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Matthew

Personal

Day 979 on the Island – Damn thats a long time.

Well, summer is coming to a close, Rainy season is hitting us quite hard, and soon the rain will turn to snow.  Not looking forward to Winter, it will be my 4th Winter here on the Island… 11-12, 12-13, 13-14 and now 14-15… WHen I look back over the last 979 days here, it’s a mess of everything mixed together.  I have had 2 major jobs, first working for the UPS Store #350 in Dorval, which is the reason I came to Island in the first place.  Before the Island I lived in Cornwall and the contract I was on at StartTek was not being renewed, which means myself, along with 400 other Call Service Reps (CSR) would be out of a job.  …

Personal Rants Technology Windows

Lack of Posts, Bell Canada, Windows 8 and Exchange 2013.

Sorry for the lack of posts, I try and get one in at least once a week, but as you can tell I haven’t posted in over a month.  I have been extremely busy with Work and School that this site has escaped me.  So I decided to make a rant post.  There will be 3 main topics, Bell Canada, Windows 8(.1) and Exchange Server 2013.  There may be more, depending on how I feel after the rant.

Round 1: Bell Canada

So anyone who has me as a friend on Facebook knows the story about the issues I have been having with Bell.  …

Personal

If I had a million dollars… or 50…

I am sure we all dream of it, winning the Lotto.  I mean with the LottoMax sitting at $50 million pretty consistently these days, why wouldn’t you dream.  Will it ever happen? Probably not.  I tend to live by the following philosophy: You have 1 in a 1,000,000 chance of winning the lottery, but you have close to 100% chance of losing your $5.  The odds are forever NOT in your favour.

But what if it did happen?  What if money was no longer an issue.  Would your life change?  Would you live in a small nondescript house or would you live in a huge mansion?  …

Technology Windows

Refresh failed with the following error: The RPC server is unavailable.

TL/DNR:

Verify your DNS info is correct for each system

Full Story

During my studies at Dawson College I ran into his issue a lot while trying to set up my virtual lab environment.  Using both VirtualBox and VMWare.  Here is a basic layout of my virtual lab environment:

Domain: SME.zlocal

System Name IP Address Function OS
OLYMPUS 192.168.12.250 DC. AD, DNS Server 2012 Datacenter
ARES 192.168.12.251 TBD Server 2012 Datacenter
HERMES 192.168.12.5, 196.168.1.119 Gateway, IIS Server 2012 Datacenter
ZEUS 192.168.12.10 Remote Service Control Windows 8.1 Enterprise

I chose the Greek Gods as they are of interest to me.  OLYMPUS, Home of the Gods,  being the Domain Controller, Active Directory and DNS, where everything is stored.  …

Windows

Adding a Windows 8.1 bootable VHD to windows 7

Sounds simple right?  Well it is, if you know what you are doing.  However for those that don’t, try finding a tutorial online.  Over the last 3 days I have been trying to find a tutorial that doesn’t ahve you create and install windows intot he VHD while on the target system. What I ned to be able to do is to add a pre-made VHD into windows.

The reson for this is becasue I am not doing it to just one system, I am creating a VHD that I will deplay to several systems allowing them to multi-boot.  In order to do this I create the VHD with a virtualization software like VMWare, Hyper-V, or VirtualBox.…

Personal

A Video Poem on our current state as a society and how social media and technology have affected us.

Ok, long title, but how else can I describe this masterpiece of a video.  My good Friend Isabella, whom I have known since High School posted an article on this video on Facebook. I have to admit, half way into it I started to cry. It’s such a powerful message, of how most of us now spend our time with our faces staring into a our smart phones, our computers, and our tablets.  That we barely look up to greet those around us.  Instead of having social gatherings, we text message or chat on our phones.

After watching the video we started to discuss it in the comments.  …

Personal

College, 10 years later

dawsonWell its now official, I am back in college for a second time, 10 years after I graduated from Algonquin College’s Computer Systems Technician course, I am back at it.  However this time I am attending Dawson College in Montreal.  The funny part is, the course I am now taking (Preparation for Microsoft Certification) deals with pretty much everything I learned in the Technician’s course, minus of course the hardware aspect of it.  But the labs I did, where we installed XP, Windows NT4/Server 2000, and did network security, are the same, just updated of course, now its Windows 7, windows 8 and Server 2012.…

Easily transfer emails from one webmail account to another.

Over the last few days I have been helping a patron of the library where I work transfer his email from his current service provider to a newly created Outlook account. As this is new to me I decided to create a tutorial video in hope it will help others back up their old emails before canceling an account.…

Personal Rants

GrooveShark, why would I pay to use your Android app when I can use your mobile site for free?

I couldn’t believe it.  Yesterday I was setting up my phone to play a few streams to help me sleep.  I use the GrooveShark’s mobile site as there is so much archived on this site its mind-boggling. Now in the mists of setting it up I went into the menu and saw that GrooveShark now has an android app, so I downloaded it thinking it would be easier to browse and look up songs.  However once downloaded, it forced me to create an account (You can use the mobile site without having to sign in) and when I went to stream my usual meditation lists, it tells me it’s for subscribers only at $9 a month.…

Personal

Day 828 on the Island

It has been 11 days since my last report. Tension on the island was rising as the locals prepared for a vote that could have changed the face of the country. Thankfully, in a massive turn of events, the previous Premier was ousted, replaced with a lesser foe. Out with the Blue coats, in with the Red.

Has this changed anything? Well, for one, the outsiders like myself can take a deep sigh of relief, although how ever short it may be. We ousted one ideology for another. Is it any better for us? All I know is we solved one problem, a very large problem, but how many more problematic door ways did we open in the process?…