Well I just have too much fun with things like this. I don’t know where it came from, but the Blogosphere was a great name people use. I suddenly thought of Nettiverse because I was trying to connect my blog with Facebook and Twitter. I thought they were pieces of the virtual universe we take part in, the Nettiverse. Now, many people out there are moving away from the Blogosphere and into the Twitterverse. Or maybe it should be called the Twittersphere. Personally, I like Twitterverse.

What’s bugging me is this, Facebook’s name. I haven’t seen or thought up a cool name for it as it exists in the Nettiverse. Anyone out there with a cool idea?

I thought of BookHole! Hahaha! I like it, makes me laugh because that’s exactly what it is, a Black Hole in the Nettiverse. Once you get in, you can’t get out! It sucks you in and wastes away time! But there must be something more fun to call it? Tweet me if you have any ideas. http://twitter.com/gregthegeek

By the way, as people more and more move away from blogs and on to Twitter, I’ve seen a post or two from people suggesting that blogs are a thing of the past. Well, I disagree. I feel they are useful tool. I use my blog mostly as a tech log. Things I like to remember, things I once fixed. The world out there could care less about it, but that’s not the point. It’s for me. I refer back to it, and it’s easy to get online while I am at a client and can’t remember how I solved a problem. Also, the little tidbits I post are found by Google searchers. So, if I find a solution and it helps just one person out there. Right on! Tweets are too short for that. So I like my blog, and I’ll keep using it alongside my Tweets and BookHole. (there’s got to be a better name than that! ??? )

This drove me nuts!  Why Microsoft had to take something totally simple in Windows 2000 and make it a complicated thing is NOT beyond me!  This is MS we’re talking about!  Of course it’s not easy with newer versions.

Took me a little bit, but here’s the commands I used on our primary domain controller, and it’s working great. that first w32tm command is all one line.

w32tm /config /manualpeerlist:”0.pool.ntp.org 1.pool.ntp.org 2.pool.ntp.org pool.ntp.org”,0×8 /syncfromflags:MANUAL /reliable:yes

w32tm /config /update

net stop w32time

net start w32time

w32tm /resync /rediscover

That should do it. However, always make sure you firewall is open to port 123 outbound!  I initially was receiving this error after running a “w32tm /resync” :

The computer did not resync because no time data was available.

In my case, that was caused by my firewall blocking port 123 for NTP traffic.  Go figure, we’ve been running this particular network for probably 2 years with that firewall blocking port 123, and only now did someone come and ask “why is our computer time off by 6 or  7 minutes?”  This is when you say, “Welcome to the world, can I help you?”  (Good old Beavis)  Well, at least we got our server configured better as a “reliable” time source with the right ntp.org pools.

Man, I haven’t posted in ages! Well, here’s something I want to remember for later. Force a computer to logoff at a particular time, but still allow logons later. Using Active Directory, I think, will force a logon schedule and dissallow users from logon if not within scheduled times.

On the computer you want to force logoff, open the C: drive and create a text file. Then rename it to, force-logoff.bat
Be sure you can view the extensions, or it will hide the .txt at the end and this wont work. (it can’t be force-logoff.bat.txt, which is what you’ll get if you have “hide extensions of known file types” selected)
Then right click, edit.
Put this in the file and save it.

PsShutdown.exe -o -f

After that, find PsShutdown.exe and copy/paste it into the C:\Windows dir on that system. Get it from here:
http://download.sysinternals.com/Files/PsTools.zip
You’ll have to unzip that and get the Psshutdown tool out of it.  I usually just put all the Pstools in the Windows directory anyway, it’s handy to have.
Then to test, just double click the force-logoff.bat file and it should log you out.  NOTE: The first time you run any of the PSTools, you’ll get a little EULA and you’ll need to agree to the terms.  Not big deal, then after that you won’t get a popup.

Last, make a schedule for it to run every day at your desired time.

Here’s the link to the Microsoft site regarding PsShutdown command line usage.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897541.aspx