Today i had some issues with a locked account.

I downloaded the account lockout tools from Microsoft Download Center. 

It includes several tools… 

Additional Account Information

There is a very interesting tool called “additional account info”. It gives more information about a user’s password.

Here you have a screenshot.

To see the “Additional Account Info” tab, register the AcctInfo.DLL. on the pc where you are using the MMC “Active Directory Users and Computers” snap-in.  (you might need to install the Administrative tools on your client pc if you don’t want to install the plug-in on your server)

Register the DLL

Use the following command :

regsvr32 %systemroot%\system32\acctinfo.dll

(change the path appropriately)

eventcombMT.exe

This is a pretty cool application.   It goes searching through all event logs of the Domain Servers.

Use the Menu Searches – Built-in Searches.  It saves you lot’s of time.  You will see that the servers, event id’s and types are automatically set.  The tool is not blasting fast, but it gathers all information from the selected servers and dumps it into text files.

Make sure you have the right permissions to do search the event logs on those servers.

LockoutStatus.exe

To see the current “bad password count” status on all the domain controllers, launch the tool, choose File – Select Target.  Enter the right username, and you will see on which domain controller the bad password attempts have occurred.

I had this in a ListView with an EntityDatasource.  But only the ListView had to do something with it…

Cause & solution

You did a copy paste from the EditItemTemplate to the InsertItemTemplate. 

The edit command is not allowed use the Insert command.

Change this:

<asp:Button ID="UpdateButton" runat="server" CommandName="Update"  Text="Update" />

To:

<asp:Button ID="InsertButton" runat="server" CommandName="Insert" Text="Insert" />

Very interesting article about the things which are about to change on the internet. 

In short:

• DNSSEC
• IPv6
• International e-mail addresses
• DKIM
• Reputation services

I think IPv6 and DNSSEC are the toughest, but highly necessary.

Read the article here:

http://www.techcentral.co.za/a-disturbance-in-the-force/16564/

So back to the example. 

One of the first times you start, you get this screen:

The intentions are not hidden…  The screen titles: “Promote Trillian!” Your users have just to push the buttons where they want to let the world know they are using Trillian.  If they like your program, they have no reason no too…

Apparently, this year I am celebrating my 10th anniversary on sourceforge.net.  You can see this on my sourceforge profile page.

Not to be proud of really.  I did not created lots of open source code. 

Web front end for vacation

The first project I started 5 years ago was the Web Frontend for Vacation Program.  This is a very simple web administration interface for those using the “vacation” program to set out of office. 

This project started several years ago and has been downloaded 500+ times. That would be 100 download a year or 10 per month since the release of the “final” code. 

I always asked myself: “Does anyone care?”  In 10 years, no one applauded, congratulated or send me a thank you.  That probably would tell much more about the code quality than the friendliness of people.  But yet.

Ymlp.Net

This other project I started earlier this year: YMLP.net (a .Net wrapper for the YMLP API).  YMLP is an abbreviation for YourMailingListProvider.  The name is self declaring, it’s a (cheap)mailing list provider, with an API.  The sample code is only available in PHP and I ported it to .Net (C#).

The project has been downloaded 57 times since January this year.  That would be about almost 10 per month.  Not bad in my opinion.  But even here, no one applauded, congratulated or send a small thank you.  And I am pretty sure the code works.  I use it regularly.

But for the few bugs we had in the code, not a single person reported something on the discussion board, issue tracker or send me an e-mail. No one send his improvements or patches to codeplex, to the forum or to me. 

This project is meant for developers.  It’s an API wrapper.  End users don’t care and won’t use it directly.  So you KNOW that there must have been made changes to the code.  That is what developers do. Furthermore, I know pretty sure their are improvements, the API changed recently and I haven’t had time to implement all new methods last few weeks. 

According to Ohloh this project would cost $ 47 157 to build it up from scratch.  (Which is overrated due to the used calculation method). But still, their are lots of hours put into this project.

Someone has put time (and money) in the project.  Someone created value.  But do you think someone cares? 

No one cares. 

Since when did open source means: “profit from free code and don’t show any gratitude back to the community”.

WOOOW… Myspace finally understands that we do NOT speak French as mother tongue.

Until now i always got myspace in French, which is very frustrating.  I couldn’t change it to English.  I do understand French, but my English reading is more fluent.

Thank you!

Side note about languages for foreign companies thinking about entering Belgian market.  Belgium is small, nevertheless it has 3 (!) official languages: Dutch (59%), French (40%) and German (1%) (numbers from wikipedia ).  Most of the Dutch speaking part are more fluent with English than French.  So please consider to supply your site in English if you can’t support Dutch. 

Ik weet niet wat er aan de hand is, maar ik wilde mijn abonnement op Trends aanpassen. 

Surf ik naar abonnementen.be. Krijg ik daar eerst een compleet franse pagina.  Om vervolgens na één klik toch de nederlandse pagina’s te zien te krijgen.

Helaas krijg ik bij mijn abonnement beheren de gegevens van totaal iemand anders te zien.  ZELFS als ik op uitloggen klik en terug op mijn abonnementen beheren. 

A few weeks ago someone told me that Google is not capable to export lots of data to CSV.  Although you have a export to CSV option, it is limited to the “show 500 lines”.  To export you have of course the Data export API, but if you are not ready to use the API, you might be interested to use the following tip.

Today, I read a useful tip how to export more rows to CSV from SeoMoz

• Add "&limit=#" in the URL
• Then Select Export to CSV

We are evaluating Fogbugz, project tracking software. Because I consider ourself as a startup and we are only with 2 persons, we got it for free from FogBugz.

Our first 4 days are already very convincing.  We both started with changing our filters to our own needs. Set up an support@… e-mail account which is automatically checked by FogBugz.  We haven’t installed any special plug-ins until now. 

The extensive FogBugz API makes you think the sky is the limit.  If you can not find the features you need in some existing plug-in, you can write it yourself.  Really.  This is a very well documented API.  Congratulations at the FogCreek team.

The Fogbugz Outlook plugin from “CNOC Informatiesystemen” is working very well, in our Outlook 2010, which i have installed on my pc.

More on fogbugz later…

Ok.  I admit.  I used a borrowed Microsoft Office 2010 key to install the software.  (But, I never clicked the activate button.  Knowing that the software won’t work anymore after 30 days of trial.)
Today, I looked up my MAPS product key and I wanted to change the product key.

I have no option, i say NO option, in outlook/word where i see “Change product key”.  Trust me, I can search.  I wear glasses which cost almost the price of an MS OFfice 2010 suite.

Or what to do what if you activated “by accident” with the wrong serial number.  (Read: I installed unofficially but now i have bought Office 2010 now)

Solution

Fortunately, there is an easy way to change the product key.  One you might not think of instantly.

Reinstall the software… Or just take the “Change product key” option on this screen:

• Go to Control Panel\Programs\Programs and Features
• Select Microsoft Office (…) 2010 and click Change on the top of the screen

You will get the following screen.  You can guess it, choose “Enter a Product Key” an hit Continue.

The rest of the story is easy…