How can I resize windows that are stubborn?

Adam Pash covered this tiny app on LifeHacker a while back. This Resizeable goodness is ever so cleverly called resizeenable and it lets you resize system windows that you normally could not. You guys always seem to find what I am looking for before I’m looking for it! Thanks LifeHacker…

Some of you may wonder why we are so anal-retentive that we need to do this (is there a hyphen in that - wow now that’s anal)…

Well screen real estate is a commodity (much like sleep these days) that we can never have enough of.

Take your resizing self over to the authors site and grab this app and you will be resizing like a pro in no time. Its 39k and the screen contents scale down or up to what ever size you choose.

_TheWhatYouTalkingAboutWillisAdmin_

PC power users switching to Mac? Mac’s got a toolbox that’s right up your alley!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS kiddies,

Comodore64 back again to shed some light for any newly ordained Mac users that are carrying over from the M$ world. Since Mac is gaining a kind of strangle hold on the industry, I’m pretty sure there are a lot of guys like myself who have a PC for certain purposes and a Mac for others. In my case, it’s a Powerbook. But not just any Powerbook, this is one of the last Powerbooks made with a PowerPC processor, right before Jobs and Co. made the switch to Intel processors. In retrospect, it was one of my better purchases in life. Worth every penny, and keeps on tickin. Unfortunately, a lot of you didn’t stay on the PowerPC bandwagon, and jumped over (maybe not even by choice) to the new Intel Macs. From what I’ve seen and heard , they are quite the problematic little buggers. But my PowerPC Powerbook has been rock solid since day 1 (gleam.)

Shortly after buying this Powerbook over 2 years ago, I was rummaging around the hard drive for whatever pre-installed goodness I can come across a folder that looks like the image above. This collection of proggies is sure to make any former M$ user feel right at home.

Here is a rundown I’ve found courtesy of http://www.freemacblog.com/exploring-the-utilities-folder-on-your-mac/

Activity Monitor - Activity Monitor let’s you know what is going on with your computer. It can let you know where your memory and CPU is being used most.
Airport Admin Utility - The application will let you configure your Apple Airport products.
Airport Setup Assistant - This app is used when you first set up your Airport product. It’s an easy wizard for setup.
Audio MIDI Setup - You can use Audio MIDI Setup to configure the audio input and output devices you use with your computer, such as microphones and audio playback equipment. If you need this app, you probably already know how to use it.
Bluetooth File Exchange - If you have a cell phone or PDA with bluetooth, this application makes it very easy to send files back and forth. This is a great way to take your photos off of your phone, or to add ringtones to your phone.
Colorsync Utility - This app gives you access to to Apple’s Colorsync specs. In this app you can set different profiles. There is also a nifty calculator that can convert between RGB and CMYK. This is another of those apps that isn’t useful to most people.
Console - Console gives you a “behind the scenes” look at your Mac. While you see all the pretty pictures and graphics of Mac OS X, there is a ton happening in the background. Console lets you watch that. It’s especially helpful to see error or status messages.
Digitalcolor Meter - If you are preparing your work for professional printing and you have an Apple monitor, you can use DigitalColor Meter to match the color on your screen against several industry standards.
Directory Access - Directory Access lists the different kinds of services that Mac OS X can access. The list includes directory services, which give Mac OS X access to user information and other administrative data stored in directory domains. The list also includes kinds of network services that Mac OS X can discover on the network.
You can enable or disable access to each kind of service. If you disable a kind of service in Directory Access, Mac OS X no longer accesses services of the disabled kind. The different services can be found here.
Disk Utility - There is all kinds of power in the Disk Utility. Here you can reformat a disk, check and fix permissions, and so many other things.
Grab - Grab will let you “grab” screenshots of your Mac. Of course, you can already do this with key combinations, but Grab does have one nice feature. You can do a timed grab. Start the timer and ten second later the Mac will grab a screenshot.
Grapher - Grapher lets you create 2D and 3D graphs from equations.
OS 9 came with a graphing calculator. OS X versions before Tiger had no graphing options. But, with Mac OS X Tiger, we now have Grapher.
Installer - You’ve probably used Installer a hundred times and didn’t know it. Whenever you download a new application that comes in a package or a metapackage, Installer makes it possible to install that application.
Keychain Access - Keychain Access gives you access to the keychain. Duh.
Anytime you save a password to a site or a server or anything on the Mac, it is stored in the keychain. If you forget one of those passwords and it isn’t filling in automatically, you can access keychain with this application and find your password.
Migration Assistant - This is simply one of the most amazing applications. If you’ve ever purchased a new Mac and migrated from your old one, this is the app you used. You can also use it to get a use from a different machine.
Netinfo Manager - Netinfo is the built-in Mac OS X directory system. It stores information about users and resources and makes it available to Mac OS X processes that want to use it. This application helps you manage it.
Network Utility - Since I run a fairly large network of Macs this app is great. It makes it easy to ping machines, lookup name server and DNS, do traceroutes, port scans, etc. It also is a quick way to find info on your Network interfaces. (e.g., ethernet, airport, etc)
ODBC Administrtator - This will give you access to database management systems using Open Database Connectivity standards.
Printer Setup Utility - When you get that new printer and hook it to your Mac, this app comes to the rescue. It will lead you along to get the printer working.
System Profiler - If you need information about your Mac, here is the place to come. It will tell you about your RAM and your drives and your processors and anything thing else you’d need.
Terminal - This is the gateway to the true power of Mac OS X. It is a terminal emulator that will let you use the Unix base of Mac OS X.
VoiceOver Utility - Voiceover is a Mac OS X feature that lets you interact with your Mac via voice. It will read the text of websites, email, and documents. It also allows you to control your Mac using audible commands. Voiceover Utility lets you determine how Voiceover will behave.

Well, kiddies I hope this helps you settle into your new Mac a little easier. Some of these Utilities are clutch and definitely make me feel more in control of my MAC.

Til next time,
Commodore64 (The one you used to play Bruce Lee on)

Using Windows Vista Snipping tool (Video)

The Admin has covered the Vista Snipping tool recently but, you know what they say about a picture being worth a thousand words… How about a video? How many words is that worth?

But here is the second in a series of Video how-to’s By Dan Morrill, on special assignment to Ask the Admin.

If you missed Dan’s first one on Wednesday, on how to use Word 2007 as a blog editor, then here it is.

Windows Vista comes with a number of handy tools, the best one is the windows vista snipping tool. This tool allows you to capture a JPG image from whatever is on the screen, and save it off for use later. This is very handy when you need a logo from a site, that is using a text based logo with no images that you can download and save.

This program can be found under start, all programs, accessories and can really make your day easier when you need to capture an image off the screen. This completely replaces the alt+print screen or function+print screen and is very cool.

A Tale of Two Admins.

Please follow this email chain between myself and our friend Karl AKA ATA.

—————————————
ME

Here’s the scenario….

Backed up info off old laptop to external HD.

During XP install I saw two identical drives…nuked the first partition and tried to install. XP said no. Nuked the 2nd one…XP allowed the install. JOY!!!

You know where this is going don’t you…..

Anywho…it turns out XP is able to see external USB HD’s and I nuked the MBR on the drive. Do you know of any freebie tools to recover the data on that drive? I have my bosses personal stuff on it and a lot of my own personal stuff too….and the drive states that it needs to be formatted….

HELP ME Obie-ADMIN, You’re my only hope!
——————————————–
Karl

Sorry it took so long ive been in windows mobile hell today.

Do not let it format! Knoppix live cd wll fix you right up.

You will be able to see and copy everything even without the mbr.

Let me know how it goes and if it doesnt work i might have some other apps
———————————————
Me

I bought a tool to recover the drive….but…..I have a BKF file on
there that is corrupted now….any idea of any tools that are freebies
to be able to recover those files? I suppose I can get the bosses CC to
buy a tool to do it…but I’d rather not…..
———————————————-
Karl

What OS is the BKF file from? What os are you restoring to? What is the error message?

———————————————-
Me

Win2k Pro. It is saying that the BKF(windows Backup file) is not valid or something to that effect….

I am running a scandisk on it….we’ll see if it goes. I downloaded a demo of a $ product and I could see the data in the file, but I cannot get at it without paying…..
———————————————-
Karl

Are you restoring to w2k as well? Did you use msbackup or ntbackup to compress it?
———————————————-
Me

NTBACKUP to create it. Tried restoring on Win2k server and XP.
———————————————-
Karl for the win

I’d try to restore on 2k pro but if that doesn’t work check this out:

Backup Exec has the ability to read .bkf files. You can download the trial
version and use it for 60 days for free.

If you go to the “Tools -> Options -> Catalog” menus, there is a check box
labeled “Use storage media - based catalogs”. If you remove the check from
this checkbox and run a catalog job on the bkf file, you should be able to
recover any files that are not corrupted. The catalog operation will take
longer to complete, but you should be able to restore any valid file within
the .bkf, before and after the corruption. Its hard to know how much
corruption there is in the .bkf file, so I wish you the best of luck.

This link will give you instructions on how to import a bkf file into the
program for restore. Before performing step 6. (The catalog operation),
follow the steps above. http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/241600.htm

———————————————-
Grateful Me

Dude……you rock.

We use BE and I never thought of trying it. Thanks to you I was able to restore….get this…..ALL OF IT.

Rock on Detroit….Rock on Chicago…NAPA, it’s the auto parts store. (If you don’t know what this is…do a Youtube/Google search on Wesley Willis)
———————————————–

So what have we learned today?

• 1. NEVER, EVER leave a USB HD attached to XP on install and NEVER, EVER nuke a drive unless you are 10000000% certain you have the right drive.
• 2. Karl rocks and has great ideas.
• 3. NAPA, It’s the Auto Parts Store

–A Grateful Slothman

Open Source E-Mail Encryption

“…Perhaps you think your email is legitimate enough that encryption is unwarranted. If you really are a law-abiding citizen with nothing to hide, then why don’t you always send your paper mail on postcards? Why not submit to drug testing on demand? Why require a warrant for police searches of your house? Are you trying to hide something? If you hide your mail inside envelopes, does that mean you must be a subversive or a drug dealer, or maybe a paranoid nut?…” -Philip Zimmerman, Creater of PGP

PGP, or more specifically OpenPGP is a great, and more importantly FREE method of securing your data and your e-mails. You don’t want “The Man” reading your e-mails, and neither do I.

There are many PGP and OpenPGP programs out there, but the one that is the most versatile that I have seen is called GnuPG. It comes in some form for every operating system. It comes standard with Ubuntu Linux, and there are versions for Windows and MAC.

If you are a fan of Mozilla Firefox, and Thunderbird like I am, then you will be happy to know that there are GnuPG plugins for both of them. Enigmail for Thunderbird, and FireGPG for Firefox. Of course you have to have GnuPG installed for the plugins to work.

If you have any doubts on the strength of the encryption, it uses PKI and the encryption keys can go up to 4096 bits, which is so strong that if you take all of the computing power on the planet it would still take something ridiculous like 10 billion years to crack (Give or take). I also found a quaint little article here about how the FBI has problems cracking PGP.

“So ya ya ya, yackity smackity… where do I download this fantastic software?”

I thought you would never ask. You can download it from the following sites:

Mac

Linux

Enjoy!

Written by El Di Pablo of Bauer-Power

The 12 Admin Days of Christmas

Last year I tried my hand at Christmas parody by writing An Admin’s Night Before Christmas. It was all festive and what not, and did spread some Christmas joy, but honestly it wasn’t my best work.

This year, I decided a much easier Christmas Carol to parody, The 12 Days of Christmas!

With the help of Mark Sexton, one of my company’s Senior Systems Administrators, I have come up with this year’s Sysadmin driven Christmas Carol, the 12 Admin Days of Christmas!

Enjoy!

We at aTa wish all of you a very Merry Christmas (Or what ever Holiday you celebrate) and a very happy New Year!

Please forward this to all of your friends and help me spread some Sysadmin Christmas love!

By El Di Pablo of www.Bauer-Power.net