June, 2009

RFID tags will make our lives a lot easier

I read in interesting article just now on RFID tags in cellphones and how they could revolutionize the world. Read more about it here.

Basically, the article talks about how the RFID chip in your phone could be used as your house keys or car keys… cool use of technology. It mentions that you could buy a concert ticket and then use your phone as a “ticket” to get into the concert. Another cool use!

WHOA! It dawned on me, wouldn’t the people at the concert ticket “selling place” need my home address when I made the purchase? RFID lock at home + purchased concert ticket = they have my RFID key… to my home. Frightening!

It goes on and talks about the fraud control implications where if your phone wasn’t near where your credit card was used they could logically flag the use as possible fraud. But that would require either a swipe of your phone infront of a RFID reader or a huge network of tracking devices that track your cellphones every movement. (Yes, I know it can currently be done with triangulation.) Who has access to this network?

Frightening stuff…

A day in the life of a Sysadmin: Check out Microsoft’s Server Quest Game

So, I’ve been on call for a week now covering for a co-worker — with a week to go for my turn and got my periodical Technet Flash Email (register here) and thought, “I’ll read up on new technology this morning”. However, my brain’s fried from lack of sleep and I noticed a link to a game from Microsoft… so I thought— “I need some mindless activity right now.”

If you need a mindless activity, and something to laugh at, check out this completely retro Server Quest Game! It will completely remind you of an old school Sierra game when you play the game and it’s well done! So go waste some time—You’ve earned it!

Turning on IIS Health monitoring’s worker process ping via VBScript

Some of the health monitoring options for IIS 6.0 are not optimally setup for most environments. For example, recycling the workerprocess after 1740 minutes of running may not be what most people want to do… especially since when you do the math it comes to 29 hours. Having IIS recycle on it’s own every day– offset 5 hours from the previous day is likely something that is going to cause you a head ache.

Another one that may is the pinging of the IIS workerprocess. However, changing a bunch of servers and ensuring each is consistant can be a pain. Enter VBScript, plus Microsoft has already written the code for us in adsutil.vbs!!

To turn on

To enable application pool health monitoring by using Adsutil.vbs at the command prompt, type:

cscript %SystemDrive%\Inetpub\AdminScripts\adsutil.vbs set W3SVC/AppPools/ApplicationPoolName/PingingEnabled TRUE

Note: Be sure to change TRUE to FALSE if you want to turn it off.
To change the ping interval by using Adsutil.vbs at the command prompt, type:

cscript %SystemDrive%\Inetpub\AdminScripts\adsutil.vbs set W3SVC/AppPools/ApplicationPoolName/PingInterval n

Note: Be sure and replace n with the number of seconds that you want to elapse between pings.
Enjoy!!