I had to rely on my Orange mobile broadband dongle, which is roughly equivalent to dial-up speed. I’m not quite sure what went wrong, but there was definitely a failure to communicate somewhere along the line. If you’re considering a similar move, this post should give you an idea of what to expect.
Continue reading “VDSL”
Scareware is normally just a minor nuisance, assuming that you know how to get rid of it without paying any money. However, I’ve now come across a new wrinkle: it can get you blacklisted, so that you can’t send email.
Continue reading “Scareware and Spamhaus”
I’ve been looking at a server that has Progress OpenEdge installed (10.1C). I’ve found a bug in this recently, and it’s useful to be aware of this if you use the same software. More generally, it’s something to be aware of if you write any computer programs, so that you won’t make the same mistake.
Continue reading “Integer overflow”
I’ve come across a few Word documents that have got corrupted, so I get an error message when I try to open them:
Continue reading “Word Recovery”
When I created accounts with Facebook and LinkedIn, both websites asked me for my email password to help me find people I know. The idea is that they can log into my email account, go through my address book, then search their own database for people with matching email addresses. That would certainly be convenient, and save me some time, but I think it’s a very bad idea.
Continue reading “Protecting passwords”
Early in my career, I noticed an error when I rebooted a server, saying that one of the RAID drives had failed. The server was able to keep running, but the drive needed to be replaced, so one of my colleagues came over with a new one. The drive was hot-swappable, so he was quite cheerful about the fact that we wouldn’t need to shut the server down first. However, we disagreed about which drive had failed; the error message referred to drive 2, and there were 5 in total, but I thought that the numbering would start at 0 while he thought that it would start at 1. He outranked me, so he pulled out the second drive. Unfortunately, this turned out to be the wrong one (i.e. one of the working drives), so the entire server crashed, and we had to spend our Friday night re-installing Windows from scratch.
Continue reading “RAIDers of the lost sleep”
Someone called me earlier, because she had a big virus warning on her screen. This was actually a hoax (a web page trying to install malware), and it’s useful to be aware of it so that you know what to recognise.
I identified the website which was responsible, but it’s now been taken down. So, the purpose of this post is to warn you about similar sites rather than this site in particular. I observed the same behaviour in IE8 and Firefox 3.6.12 (on Windows 7), but I haven’t tried any other OS/browser.
Continue reading “Fake virus warnings”
“Hey, witch doctor, give us the magic words!”
One of my servers has an SSL certificate from GoDaddy. More specifically, this is a Unified Communications Certificate (UCC), so it can have up to 5 domain names. I originally registered 3 names, and I recently needed to add a 4th. The good news is that GoDaddy let you specify extra names through their web interface and download the new certificate without charging any extra money. The bad news is that they don’t provide any documentation on installing the new certificate.
Continue reading “SSL: Adding a SAN to a UCC”
Someone contacted me because she was trying to watch 4od (Channel4 on demand), but she couldn’t get past the age restriction screen.
Continue reading “4 on demand”