Wild Blue Sky

Just fixed a problem that had been (unbeknownst to me) plaguing this place for who knows how long.

After rebooting a domain controller, the SQL servers would start throwing logon errors until it came back up.  Most of the errors were from IIS that use windows auth, a few errors even came from the app servers.  What made it especially tricky was that it really looked like a kerberos problem.  Depending on what machine you were looking at, you’d get an error like

Login failed for user ”. The user is not associated with a trusted SQL Server connection.

or maybe

Logon Failure:
Reason: An error occurred during logon
… it’d go on to tell you what was wrong with Kerberos

and one

The Kerberos subsystem encountered a PAC verification failure

I saw a few

The failure code from authentication protocol Kerberos was The specified user does not exist

Long story short – I looked and poked and Googled… I couldn’t seem to find anyone that had reported this problem before (and I’m usually pretty good at putting together search terms that get me what I want) until I finally found a KB article that fit my hunch of what was happening.  I don’t think I saw the “NO_SUCH_USER” code in any of the logs I looked through (maybe that’s what you get if you’re using NTLM?) but the rest of it sure sounded good.  I tried the work-around on the domain controllers first – stopping the netlogon service before rebooting – and didn’t get a single error.

I deserve a raise.

I’m adding a Windows 2008 RC2 (x64… if it matters) to an existing 2003 domain.  Join the domain, everything’s happy, run all my forestprep & domainprep goodness… but dcpromo kept shitting itself with:

“Failed to examine the active directory forest.  The error was: The operation cannot continue because the LDAP connect/bind operation failed: error: 58”

The only thing I could find was this page which suggested the local admin account password had to be the same as the forest root domain password.  Before I went through all the account renaming and hunting down the password (all your admin accounts get renamed, right?  And no one really has that password?) I decided to just disable the local admin account on the 2008 server first.  It worked.  “WTF?O” indeed.

So I’m doing this again.

I’ve been a Blockbuster Online member pretty much since they launched… late 2004 I think.  I tried Netflix at the same time – they both offered free two week trials.  I started with Blockbuster because they gave me 2 coupons a month that I could use in the store for movies or games.  I’ve stayed with them because of that and the in-store exchanges of movie.  I rarely use either of those features of the plan, but when I do I’m really glad I have that ability.  I don’t think new customers can even get the coupons anymore (or if they do, they aren’t good for games) but if they ever take it away from me, I will switch to Netflix in a heartbeat.

Netflix mailed me a ‘Hey, come back, try us again!” flyer a few weeks ago.  Right about the same time they announced that they could stream your ‘Watch Instantly” queue to a PS3.  I called to ask if I could get a streaming disc for my trial (you need to have their disc in the PS3 for all this to work) and they said no problem.  I signed back up, and they actually still had all my account info from from back when.

So far their shipping speeds are faster than Blockbuster.  It’ll be interesting to see what their turn-around times are.  One of my complaints about Blockbuster lately has been how long it takes them to ship one after the get one back from you.  One time it was almost 5 days – they had all 3 that I sent back and had yet to send another out.  Every time I asked about, they’d blame it on some system bug and send me a coupon for a free rental or something.  I think last time they actually just sent me a ‘rental bonus’ – so basically I had 4 out at a time, the bonus one didn’t count against my plan.  That’s better I guess.  I don’t like going to the store, I like things just showing up in the mail   Blockbuster is also horrible at having enough Blu-Ray stock.  This is not an exaggeration:  The first 12 titles in my queue right now are on some kind of wait.  Two “Long Wait”, two “Very Long”, the rest are “Short”.  I have 7 titles in my Netflix queue, including the 4 that are Long/Very Long from Blockbuster, and they’re all available now. Netflix’s site is faster, cleaner, and I think more personalized.

We’ll see what happens.  Their plans are about the same price once you factor in Netflix’s extra charge for Blu-ray access (which I think is stupid) so it’s going to come down to store vs. streaming.  I really want to love Netflix – if they started letting me get games in the mail too, I’d instantly be theirs.  Or course, as soon as they do that, Blockbuster probably buys Gamefly and competes.

… when the NIC has a heat-sink.  So does the SFP.  And we almost need to start talking in petabytes.  Should be an interesting year.

If you understood all that, you’re a geek.  But Happy New Year anyway.

PS: Up In the Air – two thumbs up.  Great movie.  You should watch it.

Every few months I look through the stats for this site just for giggles. Here is an actual search phrase used to find this site: “jesus rita do i look fat as hell”
Top result in google.

I seriously just killed the entire first season of Sons of Anarchy in less than a week.  Partly because it’s a pretty good show, partly because there’s nothing else on my DVR, and partly because I’m flat broke and can’t go do anything else

Blockbuster.com is seriously pissing me off.  I’m about to go to Netflix (or nothing)  My queue has been screwy for a month now – first they weren’t sending anything, then they sent two movies twice (one of which never showed up) and now it looks like they aren’t processing anything again.  And now I can’t do anything about it because I get an “Internal Server Error 500″ when I try to edit my queue.  If I didn’t still get the 2 coupons a month good for a movie or a game, I would have canceled a long time ago.  As soon as they take that away, I will.  Besides, Netflix offers free streaming (have to pay BB for it) and I can stream to my PS3.

My kitchen remodel woes continue…. six months later.  The Blanco Cascade Super Single sink that I had put in now leaks.  From the little bit of looking around I’ve done, it’s happened before.  I thought these things were supposed to be tough as granite.  There’s a crack across the back that goes all the way through.  If I try to fill the sink with more than an inch of water it leaks.  These are not cheap sinks, they shouldn’t fail after 6 months.  They do offer a limited lifetime warranty… but they don’t cover labor.  They guys who originally put it in want $150 to swap them, and that’s if they don’t have to move the counters to do it.  And I don’t think they do the plumbing (which I can do, that’s no big deal) they only take the old sink out and put the new sink in.  Sigh.  To really cap everything off, the replacement sink showed up a few days ago… and it’s the wrong color.  They even asked for pictures of the existing sink, and still got it wrong.  The kitchen is really the only part of the whole thing that I hired someone to do parts of, and those parts have really been screwed up.

Ok… back to looking for a good hosted VMWare solution for DR.

For some time I keep getting a few search hits a month on “craig mitchell she hates my futon” (I posted about it awhile ago)
Maybe, just maybe he means it this time.  myboot / famousboot 2.0

If you’re completely confused, you can get a jump on it via The Wayback Machine I will warn you though, it’s been almost 10 years with no more chapters.  You’ll be hurt, angry, and randomly Google-ing “She hates my futon” for years to come.

I’m on a plane, streaming internet radio, remoted into a computer at home to IM, watching the flight I’m *on* on flightstats.com and writing this.

… is playing Jurassic Park III right now.  WTF?  Did they just completely stop trying?  Or did they finally buy into all the jokes?

As part of my “home improvements” (in quotations because it was really more “home repairs”) I decided to replace my water heater.  The utility room was already ripped up and my old water heater was nearing the end of its life.  After putting this all back together, who wants to have a water heater rupture and ruin it all?  I decided with the tax credits and everything, this might be a good time to switch to a tank-less.  And let’s be honest, I’m a ‘gadget’ kinda guy anyway.

Quick side-rant/plug here:  I have a hard time believing the economy is as bad as everyone says.  When this disaster first hit, I called a lot of people to get estimates.  I had a feeling I might end up doing a lot of it myself, but I wanted to make sure the numbers the insurance guy was giving me were correct and if the price was good enough I’d save myself some time and money.  One drywall place I called… let’s just call them “Drywall Surgeon”  took about 4 days to show up to even look at the place.  He finally got there on a Friday I think it was, and said he’d have an estimate to me “…next week sometime”  When the estimate did finally show up, they wanted over $1,000 to do what ended up costing me maybe $100 (not counting beer)  Hell, one of the other drywall guys I called just never showed up.
The kitchen people I called were almost as bad.  Ok, so the one wasn’t all that bad… they were just a little slow, uninspired, and wanted to do all the work.  One moved really slow (they actually emailed me a good 2 and a half months after we had last spoke to ask if I had made a decision!) and I actually felt insulted by them on more than one occasion.  I really got the feeling this was too small of a job for them and I wasn’t worth their time.  The third guy got the job – he was the last one I called, the quickest to come out, the first one to have a design that I liked with numbers, and I probably learned more from him in 20 minutes than I had in the hours I spent talking with the others.  He was probably more expensive than the other two, but he was actually fine with me doing everything – actually, I think he preferred it.  The only reason he’s not getting a great review complete with name and number is because they made a pretty big ‘oops’ and I actually think they still might owe me some money

One thing I knew I wasn’t going to do myself was some of the plumbing.  I can do some basic stuff, but when it involves water, electric, and gas… nuh-uh.  I had pretty much decided on a Rinnia tank-less water heater mainly because my dad went on and on about how great the one he put in a few years back was.  On top of that I was going to need a new water softener.  No sense destroying the fancy new water heater with hard water because the old POS softener I had couldn’t keep up.  And of course my motto towards the end of this whole project was “Why cheap-out now?”  One plumber (actually the one that did the ‘emergency repair’ on the pipe) I couldn’t get to give me an estimate.  I’m pretty sure I asked for it 3 or 4 times and it took probably 2 weeks… if not more.  The guy from Ed’s Heating and Cooling though… boy was he on it.  Yes, I’m difficult to please – which means that when I say “Use this guy” it should actually carry some weight.  Use this guy.  Seriously, he was fantastic – I think he was out the day after I called to look at what I needed, sat down at my kitchen table and gave me a quote, explained all the tax credits, told me about a rebate my gas company was just about to start that no one really knew about yet, and even called me 2 or 3 times to see if I had any questions or had made a decision.  Not in a pushy way at all, just in a “I want your business” way.
The installation went perfect, even though they had to do some of it in the rain.  They cleaned up well after themselves, did a solid job, it even looks good, and he even (for no extra charge)  had one of the HVAC guys put in a small vent for that room in case it starts to freeze up again this Winter.  He went so far as to fill out and mail in the rebate form for me to make sure I got that $150.  Just wonderful all-around customer service… just when I thought such a thing no long existed.  Really, if you’re in this area and need plumbing work of any kind done, call him.

Ok… so the side rant really turned into most of the post.

So the point – last July my gas usage averaged 0.37CCF/Therms per day.  This year with the tank-less water heater it was 0.12.  It’s safe to say that neither year had the furnace running at all and hot water usage was probably similar… so that’s a pretty good indication.  That alone probably won’t pay back the extra installation cost over the life of the unit, but add in the tax credit and it probably comes close.  Not to mention I can take a 2 hour long shower (if I really wanted) and not run out of hot water   Oh, and the new softener is saving me a little too – it’s one of those ’smart’ ones that only regens when it has to – my water is nice and soft all the time now and I’m probably using 1/4 of the salt.