Mike Norman

Hello! I have been contracting in Afghanistan for almost a year now and here is a list of things i wish someone had told me before i started!

Things to bring:

• If at all possible get a Deployment Bag! i got a tri-wheel deployment bag and it has been incredibly useful!
• Decent boots. You will be walking on gravel a lot, you’ll need some boots that will hold up
• Wristwatch
• Shower bag
• Body Glide (trust me here)
• Micro fiber towel
• Bring your own pillow! the ones at the PX here will always suck, at every base.
• Backpack that can fit 3 days worth of cloths
• 4-5 days worth of cloths
• Good bed sheets! bring these with you, you will need them when traveling!
• Flashlight(s). If you get stationed at a blackout base.
• Camera if allowed. you’ll want to document this experience!
• Kindle. books add to baggage fees and its more crap to lug around, buy a kindle and stock it before you arrive
• Laptop/Tablet something to watch movies on, there will be alot of down time
• External harddrives. Movies, TV shows, music. all of these are a form of currency here. come prepared.

Things to buy when you get here: (an amazon prime subscription will be useful for this)

• Mattress pad! i don’t have back problems or anything like that, that’s not the reason i recommend it. its because there are no good mattresses over here, anywhere.
• Games. i ended up buying a few card and board games. keeps us occupied on boring times in the office and after work.
• Food: there are alot of foods and snacks you will miss. amazon ships to APO/FPO

Expect to be in hell for the duration, in actuality you’ll prob end up loving it! but expect the worst. some bases get attacks almost daily and are terrible to live at. some are a walk in the part and have all the amenities of home! Good luck and stay safe!

Oh and if you are going over there to work for Dyncorp try to find another job once you get there. dyncorp is a terrible company. Oh and avoid Kandahar at all costs, that place is terrible.

A couple of my SCCM clients were having problems applying updates. Even forcing the updates wasn’t working. every time I tried to install SCCM updates i would get “update failed to start because another update installation is in progress” Tried all the usual registry tricks to kill hung installs, nothing showing up in the task manager. then i found this.

The SCCM Client Center. This app is incredibly useful for troubleshooting SCCM client problems. So if you are having this issue, download the SCCM Client Center, install it. you may need to reboot after the install. now open it up as an administrator (right click, run as administrator) Click connect in the top left area, click the Repair/Install tab. the first thing i did was repair WMI. only had to do that on one of the clients with the problem. next click “Delete root\ccm” just below. that should fix it!

You may need to wait 5-15 mins for the SCCM client to repair itself. after waiting a while i went into the config manager properties in the control panel and clicked the actions tab, then selected Software Updates Scan Cycle and hit “initiate action” to hurry things up. Updates should start coming withing 5 mins! Hope that helps!!

Another quick tip. I’m currently working in Afghanistan doing IT contracting and we use a system of Canopys to avoid running cable all over base. Occasionally the Canopys will detect weather radars or mobile radar systems and shut down for 30 mins. the way we get around that is setting the Region Code to Other. that will force them to ignore radar interference and not shut down for 30 mins.

Havnt updated in forever! im contracting in afghanistan for the next year. which will either mean boredome and more posing, or busyness and even less posting… well see.

anyway here is the photo album where i’m uploading all the pics i’m taking here, i’m uploading more almost every day. Enjoy!

I have been trying to get fitter, and being the geek i am i have been trying out different android apps. Sofar ive checked out Run Keeper, Cardio Trainer, and Runtastic.

Runkeeper is pretty great app! It does everything i was looking for, and connects to a website where you can look over your workouts. Most of the stats are useful, the mapping is excellent (but it does have some GPS lock on issues that can get pretty tiresome) . Its an overall good solution for workout tracking. doesn’t really stand out, but it does its job. Here is an example of a runkeeper workout.

Cardio trainer is much more social, has ALOT more options, and integrates with Google health. It has alot of little fun apps where you can “train your droid” and have it compete with your friends droid (crappy facebook game), a live wallpaper where snacks disappear as you burn their equivalent in calories. I stopped using it because it required you to install a facebook app to post your activity. its a general pain in the ass to share with others. But the google health integration is pretty great if you are using it, and don’t already have a fitbit.

Runtastic is what im currently using. It has everything runkeeper does and a bit more. Much more workout details available on the site. It seems like someone took runkeeper, fixed the GPS issues, and added alittle more details to the workout stats.  the website looks like it was designed by a recently fired apple employee who had a very limited color pallet at his disposal. And the app has a tendency of crapping out in the middle of a workout (at least on android)  Here’s an example of a Runtastic workout.

Overall I recommend Runkeeper. But I’ve only tried those three apps. if you have any recommendations please let me know!

I followed these steps from theunlockr.com and they worked perfectly! Instead of copying their content ill just post links. Follow these steps in order:

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Enjoy! and when it comes time to choose a Rom i recommended Cyanogen!

recently my company has had some issues with some individuals deleting and altering files then claiming they never touched them (or even worse blaming the IT dept for removing their files). If you have users trying to blame their problems on computer errors or magically deleted files you should turn on auditing! File and Folder access auditing is a wonderful component of general auditing that will keep records of file access, deletions, etc etc. Here is how to turn it on.

In these examples i will be using Windows Server 2008 R2 but these same steps work all the way back to 2003 server., we should start by defining a local policy or group policy on the file server. i went with group policy, so that adds a couple extra steps. first open up your group policy management tool and create a new policy (or add the following to an existing one)

Edit the Computer configuration > Policies > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Local Policies > Audit Policy > Audit Object Access

Then check “define these policy settings” and check the Success and Failure boxes:

Hit ok and we should be done with the policy side editing. its pretty much the same to do a local policy instead of a group policy, but instead go to Start > Control Panel > Administrative tools > Local Security policy > Local Policies > Audit Policy > Audit Object Access. then make the same changes. If your using group policy make sure the policy is applied to the file server you want auditing enabled on.

Now that we have enabled auditing we need to specify the folders/files we want to audit. To do this go to your file server and select the folder you want audited, right click and go to properties. Click the “Security” tab then the Advanced button, then the Auditing tab. This part will require administrative privileges, make sure you are loged in as an administrator. Now in this box add whoever’s access attempts you want audited. i chose to add everyone.

Now click Edit (or ok if this is the first entry) to open the “Auditing Entries” box. Here you should select which actions you want audited. i chose everything just to cover all the bases, but over time you may want to edit this down until you get only the information you need.

Use the drop down at the top to make sure auditing is applied properly (for most uses make sure it says “This Folder, Subfolders and files” as in the picture)

Click OK and auditing is enabled for the specified Folder/users!! You can check the results of the auditing in the Security section of the event viewer! An easy way to find these auditing result sin the event viewer is to look for the Task Category of “File System”.

I hope this helps! If you have any questions please post them in the comments and i will do my best to answer them!

Had some minor hiccups with my hosting provider, but I’m back online! so theres that..

ill hopefully be updating more frequently, ive got some awesome traveling coming up!