Archive for May, 2013

Featured Beer: Review of River Horse – Tripel Horse

Today’s fine craft brew comes from River Horse Brewing Company in Lambertville, New Jersey. The aptly named “Tripel Horse” is a Belgian-style Tripel, which is a strong pale ale. Poured into a 0.3L Rastal (stemmed glass), Tripel Horse has a somewhat cloudy appearance and a deep penny-like copper hue. Depending on how you pour it,…
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The Phantom SPID: SQL Error 952 – Database Is In Transition

Recently I encountered a database issue on a Microsoft SQL 2008 R2 server that can only be described as a case of a phantom SPID (server process ID). What I mean by phantom is that this SPID was showing a date of 1900-01-01. All external connections to this database had been severed, but every attempt…
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Exercise In Cracking: Choosing A Secure Password For The Real World

A few weeks ago, David K. Sutton posted his thoughts on passwords on this blog, and since I had coincidentally just finished trying to hack a password around that same time, I thought I might add and/or elaborate a little on what he said, and offer some real world context and numbers. WORKPLACE CRACK Someone…
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Graphics Interchange Format: Is It Pronounced ‘JIF’ or ‘GIF’?

The ever ubiquitous GIF (Graphics Interchange Format), developed in 1987, is a computer graphics specification that has lived a long and fruitful life. From an hour-long download to obtain a single GIF image back in the pre-World-Wide-Web Bulletin Board System (BBS) days, to animated GIF memes spread by social media, the format has a long…
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Active Directory Shadow Groups: How To Automatically Add OU Users To Security Groups

Remember Novell? Remember NDS or eDirectory as it later became known? NDS might be mostly dead, in favor of AD (Active Directory), but NDS did have many advantages over AD, and one of them was the ability to assign rights (permissions) via OU membership. Want to give users in a specific OU access to a…
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Breaking Bad: Creator Vince Gilligan Sings Praises Of Netflix Binge-Watching, And More

Over on Vulture, they have a Q&A with “Breaking Bad” creator Vince Gilligan. It’s quite an extensive and wide-ranging interview. If you’re a fan of AMC’s Breaking Bad you might want to check it out, although I should warn you that there could be spoilers. I say “could” because I skimmed it for just that…
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Featured Beer: Review of Flying Dog – Double Dog IPA

Pour Yourself a Grog. Today’s featured beer “Double Dog” is from East Coast brewery, Flying Dog. Located in Frederick, Maryland, Flying Dog Brewery started as Flying Dog Brewpub in Aspen, Colorado. Flying Dog was co-founded by astrophysicist George Stranahan and rancher Richard McIntyre. Double Dog is a Double IPA (India Pale Ale), which is another…
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Photos, Music, And More: Why You Need A Tiered Data Backup Strategy

This post is aimed at home users, but the ideas are sound for business as well. If you’re like me, you’ve reached a point where most of your must-have information and data is in digital form. Whether its photos, music (commercial or self-created), financial records or documents, all my important data is virtual. That is,…
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