A Treasure Trove of Technology Tidbits
So, we just walked through how to generate a self-signed certificate in the last post. Next, we need to bind that certificate to a website in order to enable SSL on that website. This post walks through the binding the self-signed certificate. Make certain you have generated the self-signed certificate: Use the steps in […]
I needed to add https:// support to a website, add redirection, and test that everything functioned. I was in a hurry to complete this testing, so didn’t want to deal with purchasing a third-party certification. So, I thought to myself, “No problem, I’ll just install a self-signed certificate!” Here are the steps, if you need […]
I was patching a Windows Server 2008 virtual machine, and noticed that one patch kept consistently failing. The failed patch was “Security Update for Windows Server 2008 KB967723” and it failed with error number 80070490 which I googled and was one of the many generic errors that can occur when using Windows Update. What should […]
This weekend, my mother complained that her Mail app’s Apple notifications were popping up over the movie she was watching. “How do you disable that?” she asked me. So, I went looking in the System Preferences to discover what controls were available to suppress notifications. I found changing these settings was easy, and that you […]
As the deadline draws near for the summer retirement of Windows Server 2003, last minute upgrade projects are scrambling to be finished. I got involved in one such project this month, trying to get an application that was previously running on Windows 2003 to run on Win 2008R2. The first challenge was getting the installer […]
I am helping to upgrade some desktops from Windows XP to Windows 7. What makes the upgrade a little odd is that many of the Windows 7 machines are “themed” to look like XP, so that saying something like “what does your Start button look like?” becomes meaningless. Of course, I could go into Control […]
I got a call from one of my friends who was all excited because they had purchased a new Apple MacBook. And, they asked me to recommend an encrypted thumb drive (aka flash drive) that would be compatible with their laptop. Well, I explained there are thumb drives with hardware encryption, but for most of […]
Recently, I was given a generic user network login to use. But, I was performing computer security tasks and needed to have administrative access in order to check various settings. As a result of my needs, the network administrator gave me access to an “administrator command prompt”. Since I was not a local administrator on […]
So, recently I wanted to do some client/server testing on my laptop. I am using Oracle’s VirtualBox to allow me to run Windows on my Apple. Anyway, when I attempted to network my Windows 7 VM to my Windows 2008 Server, nothing happened. Specifically, they could each ping the gateway and the Internet, but they […]
I need a bootable USB thumb drive. My usage case was making a laptop whose hard drive was dead work again. I wanted to generate the USB from my Apple Air, and was having a little trouble finding easy-to-follow instructions. But, with a little help from Fedora, I got what I needed. Here are the […]