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Anyway, the Claritin I'm on can act as a stimulant. The allergies gave me a ripping headache, so I downed a couple of Excedrin, which has caffeine, and along with the usual regimen of Pepsi, I was way over-stimulated. According to my uncle the optometrist, this causes dilation of the pupils, which in turn leads to blurry vision, extreme light sensitivity and headaches. I responded to the headaches with more drugs. This vicious circle slowed me down to a crawl and I accomplished virtually nothing this weekend. After staying off the medication for a while, getting away from the computers to visit some family and sleeping off the effects, I feel much better, but I'm still behind. I feel like Chris now with so much on my plate and only 24 short hours in a day!

Set your Tivo, VCR, video capture, camcorder, or whatever this coming Monday. That's when Chris takes the mic on the set of Call For Help. He'll be live in your living room each and each weekday from 2-3pm Pacific. I'll have to make sure Outlook reminds me every day until I get used to it, or I suppose I could write it on my monitor with a dry-erase marker so I can't possibly miss it.

Randy Nieland      

GnomeNETWORK

Preventing Automatic DNS Registration

Windows 2000 domain controllers insist on registering themselves with a DNS server and will drop errors in the event logs if they can't locate one to make their voices heard. For some, this is totally unnecessary, and only serves to fill up the logs, so this feature can safely be disabled. The following registry entry is the key to doing so:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ System \ CurrentControlSet \ Services \ Netlogon \ Parameters
Value Name: UseDynamicDns
Data Type: REG_DWORD
Data: 0 equates to disabled

If you are dependent on DNS, but simply don't want to have the DC automatically register itself, then you'll be required to update the DNS records by hand in order to keep Active Directory happy. For the record, the file you'll need to update is located at C:\WINNT \ System32 \Config \ netlogon.dns

Be sure you know what you're doing before modifying any of this, as this can have dangerous side effects in production environments. I choose to use this mainly in single server environments that are connected to the Internet and have workstations that aren't dependent on Windows 2000's DNS services. Some ISPs get a little testy about DNS registration requests and such coming across the line. This is one of those cases where Windows 2000 provides too many features where they really aren't necessary. Small shops may not need DNS services, or even Active Directory, but Exchange does require a domain controller, so you're left with no choice but to deal with AD and DNS.

GnomeJOB

Technical SupportEngineer
East Coast/Telecommute
$120,000/year

Here's a customer looking for someone to be the field expert on their network equipment products! You will interact with customers, help in pre-sale and post-sale activities, analyze customers' requirements and determine how they can be addressed and provide feedback from the field on products. This position works closely with Sales, Customer Support, and Product Marketing and Engineering. Experience with LANs, TCP/IP and Voice over IP is a must. Best of all, it's a telecommuting position! That's right... work from home! Come on, you know you've always wanted to do that, so visit the search page and look around. You never know what you'll find!

GnomeSYSTEM

SAY GOODBYE TO ANNOYING CO-WORKERS: If you're tired of carrying everyone else's load, find a new job with higher pay. Use the Lockergnome job search page to find a career away from that guy who starts every sentence with, "Dude, I got so wasted last night..." Unless, of course, the annoying guy happens to be you; in which case, you better start looking before you wear out your welcome. Find a new job today!

http://www.iomega.com/software/floppycopypc.html

Iomega's latest utility allows you to combine the contents of your drawer full of floppies onto Zip disks. The contents of each diskette are copied to an individual folder on the Zip disk in order to keep order and avoid disorder. I've got a huge stack of floppy diskettes that I need to keep around just in case, and I've just never gotten around to moving the data elsewhere because of the manual work involved. This at least helps make the process a bit less painful.

GnomeASSISTANT

Apycom Java Menus

http://www.apycom.com/apmenu/

I've been wrestling over what to do about a site navigation structure for my personal website, and I just haven't found anything I really liked. Now I have. Apycom's Java applets are exquisitely designed and work extremely well. Choose from four distinct types of menu designs, all of which are full customizable and offer many individual styles. Some have graphical effects, others have sound and a few offer both. I can't spill the Java beans on my personal URL just yet, as the server may not stand up to all of the traffic... soon though... and even then you may fall over on itself. We'll see, I guess.

GnomeSTUFF

New Virus Warning

http://www.breakthechain.org

Well, sort of. I appreciated the humor in this one, playing off of the virus warnings that everyone and their brother's goldfish insists on forwarding to their entire contact list. I'm still not sure of how I got on the "friends" contact list of some people I've never heard of. Why do I care if their kid is graduating the 6th grade or that they're taking a vacation to Spain? Anyway, the link above takes you to a site dedicated to breaking the annoying cycle of email chain letter forwarding to which we all fall victim.

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!
IF YOU RECEIVE A GIFT IN THE SHAPE OF A LARGE WOODEN HORSE DO NOT DOWNLOAD IT!!!! IT IS EXTREMELY DESTRUCTIVE AND WILL OVERWRITE YOUR ENTIRE CITY!

The "gift" is disguised as a large wooden horse about two stories tall. It tends to show up outside the city gates and appears to be abandoned. DO NOT let it through the gates! It contains hardware that is incompatible with Trojan programming, including a crowd of heavily armed Greek warriors that will destroy your army, sack your town, and kill your women and children. If you have already received such a gift, DO NOT OPEN IT! Take it back out of the city unopened and set fire to it by the beach.

FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!

Poseidon

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

FROM: hector@studmuffin.com
TO: laocoon@doomgloom.edu

Laocoon,

I hate to break to you, but this is one of the oldest hoaxes there is. I've seen variants on this warning come through on other listservs, one involving some kind of fruit that was supposed to kill the people who ate it and one having to do with something called the "Midas Touch." Here are a few tipoffs that this is a hoax:

1) This "Forward this message to everyone you know" crap. If it were really meant as a warning about the Greek army, why tell anyone to post it to the Phoenicians, Sumerians, and Cretans?

2) Use of exclamation points. Always a giveaway.

3) It's signed "from Poseidon." Granted he's had his problems with Odysseus but he's one of their guys, isn't he? Besides, the lack of a real header with a detailed address makes me suspicious.

4) Technically speaking, there is no way for a horse to overwrite your entire city. A horse is just an animal, after all.

Next time you get a message like this, just delete it. I appreciate your concern, but once you've been around the block a couple times you'll realize how annoying this kind of stuff is.

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