And then, suddenly....

Things happen suddenly; usually it is bad things, but some things that happen suddenly are good. Actually, the worse of the bad things happen imperceptibly slowly. Anyway... Some sudden things happened to me today, two good, one bad.

First, I got a raise! After taxes, we're suddenly getting an extra $25 a week, but that's always nice.

Second, I was planning a new VOIP system at church for the eventual demise of our current phone and voice mail systems. Suddenly, today it died completely, but our phone tech had a mortgage company go belly-up and is re-selling us that system for 1/3 of what I was budgeting for. I hope we get new phones, too... I'll find out more tomorrow. So, that's maybe a good suddenly.

And finally, the owner of a company that I hear from often died last night of a hear attack; he was only 58. I can remember how his voice sounds over the phone. He was a nice man, and suddenly I'll never help him fix a computer problem again. OK, this didn't happen to me, but it was still so... sudden.

Windows XP SP3 (Service Pack 3)

Windows XP SP3 (Service Pack 3) is available now as an optional update on Windows Update and will become automatic (probably as a critical update) on June 10th.

If you are using Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft's POS (point-of-sale, not the other thing you're thinking) retail solution, don't install SP3.

Microsoft requires you to have SP1 installed before SP3, and recommends you have SP2 installed (get SP2 from Windows Update) as well before SP3.

In a nutshell, if you have been running updates all along, this won't be a big deal. However, if you load Windows XP fresh on your PC for some reason, this will save you a great deal of time. It adds some Windows Server 2008 compatibility and other networking features, but the big deal is saving time after installing SP2.

So, don't expect any new features. Getting SP2 was essentially getting a new operating system. SP3 is just a time-saving roll-up of patches.

You can download Windows XP SP3 here (316mb) or (more official looking) here. Of course, you should find it as an optional update.

For more, Paul Thurrott's got a review.

Yeah, I know, lots of boring technical stuff lately, but it's what I do for a living.

Update: Microsoft has released a hotfix for Microsoft Dynamics.

Reflections on teaching junior highers

I had the pleasure (and toil) of preparing a Sunday School lesson this pas week for our junior high students. My assigned passage was Genesis chapter 21, verses 1 to 21. This portion relates the birth of Isaac that God promised, and the sending away of Ishmael and Hagar.

I don't intend to give a lesson here, but I did note a few things worth mentioning.

1. First, when you study the Bible only for yourself, you get something out of it that is very narrowly applicable for you. At least, as someone who went to a missionary school from K-12 and attended a Christian college and seminary, that's what happens to me.
   But, when you study for the purpose of teaching others, you have to take into account their concerns and needs, and suddently what God has to say becomes more broadly applicable. This may be because my perceived needs do not always coincide with any given text.
2. Second, junior hight students are in the middle of a transition, the cusp of entering young adulthood, and they are a fascinating mix of youthful naivite and hard-bitten realism. The JH's were innocent about personal relationships and yet really struggled with the screwed up dynamics of mixed families.
3. Third, God surprises you when you seek His message for your people. Something I never would have thought of on my own occurred to me the morning before the lesson, and it changed how the conclusion of the passage would be presented.
4. Finally, I enjoy teaching the young; there is so much energy there! I just don't know if they learned anything!

Ran into an interesting Windows Server 2003 problem today. There was very high CPU utilization by lsass.exe and svchosts.exe (NETWORK SERVICE), and an inability to create outbound network connections. The client has previously rebooted this server to resolve the issue in the past, but wanted an explanation.

This client runs our application from that server using Terminal Services. Our application would not run and was given a cryptic message with the error code 10055. That five-digit code looked like a Microsoft TCP error to me, and sure enough it was. A quick Google searched turned this up:

10055 WSAENOBUFS -- No buffer space available.

Since that is a TCP error, that would mean no network resources are available. I ran "netstat -n" but saw very few established sockets.

Task Manager showed high CPU usage by lsass.exe and one svchosts.exe running as NETWORK SERVICE. I tried to download Process Explorer but Internet Explorer could not get to any websites; the bottom of the page said there was a DNS error.

I opened a command prompt (CMD) and was able to ping www.yahoo.com, so DNS works. I figured I would just FTP the file, so I ran FTP from their server to our web site and got another error:

> ftp: connect :No buffer space is supported

So, another error that points to TCP resources being unavailable.

I tried asking the great Google for answers about TCP resources and error 10055 but mostly found people who rebooted to make the problem go away. There were some Microsoft Articles about increasing the maximum TCP/IP socket buffers, but this is not our server, so I do not want to make changes requiring a reboot without knowing if it would even solve the problem.

Naturally, I examined Event Viewer and saw some error messages that suggested more socket errors which Microsoft's KB indicates a group policy not being able to execute. Probably not the root problem.

I decided to figure out which service was killing the CPU and see if it was also tying up the network resources.

LSASS sustains a bunch of services, including HTTP SSL, IPSEC, Kerberos, NetLogon, NT LM, Protected Storage, Security Accounts Manager, and maybe a couple others. It seems to manage TCP sockets rather than use them, so though CPU is high I figured I could safely ignore LSASS.EXE

OK, svchosts.exe is starts up services, so I ran the Services.MMC (or go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services) to examine services. I went through all the listed services and looked at the details for each. Where the command line included svchosts.exe, I looked for the "-k NETWORK" to determine which svchosts.exe service was running as NETWORK SERVICE. I restarted each one and watched Task Manager to see if the high-CPU instance of svchosts.exe disappeared briefly. When I got to the "Server" service, both svchost.exe and lsass.exe freed up their resources. The Server service also restarted Net Logon, DFS, and Computer Browser.

Ta-dah! I was able to browse the web, FTP, and of course our application worked again. Since this was not our Windows Server 2003 machine, I passed the information along. But, that certainly beats rebooting completely.

Clyde Cook

Not many of those who read this blog will have had to privilege of meeting Dr. Clyde Cook. Nonetheless, his passing is both a sad and glorious thing. Biola has a tribute site for Dr. Cook.

I graduated from Talbot in 2000 and 2008. Biola found me in 1991 and I began attending in 1992. Dr. Clyde Cook was there for my entire Biola and Talbot experience. I was very pleased to hear he was retiring and it gave me joy to think that this wonder servant of God spending well-earned time with family and friends.

I heard about his passage into glory the day after; good friends and fellow Biolans told me. Strangely, while I felt sorrow for Anna Belle Cook, I smiled with the realization that Dr. Cook was received in celebrated in heaven.

"Well done, good and faithful servant." If I have known any man about whom I could confidently assert would hear these words upon meeting our Lord and Savior, it is Clyde Cook.

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New MSN phishing problem

I use several instant messengers. There's a new phishing / trojan (?) program floating around on MSN Messenger. If you get the following message you should not click this:

Hey check this.. http://very.c00l-stuff.com ..brb !!

In fact, as a general rule, don't click on stuff unless you have a good reason.

The scary thing is that the message came from a family member on my contact list. That implies that my family member has an infected PC. So, watch out for unsolicited links to websites and downloads, even from trusted sources. Always double-check.