Webninja.org

Windows Vista and terminal service

I actually stumbled across this a few days ago at work.  While trying to remote desktop into our terminal server,  I kept experiencing some odd slowdowns as if the connection was intermittently working.  The odd thing, is I had no issues while typing in my password or typing in a window when I turned up the command prompt.  After doing a bit of searching I came across some sites that explained what was going on.

With Windows Vista a new technology referred to as autotuning was introduced.  This feature enables the system to adjust the size of tcp packets beyond 64kb.  To do this, a SYN packet to negotiate a larger packet size is sent to the client.  This is all fine and dandy except that some routers think this is something else and strip the acknowledgment packet so the server starts running with the new packet size, and the client sits dumbfounded.

To make a long story short, I disabled autotuning with the following command:

netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled

After which, I was able to remote desktop to my hearts content.  The reason this only occured with our 2003 server was that our 2000 servers don’t support autotuning.  Go figure.

Posted in Tech | 2 Comments »

MSSQL to MySQL migration

Well today I start the initial steps of migrating our MSSQL databases to MySQL.  One of the first tasks here at the new job was to determine where our MSSQL licensing was at.  We’re currently running a version of MSSQL 2000 Personal edition so we either need to migrate or get our servers legal.  <rant> Our existing setup is 2 servers, 1 IIS server, and another dual processor system running MSSQL.  Due to Microsoft’s awesome licensing setup, in order to be legal we need to purchase 2 MS  Windows Server Unlimited Connector licenses.  The part that makes no sense, is one is for the IIS server, the other is for the SQL server.  I can understand one, but the second is ridiculous.</rant> So in the end, it’s pay $17,000+ to be legal, or move MySQL, which in the benchmarks I can find, smokes MSSQL.

After this, I went ahead and installed the MySQL migration tools on the MSSQL due to the application crashing on the CentOS box.  I had to modify the grant tables to allow root to remotely connect to the system.  After this, I ran into a small pitfall of the Migration tool.  The default value of some of the fields in my table refer to MSSQL functions, which aren’t compatible with MySQL so I had a compatibility error.   For example:

`beginningdate` DATETIME NULL DEFAULT convert(datetime,(convert(varchar,datepart(year,getdate())) + ‘-’ + convert(varchar,datepart(month,getdate())) + ‘-’ + convert(varchar,datepart(day,getdate())))),

Since getdate() and datepart() aren’t acceptable functions, I removed the default value for now.  After that all of the data migrated fine except for a few truncated records.  When I move this to production though I’ll be sure to solve that problem.

Posted in Tech | 1 Comment »

I hate Windows Firewall

After a brief discussion with Tarken I settled on my new work development server being run on CentOS. For those of you that are unfamiliar, CentOS is the open source community’s free version of RedHat 5 Enterprise. I had initially downloaded the dvd iso image only to realize that my new server doesn’t have a dvd drive. Instead I opted to go the route of a network install. After about an hour of seeing this, I jumped on to irc to see if anyone could help me out with the problem. I was able to ping the booted server, but I wasn’t seeing any network traffic going through.

Finally I realized what was going on, you guessed it, Windows Firewall at some point had opted to turn itself back on. Whether this is an added “feature” for Vista I’m unawares at the present moment. Regardless, after turning it off, the install still started puking running through a web server. Partway through the install I would get a system exception error. Pointing my ftp server to the iso however fixed the problem.

Posted in Rants | No Comments »

What the hell happened?

So I’m beginning my 2nd week as an employee for the new company. I’ve jumped right in like past jobs thus far. In fact on the 3rd day I was working on relocating one of our databases remotely. While my job title is web developer, I’ve taken on a bit of a system administrator / database administrator role as well. I actually enjoy it quite a bit. A smaller company with less of a “this is your task and do only that task” mentality seems to be the perfect fit for me.

With the more techie position, I’ve been returning more and more to the mindset that I used to always have as a coder. Instead of reading car magazines or Maxim at home, I’m reading large coding books. I’ve broken out the code poet short and the legendary coder pants. Look out Herman, it’s time to code.

With that being said, you probably noticed a huge change in the look of the site. I just migrated from Nucleus to Wordpress. This is partially due to the 3000+ spam comments, also because I wanted a change. You should see me posting more technical web / database related posts soon as well. For those of you that are non-techies, I apologize.

Posted in General, Personal | 1 Comment »

More changes..

So the past couple weeks have been a bit of a blur. Tomorrow is my last day at Identix. It’s been a fun 2.5 year run but everything needs to end. I’ve been offered a pretty decent career move (along with a decent pay bump) and I’ll soon be picking up the reigns of web developer. It’s been a while since I’ve been a code monkey and I honestly can’t wait. My life is so busy these days it seems like I haven’t had the time I need to give the coder side of my brain. Hopefully my social life won’t suffer too much but I’m sure djing will keep that going.

I also recently made the decision to buy Robbie’s 99 Jeep Wrangler. Last year this time I never would have dreamed I’d own a Jeep. It’s weird, the statement “It’s a jeep thing, you wouldn’t understand” makes sense now. At least until the Focus runs again but thats a whole different story.

Posted in Old Posts | 3 Comments »

It’s about time…

Lots of people spend their whole life looking for that right person for them. I’m happy to say that over the weekend I attended the wedding of two of my close friends Jay and Carla. Jay and I became close friends over the summer after our graduation and I give him credit for my love of cars. Carla and I originally met in the grill area at McDonalds where we both worked. When I found out the two of them were dating, they always seemed different together than other couples, almost as if they had a connection you rarely see in couples. It’s even more evident after last weekend.

On the personal aspect of things, it was great to get away and live life like it was before Justin Styles was created. Three and a half days of being with old friends and family made me awful nostalgic. I met some new people, a few I’d like to get to know better, and a few I’m glad I will never know better. Thankfully the latter can serve as a reason why I’m glad I left Superior so it wasn’t for nothing.

I could type out the whole trip, and maybe I’ll do this in the future. But it’s late and I felt it necessary I say something because this past weekend had a huge impact on my life (and partially because Dave said I need to update). I did lots of thinking about things that were and where I’m going with my life. I definitely see myself aging, watching friends get married and separate. Soon my friends will be having kids, all the meanwhile my mom will be asking me when she gets grandchildren. The answer is still the same though, when I have my 911.

Posted in Old Posts | 3 Comments »

I think it’s quite possible that nobody reads this page anymore.

There was once a time I had a glimmer of an idea to create a website. On this website I would tell tales of my exploits as a web programmer. Give bits and pieces of information of what I was working on, perhaps suggestions, little algorithmic nuances in my life. Then I bought a car. Once that began to get old, I dove headlong into djing. Somehow djing has taken me back into writing code again, in JSP of all things. Along with writing code for my added employer, Vital Vinyl I’ve come to experience 60+ hour work weeks regularly.

Ever since I turned 16 (this is the part where I tell a story of my past in an attempt to give the reader insight into my life) I’ve been a bit of a workaholic. 1 job has just never seemed like enough. At 17 I was working at the Board of Education in Superior and Mcdonalds. My record is 4 jobs, working at 2 McDonalds restaurants, the Board of Education, and also djing schools and weddings. What was I thinking? I was slightly depressed at the time, probably for about a month or so. When I wasn’t working, I was unleashing my zerglings and hydralisks upon unsuspecting foes.

Fast forward to today, I’m tired of working. For a while I worked 1 job, just here in my cubical, helping fix the fingerprints of the world. At some point I decided to start djing weekly in a club again, then decided to help out at the record store. Oh wait, I already had 2 online radio shows I was doing. For added spice, I’ve now added 2 more nights at a local lounge. Holy schnikes, I’m working over 60 hours a week now. Granted, lots of this time I enjoy and I’m not entirely commited to being at the new place twice a week, but still, it adds up. I have to admit that there’s a bit of comfort going from one work place to the next. On the other hand, sometimes you just want to sleep. We’ll all be dead in the blink of an eye anyways right? Well it’s a blink of an eye if you consider how long the earth has been around.

I’d like to say I’ll get this website going some day. Perhaps if I buy a digital camera I’ll have more things to post. Maybe bits of code? I’ve decided eventually I’ll shed this Nucleus CMS and go to wordpress. Things have changed so much, in the past I’d only use something I had written. It’s funny how so many things change, yet a few stay the exact same. Perhaps you’re one of the people that checks this website once a week, only to not be surprised there is no updated post. There’s the chance you haven’t checked this page for months (and I don’t blame you), or perhaps you just stopped by because I told you my email address and you wanted to see what was here. Either way, thanks for stopping by. and say something in the shoutbox.

Posted in Old Posts | 3 Comments »

Is it worth it?

I really, really hate feeling like this.

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3 months is a long time…

Summer was a blur and it’s hard to believe it’s over. I’ve definitely made a transition in life. I used to be a die hard car guy, always ordering the next part to put on to my car but lately djing has taken over my life. I figured that it was time to sit down and take a little time to perform some maintenance on the site.

Before I fill you in on the geekier details, I’ll fill you in on the dj details. The DJing has gone extremely well, I’m currently the Friday resident at one of the best clubs downtown. While there are some things going on that I think will be resulting in me leaving, it’s a good feeling that I’ve actually been there for a short while. I’ve also been getting more and more gigs which are either out of town, or high profile local gigs. Last week I made a trip to Milwaukee to open for JJ Flores and Steve Smooth which was a blast. I’m somewhat worried I’ll hit a ceiling of how far I can grow as a DJ in Minneapolis so I’ve begun other ventures to try to keep my options open. One of these things is starting a digital record label. I’ve been working mostly with a local producer by the name of Jake Encinas and a producer out of Chicago named ZXX. Our first two releases are scheduled for release on 10/10 and both sound great.

On the geek side, I’ve been working on a Myspace friend’s manager. Yeah I know, Myspace is the spawn of satan but you’d be amazed at how much networking one can actually do on there. I hate updating my page so the php utility I’ve been writing is meant to make it easier. I’ve made lots of progress and I might even open it up for the public to use. I’ve also gone through deleting the 1700+ spam comments that were here and fixed the shout box. Hell maybe I’ll even work on the buttons and make those work.

Anyways, off to keep working. Until next time…

Posted in Old Posts | 2 Comments »

sleeping sucks

I hate it when I can’t sleep. When something gets drilled into my head and I roll around trying to sleep. I’ve had problems falling asleep my entire life, at least when I’m not burning the candle at both ends. Nights like last night though really kill me. I’ve had too many things on my mind as of late and they started to apex last night.

On the dj side of things, last Wednesday on my show on AfterhoursDJs.org I did a tribute to Kaskade. Kaskade is to deep house as Hatiras is to funky house. At least in my eyes. It’s a 57 minute long set that Christian joined up with me to tag team on. He laid down the first 5 tracks and I finished off with the remaining 8. So on that note, I recommend you download it now.

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