Fun

Free Art From Costco

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My three year old son loves to take the receipt from Costco to the “receipt checker” as you leave the store.  Usually the nice person there will check the receipt and draw a little smiley face on the back of the receipt.  Recently my son has been asking for particular art requests and the Costco employee usually tries to comply.  Some of the results have been very humorous and I thought should be shared at a domain name like CostcoArt.com (domain doesn’t exist….yet), but someone else has already been collecting Costco receipt art on their blog here.  I’ll be posting our pictures there, but will also include ours on this blog as well.

2010-07-01 - Costco Art - Mouse - Everett, MA $9.92
2010-07-01 - Mouse - Everett, MA $9.92

Personally I think this one looks more like a bug than a mouse, but he tried to make big Mickey Mouse style round ears.

 

2010-07-27 - Costco Art - Rhinoceros - Everett, MA $337.32
2010-07-27 - Rhinoceros - Everett, MA $337.32

This rhino is only missing a couple legs, but it has a nice friendly look about it.

UPDATE: 4/27/2011

We’ve had a couple new additions to add as well.  We normally get these pretty generic smiley faces from the checkers who feel they can’t draw.  Sometimes they are pretty interesting.

2011-03-31 - Smiley Face - Everett, MA $268.96
2011-03-31 – Smiley Face – Everett, MA $268.96

And the mouse is an always popular option, but in this case it is sort of a cross between a mouse and a lion:

2011-04-21 - Mouse - Everett, MA $192.62
2011-04-21 - Mouse - Everett, MA $192.62
Fun

Expand Your Vocabulary: Mantrip

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While on the phone today with a client (they are involved with coal mining in Kentucky) she mentioned they almost got run over by a mantrip today.  Since a mantrip sounded like something that it isn’t, I asked for more information and they were nice enough to take a couple of photos.

From Wikipedia:

A mantrip is a shuttle for transporting miners down into an underground mine at the start of their shift, and out again at the end. Mantrips usually take the form of a train, running on rails and operating like a cable car, but mantrips may also be self-powered, for example by a diesel engine. Other types of mantrips do not require a track and take the form of a pickup truck running on rubber tires.

Because many mines have low ceilings, mantrips tend to have a reduced height.

So, basically it is like a low riding golf cart where you can really lean back to avoid hitting your head on the ceiling of the mine.

Here’s the stealthy electric version that almost ran them over:

Electric Mantrip
Look at the lean back on that seat!

And the larger diesel powered mantrip that is used at the beginning and end of the shifts:

Diesel Mantrip
Larger mantrip used in the mines

So while you are having your next “man trip” to the local hardware store, you can now add the word mantrip to your vocabulary and impress your friends.

p is a shuttle for transporting miners down into an underground mine at the start of their shift, and out again at the end. Mantrips usually take the form of a train, running on rails and operating like a cable car, but mantrips may also be self-powered, for example by a diesel engine. Other types of mantrips do not require a track and take the form of a pickup truck running on rubber tires.

Because many mines have low ceilings, mantrips tend to have a reduced height.

Work

Disable Client Popup Message for SCCM Task Sequences

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By default an advertised Task Sequence in SCCM (Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager) will popup a message on the client workstation indicating that there is a new application that is available to be run. This is sometimes not desirable. By default it is possible to turn off notification for a regular Software Distribution Program in SCCM via the GUI by checking the box on the Program for “Suppress Program Notifications”. This GUI option is not available from a Task Sequence, but can manually be added via VBScript.

The value that we are adding to the ProgramFlags setting is 0x00000400 (which in decimal is 1024). You can find more details about the ProgramFlags from here.

Here’s the basic process:

1. Copy the following script to your SCCM server and save as “DisableTaskSequencePopupMessage.vbs”

‘Disable the popup message on a client workstation for a Task Sequence
‘Run this VBScript on your SCCM server
strSMSServer = “.”
‘Set COUNTDOWN value to 0x00000400 in HEX
COUNTDOWN = &H00000400

Set objLocator = CreateObject(“WbemScripting.SWbemLocator”)
Set objSCCM = objLocator.ConnectServer(strSMSServer, “root\sms”)
Set Providers = objSCCM.ExecQuery(“SELECT * From SMS_ProviderLocation WHERE ProviderForLocalSite = true”)
For Each Provider in Providers
If Provider.ProviderForLocalSite = True Then
Set objSCCM = objLocator.ConnectServer(Provider.Machine, “root\sms\site_” & Provider.SiteCode)
End If
Next
Set TaskSequencePackage = objSCCM.ExecQuery(“SELECT * FROM SMS_TaskSequencePackage”,,48)
For Each PackageID in TaskSequencePackage
PackageIDS = PackageIDS & VbCrLF & PackageID.PackageID & ” – ” & PackageID.Name
Next
Do
strTSID = InputBox(“Please enter the packageID that corresponds to your Task Sequence:” & vbCrLF & PackageIDS)
If strTSID = “” Then WScript.Quit ‘Detect Cancel
If strTSID <> “” Then Exit Do ‘Detect value strTSID.
‘MsgBox “You must enter a numeric value.”, 48, “Invalid Entry”
Loop
Set objProgram = objSCCM.Get(“SMS_TaskSequencePackage.PackageID='” & strTSID & “‘”)

OldProgramFlags = objProgram.ProgramFlags
ProgramFlags = objProgram.ProgramFlags
ProgramFlags = ProgramFlags OR COUNTDOWN
MsgBox “Flag for ” & strTSID & ” currently set to ” & OldProgramFlags & ” (HEX: 0x” & HEX(OldProgramFlags) & “)” & vbCrLF & vbCrLF & “Adding 0x00000400 (COUNTDOWN. The countdown dialog is not displayed)” & VBCrLF & vbCrLF & “Set flag to: ” & ProgramFlags & ” (HEX: 0x” & HEX(ProgramFlags) & “)”,,”SUCCESS!”
‘ see ConfigMgr SDK for details (“SMS_Program Server WMI Class”)
objProgram.ProgramFlags = ProgramFlags
objProgram.Put_

2. Run the VBscript. You’ll be prompted with a list of the Task Sequences. Type in the name of the task sequence you want to change (e.g. NYC000279) and hit OK.

3. You should see a response like the following:

—————————
SUCCESS!
—————————
Flag for NYC00279 currently set to 152084496 (HEX: 0x910A010)

Adding 0x00000400 (COUNTDOWN. The countdown dialog is not displayed)

Set flag to: 152085520 (HEX: 0x910A410)
—————————
OK
—————————

4. Then advertise the Task Sequence and the Task Sequence will not popup any messages on the client workstation.

5. NOTE: This version is improved in that it prompts you for the task sequence ID and also now “OR’s” the value together rather than just blindly adding 1024 to the value every time the script runs, so you can safely run this script multiple times without any issues on the same Task Sequence.

References:

Workaround to disable notification for task sequence?
Notifications for virtual packages

Work

Allow WSJ.COM to bypass email spoofing rules

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By default my firm blocks email spoofing using Mimecast. You can’t send a message from the Internet and claim that it is from our internal domain names. Occasionally we’ve had to make exceptions to the rules for particular public web sites that use email spoofing to send out email messages. Today’s case was The Wall Street Journal. If a user registers with an internal domain name email address and then tries to send an article to themselves, WSJ nicely uses the email address: no-reply@freerangeinc.com but when sending to anyone else it uses the registered users email address. When they send to another person at the firm, the email is bounced.

After some back and forth with WSJ support, they were able to provide me the external IP addresses that they use to send email:

208.144.115.183/32
205.203.128.129/32
205.203.128.130/32
205.203.128.166/32

Once we put those IP addresses in our Mimecast configuration the messages were no longer bouncing. Ideally web sites should NEVER spoof someone’s email address, but at least the IP addresses to allow it to work are available.