Ed Buford - Just Another Geek

Boy Next Door – Warning

This story is a big part of my life, and tells about a time when I turned my back on God…

It has nothing to do with Church IT and might be something you don’t want to read.

The Boy Next Door Part 1

My parents moved into the house I grew up in when I was two years old. It was that summer I met Harlan, the boy next door, he was six months older than I, and he always seemed like my brother. Some of the first memories I have are of me playing with Harlan in the front yard.

Harlan had two brothers Randall and Mason; they were much older than we were, just as my brother and sister were 8 and 10 years older than me. I remember Randall playing with us, he was a big brother who loved his little brother and Harlan loved him most of all.

I was six when Randall was shot in the back with a 22 caliber pellet. It was a one in a million shot that lodged in his mid spine paralyzing him from the chest down. A short time latter they removed both of his legs as gangrene set in. I watched Harlan struggle with what was happening to his brother. I remember us crying together and I told him maybe Santa would bring Randall new legs; Santa didn’t come that year.

Free plus shipping

I have twenty 3com PCMCIA cards, model # 3CCSH572BT, I’m willing to give a Church or some other not-for-profit organization. These cards are brand new, still in the box; they work with most all Windows OSs. The only catch is that you pay the shipping. I’ll be happy to ship them in their package or pull them out.

Sweet New Look

My good friend Adam Tarwacki took one look at the lame-o graphic I built for my blog and offered to make a real one. He brought his camera and took some pictures of a hard drive I opened just for the occasion. It was a lot of fun to watch him create it from scratch. He took the concept that I so poorly created and developed this sweet new header.

Adam – You Rock!

PrimalScript Upgrade

PrimalScript has released version 4.1 This new version handles the new Windows PowerShell scripts. If you have a valid PrimalScript 4 key you can upgrade it for free for a limited time and then it will cost you to upgrade. If you have 4.0 you can upgrade your key here.

Mac/PC Forum

Tony Dye has some notes from the MAC/PC Forum held in Birmingham.

If you’ve been following my Mac posts you’ll want to check this out.

My boss’s boss just bought a Mac

Tony Morgan, one of the Simply Strategic guys has ordered a Mac.
He’s given lots of sound reasons for ordering one, but my favorite is: the slowing of male pattern baldness. If only I’d known of this secret feature years ago, I might have a different hairline. Oh well and good luck with the Mac Tony!

sysprep, not just for breakfast anymore

I get enough questions about sysprep that I thought I’d faq some of the top questions of when where and why to sysprep.

Q. Where can I find sysprep?
A. You’ll find sysprep in on the XP media in a cab file called deploy.cab in a folder called \Support\Tools
Q. Do I have to sysprep every computer?
A. No, you only need to sysprep computers you’re making a clone of, and that you plan to add to Domain.
Q. If I use sysprep and put my username and password in it, will it be secure?
A. First, you don’t put domain admin credentials in a sysprep.ini file. Just create a user and delegate the right to add a computer. Second, if you create a sysprep folder on the root of the c:\ drive windows setup will delete it during set up. Thirdly, if you are using a program like Ghost you’ll be able see all files using the console; so make sure that not everyone can get to your Ghost files.
Q. Why can’t I use Ghost Walker or some other program to recreate the sid?
A. You can, Microsoft doesn’t support it, and if you ever have to fall back on Microsoft support, you’re… well, screwed.
Q. Why don’t you (me) use the Auto-generate name feature in sysprep?
A. Because naming a computer something CVC12YR-567 has no real use to me.
Q. Is there an easy way to create the sysprep.ini file?
A. Yes, you can create the sysprep.ini file using a program in the deploy.cab called the Setupmgr.exe

I’d be happy to answer other sysprep questions, but I thought I’d get these out of the way once and for all. You might also want to check out this old Ghosting post, it has some good sysprep stuff in it too.

One more Spin

This Post has been hanging around in my Drafts folder for a long time... sorry it took me so long to put it out here:

The one thing I really hate to do is to tell someone their data’s lost…
Recently a good friend brought me a LaCie 500gig drive. His computer wouldn’t recognize the drive any more. The drive had two Maxtor 250gig drives configured in some sort of RAID 0 configuration. He had already taken the case off the drives and made the call that one drive didn’t seem to be starting up. He had also called around to see what it would cost to have the drive recovered… it was a whopping $3500. There was critical data on the drive which would mean he’d have to go that path if there was nothing we could do.

After a bit of brainstorming, I pulled the controller card off of the second drive, and placed it on the failed drive and lo and behold it spun up. This was great news, but not definitive.

We hunted down another drive just like the one we had and our friends at Bason Computer found us one that was made within two weeks of the failed one. When the drive came in I pulled the controller card off the new drive and put it on the failed drive. When I fired it up both drives spun to life. I plugged it into the computer and the computer found it, and we could see the data.

We tested it and found we could pull the data off, but the drive was getting warm. With a new drive on the way we shut this unit down until could get the new portable drive in and configured. He put a fan on the drive to keep it cool managed to get the critical data off of it.

I recommended he pitch the old unit straight into the trash as we just don’t know how stable this unit will be.

The staff at work made me cry today.

There is a weekly staff meeting at GCC, and during that meeting someone will often be called to sit on the “Hot Seat”, where the staff can ask you questions about your life, your family, and most anything. Then they shift gears and tell you what they like or love about you. Today they asked me to sit in that seat and then they made me cry.

It made me aware of just how much I love these people and consider them my own family.

Thanks Family!