The scary reality of internet voting

I’m a web and network geek so I’d love to see it work. But I admit thinking about relying on it today for so elemental a thing as electing the representatives to lead a nation scares the proverbial electronic bejeezus out of me.

Maybe Halderman’s “significant fundamental advances in computer security” will be possible with quantum computing.

Beer-powered bending robot elected to DC school board by hackers


Bender-Nixon

Launching LogMeIn Rescue Desktop App with AutoHotKey

Happy Leap Day

At work I use LogMeIn Rescue a lot. It’s a great tool for for accessing remote computers and it works from any web browser…assuming the browser is IE or Firefox. I used Firefox mostly but I got tired of keeping up with what version of what browser was compatible with the Rescue plugin. Lately Firefox has gotten pushy about updating itself and LogMeIn wasn’t always as quick to update their plugin.

LogMeIn now offers a standalone desktop application and it’s very quick. Not only faster-loading than a browser, the Desktop App can get you there quicker by remembering your LogMeIn credentials. You’ll be be going from zero to tech support in no time flat.

The problem is we share LogMeIn accounts and need to use whichever is available at the time. Using the Desktop App and AutoHotKey to quickly enter the username is a good solution.

Log into your Rescue admin account and download the Desktop App from there. Install it and make sure it works when you log in manually.

Download AutoHotKey_L from here: AutoHotKey download. Install it and follow the instructions to make it run every time you login.

Once that’s solid, add this code and reload the script. (Of course, edit the run path to match your LogMeIn installation and enter your email addresses.)

I chose the Ctrl-Shift combination plus the numbers 1 thru 3 since I can hit these quickly with two fingers of one hand. Take a look at the AutoHotKey documentation for other key combinations. (AutoHotKey is amazingly flexible and I’ve already thought of a ton of other ways it can make my life more fun…well, at least easier. I can’t believe I haven’t found it before now!)

This will run the Desktop App and enter the login name, then tab to the password field and wait for your input. Very quick and easy!

Enjoy

; *****************************************************
; Launch #1 LogMeInRescue with Ctrl-Shift-1
^+1::
IfWinExist LogMeIn Rescue Technician Console
WinActivate
else
run "C:\Program Files (x86)\LogMeIn Rescue Technician Console\LogMeInRescueTechnicianConsole_x64\LMIRTechConsole.exe"
WinActivate LogMeIn Rescue Technician Console
WinWaitActive LogMeIn Rescue Technician Console
send user1EmailAddress`t
return

; *****************************************************
; Launch #2 LogMeInRescue with Ctrl-Shift-2
^+2::
IfWinExist LogMeIn Rescue Technician Console
WinActivate
else
run "C:\Program Files (x86)\LogMeIn Rescue Technician Console\LogMeInRescueTechnicianConsole_x64\LMIRTechConsole.exe"
WinActivate LogMeIn Rescue Technician Console
WinWaitActive LogMeIn Rescue Technician Console
send user2EmailAddress`t
return

; *****************************************************
; Launch #3 LogMeInRescue with Ctrl-Shift-3
^+3::
IfWinExist LogMeIn Rescue Technician Console
WinActivate
else
run "C:\Program Files (x86)\LogMeIn Rescue Technician Console\LogMeInRescueTechnicianConsole_x64\LMIRTechConsole.exe"
WinActivate LogMeIn Rescue Technician Console
WinWaitActive LogMeIn Rescue Technician Console
send user3EmailAddress`t
return

xkcd: Wisdom of the Ancients

If you’ve never spent time mining online forums—trying desperately to not get distracted by any shiny, off-topic links—looking for that one setting change that will magically solve a frame rate problem in your newly-obsessed-over online flightsim, this won’t mean anything to you.

If you have, it’ll make you wonder why every forum thread ever created can’t have a “final summary for the benefit of the sanity of future lost souls”. (The new holy-grail of online collaboration?? I smell a start-up opportunity.)

btw, if you don’t read xkcd.com regularly…you should. He’s brilliant.


xkcd: Wisdom of the Ancients
Wisdom of the Ancients

Robocopy backup to dynamically-lettered removable drive

I use a Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex USB drive to carry large install files to customer sites. I wanted an easy, portable way to keep my Flex drive in sync with the working files on my laptop’s D: drive. I use Robocopy for big backup jobs on the server application products we support so I put it to use here, too, and it worked fine. The only annoying part was editing the Robocopy statement whenever the drive letter of the Flex changed.

To get around this I named the Flex volume “flex” (original) and added a statement to find the driver letter on-the-fly.

This should work for any removable drive for which you know the volume name. Just change the text of the find "flex" statement in line 10.

  • You’ll need a copy of Robocopy. I grabbed it from the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit and it runs fine on the XP & Win7 workstations I’m using. I think the new version might be delivered standard with Server 2008.
  • This example mirrors the entire D: drive, excluding two directories I don’t care about, to the Flex drive. If you haven’t used Robocopy, do some reading before using /MIR. It will delete anything on the destination that doesn’t exist on the source.

backup_flex.bat


@echo off

echo. > "%cd%\backup_flex.log"
echo %time% *** backup starting *** >> "%cd%\backup_flex.log"
echo. >> "%cd%\backup_flex.log"

rem Find the drive letter corresponding to the removable drive named "flex"
setLocal Enabledelayedexpansion
for %%i in (d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z) do (
	for /f "tokens=1,* delims=:" %%x in ('fsutil fsinfo volumeinfo %%i: ^|find /i "flex"') do set drive=%%i
)

REM Mirror the D: drive to the Flex drive, excluding some directories.
Robocopy D:\ %drive%:\ /MIR /XJ /R:0 /W:1 /NP /NDL /xd "D:\Tools\Outlook offline files" "D:\Tools\Windows Search Index" /LOG+:"%cd%\backup_flex.log" 2>>errors.txt

echo. >> "%cd%\backup_flex.log"
echo %time% *** flex backup done *** >> "%cd%\backup_flex.log"
echo. >> "%cd%\backup_flex.log"

p.s. If anyone comes up with a cool way to limit the drive letters the FOR statement needs to iterate through, I’d be happy to hear about it. I spent more than a few minutes trying to work the output from fsutil fsinfo drives into the loop but I’m missing something.

for /f "tokens=1,*" %%i in ('fsutil fsinfo drives') do (
  rem iterate through the ...volumeinfo command with %%j
)

The Knack

My favorite 1.71666666666666666666666666666667 minutes of tv…ever. Though I are not technically an engineer, I absolutely believe they are critical to perpetuating our species. Even if we occasionally need help “producing progeny.”

…they! I meant they. (dang)