The Samsung Omnia is the mobile phone I now have, my Motorola Q died a while ago and I tried the Blackberry Pearl but it was just wasn’t all that, the Pearl had some nice email features and was quick with that, but the general fun wasn’t there, and I did not want to take the time to figure out how to work with Java, and the price at the time was right on the Omnia, so I had to do it. Anyways, here is some things that I have done to mine to make it mine, including a screen shot or two.

I just reloaded it again cause I did some stuff to make it cry, here are the general applications that I am using to do things. First thing is to review this pageand check out some of the cool stuff he has links to.

Now the stuff that I use on my phone, this entery is more for my record keeping so I  can remember.
Keyboard - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=3395347

         versus     

Hapatic Feedback – Makes the phone vibrate when you hit the shiney new keyboard Omnia device ID is 11
http://www.howardforums.com/showpost.php?p=12102979&postcount=275 

phm-registery – it says it is for window mobile 2003,  but it works really well http://www.phm.lu/Products/PocketPC/RegEdit/

Slide To Unlock – Like how you would unlock the iPhone but with a few more options
http://s2u2.ac-s2.com/

Dale Lane TwitToday – because i twitter, this is a nice app i can turn on and off when i want to view it from the today screen
http://dalelane.co.uk/page.php?id=1047

Microsoft MyPhone – This was nice, i was able to get all my contacts, appointments, pictures, and chats back without hooking the phone up to a PC
http://myphone.microsoft.com

chgfingermouse – Allows me to hit a button and switch between the D-Pad and Mouse feature on the phone, really handy for email, web browsing and the like
http://www.mysamsungepix.com/applications/utilities/chgfingermouse/

MyMobiler – This app allows me to view the screen, type from your desktop, and cut & paste.
http://www.mymobiler.com/

Advanced Configuration – Some common pre-defined registry settings all in one spot
http://www.touchxperience.com/en/advanced-configuration-tool.html

Taskbar Makeover – Add some flair to your taskbar, there are many choices here is one
http://www.modaco.com/content/i9x0-omnia-http-omnia-modaco-com/279372/taskbar-makeover/
   Versus 

Now time for some of the registry edits on the device

Increase Volume: 
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ControlPanel\SoundCategories\InCall\
InitVol=4
Raises the volume while on a call

Recalibrate the Screen:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\HARDWARE\DEVICEMAP\TOUCH\
CalibrationData changed to:
519,503 177,881 182,129 847,127 849,872
These numbers will vary depending on where you look, but just find the settings that work for you

Phone Skin:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Security\Phone\Skin\
Change “Enabled” = 1 to “Enabled” = 0

DotNet Framework 3.5:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\.NETCompactFramework
Change 2.0.7045.00 to 0
Change 3.5.7283.00 to 1

Remove Shozu from startup
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\init
Delete Launcher140

Removing Extra SIP (Keyboard Choices):
Default Windows Keyboard
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINCE\CLSID\{42429667-ae04-11d0-a4f8-00aa00a749b9}\IsSIPInputMethod\
Change “Default” from 1 to 0

Letter Recognizer
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINCE\CLSID\{42429690-ae04-11d0-a4f8-00aa00a749b9}\IsSIPInputMethod\
Change “Default” from 1 to 0

Block Recognizer
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINCE\CLSID\{42429691-ae04-11d0-a4f8-00aa00a749b9}\IsSIPInputMethod\
Change “Default” from 1 to 0

Samsung Phonepad
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINCE\CLSID\{CE176388-8E63-4549-0646-BE242E3FE78C}\IsSIPInputMethod\
Change “Default” from 1 to 0

Samsung Keyboard
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINCE\CLSID\{CE176388-8E63-4549-0946-BE242E3FE78C}\IsSIPInputMethod\
Change “Default” from 1 to 0

Samsung Keypad
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINCE\CLSID\{CE176388-8E63-4549-0A46-BE242E3FE78C}\IsSIPInputMethod\
Change “Default” from 1 to 0

Transcriber
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINCE\CLSID\{F0034DD0-2AD4-11d1-9CB0-E84BE8000000}\IsSIPInputMethod\
Change “Default” from 1 to 0

I think that is all i have for the moment. Took me long enough to write it.

I have twitter now and on  the right under the tag cloud is my twitter updates. I removed the “recent items” to try to seem more interesting.

Ok I got a new laptop, this time it is a windows based laptop, and it is shiny. Nothing overly cool about it though, it doesn't even have a Virtualization CPU so I can’t exploit VMWare on it. But so far the battery lasts for around 3 and a half hours, and it has a large hard drive, so I will more then likely dual boot it eventually, as soon as I clean it up some more. Problem with it though is all the finger prints on it. I mean seriously it has a lot of shiny surfaces that gather finger prints like mad, it might make me crazy shortly, but that is ok.

Other news of the world, I have not been studying like I should be. Just been too tired after the kids go to bed to do much of anything. I should start setting a better time line for things. I have the materials so that isn’t the issue.

Also I have been more in charge of email and found some cool tricks, tips, and settings in postfix/amavis/apache, so lets do a tip with a simple apache tweak.

Open the apache conf (/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf on red hat based) in your favorite editor.
look for the line
KeepAliveTimeout   15
With this line it means that each connection will time out in 15 seconds.
around that area you will also see
MaxKeepAliveRequests 100
This is how many sessions it will keep alive at a time. Now this is 100 sessions for five seconds each, it doesnt sound like much, but what if you are the 101st person who connect?
Drop that to 3 second for the KeepAliveTimeout and 100 connections and people will be happier, or you can even turn off the setting and it will be fine as well.

Another handy apache tip, if you have a heavily visited web server, turn off the reverse hostname lookups.
HostnameLookups on
Change it to off, also you need to edit how the site(s) log. By default the log format is
CustomLog logs/access_log "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\""
This should change to
CustomLog logs/access_log "%a %l %u %t \"%r\" %s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\""
The %h changed to a %a because %h will use the remote hostname to the log file, and %a will use the remote IP Address.
IF you really want to see the hostnames you can use logresolve.

Also, i can attach pictures again, so next update I will pull a random photo from my phone, just because I can.

So I tried to use my handy dandy MacBook to try to take the study courses for the next cert i want to take and discovered an interesting issue. Microsoft eLearning site does not support Safari or Firefox. After talking with a couple of peers i found out that I have to use IE to access the site, so to the desktop I went. And so far there is nothing fun, or memorable, about Routing and Remote access. It seems like basic network troubleshooting, and every company I have worked for/with seems to use Cisco devices for Routing and Remote access. So next is to tackle the custom subnets.

One of the fun things is that I currently posses one cert, I really need to get up on it and get atleast a second one. I have tried to study before, but all of my tools are for windows based OS and I currently have a Mac based laptop. Now if I had a Linux based laptop, would I be more motivated to study? or would I just be more inclined to goof around while playing on it?

Lets find out. I am going to try to study at least two nights a week from my laptop and if that fails, then I will use my desktop more often. I will blog about the interesting things I learn about while studying as well. One of the things I am currently finding really fun is Distributed File System (DFS) with active directory.

I will try it and keep you posted.

no tags

Well they say it takes about 21 days to form or change a habit, so let me try to get into the habit of blogging on the magic three days a week. And just cause it gets posted after midnight doesnt mean I wasnt writing/debating/thinking about it on that day, but i will try to be as regular as a fiber rich diet.

This one is something I did recently, and the the mighty Kolbold asked me for something that could help monitor network traffic.

The first thing that I thought of was Cacti because it allows you to configure an snmp community on a switch, the get the data and graph it in a nice simple to view interface that can update quickly. Check out the screen shots on the cacti home page.

The quickest way I have found to deploy this has been with CentOS and then using a guide I found online at Karl's Place. This being a CentOS install a couple of steps while you start the install should be taken into account. If you have never installed CentOS before that is ok just keep a few things in mind. When installing choose custom and server install for packages. You want to install MySQL server, HTTP Server, PHP for web and MySQL, with the firewall and security area's be aware of what you are doing there, if you are going to use IPTables and SELinux make sure you know how they work. The rest of the packages are listed in the Karl's Place link.

After you have your system booted, make sure you allow access to your web site by removing

deny from all

from the /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf file.

Start the apache service:
service httpd start

Make it start automaticly
chkconfig httpd start

Start MySQL service
service mysqld start

Make it start automaticly
chkconfig mysqld on

After these services are installed and running is when I installed the DAG repository then I did the snmp install:
yum install snmp

then started snmp service
service snmpd start

and set it to automaticly start
chkconfig snmpd start

after that you can follow the rest of the instructions on the cacti install to install the database and create the DB user.

Also, I never set the crontab job to run the cacti script every five minutes. I wasnt using it that intensely and it did update my graphs afterwards.

I will try to do these steps again by friday and post some screen caps with how I configured some basics in Cacti, until then.

Well I found a program that seems to work for posting better then what I was using. Just if i buy it I will post more, hey you get what you pay for.Ecto seems to work better, it even lets me delete test posts. I should use an image as a test, but i will get to that later. Right now not a whole lot running around in my mind other then I have some work to do tonight at 1AM.

I think I might buy this app and find out how it posts things to get the picture plugin to work better. Time to start the coding I guess

I might poke at it later, but for now a simple weekly tip
When you need to check someone's mail server you can use nslookup on XP and Vista

nslookup
> set type=mx

> server 4.2.2.2
Default server: 4.2.2.2
Address: 4.2.2.2#53

> velcrohurts.com
  Server: 4.2.2.2
Address: 4.2.2.2#53

Non-authoritative answer:

velcrohurts.com mail exchanger = 10 mx.velcrohurts.com.cust.b.hostedemail.com.

Authoritative answers can be found from:
>

Now to review this. nslookup is the name server lookup for most OSes.

set type=mx
that tells nslookup that we want to look for a mail record or a Mail eXchange record

server 4.2.2.2
This chooses a server outside of most peoples controller. This allows us to see our information from an external source that is not in our control to make sure our records are correct

The next part is the domain that we want to look up. In my case i used my email server. By telling me that it is the record has not been changed for a while or updated.

If you want to get seriously into DNS, I recommend setting up a linux server like Ubuntu, CentOS, or Slackare and setting up BIND atleast once.

So I thought I had done a few post over the last month and a half, turns out I haven't. I need to troubleshoot it and find out where my posts went because I will be damned if I can find them. I think part of the problem is that I am on a Mac and I am trying to post to something that is not supported. Either that or it gave me an error that I didn't read, hey it can happen.

So here is some highlights:

• Got the civic Back
• SAN management
• Civic tinted with alarm

So that is about it, with no tags on this one.

So Happy Halloween all. Remember know when to say when.

My first ever pumpkin carving, the guts were an after thought but it did turn out nice, and i think i want to do it again next year.