In Office 2010, Word, Excel, and Powerpoint have Autosave and AutoRecover enabled by default.  The default setting is 10 minutes.  What’ s the difference between Autosave and AutoRecover?  In a nutshell, AutoRecover saves your entire workspace while Autosave saves the individual files you are editing.  More info can be found here.  AutoRecover has an added benefit of being able to recover previous versions of files as well.

Turns out, Visio 2010′s Autosave/AutoRecover features are not enabled by default, at least not in any of the installs I checked around our office.  Go figure.  Enable Autosave by going to File>Options>Save and check the appropriate box.

In Visio 2007, go to Tools>Options>Save/Open and check the checkbox.

That’s all for now, I’m off to get some replacement batteries for my UPS.

 1.  Answer every technology question with “I hate”. 

Have a negative bias toward a certain vendor or product?  Your managers and peers love hearing you rant, especially if it’s your one and only experience with the product.  Support your position with plenty of generalizations and heap blame on the vendor.  Leave out any specifics; they just complicate your argument.

2.  Answer every technology question with “I love”.

Emotionally invested in a particular vendor or solution because it’s the only technology you’re familiar with?  Then make sure to solve every problem with that favorite vendor/product.  Spread the word to everyone about how great it is.  Leave out the part about it being the only solution you’ve ever deployed.  Keep your mind closed to other options.  Tunnel vision is good because it helps hone your shallow, singular focused skill set and lessens the chance of objectivity creeping into the equation.

3.  Interrupt others mid-sentence.

Always find yourself too busy to listen to the whole question?  Then begin formulating your answer before the question is asked.  It’s a good way of showing the other person that you place no value in what they have to say and that they need to be enlightened with your superior knowledge.

4.  When asked a pointed question, answer it with another question. 

Politicians are really good at this, with the respect they garner why not take a cue from them?

5.  Arrive late for everything.

Nothing says, “I’m more important than you” like being chronically late.  Make sure not to call/email/text ahead to let them know.  It consumes unnecessary bits on your mobile data plan.

6.  Dress like a slob. 

Ironing clothing consumes valuable time that you could spend gaming.  Keep all of you work cloths in the hamper. It lessens the chance of misplacing that pair of seven-year-old khakis and favorite t-shirt from the 1994 Inter-Op.

 7.  Break your promises. 

Make plenty of commitments, but don’t keep them.  Be ready with a litany of excuses and make sure to blame the vendor or consultant.  It’s always someone elses fault.  The buck stops with someone else, not you.

In my experience, a true Professional Sales Representative exhibits the following behaviors;

The drive and discipline to prospect regularly.
A focus on net new customers.
The tenacity and persistence to get a meeting with key decision makers.
Impeccable follow-up and customer service skills.
The ability to close the deal.
The willingness to take a deal off the table if it isn’t a good fit.

Because a true professional sales person recognizes the importance of prospecting, their sales “funnel” is always full of opportunities.  A byproduct of this is that they are not afraid to get to a “No”.  Meaning, they stop wasting time on an opportunity that is not going to close and move on to other prospects.

In my 20+ years in info tech, there’s been only one person I’ve had the pleasure of working with that was a true professional sales person.  She exhibited all of the above traits and is still extremely successful to this day.

I Don’t Care What Your Title Is
The title of Sales Representative is seldom used anymore.  More sophisticated titles like Account Manager, Senior Account Manager, Account Executive, Territory Manager or Business Development Manager are commonplace.  The more sophisticated the title, the less they produce.

Account Managers
Account Managers are order takers.  If they find out a customer is interested in purchasing a product they will quickly contact them.  Otherwise they wait for existing customers to call and then fill out the paperwork.  They either can’t or won’t prospect for new business unless it falls in their lap.  If your sales team consists of only account managers, you’re going out of business as soon as you lose your one big customer.

Account Executives
These are experienced sales people who usually have a track record of success.  Because of their experience they have earned the more sophisticated title.  The problem is they don’t like to prospect and they demand very high base salaries.  They will follow-up on leads and mine their existing contacts for business.  They will often view prospecting as beneath their skill set.  These are good people to have on the team as long as they keep producing enough new business to justify their high salaries.  Sadly, they often morph into highly paid Account Managers.

Territory Manager
What usually happens to a successful Sale Representative?  They get promoted to a Territory Manager.  Most junior reps have a goal of being promoted to a manager because of the perks. (company car, trips, incentives)  The problem is that they are often poor people managers and don’t know how to recruit new talent.  Instead, they will entice their friends to jump ship and come to work with them, which is never a good thing.  Experienced reps realize that being a manager isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.   Besides, they can usually make more money just being a consistent top performing sales rep.

Business Development Manager
This position is somewhat of a mystery but appears to be a hybrid between sales and marketing with an emphasis on neither.  Often this is one of those positions created for an underperforming rep who probably should have been fired.  They don’t prospect or take orders and seldom have direct contact with the customer.  It’s difficult to measure their contribution because they produce nothing tangible.  For the most part they coordinate one or two customer events per year and attend WebEx sessions put on by manufacturers.  Fortunately, it’s also one of the first positions to be eliminated when a new CFO takes over.

By The Way, Engineers Are Not Sales People
Sorry guys, but recommending a client purchase additional storage or an upgraded core switch is not sales.  The customer likely considers you a trusted advisor.  That trust, built over the course of the relationship with the customer,  is based on delivering what you promise and providing a service the customer values.  It’s also based on the fact that the customer doesn’t view you as always having one hand in their pocket.

The Bottom Line
If you are considering going to work for a VAR or reseller, take a close look at the sales team and the account base.  Certain combinations should raise red flags.  For example, one or two large customers that comprise 80% of the revenue combined with a sales team consisting of strictly order takers.  Think carefully about going to work there because if you lose that one big customer, you can quickly find yourself on the street looking for a new gig.

Net new customers and a reliable recurring revenue stream is what grows a company and makes it a stable place to work.  That requires vision, planning, experienced management and support teams and experienced Professional Sales Representatives to make it happen.

Case in point, on a Server 2008 R2 Domain Controller protection of the system state and bare metal restore began failing with the following errors noted in the event log.

The first error, 8193, was caused by the Service Account not having the correct permissions to the HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VSS\Diag key in the registry.  Nothing had changed on this server other than patches and updates being applied recently.

 Look at the error details to find which account the VSS service is attempting to use.  It’s likely the Network Service account. 

 Navigating to HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VSS\Diag and giving the Network Service account Full Control permissions to the key should correct the error.

The second error, 8230, was corrected by removing the account specified in the error from the HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VSS\VssAccessControl key, leaving only the NT Authority\Network Service account.  After this, initiate a manual consistency check. The System State and BMR recovery points should synchronize successfully.

The other issue I’ve been struggling with was on a Server 2008 R2 host. Nothing special, just a file server.  Again the System State and BMR began failing for no apparent reason, with the following error code;

Error 546
The backup operation attempted at ‘‎2012‎-‎01‎-‎05T04:50:29.755285700Z’ has failed to start, error code ’2147942405′ (General access denied error). Please review the event details for a solution, and then rerun the backup operation once the issue is resolved.

I spent considerable time researching the error and never really found an answer.  In the end, removing the System State and Bare Metal Recovery from the protection group, deleting the recovery points from DPM and then adding the SS and BMR back to the protection group corrected it.   This isn’t best best solution as it requires you to delete the recovery points but that’s the only way I was able to get it working again.  If anyone has encountered this error and was able to correct it please leave a comment.

First you’ll need a compatible USB to serial adapter for your Mac.  A few Google searches showed the Plugable USB to RS-232 DB9 Serial Adapter had the most positive reviews, but anything based on the Prolific PL2303HX Chipset will probably work.

Assuming you have the Plugable adapter, go here and follow their configuration instructions.  Make sure to download and install the latest driver.

Download and install iTerm2.

Open iTerm2 and create a new profile (Profiles>Open Profiles>Edit Profiles)
Click on the + at the lower left of the screen.
Give the profile a name, I called mine Serial.
Click the Command button and enter ‘screen /dev/cu.usbserial’ in the command box.

Accept the defaults on the other settings and close the dialog.

After connecting to the console port on your router/switch/firewall, open iTerm2 and select the Serial profile.  iTerm2 will automatically open Screen and connect to the adapter.  If everything is working correctly you should have serial console access to your device.

Use CTRL-A, then CTRL-\ to exit Screen.

Over four years of daily use I replaced the battery, the power adapter, upgraded the RAM to 4GB, and replaced the hard disk with a 320GB 7200RPM SATA drive.   I also experienced a serious video issue that required the unit to be shipped to Apple for repair.

By August of 2011 it was beginning to have display issues again and one of the speakers had quit working.  I had convinced myself that I was not going to purchase another Apple because I just couldn’t justify the steep price.

I started shopping for a replacement in October and had narrowed by choices to Sony and Lenovo.  Both weighed in at approximately $900.  I procrastinated, pondered and postponed the purchase, a habit that drives my wife crazy BTW.

Toward the end of November while visiting our corporate office for a meeting with a client I noted that seven of the twelve people in the room were using Macs and four of them had a MacBook Air.  About that same time a couple of folks I follow on Twitter began tweeting about their new MacBook Airs as well.

Prior to this I had written off the Air as being too limited and too expensive.  But based on the feedback from these friends and co-workers I made a trip to Best Buy in late November and picked up a 13” MacBook Air for slightly less than $1,200.

I had a few concerns about the MacBook Air prior to the purchase.  All of which have turned out to be a non-issue.

Screen Size
My MacBook Pro had a 15” display.  I’m not getting any younger and my eyesight is not like it was even five years ago so the prospect of downsizing to a 13″ display had me a little worried.  Turns out the display on the Air is so much clearer and sharper than my four year old MB Pro that I don’t miss the extra real estate.  Based on some input from others on Twitter, I’ve increased the default page zoom in my browser to 120% but other than that I don’t miss anything about the larger display.  The glossy finish doesn’t bother me either.

No Ethernet Adapter
Another non-issue.  After doing some research I picked up a Plugable USB 10/100/1000 Ethernet Adapter based on the ASIX AX88178 Chipset, installed the driver and it worked like a champ.

No Optical Drive
I didn’t buy an external drive with the Air and I really thought I would miss having a one.   To date however, I have not had a single occasion to use one.  Non-issue.

Horsepower
I spend most of my time in Chrome, iTerm, Preview, Kindle Cloud Reader, or Microsoft Office.  I’ll also do some dabbling with electronic music using Ableton Live.  So far horsepower has never been an issue.  Your mileage will obviously vary based on your usage patterns but for me it’s been another non issue.

Disk Space
The 120GB SSD drive is much smaller than the 320GB drive in my MB Pro.  Again this has been a non issue.  With over 20Gig of music and full installations of MS Office for Mac and Ableton Live Suite I still have over 50GB of free space.  I’m utilizing cloud based storage for more of my music and documents anyway.

The Bottom Line
For those that don’t need the extra horsepower of a MacBook Pro, the MacBook Air is very capable and reasonably priced.  Sure you pay a premium because it’s an Apple product, but the quality of this laptop is outstanding and after the first six weeks of ownership I’m glad I made this choice.

Just a few other thoughts.  The battery life is really, really good.  Again, this is something that will vary from user to user but for me I can easily go six to eight hours between charges based on my usage habits.

Since I spend a good deal of time working with routers and switches I was also concerned about finding a good USB to Serial adapter that works with Lion.  My prior experiences with USB to Serial adapters on a Mac were full of driver issues, so much so I usually spun up a Windows 7 VM on Parallels as a workaround.  This has been another non issue.  I picked up a Plugable USB to Serial Adapter based on the Prolific PL2303HX Chipset and after installing the driver I was connecting to the console port on Cisco and Juniper gear without any problems.

Besides getting the hang of using gestures, one other nicety is the disk space utilization display.  Go to About This Mac > More Info and then click on Storage.

The breakdown of file types is helpful, especially when you’re accustomed to a 320GB hard drive.

My goal with the Macbook Air is to do everything natively and not use a Win 7 VM or boot camp.  So, keeping an eye on my growing music collection will be less of a challenge using this method.

1. All the accounts had been moved to an OU called NOID.  Due to the number of accounts and the size of some of the mailboxes, I created a second set of OU’s under the NOID OU and sorted the accounts alphabetically.

2.  A dedicated virtual machine was provisioned to run the export from.  The VM runs Windows Server 2008 and has a 300Gig virtual disk for additional storage.  After the VM was joined to the active directory domain, I installed a 32bit version of Outlook 2007, Powershell, and the Exchange Management Console.

3.  You will need to decide what user ID will be used to run the export.   That user ID will need full access permissions to the mailboxes in order to export them successfully.  Assign the correct permissions to the OU by running the following command;

get-mailbox -OrganizationalUnit "OU Name"|Add-MailboxPermission -User "UserName" -AccessRights FullAccess

4.  You are now ready to run the export.  Make sure to specify the correct OU and target directory.

get-mailbox -OrganizationalUnit "OU Name"|Export-Mailbox -PSTFolderPath "Target Directory"

This will export all mailboxes in the specified OU.  The process is multithreaded and will export four mailboxes simultaneously.

Performing the export one OU at a time allows me to monitor how much storage the process is consuming before moving on to the next OU.  There are probably more elegant ways to do this that require less human intervention but this method gets the job done.

Just stop and consider the absurdity of it for a moment.  Spanning Tree is a loop prevention protocol.  Spanning tree comes in multiple flavors and is enabled by default in most decent switching gear.  Any network you give a damn about should have spanning tree.

The correct term is “Bridging Loop”.  If you have a loop in your network, don’t blame spanning tree for your problems.

Some folks hate on spanning tree, especially at the network core.  I can understand that to a certain extent.  But at the access layer you really have to question the wisdom of disabling spanning tree.  Left alone, it will do it’s job and save you from a weekend spent tracing down who plugged a long patch cable into two data ports in adjacent cubicles.

Sure, spanning tree takes a few seconds to re-converge, but at the access layer would you rather have a short outage or one lasting until you find that long patch cable.

What's wrong with this picture?

The vitriol directed at NAT can be confusing at times.  The Internet as we know it is a collection of NAT’d networks walled off from the rest of the world.  If it’s so bad, why do we use it everywhere?

When faced with an issue caused by NAT, we just deal with it.  Seldom do we stop and consider what the Internet would be like without NAT.  (NetworkingNerd being the exception as he followed up an appearance on Packet Pushers with a great blog post explaining some of his experiences with NAT.)

NAT makes our lives more difficult because translation breaks things.  Whether it is a VPN, VoIP, video conferencing or FTP, NAT gets in the way.  NAT complicates logging.  NAT requires workarounds and hacks to be performed on our edge devices to make services function correctly.  Those services would otherwise require no special treatment if NAT didn’t exist.  NAT adds a layer of complexity to edge devices that otherwise would not be needed.  With complexity comes the increased likelihood for problems resulting from buggy software or misconfiguration.  NAT was a big red EASY button  It prolonged the inevitable exhaustion of the IPv4 address space, delayed the adoption of IPv6 and allowed us to be sloppy and careless with security.

Speaking of security, another popular rant is that NAT is not a a security mechanism.  This is true.  However because many edge firewalls also act as NAT devices, the perception is that NAT is providing some of the security.  The “NAT as a security measure” misconception has contributed to a lack of understanding of what a firewall is really supposed to do in a network.

Consider a world without NAT.  All the IP addresses on your internal hosts are public addresses.  That’s right, no RFC 1918 addresses and no hiding.  You control access to those hosts at your firewall.  That scenario is tough to get your arms around if you are accustomed NATing everything.  I’ve done some work for a few educational institutions and many used public IP’s on their internal networks.  No NAT.  Want to access a host, switch or internal router?  Just SSH directly to the public IP.  Done.  No hocus pocus.

Because there is no hiding you take host hardening and the configuration of your firewall much more seriously.  You know exactly what services need to be allowed to pass thru the perimeter.  You study it, you worry about it, you log it, and you review it regularly.  If you don’t, well let’s just say the laws of natural selection begin to take effect.

Suddenly we all become as paranoid as the hard-core security dudes, minus the black helicopters.  Not necessarily a bad thing.  It would certainly make the Internet a completely different place than it is today.

As Networkingnerd mentions in his post, IPv6 is about to turn the walled off world of NAT on its ear.  Not a moment too soon IMO.  However, NAT is so engrained in our collective internet psyche that it’s not going to be eradicated overnight.  Some will no doubt cling to NAT indefinitely.

Let’s do things right this time as we transition to IPv6 and leave NAT behind.