All you have to do is open up Google’s homepage from any HTML5 compliant browser and type in Let It Snow.

When it is done click Defrost and thaw out!

_TheNoSnowForMeAdmiN_

Well, not sure if my coworkers do this, but I like to use the status update area in Office Communicator to subtly say what I’m thinking about. Sometimes that also requires a little bit of ASCII art.

Do you do the same? Awesome! Here is a list of some simple one line ASCII art you can use to put in your messages:

Ascii Text Animals

Caterpillar ,/\,/\,/\,/\,/\,/\,o
Fish <`)))><
Fish Swimming ¸.·´¯`·.´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸><(((º>
Happy Cat <(^.^)>
Kitty cat =^..^=
Koala @( * O * )@
Loch Ness monster _mmmP
Monkey @(‘_’)@
Mouse <:3 )~~~~
Rat (to the left) <^__)~
Rat (to the right) ~(__^>
Sheep °l°(,,,,);
Spider ///\oo/\\\

Ascii Objects

Crayon ())__CRAYON___)) >
Cup of coffee [_]3
Glasses -@-@-
Needle |==|iiii|>—–
Pie fight —=======[}
Rose 1 @-}--
Rose 2 @}}>-----
Rose 3 @)}---^-----
Rose 4 @->-->---
Rose 5 --------{---(@

Ascii Faces/People

Angel ^i^
Concerned (@_@)
Heart <3
In Love <*_*>
Looking at you ô¿ô
Very Happy ^_^
Very Happy 2 [^_^]
Sleeping (-.-)Zzz…
Sleeping Baby w/Pillow [{-_-}] ZZZzz zz z…
Whoa O_o

Miscellenous Ascii Art

Ascii Waves 1 *~’`^`’~*-,._.,-*~’`^`’~*-,._.,-*~’`^`’~*
Ascii Waves 2 `’~,.,~’`'~,.,~’`'~,.,~’`'~,.,~’
Hearts w/text »-(¯`·.·´¯)->TEXT<-(¯`·.·´¯)-«
Robot d[ o_0 ]b
Text Embellishment 1 (¯`·._.·(¯`·._.·(¯`·._.· Your Text ·._.·´¯)·._.·´¯)·._.·´¯)
Text Embellishment 2 ,.-~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸-(_Your_Text_)-,.-~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸

Not only are these good for IM, but you’ll find that they work pretty good for Twitter and Facebook as well. Hell, you can use these for email signatures if you want. The sky’s the limit really.

Do you like to add a dash of ASCII to your every day? Let us know how you like to insert ASCII into your stuff in the comments.

-=El Di Pablo=-

[Via Squidoo]

Well, I found a place that puts the long-ass email address I had at Newland Communities to shame. Oh, and by the way, you can get an email address with them if you like for free! The site is, and I’m not kidding here, abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.com, and they are giving away free mailboxes so you too can have one of the worlds largest email addresses!

Take a look at their selling points from their home page:

With each account, you not only get an obnoxious email address that is sure to piss you friends off, but also you get 25MB of storage. True, you’re better off with Gmail, but then again, you won’t have an email address that won’t fit into some web forms. Your call I guess.

-=El Di Pablo=-

Here is a little humor for all our Linux friends out there… The text on mouse over was: Ew, gross you moddified link()? How can you enjoy abusing a file system like that! – [via XKCD]

The truth about passwords...

[Via XKCD]

[Via TheDailyWTF]

[via TheDailyWTF]

I know only a select few of you will get it but this XKCD strip is pretty awesome:

Case and point:

[Via XKCD]

Hors D'ouvres will be served near the IE6 dartboard?

IE6 will be barely missed by us here at AskTheAdmin. We’ve had bad times, and we’ve had worse times with our old frienemy Internet Explorer 6. Rest in pieces you old coot.

Commodore 64 (the one you used to play Bruce Lee on) ,8,1

Don’t forget to sign up for email updates by hitting this link or our RSS Feed here.

Seriously don’t mess with my uptime! We haven’t been down in 645 days 23 hours  12 minutes and 13 milliseconds.

Most people don’t realize that a well formed web query is just as good as asking the right person the right question at the right time. Google, for most people, is just that person. Some of the more complicated queries actually do warrant your newb friends to ask you for a good set of query terms, even using the more advanced search modifiers.

But most of the questions I have to field during my day to day are questions that could have been easily answered, had the person asking put some thought or effort into it. Questions such as “what’s the url for ask the admin?”

We all know that’s a stupid question. Ask The Admin prides itself on being very search engine friendly, especially when looking for the site itself!

Enter Let Me Google That For You, or more easily LMGTFY.com. This nifty little service allows you to perform the search for your friend or colleague who just cant form the words together themselves. But instead of giving your dear friend a fish, so to speak, you’re actually giving your friend a fishing pole. You’re basically telling them, “You could have googled this yourself, look how simple it could have been for you. You could have completely avoided bothering me during my busy day.”

So, to answer the question above “What’s the url for Ask The Admin?”

browsing over to http://lmgtfy.com/?q=asktheadmin.com yields a search page resembling googles.

Except now, when you search , it provides you a tinyurl, which you can send back to your inquisitive friend rather than the url of the actual search result.

Click to see sample results here

Nifty right?

-enjoy

Commodore64 (the one you used to play Bruce Lee on,) ,8,1

Don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS Feed here.

I think that also means "Kanji" in Jersey Shore-speak

Very, very funny.

-enjoy

Commodore64 (the one you used to play Bruce Lee on) ,8,1

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I didn’t write this. I got it from a site, who got it from a site that no longer exists. Although the tone is a bit whiny, it is essentially true. It is all about the 10 things your IT guy would like you to know. This will make everyone’s lives easier for real! Take a minute to read through this and see if your IT guy thinks you are an idiot or a normal user :)

1. If you ask me technical questions please don’t argue with me because you don’t like my answer. If you think you know more about the topic, why ask? And if I’m arguing with you…it’s because I am positive that I am correct, otherwise I’d just say “I don’t know” or give you some tips on where to look it up, I don’t have the time to just argue for the sake of it.
2. Starting a conversation by insulting yourself (i.e. “I’m such an idiot”) will not make me laugh, or feel sorry for you;  all it will do is remind me that yes, you are an idiot and that I am going to hate having to talk to you. Trust me;  you don’t want to start a call that way.
3. I am OK with you making mistakes, fixing them is my job. I am not OK with you lying to me about a mistake you made. It makes it much harder to resolve and thus makes my job more difficult. Be honest and we can get the problem resolved and continue on with our business.
4. There is no magic “Fix it” button. Everything takes some amount of work to fix, and not everything is worth fixing or even possible to fix. If I say that you just need to re-do a document that you accidentally deleted 2 months ago, please don’t get mad at me.  I’m not ignoring your problem, and it’s not that I don’t like you, I just can’t always fix everything.
5. Not everything you ask me to do is “urgent”. In fact, by marking things as “urgent” every time, you almost ensure that I treat none of it as a priority.
6. You are not the only one who needs help, and you usually don’t have the most urgent issue. Give me some time to get to your problem, it will get fixed.
7. Emailing me several times about the same issue in the same day is not only unnecessary, it’s highly annoying. Emails will stay until I delete them. I won’t delete them until I’m done with them. I will typically respond as soon as I have a useful update. If it is an urgent issue, let me know (see number 5).
8. Yes, I prefer email over telephone calls. It has nothing to do with being friendly, it’s about efficiency. It is much faster and easier for me to list out a set of questions that I need you to answer than it is for me to call and ask you them one by one. You can find the answers at your leisure and while I’m waiting I can work on other problems.

9. Yes, I seem blunt and rude. It’s not that I mean to, I just don’t have the time to sugar coat things for you. I assume we are both adults and can handle the reality of a problem. If you did something wrong, I will tell you. I don’t care that it was a mistake, because it really makes no difference to me. Don’t take it personal, I just don’t want it to happen again.
10. And finally, yes, I can read your email, I can see what web pages you look at while you are at work, yes, I can access every file on your work computer, and I can tell if you are chatting with people on an instant messenger or chat room (and can also read what you are typing). But no, I don’t do it. It’s unethical, I’m busy, and in all reality you aren’t all that interesting. So unless I am instructed to specifically monitor or investigate your actions, I don’t. There really are much more interesting things on the internet than you.

The point of that article is one that everyone wants to make, whether they are in IT, or are testers, consultants, or engineers. The point is we are all trying to do our jobs the best that we can and it’s easiest to do that if we all work together, stop pointing fingers and give other people the space that we would like to get as well. If we can do that more often than not, things will go well and work out.

_TheWatchingYouAdmiN_

Check out this information pieced together from their site:

The ThinkGeek Annoy-a-tron would be useless against an army of Snowbots, but it’s very effective at disturbing that guy in the sales department or your “friend” down the hall. With its thin design and embedded magnet for easy hiding, the Annoy-a-tron can be placed in a variety of locations. Select one of the three sound choices (2 kHz, 12 kHz, or alternating) and push the switch to the on position. Place it in a proper hiding spot and let the “fun” begin.

The Annoy-a-tron generates a short (but very annoying, hence the name) beep every few minutes. Your unsuspecting target will have a hard time ‘timing’ the location of the sound because the beeps will vary in intervals ranging from 2 to 8 minutes. The 2kHz sound is generically annoying enough, but if you really really want to aggravate somebody, select the 12 kHz sound. Trust us. The higher frequency and slight ‘electronic noise’ built into that soundbyte will make a full-grown Admin wonder where his packets are.

3 simple steps.
• Turn on.*
• Hide it.
• Muahahaha…

Assuming you have done your part in selecting a suitable hiding location for the Annoy-a-tron, it will do its part to drive your co-workers slowly mad with its short and seemingly random beeps. And when someone does locate the Annoy-a-tron, they’re really not going to know what it is – which is almost as much fun as watching them search for it. Muahaha.

The Annoy-a-tron takes one CR2032 battery (included) and measures approximately: 2.5″ x 1.25″ x .3″. It will run for 3 to 4 weeks on a single battery.

Some Recommendations:

• Don’t hide it inside of food (the chemicals in a burrito are known to be quite destructive to electrical components)
• You should probably avoid the area near your local BOFH (we understand that most likely you are the local BOFH, but still please take note)
• Yes, we realize you could buy a dozen and hide them all inside someone’s office (oh, did we say that out loud?)
• Please reserve the use of the Annoy-a-tron for deserving subjects only (we’ll leave it up to you to determine who qualifies)
• * Note: Please remember to remove the small plastic tab underneath battery.

Not convinced of the Annoy-a-tron’s evil powers?

Read this letter we received from a satisfied customer and be enlightened:

And for another way to Annoy the hell out of some one legally check this out…

_TheMuhahahahaAdmiN_

LMFAO!

[Via My Personal XKCD Archive]

_TheAddictedAdmiN_

Well um not exactly. Google Trend’s might have influenced my title :)

That headline should have been that Twitter was hacked and down for a good portion of the evening due to the fact that the Iranian Cyber army seems to have hijacked their domain. If you use the same password from your twitter account on other services now would be a great time to go in there and change it. When browsing to Twitter yesterday you would have seen this text:

Iranian Cyber Army

THIS SITE HAS BEEN HACKED BY IRANIAN CYBER ARMY

iRANiAN.CYBER.ARMY@GMAIL.COM

But they have regained control of their domain and posted this update on their status blog (http://status.twitter.com/) last night:

Update (11:28p): Twitter’s DNS records were temporarily compromised but have now been fixed. We are looking into the underlying cause and will update with more information soon.

After a few big name sites have had this happen to them you think people would start locking their domain’s settings! Could this have been avoided? Do you have more information? Are you part of this terrorist group? We want to hear from you in the comments!

_TheHackingAdmiN_

When I was in Junior High, my friends and I would all share our PC games (Castle Wolfenstein 3D FTW!)

Here is a poster from the 1980’s. check it out and try not to laugh too hard:

Via [Via Bauer-Power via This Blog Rules]

For those of you not old enough to remember GeoCities – this is where i first published a web page and messed with HTML tags. Oh wow do I remember my first javascript that made a word follow the cursor – remember that?? Good Times, Good Times!

Oh an RIP GeoCities!

_TheOldAdmiN_

Seriously funny comic, courtesy http://www.jeffpalm.com

-enjoy
C64 ,8,1

Send an IT eCard

Remind Them Who Makes IT Happen!

You’re the oftentimes unsung hero that makes IT happen…which is why Spiceworks & our sponsors salute you! And, why we’ve created some funny e-Cards that’ll help you get the appreciation you deserve (without unplugging your server!).

Here’s the simple trick:

1) Open the calculator (or any microsoft program)

2) Push F1 or the “help topics” button

3) Select the icon on the top, left corner.  Its the one that has a magnifying glass on it.

4) Select the “Jump to URL” link

5) Enter the link you want in the field, eg “http://www.cnn.com”

Any other cool ways to surf that you can think of?

Kerry enjoys writing about a variety of topics.  Her favorite website is CallCatalog.com which is a reverse phone number directory website that allows you to lookup and report unwanted phone calls.  You can also read her blog which discusses phone number privacy issues.

[via XKCD]

Thanks Commodore for the early morning chuckle!

_TheNgrmadAdmiN_

And no TheAdmiN was not featured… Thanks for looking out Kevin!

Enjoy!

_TheGeekedOutAdmiN_

Around my network we don’t have ANY user accounts called Administrator or Admin – Period.

Why you might ask?

Well for starters it’s a HUGE security risk!  Let’s look at it like this. If a hacker wants to try and gain access to your machine the first thing they will do after a port scan is try and find your administrator password.

Most of the time automated scans search for weak passwords on commonly named administrator accounts including: Root, Administrator, Admin and foreign variations on them. If the potential attacker does not know what the account is called then they will have a MUCH harder time gaining admin access.

I learned way back when in school to not only rename my real administrator account but to create another account called Administrator with limited access.

This creates Honeypot of sorts. For a great example of Honeypot’s and snooping on the snoops check out this article on using Spector.

Why is it called a honey pot? Good question read this answer below:

Winnie the Pooh is a big fan of honey. In fact, he loves it so much that he will often get his paws and even his face stuck in the honey pot! In the computer world, a Honey Pot is a computer (or network of computers) designed to detect and monitor hackers. The idea is that the hacker will be lured in and trapped by the honey pot.

Now I don’t go crazy and give this sudo admin account  an easy password either, after all the unauthorized user gains a small bit of access to your network that they did not have before. This is not what want. We want them to spend their time and resources looking for information that really doesn’t help them. And in the process your intrusion prevention services should catch them in the act.

So really password protect your fake administrator account. Let them spin their gears getting something that is no where near as critical as if they got your real account – you know the one you just renamed honeyp0t :)

This works on any operating system where you can rename your administrator account. Do you have other tips or tricks for securing your servers? Let us know in the comments! Put your fellow admin’s on!

_TheHoneyLovingAdmiN_

Joe is an Admin after my own heart! I read this cover letter for his resume and knew AtA readers would enjoy this as well. I found it from a link off of Phil’s MindCircus blog. Check it out:

Here is the home for my resume. I am not actively looking for work but I will always look at opportunities because I wouldn’t be where I am now if I didn’t keep my eyes and mind open to alternate possibilities. At the moment I am into working for the money, once I become independently wealthy I will work for fun and take up sympathy/charity cases for the challenge. As of right now my non-for profit and charity work is limited to my free tools and my responses in the community to various newsgroup and listserv questions.

Note that overall the computer industry in my opinion is in sad shape. You have a bunch of people working with computers who shouldn’t be and a bunch of companies trying to pay nothing for people with good knowledge. To the people lying on their resumes to get the "Good" jobs I say – "Stop it!". You are hurting yourself and the overall state of the industry, you will get yourself into something you can’t handle and look like an idiot. This also forces the companies to downgrade resumes when they see them and not believe what is written plus offer people who actually may be good crap salaries.

What is a crap salary you ask? A crap salary is a company posting for some expert with 5-10 years of experience in some field and several other fields and then saying the salary will be $20-30 an hour. If you have someone you are looking at that is a good thinker you better be starting at $50+ an hour with a ton of benefits and guarantees or looking at $100+ for straight hourly work. To put it another way, if someone offered me $30 an hour I would ask them why I shouldn’t just be a manager at a Best Buy or something like that. I made that much 10 years ago selling TV’s at Montgomery Wards and that was far less stress and pain than a full time tech job trying to make systems safe for the masses. And if you as a company offered someone that and they took it, you have to wonder… Are they that bad? Are they that desperate? Are they just biding their time until they go do something else and leave you cold.

Companies should start looking at tech talent like the sports teams look at athletic talent. Are you having tech issues in your company? Do you have tech superstars or do you have third stringers working to get into "safe" position or management and hide until retirement? I haven’t met many really good tech people who "wanted" to go to management or want to find a safe position, they want to accomplish things. There are exceptions to the management item… People who did tech because it was a way to get in the door to get to a management position and are bright enough to do pretty much anything. If you want a tech superstar, you will find that that is a person who has no desire to be in management and actually doesn’t need much management and doesn’t want to hang with management. Do yourself and your superstars a favor by not forcing them into management – read up on Peter’s Principal for more info.

At this point in time, most companies with computers actually need computer tech specialists. You are the least dependent on computers right now as you EVER will be. They will just get more and more important and if you intend to simply coast on whatever talent you get for some poor pay, you deserve everything that happens. I have no problem hearing that tech specialists make more than their managers. IMO, in many cases they should make considerably more. It is the tech specialists who keep your company’s tech running efficiently.

Clipped from JoeWare.net’s Resume Introduction found HERE.

I am still doing my 3 articles a week for MakeUseOf.com and I have been averaging 1 eBook a month for them as well. I just posted my second post to GeeksAreSexy.net. If you want to check out my posts click the following links:

• http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/author/karl-l-gechlik/
• http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2009/03/12/how-to-reset-your-lost-2003-active-directory-admin-password/
• http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2009/03/04/how-to-recovering-your-windows-password/

And I was quoted in the New York Times recently but I never linked you to the online article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/technology/personaltech/09basics.html?pagewanted=print

And as promised here is today’s great time waster. A goodie brought to my attention by GAS writer Brian Boyko:

Find out if you are a Network Rockstar here http://www.networkrockstarchallenge.com/ or by clicking the image above. I have gotten 8/10 anyone do better? Is it just me or do the questions get harder each time I play?

Got some tips or hacks to share with our readers – then send us an email to tips@askTheAdmin.com

Interested in writing for us? Email WriteForAtA@AskTheAdmin.com today and let me know what you could add to our already awesome team!

_TheAlmostARockstarAdmiN_

Remember, all those late nights might help you achieve those 6 9′s of up time but, they are making your spouse secretly hate you (Maybe not so secretly in some cases like the one below)…

Look at the above carefully and maybe next time you will settle for 5 9′s of up time… (Probably not!) Do you think she threw the rest of the letters out?? :)

_TheGoingToBeHomeLateAdmiN_