Automation Gyration

I recently updated some information on my tabular matrix of "Windows 7 Automation Options" over at my other other other web site.  The goal of this matrix is to map out alternative ways to perform common administrative tasks and compare which is best for certain conditions or situations.  Let me know if you want something added or if you have a correction to offer.

Mapping Out Windows 7 Automation Options

This is another one of those projects I’ve had swimming around in the back of my puny brain for a long time.  Think of it like an ant rollerskating around the inside of a vacant Walmart building.  Yeah.  Kind of like that.

The idea was to map out various “common” IT chores against the four most common methods for automating them and checking which ones work best and which are the “easiest” to implement.  Is it perfect?  Ha!  If you know anything about me you’ll know it’s at least sincere and fairly thorough, but I cannot claim 100% accuracy.  It is a living document since I’m using one of Google’s coolest and most flexible tools: Google Sites List Page template.  It lets you define your own list structures, including data types per column (text, date, URL, checkbox, drop-down, etc.) and specify the default sorting options. 

I plan on adding to this and updating it as time permits and as something new comes up.  I welcome any input and corrections, so chime in and I will be sure to post credit for submissions/corrections on the page.  I hope it helps system admins to more quickly pick an option to solve an automation challenge using one of the many built-in features of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

https://sites.google.com/site/skatterbrainz/automation

Please check it out and let me know what you think?  Thank you!

Bugs that May Never be Fixed

I'm guessing that you are most likely familiar with Windows Environment variables, since most of the readers here are pretty savvy about Windows stuff.  So, you should be pretty familiar with how 64-bit Windows variables are spread out too…

%programfiles%

%programfiles(x86)%

…and so on.

Well, guess what?  VBscript (WSH), has a little bug regarding how it handles the [programfiles] variable on 64-bit Windows 7.  To demonstrate, try this…

• Open a CMD console
• Type SET and press Enter
• Observe the values for [ProgramFiles], and [ProgramFiles(x86)]
• Type echo %programfiles% and press Enter.  Observe the output.
• Now run the following VBscript code and observe the output

Set objShell = CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")
wscript.echo objShell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings("%ProgramFiles%")

Notice anything odd?  While the echo statement returns "C:\Program Files", the script result returns "C:\Program Files (x86)", as will "%programfiles(x86)%".  So how do you get the 64-bit native app install path of "C:\Program Files"?  Well, using the ExpandEnvironmentStrings method - you don't.

And you might expect that you could rely upon the Environment property of the WshShell object, like this…

Set WshSysEnv = objShell.Environment("PROCESS")
wscript.Echo WshSysEnv("ProgramFiles")

But, sadly, it too returns "C:\Program Files (x86)"

And just when you thought that maybe something like KiXtart could ride up on a stallion wearing a shiney suit of armor and save the day with …

Break ON
? ExpandEnvironmentVars("%ProgramFiles%")

Well, think again.

There is one workaround, but it's not very "elegant" in terms of methodology (but it works, hey):

Set objShell = CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")
sysdrv = objShell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings("%SystemDrive%")
progfiles = sysdrv & "\Program Files"

The same approach works for KiXtart and others as well.

Conclusion

Given that Microsoft left VBscript at the wedding altar, sobbing and destitute, and ran off in a stolen convertible to Vegas with PowerShell, I wouldn't expect any changes to this behavior - ever.

Making Environment Variables Follow Users Around

Some Windows applications rely on System or User environment variables to provide a global configuration setting that is queried during application launch, or while the application is being used.  A common example of this is ADSKFLEX_LICENSE used by many Autodesk products.  There are others, such as those used by Oracle, and whatever.

Most of the time, users stick with an assigned computer and things are static and happy.  But when you have a user that moves around different computers, but you need a setting to follow them, then you may worry about scripting or registry hacks.  Fortunately, Group Policy Preferences makes this easier than blowing your nose.

There are more ways to map out how to apply settings (logically) than I have the time or patience to describe.  So for this example I'm going to pick one scenario: The dreaded Microsoft Certification Exam question format…

Your company, Stinkfist Inc., has two FlexLM license servers in the production AD environment: Server "A", which handles licensing for the bulk of production, and Server "B" which is isolated for R&D users only.  You gave up trying to figure out how to use an options file with feature sets to segment license pools within FlexLM because you drink too much and spend way too much time flirting with the cute receptionist. 

You get a call that senior R&D engineer, Duke LaCross, needs to travel from office to office, but can't bring his laptop on the trip because he's concerned about it being confiscated for all the porn files he's collected.  So he needs you to figure out a way to make it so where he goes, when he launches AutoCAD, it pulls a license from server "B".  But if anyone else gets back on the computer, it pulls from Server "A".

You hang up, dash over to 7-11 and buy a canned energy drink, two 5-hour energy drinks, an apple pie, and a bottle of water.  You get back, sit down, consume all of these items at once, and now you need to devise a plan.  What do you do?

Answer: (choose one)

A) You slip a $50 bill from your wallet and pay the intern next to you to figure it out.  If he makes it work, you take full credit.  If it fails, what the hell?  He's an intern, and therefore replaceable.

B) You tell Duke to shove it.

C) You open up Group Policy Management Console, create a new GPO, configure the Preferences to assign a user environment variable "ADSKFLEX_LICENSE=@ServerB" if the user is a member of the "Obnoxious R&D Users" group, but assign it "@ServerA" if not in that group.  You know that in order to do this, you employ the "Item Level Targeting" feature of the Group Policy Preference and filter it based on Group membership.

D) A and B and then you go drinking because it's nice outside today.

I hope you picked C.

“Scoop the Poop” isn’t about Dog Shit. It’s Bullshit

I was walking my Beagle on the beach last weekend and for whatever reason (ok, I know the reason, but let’s just move along) she had to stop and drop a load in the sand.  This is on the “North Beach” area, which is one of the THE most sparse places on the shore of Virginia Beach.  I can typically count every human in sight on one hand.  My dog finishes, I scooped a hole, nudged it in and buried it.  Within seconds, some middle-aged white guy runs up and smiles and says “you should pick that up, you know.”  Problem is I didn’t have a baggie, nor any gloves, nor a shovel, nor a God damned care in the F***ing world to go with it.

I said “whatever.” and started to walk on in the direction I was already going.  He started walking beside me, continues trying to make his point and save the planet Earth for all living creatures.

“If you leave that, some child will dig into it.”

I said “with the daily tides, it will be long dissolved and gone by morning.”

“Well, it creates an E-Coli problem for the beach water.”

I said “really?!  ONE DOG can do ALL THAT?”

“Well, if everyone felt that way, then…”

“Then what? You’re saying I can control or influence what every other dog owner does on this beach?!  Really?!  And by the way:  It takes quite a bit more ‘fecal matter’ to create enough E Coli quantity in parts-per-million before beach swimmers would have to worry.”

“It’s just bad for the environment” (with an obnoxious shrug and smile)

“So are you.”

Which brings me to this quasi-scientifc hypothesis:

Assuming that the quantity of “wildlife”, particularly fur-covered mammals, was higher in the years prior to mankind arriving, how did the environment ever survive their massive quantities of fecal matter?  If the conditions have changed such that the non-human mammal count has been DRASTICALLY reduced from 1500 to 2010, and the human population has increased from 4 or 5 to 437,000, well, gee, I wonder what factor has led to environmental impact?  Hmmmm… Finger’s tapping, staring up to the left or right.

Now, let me say that I don’t think anyone wants dog poop laying around on sidewalks and streets.  But on “nature trails” and secluded beaches I say: Dogs! Drop your loads!

Oh, and by the way, all along this particular area of beach are wild foxes living in the dunes.  Who picks up their droppings?  How much damage are they creating for the environment?  This whole thing reminds of a South Park episode.   Sometimes I wish a pack of dogs would dig a big hole and bury these idiot dumbasses and save our mental environment.

Why I Feel Politics is For Kool-Aid Drinking Idiots

We try to draw physical boundaries (states, counties) around illogical regions (blue-tards vs red-tards).  Which has always added confusion to our landscape in America as far as how we expect people to vote.  Every state has varying degrees of left-vs-right depending on which geographic area you happen to be in.

But I don't buy into the notion that one side of the tired left-vs-right debate has inherently "better" followers than the other.  The red-tards are knuckle-dragging, tobacco-chewing neanderthals for the most part, but the blue-tards tend to be smug, obnoxiously close-minded and prima-donna-ish while espousing having a more "open mind" yet any counter-opinion is immediately and venomously attacked as being red.  If you’re not blue, then the blue-tards call you red.  If you’re not red, the red-tards call you blue.  There is no tolerance for purple or green, not from either side.  I see it is another cycle in the long rolling history of America's polarization, which follows economic cycles.  

When things are bad, the red-tards come out swinging with anti-immigration and conservative rhetoric, church this, school that, and the usual book-burning diatribe of isolationist idealism.  But the blue-tards come out with the kool-aid and insist everyone drink it and all will be fine.  Gay tolerance for everyone, no bounds on topics for books tv radio for anyone, regardless of age or (gulp!) religious leanings, no more torturing peoples that want to destroy us, pass all kids through school regardless of their ability to add numbers or read a sentence and so on.  One side is no free lunch, not even if you’re starving to death.  The other insists on free lunches for all, even those who have a full refrigerator.

I ask this question to everyone that jumps into political discussion after each election: what has really changed from this?  Tell me.  What specific improvements have you seen that directly impact your life?  Every time it’s the same response:  A lot of hemming and hawing.  Let me translate that answer for you: NOTHING.

Looking over the elections of the past 30 odd years that I’ve been involved or familiar with, I can summarize the impacts of each election:

• It impacts the lives of people in oppressed lands around the world
• It impacts the lives of people in disaster-stricken areas
• It impacts the world markets
• It impacts the banks and financial systems
• It impacts defense spending
• It does nothing for Americans

I’d like to see improvements to public education, health care, the environment, transportation, personal taxation, energy resources, national security, space exploration, undersea exploration, and the general well-being of mankind around the planet. 

But we will never see that. 

Why?  Because no two humans agree on what those improvements should be.  Some actually think those individual topics are fine as they are or should actually be eliminated.   Politicians simply play to the statistical base of their demographics.  They have to, or they don’t have a paycheck to count on.  They will eternally tell us what they think we want to hear.  Why wouldn’t they?  That’s why you will never hear a politician directly admit that we’re in the midst of a religious war around the globe.  That would be political suicide.

So ask yourself how the following issues have been improved as a DIRECT result of any given election:

• Conflict in the Middle East (as bad as ever)
• Public Education (as bad as ever, maybe worse)
• Public Health (worse than ever, even statistical mortality)
• Environment
• Taxation (ha!)
• Transportation (in isolated areas it has improved.  overall it’s worse)
• Terrorism (oooooh.  Not better, sorry)
• Economy (nope.  it heals itself.  everyone else just takes credit)
• Unemployment (same)
• Immigration (same)
• Gay marriage (hey, didn’t they promise this too?)
• Drug Enforcement and Drug Crimes (no difference at all, ever)

I have voted for blue as often as red.  Not because I’m keeping a quota, but because:

• There are usually only those two choices
• I vote by individual clarity of agenda (i.e. do they have a lucid plan?)

And when neither side has an idiot-liar, oops, I meant “candidate”, I feel is worth voting for?  I skip.  It hasn’t hurt anyone, so relax.

Wearing a badge does not make a person automatically viable, smart or worthy of my vote.  That's my biggest gripe.  I'm just fucking tired of people telling me I have to drink the kool aid.  I stopped drinking that crap years ago.  I don’t give a shit about NASCAR or gay marriage.  So the next time you feel like trying to aim your bullhorn in my direction, just please STFU.

Ways America Could Recoup Lost Revenue

Here’s a few ways our illustrious government could fill their budget gaps…

• Tax non-commercial vehicles by their weight (progressively) and gas mileage (inversely).  Added strain on our road maintenance and oil consumption should come with a price.
• Raise the fee for getting a non-commercial driver’s license (or just give them away free).  Seems the qualifications for obtaining them are almost non-existent as-is.
• Actually enforce existing laws, and collect fines, for failing to cut your lawn, non-commercial vehicles with bumpers higher than 24 inches above the ground, improper parking, and so on.
• Tax people extra if they require medical assistance for issues they caused, such as excessive drinking, smoking or eating.  Exclusions would exist for contributing medical conditions obviously, but they would require a physician’s explanation
• Tax anyone who votes for going to war without contributing one of their own children to fight that war.  If you believe in it, you should be willing to pay for it somehow.
• Add a Tax or fine on “parents” who’s children commit crimes repeatedly while under the guardianship of the “parent”.
• Add a Tax on people who’s house is visited multiple times (within a given year) by the police or animal control.  Extra service should cost extra.
• Tax parents who’s (non-medically challenged) children fail and repeat a grade in public schools.  Do-overs should cost extra.
• Tax people for each “pet” animal over 2 per kind and more 3 kinds.  If you have 2 dogs, 2 cats and 2 snakes, fine.  More than that: you should pay extra to cover when the animal control folks clean out your 100-cat shithole and remove the Boa from your torso.
• Raise the fine for littering to $10,000 and include cigarette butts as “litter”.
• Raise the fine for DUI to $10,000, or whatever you have in all of your bank accounts, whichever is greater, on the first offense.  If you really want to help drunk driving, do it right or just forget it.
• Fine people for driving around with stupid flags all over their vehicles.  As if anyone cares what team they like.  The flags are distracting and annoying.  The added risk to nearby drivers should come with a price-tag.  Want your flags?  Fine.  Pay up.  Same goes for spinner wheels, and flashing decorator lights.
• The fine for any business polluting the environment should be equal to one-half of their gross revenue for that year.

And for those people that manage to NOT violate any of these guidelines should get a tax BREAK as well.

Because I Said So, That’s Why!

Nothing says “I love you” as much as spoonfeeding shit in mass quantities to those around you.  I’ve done this rant many times before, to people that know me this is a regurgitation, but with a twist of lime this time around.

“Dolphin Safe”

Most kids under 30 don’t really know what this term infers.  To those of us over 30 (or 40) it’s an obvious reference to the Tuna industry and their fight to win public acceptance of their eco-friendly methods of mass-collecting and killing natures tastiest creatures (no, not the pizza-fish, the Tuna).

Documentaries went crazy with stories of enormous, wide-cast nets, dragged for miles over the open sea, catching Tuna, but also catching Dolphin, Tortoises, and almost anything else swimming in the wrong place at the wrong time.  The public supposedly became “insensed” at this disregard for nature, although I’ve never seen Americans get upset at anything since the great corporate brainwashing project ended the 60’s free love movement.  The only thing we get upset about now is cancelling our favorite TV shows.

So the canners got together in the bar next to the golf course and concocted this idea of stamping all the cans as “Dolphin Safe” and saying they were using “newer technology” to spare the dolphins and tortoises and only catch those tasty, benign, nutritional Tuna.  Sure.  Magic nets somehow can tell a Tuna from a Dolphin, regardless of those two overlapping significantly in the realm of physical dimensions.  Ever been out to sea on a Tuna boat?  Ever watched them reel the “catch” in?  (I love that term “catch” when we’re talking about nets that can reel in an entire stadium)

But “they” say it’s “Dolphin Safe”, so it must be!  Right?

The axiom here?  If you spoonfeed enough shit, for a long-enough time span, the masses will not only accept it as normal, but will eventually relish it, and even worship it.

We are still being spoonfed shit, but the media production is far more savvy and convincing.  That “long-enough” caveate is now almost 24 hours.  The “enough” (quantity reference) is now roughly about 3 major networks.  So, using this new media capability with the old axiom, we get an equation as follows:

3n * 24h = MA

This translates into 3 (major) networks, spoon-feeding 24 hours of shit to the public, results in Mass Acceptance as fact and norm.  It’s a perfect formula.  It works for WMDs, invasion plans, bank bail-outs, flu pandemics, vaccine distribution, multi-national treaties, corruption scandals, and so on.  Everyone has an agenda if they (a) have a communication channel, and (b) a budget.  The budget is what ties them to an agenda.  Parent companies, contracts, partnerships, PAC’s, you name it.  There is no such thing as “no strings attached”.  Even those Dolphins know that.  But they’re safe, right?  After all: It says so right on the can.

Virginia Beach: If I could only pick 5 projects

If I had the magic checkbook and could assign any 5 projects to be embarked upon without regard to cost…

1. A combination Light Rail and Bus system that not only follows the Norfolk-Southern abandoned rail (East-West parallel to I-264), but branches out to form a circuit that encompasses all of Virginia Beach.  Everyone should be within walking distance of mass transit without waiting hours between pick-ups.

2. Walk-over bridges around Town Center, at Rosemont, and at various points along the oceanfront.  Get people off the habit of walking in front of cars, which as you may know can be hazardous to the health of pedestrians.

3. Connect all the bike paths and add new paths.  Get the freaking idiot “I’m a car too, watch me” bicyclists off the road and onto their own pathways.  Make it possible to cross the city without risking your life along the way.

4. Beef up the parks.  Mount Trashmore should have a performance stage, more benches, wider paths (so joggers can get around slow-poke walkers, strollers, etc.), keep the carnival there all Summer long, expand the skate park, add path lights on the western perimeter, and so on.  Other parks should get similar treatment.

5. Replace Pembroke Mall.  Build a bigger, fancier, cooler, awesomer mall.  It should combine all the cool things of other malls around the country.

Bonus: Offer up better incentives to entice high-tech industry to move into the area.  Not talking about call centers.  I’m talking about manufacturing, software development, and R&D.  We let a lot of talented ex-military folks slip through our fingers.  We should give them a better reason to stick around than just the beach.

America, the Beautiful. God Shed his Waste on Thee

I’m really surprised nobody feels as strongly about this as I do.  Really.  Every day on my commute to and from work, driving around town, and so on, I see people toss trash from their car.  Wrappers.  Bottles.  Cigarette butts.  Cups.  You name it.

If I was president/prime-minister/king/emperor for a day, the first law I would pass would be immediate death penalty for anyone harming or exploiting a child.  The second law I would pass is a $1,000 fine and 7 days in jail for littering, that would be “per discarded object” not per incident, by the way.  The third law, by the way, would be public lashing for anyone on food stamps who also smokes, but that’s for another article.

What’s most ironic is the large percentage of offending motorists who also take the time to affix a bumper sticker on their vehicle proclaiming how proud they are to be “American”.  So proud, in fact, that they can barely hold back their desire to express their pride by expelling shit from their vehicles any chance they get.  Even more ironic is how many folks hang a flag from their rear-view mirror for whatever country their ancestry hails from.  If it is so great, why did your ancestors make the trip over here?  Face it, your origins suck.

Here’s a shocker for you:  Cigarette butts take months to decompose in open weather and sunlight.  Months.  Maybe the spattering of them behind your workplace smoking area hasn’t registered in your brain yet, but you might have noticed that if you don’t pick them up, they tend to stick around almost a year (or longer in many cases).  They are not classified as “bio-degradable” folks.  They never have been.

Beer and soda cans.  Plastic bottles.  Fast food containers and plastic wrappers.  Styrofoam cups and plastic lids.  Empty cigarette boxes and packs.  These all will outlive you and I.  Not to mention how ugly they look laying around everywhere.  They blow in the wind and end up in parks, rivers, lakes, and our front yards.

If you even remotely “like” this piece of land we stole from the Indians, then you should pay it homage by putting your trash in something appropriate.  Don’t toss it indiscriminately.  From all of us, and your children’s children: Thank you!

Busting Another Myth: Dog Poo is Destroying our World

Myth: Dog Feces is Bad for the Environment

I would have thought this was obviously dumb, but I suppose I need to digress into this and flesh out the rationale behind why this is just flat-out stupid.

Assuming that before mankind arrived in high numbers to this wonderful land of “ours” (translation: the piece of land we stole from the Indians), there were likely a much higher population of wildlife than there are today.  A MUCH higher population.  That would also imply more wildlife fecal matter.  Before the East Coast was settled, there were large numbers of deer, bear, foxes and wolves and all sorts of furry mammal critters living all over the place.  Did their poop destroy the forests?  Did it destroy the fish with the runoff?  Now we have VASTLY fewer animals per square mile in 2009 than were here in 1809, with the remainder filled (or over-filled) with humans (the other dumb mammal that does stupid shit).  Given that humans, for the most part, do their dirty business into a toilet, and that the byproduct is routed by sewer lines to a treatment plant, that means there is much less fecal matter laying around per square mile than one hundred years ago.  Much less.  If every dog alive did a doody on their owner’s front lawn, it wouldn’t come close to 1/100th of the total volume of doody from back then.  Yet, somehow, it DESTROYS the environment.  If you still believe that, you suck at math.

Part 2 – If you live near a park with a lake or a pond, you may have come to see a Goose or two.  If so, you may also notice just how much poo a Goose tends to drop as they walk around acting as stupid as a typical human car driver.  Just in the park across the street from our house, on an average day, there will be about two dozen Canadian or white geese grazing and pooping like little doody machines.  The size and mass of their droppings is about the same as that of a small dog.  However, they doody at about 1000 times the rate of a small dog.  If you have a small dog and it poops every minute, it has serious problems.  However, this is normal for a Goose.  Does Goose fecal matter destroy the environment?  Are there actually people that walk behind them and scoop their poop?  I sure hope not.

Sure, Geese eat grass and vegetation, while dogs eat meat and vegetation.  Foxes, beer and other animals eat meat too.

Granted, nobody wants dog poo everywhere.  It sucks to step in it, and it smells bad.  I’m not saying you shouldn’t “curb your dog”, but let’s be honest about the logic behind it.  Pick up because it’s the decent thing to do.  Not because of some bullshit “green” storyline.  If this dumbass P.C. mindset continues on, I would expect to see a law passed that requires dog owners to attach a poop sensor on their dogs.  It would count the poops and transmit the location of the drop and date/time.  Automatically sending a bill to the owner for carbon footprint damage to the environment.  Think I’m kidding?  Think again.

Apparently, the approach of asking people to pick up just to be nice wasn’t working.  So they have to pin another reason on it: The environment.  That’s right.  Animals pooping destory the world.  So don’t forget to pick up after your racoon, squirrel, rabbit, fox, deer, bear, and so on.  After all: wildlife has now become Nature’s enemy.