Among the things that can befuddle even experienced developers, domain resolution ranks up at the top. Usually this is because we don't spend a lot of time worrying about resolution on our desktop or laptop or Iphone. DNS is an extremely mature technology and for the most part it just works with few issues. When it comes to a server however, there are several things that can trip up resolution. Without an understanding of exactly what is going on under the hood, you will find yourself destroying yet another keyboard with the ball of your fist as you shout "why won't you just work!"
Domain resolution comes into play on most ColdFusion applications, even if you don't think so. Among other things, resolution is important for:
I confess I can't live without RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol). Coupled with a VPN it is an effective way to work from home on my high powered office workstation. In fact, on a recent road trip to St. Louis while my wife was driving, I used my Verizon Blackberry tethered to a laptop to connect to my VPN and RDP to my desktop at work. I managed to handle email and write most of an 8 page document. Such things were not even possible 3 or 4 years ago. Telling this to my mom and dad makes them think I'm Captain Kirk (I keep telling them that Picard is better - Kirk's screens and dials were all analog). I prefer RDP to everything else I've tried - including log me in, go to my pc, pcanywhere and VNC.
Anyway, Nicole (our creative director) and I had a similar problem. Her RDP stopped working completely after a windows update. For her, the login screen would not even appear - and no error either. It would just return to the host name box immediately. For me the login would appear and I enter my password to login - but then the process would lock up and I would have to wait a few minutes for the whole thing to time out without ever successfully getting in.
Googling around I found that a lot of folks had problems like this and their solutions seem to focus on display drivers (NVidia in particular). I have a 3 monitor setup and I use 2 NVidia cards - so this seemed likely to me. Checking with Nicole she too was using Nvidia drivers. To fix it, she downgraded her recent drivers one version. I took the opposite approach and simply "upgraded" my drivers to the next version - and that solved my issue.
When you think about it I suppose it makes sense that display drivers can cause RDP issues - since RDP renders the desktop for you. But it was not something on my radar. Now I have something to look for if it happens again.
We had a ticklish issue arise with a customers recently. We host an application for them that allows them to upload files. As they began to use the application more heavily they noticed that file uploads above a certain size were failing. The size was fairly modest. Uploads sized between 1 and 4 megs were simply timing out. We eventually came up with a solution, but not before some head scratching. Here is the play-by-play.
Read More
When I arrived at work this morning I found more than 280 spam links posted as comments to various entries on my blog. They were all for certain articles of clothing which shall remain nameless (but some of them are made for walking). Now occasionally, about 3 or 4 times a week, I'll see a single spammy comment posted and I just kill it - cased closed. The Captcha keeps out most automated spam, so I figure any spam I get is individuals paid to labouriously post links. This seemed like more than that - both in volume and in the systematic way it was perpetrated. I will be keeping a close eye on it - but it makes me wonder if there is a bot out there that has cracked my captcha.
Meanwhile, my sincerest apologies to anyone subscribed to any post of mine who had to suffer through these emails. The Muse will do what he can to make sure it is not a commmon occurance.
I have been looking forward to Google Wave and I was excited to at last have my invite. I got signed up and imported my contact list and created a wave and then.... then.... well... in the words of the dinosaur in the animated movie Meet the Robinsons, "I've got tiny arms and a huge head... I'm not sure you thought this plan through very well." Ok, not the tiny arms part, but this whole invitation thing, while a neat way to create Internet buzz in the lighting world of social media, doesn't really lend itself to useful testing - at least not for a company.
Sure, I'm seeing a few folks in my contact list who have a wave account. They are mostly tech savvy developers. I know I could create a wave and collaborate with them. But what I really need is to be able to roll my company developers and select customers into a wave for testing. I'm not trying to chat about the weather or review movies. If I want to waste time I can Facebook or Twitter. Instead I'm trying to see if the new wave paradigm can enhance my current project management processes (maybe even supersede some of them). I sent out a passel of invites but I've yet to have any of them approved. I guess until I get the right folks on the inside I will sit here and wave to myself. If I ever do get a legitimate test going - and more importantly if I can figure out how to tie Wave into my tracking and billing system - I will make sure and post a full report.
I have a few Win2008 servers under management and I had to renew a cert for one of them today. Now I confess this is the first time I had to do this particular task so there was some head scratching involved. I learned a number of things that might be of some use to you if you are up against this task. In this case I was renewing a Verisign cert. Here's what I learned.
Read More