John Croson's Blog Home

Last week Friday, a tape got stuck in our Dell PowerVault 132T Library. Luckily, I was able to remove the tape and resume order to our backups ...or so I thought. After checking in Saturday it was clear that we were going to be without backups, something that makes my skin crawl. Image by artescienza via Flickr So promptly after our return to work after a nice long Labor Day weekend, I rushed out and to purchase an external drive to backup data to. My choice for such emergency trips is usually Milwaukee PC , since they are likely to have what I need in a pinch even if it is a few more dollars. Image via Wikipedia They indicated there indeed was a 2tb drive in stock, so I bought an enclosure and we headed over to the display case to retrieve the drive. Unfortunately the drive was no where to be found...bummer. A 1tb drive was likely not going to be quite large enough, but it was going to have to do. I started planning what data to trim from the backups to make room, then sudd...

Just finished posting two examples of the dashboards I've been creating for a few of our clients. Image by cobalt123 via Flickr One is a Visit Log , and the other is a Demographic Map . Demo went well with one of our clients, they appeared even a bit exited at the possibilities it represents for them... I'll start working on exposing other data, like Relative Values of services provided, attached receipts, etc.

Image via Wikipedia I recently had the need to provide printer admin access on an ERP server to ordinary users. Nothing makes me shudder more than elevating a users access on a machine that holds your entire business operation on it's drives... I was able to come up with a solution using CPAU.exe which I've written about here . The scenario: An active label printer and a backup. When one goes down, the other needs to be put into service, but it needs to have the same name as the active one did. The users then also need to be able to "flip a switch" to put the active one back into service. First, I needed the guts of the switching script, which makes use of Microsoft 's prncnfg.vbs script, stored on all Windows boxes in the %windir%\ system32 directory (Called ChangePrinter.cmd) : @ECHO OFF @SET _ONE=ACTIVEPROD @SET _ONE_DOWN=ACTIVEPROD_146 @SET _TWO=BACKUPPROD @SET _HOST=BAPFSVR03 :: PRINTERS RECEIVE ADDRESSES VIA DHCP :: WHEN NO ERROR CONDITIONS E...

I recently wrote a VBScript utility that queries the contents of an Indexing Service database, finds the indexed Fax documents ( CCITT Group 4 (2d) Tiff's), sorts and moves them to another repository located on a SAN. Option Explicit Dim oCon Dim oCmd Dim oRst Dim sQry Dim sString Dim sScope Dim sAqScan Dim sFile Dim sPath Dim sMoveTo Dim sNum Dim FSO Dim sDate Dim sDosText Dim sDateDir Dim sDateDiff Dim sMonth Dim sDay Dim sYear Dim nCnt '/////////////////////////////////////////// ' ' Create the FSO ' '//////////////////////////////////////////////// Set FSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") '///////////////////////////////////////////////// ' ' Scope, Aquaius scan dir and Query. ' '//////////////////////////////////////////////// sScope = "F:\Incoming Fax\CWHHM\" sAqScan = "F:\Scanned Docs\Aquarius\14CWHHM\" sQry = "Select Path, Filename, Size, Contents " _ & "FRO...

This Bio was written by my employer. I was very flattered... John likes to refer to himself as a “jack of all trades”, but his experience and knowledge of technical and operating systems make him anything but a generalist. John’s background in information systems ranges from development of software , to design and implementation of hardware compatibilities, to key management-related duties, such as cost containment and budgeting, and training. When John started his career in the IT field, he was the Technology Operations Manager for a local art museum in Racine, WI . In that job, he maintained a heterogeneous 2-site environment for this organization while managing various IT-related projects. As he moved further with his career, he provided IT support and development with an IT consulting firm . His accomplishments here included the maintenance, administration and building of a multi-server environment, as well as implementing the related policies and procedures for network securi...

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Customer service these days seems to be lacking, when they should be excelling. I was talking about this topic with a co-worker yesterday over lunch. We both agreed that providers of goods and services need to be even more attentive to their customer base these days, especially in light of the fact that the economy is in such a mess. Image via Wikipedia My wife had received a call from our local Time Warner sales staff, suggesting we could save money by purchasing their bundled voice/data/cable package. We looked at the numbers and decided we could. At that time we used Dish Network for TV , Vonage for voice, and Time Warner/ Earthlink for data. It seemed like a no-brainer to her. She pays the bills, and it makes her life easier to pay fewer, especially when a 3 year old is demanding your undevided attention, or the laundry needs to get done, or the house needs to be cleaned, etc, etc, etc. ...