Taking life on.

If I was living like today was my last day, this is what I’d do:

1. Tell work I wasn’t coming in today. Or ever. Maybe tell someone my passwords so they can get to all the old InDesign documents and Word templates I’ve made so they don’t have to start from scratch.
2. Make sure my life insurance policy is sorted for Mil and Amm. Write down my email password so Mil can get into all my accounts.
3. Blog my final thoughts, for the interests of imparting my final wisdom to the world¹.
4. Play with Amelynne. Do everything she loves. Give her lots of tickles and cuddles, which I love.
5. Play with Mil. Ahem.
6. Invite everyone I know over for a party. Play the “I’m gonna die tomorrow” card to make sure they come. Cross those that don’t off my Christmas list.
7. Die. Or perish, or cease to be or whatever it is that makes it possible that I know I’m gonna die, and not be taken completely by surprise the way it should be.

None of those things, except maybe the ones with my girls are things that anyone should be doing every day. Giving out my work password would be asking for trouble, as would telling all my friends I was dying just to get them to come to a party². Maybe some of them would be good housekeeping, but I don’t think that anyone with a mortgage who’s leaving behind a family should live life like there’s no tomorrow.

Perhaps the only thing I’d regret might be that I haven’t got my name on anything “big”. You know, the kind of major contribution to society that gets you a wikipedia article.

Maybe that’s a better adage for today’s age… “Live life like you haven’t got a wikipedia article about you yet”. That sounds much more inspirational.

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One of the biggest problems I face when I contribute anywhere on the internet is feedback. Often there just isn’t any.

Whether it’s Twitter, this website, Firstwaves.org, Reader, Buzz, Fizz, Flickr, Facebook, Shittr, whatever, I just don’t get much feedback at all.

It’s partly because I’m a self obsessed narcissist¹ that this bothers me so, but mostly because I just want to know what I can do better. What I’d like to know is if people find the things I share or write about are interesting, well written, useful, or pertinent so I can adjust my focus accordingly.

I started out blogging saying I was writing for myself, and I didn’t care if people found it interesting, but really I do. I want to be helpful. I want to share parts of the web that people might not otherwise find, and expose the things I’ve learned in my job or in my leisure. Now as sites like Twitter and Facebook become more mainstream, I find myself trying to be helpful and useful there as well and find myself in a (stupid) dilemma about where to put all this stuff I want to share. For a while I was using Twitter, but I didn’t feel like I was really saying anything of worth there. The most followed and re-tweeted² users were the ones who were constantly finding and posting new stuff. When I got around to doing it, it was usually old-hat or (I assume) fairly uninteresting. I say “I assume” because I only occasionally got re-shared or responded to, so I took it to mean that what I said was uninteresting or dull and didn’t warrant much attention. So I quit. Hopefully it didn’t come off in a “I’m taking my ball and going home” sorta way³, but rather in a “I’m not sure what I’m doing here” sorta way. I’ve had more success with Facebook, because I’ve tried to share stuff I know my friends might appreciate, and I get a few more “likes” and an occasional comment there than I got the equivalent on Twitter. But my Buzz and Friendfeed streams are the equivalent of me standing on the roof of my house with a megaphone. A friend might hear me when they come over, but I could just talk to them. And everyone else who can hear it might just be getting annoyed with me.

I’m trying not to be sulky about this. What I’m hoping from this post is not pity, but an answer. From the people who DO actually follow me (via my feed, or on Facebook, or who just come and visit when they think of me), what sorts of things do I do well, so I can keep doing more of that? The most lovely suggestion I’ve had so far is that I continue to do more posts about my family and bubby girl. And if those are the ones people like the most then maybe I will. But I named my site “the Geekorium” for a reason — I am a geeky fellow, with geeky tastes and by far the things outside my family that interest me the most are geeky things. I like sharing such things, but am fairly certain that the majority of people who read my site regularly are family and friends who have no interest in what the latest gadget can do slightly better than that last gadget I said was awesome. Writing about my family is hard though, not because they aren’t worth writing about, but because I don’t want to be one of those people who are always exposing their love one’s lives on line for their own gratification. If I could find a way to do it without it coming off that way, I might.

I also do large run-on sentences and start a lot of paragraphs with “I”, so I know I’m not the greatest of authors, so if it’s my actual writing style that bugs you, then maybe I should know that too⁴.

Should I keep my posts small? Talk about one topic only? Use words no bigger than two syla? Try and be funnier? Keep my sentences smaller? If you read my stuff and find it’s not quite what you’d like to read, tell me in my comments (or on Facebook, or via Buzz, or in the “suggestions” tab over there, or in an email) and maybe I can get better at it. They say you should write for your audience, and I’m not sure I’m doing such a bang up job at the moment, so please let me know.

I’d like to think that I’m getting better at this writing thing. I’d like to know what I can do better though. Stats and analytics software can only tell me so much — they can’t give me feedback about why one throw away post about Fred Basset gets more feedback than any of the other things I write about. So please help me out. Talk to me. Write to me. I’m listening.

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Normally when you first log on, Windows makes a few folders under your user document folder for things such as Music, Favourites¹, Downloads etc. On a standalone machine these are usually stored under your user profile folder (C:\Users\{username}\Downloads in Win 7 for example) but they can be moved when you’re on a network².

In Group Policy, expand User Configuration > Policies > Windows Settings > Folder Redirection. Right click on one of the folders listed and select “Properties”. Documents is a good place to start, as I’ll show you how all the others can hang off that.

If you’ve worked with group policy before I won’t insult your intelligence more by explaining everything in here, suffice to say that in our environment, I’ve chosen to use the settings as shown below:

Settings for redirecting My Documents to a shared network location.

For all the other folders I redirect, I use the same settings on the right there, and only change the Target folder location property on the left.

What this does is specify that you want all the users folders redirected to what you’ve specified in the Home folder property for the user in Active Directory (usually H: somewhere on your network). This is I suspect how most admins configure their document folders. The issue comes with the other folders later on. Lets work with the Desktop folder for example.

To redirect the Desktop, you again access the properties of that folder. This time, you’ll notice you lose the option to “Redirect to the user’s home folder”. This is fair enough, as we don’t want every folder type pointing to the same location. Unfortunately though, Microsoft don’t offer a simple way to redirect to a subfolder of the new Documents location, although they do suggest this:

The %USERNAME% variable may be used as part of the redirection path, thus allowing the system to dynamically create a newly redirected folder for each user to whom the policy object applies.

Folder Redirection feature in Windows KB Article.

What they are suggesting is using \\server\share\%USERNAME%\Desktop to specify the location, but what if your AD structure is more complicated than that? For instance, we have our year levels separated into folders to make it easy for teachers to locate a certain kid’s work. There just isn’t a variable to insert a specific folder into this path based on the user’s location or position in AD — ie. you can’t use \\server\share\%groupfolder%\%username%\Desktop as it just doesn’t exist.

The next logical step was to try inserting the mapped drive into this field: “H:\Desktop”. The problem here was that at the point that the logon process connects to the desktop, the H: has not yet been mapped, leaving a blank desktop and an error in the Application log. It was at this point a few years ago I gave up. Until this week.

Lucky for us!

When you view the GP report for Folder Redirection you’ll notice that MS includes the %VARIABLES% that it uses to fill in the user’s home folder path (as shown):

AH! Variables!

In my initial tests, I set the Target folder location to “Redirect to the following location”, and the Root Path: to “%HOMESHARE%%HOMEPATH%\Desktop”. This did NOT work. I can’t remember the error exactly, and I think it may not have even mapped at all.

My next test was to try with “%HOMESHARE%\Desktop” and lo-and-behold, it worked! Now when a user logs in they get a H Drive, and a desktop that routes to a folder in that drive, regardless of the path the user data is in. If they inadvertently save something to their desktop³ it will be securely tucked in their home drive where they can find it again later, or on their desktop the next time they log in.

Going through the rest of the folders in Folder Redirection I did the same (except for the Start Menu, although I suspect this will work exactly the same way). Now all my data is secure in my home drive, without using true roaming profiles (which can end up pulling a lot of data around the network in a school environment).

Some caveats

Even after multiple iterations and rewrites, Adobe software still cannot handle expanded network paths for saving application data. If you redirect AppData to “%HOMESHARE%\AppData” even something as new as Adobe Photoshop CS4 refuses to load. The only solution I have found for this is to use “H:\AppData” or nothing at all for that folder. This seems to work acceptably for the AppData folder, even though it doesn’t for the Desktop.

Also! I haven’t actually tested this extensively in a production environment (although it works day-to-day on a couple of test desktops), so test this with your apps and bits before making these changes wholesale to your network.

I’ve also found while writing this post⁴ that this information is included in part in Microsoft’s Managing Roaming User Data Deployment Guide.doc found here. As I wasn’t using roaming profiles I didn’t read it. Plus it’s unclear as to the best way to redirect and I still would have written this post to clear it up for you.

I hope this tip can help you get Folder Redirection working for you if your environment is a bit unusual. Let me know what you find!

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And by emergency, I mean Google Wave

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Introducing my standing desk

It’s two different size filing cabinets which turn out to be exactly the right heights for my keyboard and monitors. It’s surprisingly comfortable from about my shins up, but my feet are already killing¹.

I find it difficult to fit much exercise into my day. Hopefully this might get me using even a little energy.

PS. Read that article. It’s an eye opener, and a very quick read.

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I can’t think of a way they can possibly top this clip. Brilliantly shot in High Def, beautifully choreographed, and perfectly synchronised. If you liked their treadmill clip (symbolically shattered half way through) you’ll love how clever this is. It also knowingly nods to the Internet and Youtube crowd (did I see the mars rover? Something like the water bird that Homer uses to press the “any” key when he works from home? An OK Go concert rendered in Lego?).

What a joyful and exciting clip from a band that knows how to engage their audience. Bravo!

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My wife is _______. She _____________ _______. When I _______ and it dawned on me ________, I wanted to marry her all over again.

Thus:

My wife is amazing. She carried and gave birth to my daughter Amelynne. When I first saw my little girl and it dawned on me that I now have my own clone, I wanted to marry her all over again.

See how that works?

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I’ve been sorting through our group policies and rewriting them ready for a switch over to Windows 7. During my thorough investigation it turns out our current policies overlap a fair bit, and it’s no wonder we have trouble tracking down why something we’re sure we’ve set in GP turns up unset on logon¹.

So my big project has been going through our settings one by one, and deciding which of these categories they fall into:

1. Common Computer settings — all the computers should get these as they are vital to the function of the network, or are likely to break something if they aren’t explicitly set for our staff and students.
2. Common User settings — everything else that just can’t be set in the Computer policy.
3. Staff Settings
4. Student Settings
5. Printers

The interesting trick I’ve learned about the printer GPs though is how to apply printers based on the computer’s OU without using local loopback!

The Problem

The problem with managing printers in a school environment is that unlike corporations (which GP is clearly geared towards) people move around all the time but want to be connected to both their printers in their offices on the other side of the school, but also the local printer in the classroom they’re in². Microsoft decided that without any extra tricks they would let you set a default printer for a user, but not for a room because Betty from HR will only ever use the one computer in her office.

The Old Trick

Then they told people you could get around this by enabling local loopback, which applies both computer and user policies to a user, so you could set the printer as default in a computer policy using the “user” section, then make the computer read the computer section at logon and apply the printer. The problem with this³ is that it could slow down your logins, as it increases the number of policies it has to read and evaluate to prepare the desktop.

The New Way

In my quest to eliminate unnecessary policies, I wanted to kill local-loopback too. A bit of research turned up this page on using GP Preferences to assign default printers, which I already knew and was using, but it advocated using local-loopback.

But

Further down that page was a comment by Michael Moore who had this bit of advice:

Actually, if you Item Level target a group which has a computer in it, it will still install the printer even though these preferences are under the User Configuration Section of the GPO.

Try it, saved on loopback.

Michael Moore

So I followed the directions on that site (it has helpful screenshots) to create a printer policy and target specific computer OUs, but then instead of turning on local-loopback, I simply ticked Run in logged-on user’s security context (user policy option).

Now my printers deploy and are set as default based on the current computer’s OU without using local-loopback at all.

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