Bad Deal

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by Lisa

A friend of mine posted a graphic that basically said ten years and six trillion dollars later, we’ve got ISIS in Iraq instead of Hussein and we’ve got the Taliban in Afghanistan instead of … oh, wait, the Taliban. I understand the six trillion dollar figure looks at long term costs for veteran care *and* direct costs of the occupation. Still, the graphic got me to wondering — could we have simply purchased the country for the amount of money we will eventually spend? Iraq is 108,000,000 acres. That’s an average of 33,333$ per acre — now there are some fertile areas, some developed areas … which may well go for more than 30k per acre. But there’s a lot of desert too – not in an oil rich area – which wouldn’t go for anything like 30k an acre.

Population is something like 33,420,000 people. We could have saved near a trillion dollars ( 987,000,000,000) by giving each person in Iraq 150,000$ to do whatever we asked of them. Sure, a few would have held out … but if the alternative clearly was a foreign invasion and no 150k, I’m thinking we could have literally overthrown a government by just bribing the citizens to revolt.

Toddler Closet

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by Lisa

I used a tension rod to create a toddler-accessible closet. I plan on raising the bar as she gets taller.

I got hangers that have clips for slacks/skirts, and each hanger holds an outfit. Her pajamas, daily clothes, and gymnastics outfits are all available. Anya *LOVES* having her clothes in her closet.

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Project Stack – Update

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by Lisa

Halloween Circle Skirt – Completed! Circle skirts are *super* quick projects. I have a circle pattern that I re-use each time. Double-fold the bottom hem (pressing after each fold) and stitch the hem in place. Cut a 5″ wide strip of fabric a few inches longer than the inner circle circumference.  Serge it along both long sides. Placing wrong sides together, I sew the rectangular strip to the inner circle (this stitch ends up being right along the serger threads). Once the two ends meet, I serge them together. I then cut a 2″ wide strip of non-roll elastic to Anya’s waist size, overlap the ends by 1/2″ and stitch it together along the edges of the overlap and then sew an X inside the rectangle. Insert the elastic into the waistband fabric, fold the fabric over, and stitch the three layers (outer waistband fabric, circle skirt, inner waistband fabric) together. About 3/4 of the way through, I gather the already sewed part of the waistband on the elastic so the 1/4 that has not yet been sewed is straight and flat. Voila, one circle skirt.

Halloween bag – Almost done! I’m still stitching the letters onto the bag.

Halloween costume – I had to re-do the bodice (it was too wide), but should be able to finish off the back hook-and-loop closure this weekend. Need to make a hoop skirt and add some embellishment to the skirt.

 

USN Rollback

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by Lisa

I had to recover my domain controller from the Hyper-V image backup. There’s some protection build into AD which prevents just randomly reverting a server. When you’ve got a larger domain, the built-in protection after unsupported restoration procedures serves a purpose. Pausing netlogon avoids having users log on against bad data. Disabling replication avoids propagating bad information out to the remainder of the network. The solution is simple – demote the DC, promote it again, and the DC returns to service. But when you have a single domain controller in a single domain in a single forest … well, there’s no other data around. What the recovered DC has is as good as it’s going to get (i.e. a change from 2AM is lost when I revert to my 10PM backup). And taking the entire domain down and building it overkill. You can, instead, basically tell AD to go with it. From the MS documentation:

To restore a previous version of a virtual domain controller VHD without system state data backup

  1. Using the previous VHD, start the virtual domain controller in DSRM, as described in the previous section. Do not allow the domain controller to start in normal mode. If you miss the Windows Boot Manager screen and the domain controller begins to start in normal mode, turn off the virtual machine to prevent it from completing startup. See the previous section for detailed instructions for entering DSRM.
  2. Open Registry Editor. To open Registry Editor, click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK. If the User Account Control dialog box appears, confirm that the action it displays is what you want, and then click Yes. In Registry Editor, expand the following path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NTDS\Parameters. Look for a value named DSA Previous Restore Count. If the value is there, make a note of the setting. If the value is not there, the setting is equal to the default, which is zero. Do not add a value if you do not see one there.
  3. Right-click the Parameters key, click New, and then click DWORD (32-bit) Value.
  4. Type the new name Database restored from backup, and then press ENTER.
  5. Double-click the value that you just created to open the Edit DWORD (32-bit) Value dialog box, and then type 1 in the Value data box. The Database restored from backup entry option is available on domain controllers that are running Windows 2000 Server with Service Pack 4 (SP4), Windows Server 2003 with the updates that are included in article 875495 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=137182) in the Microsoft Knowledge Base installed, and Windows Server 2008.
  6. Restart the domain controller in normal mode.
  7. When the domain controller restarts, open Event Viewer. To open Event Viewer, click Start, click Control Panel, double-click Administrative Tools, and then double-click Event Viewer.
  8. Expand Application and Services Logs, and then click the Directory Services log. Ensure that events appear in the details pane.
  9. Right-click the Directory Services log, and then click Find. In Find what, type 1109, and then click Find Next.
  10. You should see at least an Event ID 1109 entry. If you do not see this entry, proceed to the next step. Otherwise, double-click the entry, and then review the text confirming that the update was made to the InvocationID:

 

  • Active Directory has been restored from backup media, or has been configured to host an application partition. 
The invocationID attribute for this directory server has been changed. 
The highest update sequence number at the time the backup was created is <time>

InvocationID attribute (old value):<Previous InvocationID value>
InvocationID attribute (new value):<New InvocationID value>
Update sequence number:<USN>

The InvocationID is changed when a directory server is restored from backup media or is configured to host a writeable application directory partition.
  • Close Event Viewer.
  • Use Registry Editor to verify that the value in DSA Previous Restore Count is equal to the previous value plus one. If this is not the correct value and you cannot find an entry for Event ID 1109 in Event Viewer, verify that the domain controller’s service packs are current. You cannot try this procedure again on the same VHD. You can try again on a copy of the VHD or a different VHD that has not been started in normal mode by starting over at step 1.
  • Close Registry Editor.

 

After following the instructions from Microsoft, I still had a problem — my DC has replication turned off & netlogon comes up paused. In regedit, locate HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NTDS\Parameters and delete the “Dsa Not Writable” key (value: dword:00000004). In a command prompt, run the following:

 

repadmin /options dchostname.example.com -DISABLE_OUTBOUND_REPL
repadmin /options dchostname.example.com -DISABLE_INBOUND_REPL

Reboot the DC. When it starts, netlogon should be running and replication.

Halloween Planning – Healthy Snacks

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by Lisa

Anya’s preschool has a sign-up for Halloween party volunteers — and no one took “healthy snack”! We have a couple of lot of Halloween parties this year for which I’m coming up with non-candy but still Halloween-y treats … what’s one more?

So my current Halloween snack list is:

Friends Parties: tangerine pumpkins and witches’ broom pretzel/cheese snacks

Friends Parties: Scarecrow veggie platter

 

Low Tunnel Update

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by Lisa

We had amazing tomato and pepper plants pop up in our compost. Shouldn’t be possible (compost is hot), but the enormous plants are evidence to the contrary (we have pepper plants that are three feet tall, with more than a dozen little peppers growing). We had a frost warning yesterday, so Anya and I went out to put the greenhouse up over the compost bed. Pulling the CPVC and rebar from the garden bed sounded like a quick task. An hour later … low tunnel greenhouses are not as easy to move as I thought. Earlier in the year, we drove the rebar into the ground with a drilling sledge. To pull it out, we had to dig down about twenty inches. Luckily I didn’t actually *need* all of the rebar — we pulled four of them to get greenhouse plastic over the tomatoes and peppers.

Once the rebar was out, getting the greenhouse together was quick and easy. We’ll eventually have two garden beds — one greenhouse and one where we’ll put the stuff that needs chill-hours. For crop rotation, we’ll switch those each year. Certainly going to want rebar in each bed!

This was also my first opportunity to use the real greenhouse plastic we bought this summer. It is so much nicer than plastic painting drop-cloth. Cost a lot more, too – but there is significantly more light getting through.

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