My basic Debian install

The first in what will hopefully be a series of articles disusing software choices, configurations and setup instructions to create a basic small business server in Linux. The plan, in the end is to have a server that can perform all the basic functionality that any small business might need. Things like email, file shares, disaster recovery, printer sharing and even a proxy server with logging. The most challenging part of the build will be making it transparent to the end-user that this isn’t a Windows domain.

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HOWTO: Sync Blackberry with Vista Contact Images

I have loyally touted around my Blackberry Curve (8310) now for almost exactly a year now (358 days to be exact). But recently, because of some problems I was having, and an upcoming need for my current contact list to be on my computer I decided I would install the Desktop Manager software and get my Blackberry contacts synced up with my Vista contacts. Support for syncing with Vista contacts was added to the Desktop Manager software in version 4.3, and the current version at the time of this writing is 4.7, so this isn’t a new feature.
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Remove a stuck print job in Windows

I have often recived a call, or gone out to a site where there is a print job stuck in the print que on the server that is holing up everything. You can try to cancel the job at the printer, or at the server. You’ve tried to restart the server and restart the printer but the print job just sits there staring at you the whole time. While not quite as bad as upsetting as the famed “PC LOAD LETTER” error it can still make you want to chuck your printer and/or computer off the roof.

So how do you purge the vexing print que? Its actually easier than you might think. It only takes three lines typed in to your command prompt (you can do it through the Windows GUI too, but its easier this way).

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More than meets the eye

I received a “Bug report” earlier today via my nifty submission page, that wasn’t really a bug report, but still warrants some attention.

Basically the question that Mike posed was “How did you get a Wufoo form to work in wordpress?”. The short answer is I didn’t. But the short answer isn’t very helpful. The long answer is that I used an iframe html element to embed the form into a wordpress page, and formatted the Wufoo form (using Wufoo’s built in tools) so that it blended well with the wordpress theme.

You can go take a look at the WuFoo form by itself by clicking the link below.

http://indemnity83.wufoo.com/forms/bug-reports-feature-requests/

Basically, any element of WuFoo that I didn’t want to see on my page, I made white. If you highlight the text starting from the first sentence up, you’ll see that your cursor highlights a few elements (including some text) that I just turned white to hide from normal view.

The trick works well to create a seemingly seamless integration, while leaving all the heavy lifting (IE, the extreemly well designed form) to WuFoo.

So what does the Wordpress page look like? Ask and ‘ye shall receive:

<iframe height="1436" allowTransparency="true" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="width:100%;border:none" src="http://indemnity83.wufoo.com/embed/bug-reports-feature-requests/" title="HTML Form"><a href="http://indemnity83.wufoo.com/forms/bug-reports-feature-requests/" title="HTML form">Your browser doesn’t seem to support iframes, please click here to be taken to the form.</a></iframe>

Mike, I hope that answers your question. Below is a zip with the custom theme I created for my site (as a .css Style Sheet). You should be able to use this file in your own WuFoo theme manager to quickly get an embeddable form (although, admittedly, I haven’t tested it).

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Securing the WCG200 Router

When you are being chased by a lion, you do not have to out run the lion, you need only to out run the antelope in front of you.

I’m sure you’ve heard a joke similar to this at some point in your life, and I think its a good synonym to security (in all facets, not just computers). Your goal, when trying to secure something, is to make so the would-be thief, or hacker decide you are not the easiest target, and move on to an easier one.

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