It seemed rather fitting that my 100th post would land on SysAdmin Appreciation Day. This is the day where you're intended to show your appreciation for all the hard work, skill, dedication, and time that your System Administrators put in every day to keep things up and running. This being my 100th post, I look forward to writing many more, helping you solve more problems, and … [Read more...]
Password Security Basics
A good blend between stating the obvious and saying what needs to be said regarding password security and common sense, these articles make for a good read in understanding authentication issues with software development: The Basics of Password Security - Security Series #4 A Simple Password Strength Function - Security Series #4.1 Password Security with Hashing Functions - … [Read more...]
Setting defaults in Word 2007
New to Office 2007? Don't like the default font, font size, spacing, or justification for Word 2007? Tired of changing it to your preferred setup each time? Let's configure the Microsoft defaults to your defaults. First, make sure all Office applications are closed. Now we're going to browse to where the default template stores these settings. Open up My Computer and you'll … [Read more...]
USB/Mapped drive conflict resolved with Windows XP SP3
The conflict between USB drives and mapped drives seems to have been resolved with XP's Service Pack 3. Previously, Windows would only assign USB drives to letters D-H. If these letters were already assigned to Mapped Network Drives the USB drive would not show up until a different drive letter was automatically assigned to it. Using a third-party software was the previous … [Read more...]
USB Drive Letter Manager
My Computer can get to be a little over-crowded very easily. When you plug-in a jump drive Windows will automatically assign that drive a letter somewhere between D and H. Well, let's say you have a: Floppy Drive (A) Hard drive (C) CD-Burner (D) DVD-Burner (E) Then you also have some mapped drives to server shares: Group files (G) Home directory (H) That pretty much leaves F: … [Read more...]