The Outspoken Wookie

Hilton Travis - Part of the Team Leading Change for Redland City, 2024

noreply@blogger.com (Hilton Travis) — Sun, 19 Nov 2023 08:09:00 +0000

It is my pleasure to be invited to join Jos Mitchell's team of people looking at Leading Change and bringing the community focus back into our Council.

I am really looking forward to connecting with more people leading up to the election and beyond so we can build a truly community focused strategy moving forward.

Hilton Travis - Div 5 Candidate, Redland City, 2024
Https://HiltonTravis.au

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0ikzTkLR8b69oLFQ7FGVPQpF2aDsWQMhD7GeJY3pZyS2ngNzYTzkWFmc9iyizpmonl&id=100086758947361

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

SMBI Food & Goods & Services Options

noreply@blogger.com (Hilton Travis) — Thu, 02 Apr 2020 09:27:00 +0000

G'day All,

(Updated: 6 September, 2020)

In response to a question on one of the SMBI-related Facebook Groups, I've made this blog post so that not only the Facebook users, but also non-Facebook users can have access to this information.

During the Covid-19 restrictions, we're in a slightly tricky place over here on the SMBI - both in a good and a bad way (but by far, mostly good).

One of the more interesting exercises is getting food delivered to those of us who are in the higher risk categories and have been either directed to self-isolate, or had it strongly suggested that we self-isolate.

So, here's a list of the Food and Goods takeaway delivery options available to the SMBI that will be updated as and when I'm made aware of any changes. (Saying that, unless I'm informed of a change to the information below, the information is as presented the last time I was made aware of it, so it may be out of date slightly.) Also listed are other businesses and their current operating information.

Please also note that a number of businesses are making their products available through Bay Islands Eats, which is an initiative of the SMBI Little Bus. To place orders for delivery, order and pay over the phone with the store and ask for it to be delivered via Bay Island Eats. The details for this service are:

Bay Island Eats - How It Works

1. Browse our index of local businesses for the items you need

You can do this via the ‘Eat’, ‘Drink’ and 'Health and Groceries’ options on our website.

2. Contact the business you wish to place an order with

Make your order in full and specify that you would like delivery.

3. Pay for your goods

The cost of your goods can be paid directly to the business over the phone (excluding delivery fee), or our Bay Island Eats delivery driver can take payment of cash and card upon delivery.

Delivery costs should ALWAYS be paid directly to the driver when your order is delivered.

4. Collection and delivery

The business will book in a pickup time for your goods and one of our drivers will collect it from the venue and deliver it to your door.

Visit https://www.bayislandeats.com/ for more information and delivery costs.

FOOD TAKEAWAY AND DELIVERIES

On-Island Businesses

Coochiemudlo Island

Curlew Cafe - 07 3207 7207
https://www.facebook.com/curlewcoochie/
Hours: 8:00AM - 2:00PM every day
Delivery: Yes
Takeaway: Yes
We are building our grocery line daily. Fruit and veges are now in stock. Phone us and order any groceries including our entire dining menu hot and cold.

Oasis - 07 3207 7600
https://www.facebook.com/OasisOnCoochie/
Hours: 5:00PM - 7:30PM Wed - Sun
Delivery: No
Takeaway:Yes
Oasis will be open for takeaway dinner and drinks (including alcohol). Convenience Corner will be operated from Oasis during opening hours. Unfortunately, we are unable to offer phone or internet orders but will provide a safe environment for people waiting for their meals. As always Wednesday night will be Pizza Night plus our expanded every night menu options.

Lamb Island

Lamb Island Convenience Store - 07 3409 5222
https://www.facebook.com/lambislandcs1
Hours: 6.30AM - 6.30PM Mon-Fri, and 7:00AM - 3:00PM Sat - Sun
Delivery: Yes (Bay Island Eats)
Takeaway: Yes
Full menu is available, including coffee.

Lamb Island Rec Club - 07 3409 5832
https://www.facebook.com/lambislandrecreationclub/
Hours: 5:30PM - 7:00PM Wed - Sat, Dine-In, Take Away or Delivery
Delivery:Yes
Takeaway:Yes (Bay Island Eats)
Take away alcohol is available and take away meals are available, as are pre-frozen meals to take home and warm up later.

Macleay Island

Blue Parrot Cafe - 07 3409 4900https://www.facebook.com/blueparrotcafemacleayisland
Hours: 7:00AM - 1:00PM Mon - Sat, closed over Easter
Delivery:Yes (Bay Island Eats)
Takeaway: Yes
Please phone to pre-order. Frozen meals from $10, coffee, cakes and savouries.

Bay Islands Golf Club -07 3409 5299
https://www.facebook.com/Bay-Islands-Golf-Club-Macleay-Island-278688322166632/
Hours: 11:00AM - 3:00PM each day (Bistro closed for now)
Delivery:
Takeaway: Yes (no food, bistro closed for now)
Bay Islands Golf Club is closed for normal services until further notice. The club will be open only to our members and reciprocal members for alcohol takeaway. There is a good range of soft drinks and mixers, as well as snacks such as chips, nuts and cashews. Also, the greens are open for 2 player games, there are no competitions.

Club Macleay (Water's Edge Bistro) - 07 3409 5364
https://www.facebook.com/macleayisland.bowlsclub/
Hours: Food 12:00PM - 2:00PM and 4:30PM - 6:00PM Wed - Sun
Hours: Alcohol 12:00PM - 5:30PM Mon - Tues, 10:00AM - 5:30PM Wed - Sat
Hours: Alcohol 10:00AM - 4:00PM Sun
Delivery:
Takeaway: Yes (members and reciprocal members only)
Club Macleay is closed for normal services until further notice. The club will be open only to our members and reciprocal members for food and alcohol takeaway. For food takeaway phone 3409 5364 to order.

5 Star - 07 3409 5408
Hours: 6:30AM - 6:30PM Mon - Fri
Hours: 7:00AM - 5.30PM Sat, 7.30AM - 4.30PM Sun
Delivery: No
Takeaway: Yes
5 Star is open regular trading hours. Easter hours will be reduced.

Bay Island Island Bakery - 07 3409 2006
https://www.facebook.com/Russell-Island-Bakery-and-Bay-Islands-Bakeries-Macleay-Island-111489912245635/
Hours: 6:00AM - 4:00PM Mon - Fri, 6:00AM - 3:00PM Sat
Delivery:
Takeaway: Yes
Our regular products are available.

Macleay Island Takeaway - 0475 506 232
https://www.facebook.com/macleayislandtakeaway
Hours: 10:30AM - 2:30PM and 4:30 PM - 7:00 PM Tues - Sat

Delivery: Yes between 2:30PM and 4:30PM (free for the over 70s)
Takeaway: Yes (also Bay Island Eats)
Please ring and place your order between 10:30AM and 2:30PM and I will close between 2:30 PM and 4:30 PM and make the deliveries every day (Tues - Sat).

Mumma's Pizza - 07 3409 4915
https://www.facebook.com/mummaspizza/
Hours: 4:30PM - 8:30PM every day
Delivery: Yes. free for orders over $15
Takeaway: Yes
We are taking extra caution at Mumma's but its business as usual. Remember you can call in phone orders for delivery and pay over the phone by card to avoid coming to the store 3409 4915 or 3409 5822.

My Health Aisle - 0431 250 292
https://www.facebook.com/myhealthaisle/
Hours: 9:30 - 4:30 Mon, Tues, Thurs, Fri, and 9.30AM - 1.30PM Sat - Sun
Delivery: Yes
Takeaway: Yes

My Health Aisle will continue to do deliveries to all islands with the assistance of SMBI Little Bus/Bay Island Eats, Oasis Direct and partnering businesses. We take phone orders and payment over the phone and if we haven't got it we will do our best to source it.

Oasis Direct Fruit and Veg - 0405 260 610
https://www.facebook.com/Oasis-Direct-1321595854539687/
Hours: 9:30AM - 12:30PM Sun
Delivery: Pick up, delivered to your vehicle
Takeaway:Yes
Pop Up Shop at Emerald Isle. Pre-orders can be arranged by emailing greggapps@bigpond.com or calling or texting 0476 041 977. Orders can be collected at the Shop.

Pub Paradise Bistro - 07 3409 5200

https://www.facebook.com/pubparadisebistro/

Hours: Delivery only
Delivery: Yes
Takeaway: No
All prepared in commercial kitchen on Lamb Island.
Frozen meals are available for delivery at $10 each.

See https://www.facebook.com/pubparadisebistro/posts/2366697186954546?__tn__=-R for the frozen meal menu items.

Pub Paradise Bottle Shop - 07 3409 5200
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2233484950220332/
Hours: 10:00AM - 6:00PM every day
Delivery: Yes
Takeaway: Yes (Bay Island Eats)
The Macleay Island Hotel Bottle Shop is open for take away purchases every day.

Scorpion Cafe - 07 3409 4031
https://www.facebook.com/Scorpion-Cafe-Macleay-Island-224862054761429/
Hours: 8:00AM - 3:00PM Mon - Fri
Delivery:Yes (Bay Island Eats)
Takeaway:Yes
Scorpion Cafe is open for take away purchases on Mon to Fri.

Spar - 07 3409 4477
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Macleay-Island-Spar-Supermarket/156165167837561
Hours: 6:30AM - 6:45PM Mon - Fri,
Hours: 7:00AM - 5:45PM Sat and 7:00AM - 4:45PM Sun
Delivery: Yes, Mon and Thurs, Email order before 11:00AM
Takeaway:Yes
Spar is open our normal hours. We have Home Delivery available on Mon and Thurs. Please email your order before 11AM for Home Delivery. email: SparMacleayIsland@bigpond.com

Tingira Boat Club - 07 3409 5341
https://www.facebook.com/Tingira-Boat-Club-165332070195079/
Hours: Closed until further notice
Delivery:
Takeaway:

Willow and Oak - 07 3409 4331
https://www.facebook.com/Willow-Oak-Macleay-Island-114371823537356/
Hours: 7:00AM - 4:00PM Mon - Sat
Delivery: Available from 1:00PM - 3:00PM in cafe next door
Takeaway: Yes (Bay Island Eats)
Payment: Prefer card, but cash available
A good selection of fruit, vegetable and health food products.

Russell Island

Aunty Alice's Cafe - 07 3409 2002

https://www.facebook.com/auntyalicescafe/

Hours: 7:00AM - 3:00PM Mon-Thurs, and 7:00AM - 6:00PM Fri
Hours: 8:00AM - 6:00PM Sat, and 9:00AM - 2:00PM Sun
Delivery:
Takeaway:
Aunty Alice's is open for takeaway orders.

Fresh On Bayview - 07 3409 2713

https://www.facebook.com/pg/FreshOnBayview
Hours: 6:00AM - 4:00PM Mon, Wed and Fri
Hours: 6:00AM - 6:00PM Tues and Thurs
Delivery:
Takeaway: Yes
At Fresh on Bayview you will enjoy fresh homemade food ,hot dogs, sandwich bar, fresh juice, barista coffee, ice cream and more. We specialise in Vegetarian food. Special menu of Covid-19 takeaway meals. Home made apple pie and cheesecake. OPEN GOOD FRIDAY - please call for information.

Island Beans - 0456 390 755
https://www.facebook.com/islandbeansri
Hours: 7:20AM - late, 7 days
Delivery: Yes, call
Takeaway:Yes
Now operating from right next door to Pizza and Kebab Express in the IGA complex. :)

My Health Aisle - 0431 250 292

https://www.facebook.com/myhealthaisle/

Hours: 9:00AM - 4:00PM Mon - Fri, and 9:00AM - 2:00PM Sat
Delivery: Yes
Takeaway:Yes
My Health Aisle will continue to do deliveries to all islands with the assistance of SMBI Little Bus/Bay Island Eats, Oasis Direct and partnering businesses. We take phone orders and payment over the phone and if we haven't got it we will do our best to source it.

Oasis Direct Fruit and Veg - 0405 260 610
https://www.facebook.com/Oasis-Direct-1321595854539687/
Hours: 8:00AM - 1:30PM on Wed and 8:00AM - 2:00PM Sat
Delivery: Yes
Takeaway:Yes
Pop Up Shop at Aunty Alice's Cafe on Wed and Sat. Home deliveries are available by emailing greggapps@bigpond.com or calling or texting 0476 041 977. Pre-orders can also be collected at the shop.

Pizza and Kebab Express - 07 3409 1518
https://www.facebook.com/Kebabexpressteam/
Hours: 10:00AM - 8:00PM Mon - Sat, and 11:00AM - 8:00PM Sun
Delivery: Yes, free for phone orders over $30, otherwise $5
Takeaway:Yes
Pizza and Kebab Express is open for takeaway and home delivery menu orders. Our full menu is available.

Russell Island Bakery - 07 3409 2006
https://www.facebook.com/Russell-Island-Bakery-and-Bay-Islands-Bakeries-Macleay-Island-111489912245635/
Hours: 6:00AM - 4:00PM Mon - Fri, 6:00AM - 3:00PM Sat
Delivery:
Takeaway: Yes
Our regular products are available.

Russell Island Bowls Club -07 3409 1330
https://www.facebook.com/Russell-Island-Bowls-Club-125875007477843/
Hours: 5:00PM - 7:00PM Wed - Sat
Delivery:
Takeaway:Yes
Yan's Bistro will be open for takeaway only.

Russell Island RSL - 07 3409 1372
https://www.facebook.com/russellislandrsl/
Hours: Food 4:00PM - 7:00PM Tue - Sat
Hours: Alcohol 4:00PM - 7:00PM Tues - Sat
Delivery:
Takeaway: Yes
The Russell Island RSL hereby announce the closure of the club for normal service until further notice. The club will be open only to our members and reciprocal members for food and alcohol takeaway. For food takeaway phone 3409 1372 to order.

SupaIGA - 07 3409 2777
https://www.facebook.com/supaigarussellisland/ and
Hours: 6:00AM - 8:00PM every day
Delivery: Telephone orders 9:00AM - 5:00PM Mon - Fri on 07 3206 6680
Delivery: Yes, $10 per delivery, Tues - Sat, subject to transport and order timing
Takeaway: Yes
https://supaigarussellisland.com.au/ is operating as per normal.

Thirsty Camel - 07 3409 1515
Hours: 10:00AM - 6:15PM Mon - Sat, and 10:00AM - 6:00PM Sun.
Delivery:
Takeaway:Yes
Service with a smile at the doorway.

Off-Island Businesses

Banjo's Bakery - 07 3821 5660
https://www.facebook.com/pg/banjosbakery
Banjo's Bakery Café is a bakery café with a difference. We combine freshly baked breads, sweets, savouries, pies & pastries with quality espresso in a take away format for delivery to the Islands. We really do have something for everyone!

Boutique Meats - 0427 613 823
Boutique Meats have been delivering to the Islands for some time now and this will continue to happen throughout the Covid-19 restrictions where at all possible.
https://boutiquemeats.com.au/

Pattemore's Meats - 07 3824 0576
https://www.facebook.com/pg/PattemoresMeats
Specialising in 1st grade quality Beef, Pork, Lamb and Chicken products along with a fantastic range of value added products prepared onsite by our own Master Butchers.

Salads Made Fresh - 07 3207 6877
https://www.facebook.com/saladsmadefresh/
Salads Made Fresh is a salad manufacturing company located in Victoria Point QLD, specializing in a variety of freshly made salads, curries and cut veggies. They supply a number of different customers including restaurants, take-aways and the public.

Skippy's Fresh Frootz - 0451 069 808
http://www.skippysfreshfrootz.com.au/home-delivery/
Deliveries are being made to the Islands. Call for more information.

The Nook - 0455 054 418
https://www.facebook.com/The-Nook-156125594443370/
Farm fresh fruit and veg, as well as health food and Gislers Pies

Woolworths - 1800 000 610
https://www.woolworths.com.au/
Woolworths Home Delivery continues to deliver to the Islands, prioritising access to our most vulnerable customers including seniors, people with a disability and those in mandatory isolation. Once these vulnerable customers have been given first access, we are providing online deliveries to our valued customers where we can.

NON-FOOD BUSINESSES

On-Island Businesses

Lamb Island

SMBI Little Bus - 07 3064 8000
SMBI Little Bus is still offering their regular passenger transport services on Lamb and Macleay Islands.

Macleay Island

Auto and Marine Supplies - 07 3409 5647
https://www.whereis.com/qld/macleay-island-4184/yellowId-15414445
Hours: 8:00AM - 4:00PM Mon - Fri
Hours: 8:00AM - 12:00PM Sat -Sun
Delivery: Yes (Bay Island Eats)
Takeaway: Yes
Operating as normal, please maintain physical distancing!

Bay Islands Medical Service - 07 3409 1151
https://www.facebook.com/Bay-Island-Medical-Service-Russell-Macleay-Islands-106458264327507
Hours: 9:30AM - 4:00PM Mon - Fri
In response to the new social distancing guidelines and Telehealth availability, Bay Island Medical Service will be making changes to how we book in our patients appointments.
Please discuss your health needs with reception when booking to allow us to book an appropriate appointment time and type.
If you can stay home, please do!

Carbrook Veterinary Services - 0400 280 094
https://www.facebook.com/CarbrookVeterinarySerivces1/

We run an emergency service along with routine. Our hours are 24/7, 7 days for our existing clients. We work by appointment only, non urgent and routine procedures are conducted Mon - Fri.

iLegal Services Pty Ltd - 07 3409 4221 or 0455 453 425
Hours: 9:00AM - 5:00PM Mon - Fri
Appointments: Telephone, Facetime, and Skype
All conveyancing is being done electronically to ensure settlements are completed on time.

JSB Earthmoving and Tree Specialists - 0428 259 060
https://www.facebook.com/JSBs-Earthmoving-Tree-Specialists-PTY-Ltd-2146947092232968/
Hours: 7:00AM - 6:00PM Mon - Fri, and 7:00AM - 1:00PM Sat
Business as usual, with observance of physical distancing requirements

Macleay Island Community Library - 07 3409 4243
library@mipa.org.au
Hours: 09:00AM - 12:00PM Mon - Tue
Delivery: Yes (Mon and Tue mornings)
Takeaway: No
The Macleay Island Community Library is operating as a delivery and drop-off/collect service Monday and Tuesday mornings.

Macleay Island Hardware and Landscaping Supplies - 07 3409 5666
https://www.truelocal.com.au/business/macleay-island-hardware-and-landscaping-supplies/macleay-island
Hours: 7:00AM - 4:00PM Mon - Fri
Hours: 7.30AM - 2:00PM Sat, 7.30AM - 12:00PM Sun
Delivery: Yes
Takeaway: Yes
Currently operating as normal.

Macleay Island Taxi - 0418 734 741
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Macleay-Island-Taxi-Hire-Car-Service/1001583986588906
We are operating business as usual.

Macleay Pets Plus - 07 3409 4992
Hours: 9:00AM - 1:00PM Mon - Sat, except public holidays
Delivery: Yes, free home deliveries as always
Takeaway: Yes
For all your pets and pool supplies.
For deliveries, either call the shop number (above) or SMS/TEXT only to Michelle on 0490 675 222 for delivery and you will receive a text back with bank account details for payment. Delivery will be made once payment has been made.

Mater Pathology - 07 3409 4318
Hours: 7:30AM - 2:00PM Mon and Fri, and 9:00AM - 2:00PM Wed

Home Visits: Can be arranged for people who require, speak to your GP

Pharmacy Essentials - 07 3409 5187
Hours: 9:00AM - 5:15PM Mon - Fri
Hours: 8:00AM - 12:45PM Sat, and 8:00AM - 11:45AM Sun
Delivery: Yes (Bay Island Eats)
Takeaway: Yes

SMBI Little Bus - 07 3064 8000
SMBI Little Bus is still offering their regular passenger transport services on Lamb and Macleay Islands.

Russell Island

Bay Islands Medical Service - 07 3409 1151
https://www.facebook.com/Bay-Island-Medical-Service-Russell-Macleay-Islands-106458264327507
Hours: 8:30AM - 4:00PM Mon - Fri
In response to the new social distancing guidelines and Telehealth availability, Bay Island Medical Service will be making changes to how we book in our patients appointments.
Please discuss your health needs with reception when booking to allow us to book an appropriate appointment time and type.
If you can stay home, please do!

Loveable Pets - 07 3409 1573
Hours: 8:00AM - 3:00PM Mon, 8:00AM - 5:00PM Tues - Fri, and 8:00AM - 2:00PM Sat
Delivery: Yes, phone orders and payments available
Takeaway: Yes

* From Mon 7 Sep until further notice all customers will be served at the door. Pet owners will be phoned when their pet is ready for collection.

Affordable pet products, home care and advice, grooming, pet minding, and veterinary care.
We are offering over the phone payment and delivery of products for free. Pick up and drop off of pets is available. We also have puppy and small dog Kindy Tues, Wed and Thurs mornings 9:00AM - 12:00 PM for $25.

Mater Pathology - 07 3409 2946
Hours: 7:30AM - 1:50PM Tues and Thurs

Home Visits: Can be arranged for people who require, speak to your GP

Russell Island Building Supplies (RIBS) - 07 3409 1163

https://www.facebook.com/Russell-Island-Building-Supplies-RIBS-279332919256027/
Hours: 7:30AM - 3:30PM Mon - Fri and 7:30AM - 1:00PM Sat
Delivery:
Takeaway: Yes
Payment: No cash - card only
We will be serving from the door (no people inside).

Russell Island Pharmacy - 07 3409 1366
Hours: 9:15AM - 4:45PM Mon - Thurs, 9:15AM - 4:30PM Friday
Hours: 9:15AM - 12:00PM Sat
Normal trading hours, normal trading conditions.

Russell Island Post Office - 07 3409 1910
https://www.facebook.com/RILPO-Russell-Island-Licensed-Post-Office-273921309315123/
Hours: 8:00AM - 5:00PM Mon - Fri, and 8:00AM - 11:30AM Sat
Trading as normal.

Russell Island Service Station - 07 3409 1269
https://www.whitepages.com.au/russell-island-service-station-11125770/russell-island-qld-11125780B
Hours: 6.30AM - 5:00PM Mon - Fri and 7:00AM - 2:00PM Sat - Sun and PHols
Hours: Closed Good Friday and Xmas Day
Delivery: No
Takeaway:Yes
Operating as normal, except traffic through the doors is in one direction.

Russell Island Soapery - No telephone contact
https://russellislandsoapery.com.au/
Hours: 8:00AM - 4:00PM every day
Delivery:
Takeaway: Yes
To keep social distance, advise time of pickup and your bag of soaps with a complimentary sample will be waiting for you beside our mailbox. This is great value for $$ because our soap normally retail for $6+ each. Soaps are made in our soap room under strict sanitary conditions, work surfaces are sprayed with 100% alcohol, gloves, mask & hairnet worn during production. Message us for payment details and address. Stay safe, wash your hands!

Russell Island Taxi - 0408 785 555
https://www.facebook.com/RussellIslandTaxi/
We are operating business as usual.

Off-Island Businesses

Bay Island Transport - 07 3206 8603
Bay Island Transport continues to deliver daily www.bayislandtransport.com.au

Regards,

Hilton Travis
Humanist Chaplain
https://www.facebook.com/HiltonTravisChaplain

Division 5 Councillor Candidate, Redland City Council, 2020

noreply@blogger.com (Hilton Travis) — Sat, 08 Feb 2020 05:20:00 +0000

After having been asked by a number of people whether I'd consider running for the 2020 Local Government elections as a Candidate for Division 5, having a long, hard think about it and discussing it with my partner and a number of friends, I have decided that I will throw my hat in the ring.

The deciding factor was asking myself if I thought I would have a better opportunity to help my community more as a Councillor - and I can see a lot of opportunity to improve the lives of those not only living in Division 5, but also across the Redlands.

As an active community member who volunteers in a number of areas across the region, I get to speak with a wide range of people about their lived experiences and the disparity between this and the position government seems to have been taking.

I will continue to make myself available to meet with people and groups across the region to listen to your input and to keep your lived experiences front and centre when making decisions about current and future needs of our community.

So with that, I ask you to have a look at https://www.facebook.com/HiltonTravis2020/about to read the "Story" page for a more comprehensive Announcement and I look forward to the opportunity to speak with you and to represent you in Council after the 2020 election.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

The New Microsoft Partner Center (Le Sigh)

noreply@blogger.com (Hilton Travis) — Wed, 14 Nov 2018 06:01:00 +0000

Microsoft's latest regurgitation of their Partner Portal is the Microsoft Partner Center. This is a fair bit different to previous regurgitations as it now requires an Azure AD account to authenticate against. For newer Partners this won't really be an issue as they will have a single Azure AD tenant that is where their MPN Azure Credits and also their IUR Office 365 rights are assigned. Most likely.

But for those of us who have been around since before Azure/BPOS/Office 365 existed, that's likely a very different story. :(

Way back in prehistoric times, many Microsoft Partners had a Live ID (later known as a Personal Account) that they signed into the Partner Portal with. Then Microsoft came up with Azure and created a tenant based on that Live ID and failed to mention this to their Partner Channel. So, for instance, if your original Live ID was FSM@rocks.com then a new tenant named "fsmrocks" was created and it was here that the Azure Credits were assigned.

Since many of us longer-term Partners signed up for BPOS (what Office 365 was originally known as) before taking a serious look at Azure, many of us followed the procedure as we'd do for our clients - create a tenant (such as fsm.onmicrosoft.com), set up a custom domain, assign the License Key here (in this case the IUR key) and away you go. This then created an Azure AD tenant and the world was good.

Or so we thought...

Now there was an Azure AD tenant for your MPN and Azure credits (fsmrocks) and another (fsm.onmicrosoft.com) that had all your real users and the custom domain you used regularly (fsm.com). And unless you really needed to have Azure guests working with Azure AD COnnect back to your on-premises domain, that was also a non-issue.

Now Partner Center is introduced. It needs to use an Azure AD account. But which one? Which tenant?

The more switched on members of the long-term MS Partner crowd here will see this will be an issue. And another Partner issue is just what we don't need. Yet another Partner issue...

So, here we go down the complicated, time consuming and unnecessarily frustrating rabid hole. (Yes, I know - it really is rabid, though...)

You will need to "merge" the tenants. If you don't have anything you're not willing to rebuild (or export and import) in Azure on the MPN account, then that's going to be a lot easier. So you have a source tenant (MPN tenant - in this case fsmrocks) and a destination tenant (Partner Center tenant - in this case fsm.onmicrosoft.com). We will need to migrate your older MPN account to the new Partner Center (relatively easy) and then create an Azure Support Ticket and have the MPN subscription moved to this new Partner Center tenant (unnecessarily frustrating and difficult).

So, either calling Microsoft Support (hhmmm...) or using their online support you will get the existing MPN account converted to a new Partner Center account. The primary login for this Partner Account needs to be a user with Admin rights in the destination tenant, so we'll use FSMisLord@fsm.onmicrosoft.com as an example. This account needs an email box assigned for the duration of this exercise, which can then be removed. Once this has finished, you'll be able to log into both https://Portal.Office.com and also https://My.VisualStudio.com with this account, however the My.VisualStudio site won't have your MPN details assigned yet.

Now the fun really starts.

Signing into the source Azure Portal, see if you can go into Subscriptions and initiate a move of the MPN subscription to the destination tenant (

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/billing/billing-subscription-transfer

). I'm betting it fails. So kick off a support ticket and ask to have your MPN subscription moved to the new Partner Centre account. This is where things really can go South.

Quite probably, you won't have a Partner Center account that Azure can see. I don't know if the Azure team yet know the Partner Center is using Azure AD credentials. I'm sure in a few years or so they will work it out. Thre Azure team should contact you within 24 hours and will likely have no idea what you are trying to do, why, and how to fix it effectively.

So after prompting by the Azure Support call center contractor, from the source tenant email address (the old Live ID) you'll eventually need to send them a lot of information - the MPN Subscription ID you wish to move, the physical address of the old tenant, the last 4 digits of the CC used on the old tenant tenant, the email address of the administrator of the new tenant, some screenshots of you logged into the new Partner Center so they can see you can log in, some screenshots of the My.VisualStudio.com login with the destination tenant admin account showing there is no MPN stuff assigned yet, and maybe something else, depending on which call center contractor you get hold of.

Then from the email account of the Partner Center admin (in this case, FSMisLord@fsm.onmicrosoft.com) you need to send the same details as you sent for the source tenant, but with destination tenant information (CC, email of the source tenant, MPN subscription ID, fully worked proof of Legendre's Conjecture, and possibly some other random information about your neighbors across the road).

Eventually, a few dozen emails and days later (hopefully a lot less for you since I have already detailed a lot of information above to help this procedure out) it should be sorted.

If you need to know where to send a bottle of bourbon, contact me for the details. :)

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

CIAOPS Microsoft Cloud Course

noreply@blogger.com (Hilton Travis) — Sun, 08 Jul 2018 23:41:00 +0000

As an IT provider to SMB clients, do you look up and see this wibbly wobbly cloudy woudy thing and wonder what it actually is? Do you look at Microsoft Office 365 Business and Microsoft 365 Business and wonder what the difference is, except one includes Windows 10 which your clients already own? Are you looking at the Google offerings and wondering what Microsoft could possibly do better?

Or maybe you are rather hoopy and wish to become quite a frood regarding Microsoft's Cloud offerings?

Well, either way, Robert Crane (yes, THAT Robert Crane) from CIAOPS (no, not the real CIA, they already know all about you) who is a really hoopy frood can help you learn more about what Microsoft has to offer the SMBs using their Cloud services.

So, if you're in or around Sydney on 19th July and are wondering which cafe to sip latte at for the day, how about heading over to Cliftons on Margaret Street instead for a great day of learning? If you want more information on this course, have a read of this page, and if you really love the idea of Robert being able to eat from his efforts and receive a lot more information from him regularly (not necessarily just about what he eats), then have a look here.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Microgreens Experiment

noreply@blogger.com (Hilton Travis) — Wed, 10 May 2017 05:24:00 +0000

As part of my "lose it to gain it" plan I'm working on, I need to eat more vegetables (not that I don't eat a lot anyway - I'd gladly become a vegetarian if meat wasn't so god-damned tasty) and more importantly, more vegetables that offer a high nutritional content. So, microgreens!

What are microgreens? Sprouts. Basically. Well, kinda. Microgreens includes the salad greens and leafy vegetables as well as herbs and edible flowers. And sprouts. Microgreens includes a variety of edible, yet immature greens harvested up to a month after planting. You eat not only the first proper set of leaves, but also the stems and even the seed leaves (cotyledons).

So, basically, I want to grow these in a quantity and format that there is enough to eat every day in various forms.

Day 1
So, to do this I went to a garden shop (in this case, just to Bunnings as they were open at 5:45pm one evening) and bought some seeds (shown below) as well as some 5L plastic containers. I then decided to use the 5L containers to store stuff in - such as the unused seeds and potting mix - and use takeaway food containers (of which I have a half dozen or so - Fred's chicken necks come in these) instead.

As I had some left over potting mix downstairs, I wet that with water from the fish tank, put about 2cm in the bottom of each food container then sprinkled the seeds I wanted on top of this potting mix. Some places suggest soaking the seeds overnight - I didn't do this but if there is a less than stellar result from this first attempt, may try that.

I then covered the seeds with a thin layer of dry potting mix and put the covers on the container to keep the moisture in.

I then placed the containers on the verandah where they get a reasonable amount of afternoon sun (except on a day like today when it is heavily overcast and rainy). You can also see the sweet basil and coriander (cilantro) growing in pots - Pete and Linda kindly donated these to my collection. :) For those people who hate coriander, you're wrong! :)

I will spray these containers each day with a spray bottle filled with pre-pooed-in fish tank water (fish poo, not Outspoken Wookie poo - that would be gross). In a few days I should see the seeds starting to germinate and then a week or two after that I should have a decent crop. We'll see... I'll then work out how long they take to grow and what sort of harvest I get and work out how many more containers I will need in a rotation and how often I will need to set a rotation off. :)

Update: Day 6

I've left the containers inside until around lunch time today. They seeds have germinated quite nicely and I'll now leave the lids off and leave them all on the verandah during the day and bring them into the kitchen at night so they can receive early morning sun. Looking good so far! :) The basil and coriander are also coming along nicely.

Update: Day 7

I thought I'd take a closer photo this time - they seem to be doing well - the "D" container did have fewer seeds in it to begin with and the result shows that. They are all looking quite decent and I'll leave them another few days and see how they look before I start sampling them. :)

Update: Day 10

OK, so I think I could call this a success. The "D" packet (Kale, Cabbage Red and Pea Morgan) may need a little more loving, else I will drop it and try something else later. Maybe I didn't sprinkle enough seeds? Aside from that, the rest look good - especially the "B" packet - the Hot & Spicy Mix of Radish, Radish Red Arrow, Kale Red Russian and Broccoli. Now, how did this experiment know that this is the one of the four I was most interested in? :) I'd like the Alfalfa to be a little heavier next time, too. But all up, I'll call this a successful first attempt with a little tweaking needed to get it to a regular production level for myself. :)

I will add another update or two here and then see how long it takes me to eat through this lot. I'll start another batch probably on Monday next week (it is Friday now). This will let me see how many sets I need to have in a rotation to keep this all at a satisfactory level.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Bootable Windows Server 2016 UEFI ISO

noreply@blogger.com (Hilton Travis) — Tue, 08 Nov 2016 01:17:00 +0000

This is an update of my http://hiltont.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/bootable-windows-server-2012-iso.html post.

Back in the Windows F^HVista/7 and Server 2008/2008R2 days, it was possible to install an operating system instance without needing to input a key during the installation process. You could use various methods to make a bootable OS Install USB key then simply remove the \sources\ei.cfg file and you'd be able to choose between all the versions of the OS inside the boot.wim file - this was very handy!

Microsoft has made a change since Windows Server 2012/Windows 8 whereby they don't allow you to install Windows without the use of a Product Key. There is no ei.cfg file in the \sources folder and you are forced to input a Product Key during installation.

Well, there's a simple way to work around this to not only create a bootable USB Key that doesn't need a Product Key during install (and lets you choose among the multiple OS variants in the boot.wim file), but also to re-create a bootable ISO image so that you can then mount this as an installation media source in Hyper-V!

The steps to achieve these goals are:

First, you'll need to download a Windows Server 2012, 2012R2 or 2016 ISO image or use the VL ISO image you already have there. Then you'll need to either extract this image to a folder, or better still, just run the (portable) Rufus application to make yourself a bootable USB key that allows for quite quick OS installs.
Now, you'll need to copy the following into a new plain text file called ei.cfg in the \sources folder of the USB key:
[Channel]
Retail
[VL]
1
If you only need the bootable USB key, you can stop here, however if you now wish to recreate the ISO image file so that you can then use this modified image in a Hyper-V environment...
Download and install the latest Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK) (the latest at time of writing this post was for Windows 10 Build 1607). The installer itself is around 1.7MB and the only component you need to install for this process is Deployment Tools, which is around 68MB
Now, to create an ISO image that will work with BIOS-based systems, assuming the USB Key we just made is available at U: and you're creating the ISO image on D:
- Run the Deployment and Imaging Tools Environment (Command Prompt) as Administrator, change to the "amd64\oscdimg" folder and then type the following:
- oscdimg.exe –l<disc_label> -m -u2 –b<path_of_bootable_img_file> <path_of_installation_source> <path_where_ISO_is_to_be_created>
- Please see this link for an explanation of the oscdimg.exe command-line options
- Example:
  oscdimg.exe -lSVR2016BIOS -m -u2 -b"U:\boot\etfsboot.com" "U:\" "D:\Svr2016BIOS.iso"
If you wish to create an ISO image that will work on both BIOS-based and UEFI-based systems such as a Hyper-V 2012 R2 and 2016 Gen 2 guest instance, assuming the USB Key we just made is available at U: and you're creating the ISO image on D: (this uses a modified version of the instructions found here):
- Run the Deployment and Imaging Tools Environment (Command Prompt) as Administrator, change to the "amd64\oscdimg" folder and then type the following:
- oscdimg -l2016UEFI -m -o -u2 -udfver102 -bootdata:2#p0,e,b"U:\boot\etfsboot.com"#pEF,e,b"U:\efi\microsoft\boot\efisys.bin" "U:\" "D:\2016-ei-UEFI.iso"
- Please see the original post (here) for more information on the command-line options used.
Now, you can burn this ISO image to a DVD or simply use it as the source for a Hyper-V guest and because it contains both the BIOS and UEFI boot data, it can be used to install either a Gen 1 (BIOS) or Gen 2 (UEFI) Hyper-V Guest. :)

Enjoy!

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Network Stack Reset - Access Denied

noreply@blogger.com (Hilton Travis) — Thu, 06 Oct 2016 03:46:00 +0000

A number of times I have seen network stack corruption on a Windows desktop and when trying to reset the stack, an "access denied" error message is given and the stack reset fails.

Here's how to fix this.

Run RegEdit and provide approval/authentication at the UAC prompt.
Navigate to HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\NSI\{eb004a00-9b1a-11d4-9123-0050047759bc}\26
Right click on the "26" key and choose "Permissions"
Click on "Everyone" and then "Full Control" under "Allow", Apply, OK and exit from RegEdit
In an elevated command prompt, type "netsh int ip reset"
Check that all steps reset successfully
Reboot and all will be good with the world⁽¹⁾

⁽¹⁾ Well, with this teensy little part of it at least...

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Microsoft Action Pack Subscription Promo Codes

noreply@blogger.com (Hilton Travis) — Fri, 22 Apr 2016 04:15:00 +0000

Does anyone need to renew their MAPS (Microsoft Action Pack Subscription)? If so, when you go to pay, use the Promo Code "WELCOME2ACTIONPACK" for a 50% discount and then once you have entered this one, enter "GROWYOURBIZWITHMAPS" for a further 50% discount - that brought it from $490 ex tax down to $134.20 inc tax! :)

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Mar 2016 Update to .NET Redistributables

noreply@blogger.com (Hilton Travis) — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 01:42:00 +0000

I have just updated my http://hiltont.blogspot.com.au/2008/01/net-redistributables.html post with links to the latest redistributables for dotNET 4.6 and 4.6.1. :)

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Accessing O365 Shared Mailboxes With Android

noreply@blogger.com (Hilton Travis) — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 08:58:00 +0000

Microsoft's official position is that you cannot access Shared Mailboxes in an Office 365 tenancy from an Android device. Here's how to do it by configuring a new IMAP account with the following settings:

Incoming Settings
1. Email Address = SharedMailbox@Domain.com
2. Username = O365Account@Domain.com\SharedMailbox
3. Password = Password
4. IMAP Server = outlook.office365.com
5. Security Type = SSL
6. Port = 993
7. IMAP path prefix = Optional

Outgoing Settings
1. SMTP Server = smtp.office365.com
2. Security Type = TLS
3. Port = 587
4. Require Sign In = Yes
5. Username = O365Account@Domain.com
6. Password = Password

You should be able to have this work also on iOS and Android (and maybe even Mac OSX) devices by setting an account up in a similar fashion.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Windows 7 Reaches Its First EOL Step

noreply@blogger.com (Hilton Travis) — Wed, 14 Jan 2015 03:05:00 +0000

Windows 7, the operating system that Microsoft simply can't kill off, has reached the first major step in its End Of Life cycle - the end of mainstream support was yesterday (13 Jan, 2015). As can be seen on Microsoft's Product Support Lifecycle page for Windows 7, this date has now been reached and we're now in the Extended Support phase. This is just like when Voyager 1 passed out of our Solar System in August 2012 and into interstellar space.

What this means is that the product will now only receive security updates - no non-security updates will be made available for Windows 7 based products (unless you have a Premier Support Agreement for Windows 7 Enterprise, which I can guarantee no small business has). This is not a nail in the coffin of Windows 7, but it does mean that the product is entering its final years of functionality. Paid support is still available for Windows 7 on a per-incident basis.

On the 14th of January, 2020 we'll have another milestone - the last day of extended (security update) support. That will be the last nail in the coffin of Windows 7 - this is what happened to Windows XP back on 8th April, 2014.

So, right now there's nothing to worry about if you're still running Windows 7 on your computers - currently computer manufacturers are still allowed to supply computers with Windows 7 pre-installed if the manufacturer still has old stock of Windows 7 licenses. But with Windows 8 and also Windows 8.1 already out and Windows 10 on the horizon, it may be time to think about the steps needed to move up to the current/next version of Windows.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Outright theft and plagiarism

noreply@blogger.com (Hilton Travis) — Tue, 13 Jan 2015 23:47:00 +0000

It was brought to my attention yesterday that the author (sic) Pomiraja from the http://www.AskMeBoy.com site was plagiarising my blog posts. I'd like to thank the anonymous person who brought this to my attention.

AskMeBoy have so far, through Pomiraja's plagiarism, republished 26 of my blog posts (as of right now) as Pomiraja's own work without giving any credit to me. To see exactly how stupid this plagiarist is, they have even left my signature on all of the posts they have stolen!

If you would like to see a list of the plagiarised posts, have a look at https://askmeboy.com/?s=outspoken+wookie or the screen captures I took below - as I said, there are 26 at this point in time. I don't know if this will encourage the owners of the website to axe Pomiraja for this plagiarism, axe the stolen and mis-credited posts, or have the site publish a written apology. Their contact page is broken so I could not contact them directly about this, forcing me to make this public complaint about their plagiarism.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Does A 6Gbps SATA Interface Actually Matter

noreply@blogger.com (Hilton Travis) — Sun, 07 Dec 2014 06:19:00 +0000

As we've been told all our lives, bigger is better. But as we also know, what we've always been told isn't necessarily right any more (and often wasn't ever right). So, with that in mind, I present the 6Gbps SATA Interface!

First, for those who get confused by the nomenclature and numbering used in computing, a Byte (B) is a collection of 8 bits (b), a Kilobyte (KB) is 1,000 Bytes, a Megabyte (MB) is 1,000,000 Bytes (or 1,000 KB) and a Gigabyte (GB) is 1,000,000,000 Bytes (or 1,000 MB or 1 million KB).⁽¹⁾

So, with that information at hand, we can do a few calculations to see what 6Gbps really means. An added complication is the way that the data is encoded across the SATA interface using something called 8b/10b Encoding (and here's a link for the nerdy types) which results in a slight loss in data throughput across the SATA. The end result of this data encoding means that a SATA 1.5Gbps (187.50MB/s) interface will deliver a total of 1.2Gbps (150MBps) of data.

SATA Revision	Interface Speed Gbps	Interface Speed MBps	Data Throughput Gbps	Data Throughput MBps
1.0	1.5Gbps	187.5MBps	1.2Gbps	150MBps
2.0	3.0Gbps	375.0MBps	2.4 Gbps	300MBps
3.0	6.0Gbps	750.0MBps	4.8Gbps	600MBps
3.1	6.0Gbps	750.0MBps	4.8Gbps	600MBps
3.2	16.0Gbps	2000.0MBps	12.8Gbps	1600MBps

Right, now that we know the actual maximum data throughput of a bunch of different SATA standards, what we need to do is to look for drives that we can attach to these SATA interfaces and see how fast they can go compares to the data throughput speed of the SATA interfaces.

Drive Manuf	Drive Model	Drive Capacity	Max/Sustained Read MBps
Seagate	Desktop SSHD ST4000DX001	4TB	146MBps (from all zones)
Seagate	Desktop SSHD ST4000DX001	4TB	190MBps (from NAND)
Seagate	Desktop NAS HDD ST4000VN000	4TB	180MBps
Seagate	Laptop SSHD ST1000LM014	1TB	100MBps
Samsung	SSD Pro 840 MZ-7PD512	500GB	540/520MBps (Read/Write)
Samsung	SSD 840 Evo MZ-7TE1T0	1TB	540/520MBps (Read/Write)
Samsung	XP941 Gen 2 X4 M.2 SSD	512GB	1170/950MBps (Read/Write)
Plextor	M6E Gen 2 X2 M.2 SSD	512GB	705/638MBps (Read/Write)

As you can quite clearly see, all of the regular Hard Drives (and even the Hybrid SSD/HDDs) are pretty much around the same maximum or sustained transfer rate of somewhere under 200Mbps, which means that plugging one into anything faster than a SATA 3.0Gbps controller will give no performance improvement whatsoever.

This changes when we start to look at SSDs. The regular Samsung SSDs will deliver up to 540MBps of read performance which is well in excess of the throughput of a 3.0Gbps SATA interface - to get the full performance from any modern SSD you will need to have a SATA 3.0 (6.0Gbps) to connect it to. This goes for many current SSDs that all deliver up to around 550MBps from Samsung, Intel, Crucial, Transcend and others.

Things, however, start to really get interesting when we look at the newer M.2 (SATA Rev 3.2) devices. These can deliver data across an older SATA 3.0 interface, or a PCIEx2 or PCIEx4 interface, depending on the configuration of the drive (and socket). Currently, the Asrock Z97 Extreme6 is the only motherboard to support the X4 transfer rates, however more boards are sure to hit the market soon. The Plextor M6E drive delivers just under 50% faster transfers using its PCIEx2 interface than can be achieved using the SATA specification, and impressively the Samsung XP941 512GB M.2 drive on an Asrock Z97 Extreme6 delivers over 1GBps in read performance!

So, basically, if you have any form of spinning metal disk, be it a hybrid or not, there's no need to upgrade to a 6Gbps SATA controller, though if you have one on your motherboard, it won't hurt to use it. If, however, you have one of the current fast crop of SSD drives, then you will need to connect this to a 6Gbps SATA port to realise the full speed of the device.

If speed is your bag, baby, then a 6Gbps SATA port is not enough and you'll need to look at the newer M.2 X4 devices on a controller that will allow it to run at full speed and right now, the only onboard controller that will handle this is on the Asrock Z97 Extreme6 motherboard. Plug in adapters that will support this spec include the BPlus M2P4S and the PEX16X-LTSSD-ADP adapter. There may be others out there and Google may well help locate them! :)

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

BEASTly POODLEs

noreply@blogger.com (Hilton Travis) — Wed, 03 Dec 2014 08:17:00 +0000

There have been a number of vulnerabilities detected in various security protocols over the past year or two including BEAST Attack, Heartbleed Bug and POODLE Attack. At least 2/3 of these have names that give some indication of their severity and the remaining 1/3 leaves you with a rather interesting visual image. But be ye not distracted by the names - they are all things that need to be addressed in various ways.

Information about the Browser Exploit Against SSL/TLS (BEAST) Attack was released in September 2011 and involved attacking the lack of security in particular implementations of TLS 1.0 traffic. This vulnerability has been pretty much mitigated today (Dec, 2014), however there are still some older, non-updated systems out there that are vulnerable to this attack. The table below lists the earliest version of the products that have mitigated the BEAST Attack (and yes, Apple took an inordinately long time to patch for this vulnerability):

Apple iOS	iOS 7.0
Apple OS-X	OS-X 10.9 (Mavericks)
Google Chrome	Version 16
Microsoft Windows	MS12-006 on Windows 7/Server 2008 R2 and older
Mozilla Firefox	Version 10

Following on from the BEAST Attack were the CRIME and BREACH attacks which, too, have been mitigated in current browsers and are a low-grade threat at worst these days.

The Heartbleed bug, publicly announced in April, 2014, affected anything running OpenSSL. The Heartbleed bug allows anyone on the Internet to read the memory of the systems protected by the vulnerable versions of the OpenSSL software. This compromises the secret keys used to identify the service providers and to encrypt the traffic, the names and passwords of the users and the actual content. This allows attackers to eavesdrop on communications, steal data directly from the services and users and to impersonate services and users. Yup, it is pretty nasty but this, too, is pretty much completely mitigated by the various vendors using this code.

For an easy to understand explanation of the Heartbleed bug, have a read of this XKCD comic. To see if your website is affected by the Heartbleed bug, have a look at https://lastpass.com/heartbleed/ (Heartbleed bug only) and https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/index.html (Heartbleed and more). Any site that you go to that uses the "https" protocol can be checked to ensure it is running a version of OpenSSL that is not vulnerable to this attack. If the site *still* has not been updated, I'd suggest speaking with the vendor, outing them in social media and removing your account and changing any passwords and/or information that was stored in that site.

And now we come to what at first glance may be the fluffiest of all these vulnerabilities - the POODLE Attack. Basically, there's the ability in browsers to request a lower level of security from the server if the browser doesn't support the version the server prefers. This is called a security renegotation. The POODLE Attack uses a recently discovered flaw in the now obsoleted and in the process of fast becoming deprecated SSL 3.0 protocol mixed with a renegotiation attack (forcing the server to drop from TLS 1.x to SSL 3.0). The simple fix is to disable SSL 3.0 on all your web servers, however there are still some applications that use SSL 3.0 (again, speak with the vendor, expose in social media and seriously question your continued trusting of a vendor using 18 year old technology that's been superseded 3 times).

To read more on the POODLE Attack and how to ensure you're doing everything you can to protect against it, have a read of https://scotthelme.co.uk/sslv3-goes-to-the-dogs-poodle-kills-off-protocol/ and then go to https://www.poodlescan.com/ and https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/index.html to confirm your server mitigations have been invoked. There's also a funky little tool from Nartac Software called IISCrypto that can help you properly configure your Windows IIS to mitigate against POODLE and other vulnerabilities.

The table below lists the earliest version of the products that have mitigated the POODLE Attack:

Apple iOS	iOS 8.1
Apple OS-X	OS-X Security Update 2014-005 (Mavericks & Mountain Lion)
Google Android	Chrome - still waiting
Google Android	Samsung Browser - still waiting
Google Chrome	Version 39
Microsoft Windows	Temporary Fix it released, also shows Group Policy fix
Mozilla Firefox	Version 34

If you want to see if your client (browser) is susceptible to the POODLE Attack, go to https://www.poodletest.com/. If your browser is vulnerable, don't trust it to keep your data secure.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Azure Needs To Be Introduced To 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Hilton Travis) — Mon, 10 Nov 2014 07:34:00 +0000

I'd *REALLY* like to know how, if Microsoft is pumping so much time and energy into Azure, it cannot handle the VHDX format, let alone Generation 2 Virtual Machines from Hyper-V 2012? I mean, we're now in 2014 and have the Windows Server 10 Technical Preview available to us and Microsoft still can't handle .VHDX files in their Azure virtual machines!

This is slack. Really slack. It means that even though we who use on-premises Hyper-V Servers can use the current Microsoft technologies for all of our current-release guests, we cannot do it using their Azure platform. It means that we cannot even upload our virtual machines nor use SCVMM and replicate our Gen 2 VMs into Azure.

Come on Microsoft - bring the Azure infrastructure up to your current generation before you get severely left behind yourself! :(

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Medical Woo-Woo Shits Me

noreply@blogger.com (Hilton Travis) — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 23:22:00 +0000

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not a fan of medical woo-woo. So, to help people understand what these quasi-medical woo-woo terms mean, here's a Patient's Guide to Magical Medicine.

And in case someone is looking for the other common term for these practices, it is "SCAM" as in Supplements, Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Windows 8.x Wireless Networking Issues

noreply@blogger.com (Hilton Travis) — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 02:22:00 +0000

One of the more useful features of Windows 7 that has been completely removed from Windows 8.x for no apparently decent reason is the "Manage Wireless Networks" Control Panel applet. It provided you with a wealth of knowledge and gave you the ability to, as its name suggests, manage wireless networks.

So, with the demise of this useful feature, along came the Kerkia group with their WinFi application to return the functionality of this tool in a nice, usable interface. It allows you to re-order, delete, import and export network profiles and it also allows you to change a network profile between Current User and All Users. All User profiles will connect before any user has logged in to the computer.

In addition to this, there are some "netsh" commands you may well find useful if you like doing things via the command-line:

Showing Wireless Profiles

netsh wlan show profile

- output will be something like:

Profiles on interface Wi-Fi:

Group policy profiles (read only)
---------------------------------
None
User profiles
-------------
All User Profile : SSID1
All User Profile : SSID2
Current User Profile : SSID3

Deleting Wireless Profiles

netsh wlan delete profile SSID2

- output will be something like:

Profile "SSID2" is deleted from interface "Wi-Fi".

Exporting Wireless Profiles

To back up all Wireless Profiles
netsh wlan export profile folder="%UserProfile%\Desktop"

To back up all Wireless Profiles on a particular interface
netsh wlan export profile interface="interface name" folder="%UserProfile%\Desktop"

To back up a specific Wireless Profile on all interfaces
netsh wlan export profile "profile name" folder="%UserProfile%\Desktop"

To back up a specific Wireless Profile on a specific interface
netsh wlan export profile "profile name" interface="interface name"
folder="%UserProfile%\Desktop"

Note:

Substitute profile name (SSID) in the command with the actual SSID network profile name that you want to export as a backup.
Substitute interface name in the command with the actual name of the interface that the wireless network is on that you want to export as a backup.
If you want to back up the Wireless Key (password), add "key=clear" after the profile "profile name" section in each of the above commands (needs administrator rights)

For example:
netsh wlan export profile "SSID1" interface="Wi-Fi" folder="%UserProfile%\Desktop"

Exporting Wireless Profiles

To restore a Wireless Profile for the Current User only
netsh wlan add profile filename="\path\to\file.xml" user=current

To restore a Wireless Profile for All Users
netsh wlan add profile filename="\path\to\file.xml" user=all

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Microsoft's Broken Store Upgrade to 8.1

noreply@blogger.com (Hilton Travis) — Thu, 11 Sep 2014 06:52:00 +0000

After spending well over 8 hours trying to work through this issue, including a reasonable amount of Google searching, it seems to me that Microsoft has royally fucked up the Microsoft Store Windows 8.1 Upgrade for Windows 8.0 users. And now, I'll explain it in a little more depth...

For anyone who needs/wants to reinstall their Windows 8 (RTM), then activate with their license key, then install the updates needed (KB2871389 and KB2917499) to get the Windows 8.1 upgrade from the Microsoft Store and upgrade to Windows 8.1, you're in for a bit of a shock if you need to run applications that need the .NET Framework 3.5 (or 3.0 or 2.0) Feature that's normally installable via either the Control Panel or a particular invocation of the DISM command.

If you try and install via Windows Update, you'll be presented with the following error message:

Windows couldn't connect to the Internet to download necessary files. Error code: 0x800F0906 (which, of course, is bullshit if you've got a functional Internet connection - this is an erroneous error message)

If instead you try the DISM way, you'll see either the above error code or the following:

•0x800F081F: The changes could not be completed.

The reason for this, it seems, is because downloading the Windows 8.1 Upgrade from the Microsoft Store gives you the latest slipstreamed install of Windows 8.1 with almost all current Updates and HotFixes. Normally that would be great as it means that you don't need to bother performing a boatload of updates after installing the Windows 8.1 Upgrade, except that it seems that Microsoft has chosen to include in the slipstreamed Upgrade, HotFixes KB2966826 and KB2966828 (see: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1-winapps/cant-enable-or-install-net-framework-35-in-windows/2f221b25-8d17-421f-8c37-1fed61649b4f) which are .NET 3.5 updates, meaning that until you uninstall these (which you cannot do if you've installed the 8.1 Upgrade from the Microsoft Store) you are what's known in the trade as SOL if you want to install .NET 3.5 (including 3.0 and 2.0) in a newly installed Win 8.0/8.1 from the Store.

As mentioned in that answers.microsoft.com thread, if these have been installed as part of the regular Microsoft Update regime before .NET 3.5 is even installed, it is a simple enough task to uninstall them, install .NET 3.5 and then reinstall these updates. This is not the case with the slipstreamed Windows 8.1 Upgrade from the Microsoft Store as these updates seem to have been slipstreamed into the installer, meaning that they don't show as updates that can be uninstalled, therefore they can't be uninstalled, therefore you CANNOT install .NET 3.5 on this system - that leaves a lot of software that won't install nor run properly.

Out of interest, this thread also details issues with these updates - so it isn't just on Microsoft's own site that this issue has been discussed.

I have found - as expected - that even if you install .Net 3.5 in Windows 8.0 before performing the Microsoft Store upgrade to Windows 8.1, Windows 8.1 is installed with .Net 3.5 uninstalled. As I said, I expected this behaviour and would have been rather surprised if this had actually worked.

It seems to me that the easiest fix for this is to re-release both of these HotFixes with better pre-requisite detection and also rebuild the Microsoft Store upgrade image so that these two HotFixes are not included, or alternatively, fix the Windows Update site so that if a Windows 8.1 system with these updates already installed, but .Net 3.5 not yet installed, goes out looking for the .Net 3.5 installation files, it provides a working set of files that will install the .Net 3.5 Feature.

Until then, good luck if you need to get the .Net 3.5 Feature installed on a Windows 8.1 system recently upgraded from Windows 8.0 through the Microsoft Store.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Companyweb on SBS 2003 stopping

noreply@blogger.com (Hilton Travis) — Fri, 15 Aug 2014 06:34:00 +0000

We've all had those sites where, for some reason, Companyweb just stops, needs restarting then runs fine for a while and then stops again. Gotta love it...

Well, I have a site we're in the process of migrating from SBS 2003 to Essentials 2012 R2 + Office 365 where this started happening a few days ago, so I decided to sort out a scheduled script to take care of this for me.

@Echo Off
if exist default.aspx del default.aspx

"C:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin\wget.exe" --user=administrator --password="Seriously, you think I'd post that on my blog?" --timeout=30 --tries=1 http://CompanyWeb/default.aspx

find /C "SharePoint Team Web Site" default.aspx

IF ERRORLEVEL 1 cscript C:\WINDOWS\system32\iisweb.vbs /start companyweb

I'm running this script every 5 minutes which places bugger all extra load on the server, but means that it isn't long after the Companyweb site stops that it is restarted.

Oh, and run it as "nt authority\system" so it doesn't pop up a command prompt window on the user's desktop (ie, the administrator's desktop).

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

APNs

noreply@blogger.com (Hilton Travis) — Wed, 30 Jul 2014 05:22:00 +0000

OK, so I'm sick and tired of visiting various sites to find the APNs for the carious 3G/4G providers our clients use at work and at home, so here's my own list...

Provider	3G/4G	APN	Account type	Comments	URL
Aldi Mobile	3G	mdata.net.au	Personal	No business use - see 1.4.1.d here.	Aldi Mobile
Amaysim	3G	internet			Amaysim
ApexN	3G			Optus based plans	ApexN
Bigpond	3G/4G	telstra.bigpond		Username and password required
BoostMobile	3G	telstra.internet		Mainly personal use - see 1.1 here.	BoostMobile
Exetel	3G	exetel1	Premium	Older Optus-based plans
Exetel	3G	connect	Standard	Newer Optus-based plans
Exetel	4G	yesinternet		New Optus 4G plans
Internode	3G	internode
Optus	3G	internet		Best option	Optus
Optus	3G	yesinternet		Use if "internet" doesn't work	Optus
Optus	4G	yesinternet			Optus
Pacnet	3G	internet	Static IP	Optus infrastructure	Pacnet
Pacnet	3G	pacnet	Static IP	Optus infrastructure	Pacnet
Telstra	3G/4G	telstra.internet	Business account	This is the Telstra 10. private NATted network. Code is "GPTCOMB3".
Telstra	3G/4G	telstra.iph	Any account type	This is their "iPhone" APN. Call and ask for the "GPDWLES3" code to be added to your account.	Whirlpool
Telstra	3G/4G	telstra.extranet	Business account (10 digits)	This gives you a real, usable dynamic IP. Call and ask for the "GPTEXB3" code to be added to your account.
Telstra	3G/4G	telstra.corp	Business account (10 digits)	This is for Telstra Wireless IP WAN users. Call and ask for the "GPCORPB3" code to be added to your account.
Vodafone	3G/4G	live.vodafone.com		This is NATted on the 10.0.0.0/8 network	Vodafone
Vodafone	3G/4G	vfinternet.au		This gives you a real, usable dynamic IP. Or so it appears. But it is NATted through 10.64.64.64 still. Ggrrrr...
Voicetalk	3G	splns357		Try getting any sense out of VoiceTalk!

There are some other sites out there with useful collections of APN configuration information:
Whirlpool APN - Access Point Name

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Samsung Galaxy Note 2 Factory Mode

noreply@blogger.com (Hilton Travis) — Fri, 18 Jul 2014 07:21:00 +0000

OK, after trying everything I could find on the 'Net (unsuccessfully, obviously) I decided to do one final search before buying a new handset and came across http://www.444android.com/showthread.php?p=86539 which is the only thing I found that worked - my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 no longer continually boots into factory mode, which means that it is no longer as useful as a 80.5 x 151.1 x 9.4 mm, 182.5g brick!

Having then found this, I followed another too many hours and too many links to eventually get the LiquidSmooth 4.4.4 ROM installed (basically involving needing to use the TWRP Recovery environment to reset permissions and reformat the entire device (http://teamw.in/project/twrp2/115) and then the ClockworkMod recovery environment from https://www.clockworkmod.com/rommanager to load the LiquidSmooth 4.4.4 ROM (http://galaxynote2root.com/sprint-galaxy-note-2-roms/liquidsmooth-rom-for-galaxy-note-2-android-4-4-4/)), I found that the phone still had no signal at all. It looks like the phone chip really has died. Oh, well - here comes a Note 3! :)

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Embedded "Security" with IPMI and UPnP

noreply@blogger.com (Hilton Travis) — Mon, 23 Jun 2014 22:52:00 +0000

First, let me say that I've been outspoken about UPnP on gateway devices since UPnP was first released - it is simply a Bad Idea^TM.

Recently released information on an IPMI vulnerability involving UPnP on server motherboards has been published by Cari.net here. Basically, it details how the BMC authentication details of almost 32,000 servers are available online, easily, in plain text - from the servers themselves. Add to this the older Linux kernel versions some BMCs were running (any old version of any operating system will contain unpatched vulnerabilities that can be exploited for nefarious purposes) and you have a great recipe for easy and effective hacking of servers.

Not good. Not good at all.

So, again, can I ask that people administering systems actually do their jobs properly and keep up to date with patches and updates and - particularly - disable vulnerable services from gateway devices and implement decent firewall rules to limit access to systems that are supposed to be protected behind these firewalls.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

CPU Cores, NUMA Nodes and Performance Issues

noreply@blogger.com (Hilton Travis) — Wed, 18 Jun 2014 08:34:00 +0000

I have a client who has been suffering from performance issues on a Remote Desktop Server guest that's running on a Hyper-V server. I suppose some details may help here:

Original Configuration
Dell PowerEdge T410 Server
2 * Intel Xeon E5649 CPUs @ 2.53GHz
4 * 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 modules (32GB total)
Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard SP1 as the Hyper-V Host OS
- Windows SBS 2011 (Server 2008 R2 SP1) as a Hyper-V Guest
- Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 (Remote Desktop and LOB Server) as a Hyper-V Guest

Current Configuration
Dell PowerEdge T410 Server
2 * Intel Xeon E5649 CPUs @ 2.53GHz
8 * 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 modules (64GB total)
Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard as the Hyper-V Host OS
- Original Windows SBS 2011 (Server 2008 R2 SP1) as a Hyper-V Guest
- Original Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 as a Hyper-V Guest
- New Windows SBS 2011 (Server 2008 R2 SP1) as a Hyper-V Guest (will replace original instance)
- New Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 (RDS) as a Hyper-V Guest (will replace original instance(1))
- New Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 (LOB) as a Hyper-V Guest
- New Windows Server 2012 R2 (LOB) as a Hyper-V Guest

Now, we took this particular client over recently and they have been suffering various performance-related issues as well as LOB-related issues since the new system was installed (Aug-Sep, 2012). We'll just speak about the performance-related issues here...

This system has always been under-performing, sluggish and unstable. None of those are good things and we found a few causes for some of the issues, but realistically we felt the best result would be achieved by upgrading the RAM in the server and by rebuilding all the servers (software) and adding some more for application isolation purposes - we're not fans of doing what was originally done here (running LOB applications on an SBS 2011 box) or what was then tried as a fix (running LOB applications on a Remote Desktop Server). So, as Server 2012 R2 is the current Windows Server release, that's what we decided to run with - and also because its Hyper-V implementation gives us a lot more options such as live exports and much improved Hyper-V replication.

The one remaining major issue, after the RAM and Host OS upgrade, is still the sluggish performance of the original 2008 R2 RDS guest. It was topping its CPU out (in the guest) whilst barely using any host CPU resources (16%). Yes, the latest Hyper-V Integration Components are installed (for those wondering).

So, under the original Hyper-V Host (ie, 2008 R2), there were 4 Virtual Processors assigned to each guest, which is the maximum number of Virtual Processors that any guest can have under 2008 R2 Hyper-V.

Now, as this is a 2*6-core host (i.e. 12 real cores), which means a total of 24 Logical Processors including HyperThreading, we assigned 8 cores to the original RDS guest and 4 cores to the original SBS guest and moved on to other things such as building the new servers. Apparently, that's not all we needed to do - the SBS box was running fine using 16% of the host CPU resources however the RDS box was CPU-starved.

After a fair bit of investigation, fiddling, Googling, asking questions of people such as Kyle Rosenthal from WindowsPCGuy and general head scratching, hair pulling and frustration (all-round, from both the client and ourselves) I found the issue earlier this afternoon.

But first, things that COULD well have been the issue, but weren't:

1. I thought I bumped the CPU count up but hadn't
2. The host was actually flat-lining its CPU
3. I needed to install the latest Hyper-V Integration components
4. I needed to reinstall the latest Hyper-V Integration components over the top of the existing (latest) components (yet to find a way to actually achieve this)
5. I needed to uninstall and reinstall the latest components (again, yet to find a way to uninstall them)
6. I needed to drop the number of assigned logical processors from 8 back to 4, reboot, then bump from 4 to 8 and reboot again
7. I needed to drop back to a single logical processor, reboot, then up to 8 and reboot again

And now what I found to be the actual issue: "msconfig" seems to have been run in that 2008 R2 RDS virtual guest and then under Boot/Advanced, the # processors was limited to 4. I first thought about something like this after seeing that Device Manager showed all 8 virtual processors, but Task Manager/Perfmon only showed 4. So I had a look in "msconfig" and lo and behold - there was a limit of 4 CPUs set. I unchecked this option, rebooted and amazingly (well, OK, not really), all 8 CPUs were showing.

So, for good measure, I increased this to 12 virtual processors, rebooted again, and all 12 were showing in Task Manager. WOOHOO!!!

Once you go past 12 virtual processors (in this dual 6-core server), NUMA comes into play. NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access) is a way of allowing a processor (in hardware) or a virtual machine (in software) to access local memory faster than remote memory - in hardware, "remote" memory counts as memory connected directly to the bus of a different physical CPU. Now, NUMA not only comes into play when you start adding a large number of cores to a virtual guest, but also when you add more RAM than is physically available on one CPU to a guest - you get an approximately 20% performance hit when crossing a NUMA boundary. Because of this performance hit, you can actually get a performance reduction by adding too many logical processors and/or too much RAM to a virtual guest.

Microsoft has some information on NUMA that states (basically) the maximum memory in a NUMA node is the amount of physical RAM divided by the number of logical processors. That information seems to be rather outdated when you use current multi-core CPUs. If you're looking for some more updated information regarding NUMA node boundaries, I strongly suggest having a read of the article on Aidan Finn's blog found at http://www.aidanfinn.com/?p=11945 which refers to this blog post
http://www.benjaminathawes.com/2011/11/09/determining-numa-node-boundaries-for-modern-cpus/

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Firewall with Hyper-V Synthetic NIC Support

noreply@blogger.com (Hilton Travis) — Wed, 18 Jun 2014 07:16:00 +0000

I've been looking for a while to try and find an Open Source firewall for use in a Hyper-V environment. There's a number out there that will install and work, however trying to find a product with support for the Hyper-V Synthetic NICs instead of just the slower Legacy NICs has been... well... tedious.

I've looked at IPFire before - mainly as it was originally a fork of the IPCop project which is a fork of the SmoothWall project that I was on the development team of for some time. I was re-introduced to IPFire recently on a site visit to try and see if we could find causes for ADSL speed issues and then again at a friend's place last week who was running it in his home office.

So, on a whim, I thought I'd give it another go and see if it supported the Hyper-V Synthetic NICs on Hyper-V 2012 R2 and, well, kinda. During the installation, both the legacy NICs I added to the Hyper-V Guest were detected as was the default installed Synthetic NIC I'd not removed. So, I stopped the install, removed the Legacy NICs, added another Synthetic NIC and restarted the install. During installation, I chose the appropriate NIC for Green and Red, and off we went.

The first boot was great - the IPFire VM came up NICs blazing. :) I fiddled with the web interface a bit then rebooted. That's when it started to look like things weren't quite as I'd hoped - during the boot, I received an error message stating that "Interface green0 doesn't exist", however red0 worked fine. I re-ran "setup" and re-assigned the NICs and rebooted and this time "Interface red0 doesn't exist" was reported. Hhmmm...

So it seemed that Hyper-V Synthetic NICs were kinda supported. I had a look to see if the modules were being loaded properly and noticed a distinct lack of Hyper-V modules in /etc/sysconfig/modules. After a little Googling, I found the found the following information on the IPFire Install Guide:

Hyper-V
IPFire includes the modules required to work properly in a Hyper-V environment, but those modules are not enabled by default. To enable those modules, add the following four lines to the file /etc/sysconfig/modules and reboot:
hv_blkvsc
hv_netvsc
hv_storvsc
hv_vmbus

So, after adding these modules and rebooting a few times to test, all seems fine and IPFire is running with Hyper-V Synthetic NICs. :)

Now, for the speed testing results. I ran this test using 35.0GB of data consisting of some .iso files of around 4GB and also 7.8GB of smaller files of varying sizes (ie, extracted Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard and Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials ISOs) with the following results.

Test 1 - Legacy NICs, across a 1GbE L3 switch from a physical server's USB-attached drive to this 2012 R2 Hyper-V Guest on a RAID-5 SSD Array on a 2012 R2 Standard server running Hyper-V

Test 2- Synthetic NICs, across a 1GbE L3 switch from a physical server's USB-attached drive to this 2012 R2 Hyper-V Guest on a RAID-5 SSD Array on a 2012 R2 Standard server running Hyper-V

Test 3- Synthetic NICs, across a 1GbE L3 switch from a physical server's SAS RAID-5 HDD Array to this 2012 R2 Hyper-V Guest on a RAID-5 SSD Array on a 2012 R2 Standard server running Hyper-V

Results:

Scenario	NIC Type	Source	Speed	Comments
Test 1	Legacy	Remote USB2	0.113GB/min	Yes, Legacy NICs are as slow as this!
Test 2	Synthetic	Remote USB2	1.62GB/minute	This is about the speed expected from USB2
Test 3	Synthetic	Remote SAS Array	4.32GB/minute	This is much more bearable!

So, it shows that the implementation of the Hyper-V Synthetic NIC drivers in IPFire definitely live up to expectations and provide much better performance than the old Legacy NICs can ever dream of.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie