Network Connection fails after Windows Update for 64-bit Windows 7 running in Hyper-V 2008 R2

I have a number of virtual machines running on a very stable Hyper-V 2008 R2 machine. Yesterday’s reboot of my instances to accomodate Windows Update left only my 64-bit Windows 7 instance without a network connection. No amount of fiddling within the instance could restore it. After much frustration I finally removed the Network Adapter from the shut down instance in the Hyper-V Manager and added a new network interface. Upon booting the instance, it installed new drivers and successfully connected to the network.

37 of My Favorite iPad Apps

1. Air Display – turns your iPad into a secondary monitor.
2. Angry Birds – a fun game, great way to pass time. The other Angry Birds games are also recommended.
3. Calorie Tracker (LiveStrong.com) – tracks calories. I also like FitDay.com (just a web site but excellent and free!)
4. Dragon Dictation – it does a good job, although I don’t use it often. There is a service called Jott that I like much better, but it is now a paid service.
5. DropBox – great for sharing files between computers and people.
6. Evernote – note taking application; notes are shared shared between computers.
7. Find My iPhone – Apple provides a free MobileMe account to find your iDevice – it works, too!
8. Friendly Plus for Facebook – an easy to use Facebook interface.
9. GarageBand – to get your creative juices flowing.
10. GoodReader – a very good PDF reader.
11. Glympse – allows friends/SO to track your whereabouts on a map for a brief period of time (if you have the GPS version). Probably better on the iPhone, but still deserves to be on this list.
12. Google Search – better on the iPhone but features voice-based search and other niceties.
13. Instapaper – mark items to read later and then can read them here. Kind of like a scrapbook.
14. iSSH – my preferred method of command line access to Internet-connected machines.
15. iTap RDP – RDP connectivity to a Windows PC (Remote Desktop).
16. iThoughtsHD – my personal favorite mind-mapping tool on the iPad.
17. KeyNote – for when you want to create and/or display (with a connector) presentations.
18. Kindle – allows you to read your Amazon Kindle content on the iPad.
19. A Monster Ate My Homework – fun, and free, game.
20. NASA App HD – interesting content from NASA.
21. Netflix – a must if you subscribe to the service.
22. NewsRack – my favorite RSS news reader. Simple and clean and easy and fast!
23. Pandora – this is so good I am considering signing up for a paid account.
24. Parallels Mobile – if you run Parallels on a Mac, this gives you access to the virtual machines.
25. Scrabble HD – if you are a scrabble fan than this is a must.
26. Star Walk for iPad – lights up the night sky and provides useful content.
27. Tap Tap Radiation – another fun game.
28. TweetDesk for iPad – very good Twitter application – I prefer it for creating content for multiple systems (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.).
29. Twitter – I’m torn between this app and TweetDesk for access to Twitter. I prefer TweetDeck for posting to multiple accounts and Twitter to read status updates.
30. TWITpad – free audio/video access to lots of great content from Leo Laporte.
31. VNC Viewer – I use this to access my VNC-enabled computers.
32. WeatherBug – my weather application of choice.
33. WeatherStation – a nice display of weather information.
34. WolframAlpha – because it is just cool. Lots of great information in there. Of course, you can always use the free, web version.
35. WordPress – helps to maintain my WordPress blog when I am away from my computer.
36. Zillow Real Estate – satisfies my real estate curiosities.
37. Zite – news “magazine” started with information from your Twitter and/or RSS feeds.

Being Open To New Ideas

Although not an avid Angry Birds player, my 3yo son is and has told me that the red bird does indeed do something when the screen is tapped. In fact, when he told me what happens, I had a difficult time believing it, even when trying it multiple times myself. But now, it is crystal clear to me.

Turns out my son has found something about Angry Birds that I have not seen anyone else find. Most (if not all) people think when you tap the screen while the red bird is airborne, nothing will happen. That is not entirely correct. The red bird makes a sound similar to “peee-kaaaaa!”

The moral is the obvious one – don’t dismiss an idea because of the messenger or because you think you may know better.

OpenVPN Stops Working on DD-WRT v24 preSP2 (Build13064)

After struggling for quite some time to discover why the once-working OpenVPN setup on my DD-WRT router suddenly stopped working, I finally realized the configuration was corrupted. I had been issuing a number of iptables commands (inserts and deletes) at the command prompt via ssh prior to the failure, although I do not know if the two are connected.

After disabling the OpenVPN client and rebooting the router, I noticed the Public Client Cert was partially truncated. I pasted the certificates back in, applied changes and rebooted the router and it works again once more.

Port Forwarding / Port Mapping on Windows Server 2008 R2

As a long time friend of linux’s itables command, I mistakenly assumed that trying to port forward on Windows Server 2008 R2 would be just as easy. After quite a long while of searching I was able to determine the correct command; through use of netsh on the command line, it is easy to map incoming TCP traffic from one port to another port.

In my scenario, I needed to have an SSL connection initiated on a port other than 443 on the same machine, but handled by a service listening on port 443. To do this, the following command is entered on the command line; in this example, port 12345 is used as the initiating port.

C:\Users\Administrator> netsh interface portproxy add v4tov4 listenport=12345 listenaddress=192.168.1.1 connectport=443 connectaddress=192.168.1.1

Port 12345 is mapped to port 443 on the same machine. To have the traffic transferred to another machine, change the ip address for the connect address to the desired ip address.