URL to the configuration test page: https://FQDN/testconfig.aspx
super mario 3d world (wii u)
i’ve been playing this game for about a week and a half, here and there for about 2 hours, and today i finished it. i enjoyed it quite a bit more than the recent new super mario bros games. i know those games are really geared more for multiplayer and not-so-much a quality single player experience. nintendo fixed that in this game. 3d world brings back the creativity and the coolness of discovering new things that were staples in older mario games. i’m not really sure how to describe it, but its just a good feeling when you experience something truly original in a mario level for the first time. you immediately want to play the level again after completing it. this game has those types of levels.
i found the play controls to be spot-on in this game. in the new super mario bros games (particularly the first one) i’ve always felt the controls were kind of slippery. surprisingly, i played through the entire game with the wii u gamepad. it’s actually not that bad to play with. the battery dies fairly often though.
difficulty-wise, i’d say it’s harder than any of the previous mario world games. it starts out really easy and then ramps up in difficulty for the later worlds. i particularly disliked a lot of the levels on world 7 and world 8. and i don’t think the levels are really that hard, but i was definitely feeling frustration trying to collect all 3 green stars on those levels. i associate the feeling of increased difficulty to one flaw in the game. doing platforming in this game over pits in the 3d perspective can be a nightmare. i found myself dying constantly from not being “lined up” correctly in the 3d space. a lot of the levels default to a 2d-ish camera view so you’ll be thinking everything is gravy until you go to jump to a new platform and end up falling off the screen. you can alleviate this problem most of the time by altering the camera angle and paying very close attention to your character’s shadow when jumping. unfortunately!! there are levels that you can not alter the camera angle on. particularly this seemed to be true on those dreadful auto-scrolling levels. the best you can do is pray silently before each jump on these levels. during levels i was experiencing problems on i kept thinking that man i could blaze through this so easily in a 2d version of this same level. overall, it’s not a huge flaw just an annoyance. like most mario games, deaths are offset by a surplus of extra lives. at times i had 40 lives and after several difficult levels my surplus would dwindle to 8 or so.
there are 2 levels that i know i died over 15 times each on and i hope to never play them again. this would be levels 3-2 and 7-3. ultimately, success on these levels came down to memorizing the level layout and knowing what to do at each segment.
another thing that is odd/interesting is that all the levels (in some form or another) have a visible edge. i’m guessing this something related to the game engine that is no doubt also used in the captain toad game. the result doesn’t bother me visually, but it sometimes ends up sucking from a practical standpoint. what i mean by that is that you have to be extra careful running around or jumping wildly in the game. if you play around running & jumping, i can almost guarantee that you will end up falling off the edge of the screen to your death. this happened to me early on and i learned my lesson. even so i still died by doing back flips off of trees, running too quickly, or performing a bad jump from time to time. dying at the flagpole screen because of these mistakes is ANGUISH.
the concept of the white tanooki suit doesn’t really bother me. i never used it, but i will say that my anger/frustration would rise every time i saw that block appear. to me it’s basically the game saying “hey we noticed you kind of suck and might need this baby suit for babies”. i’m not sure if there’s a way to disable it or not, but i’d be glad to never see it again. but like i said the concept of it doesn’t bother me. i’ve definitely played many games in the past where no matter how hard i tried i couldn’t pass a particular level. there comes a certain point where you realize something is simply beyond your skill level. and in those instances i think it’s okay to have a method to skip a level so that you can actually see the rest of the game. that being said, i don’t think it’s okay to instantly give into frustration and use it. as i said above i died 15-20 on certain levels and that’s nothing really. i would have died probably a 100 or more times on a level over several weeks before i would ever consider using the white tanooki suit.
you can choose between playing as mario, luigi, toad, and peach. there are differences amongst the characters just like there were in super mario bros 2. i hate playing as luigi just like i did in super mario 2. his movement is so dodgy. on certain levels i felt there would be a need to play as toad because of his speed, but i always ended up feeling that his speed did not make up for his incredibly short jumps. to finish the game i primarily relied on mario and the princess. mario for the majority of levels and the princess for any levels that had lots of spikes or platforming in the sky (using the princess on these levels can save you a lot of heartache).
occasionally, to get a certain star or stamp you need a special suit like the cat suit or boomerang suit. often that suit is available on the level, but in later levels i didn’t find this to be true. this would present a mildly irritating situation where i would have to backtrack to a level that had that suit (and that wasn’t a drag to play). you have to play through the whole level again because you can’t simply pop in get the suit and pop out. this gripe is more about wasting time rather than anything related to difficulty. i almost think they just let you have the option of starting a level with a particular suit (if you so choose) to prevent the need for backtracking.
when gathering the stars and stamps i would limit myself to about 3 playthroughs of a level before looking on the internet: http://www.ign.com/wikis/super-mario-3d-world/Walkthrough
the graphics in the game are incredible and there’s nothing negative that can be said about them. the music is great too, but i would have liked just a few more tracks (2 or 3 more) for a little more variety.
and finally my end game stats:
194 deaths (that’s about a 100 more than i would have guessed)
66 stamps
240 stars (i’m still missing 2 from the last level)
i plan on getting the last 2 stars soon and i’ll start playing some of the star world levels (at a slower pace though).
windows 2008: vmware tools not running
this particular occurrence was on windows 2008 sp2 (32-bit) and very easy to reproduce. every time the system was rebooted the VM would report vmware tools not running and sometimes vmware not running (not installed). RDP sessions would not function. when trying to login to the VM console it would hang on “applying user settings”.
this all started occurring after the system experienced a non-graceful shutdown. i ended up finding a vmware kb article that referenced a microsoft article.
the solution was to boot into safe mode and edit the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\HTTP
Add DependOnService (multi-string value)
and set the value to CRYPTSVC
sources:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2005330
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2379016
samsung galaxy s3 and cyanogenmod
fairly painless process to install cyanogenmod 11
steps:
heimdall flash –RECOVERY recovery.img –no-reboot
boot to recovery
wipe & format everything
install from sideload
adb sideload update.zip <— the d2lte build
adb sideload gapps.zip
reboot
source:
http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_d2lte
http://glassechidna.com.au/heimdall/
active directory: useful excel functions
examples…
=LEFT(H3,FIND(“@”,H3)-1)
to retrieve the username portion of an email address (anything before the @)
=LOWER(LEFT(B2,6)&LEFT(C2,1))
grab the first 6 characters from cell b2 and concatenate w/ the first character from cell c2. then lowercase.
using Data->Filter from within excel is also very useful
source:
http://chandoo.org/wp/2010/01/19/usernames-from-email-formulas/
removing duplicate rows:
do a find and replace and use find all, then select all of the results and choose delete -> delete sheet rows on the ribbon bar.
source: http://blog.contextures.com/archives/2010/06/21/fast-way-to-find-and-delete-excel-rows/
windows: backing up and restoring NTFS permissions
backing up:
icacls <directory path> /save ntfsperms.txt /t /c
restoring:
icacls <drive letter> /restore ntfsperms.txt
when a attaching a drive with existing NTFS permissions to a new system the NTFS permissions will be retained. share permissions, however, will not be. share permissions can be exported and imported (details in the source link)…but i don’t find it problematic to simply recreate the share permissions…they are usually much less involved than NTFS permissions.
i have also discovered that FSRM quota data is stored on the volume. when attaching an existing drive to a new system the quota values will be retained. however, the template names will be lost unless exported. backing up/restoring FSRM info here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771319%28v=ws.10%29.aspx
android: flashing nexus 10 (mantaray)
these nexuses are incredibly easy to work with. images here – https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/images
steps to flash device:
sudo apt-get android-tools-fastboot
boot into fastboot mode (info here – https://source.android.com/source/building-devices.html#booting-into-fastboot-mode)
fastbook oem unlock
fastboot format cache
fastboot format userdata
./flash-all.sh
fastboot oem lock
boot normally
cisco ucm: upload moh wav file
audacity can be used to convert a wav file into the proper format. this can be done by going to file->export audio->save as type: other uncompressed files->options… then choosing WAV and U-Law
there’s a bit more to it than just uploading the wav file to UCM via Media Resources->MOH Audio File Management. for one, the wav file will need to be uploaded to the publisher and each subscriber. it is not automatically replicated to the other UCM servers. secondly, the wav file must be associated with an MOH audio source (enable allow multi-casting). also the media streaming service is now named “Cisco IP Voice Media Streaming App” in case it needs to be restarted (seems like this needs to be done on each cucm node).
the bulk admin tool can be used for mass changes with phones->update phones. alternatively, phones->add/update lines can be used if the MOH file is set at the line level.
source:
http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=78712
update 5/18/2016:
i was able to get cucm 9.1 to accept an audio file with a 44.1kHz sample rate, 16-bit PCM, mono (however it does appear that stereo is allowed).
sql server alwayson availablity groups
first step is to set up windows server failover clustering (WSFC) on two or more nodes. the setup is fairly straight forward…install the feature on nodes you want participating in the cluster. shared storage is not actually required for alwayson availability groups, but you may want to configure a file share witness (~512MB) if you have an even number of nodes.
my setup looks like:
SQL1 – 192.168.1.10 (WSFC node 1 w/ standalone SQL server instance)
SQL2 – 192.168.1.11 (WSFC node 2 w/ standalone SQL server instance)
SQL-CLUSTER – 192.168.1.20 (the WSFC cluster object)
SQL-AG – 192.168.1.21 (availability group which applications should connect to)
important: The SQL-CLUSTER computer account needs to have the ability to create computer objects in the same OU it resides in so that it can create the AG object. by default this is usually the Computers container, but in my case it was not. if the permissions are not set up correctly then the create availability group listener step will fail.
related info:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2829783
https://ittreasure.wordpress.com/2012/08/14/hello-world/
failover clustering info:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc770620(v=ws.10).aspx
http://blogs.technet.com/b/askpfeplat/archive/2012/06/27/clustering-what-exactly-is-a-file-share-witness-and-when-should-i-use-one.aspx
second, install .net framework 3.5.1 if you haven’t already (needed by sql server 2012)
save yourself a hassle and make sure to set the SQL server service to run as a domain user during the installation.
if you change it later from a local service account to a domain user you’ll have to fix the SPN by following the ADSIedit instructions here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811889
further info:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/sqlserver/en-US/2d4d6a0f-de2c-4dc3-b813-46167f3ade0c/the-target-principal-name-is-incorrect-cannot-generate-sspi-context-microsoft-sql-server-error?forum=sqlsecurity
https://cmatskas.com/fixing-error-cannot-generate-sspi-context-after-changing-sql-service-account/
if you receive a “joining database on secondary replica resulted in an error” when running the AG wizard then run this against the master database on each node:
USE master
GO
CREATE LOGIN [mydomain\sql-service] FROM WINDOWS
GO
GRANT CONNECT on ENDPOINT::Hadr_endpoint TO [mydomain\sql-service]
GO
^lines other than GO require a semi-colon at the end. wordpress freaked out about including actual t-sql statements…
source: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/svarukala/archive/2014/03/31/sql-alwayson-failed-to-join-the-database-to-the-availability-group-error-35250.aspx
more resources:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/scvmm/archive/2012/10/24/how-to-configure-sql-2012-alwayson-availability-groups-in-system-center-2012-virtual-machine-manager-service-pack-1.aspx
http://blogs.technet.com/b/canitpro/archive/2013/08/20/step-by-step-creating-a-sql-server-2012-alwayson-availability-group.aspx
http://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/2518/sql-server-alwayson-availability-groups–part-2-availability-groups-setup/
http://sharepointengineer.com/2014/02/17/sql-server-2012-step-by-step-create-the-alwayson-availability-group/
http://stevenpoitras.com/2014/02/configure-sql-db-availability-group/
http://www.sql-server-performance.com/2013/alwayson-clustering-failover/
http://www.davidklee.net/2012/04/10/sql-server-2012-alwayson-availability-group-creation/
update 9/23/15:
some differences in managing availability groups…
i had some ADFS servers complaining about the service broker feature not being enabled. unfortunately, you cannot enable the feature on a database that’s been added to an AG. the only solution i could find was to remove the database from the AG and enable the feature on the now standalone (non-synchronized) database. then finally re-add the database back to the AG.
something else i noticed was that AG requires the full recovery model be set on databases and this of course can result in rather large .ldf files. however, in a normal scenario a backup and shrink job usually reduces the .ldf size. i was not experiencing this with the AG database. i suppose i could have used a similar solution as mentioned above where i would remove the database from the AG and then shrink it and readd it to the AG. however, i didn’t consider that at the time so i ended up moving the affected DB to its own volume by removing it from the AG, detaching/reattaching and adding it back to the AG. i’d like to look into shrinking the .ldf again further when i have time. also new volumes that SQL DBs reside on will need to have full control NTFS permissions given to “nt service\mssqlserver”.
update 10/12/16:
i ran into a few issues recently when attempting to add another secondary replica. the third node mostly added to the WSFC cluster fine except i experienced an issue where the cluster decided to take ownership of the local storage on the nodes. this caused the disks to disappear from windows on each node. it’s possible i missed something within the wizard that would have prevented this or perhaps not? anyways, i resolved the issue by going to the failover cluster manager->storage->disks and removing the disks listed there from the cluster.
next, i was experiencing difficulty with adding the new replica with the AG “add replica” wizard. it took me longer than it should have to determine what the issue was (i wasn’t paying close enough attention to the error messages & logs). the issue was that the new node wasn’t agreeing with the encryption algorithm used by the other nodes.
i resolved this with the following (AES seems to be the standard for sql 2012+):
CREATE ENDPOINT [Hadr_endpoint]
STATE = STARTED
AS TCP ( LISTENER_PORT = 5022 )
FOR DATABASE_MIRRORING (
AUTHENTICATION = WINDOWS NEGOTIATE,
ENCRYPTION = REQUIRED ALGORITHM AES,
ROLE = ALL)
^the last line should end with a semi-colon
if you’ve already created the endpoint you can use the following to delete it:
DROP ENDPOINT [Hadr_endpoint] <— semi-colon
GO
or even better – alter the settings of an existing endpoint:
USE [master]
GO
ALTER ENDPOINT [Hadr_endpoint]
STATE=STARTED
AS TCP (LISTENER_PORT = 5022, LISTENER_IP = ALL)
FOR DATA_MIRRORING (ROLE = ALL, AUTHENTICATION = WINDOWS NEGOTIATE
, ENCRYPTION = REQUIRED ALGORITHM AES)
GO
if recreating the endpoint from scratch you’ll need to repeat the step mentioned above:
USE master <— semi-colon
GO
GRANT CONNECT on ENDPOINT::Hadr_endpoint TO [mydomain\sql-service] <— semi-colon
GO
source:
https://sqlperformance.com/2013/04/system-configuration/troubleshooting-alwayson
once the encryption algorithm problem was resolved i was much closer. the next issue i encountered