September 2003 - Posts
My business partner wants to get up to speed on .NET, but he comes from a sales and marketing background, not a technical one. Do you guys have any recommendations for good books on .NET for someone coming from a completely non-technical history? Maybe like “.NET for Dummies” or something to that effect? Please let me know. if not I'll have to write one.
I finally got my other blogs working again. Since my old hosting provider won't release the hostages, I'm going to have to completely rebuild them. I'm going to pull my best posts out of the Google cache and, even tho my permalinks won't work, hopefully Google will reindex and all will be well. Cross one more thing off my list.
A little over 24 hours until the big news....
Just two more days until the big launch. Today was a very good day, as now the new servers are all up and running, DNS issues are mostly resolved, and two new community websites are up and running. Now, just gotta wait for the domain names to resolve properly, and those sites should be totally finished and out of my mind. Two more full days of work, and the past two years of work will finally be completed (well, begun really).
Tomorrow is going to be another busy day. I have to negotiate the release of my data, which is being held hostage by my old hosting provider. Private networks are not always a good thing, especially when your provider will not keep their equipment online. I'm hoping the hostages will be freed swiftly so that I can get back to the other things that I have to do with my data. Hopefully this means that my other blogs will be back online tomorrow as well. I hate not having a consistent online presence. It really makes me mad. Oh well.
Ok, that's enough for tonight. I'm going to go to bed because Tumbler is waking me up at six. I hate him. I want to sleep. Pooey. Ok I'm done pouting now. Nite.
Seven long hours of work later, and I FINALLY get my new web server to talk to my new SQL server. Geez man this was getting ridiculous. For whatever reason, after installing SQL on the server, I could not connect to it through EM on my local machine. The ports were wide open, but my EM was doing a really good Stevie Wonder impression. The web server couldn't see it either.
So, I started to set up a VPN connection. Gosh what a PITA that was. I set one up on my old network, and loved it to death. The only problem was, the server only had one network adapter, and you need 2 to have a VPN server. So I had a brilliant idea. Why not use the Microsoft Loopback Adapter as the second interface? Well, to my astonishment, it worked..... sorta.
I hadn't configured the server properly for VPN access. I had neglected to clear the checkbox that said “Only allow VPN traffic through this interface” when using the “Configure Your Server” wizard . Um, yeah bad idea. As soon as I tried to dial in, my sql box decided it didn't want to play with ANYONE, and I could no longer RDC into it. I tried using the nifty RapidReboot option that ServerBeach gives me on my console, to no avail. Lucky for me, when the server does not reboot properly, a trouble ticket is automatically issued and some superhero tech guy comes in and checks out the problem. When I woke up this morning, I had a nice e-mail saying that they disabled RRAS again and the server was online as normal.
So after messing around with the VPN settings again, I finally got everything working, and all my server are able to communicate properly. I like this setup even better, because now all my servers can see each other (they are all on different subnets), and I can firewall off all traffic to my database server except for RDC and DNS. And all my DB traffic will be secure.
Now on my to-do list is an entry on how to configure VPN using the same setup I just created. If configured properly, you can set up any machine to be a VPN server regardless of how many adapters you have installed.
I've been heads-down all week working on the finishing touches to everything I have going on. The DNS settings started transitioning over to my new servers, and I've been hard at work prepping the new production servers for the new websites we are launching. It's getting pretty intense now. Only two more business days and the rest of the weekend before the big launch day. This time it cannot be missed, due to the timing of other announcements that are outside my control. Things are moving well tho. I'm in for a few sleepless nights, that's for sure.
At any rate, I've got to get back to work. Keep watching Wednesday for a series of big announcements.
How about we all go to
Universal Studios instead? Um, that would be way more fun than not drinking and yakking for hours about BS that we're all gonna be yakkin about all week long anyway.
I stumbled upon the ASP.NET Checklists today (courtesy of Roy Osherove), and have been roaming around the Patterns and Practices section all day. I've found some truly outstanding gems, and just in time to configure my new servers that are slowly coming online.
HOW TO: Harden the TCP/IP Stack
HOW TO: Use IPSec for Filtering Ports and Authentication
DOWNLOAD: Improving Web Application Security: Threats and Countermeasures
I'm going to put together a series of files that assist in making the necessary changes. For example, I'm putting together a registry file for hardening the IP stack, and I may put together a simple WinForms app that lets you choose which settings to implement graphically. I might even experiment with the settings and offer various default levels. As soon as it's finished I'll post a download link.
I also found a CD of all the Patterns and Practices in the Microsoft Online Store: (You can click on the graphic to jump straight to the Microsoft Store and buy it, courtesy of the BoyWonder.NET Developer Store)
ISBN: 0-7356-1841-0
This CD includes the complete set of 28 patterns & practices including printable .PDF files for each title. Many also include fully tested, production quality source code to accelerate development. This library contains thousands of pages of detailed technical information packaged as a Web site. The contents of this disk may be copied to a network file share, or to individual PCs, for use as an online resource for your IT development and infrastructure teams.
It's only $20, so I'm going to get it. If you do buy it as well, please do it through the
BoyWonder.NET Developer Store. Proceeds from all sales will go to help offset my PDC expenses, and will help me continue to do the work that I do for the community.
WOO HOO! The Weblogger BOF session topic was selected as one of the first 23 picked on Saturday. I'm really excited that it's a go, and very soon I'm going to put together a working group to help determine how the session is going to work. Currently, the following people are signed up to help:
- Robert Scoble
- Drew Robbins (PDCBloggers.com)
- Michael Slade
Over the next few weeks I'll be sending out e-mails to people I would like to assist. The problem is tracking contact information for a few of these people down. If you would like to help out, please send me an e-mail or comment in this post, and I'll get you on the mailing list. I'd like so A-list bloggers there, so if you're interested, drop me a line. It's gonna be a great session!
It seems to me like the easiest way to get rid of SPAM would be to have mailservers check to see if the IP address of the e-mail sender resolves to the domain references in the “From” field. This would require people like me to register their home computers in their business DNS system when sending business mail, but so what?
Case in point, I just got one of those damned fake Microsoft alerts again. This time it went to my “Microsoft Correspondence” folder, because Outlook saw that it was from “updates.microsoft.com”. It OBVIOUSLY wasn't from that domain name, because the e-mail is a poor forgery at best. But if all e-mail servers tested IP resolution, it would be a lot harder to spoof the domain name, cause you'd have to spoof the IP too. It would take more effort to try to break through.
Just my opinion.
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