I don’t really like entering my email address into online forms. Who knows where it’s going to go, and who it’s going to be sold to?

I first started to track who I gave my email address out by using a catch-all account and giving out different email addresses to different companies.  I realised that this system was flawed when I realised that I couldn’t turn off an email address if it started to spam.

So version 2 of my system, is to create email aliases when I sign up for something. If they start to get annoying, I can just turn off the alias. I don’t have to create a new email address and remember another password, and I can see who it is that has sold me out because I can match the incoming email address with the company I gave it to.

UPDATE:

An alias is also known as a forwarder.  The address doesn’t have an associated mailbox, it just forward the email to the address you specify.

I prefer to call them aliases. My hosting uses DirectAdmin and they tend to use “Forwarder”. To configure an email alias in DirectAdmin, you click on “Forwarders” under “Email Management”. Create a new forwarder and make up an name for it: something@yourdomain.com. Then enter the email address(es) you would like it forwarded to.

You do not need to change your email client to receive the emails, and if you want to stop emails arriving for an alias, just delete the forwarder.

The backup operation that started at ‘xxxx-‎xx-‎xxTxx:xx:xx.xxxxxxxxxxZ’ has failed because the Volume Shadow Copy Service operation to create a shadow copy of the volumes being backed up failed with following error code ’2155348129′. Please review the event details for a solution, and then rerun the backup operation once the issue is resolved.

It’s never nice to see that your backups are failing. It’s even worse when the error messages are as cryptic as the one above, and yet another step worse when you realise that you don’t have an up-to-date backup in case one of the many, many, many suggestions offered on Technet breaks something. Here’s a quote:

Note that this is just for a test and may lead to unbootable of your computer. Change the Active volume back to the previous one after this test.

I didn’t try it, believe it or not.

What I did try, however, was to change the SQL Server VSS Writer service’s log-on to be the domain administrator rather than the system account, as someone suggested in a thread somewhere. I did, and it has fixed it for me – backups are running (right now, as a matter of fact).

I’m not suggesting this is a solution, but more as a workaround to give you a fresh, up-to-date image for when one of your attempts to sort out this problem turns out to wreck everything.

As always, results may vary – this worked for me.

UPDATE: 19/01/2012

It fixed it. Temporarily. For some reason the VSS writers failed again, so I went back to Google. I checked what 2155348129 is in hex, and it turns out to be:  0x807800A1. Armed with this tidbit I managed to find some more information. I ran “vssadmin list writers” after the backup had failed, and it reported that the SPSearch4 vss writer had failed. Searching this, I came across a technet article that where someone had the exact same issue, and the solution is to run:

 C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\BIN\PSConfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -force -cmd applicationcontent -install -cmd installfeatures

This updates and configures Sharepoint which will fix the problems.

This works for me. If it doesn’t work for you it isn’t my fault. Back up your system before you try this. We’re not responsible, etc. etc. etc.

This has been covered in other places, but as a reminder to myself here is how to enable native NTFS read/write on OSX.  You can use the free NTFS-3G or a few paid-for versions, but with 10.6+ there is native support for NTFS.

move /sbin/mount_ntfs to /sbin/mount_ntfs.orig

sudo mv /sbin/mount_ntfs /sbin/mount_ntfs.orig

Create a new /sbin/mount_ntfs with the following content (use whatever text editor you want – nano is easy to use)

#!/bin/sh
/sbin/mount_ntfs.orig -o rw “$@”

chown it to root:wheel

sudo chown root:wheel /sbin/mount_ntfs

chmod it to 755

sudo chmod 755 /sbin/mount_ntfs

And you’re done!

If you want to revert to how it was before you started

sudo mv /sbin/mount_ntfs.orig /sbin/mount_ntfs

Because ADSL can, and usually, operates on the same physical phoneline as your home-phone, you need to ensure that only the ADSL equipment can communicate on the frequencies specified for ADSL. This is done by using filters on the phonelines in your house.  These stop your phones from generating tones that would interfere with your ADSL connection, causing drop-outs or slow uploads or downloads.

The basic rules with ADSL filtering are:

1. Every phone needs a filter
2. Your modem must not be filtered

There are a few exceptions to the basic rules.

• If you have an alarm system, you need to have a central filter installed.
• If you have more than 4 telephones, it is recommended that you have a central filter installed. If you have a central filter, your ADSL is tied to one phone-plug in the house, and it can only be used for ADSL.  If you have a central filter, you do not need to filter your phones.
• You might see a ADSL splitter, where you have one plug for the phone-line, one for ADSL and another for a telephone.  Only use these if you actually want to split the phoneline.  If you do not need a phone near the modem, leave the splitter out.

If you are still experiencing problems with your ADSL, we can perform an ADSL Health Check – read all about it here.

Unrelated to filtering, but good for ADSL stability and speed, is to keep your internal cabling as short as possible. Don’t have metres and metres of phone extension leads bundled up between the wall and your modem.

I was recently asked to deploy a font to about 10 computers, and decided to use it as a learning experience to see if you can do it using Group Policy Preferences.  The quick answer, is “yes”. You can.

With Windows 7 (and probably earlier versions) you can just copy a font to C:\Windows\Fonts and it will magically be available in the system, so I set up a Group Policy object that would copy the required .ttf to C:\Windows\Fonts and I expected it to appear in the fonts.  It didn’t. It turns out you also need to add a registry key to the machine – fortunately you can do that with Group Policy Preferences also.

Add a new string value to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts with the name of the font as the name of the string value, and the name of the font-file as the Data.