I’ve been working on a one-way trust so that my DMZ trusts my internal domain users. This is running mixed mode with Windows 2003 servers. A one-way trust shouldn’t require inbound ports (for reasons of security), but it’s the Redmond way, I suppose. So I had to either force users to have a separate login account in the DMZ and internal domains, or setup the trust and allow the traffic. In the end, the latter won out (though from a security standpoint, the former is a much better choice).

The problem I had was that I couldn’t find anywhere that Microsoft documented what ports need to be open between DMZ servers and the internal domain controllers. I ended up opening one port at a time, based on what I saw when I did packet captures on the data. If you ever need to do this, you’ll be happy to see the information posted in this blog entry.

Ports needed to authenticate users on a one-way external trust between Active Directory domains:
tcp 53
tcp 88
udp 88
tcp 135
tcp 139
tcp 389
udp 389
tcp 445
tcp 1025

There may be more ports that are required, but these are all the ones that showed up in the packet captures. When I allowed these ports, it worked. I say there may be more, because with Microsoft, you never know…

…just a quick update for you guys on the “Appendix A” project. I’ve been going back over the bootlegs and pulling the good stuff off to a wav format. The MDs took a while, and I have just a few left downstairs. Tonight I pulled the good stuff from 16 CDs. Yeah, 16.

I told Andy that I’d try to have this stuff done before next Thursday. The plan is for me to deliver the goods Thursday night when I see him at the CD release party for his newest recording “The Far Country.”

(By the way, “The Far Country” will be available in stores Tuesday, August 30. I’ve heard it, and it is amazing.)

Anyway, I figured I could get this done by 9/1, and then (after I set my deadline) I realized how much I have left to do. So there’ll be a few nights like tonight where I have to just buckle down and force myself to make progress on it.

That’s the update for now. Stay tuned…there’ll be more to come in the next few days.

I’m not trying to make this site a mirror of Andrew Osenga’s site. Really, I’m not. And I’m going to link over to him again real quick, but it’s only because he says stuff so well (and I guess he should since he makes his living with what he writes) and I’m not the best when it comes to writing. Me ain’t so good at that writing junk.

Anyway, Andy Osenga has done it again. This time he posted about Pat Robertson’s calling for the murder of another nations leader. Andy says it better than I ever could, so I’ll just link to his blog post about Pat Robertson and let you read about it over there.

Today we said a final farewell to our hero soldier. Yesterday we saw him one last time at the funeral home, and hugged on his family again. We were doing ok until Josh’s mom told us that he kept a picture of himself with our son Brett in his locker. I don’t know if this is the same picture, but it’s a good one:

The service today was an emotional one. It started with slideshow images of Josh, friends, and family. There was singing, crying, rejoicing, crying, preaching, crying, and some more crying. Fox 5 of Atlanta was there; kudos to them for showing up and broadcasting it on the 10:00 news in a way that was honoring to Joshua.

I held together pretty well. I’m not usually an overly-emotional person anyway. I was straight-faced on the outside, but I was crying like a baby on the inside. It wasn’t until the 21 gun salute at the grave site that I really broke down. Then the reading of awards and presenting them to his parents really got me, too.

This was the first military funeral I’ve attended. Even more than that, it was the first I’ve attended for a man who gave his life in combat. It was humbling to watch grown men break into tears, hands over their hearts, as that flag-covered coffin was rolled down the church aisle.

I’ve done a lot of thinking this week. My friends, the Dingler family, have been in the forefront of my mind for the better part of the past 6 days. I’ve known their son, Joshua Dingler, for about 3 years now. When we moved to the Atlanta area, one of the first families we got to know was the Dingler family. They treat and love my family like their own, and they mean a lot to me.

Joshua was about 16 when I first got to know him. We worked together some in church activities, and I got to know him more as I was moving into the sound booth at church. Joshua was always willing to help a friend. I remember one time he helped me move a desk. I don’t even remember why I had to move it, but I remember him going out of his way to be available to lend a hand. He always wanted to help.

I suppose that his servant’s heart and his approach to life is what led him to join the Army. He wanted to help the people of Iraq. Joshua went to Iraq this summer, not as a soldier with orders, but as an American excited about lending a hand in the freeing of a nation.

This week Joshua gave his life for that freedom. He is a hero to America for the freedoms he was protecting, and he is a hero to the people in Iraq for the freedoms he was fighting to give.

Dealing with this loss of a friend has been hard for me. I don’t really feel bad for Joshua; he’s in a much better place and in much better company. My heart breaks for his parents and his brother because of the times they are going through. And the hard part in dealing with this is that I’m not sure what to do about it. I talked to Tommy (Joshua’s dad) the other day and felt like an idiot because I didn’t have anything to say. I just said that we were praying for them, and that I’m available if they need me for anything. Anything more than that just seemed too trite to say.

I think about my life between May and August, and how much it hasn’t changed. This week, when I go to the funeral home to see Joshua’s family, and then when I go to the funeral, I’ll pay a well deserved “thank you” to a fallen hero, and I’ll say a painful farewell to a friend. And I’ll make myself available to a family of friends whose lives are forever changed. The more I think about this, the more speechless it leaves me…their lives are changed forever because Joshua was willing to pay the ultimate price so that my life wouldn’t change. That sounds like the Gospel to me.

Thanks, Joshua.

We received some saddening news last night. One of our friends, US Army specialist Joshua Dingler was killed in Iraq this week. Joshua believed in the freedoms we enjoy in America, and he believed those freedoms were worth fighting for. I remember before he left for Iraq, he was excited to go and lend a hand in the freeing of the people of Iraq. My friend Randall Goodgame wrote the line “sometimes soldiers die setting people free / that’s more like Jesus than I’ll ever be”, and I’m just now really starting to appreciate that line.

So here, on this little spot on the internet, I make this post, hoping that all my fellow Americans who read this take a moment to think about the freedoms they have, the freedoms this man died protecting. This man, Joshua Dingler, is a real American hero, and I’m proud to have known him.

We’re at my parent’s house this weekend. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of reminiscing. Today I’ve been remembering that Sunday afternoon 5 years ago when I entered the world of parenthood. Yup, my little girl is growing up. She’s 5 now. We had a big party with some family tonight. She had such a fun time and totally wore herself out.

Tomorrow is “Christian Education Sunday” at my parents’ church. My dad is a school principal, and this is the day that they parade all of the teachers up in front of the church and introduce them. It’s a big Sunday for this little church. And, in a way, it’s a big Sunday for me. I grew up within the walls of that church/school, so the teachers there had a big impact on my younger years. So tomorrow I’ll be sitting there watching those teachers line up in front of me and get ready for another year of teaching kids. What heroes they are…I could never do it.

So, with all this reminiscing, I’ve realized that I’m just getting older. Seriously, it’s a Saturday night, and I’m sitting in my parents’ living room watching little league baseball while Dad eats boiled peanuts. Only old people sit at home watching TV and typing blog entries at 10:00 on a Saturday.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, “Everybody Loves Raymond” is coming on and I’ve got a craving for some of those peanuts.

Andy Osenga made mention on his blog about a possible reunion concert for The Normals. They were one of those bands that I wish I had been able to see live. Unfortunately, I got to know Osenga’s music after the band quit touring, so I never got to see them play together.

It’ll be in Nashville (probably), and it’ll be either October or November (again, probably). Details here.

You might assume that constantly updated content would attract attention from search engine bots. That would probably be a safe assumption, except that the one thing I know to be true in this game of search engine optimization is that you can assume nothing.

One of the reasons I launched this site was to test some of my theories on search engines. This “constantly changing content” theory of mine (what I normally would have assumed) does indeed appear to be correct.

I’ve been thrown to the top of MSN for several key phrases. (By the way, those of you looking for The Simpsons porn are just sick.) Apparently, the ever-changing content works well if you want MSN traffic. I’m only getting a few people coming through from Yahoo or Google, which leads me to believe that MSN cares more about frequently changed content than Yahoo or Google. It is obvious - based on these stats - that frequently changed content gets MSN’s attention and keeps it for a while.

I haven’t quite figured out what makes Yahoo tick. It seems that without inbound links with target phrase anchor text, it’s hard to rank well in Yahoo. Of course, it seems that everything Yahoo does tries to imitate the almighty Google, so this should be of no shock at all. As for the new content getting Yahoo’s attention, based on these numbers, it seems that Yahoo comes more frequently at first and then levels off. This leveling off behavior makes sense. Really, the only page in the site that gets changed is the home page. Does MSN spider a domain based on the frequency of updates on the home page? It doesn’t seem like that would be a very logical thing to do, but it is the type of thing I would expect to see from someone with a whopping 3% of the search engine popularity.

Google’s traffic patters intrigue me. 67 hits last month to (a predicted) 685 this month is worth considering. I made a major change to the site late May 2005. Since then, I’ve had almost zero people find me through Google (read: sandbox). So then does this high level of attention mean that moreron.com is emerging from Google’s sandbox? And does it also mean that frequently updated content will get you out of the sandbox faster? More tests are needed, but it’s an interesting theory.

This story about wireless access in Boston’s Logan Airport will be an interesting one to follow. As the author mentions, the trial (if it goes that far) will be important because it could set a precedent for rulings on who controls the radio waves in a rented building.

It’s probably only a matter of time before there is some government type of interference (not the radio kind) pushing its way into our lives. How would apartment dwellers with wireless internet connections (and their neighbors who “borrow” the signal) react if apartment complexes were legally able to shut down all of their wireless connections? You’d probably have a riot on your hands.

Plus, if the wireless access points disappeared from apartment complexes, we’d need somewhere else to go wardriving. Not that I would be wardriving though…