Who Are You - Your Personal Brand

Who are you…..?

Or more importantly who do you want others to perceive you to be. With the emergence of social media more and more of our lives are becoming visible to others. In some ways this is good and in other it has been disastrous.

Most people consider marketing something that only business need to be concerned with, though each of us have our own personal brand. Our personal brand is the person that others perceive us to be.

Historically most people’s personal brand encompassed first impressions and our résumé. In our current time where social media is a large part of our life our personal brand now encompasses many other elements; blogs, social forums, email addresses, web sites…. If we are not careful and do not plan our interactions carefully we could be creating a personal brand that is contrary to what we want it to be.

For the longest time I stayed out of the social media arena because I wanted to be careful not to harm my professional image with a lot of personal stuff that my employer, potential employer or clients do not need to know about. Recently I came to a realization that I am also hurting my personal image as much as I am protecting it. In essence if I am not visible in the social media arena I am reducing my visibility and my professional image only encompasses personal interaction and what others write about me. I finally started to get out there and did some research and planning so that I can be wise about my activities. I have made mistakes none of which have been embarrassing though they could have led that way if I was not already being a little shy about my interactions.

The first suggestion that I would make is to try to segment your personal and professional life as much as possible. This starts with your email address. Get a professional email address, one that is not tied to your internet service. Using your free accounts that come with your internet service is convenient though if you ever change your service it could cause issues with people wanting to connect with you professionally. Plus, by using those emails you are doing more marketing for your service provider than you are for yourself. Use an address that is professional. CutE85@hotmail.com is probably not a good representation of someone who wants to get into public office. Remember first impressions are extremely important and in these times potential employers my have more interaction with our email address than they do with us personally. Try to keep your professional and personal addresses different enough that if someone Google’s your professional email address they do not come up with your personal life as well.

Social networking sites can be important to building or destroying your personal brand. Be careful on what you post and who can see your posts. Don’t just befriend anyone that requests it. Make sure that they are people you know. You would not want a comment made by a “friend” to potentially cause you embarrassment to you professionaly. According to Melanie Gallegas (link) 8% of US companies have sacked social media miscreants. Whether you like it or not you represent the company you work for. If you list their name on your linkedin account, mention them on your Facebook page or wear their company logo and post a picture of it online then you represent them for good or bad. Following are a few examples of how poor choices in social media have affected other’s employment.

Stacy Snyder (story quoted from a myspace.com forum)

“In the absence of strong protections for employees, poorly chosen words or even a single photograph posted online in one’s off-hours can have career-altering consequences. Stacy Snyder, 25, who was a senior at Millersville University in Millersville, Pa., offers an instructive example. Last year, she was dismissed from the student teaching program at a nearby high school and denied her teaching credential after the school staff came across her photograph on her MySpace profile. She filed a lawsuit in April this year in federal court in Philadelphia contending that her rights to free expression under the First Amendment had been violated. No trial date has been set.”

Unknown Coke employee (quoted from an article by Janine Yancey)

“During the height of the cola wars in 2003, a Coke delivery driver was fired for sipping a Pepsi on the clock, while a Colorado man was fired in May 2005 from his job at a Budweiser distributor for a conflict of interest. The offending activity: he was spotted drinking Coors at a bar on Saturday night. His boss reportedly informed him that drinking the competitor's product was ‘putting food on the competitor's table, while we are putting food on yours.’”

Unknown Facebook User (paraphrased from a presentation done by Melanie Gallegos)

A Facebook user posted a comment about how she hated her job and that her bass was a “Wanker”. Unfortunately for her she did not remember that she had added her boss to her list of friends and he promptly responded that she did not need to report to work the next day.

A potential Cisco employee (quoted from an ABC New article by Dalia Fahmy)

“One Twitter user posted an update last year saying "Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work."

A Cisco employee responded, "Who is the hiring manager? I'm sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the Web."

Needless to say, the applicant did not end up working at Cisco.”

On the other hand your social media presence can work for you. The other day I was in a training session for a product called SharePoint from Microsoft. During the meeting the trainer had commented that if we wanted to know more about a specific topic that we should check out a person’s website (to be honest I forgot her name and did not write it down). She was not an employee of Microsoft. She is just considered an expert on that platform as a result of her social media interactions. She has made a name for herself doing nothing more than blogging about helpful hints and learned best practices that she has come across.

Another example is from one of my favorite authors, Brandon Sanderson. Not too long ago another one of my favorite authors, James Rigney (AKA Robert Jordan) had passed away. Sanderson had posted a blog about Rigney’s influence in his life and how it helped to give him direction in his current profession as a Science Fiction writer. The message that he wrote was very touching. So much that Rigney’s widow, Harriet, had somehow got a hold of this note and later contacted Sanderson to finish Rigney’s legacy in writing the final book (later to become three books) of the Wheel of Time series. The fact that Sanderson is a wonderful writer also playing into her decision I am sure.

After hearing about these stories you may be thinking, “Hey we live in a country where we have free speech and should be able to say what we want to say.” That is true though that free speech can still have negative impacts. Whether you like it or not you represent your company and employers or potential employers will not want to be associated with anyone that could do their brand harm. They may not come out and say that you did not get hired, did not get promoted or did not get the desired raise because of your social media interactions but that does not mean it did not happen and they found another reason to disguise it. By all means use your rights to free speech though do it in a way that it does not mar those that you professionally represent.

It is important for you to take control of your personal brand and control the parts of it that you want your professional network to see. Businesses do this all the time through the use of SEO and SEM. Take control of your personal brand and how your professional network perceived you. Gallegos mentioned in her presentation some elements that I am going to expand upon that you should consider in planning and implementing your personal brand.

• Come up with a “keyword”; your full name, nickname, married name or “handle” that you want to own and stick to it.

This is especially important if you have a common name. I have a very common name. In fact if you were to Google my name the chance of getting any info about me is next to impossible. Most likely your first hits will be regarding the Robert Ford that killed Jesse James. If you use something other than your name, make sure it is something professional and represents your personal brand. “The Tan Queen” would not be a good nickname to use for someone who wants to be a network administrator.

• Buy a domain and build a website of blog.

If possible have a domain name that matches your “keyword”. Also make sure that the content is appropriate. Expressing you thoughts about a drunken party the previous evening on your Small Business Technology blog would not set the right tone. Also, if you are trying to promote yourself as a web designer please have a decent website. I was involved in a situation where I was helping a friend find a web designer for his small business. He did not have enough to pay for a big company to do it so we were looking at some independent developers. I was sadly disappointed by the number of people who were promoting their services and had terrible websites themselves. Make sure that if you profess a certain profession or skill set that it can be backed up by what people can see.

• Use an email address from your professional domain as your email address for all professional correspondence.

Do not use your personal email address for professional use. It will make it too easy for personal interactions to become professional correspondence. If you use social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter… have a profile associated to your personal email and another for your professional email. Yes that will make it a pain to manage though it can save you some potential embarrassments in the future. Also if you have a smart phone where you keep your social networking sites logged in at all times have it connected to your personal account. You do not want the boss to know that you are out golfing with a buddy when you are supposed to be at home sick.

• Link all of your professional networking sites together using your “keyword” and with links to your profile.

An example: Recently I have started writing articles for one of my favorite websites, CodeProject (though I only have two articles up there as of yet). On my profile for that website, I added a link to my LinkedIn profile. My LinkedIn profile has a link to my Facebook profile. My Facebook profile has a link to my CodeProject profile. And all three have links to my technology blog. All of these accounts I have associated to the same email address that I use for all of my professional interactions.

• Blog positioning your credibility, personality or expertise/thought leadership.

If you blog make sure that your blogs are relevant to your personal brand. Show that you know what you are talking about and that you are a leader or expert in that field. Don’t spend time talking about how great you are. No body likes personal aggrandizements. Be humble and let your work speak for itself. Make sure to keep confidential information out of your blogs. Hackers and corporate pirates constantly look at social media to find info that can help them to steal or get an edge of other businesses. Many times you will see a system admin posting a specific problem that they encountered and put too much detail in to the note and gave someone all the info that they would need to hack into the company’s website. If you pick up any “how-to” book in hacking the first think it will recommend is to check help groups and blogs to get info that can help to hack the network.

• Consistency.

People like others that they can rely on. If you are a blogger and you really want to build your brand through that medium then you need to blog about relevant info and often. If you only post a blog once every three months or are inconsistent on your schedule then others will not know when to check out your blog and may lose interest. This is something that I am not good at and plan to get better at. Keep your websites up-to-date and relevant. If you are a hardware specialist then having how-tos relating to fixing a IBM 386 is not going to help you.

• Never assume that anything you post is private

Even on your personal profiles if you assume that anything you post is public even though you have your privacy options set and act accordingly then you will be pretty safe.

• Be aware of who you befriend

Don’t just accept anyone as your friend. Remember that your “friends” also represent you. If you befriend your college buddy’s personal profile on your professional profile and someone in your professional network checks out their page and sees pictures of you dancing on a table after a weekend of dubious behavior the damage is almost as bad as if you posted it on your profile directly. Make sure that your friends understand what that profile is for and act accordingly.

• Be thoughtful about what you put in writing.

Sometimes we are in a hurry to put out a post and put it together quickly to get it out. Make sure that you use spell check and that your grammar is decent. You do not want people to think that you could not handle yourself in a conversation with important people. Also if you are going to quote something provide a reference or link to the information to help provide credibility. In fact there is value in doing so. Links to other sites helps you in regards to search engine optimization. In fact if you reference someone and provide some decent information it could not hurt to send that person a note about it in hopes that they might also link to you in order to drive more traffic and build your name faster.

• When corresponding with others, be diplomatic and engaging.

Never use harsh words or disparaging comments to criticism someone’s words or work. It only makes you look like the fool and may detract from others wanting to associate with you in fear that you might do the same to them. Also it could get you banned from certain sites which would hurt you in your ability to build your brand.

• Include social media elements in your résumé.

If you include your professional website, blogs, email and such in your résumé you will helping to direct potential employers where you want them to go. They will be less likely to Google you and come up with things that you do not want them to see. Not only will this help direct them where you want them to go it can help to show more of your expertise and leadership that it not possible to show in a one or two page résumé.

• Professional logo.

Use an appropriate photo. You should be dressed appropriately and it should be of you. Your pictures of your kids are cute and all but your professional network wants to know about you not your kids.

• Monitor your personal brand

Make sure that you know what others are saying about you. “Google” your “keywords” often to make sure that you are still presenting the personal image that you want to portray. If something negative comes up work to resolve it quickly so that you can reduce any potential issues it could cause. It is true that you can delete comments placed on your Facebook wall though if you get to it after you boss or potential client has already seen it then the damage is already done. Do not allow others to post comments on your social networking sites message boards. You cannot control what they will write and you will be opening yourself up to a potential risk.

• Don’t participate in bad mouthing your employer

Not only could it potentially lead to being black listed or termination in your current employment it could lead prevent you from getting hired somewhere else. Potential employers would be hesitant to bring you on in fear that you would do the same about them. You will be considered damaged goods. Instead of focusing on the bad things about your job, focus on the good things. If there are no good things then do not say anything, just quit and find somewhere else to work. There are a lot of companies out there. If that is not an option then see if there is anything you can do to help make the situation better. If you are allowed to help bring about change, not only would it help to make you happier but is would look great on a résumé.

Remember that everything you do is a potential impact on your personal brand. You want those things that are positive to be in the forefront. Take time to plan out how you want other to perceive you. If you are not sure yet at least lay the ground work so that when you are ready you can make the move without much work. Some sites do not allow the changing of email accounts and you do not want to get locked into something that would not enhance your personal brand.

References:

http://www.christopherspenn.com/2010/04/02/why-personal-brand-is-essential-to-corporate-marketing-success/

http://forum.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=messageboard.viewThread&entryID=49711567&groupID=100472090

http://www.salesandmarketing.com/msg/content_display/training/e3i111888fc4afd5a6a15a93bde975fac05

http://www.slideshare.net/gearyinteractive/social-media-for-employment-2020310

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/PersonalFinance/facebook-firings-employees-online-vents-twitter-postings-cost/story?id=9986796

http://www.odesk.com/blog/2009/07/facebook-faux-pas-what-not-to-do-in-social-network-view/

Adventures in DVRing

A few years ago a friend of mine gave me a HP Z552 Media Center computer.  It has been a great computer though it has started to get old and parts are starting to wearout.  About six months ago the DVD drive in it died.  I went to replace it and as I was looking around I found a BluRay DVD drive that was only $30 more than a regular DVD drive as Best Buy (LG 10x BluRay Rewriter BH10LS30) so I spent a little extra on the BluRay drive.  I brought it home and installed it without a hitch, though when we tried to play a BluRay disk in it we got errors.  At that time I did not have the time to troubleshoot the issue.  Since it played normal DVDs fine I ignored the issue for a while.

A few weeks ago I decided to troubleshoot the issue with my Media Center machine not being able to play BluRay disks.  I quickly discovered that the issue with my Media Center machine not being able to play BluRay disks was due to my video card that was installed in the Media Center machine.  Thinking that this would be an easy fix to the issue I went to Altex (I miss having a Frys Electronics close by, this is the closest store to it).  I decided to purchase a EVGA GeForce 9500 GT.  It is not the most powerful of cards though it was powerful enough to meet my needs and would last for a while.  I brought the card home, took a part my DVR and instantly realized that the card would not fit.  The case was a "slim-line" case, which I did not realize previously, and a regular-sized card would not fit.

I took the card back so that I could exchange it for another.  Unfortunately there are not a lot of cards that can easily fit into a "slim-line" case.  I purchased an EVGA GeForce 210.  This card is designed in a way that I could take the face plate off and fit it into the slot in my machine.  I brought the card home and fit it into my machine, hooked up all the connections and plugged my machine in to test it.  Interestingly enough the machine would not boot up.  I could not think of any reason why adding a new video card could do that (typically if the card is bad the machine would still get power though it would beep to let us know that there is a problem).  There was no power at all on the board.  The fans did not start the indicator light on the board was not on, nothing.  I figured it was the power supply though I wanted to make sure.

I made another trip to Altex and purchased a 400w power supply and a power supply tester (I had never seen one of these before and since I help other people with their computers so often thought that it would be a wise purchase).  I brought these home.  First I connected the old power supply to the tester and it indicated that there was not any power.  Next I plugged the new power supply into the tester just to make sure that it was working fine and all the lights came on.  So I validated that the tool works fine and the old power supply is dead.  Now my problem is this, the old power supply is custom for the box and you cannot go to a store and purchase one of its size, the manufacturer also does not make this part any more and the only way to get a new one is through an after market part supplier.  So my decisions are to purchase a new one and wait three weeks for it to arrive, use the new power supply that I bought and modify the box to make it fit, or buy a new box that the new power supply would fit into.

Since I do not have the tools to modify the box and the potential risks associated to it are kind of high, also because I am impatient and did not want to wait for a part to provide I decided to try to rebuild this machine in a new box.  Or in other words use all the current internal parts and migrate the to a new box.  I went back to Altex and after looking around a bit and came across a new dillema.  The current box has a micro ATX motherboard and three PCI cards and an AGP card in it.  The problem is that the board itself only had one PCI slot.  That PCI slot had a riser card with three more PCI slots in it.  I looked at all the boxes that Altex had and could not find any that I could modify so that all the current hardware would fit into it.  At this point I was at the end of the day on a Saturday and I decided to leave the decision till Monday (partially because Altex was now closed for the day).

Monday morning came, and since it was Thanksgiving week I had the day off (I took the whole week off) and as soon as Altex was open I headed over to get some new parts.  Over the weekend I had decided to replace the motherboard and get a new box so that everything would fit.  The box that I found that I liked is an Antec NSK2400.  Also in talking to the sales person I decided to buy an ASUS 945GC-MX because the processor that I had was an Intel P4 Socket 775 processor.  I took all of that home and started to play again.

After I got home I took everything out of my old DVR box (which was a considerable feat).  Once I had everything out I started to go through the motherboard manual and the new encolosure manual to make sure that I connected all the wires from the enclosure to the headers on the motherboard.  As I was scanning through the motherboard manual I discovered that the board that they recommended would only support a maximum of 1gb of memory.  It would also only support memory modules that have a max of 512 mb.  Since I am building a media center PC and since I only had a 1 gb stick of memory this board was not going to work.  So I took the board back to Altex along with the second video card (I had compromised earlier to get a card that was not as powerful as what I wanted so that it would fit into the old box and wanted to get the one that I had previously decided upon).  I explained my issue and told them what I wanted and they graciously helped me out.  In fact they gave me a bit of a discount (I think that they were a little embarrased over the issue with the mother board) and I was able to get a better motherboard (Intel DG41TY) and the previous video card for an even swap of what I was returning.  That made me happy.

I took my new parts home and started again to put things together.  I got the motherboard, memory, hard drive, DVD player, processor, video card and such installed and plugged it in to go for a test run. After plugging it in I could see that there was power (fans started and motherboard indicator light came on) though there was nothing coming up on the screen.  Also I did not hear any of the costomary "beeps" that the motherboard plays to let you know that it is working or if there is an issue.  I did some research and found out that the processor that I have is based on the Intel Prescott core which is .90 nm and is a 775 slot processor.  The motherboard supports a 775 processors with the exception of this one.  It seems that Intel produced one 775 motherboard with a .90 nm form factor though a majority of the processors with this slot format have a .45 nm form factor and as such this motherboard supports all slot 775 processors except for the one that I have.  In fact I found out that it would be difficult for me to buy a motherboard for the processor that I have from a store since most stores do not carry them any more.  So I headed back to Altex.

I decided to buy a new processor to fit the new motherboard.  I purchased an Intel E5200 Dual Core 2.5 ghz processor.  After I got home I put the new processor and heatsink on the motherboard (which I had to take everything out of the box because the previous heatsink mounted to the bottom of the board).  After I got everything back in I plugged it in and my media center actually started up.  Now, due to the change in the motherboard and because some of the custom HP hardware was missing I was getting a few errors when the OS started and had to run some repair processes to fix things.  That seemed to fix things though I was still getting random errors that I could not explain.  The stability of the machine was in question so I decided to wipe out the machine and reinstall the OS.  I resinstalled the OS and all the new device drivers and things started to run wonderfully.  Luckily I had backed up all my media on an external drive prior to this point so I did not lose any of my TV recordings and such.

Now that the machine is stable I proceeded to resolve the next issue.  In the old machine there was an external card that was connected to the motherboard via a firewire header.  Unfortunately I did not realize this until after I had gotten everything together and did not make sure that the motherboard I purchased had this element and it did not.  I was not about to rip everything out again and replace the board just for this.  I decided to buy an internal firewire card and a cheap firewire cable.  I modified the cable to connect to the wire from the external card and then connect to the firewire port on the PCI card.  I tried many things, and I could not get the motherboard to recognize the elements on the external card.  I am not one to give up, in fact I believe that I can figure just about anything out given time and the right tools and the internet.  Unfortunately, I did not have the time or patience to troubleshoot this further (my vacation time was almost up).  So I convinced myself that the reason why I could not get it to work is because I did not have the proper device drivers to tell the motherboard to talk to the external card (which could be correct but I doubt it) and decided to buy a wireless keyboard and mouse.

I went to bestbuy on Black Friday to see what deals I could find.  While I was there I found that they had a new Hauppauge TV tuner card on sale.  One thing to note is that we had just cancelled our cable (so that we could focus on getting rid of my student loans) and my current TV tuner cards were no longer working since they were analog and the over-the-air networks were not all broadcasting in digital.  Since the cards were on sale I decided to purchase Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1850 Dual Tuner card with Media Center remote and a Microsoft Wireless Media Desktop 1000 Keyboard and Mouse.

I plugged the new video capture card in and plugged the keyboard and mouse in.  I was very satisfied with the performance of the video capture cards (though there is a bit of a lag in the channels though I think that it is due to the antenna and not the cards themselves).  I was sorely disappointed in that the keyboard and mouse only had a range of six feet.  I did not see that on the box and did not discover it until I read the instructions in the manual.  I was not about to take another thing back so for now I am dealing with it.  Another frustrating thing was that even though the remote worked with Media Center it would not work with anything else.  I discovered that there is an INI file for the remote drivers that control which applications it can talk to.  I found a support page on Sage's website where someone had put instructions on how to edit the INI file so that the remote control can work with other applications (link).  After following these instructions I was able to use the remote control with Hulu (which has become a staple in my life without cable) and other applications.

At this point I am done with the rebuild.  Initially my desire was just to replace the video card and keep everything else the same though I ended up with everything changing with the exception of the OS and hard drive.  Everything else was new.  It is amazing how a project that initially looked pretty simple could escallate into something that was pretty complex and difficult to do.  In looking back I think that I would have been better off just starting over new and building a new DVR from the ground up instead of trying to take existing hardware and trying to build a new DVR using it.  I think that the cost would have been about the same or cheaper due to the driving around, testing, and time.  It was still cheaper than buying an equivelant machine from a PC manufacturer though it was still much more than I wanted to spend.

Another benefit is that I had a grand time playing with hardware.  It has been a long time since I have built a machine or anything like it.  I came to find out how easy it is to build a DVR.  I am listing all the elements of what I ended up with below.  It is not the most powerful of machines though it runs quite nicely and meets all of my current needs with the ability to upgrade in the future.

Machine Details:
Enclosure: Antec NSK2400
Power Supply (I replaced the 350w that came with the box): Ultra LS 400w ATX Power Supply
Motherboard: Intel DG41TY
OS: Windows Media Center 2005
Hard drive: Seagate SATA 200 gb drive 7200 rpm
Memory: 2 gb DDR2 600 mhz
Processor: Intel E5200 Dual Core 2.5 ghz
Video Card: EVGA GeForce 9500 GT
Video Capture Card: Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1850
Keyboard/Mouse: Microsoft Wireless Media Desktop 1000
External Hard Drive: Seagate FreeAgent Xtreme 1tb drive
Network Card: Linksys Wireless-G PCI Adapter WMP54G
DVD Drive: LG 10x BluRay Rewriter BH10LS30
Additional Adapter: Dual ESATA 2 Bracket (for external drive)

Venturing into the world of Virtualization Day 3

It has taken me a couple of days to get back to this due to illness and other priorities (I know what kind of nerd am I when I allow other things to take priority).  Anyway, I was left trying to discover a way to use the automatic recovery process with a backup file that was on a hard disk and not a virtual disk.

The approach that I finally took was that I just restored a new Windows Server 2003 image, shared the drive that had the back up and copied the back up to a virtual drive.  I did not want to do a normal restore from the backup because I wanted to make sure that I restored the system state and all that as well.  So I changed the virtual server's bios to boot off of a CD and started the install again though this time I was able to go through the normal restore process and find the backup.  The problem that I ran into next was that somehow my backup file became corrupted and I kept getting the message that there are miscelaneous characters in the back file and the process could not proceed (or something to that effect).  So I was left with rebuilding the server from scratch.  Luckily all the important data was stored on a secondary drive and was not lost.

My next venture that I started was to create a new Ubuntu Server from scratch.  I am not a Linux expert and it has been a very long time since I went through my Linux courses in college so this will be an experience.

So I downloaded the Ubuntu Server ISO from ubuntu.com.  Once it was fully downloaded I then created a small 8gb virtual machine and started it using the ISO as the cd drive.  The install went very smooth.  No errors or questions that I did not know the answer to.

Next you will see what a Windows tool I am.  I got done with the install and the server was just staring at me with a command prompt.  I felt very out of my element so I jumped on-line to find out how to launch one of the GUIs that I am sure is available for it.  There is a GNOME and a KDE interface available though there seemed to be some concern with security holes when using these.  now this is just a play environment so I am not as concerned about security since it will not be outside of my firewall though I decided to follow the advice of many and not load a GUI.  I did find quite a few people recommending a website called webmin.  Being a web developer, my interest was piqued.  I did a search and found a post that someone provided on how to install Webmin (click here).  The instructions were great.  I did not have any issues and everything installed with out any issues, which is impressive since I really do not know what I am doing in Linux (I know a few things but it has been a long while). 

Now that this piece was done I needed to setup the server so that the IP address was not determined by DHCP and that there was an entry in my AD DNS so that I could easily get to the website without having to remember the IP address.  I found a good tutorial on how to edit the IP address information (click here).  Then I added the CName reference in DNS on my AD server.  I then browsed to the website for teh first time and was pretty impressed by what this admin application offered.  They were not boasting when they said that there was no need for a GUI and anything you needed to do from a visual perspective was handled by this app.  I know that all the hard-core Linux persons probably would not look at this since they love their console, though for me this was a wonderful compromise.  Now the default theme was not to my liking though I did find one that I did like and went with that.

My next eperiament is to try to install a new web application that I have recently become aware of that looks very interesting.  The application is an open source portal called Liferay.  I saw a demo of it the other day and was very impressed by what it can do.

As is my want for most new installs I went on-line and found a website that had some instructions on how to install Liferay on a Ubuntu server (click here).  In the instructions they have a shell script that you can download and run.  I downloaded it and then uploaded it to the server via my Webmin site, configured it to run as an app and then executed it.

One of the steps in the process involved installing Postfix.  This is a mail handling application.  I was not sure what some of the options were.  I did a search on-line and that did not help much so I kind of guessed.  I have an Exchange 2003 environment on my small business server and I wanted to link this up to that.  So I selected the "Internet with Smart Host" option which then prompted me to enter the domain and SMTP info for my email server (I am assuming that I selected the right option since based upon these options).  So far no errors.

Next I went through the steps to download the files and setup mysql in preperation for the liferay install.  No issues with any of those steps thoughI came to find out that the base Ubuntu install does not have a the "unzip" utility installed.  Not a big problem.  Once I installed it I did not have any issues.

I completed everything in the script and then I switched back to my admin account (it is not good to do too mcuh with the root account) and disabled my root account again.

There were a few more steps on the instructions that needed to be followed after the script was completed.  I got to the point where it was time to start the liferay web application and I get an error telling me that I need to set either the JAVA_HOME or JRE_HOME environment variables in order to run this program.  I added the entry into the files ~/.bashrc, /etc/bash.bashrc, ~/.profile for the root user as well as my admin account and the process still would not start.  I then added the JAVA_HOME entry from the instructions into the start.sh script (which I know is not optimal) and the process started.  I am not sure what I was doing wrong though it is working now.

Well, something went wrong.  The liferay page displayed once, but is no longer displaying.  I am getting a PHP error.  I will revisit this later when I have time.

Venturing into the world of Virtualization Day 2

Day 1

Well today starts day two of this venture. I opened the client again and was prompted that this is an eval version and that I have 30 days left. This confused me a bit since when I registered on the website I got the impression that this was their free application which would make one assume that this was no evaluation. Also, I received a license key for the software but cannot find anywhere in the client to enter the key. I am not done with the install guide so maybe that part is somewhere down the line though I think that this is the first annoying encounter with the client application.

Now on to contiue the setup. I found the next annoying thing with the client and that is that the setup guide has instructions that either do not fit with this version or something was missed since I do not have any options in my "basic tasks" section of the "getting started" tab in the application. In order to download some appliances I had to go to the menu option file->va marketplace and then click on the link for Virtual Appliances. A round about way of getting what I wanted though a pain all together.

An interesting thing just happened. I have been browsing through what is in the client, and I am not sure what I did but now the options that I mentioned before in the "basic tasks" are now available. I am not sure what I did to make them available but they are there now.

I was able to download an appliance and upload the files though it seems that the wizard does not work with the free version of ESXi.  You have to download the files onto your machine and then go to the "summary" tab in vSphere Client, right click on the data store that you want the files on and select "Browse Datastore", click the icon on the toolbar to upload the files, and then browse to the files that you are interested it.  Not too difficult though the process could have been conceived better.

Now that I had done that it was time to try to rebuild my dead server from the last backup that I ran.  This posed to be a bit of a problem.  The back up that I have is a BAK file on a usb external hard drive.  I was able to create a new Windows appliance with all the drives that would be the same size as the physical server had, I was able to start it and using my windows 2003 server CD, and the auto recovery disk start the process of the recovery.  The problem lies in that I cannot find a way to either connect this USB drive to the server to be recognized as a drive or to create an image of the drive and convert it to a virtual drive (vmdk file).  Supposedly there is a utility that can help me though I cannot find it.  I did a lot of digging around online and I am having trouble trying to find anything useful.  There are a lot of command line utils that people have suggested though most seem to be on linux.  I saw one posting that talked about mounting the drive using a command line util to the ESXi server though I could not figure out how to make that work.  I need to stop playing with this today and take care of some other things so there will need to be a day 3 and maybe 4 or 5 of this process.  Either that or scrapping VMWare to try out XenServer which I hear has a much easier admin interface to work with.

So long for today.

Venturing into the world of Virtualization Day 1

Recently one of my servers at home died.  It is a big pain when something that you rely on is suddenly gone.  Well, I had two options; one to buy the parts I think I need to fix the server though do not really know if that will do the job, two purchase a different server.

Right now money is a little tight so I have been putting this decision off though things have been starting to get a little difficult in trying to access files that I need and having our desktop computers talk to each other and such.  So I started looking around ebay and craig's list and I put together a list of potentials.  Based upon features and I will admit company trust I purchased a slightly used HP DL145 G2 server.  It has Two dual core opteron 2.2 ghz processors, 4 gb of memory and 1 tb of disk space.  It only took 3 days for it to gether here.  In fact it arrived this afternoon.  Needless to say my I was a bit excited (I know I am a nerd).

Well, one of the decisions that I made when purchasing this server was that I would consolidate the two servers that I have (one working and the other not working) into one server using virtualization.  I am a bit of a novice when it comes to this technology though we use it quite a bit at work.  Since we use VMWare ESX as work I was leaning towards that solution though I hear XenServer is also very good (MS HyperVisor is still too new for me to want to deal with it).  So after work today I downloaded ESXi 4, burned it to a disk and off I went.

After a couple of hours of frustration on why I could not get the thing working I started doing some research and playing around (I am not one to call it quites, I have to know why it was not working).  Anyway, I came to find out that the server I bought is not on the hardware compatibility list for VMWare.  If I had know that in the first place I probably would have selected a different server, though since I do not do my due dilligence I am stuck with either figuring out how to make it work or giving up and trying another solution.

As I mentioned before, I am not one for giving up.  I came to find out that the reason why ESXi does not like this server is due to the SCSI/SATA card that the two drives are plugged into by default.  For those not familiar with this model it has a small back plane in the middle of the server that has a riser card plugged into it that supports PCI-X cards.  One of the two slots contains a SATA 300 TX4 card which has a cable that plugs into the SCSI port on the mother board.  ESXi does not work with drives that are connected to the server via a port or the backplane (at least that is my understanding and it is accurate in the case of this server).  At this point in time all that I had mentioned was just an assumption.  I needed a way to test it out and see if there was a way around it.  We in looking at the mother board I found that it has two SATA ports on the board that the drives can plug into and bypass the backplane all together.  Now I am not that familiar with all the features and functionality of this server yes so I am not sure yet if this is a good idea or not though I needed to test out a theory.  Needless to say my assumption turned out to be correct.  As soon as I changed the ports for those drives everything was working fabulously.  I was able to boot up to the instance and I must say that I was a little disapointed.  The interface has a lot to be desired.  Say what you want about Microsoft but its interfaces are pretty funcitonal even though there may be some performance or security issues.

After configuring the VERY few options on the server I then flipped over to my desktop and browsed to the server (actually I set up a DNS entry for the server first in AD so that I can use a URL instead of an IP address).  I downloaded the vSphere Client application and installed it and it all went smoothly.  I then opened the vSphere Host Update Utility 4 (might as well make sure that everything is up-to-date).  I was informed that there were some patches available, I downloaded them and installed them as easy as can be.  After all my initial issues it almost seems to easy.  I keep expecting something to go wrong, though so far so good.  After the patches were applied the utility rebooted the ESXi server and everything came back up without any issues.  I am still feeling like there is some impending doom awaiting me, maybe it is just the cynical IT guy always expecting the worst.

Next I opened the vSphere client application, logged onto the server and no errors or issues.  The interface is nice and clean.  Not a lot of clutter on it which is something that I like.  So far so good.  Currently it is 11:30 pm in the evening and even though I want to stay up and be nerdy I need to get some sleep.  I will begin my foray into the world of creating vertual machines on the VM Server Tomorrow.

Good Night.

Day 2

Active Directory User Class Update

Here is a link to an article I just posted on Code Project's website (Article)

My Favorite Excel Function

I have come to realize that many of us use software applications and in most cases only know just the surface level functionality of those applications, the common elements that we use on a regular basis. Many of these applications have a lot of really useful and time saving features that just are not well know.

One of these applications that I use on a regular basis is Microsoft Excel. Being a data guy there are many times when I am given a file or multiple files and have to do some sort of data cleansing. A function that is not well know to most but that I use a lot is called VLOOKUP. This be far is my favorite function because it saves me a little time. It allows me the ability to match two different pieces of data from two different spreadsheets in the file using a common key (i.e. I have a file from our HR system and a file from our Network OS (NOS) and I need to make sure that the name fields in the NOS match the name fields from the HR file, I can take both data sets and using the employee ID and my handly VLOOKUP function and can do a mass match of the two datasets and then compare the pieces of data using a simple IF statement).

This may not seem like that big of a deal but when you are dealing with over 6,000 records this can cut down eval time from 6 or 7 hours to about 30 minutes with a lot less chance of mistakes.

If you have a favorite feature to an application that most people do not know about then reply to this post with the info and share away.