Lessons Learned (again?)

• Educators say people do not really learn something until they have "learned" it somewhere between 5 and 5,000 times. So, if you are like me, you cannot hear this one too often: BACKUP! Automate your backups and test to make sure that you can restore files from a backup.
• This one's in the same category as the lesson on backing up; cover your assets. You KNOW you should do it! For example, I recently added an obvious but necessary(?) Limitation of Liability clause to this blog. See the bottom of the page...
• Here's a new one for you... Active Directory has a secret that it shares with each domain computer. That secret is updated every 30 days. If/when that secret gets out of sync, strange things start to happen, like the administrator username and password not working on a machine. How does this AD secret get out-of-sync? Say a domain computer has been off for a while or let's say you have to restore a backup of the AD server. Good luck troubleshooting and resolving this AD problem!
• Twitter is the new Facebook/MySpace. It's a waste of time at best. At worst, it is an invitation for bad guys to steal your identity and/or your stuff. It's an old lesson here, most computer problems are really self-inflicted by the user.
• More backup stuff... Windows SBS/NTBackup is very slow. Backing up to a NAS device goes at the rate of about 12 GB/hr. Backing up to a USB-2 external hard disk goes at the rate of about 24 GB/hr. Looking at the Windows Task Manager, CPU and network utilization is minimal during backups. Copying files goes much quicker. What's the problem with backups? These rates are too slow for a daily backup of 1 TB of data.