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So I’m testing out how this new plug-in to WordPress worked for pushing updates to my Wall in Facebook. I can tell you it’s quite a pain in the arse! I won’t go too far in depth right now as I don’t know if it even works.

So essentially, the plug-in is CRAP however you apparently can subscribe to your own blogs RSS feed. Wow!

OK, updated the plug-in. Seems to be working now. Lets see if this post updates my facebook page.

Ditched the SFC plug and tried a new one that appears to be working. Lets see if it updates this posting.

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About 3 weeks ago I had Qwest deliver me their new 40mb down / 5mb up VDSL2 broadband service. I have to admit that the experience has been pretty solid so far. Their account sales people were fairly typical in their lack of technical knowledge but the one that I had took the time to call someone from their support group and conference them to get my questions answered.

1. Do they offer a static IP address? -> Yes, 1 IP was like 5 bucks
2. My current ISP allows me to do anything I want, specifically run my own web server, mail server, DNS, etc. Do they restrict or block ports? -> No, with my static IP address they allowed me to do what I want as long as I don’t do “bad” things.
3. Can they set their DSL modem to bridging so I can set the static on my firewalls? -> Yep! Sure can and did!

The only really annoying thing about the installation process is that they wouldn’t allow me to do the installation myself. Since I was ordering the 40mb circuit, I had to have “Professional Installation”. The installer that came out was a REAL QWEST employee! Not some flunky contract installer that other companies use. He had legit Qwest identification and his own Qwest Van. Course, once the guy was here and seen my mad wiring 66 punch down blocks and cross connects, he just sat back and let me do my magic. Total time to installation: roughly 20-30 mins. He even credited me back the $100 that Qwest was going to charge for the installation because he didn’t do anything except plug in his VDSL meter and sync at my upstairs 110 punch down jack.

Am I getting the full 40mb service? Take a look here:

So far no complaints.

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Kids being kids they always push their limits, thus the hammer had to come down. I set up the kids with time restrictions on their Windows Domain accounts and then used their Group Policy Object (GPO) to give them the heave ho after hours.

This is how you do it:

1. Set time limitations up on their User profile by clicking the ‘Account’ tab and then click the ‘Logon Hours…’ button. It’s pretty straight forward at that point. If you really want to evil, you can force them to only log in to specific machines by clicking the ‘Log on to…’ button.
2. Open your GPO manager by hitting the Administrative Tools –> Group Policy Management
3. Edit the GPO – Under group policy objects you should find all of your GPO’s on the domain. Right click over the applied GPO to the user OU, then select ‘Edit’
4. Follow the path: Policies/Windows Settings/Security Settings/Local Policies/Security Options and highlight. This will show you all the options on the right pane.
5. Edit the object: “Network Security: Force logoff when logon hours expire” and Enable it.
6. Close the GPO and force a group policy update by opening a command prompt and enter: gpupdate /force

I would suggest you only apply this to a ‘User’ Organizational Unit and not on the entire domain policy. I recommend disabling the forced logoff on the domain, but enable it on any user OU’s you have.