Hopefully, I've just finished my final draft

My best friend in Chicago started reading my book two days ago, god bless him. He managed to get nine chapters in before we talked and he pointed out an obvious flaw. I can't just separate my POV changes inside chapters. I just need to stick to one POV per chapter. So, over the past day and a half, I submerged myself in rewrites again. Hopefully this will be the final draft before it goes back to the publisher. I really want to get it back to her before she forgets or isn't interested any more, but I am glad I didn't send her the previous copy. This one is much better. Is it just me or does it feel like a book is never done? Have any other authors felt like their book was just as good as it was going to get after their beta readers got done with it?

Active Directory Slow Logins

So, we've been struggling for quite some time with a slow login problem. It's apparently school districts all over having these troubles. I will hopefully be sharing my solution with one of my fellow districts sometime soon and I hope it can help them.

So, logins had been taking up to 45 minutes, which is ridiculous. By the time the kids got logged in, it was time for them to go. Usually, they didn't even get logged in before they had to go, so they tend to hold in the power buttons to turn the computers off by force. This causes a completely separate problem that can only be solved my reimaging the machines. Microsoft knew about it and had been working on a fix for quite a while. Amazing the difference it will make in the higher ups blaming you when people all over the place are having the same problem after microsoft puts out a 90, let me be very clear, NINETY hotfix rollup.

I'd found that a combo of a profile cleaning script and two hotfixes on shutdown had a profound effect when combined with a high lsass utilization hotfix on the server. For profiles that hadn't been created before the hotfixes were applied, logins came down to three minutes or under. Still a little pokey, but a vast improvement. After the 90 hotfix rollup was also pushed out to the workstations and servers, it halved the three minute logins. So, long story short, don't don't don't do this on startup. This will make people freak out, because it takes about four or five minutes to run as a shutdown script in group policy. Most people couldn't care less how long it takes for their computer to shut down, but they will squawk like biddies if their computers hang on startup. They are also likely to force them to turn off instead of letting the scripts run. This will corrupt their computers worse and make them even slower.

So, in short, what it appears to take to fix slow computer lab logins in a large scale k-12 AD domain is to:
1. Clean student profiles on shut down. Use a profile cleaning VBScript with an exception list so you don't delete public and default profiles by accident. Make sure it doesn't clean teacher profiles either. They like to save stuff to their desktops.
2. Install the 2 hotfixes for Folder redirection and item level targeted group policy shortcuts. If anybody actually reads this blog, comment on it and I'll include the specific hotfix numbers.
3. Install the high lsass utilization hotfix on the DCs. Again, ask me and I'll provide the numbers. I can't remember them off the top of my head.
4. Install the 90 hotfix rollup to both the DCs and workstations.
5. Make sure you don't have duplicated stuff in your group policy. Also make sure shortcuts that don't have to be targeted aren't and you aren't pointing to stuff that doesn't exist.
6. Disable IPv6 in the registry. Don't lie, you're not using it.

So. That's it. Appears to be the snazzy fix for slow logins, at least for us. I've rolled it out to three middle schools and they are happy about it. Soon high schools, then other districts. Again, if anybody reads this and I can help with your slow login ridiculousness, let me know.

Getting people to read your books in a timely fashion is hard

Just for informational purposes, getting people to read your book when you're not paying them is a time consuming and infuriating problem. Even my husband hasn't finished the edits on my book and it's hard to be patient. I want to get the book back to the publisher as quickly as I can, but I don't want to send it back without someone else reading through it first. Oh, and bribery with baked goods doesn't work either, by the way. If you're waiting on people's good will to read your book, expect to wait a really long time.

I found an amazing writing spot

So, there used to be a corner bar not far from my house that was once a bait and tackle shop. I loved going in there, but it didn't get enough business so it closed. I think being next to a railyard and a rock quarry wasn't good enough to keep a bar going(I'm being serious. It's within spitting distance of both a railyard and a rock quarry). Well, within the last six months, the building was purchased by someone else and covered with wonderful murals. It opened as a sort of bar and restaurant and I haven't been in here since then. Today, on a whim, since I didn't have class, I decided to come here after receiving a hair cut. It's perfect. It's not slammed. It has wifi. There is beer. And it's just the right amount of distracting and not super busy. I love it. It's amazing. This might become my writing spot. I'm about to try the food and we shall see if I'm sold forever. Hopefully my husband won't mind me lurking here if I buy him a beer occasionally.

My Ninja Status Seems to have been Cemented

My grouchy boss is grudgingly giving me the first several letters of "Ninja". So, he is rather amusingly walking around responding to my ninja assertions with a strongly voiced "ni" vaguely reminiscent of Monty Python. To cement my ninja status, I managed to automate the several hotfixes and registry changes necessary to apply the profile fixes. I also included a vbscript that wipes out only student profiles. So in short, my fix cleans the machine of damaged profiles without reimaging, applies registry changes to disabled IPv6, and installs two windows group policy hotfixes. The only thing I have to do manually at this point is run the high lsass utilization hotfix on each of our DCs. Granted, there are 50+ DCs, but that shouldn't be too difficult. The only thing the technicians have to do is manage to correctly remove the teacher profiles if necessary after doing a thorough backup. Will they do this? Maybe. Can they do it correctly? Even less likely, but I can't follow all 26 of them around and hold their hands, nor would they let me since most of them hate me.

Now, Laney, why would the majority of 26 people possibly hate you? Because the vast majority of them are so lazy it should be criminal. The laziest of them are also intractably stupid. A goodly portion of those also dislike the fact that I was promoted very quickly and I am significantly younger than they are, despite the fact I was the most qualified applicant. They drive me crazy because it's practically impossible to fire them and frankly most of them need to be fired. If you don't know how to find an IP address, you should not be a "technician" of any sort. You especially should not be on the same pay scale as me. It's insulting and infuriating. I'm totally fine with people telling me they don't know something that isn't basic, in fact usually I like it. The problem comes in when it's something fifth graders know how to do or something you can easily google. If you don't know how to install a complicated piece of software, please ask. I'll be happy to make you instructions with big ass pictures and arrows. If you don't know how to rename a computer (when there is a tool in a folder on the desktop to do it that you've been informed of repeatedly in training), get the hell out of my office.

Final passthrough

Finished my POV and sexy rewrites today. I now have to read critically back through the entire book to make sure all the changes I made didn't turn it into utter shit. Then, my lovely husband is going to read through it to make sure I didn't miss anything. Then, it gets to go back to the lovely editor. Wish me luck. This is a task that might require chocolate.

Also, I finally managed to find gluten free bread that isn't disgusting. I made my husband a pair of sandwiches with it and he was super excited(He doesn't really do well with gluten). For some reason it's really really small bread. Like the size of a cocktail napkin. And if anybody hasn't had a glass of Punto Final Malbec, you should remedy that immediately. I rarely get drunk, but I drank an entire bottle of it by myself last night and woke up with absolutely no hangover. I bought it on a whim at Earth Fare(my favorite place) and it turned out to be an excellent whim. I usually have Bodega Elena de Mendoza Malbec, but I may have to switch for good.

I might be an Active Directory Ninja. We shall see.

Rewrites for my book continue. I have two chapters left to adjust and then a final read through before I turn it over to the husband for commentary. Here's hoping it's awesome enough.

So, AD Ninja. Maybe. We've been battling a slow login problem ever since our tree was rooted..ahem. Couldn't help the pun. My predecessor was tearing his hair out about it before he left and I was equally stymied and vexed. Essentially what's happening is logins are consistently over a minute, sometimes up to forty five minutes at the high schools and middle schools. That's a lot of computers and a lot of frustrated kids and teachers. Also, the weirdest thing is it only seems to be happening in places were large groups of machines are located. We could have a 40 port switch completely full with one lab on it and five classrooms and still only the lab is effected. It's frustrating. My cohorts and I have pushed out a profile cleaning script that runs on shutdown, but it only seems to be helping so much.

So today, boss man and I went out to one of our schools that was having an issue specifically in their media center and the lab off the media center. Apparently nobody before me thought to look at the damn cables going into the machines because there was a loop in plain sight under the table. A network cable was plugged into a drop, plugged into a cable extender(HUGE boo hiss), and then plugged back into another drop patched into the same switch. This is not good. If certain protections aren't enabled on that switch, it will cause a flood of traffic not unlike rush hour. This slows things down. Again, not good. So, I removed the loop. Logins sped up a little bit. Still not perfect, but slightly better. I ran two hotfixes for the local workstations that deal with Folder Redirection and Group Policy Item Level Targeted shortcuts. I also ran a hotfix on the local DC that deals with high lsass utilization. All of these things combined with me cleaning up the login and startup scripts made for zippy logins. Like 17 seconds zippy. Keep in mind, our network has about 15,000 machines in it. Ish. That's my rough estimate and I'm not counting printers, ipads, copiers, etc.

The reason for the "might be" in front of "Active Directory Ninja" is because we're still seeing weird periodic delays on bootup. I'm wondering if the machines just haven't gotten the policy updates or if they all just need to be wiped out. I personally am in favor of wiping. The machine I worked on primarily had been freshly imaged and I got a brand new profile to load in 45 seconds. 17 seconds for second login. That's pretty damn fast for us. So here's to hoping that my fixes work. That will solve a lot of stress at work for me if I can solve the mystery of the slow login gremlins.