With Windows Server “8”, you no longer have to use netsh to set IP addresses from the command-line. Thanks to the new NetTcpip module, you can do a whole lot more network configuration via PowerShell.

It’s pretty easy to create a NIC team with Windows Server “8”. If you have tried with previous versions of Windows you know that third-party software was required. Now, it’s just a cmdlet away.

As my friends and coworkers will tell you, I’ve been somewhat obsessed with checking my site stats for the past few days.  I’m not lying when I say that the four posts I wrote about Lion and the ensuing visitors to this site now account for almost 13% of my total views–since 2008.  None of the numbers involved are all that high, mind you, but they’re higher than I really ever thought I’d see on this little old site.  Still, it’s hard not to see your view count “skyrocket” and think you’re doing something right and/or helping others who seem to be having similar problems.  I’ll admit it:  I found some pride somewhere in all this.

Then I went trolling on Google.

It turns out that thecrosseroads.net doesn’t turn up in the first page of search results for pretty much any of the search terms that brought people to the site (which leads me to believe that the users who are finding my site are some pretty persistent people!).  And when you do those searches, a lot better people than me have lent their pens to the topic of Lion.  Don’t mistake me, though; I’m glad people have found my posts useful, if only so that they know someone else feels the same way they do, notices the same things, and holds the same ideas about how things “should work.”

Anyway, enough about me.  Hit the break for a couple of resources that may help you make more sense of Lion.

It’s Sunday and I’m really trying to fight off the urge to go take a nap instead of finishing up my little series on Lion. Over the past couple of days I’ve written down my thoughts on Mission Control; the Mail, iCal, and Address Book apps; and changes in Finder, spelling auto-correct, and some miscellaneous preferences. This final post will concern the new Application/OS Resume, Auto-Save and Versions, and a couple of miscellaneous applications for which I didn’t have enough to say to warrant creating another post.

Part three of my initial impressions of Lion covers Finder, the new spelling auto-correct feature, and some miscellaneous settings. Make sure to read parts one, two, and four of this series as well!

Next up in my mini-series detailing my initial impressions with Lion is the PIM suite: Mail, iCal, and Address Book. (Be sure to read parts I, III, and IV of the series.) I won’t say I’m a heavy email or calendar user (I’m not a manager or anything… ;–)), but I am an email admin, and a persnickety one at that. I expect my mail and calendaring applications to behave in a certain way, and when they don’t, my feathers get ruffled and I get annoyed. Continue reading for a (probably too lengthy) list of pros and cons about Lion’s PIM suite.

Everyone is going to have their own opinion of Apple’s new operating system, Lion (10.7 for those of you keeping count). I upgraded both my personal MacBook Pro and the work iMac yesterday during lunch, and before I went home I had three full pages of hand-written notes—both good and bad—detailing my initial impression with the new OS. At this point I’ve only used Lion for a day-and-a-half; in all probability I’ll find other depressing quirks and unexpected niceties that could be added to these notes.

In typing up my list I realized it would work better as a multi-part series instead of one long description of everything I noted. This first part will deal with Mission Control. (Parts II, III, and IV follow this.)

It turns out that trying to create your own filesystem is a bit more difficult than one might expect. I have been nose-deep in various documentation about filesystem theory and the layouts of various popular filesystems for a little over a week. (Okay, okay, so most of it begins with “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…”, but still—lots of good information out there.)

Things I have learned, after the break.

I’ve been using some form of Linux since somewhere during the last half of 1998.  In that time, I’ve used quite a few of the various distributions that are out there. Slackware was the first, since it was the easiest (and cheapest) for us to get via my friend’s ISDN line, since he had to pay per-minute charges (this was in Germany).  Next up was Red Hat 5.2.  I got the CDs from their booth at CeBIT ‘99, apparently on Thursday, March 18 (and no, that’s not me).  Incidentally, this was their first release containing GNOME, before it was integrated into the distribution as their main window manager; it was the talk of the booth, and it’s also why I definitively know how to pronounce GNOME.  After that came SuSE Linux 6.1 (also procured during the first half of ‘99), a 5-CD monster of a distro (for the time) that included a 440-page user manual—I purchased that for something like 60 DM at the time.  Once I got back to the States I think I looked at Mandrake Linux (I’m guessing somewhere around version 7.x).  I really like it because it was dead-simple to configure—it was like the Ubuntu of today, trying to make it easy and accessible for newbies to use Linux.

There were a few things in the last post that I indicated I still wanted to get done before calling the MBR “done” and actually moving on to the VBR.  Those things were:

• Validate that the second stage bootloader has the correct signature (0xAA55) at the end, and bail if it doesn’t;
• Take into account BIOSes that don’t support reading via LBA for fixed disks and booting off of floppies by falling-back to CHS INT 13h calls;
• Reduce the bloat by streamlining boot and error messages, etc.

I finally got around to implementing these three things, so the MBR is done (at least, for now).