A friend asked me what port AIM used and I guessed something along the lines of 5190. I wanted to check to make sure and, after issuing the command netstat -n from the comamnd prompt, I couldn't find any port even close to that in use. But I did see 443 in use.. SSL, eh? I was connected to the IP 205.188.10.248 at port …

Recently, a user trying to login to OWA encountered the following error:

HTTP 403.1 Forbidden: Execute Access Forbidden You have attempted to execute a CGI, ISAPI, or other executable program from a directory that does not allow programs to be executed.

Another network administrator noticed that the URL was strange …

If you haven't been to meebo.com, you probably haven't needed to chat from a location that restricts chat program installs ;) Meebo.com is super slick; with nothing more than a browser, you can access your favorite chat network. The unencrypted meebo.com site does encrypt your password but stops there. By accessing …

In helping a visitor to troubleshoot running my IIS FTP ban script, I realized that while XP makes it appear as though it doesn't support banning users by IP address, it actually does provide that support; you just have to ban the IPs programatically.

UPDATE 12/18/06: The startup script has been modified slightly (cscript.exe was changed to wscript.exe). Now, console users will no longer encounter a blank black box upon login. UPDATE 11/21/06: Now that banning at the IP level has been added to the script, offending users are completely banned before they can even …

[super old post, reposted] A few weeks ago, I asked in an IT forum if it was possible to have a "perma-VPN" connection with Windows XP.

After searching for awhile, I found that Microsoft calls perma-VPNs "Demand-Dial Interfaces" and these can only be found in the Windows Server family, not Windows …

Last night I got locked out of my Compaq DL360's iLO. I searched the web to find how to reset the Administrator password and read that, for the most part, I'd have to be at the console. Bah! My servers are in San Jose and I'm up here in San Francisco, I didn't want to make a trip just to reset my passwords. I continued …

I used the following code a while back as part of a solution to automate the banning of spammers via their IP address.

'Here, we will pretend this is an imported list Dim XMLarr(1) XMLarr(0) = "65.19.238.21" XMLarr(1) = "198.31.175.100"

Set objIIS = GetObject("IIS://localhost/w3svc") …

I have a another blog that mentions random words like "daughter","school", "dirty", "bad", "dog", "herself", "year", "nasty" and "old." Until I started revewing my HTTP referers, It never even occured to me that nasty perverts …

This bandaid is mighty handy for pesky OSX disconnects. I don't really know what causes it and unfortunately, I don't have time to fully figure it out. I do know that changing my gateway back to my local gateway helped tremendously. Also, changing my default nameserver to a local nameserver helped too. Now, I get …