12.07.09
Posted in Work
at 6:42 pm
I just spent a while tracking down a cert problem while migrating an app to IIS7 on Windows Server 2008.
This app taps into a web service using a client cert. I finally tracked the problem down to a permissions issue with the private key on the client certificate. On Server 2003 and earlier these permissions are managed with the winhttpcertcfg.exe tool, but that’s not available on Server 2008 (or at least not supported, as far as I can tell). Turns out it’s actually pretty simple, though. See screenshot below:
Yeah…just a simple right-click on the cert in the certificates snap-in. Also, for getting SSL traces, this blog had a good system.diagnostics section:
http://blogs.msdn.com/asiatech/archive/2009/04/08/using-system-net-trace-to-troubleshooting-ssl-problem-in-net-2-0-application.aspx
The microsoft documentation, as usual, was lacking, and most of the examples I tried didn’t seem to actually output the trace to a file (at least not where I expected to find it).
keywords: server 2008 client cert certificate permissions winhttpcfg
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09.05.08
Posted in Work
at 3:05 pm
so if you have error catching code that logs the error and redirects the user to an error page, guess what happens if you screw up the URL to the error page?
Recursive Errors
Clever, eh?
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09.27.07
Posted in General, Work
at 12:12 am
Ah yes…school has started. I can’t walk down the Ave without putting myself in danger of having a stroke—people weaving about, stopping abruptly, and just generally getting in my way. But that’s not what this post is about.
I went to my office to print something. I submitted the job from my office and walked down the hall to pick up the print-out. Except the printer wasn’t working for some reason…and I couldn’t see the error because someone (probably some !@#$ freshman) had changed the printer display language to….Russian. I decided I had three options:
1. Write out the information by hand.
2. Try to remember how to reset the printer.
3. Find a professor that speaks Russian.
Three would have been a viable option since we’ve got at least a couple professors that speak Russian. Since the information I needed was only ten lines I just wrote it out by hand. On the other hand I can envision an amusing conversation taking place to request translation services:
“Hi Professor, I’m Matt MacAdam from Physics/Astronomy Computing Services. I need you to come downstairs and tell me what’s wrong with our printer.”
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10.05.06
Posted in General, Quotes, Work
at 2:37 pm
door closes
Me: Why are you locking me in my office?
Boss: Don’t come out until you’re done!
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09.19.06
Posted in General, Work
at 11:15 am
I learned some perl today to manipulate some large text files at work…Arrays are cool.
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08.25.06
Posted in General, Quotes, Work
at 12:34 pm
“…domestic violence isn’t funny. Domestic tacos are.” —Clifton, co-worker
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05.18.06
Posted in General, Quotes, Work
at 10:05 am
“It’s really hard to tell what the humping preferences of a fossil are.” —Abe (co-worker)
And a link to his post on slashdot:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=186087&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=15357816#15358724
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12.14.05
Posted in General, WYC, Work
at 2:14 pm
Tides came up at work, and we were trying to figure out what the tide numbers were relative to. You would think this would have been easy…but it took a lot of searching to find.
So…
Tides are given in feet above (sometimes below) chart datum. Chart datum is defined (in the United States) by Mean Lower Low Water (MLLW). MLLW is “The average of the lower low water height of each tidal day observed over the National Tidal Datum Epoch” (http://www.baysail.com/tide_terms/gloss_m.html). Lower low water is the lower of the two low tides (or single low tide) in a day. The National Tidal Date Epoch is 19 years, and currently is the period from 1983-2001 (http://co-ops.nos.noaa.gov/datum_update.shtml). I’m mainly posting this just to remind myself since I spent so much time figuring it out.
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11.24.05
Posted in General, Social, Work
at 4:00 am
So yesterday (Wednesday) for lunch I went to Burger Hut, I was picking up a burger for me and one of the guys at work. The guy at the counter was reading the paper and we got to talking about the Tacoma Mall shooting and concealed carry…he was like “Yeah, I had a concealed carry license in Florida and I need to get it transferred here…I need to do that with my food handler’s card, too…”
Uhhhh….well, at least he has a food handler’s card in Florida. 
The sad thing is, it didn’t register with me that he didn’t have a WA food handler’s permit until I was halfway back to campus. I didn’t really care, though…I don’t put much stock in the food handler’s permit, really…I could teach a monkey to get a food handler’s permit.
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03.17.05
Posted in Quotes, Work
at 11:23 pm
“It’s a drum–you hit it, you don’t pull things out of it.”
–Peter Stone, co-worker
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