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For staff and board members at member boards of nursing only. Sign in with your authorized user ID issued by your board of nursing.
Note: Membership to NCSBN is not open to individuals.
Learn the application and registration process.
The 2014 RN Practice Analysis is now available for review. The report contains an analysis of entry-level practice in both the U.S. and Canada. Overall, the findings reflect the continued congruency of entry-level nursing practice in the U.S. and Canada and support the use of the NCLEX for licensure/registration decisions in both countries.


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Comic 253
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======Panel 1======
======Panel 1======
Steve and
Steve and in pool of tears, bile and sweat in beavers body.

Steve: "This could be problematic"

Steve: "This could be problematic"

======Panel 2======
======Panel 2======
Revision as of 09:05, 17 January 2007
Link: Comic 253
Translations: http://www.beaverandsteve.com/wiki/images/8/8f/Finnishflag.png Finnish, http://www.beaverandsteve.com/wiki/images/5/52/Frenchflag.png French, http://www.beaverandsteve.com/wiki/images/5/57/Polishflag.png Polish, http://www.beaverandsteve.com/wiki/images/0/04/Danishflag.png Danish, http://www.beaverandsteve.com/wiki/images/7/79/Italianflag.gif Italian
Title: Unfeasible Voyage - part 4
Date: January 16, 2007
Summary: Steve gets out of beavers body after getting rid of the cold and shrinks him down to normal size, only to have left beavers exocrine system all messed up.
Onomatopoeias used: "GLOOOP!", "SWIRL!", "GLUG", "NYERR..", "CHOOO!", "POP!", "PPAZAK!", "SHRINK", "RUB RUB", "X 10,000"
"Fin" style: Magnified germs on beavers tail
Number of panels: 11
Panel 1
Steve and Cold Virus in pool of tears, bile and sweat in beavers body.
Steve: "This could be problematic"
Panel 2
Cold Virus drowning towards the nostrils while Steve is holding on the tear pipe for safety.
Cold Virus: "GLAKK!"
Cold Virus swirls.
Cold Virus: "I am unable to sufficiently express the unpleasantness of this situation! Gurgle!"
Panel 3
Steve: "Just call me 'docter Steve'"
Panel 4
Beaver NYERR'S
Panel 5
Beaver CHOO'S!
Panel 6
Beaver looking at his snot.
Beaver: "I wonder if I should be worried about that."
Panel 7
Steve POPS out of Beavers ear in his submarine vessel.
Beaver: "Ouch!"
Steve: "I did it! You're cured and all without inflicting massive damage to your exocrine system! Honest."
Panel 8
Steve SHRINKS Beaver with a PPAZAK! sound to it.
Beaver: "And you're sure you didn't break anything while you were in there?"
Steve: "Don't worry Beaver, I left it as good as new."
Panel 9
The earway, tears and bile pipes are all wrongly connected.
Panel 10
Beaver RUB RUB'S his eye.
Beaver: "I think I've got something in my eye..."
Steve: "It's ok Beaver, you don't have to pretend. It's been an emotional experience for me too."
Beaver: "Pardon?"
Steve: "But atleast we've seen the last of that cold!"
Panel 11
Cold shows up.
Cold: "I don't suppose you could direct me toward a shower?"
Beaver looking down at his tummy.
Beaver: "My gall bladder feels so sad."
Fun Facts
|Previous comic:
|Next comic:

subset: commoncrawl


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RZA Discusses Sex Habits of the Wu-Tang Clan in GQ Magazine
With his film, "The Man with the Iron Fists," hitting theaters tomorrow (Nov. 2), Wu-Tang Clan leader the RZA has been everywhere of late, not that he's complaining.
"It's good to be important. It's nice to be nice," the eccentric producer-dir


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10 Aug 2007
|Printable version | Email to a friend
|Highest Altitude Restaurant in Vermont
Stowe gondola near the top of Mount Mansfield
Here is a different idea for lunch: eat at Stowe's Cliff House restaurant on Mount Mansfield, the highest mountain in Vermont. The restaurant is nearly at the top of the mountain. It is open from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm everyday the gondola is running. Reservations are not taken for lunch.
The food is a little pricey but very good. And you get a million dollar view free through floor-to-ceiling windows. You will see the Worcester Range in Vermont and on most days, the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
Cliff House underwent a renovation last year and it looks great. There is a new exhibition kitchen where chef Jeff Egan serves an American cuisine menu with rustic Vermont recipes based on locally grown ingredients.
The Cliff House will be open for dinner August 18 and 25; Sept 1, 15, and 29; and Oct 6 for special Summit Series dinners. These are five course dinners that start with a champagne reception. Reservations are required - you can reserve online or by calling 800-253-4754. Space is limited. You can see a schedule and menus for the Summit Series dinners here..
(c) 2007 Jeff Connor Grunberg Haus
|Attractions , Unusual
|posted by grunhaus at 13:12


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Part of the Battle of Hogwarts takes place in the school's entrance hall, which was redesigned for the scene. "This is one example of how things just evolve and how Hogwarts changes from one movie to the next," says Craig. "In the final battle, it's required that the statues jump down and take part in the battle. So we needed to change the look of the entrance hall."
Photo: Jaap Buitendijk


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Show details
Top Chef
Aspiring chefs compete for their shot at culinary stardom.
Stacy Cogswell, Joy Crump, Ron Eyester, Gregory Gourdet, Doug Adams, Aaron Grissom, Adam Harvey, Melissa King, Rebecca Lamalfa, Mei Lin, George Pagonis, Michael Patlazhan, James Rigato, Katsuji Tanabe, Keriann Raesfeld, Katie Weinner, Aaron Cuschieri, Benedetto Bartolotta, Bret Pelaggi, Brian Huskey, Carlos Gaytan, Carrie Mashaney, Janine Booth, Jason Cichonski, Justin Devillier, Louis Maldonado, Michael Sichel, Nicholas Elmi, Nina Compton, Patricia Vega, Ramon Bojorquez, Sara Johannes, Shirley Chung, Stephanie Cmar, Travis Masar, Richard Blais, Carla Hall, Fabio Viviani, Spike Mendelsohn, Dale Talde, Antonia Lofaso, Michael Isabella, Jennifer Carroll, Elia Aboumrad, Stephen Asprinio, Tiffany Derry, Tiffani Faison, Jamie Lauren, Dale Levitski, Angelo Sosa, Casey Thompson, Marcel Vigneron, Tre Wilcox
Tom Colicchio (Judge), Padma Lakshmi (Judge), Gail Simmons (Judge), Hugh Acheson (Judge), Richard Blais (Judge), Emeril Lagasse (Judge), Questlove (Judge), Anthony Mackie (Judge), Dan Cutforth (Executive Producer), Jane Lipsitz (Executive Producer)
We're sorry, there are no episodes of "Top Chef" available to record on your "East Coast " lineup in the next 14 days.
``Top Chef'' heads to New England for the first time as the 16 cheftestants take their culinary battles to Boston. The challenges bring the chefs to such iconic Beantown locations as Fenway Park and the tavern that inspired the classic sitcom ``Cheers.'' Tasks include preparing a meal using only ingredients that were available at the first Thanksgiving, and a fan-appreciation challenge that sees the contestants cooking for a selection of the show's fans. New additions this season include sudden-death challenges that occur without warning, and former ``Top Chef'' winner Richard Blais becoming a recurring judge, joining returnees Tom Colicchio, Gail Simmons, Hugh Acheson and host Padma Lakshmi. The grand prize package includes $125,000 cash, a feature in Food & Wine magazine and a showcase at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, Colo.
Current cast
Tom Colicchio Padma Lakshmi Gail Simmons Hugh Acheson Richard Blais Stacy Cogswell Joy Crump Ron Eyester Gregory Gourdet Doug Adams
TiVo subscribers who like "Top Chef" also like...
Program data from Tribune Media Services, Inc.


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- Independent
- The Enterprise
- The Recorder
A former St. Mary's teacher originally charged last spring with a sexual solicitation offense and displaying obscene material has been placed on probation, online court records state, on a guilty plea to a telecommunications offense.
Arturo V. Leon III's employment with St. Mary's public schools quickly ceased last June after school officials learned details of the investigation, the superintendent reported. Leon, now 30, of California was released on $25,000 bond after his arrest in St. Mary's on the charging papers alleging he engaged in sexually explicit conversations from the summer of 2012 until March of this year on an online chat website, with a Baltimore detective who presented himself as a 14-year-old girl.
Charging papers detailed Leon's alleged conversations with the detective, including Leon's requests for intimate photographs and inquiries about sexual experiences, clothing and personal hygiene.
Leon pleaded guilty last week in a Baltimore circuit court to the telecommunications offense, online court records state, and he was sentenced to three years in prison, all of which except for four days was suspended, and he was placed on three years of supervised probation. A charge of the display of obscene material to a minor was closed.
During the investigation, the detective obtained grand jury subpoenas to find the identity of the suspect, reviewing records from Yahoo and Metrocast cable that led to a police visit last May with Leon's roommate in California's Wildewood community.
The roommate called Leon, who soon arrived at the residence and "agreed he chatted about the chats" described in court papers, initialed a webcam picture of himself and a nude picture of himself, and identified himself as a teacher at Esperanza Middle School in Lexington Park, according to charging papers filed by Baltimore city police detective Donald K. Shores.
"Leon stated that he never had anything happen at school like this," the detective wrote in a charges application, adding that the suspect handed over two laptop computers to the investigator.
Thomas C. Morrow, Leon's lawyer, said at the time of his client's arrest that no evidence whatsoever of any solicitation offense had been presented. Morrow could not be reached this week for comment on the case's disposition.
Leon taught social studies at Esperanza, and coached sports, including Great Mills High School's cross-country teams, according to web pages of the county's public schools. He also was the head coach of the school's boys lacrosse team.


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Link Ink: Dubstep Power Rangers, Transformer Hats And 'Arrow' In Action
Video: The Samurai Rangers kick it to an official dubstep remix of the Power Rangers Super Samurai theme song. In related news, the world is a wonderful place and everything is going to be okay.
TV: In response to the succe


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Jakarta's Inspiring Istiqlal Mosque
Home » Jakarta's Inspiring Istiqlal Mosque » Find Restaurant » Kafe Pisa Menteng
Kafe Pisa Menteng
Aligned with its logo, the leaning Pisa tower in Italy, Kafe Pisa offers authentic Italian atmosphere and luscious garden oasis just like Italian patio.
In 1993, Kafe Pisa served ice cream made of pasta ingredients directly imported from Italy, which is then further added with fresh produce fruits and also freshly made everyday without the use of additives. In addition to serving ice cream, Kafe Pisa also served pizza, omelet and sandwich. To expand its business, Kafe Pisa began to serve up additional varieties on the main menu, which includes appetizer, main course, deserts with family's concept, and value-added entertainment services, including staged live music on a daily basis.
To seize good franchise opportunities, Kafe Pisa has opened up additional outlets under the branding of Kafe Pisa and Restaurant in several locations in Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya and Medan.
Kafe Pisa always tries to serve customers with better and outmost services by serving a wide range of fine quality products which can be enjoyed by all with offering a wide range of products, including: Pisa Kafe, Pisa Gelato, Pisa Pastry, Pisa Coffee, Pisa Production and Pisa Catering.
|Jl. Gereja Theresia No.1 Jakarta Pusat, 10350
|021-3100 151
|021 - 315 27 29


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Anita Baker Explains 'Only Forever' Album Inspiration, Tyrese-Assisted Single 'Lately'
Anita Baker can't sit still. The Ohio-born, Michigan-raised soul singer has about as much energy as a toddler on a sugar high as she speaks about Only Forever, her first album in seven years. She's excited for the release, and rightfully so. The woman


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Ah, 4th of July. The one day a year we celebrate America's independence by watching fireworks, eating barbecue, and sipping on festive...
15 Beer Cocktails You'll Freaking Love
1½ oz. VeeV Açaí Spirit
1 oz. sliced strawberries
3 oz. club soda
2 oz. Vita Coco Coconut Water
Garnish: blueberries
Place strawberries in the bottom of a highball glass. Add ice, VeeV, club soda, and coconut water. Garnish with blueberries on top, and stir.
2 oz. Cointreau
1 oz. lemon juice
½ oz. Crème de Mure
Garnish: blackberry
Combine triple sec and lemon juice in a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake and strain into a rocks glass filled with crushed ice. Top with Crème de Mure. Garnish with a blackberry.
25 Yummy Party Drinks


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Kevin Remde's IT Pro Weblog
IT Pro Resources
TechNet EventsMicrosoft Security Response CenterMicrosoft Virtual AcademyKevin's Evaluation Download Center
IT Pro Evangelist Blogs
Blain Barton Blain Barton's Blog@BlainBar
Brian LewisMy Thoughts on IT...@BrianLewis_
Dan Stolts IT Pro Guru Blog@ITProGuru
Jennelle Crothers TechBunny@jkc137
Kevin RemdeFull of I.T.@KevinRemde
Tommy PattersonVirtually Cloud 9@Tommy_Patterson
Yung Chou Yung Chou on Hybrid Cloud@YungChou
Logically, it makes sense. Forever it seems whenever any software company comes out with a new version of their product, the added features and functionality require extra hardware. In the case of operating systems, that seems especially true. Software vendors are always trying to build their solutions not to fit today's hardware, but what hardware will be available tomorrow – trying to forecast what the hardware specs will look like for the mass market in order to take advantage of hardware "state of the art" when their software finally goes on sale.
So it should follow that Windows 8.1 requires more hardware (memory/cpu/disk) to run than Windows 8. And Windows 8 required more than Windows 7. And Windows 7 required more than Windows Vista. And… you get the idea.
"And what if that's what I believe?"
You'd be wrong. Sorry.
For the purpose of this article and our comparison, we'll just take the basic hardware aspects of a typical PC: Processor, Memory, Available Hard Disk Space, and Graphics Processor,
Windows Vista*
Windows 7
Windows 8 & 8.1
1 GB System Memory
Disk Space
40GB + 15GB for install
16GB (32bit) or 20GB (64bit)
DirectX-9 & WDDM
* Windows Vista Home Premium or better.
There are of course other considerations that may require additional specialized hardware to support specific new functionality or features such as enterprise-class BitLocker or Client Hyper-V. Click the OS Names in the table above to go to their respective hardware requirements pages.
But.. do you notice something interesting in that table? Other than the disk space requirements (which actually went DOWN when going from Windows Vista to Windows 7), the requirements are all exactly the same! And considering the fact that Windows Vista was released to the world on January 30, 2007, we're letting you run the latest and greatest PC operating system on hardware that could be 7 years old!
So as you can see, the hardware that you are running Windows Vista or Windows 7 on very likely will run Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. Myth = BUSTED
"But wait a second… Doesn't Windows 8.1 require a touch screen?"
Nope. In fact, my friend and coworker Keith Mayer addressed that very question just yesterday in his post for this series.
"What about screen resolution? What's required?"
That's a valid point. Minimal screen resolutions do differ a little. That's one of those "if you want to take full advantage of the capabilities of the OS" sorts of issues. If you have a really old monitor that can't do anything better than 800x600, then you're probably already suffering with Windows Vista or Windows 7, and the Windows 8 won't work with anything less than 1024x768. Something to consider, for sure.
"What about performance? Can I expect my PC to be faster or slower with the newer operating system?"
Ah.. that's a very subjective topic. "Your mileage may vary", mainly because everyone has certain things that they wish would be faster, as well as various things that many of us unwittingly do to our systems that actually slow them down over time.
The good news is that there has actually been a lot to improve the performance of Windows and the things that we typically find we're waiting for. A perfect example is system startup or shutdown; one of the most obvious time-wasters in older operating systems. Even with technologies such as sleep and hibernate available, the majority of people still prefer to shut their computers down completely at night or when they're not using them. So a lot of focus was given to improving this aspect of performance in Windows 8 and beyond. For an exhaustive walk-thru of how this was done in Windows 8, check out this article on the Building Windows 8 blog: Delivering Faster Boot Times in Windows 8
For even more well-documented examples of performance improvements beyond Windows 7, check out all the great content via this bing search: "windows 8 performance improvements"
And for good tips and tricks on how to optimize your performance in general, check out this article: Optimize Windows for Better Performance
So in conclusion – If you were thinking that you'll need to buy new hardware to replace what you are already happily running Windows Vista or Windows 7 on in order to get most of the benefits of Windows 8.1, now you can hopefully see that a simple OS upgrade is another option.
If you're interested in evaluating Windows 8.1: http://aka.ms/Win81client
If you'd like to purchase an upgrade to Windows 8 (which includes the free upgrade to Windows 8.1), check out the Windows Store.
And if you'd like to donate $1000 towards sending your favorite IT Pro Technology Evangelist to Microsoft TechEd , contact me through this blog and I'll send you my mailing address. (My Mom always said, "It never hurts to ask.")
This article is part of our March 2014 series of blog articles entitled "Windows 8.1 for Business" by your Microsoft Technology Evangelists and guests. For the full list of articles in this series please visit the series landing page: http://aka.ms/Win814Biz
Many of you in the U.S. may be familiar with the Microsoft "IT Camps" that we host now and then, where we teach you some great stuff and then give you the opportunity to work with the technology through hosted hands-on lab exercises. These free in-person events have become very popular. They're so popular, in fact, that our next of IT Camps (kicking off this week) are pretty much all filled to capacity! (This is why I don't have a link to share on where to go to register. We're all full!)
The labs we're doing this time involve configuring and driving a highly available virtualization and private cloud platform using Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager. Our IT Campers will configure storage pools, networking, virtualization hosts, a highly available host cluster, and even virtual machine templates and service templates. All-in-all there are about four hours of really rich lab work awaiting our IT Camp attendees.
Beyond the fact that these labs were only for our IT Camp attendees, a sad limitation in the timing of the lab. We could only make the online versions available to you for the day of the event only, and no more. So invariably at every IT Camp I get comments that go something like this:
"Hey Kevin.. I love these labs, and I'd love to be able to do them again."
"Hey Kevin, I have other people at my company that would learn so much from these labs."
"Gosh, Kevin, I wish I could have access to these labs for more than just today."
And each of these are usually followed by the big question:
"Do you have any instructions on how to build these lab virtual machines so that I can run them on my own hardware?"
Well.. you're in luck! For this new set of IT Camps, and even for those of you who are unable to attend, I've created a Virtualization Lab Build Guide.
"A Virtualization Lab Build Guide?"
Yes. I provide easy instructions and PowerShell scripts to help you quickly spin up and configure the 5 virtual machines that are used in the Virtualization lab; the same lab that we're doing at our IT Camps. And of course I'm also including the original lab manual; the same one that we're handing out at our events. So once you have the machines built, you can go through the labs over and over again to your heart's content, or quickly spin up training environments for your other co-workers.
"But, what will I need to have to do this?"
For the software on your host machine, you'll have to be running Windows Server 2012 R2 with the Hyper-V role installed. The free evaluation installation works just fine.
In order to be able to run all 5 virtual machines on the same physical box, your server (or like in my case, a Hyper-V-capable spare laptop) will have to have at least 16GB of RAM and at least 200GB of free disk space.
The software required to build the virtual machines is all evaluation or free software:
Once downloaded, you just extract the "Virtualization Lab Build Guide.zip" file containing the resources, put the above software installations into the .\Base folder, and run the script that creates the virtual machines.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Full instructions are included in the guide. Download the Lab Manuals and .ZIP file from my SkyDrive here: Virtualization Lab Build Guide
Feel free to send me any feedback or questions, either in the comments on this blog post, or through the contact function ("E-mail Blog Author") on this blog. This is version 1.1, so I definitely expect to be fixing and improving things as I hear from you all. I sincerely hope you will make good use of these resources!
And if it is useful to you, then I'll be doing more of these in future.
Even if you've never tried Windows 8 or Windows 8.1, you may have seen the advertisements showing off the lovely colorful "touch-first" interface (previously known as the "Metro" UI). Even some people using a traditional old non-touch laptop will reach out and touch the screen when they first encounter the start screen. (And by "some people", I mean my wife while using my old Lenovo laptop on vacation a couple of years ago.) So, as lovely and colorful as the start screen is, it's easy to assume that you might need – or at least be most happy with – a device with a screen you can touch in order to get the most out of the latest version of Windows.
"Isn't that the case?"
I'm going to argue that it's not. Right this very minute, for example, I'm using my Surface Pro as my work device of choice…
"Ha! Touchscreen!"
Yes, a lovely touchscreen which is currently sitting flat and closed on top of my desk, while my Surface is plugged into my KVM switcher connecting me to my big Acer monitor and ultra-durable Microsoft MultiMedia Keyboard 1.0A and Microsoft Wireless IntelliMouse 2.0. (Gotta love that name.) Can I touch my screen? No.. I can't even reach it from where I'm sitting.
"And you're just as happy using just your keyboard and mouse?"
I'll be honest. When I'm using new Windows 8 apps, sometimes I'd rather touch them. And some of those apps are really better suited for hands-on-navigation or gameplay anyway, which are great when I'm sitting in my TV chair or on an airplane. And when simply browsing the Internet using IE 11 I do prefer to be able to swipe and pinch and zoom and touch with my fingers. But for most of my work, I'm still on the desktop apps where typing and precision selections with my mouse are still the best way to get stuff done.
"Okay, Kevin.. I'm almost convinced. Show me how to work Windows 8.1 without a touchscreen."
That's where my friend Keith comes in! Keith Mayer is the author of today's article in our "Windows 8.1 for Business" (or "Why you're wrong about Windows 8.1") series. In his write-up, he goes further to prove, and gives real examples, tips, and tricks around how Windows 8.1 is the better choice for ALL devices, whether or not you put fingerprints on your screen.
Welcome to March! And not that I mean to alarm you, but welcome to the final month before support ends on Windows XP. I know that many of you supporting IT and devices for your businesses have known this for a while, and are either already done or continuing to work on migrating to Windows 7 or Windows 8. But which one, and why?
What's interesting to me is that there is a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) surrounding Windows 8.1 and whether or not there is any real benefit to providing and supporting it as the default, best-choice for business devices. And while I know that most of you have indeed done proper due-diligence in order to come to the conclusion that Windows 7 is a better choice for your businesses, it just may be that not all of your information was based on fact, or was missing some very important beneficial tidbits which, if you had known, might very well have changed the equation.
That's the purpose of this March blog series: "Windows 8.1 for Business". We, the 9 Microsoft Technology (IT Pro) Evangelists in the US, plus a few special guest authors, want to take this month to help dispel some myths and provide some useful resources for you as you evaluate (and hopefully choose) Windows 8.1 as your business desktop/laptop/tablet/phablet platform of choice.
Below is our schedule, which will be continually kept up-to-date with links to completed articles as they become available. Stop back often, because we sincerely want you to benefit from this information. And if you have any questions or comments, please please please post them in the comments either here, or at the articles themselves.
UPDATE: Thank you for your patience! Due to the importance of the topics we are going to cover, we've had to delay posting to this series. We will continue soon (this week of March 17), and I'll add items to the schedule as soon as we're sure of their availability. Keep watching…
All the best!Kevin Remde
March 3
Series Introduction (this article)
Kevin Remde / @KevinRemde
March 4
Oh Start menu, how do I miss thee…or do I?
Matt Hester / @MatthewHester
March 5
Beloved Desktop, Where Art Thou?
Jennelle Crothers / @jkc137
March 6
Windows 8 works great without a touch screen
Keith Mayer / @KeithMayer
March 7
Does Windows 8.1 require more hardware than Windows 7?
The team of US DX IT Pro Technology Evangelists is doing another series of articles and TechNet Radio interviews. The topic: Modernizing your Infrastructure. The goal: To give you as many resources as you'll need to get your infrastructure up to speed, whether you're simply looking for ways to migrate off of Windows Server 2003, or even move workloads and applications up into Microsoft Azure.
"Sounds great, Kevin! Where is the series landing page?"
Go here: http://aka.ms/ModernCloud
Bookmark it and check back often. There should be new content there every day.
Speaking of new content, today's first-article-in-the-series is by Dan Stolts. He writes about and documents using the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Tools. CHECK OUT HIS ARTICLE HERE
"Hey Kevin, are you writing any articles for the series?"
Absolutely. I have one going live tomorrow, others scheduled for later. And you'll also get to see my pretty (?!) face in a couple of TechNet Radio interviews over the next couple of weeks.
Stay tuned…
Well, you can. In fact, my friend and coworker Jennelle Crothers explains it all for you in today's article in our "Windows 8.1 for Business" blog series. She writes…
"Ask anyone who uses a computer for every day work tasks, they might say that they LIVE on the desktop and can't be bothered with the new modern start menu and interface of Windows 8.1. I'll tell you that I also live on my desktop." "I use Outlook, Word, OneNote and Excel, Lync, LiveWriter and IE 11 for a crazy number of line of business applications for work. For native apps, I tend to find myself in the PDF Reader or the native mail app to checking personal email. Most of the social media I consume I use apps for Twitter, Facebook and Yammer. I think the default full screens used by native apps are great for viewing and interacting with my friends, watching video and reading news."
"Ask anyone who uses a computer for every day work tasks, they might say that they LIVE on the desktop and can't be bothered with the new modern start menu and interface of Windows 8.1. I'll tell you that I also live on my desktop."
"I use Outlook, Word, OneNote and Excel, Lync, LiveWriter and IE 11 for a crazy number of line of business applications for work. For native apps, I tend to find myself in the PDF Reader or the native mail app to checking personal email. Most of the social media I consume I use apps for Twitter, Facebook and Yammer. I think the default full screens used by native apps are great for viewing and interacting with my friends, watching video and reading news."
Make sure you check out her entire article, which includes tips on how to make it easier for you and the users you support to go directly to the ol' familiar desktop.
This post is part of our March 2014 series of articles entitled "Windows 8.1 for Business" by you're your Microsoft US IT Pro Technology Evangelists and guests. For the full list of articles in this series please visit the series landing page: http://aka.ms/Win814Biz
Active Directory. You know it. You love it. You've loved it since it made its introduction back in Windows 2000 Server. Over 90 percent of the world's business IT relies on Active Directory for local user and machine management, authentication, policy application, and directory services.
And with every new version of a Windows Server product, we make improvements and add new functionality that either directly impacts Active Directory, or indirectly impacts (read: enables) other new functionality on behalf of your users, applications, and managed resources. So naturally we couldn't do a series of "Why Windows Server 2012 R2" articles without discussing it.
If there were an overall theme on top of the updates in Active Directory in Windows Server 2012 R2, I would have to say it's the new capabilities to support the "Consumerization of IT" and "BYOD".
From this TechNet Document:
"One of the most prevalent IT industry trends at the moment is the proliferation of consumer devices in the workplace. Employees and partners want to access protected corporate data from their personal devices, from checking email to the consumption of advanced business applications. IT administrators in organizations, while wanting to enable this level of productivity, would like to continue to ensure that they can manage risk and govern the use of corporate resources."
"One of the most prevalent IT industry trends at the moment is the proliferation of consumer devices in the workplace. Employees and partners want to access protected corporate data from their personal devices, from checking email to the consumption of advanced business applications. IT administrators in organizations, while wanting to enable this level of productivity, would like to continue to ensure that they can manage risk and govern the use of corporate resources."
To support this notion of giving our employees the ability to get their work done from their personal devices, of course there has been new functionality added to Active Directory to support it. But before I get ahead of myself, why don't I list out the 4 key value propositions – the main things you get that are new, and enabled by new capabilities in Active Directory:
NOTE: These each are very big topics in their own right. So, rather than doing an exhaustive write-up on each one, I'll summarize the capabilities and benefits here, point out what specifically has changed in Active Directory to support it, and then point you to more complete documentation and user guides for further study if you wish.
Join the Workplace
What is it?
As a company employee who has his/her own device, and with the blessing of the company I work for (who is really interested in allowing me to be mobile and productive on whatever device I have), I want to be able to get stuff done. So I will "join" my device to the "workplace".
"Isn't that like joining the domain?"
Yes. Well, sort of. But more correctly, NO. It's not going to be a domain-joined device in the way that we've been managing devices since Windows NT. In this case, we're registering the device with the domain so that it (and its owner) will be trusted when requesting and running company-secured applications, accessing company-secured data, or otherwise accessing company-secured resources. When you join a device to the workplace, it becomes "a known device and will provide seamless second factor authentication and single-sign-on to workplace resources and applications." And once the device is "known", IT can leverage that knowledge to also apply additional configurations (example: pushing company VPN connection settings to the device).
What changed in AD to support it?
The main change here was the addition of the Device Registration Service. The DRS, which is a new part of the Active Directory Federation (ADFS) role, creates a device object in Active Directory, and tracks the associated device's certificate in order to represent the device's identity.
For more information:
The SSO (Single Sign-On)
Here's a simple scenario: You have a device that you're using to connect to a company SharePoint server. You've registered your device with the company ("workplace join"), so your device has a certificate that is known to the directory as being yours; an employee in good standing. Without SSO, you would be prompted for a login with every application or company SharePoint server you try to access. But with SSO, you will only be asked one time.
In addition to the Device Registration Service, the Active Directory Federation (ADFS) role allows claims-based authentication to occur based on trusted certificates. Once the user is authenticated (username + password + trusted device + other factors as needed), the claim then is trusted and, while valid, can be used to launch company applications or access company data.
For more information:
Authentication of users "Anywhere-and-on-Any-Device"
Well.. it's not just enough to be able to sign in once on my non-domain-joined, personal device. I also want to be able to use it from anywhere. With nothing more than an internet connection, I should be able to have authenticated, secured access to my company applications data; whether they're hosted in public cloud locations or on the private corporate network.
The Web Application Proxy is a new role service; a new part of the Remote Access role. Web Application Proxy "provides reverse proxy functionality for web applications inside your corporate network to allow users on any device to access them from outside the corporate network. Web Application Proxy preauthenticates access to web applications using Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS), and also functions as an AD FS proxy."
So, now armed with SSO (facilitated through ADFS), the authenticated user + device can access applications on the corporate network without having to use a VPN connection.
Trusting your "Anywhere-and-on-Any-Device" Users
In the end, who are we really trusting? We have users who have user accounts with passwords in Active Directory. They also registered their device in Active Directory so that we know we can trust it, and the user. Hmm.. that's two things that we're trusting. Is this what we might call "second factor authentication"?
ADFS in Windows Server 2012 R2 supports more than just the permitted (or denied) user in ADFS claims. We've added "multiple factors", including user, device, location, and authentication data. Authorization claim rules have a greater variety of claim types.
"in AD FS in Windows Server® 2012 R2, you can enforce multi-factor access control based on user identity or group membership, network location, and device (whether it is workplace joined)"
"in AD FS in Windows Server® 2012 R2, you can enforce multi-factor access control based on user identity or group membership, network location, and device (whether it is workplace joined)"
The idea here is that Microsoft has expanded Active Directory in Windows Server 2012 R2 to support tracking devices that are "registered" (not joined) to the domain. With those trusted devices we have further technology to grant authenticated access to our trusted users; even using multiple forms of information (multifactor authentication) to grant secured access to applications and data. We allow users to sign-in one time and continue to have access to multiple apps and resources, from wherever they are (thank you ADFS). And we even have a Web Application Proxy to allow that trusted access directly to internal resources as well.
Here are some other topics relating to "What's New" in Windows Server 2012 R2 and Active Directory:
And of course, if you haven't had a chance to try it out, you can download the evaluation of Windows Server 2012 R2 HERE.
What do you think? Is Microsoft doing the right thing to add support in Active Directory and supporting technologies to allow any user, any device, from anywhere to be able to get work done? Please add to the comments if you have an opinion, a question, or any sort of off-the-wall comment.
Over the past several weeks, my teammates have all contributed to a very valuable series of blog articles entitled "Disaster Recovery Planning for IT Pros". They've covered topics such as how to get started in planning, and Server Virtualization and how it applies to Disaster Recovery, and testing your recovery plans. And they've discussed technologies that can help – the tools in your DR tool belt - such as Hyper-V Replica, Windows Azure, and the newer Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager.
For the full list of excellent articles, CLICK HERE.
"What is an Offline Backup?"
Before I dive in here, I want to be clear about what I'm covering. For the purpose of this discussion, I'm not talking about tapes or off-site storage of backed up data. That's something more commonly called an archive. Regular storage and archival for recovery from past history is an important (and big) topic in-and-of-itself; perhaps the topic of another blog series for another day. For this article, however, I'm talking about having a copy of some important digital asset that was saved in a way that can safely and fully be recovered as a complete unit, in case the original location is unable to house that asset. (Yeah.. a disaster.) That digital asset could be a server OS installation, a directory, a database, a virtual machine, a desktop image, file storage, an application; really whatever you consider valuable and worth the effort (and cost) to have protected in a way that can be quickly restored if the worst should happen.
"Do I really need an offline copy these days?"
That's a fair question. With all of the excellent (and many now built-in and included) technologies in modern operating systems such as Windows Server 2012 R2 , it could be argued that you don't really need to create backups of some items. A virtual machine will start running on another cluster node if the hosting node fails, and the storage supporting that machine could be on always-available file server cluster (Scale-Out File Server), with redundant paths to the storage, and supporting arrays of disks that, if they or the controllers that support them fail, are redundant and easily replaced even while the data continues to be available. (And I haven't even touched on application availability within a virtual machine or the benefits of virtualization guest-clustering.)
But even with all of this great technology, not all data or files or applications are equally important, and not all are worth the same amount of investment to ensure their availability and – important to our DR topic – their recovery in case of a really bad thing (disaster) happening.
The case for the offline backup will be determined by these factors:
"How important is your data?"
As part of the planning process (which Jennelle introduced to you early in our series), you'll take an inventory of all of your digital assets, and then make a priority list of all of those items. The priority should be in order of MOST critical (i.e. My business can't function or survive without) , to LEAST critical (no big deal / can rebuild / etc) assets. Now, going on the assumption that at some point your datacenter is turned into a "steaming pile", you'll draw a line through your list. Items above the line are critical to your business overcoming the disaster. Items below the line.. not worth the investment in time or effort. (Note: that line will shift up or down as you work through this, as you get into actually figuring out the costs associated with your plan, and importantly as you re-evaluate on a regular schedule your disaster preparedness.)
For each of your inventoried and prioritized digital assets you're also going to be defining a couple of objectives – the Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and the Recovery Time Objective (RTO).
The RPO is the answer to the question: "How much data can I afford to lose if I need to recovery from an offline copy of that data?" In its simplest terms, it decides how often or how frequently I make a new offline copy of that asset. An example in Hyper-V Replication would be the setting that determines how frequently a new set of changes are replicated to the virtual machine's replica copy. If I'm replicating changes every 5 minutes, then at most I could lose up to 5 minutes of changes should the worst happen, so my RPO is 5 minutes. Is that good enough? Maybe. It depends on what that virtual machine is actually doing for you.
The RTO describes how long you're willing to wait to bring that digital asset back online. If I'm still doing all of my backups to tape, and then shipping those tapes offsite, it's going to take a lot longer to recover at a new location than it would, say, to take advantage of another site and/or Windows Azure to host your stored backups. Can I afford to wait a day or two? An hour? A few minutes? How critical that asset is to your business continuity will help you set a desired RTO for that item.
"How much are you willing to spend?"
Again, there are expensive and there are cheaper options for addressing the RPO and RTO, and you'll ultimately base how much you're willing to invest by the relative importance of the digital assets in bringing your company back quickly (or as reasonably quickly) from disaster.
"And once I've implemented everything, I'm done?"
Of course not. You'll regularly test your recovery. And less frequently – but still critically – you'll occasionally re-evaluate your priority list and the methods for meeting your objectives. Of all people, IT Pros know how quickly technology evolves. What seemed like a good, solid plan and a decent implementation of tools last year may not fit as well today now that newer/better/faster/cheaper options are available. And that's not even considering the shifting nature of your own environment, the servers, the applications, the growth of data.. all need to be re-considered on a regular basis.
In conclusion…
There is definitely a case for offline backup. What and how you do that backup will be defined by you, based on priority, and adjusted by cost. And making those decisions and implementing your plan isn't the end of the process. You must revisit, re-inventory, re-prioritize, adjust and test your plans on a regular schedule.
This is post part of a 15 part series on Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity planning by the US based Microsoft IT Evangelists. For the full list of articles in this series see the intro post located here: http://mythoughtsonit.com/2014/02/intro-to-series-disaster-recovery-planning-for-i-t-pros/
One of the reasons some people weren't comfortable with Windows 8 from the beginning was for the lack of their familiar start menu. In today's article in our "Windows 8.1 for Business" series, my friend Matt Hester delivers the run-down on the benefits of the Start Screen vs. the old Start Menu, and provides some useful tips and workarounds to help you adjust to this big change.
And as an added bonus, Matt even gives us a "Fun Super Tip" – a built-in way to add something very similar!
Dear TechEd Diary,
This entry is several days over-due, but I hope you'll understand. Towards the end of the conference the schedule is tight, and the exhaustion is real. So I thought rather than taking time out of my day on Thursday or Friday I'd just take in and enjoy the rest of the week and finish up my diary writings after I've had a little rest.
On Thursday (Day 4) I skipped the first session of the day.
Oh.. give me a break. I needed a little extra sleep after the IT Pro Community Party at the Hughes Hangar on Wednesday night. (see photos below) I did get to the conference in time (or so I thought) for "TWC: Malware Hunting with Mark Russinovich and the Sysinternals Tools" (DCIM-B368), but even though I was there 20 minutes before the start, the room was "full" and people were waiting outside to get in. So instead, I decided to head down to the Hands On Labs, where I re-visited my past life as a Developer and walked through a lab showing me what's new in the latest version of Visual Studio.
After lunch I attended "Case of the Unexplained: Troubleshooting with Mark Russinovich" (WIN-B354). This time I got there 40 minutes early and managed to get a good seat. The room was full soon after.) This was the 2014 version of Mark's popular session that he's done for many years now, where he shows off the System Internals tools and how they were used to solve strange workstation and server issues.
And.. I confess… I skipped the last session of the day and went back to my hotel. The weather, which through most of the week was very unseasonably cool, was finally warm enough in Houston to enjoy a little time poolside.
Following a lovely Chinese dinner (we highly recommend the China Garden) with my coworker Jennelle Crothers and MVP and author Ed Horley, the evening party at Minute Maid Park was fun. Lots of food and drink, and live music stationed around the perimeter. The Dueling Piano Bar took tips to allow our friend Don Donais to play drums on a few songs. And the group "The Spazmatics" were a fun 80's-tribute band. After the main party was over, several of us went to Pete's Dueling Piano Bar for more entertainment.
Friday was a sleep-in day, followed by leisurely packing, heading to the airport, and sharing a plane home with several of my Minneapolis friends.
"So what's next, Kevin?"
I'm glad you asked. I'm going to be planning, facilitating, and participating in a series of blog articles entitled "TechEd 2014 Favorites", in which I and my coworkers who attended the event will document some of the important announcements and our favorite moments from TechEd 2014. Watch this blog for more details coming very soon.
I'll leave you, dear TechEd diary, with some photos taken at the events described above.
DJ Joey Snow cranking out the tunes at the IT Pro Community Party
My west coast coworker (and newbie on the team) Jessica DeVita, Simon May, and Ed Lieberman.
Mark Russinovich explaining the unexplainable
The drawing at the Adaptiva booth for a Harley Davidson motorcycle. I didn't win.
The little 3' deep pool shared by the Courtyard and Residence Inn. It was empty when I got there, but he chairs filled up soon after. I guess I'm a trend-setter.
Minute Maid Park on the walk over.
Entertainment at the party.
Hmm.. Odd that nobody is in the salad bar line.
View of the field and main stage
Don Donais rocking out with the pianos at the dueling piano bar.
The Spazmatics
Pete's Dueling Piano Bar
See you next year!!
Whether or not you choose to believe me, here are a two things that I know to be true:
Often our marketing and operations people send out notices about up-coming events, such as our IT Camps or live Microsoft Virtual Academy trainings. But many of you aren't getting those e-mails, because either you didn't know how to set up your information and preferences about you, your interests and how you'd like to be contacted, or at some point you said "no" to getting more e-mail from Microsoft. And if you opt out for one thing, you're opting out for everything. (See point #1 above)
"So.. what if I do want to be contacted about up-coming events?"
You need to edit your information and preferences associated with your Microsoft Account (formerly LiveID). And that's what this blog post is all about.
The Profile Center: https://profile.microsoft.com/RegSysProfileCenter/
At the profile center, you can sign in and set up or edit the information about you and your preferences. It's broken down into these 5 areas:
Once you go to any of those pages and sign-in, you can add to or edit the information that Microsoft has about you. Importantly, in order to get notifications from Microsoft about events or resources that are important to you, you need to fill in the correct business and interest areas, and then allow Microsoft to contact you via e-mail. Here is a quick summary of each of the areas, and I'll highlight the areas that will help you get our e-mails in future.
Personal Information
Share as much as you're comfortable with, but know that if you don't give us accurate information, it's not going to help us to keep you up-to-date. IMPORTANT: Even if you see the proper e-mail address, make sure you click edit next to it to see whether or not you "would like to hear from Microsoft…". If it's un-checked and you'd like to hear from us via e-mail, make sure you check the box and click save.
Business Information
Being accurate with the kind of business you work for (or want to work for) will help us better determine what makes the most sense for how we address you or what we send you. It also helps us figure out in a more general sense the populations and communities out there, and helps us shape our priorities and where we put our attention (and dollar$).
Technology Interests
This is the area that you should revisit on a regular basis. Seriously. It had been awhile since I personally looked here, and I found that I was still interested in Windows Vista but not at all interested in Server 2012 or Windows 8. As technologies change, you need to make sure we know that you're interested in learning more about it.
Contact Preferences
It won't help you if we can't contact you. Sure, it's entirely up to you, but many people are surprised that they've opted out of contact at some point and never knew it. Make sure that if you would like the occasional e-mail about items relating your business and technology interests, that you at least check the "E-mail Address" box.
E-mail newsletters on various topics are also available on a regular basis. Feel free to subscribe to the ones you're interested in.
Your Privacy
Of course, you can go back to the Profile Center anytime and change or update or verify your preferences. And if you need more details on Microsoft's Privacy policies, you can find it all here: http://www.microsoft.com/privacystatement
Any questions? Concerns? Rants? Insults? I can take it. Put them in the comments.
Welcome to another in our new series of "Modernize your Infrastructure" articles. Today I'm pleased to share with you the details of yet another free and easy-to-use assessment tool from Microsoft. The purpose of this tool is to help you answer the following important question:
"Are my servers and services able to be migrated to Microsoft Azure?"
And that is a fair question; particularly if we see the value, but don't really know where to begin. If in the process of modernizing my infrastructure I consider perhaps moving some (or all) of my servers – whether they're physical or virtual machines - off of my local hardware and into "the Cloud" as Microsoft Azure hosted Virtual Machines as an extension of my datacenter, then it would be good to have a starting-point assessment to help me learn about and consider what might be required; and even better if it was based on my current environment and some initial goals and desires.
And that's what the Microsoft Azure Virtual Machine Readiness Assessment is all about.
It's a free and easy-to-install tool that, when run on supporting OS and with the proper credentials, will ask you a number of questions about your environment and about your needs and desires (the end goal), and result in a lengthy report based on your answers and, importantly, based on what it was able to detect in your infrastructure.
"Can you show it to me?"
Showing you the whole process would be overkill here. But how about I show you some of the highlights.
Requirements and Installation
The download page is where you'll find a good description of how and where the tool can be run. In basic terms, it will run on any OS newer than Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. It does have some .NET framework requirements as well. The instructions are pretty simple:
1. Download and run WAVMRA.EXE on the computer you want to run the assessment from2. Complete the installation steps3. Launch the tool4. Select the technology you want to assess and proceed through the wizard experience
Run it
On the workstation you've installed the tool on, make sure you run it as an administrative account that has rights to administer Active Directory, SharePoint, or your SQL Servers (whatever it is you're interested in assessing).
Naturally, the first question you are asked is "What would you like to assess?"
Your answer here will determine some of the remaining questions concerning what kind of connectivity, applications, availability, and performance you're going to require.
Let's say that In my example I'm going to want to extend my Active Directory domain into the cloud. Using my single corporate domain I want to extend authentication to other applications that I want to host on virtual machines in my Microsoft Azure network.
Prior to the remainder of the questionnaire, you are reminded of the requirements for this tool to be able to run successfully:
Answer the Questions
The rest of the process prior to scanning your environment and generating the final report, is to ask you additional questions. In my scenario, I'm asked 13 more questions. "All questions must be answered as part of completing this assessment." Here are a few samples:
Note that each question provides additional detail about what's being asked, and you are often giving the option to basically say "I don't know yet". Trust me – The report will give you excellent detail on and pointers to additional information about all of the options available.
And eventually…
The tool generates a Microsoft Word .docx file that you can save, print, share.. whatever you want to do with it. Inside you'll find a detailed report on what you've chosen, what's required of you, and links to additional information and further learning around your next steps. The report is organized into three parts: "Ready", "Set", and "Move".
And then shows you "What we checked", with a quick visual indication of which items are fine, and which ones should probably be looked into further.
And that's it!
Hopefully you'll find this a useful first-step into extending your infrastructure into the Microsoft Azure cloud.
Go Forward "To the Cloud!"
Well diary, if you ever had any doubts about "the cloud", they should have been eased a bit if you attended or watched the live stream of Mark Russinovich and Mark Minasi's "Mark and Mark" cloud discussion this morning. Besides being entertaining, it was very informative. It's always great to hear the opinions of someone as important as Mark Russinovich is to Microsoft, and to the industry we serve. And it's a good look under the hood of not only what we're doing now, but there are hints of what's coming. And to me, it's very exciting.
The session, if your interested, is DCIM-B386 – "Mark Russinovich and Mark Minasi on Cloud Computing". At the time of this writing, the recording isn't yet available. But it will be soon.
The talk took the form of an informal interview, with Mark asking Mark the questions.
Mark Minasi asked Mark Russinovich the questions concerning Microsoft and cloud services and often drilling specifically into Microsoft Azure. On Azure, they discussed new capabilities, the amazing scale that Microsoft has (Did you know that last year Microsoft purchased 17% of the world's servers for their datacenters?) as well as topics of security and data privacy. It's well worth a (re)view.
"What else did you learn about today?"
I learned more about the fundamentals of some of the new networking capabilities in Microsoft Azure. Session: DCIM-B305, "What's New in Microsoft Azure Networking". They did a good job of summarizing the many new capabilities, such as site-to-site VPN, multi-site VPN, reserved static public IP addresses, and more. The demos showed that some of the configuration isn't quite as straightforward as they'd like it to be; but it's a great start, and definitely something I'm looking forward to playing with (and blogging about) some more.
The other highlight of the day was another Mark Russinovich presentation: DCIM-B306, "Public Cloud Security: Surviving in a Hostile Multi-Tenant Environment". Mark does a "Top 10" based on the Cloud Security Alliance "Notorious Nine: Cloud Computing Threats", and gives his impressions on the realities of the list's items from Microsoft's perspective. It's an eye-opener, for sure.
Those two last sessions' recordings aren't available yet. I'll update this post with links when they're available.
"What did you do for fun last night?"
Ah.. fun? Who has time for fun?
"You do."
Yep. Last night's meal was courtesy of the "Ask the Experts" event. Later, Veeam threw a very fun party (I am a sucker for good live music.) And the TechEd Jam Session was also in full-swing at the House of Blues, though I didn't spend much time there. ($11 for a tall can of Miller Lite?! I don't think so.)
Tonight I'll be attending a party thrown at Lucky Strike by Nimble Storage, and then I'm heading over to the Hughes Hangar for the "Windows IT Pro Community Party" (Sponsored by Springboard Series on TechNet).
Here are some photos from last night and earlier today.
Now.. off to the parties!
My day 2 started much as my day 1 did.
"Too early?"
Sure, if there is such a thing as "too much fun", I came close to it. But even though last night's Exhibit Hall Reception and the later "MCP Celebration" party at Howl at the Moon was a lot of fun, I managed to get home before midnight. Plus, there's not much to do in the area around my hotel.. so that's another reason to call it a night.
Today I kicked off the day with a very good session on migration strategies for moving from VMware to Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization. (Session DCIM-B412, in case you'd like to view the recording). I have to give these guys credit for doing an excellent job delivering topics that are sometimes confusing in a very easy-to-understand way.
Right now, as I type this, I'm waiting for the next session to start. ("Best Practices Integrating On-Premises Datacenters with Azure IaaS" – DCIM-B330)
I haven't decided upon what I want to learn this afternoon. I've got 3 potential good topics at 1:30pm, 5 at 3:15pm, and 2 at 5pm to choose from. And no matter what I pick, I bet the words "Mobile" and/or Cloud" will be used frequently.
"So, what's the vibe been this year?"
A lot of the people I've talked to are very impressed and very excited about the transition to a "Mobile First / Cloud First" focus. Some are still apprehensive, but I think they all understand how important it is for their businesses. In particular the support we're adding for management of all of the most popular devices is well-received. And the improvements to Windows Azure are causing many to consider using it as an extension of their datacenters.
To close out this blog post, here is some photo-evidence from last night…
Lots of people gathering lots of swag
I really want to win this!
I don't care so much about winning this.
Howl at the Moon for the MCP party
Other more incriminating photos have been withheld to protect the not-so-innocent.
Yesterday in our "Modernizing Your Infrastructure with Hybrid Cloud" series, Matt Hester described how to create a virtual network "in the cloud" in Microsoft Azure in order to support cloud-based Virtual Machines and their ability to communicate with each other and with the outside world. We of course have the ability to connect to our VMs individually using Remote Desktop connections, but if we're going to treat the location of these cloud based machines as just an extension of our own datacenter, we're going to want to have a secured connection to them.
That's what the VPN Gateway is all about.
In this article I'm going to show you step-by-step how to connect your Azure virtual network to your on-premises network. Here are the steps we'll go through:
And as an added bonus, I might throw in a little something extra.
I hope you'll think so. But for starters, let's begin where Matt left off. I have an Azure subscription with a virtual network named AzureNet1, located in the South Central US datacenter region. In my scenario, I want to connect this Azure network to my Fabrikam office (Fabrikam was recently purchased by Contoso). Once the connection is established, I will want to join servers in that office to the contoso.com domain.
Here's what the AzureNet1 network dashboard tab currently looks like. Note the two virtual machines currently in this network; a domain controller and an application server.
As you can see on the configure tab, I've set up two subnet ranges (their purposes are obvious based on the names I've given them) as part of an 8-bit-masked 10.x.x.x subnet.:
Notice that I've also defined my DNS server as 10.0.0.4. My domain controller has that address.
Collect Some Information
Before we start adding the site-to-site connection, I need to collect some information so that I can carefully use it to make the correct configurations. As you probably know first-hand, when doing networking configuration it's easy to make simple little mistakes that cause everything to NOT work, so let's make quick note of a couple of important items:
Your local network address range refers to the addressing of your local network. By that name, though, it's a little misleading. "Local" assumes you're connecting your Azure network to some "Local" office. But in reality it could be some other branch office or even another virtual network somewhere else in the Azure world. So, just think of "local network" as being "the network I'm connecting to my Azure network". And I'll keep using "local network" in "quotes" throughout the rest of this article for just that reason.
In our example, my Fabrikam network is 192.168.0.0 with a 16-bit subnet mask. (192.168.0.0/16)
The Gateway Address is the externally accessible IP address of the gateway. In the Fabrikam network, let's say that I have a VPN device connected to the Internet with an external Internet-exposed address of 18.104.22.168. I will also have a gateway address on the AzureNet1 gateway, but that address will be assigned when I create the gateway for my virtual network. So, in simple terms, the gateway address is the connection point on either end of the VPN connection.
Define the "Local Network"
Before enabling the site-to-site connectivity and creating the gateway, we need to define the "local network" Fabrikam, so that our network knows what addresses it will be routing to over the VPN through the gateways.
To define my "local network" (which I'll name "Fabrikam"), I clicked on +New in the bottom-left corner of the Azure portal, and selected Network Services –> Virtual Network –> Add Local Network.
I give my local network a name, an optionally the gateway address (I can add it later if I don't know it right now.)
Then on the next screen I add the address spaces that exist at my "local network" at Fabrikam.
Once created, you'll see it in the list on the local networks tab.
Enable Site-to-Site
Back on my AzureNet1 network and on the Configure tab, now I can check the box to enable Site-to-Site Connectivity. Notice that a couple of things change. I now will choose which "local network" I'm going to connect to (Fabrikam), and it also requires (and defines) a "Gateway Subnet" for me.
"Hey Kevin.. What's that 'ExpressRoute' option?"
That's actually what my friend Keith Mayer is going to cover in tomorrow's article in the series. I'll include the link to his article after it's published.
UPDATE: Here is Keith's article - Modernizing Your Infrastructure with Hybrid Cloud - Step-by-Step: Cross-Premises Connectivity with Azure ExpressRoute (Part 16)
Anyway, after checking Connect to the local network, clicking Save starts the process of updating the network configuration. After a couple of minutes it completes, and now back on the dashboard tab we see this:
This means the gateway is in defined, but not actually created. That's our next step.
Create the Gateway
At the bottom of the dashboard screen, click on Create Gateway.
Notice when you click it that you are given a choice between a static and dynamic routing VPN gateway.
"What's the difference?"
Your choice will be based on a number of factors. Often the VPN hardware you are using will limit you to one or the other. A static routing VPN gateway is one that routes traffic based on policy definitions (which is why it's often referred to as a Policy-based VPN). Packets are routed through the gateway based on a defined policy; an "access list". A dynamic routing VPN gateway, also known as a "route-based VPN", is a simple forwarding of packets between two networks. If the network doesn't locally contain the destination for this packet, I'll assume the gateway knows where to send it. And if it's known by the gateway as existing on the other network, it sends it securely through the tunnel. For more information about these choices, and about various devices and gateway types that support either static or dynamic VPN gateways, check out this excellent documentation. Even if your device is not on that list, it may still work if your hardware supports
In my scenario I'm creating a simple tunnel to a device that supports the other end of dynamically routed VPN, so I'll choose Dynamic Routing. Creating the gateway does take a good amount of time (as much as 15 minutes), so be patient. Eventually our display will go from this:
…to this:
…and eventually, this:
Notice that we've been assigned an official actual external gateway IP address. We're still not actually connected. (Connected would be GREEN in color.) We haven't addressed the configuration of the "local network" side of our connection yet. At the bottom of the page you see a Connect button:
But let's not click that just yet. We still need to…
Configure the Local VPN Device
Other than collecting some information about our Fabrikam network, we've only focused on the AzureNet1 side of our VPN tunnel. We still need to create the gateway on our Fabrikam network.
On the AzureNet1 dashboard, notice this hyper-link towards the right-side of the page:
Clicking on Download VPN Device Script this brings up a very interesting page that allows us to specify what kind of hardware (or software) we have on the "local network" side of our connection. The beauty of this is that, based on our selection of hardware (or even Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 Routing-and-Remote-Access (RRAS) working as your gateway), you are generating a script that can then be used to automatically configure your gateway on the "local network" side.
Once we've selected our Vendor, Platform, and Version, and clicked the check mark, we're immediately sent a text file containing the configuration script for our selected device.
Use this script to configure your device, establish the connection from the local network, and then come back to the Azure network dashboard and click connect. And if you've done everything correctly, you should see something happy (and GREEN) like this:
"What kind of hardware do you have on Fabrikam's network, Kevin?"
I don't know. I'm not actually using a local network. For this demonstration, I've actually connected my AzureNet1 network, which is located in the South Central US datacenter region to a Fabrikam virtual network that host in the Central US datacenter region and manage through an entirely different Azure subscription. So.. I'm doing Site-to-Site between two Azure virtual networks. That's my "something extra" that I promised earlier. Now I'm going to show you what I needed to do to make that connection work.
Connecting two Azure networks via a Site-to-Site VPN requires two things:
I've already showed you where you choose Dynamic Routing when you create the gateway. And other than the shared key, everything else I did for configuring the Fabrikam network was identical to what I configured in AzureNet1, except that my network in Fabrikam is 192.168.0.0/16 – identical to what I defined the "Fabrikam" "local network" to be on this side. IMPORTANT: These have to match. The range and mask have to be correct and consistent on both ends both the "local network'' definition and the actual network (or Azure virtual network as in my case) for this to work.
Also in the definition of the "local network" on either side was the specification of the Gateway IP Address. Again, ordinarily, your configuration script is populated with the Azure virtual gateway's IP address. But in this instance, I need to create the gateway first, and let it fail connecting, just so I can see what the actual assigned gateway IP address on that side of the connection is going to be. Then I can take that address and configure it into the "local network" definition on the other side.
As for the shared private key.. Notice at the bottom of the AzureNet1 dashboard that there is a Manage Key button:
If I click this, I can see (and copy) the generated long key. I'll copy it to the clipboard.
This key was created when we created the gateway, and is included for you in the configuration script on behalf of your "local network" device. But…
"We don't have a local network device!"
Bingo. And we also don't (as of this writing) have a way to use the Azure portal to set the shared key in and the configuration of the virtual network! But we will need to do that to at least one end of the tunnel to make sure they match. (Or both if we want to just use our own text as the shared key.)
This is where PowerShell comes in.
I've installed the Azure PowerShell cmdlets onto my local system, and then in PowerShell I connected to my Azure subscription where the Fabrikam virtual network resides. And now I use the following PowerShell command to set the shared key for the gateway connected the Azure network Fabrikam to the (from this point of view) "local network" named AzureNet1.
Set-AzureVNetGatewayKey -VNetName fabrikam -LocalNetworkSiteName AzureNet1 -SharedKey 2kDsdqXnxeXrGjI4r4rLltKKT1g9E9gY
Set-AzureVNetGatewayKey -VNetName fabrikam -LocalNetworkSiteName AzureNet1 -SharedKey 2kDsdqXnxeXrGjI4r4rLltKKT1g9E9gY
(For the Windows PowerShell command-line tools, go to the Azure downloads page, and scroll down to "Windows PowerShell" section. Instructions for setting this up are found there as well.)
That's how I was able to get the common shared key into the other side of my connection. After this command completes, and soon after clicking Connect in the dashboard, I was happily sending data back and forth.
"But Kevin… Prove to us that you have the connection established! Finish your domain-joining scenario!"
In the AzureNet1 network I have two servers. One is a domain controller, and the other is a member server. All machines here are assigned their DNS server as 10.0.0.4. They reside in the South Central US datacenter region.
On my Fabrikam network (which, you'll recall remember, resides in the Central US datacenter region, so not in the same location as the AzureNet1 network and machines) I have one server that I've just created:
Importantly, I've also created a "DNS Server" designation here, and assigned to the Fabrikam network, with the 10.0.0.4 address. Note the configure tab of the Fabrikam network.
In this way my machines in this Fabrikam network will be assigned 10.0.0.4 as their DNS server, and so will know how to find the DC in the AzureNet1 network. To verify this I can establish a remote desktop connection to my new karContosoDC2 server and look at the status of the network adapter:
Trusting that my VPN is happily and dynamically routing traffic between Fabrikam and AzureNet1, and knowing that my new server in Fabrikam is going to look for DNS at the domain controller in AzureNet1, I attempt to join the domain:
I am asked for domain credentials (a very good sign!)…
I'm in! That's proof that I have successfully connected these two virtual networks!
For more information on configuring secure cross-premises connectivity, check out the official documentation here:http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn133798.aspx
Here are some more specific configurations and their documents:
And be sure to keep watching http://aka.ms/ModernCloud for the full series of articles on modernizing your infrastructure.
Yes, in the U.S. we're coming to a town near you with some free training and hands-on experiences again – this time covering Windows Azure and System Center 2012 R2 to support hybrid cloud scenarios.
Here's the description of the event from the registration pages:
Build Hybrid Cloud Solutions with Windows Azure and System Center 2012 R2 You CAN have the best of both worlds! With Windows Azure and System Center 2012 R2, IT Pros can easily extend an on-premises network to embrace the power and scale of the cloud – securely and seamlessly. These Hybrid Cloud scenarios present real solutions that you can implement today to solve pressing IT issues such as: Managing more data without more hardware Protecting Data with Off-site Backups Business Continuance and Disaster Recovery Cost-effective, on-demand access to Dev/Test Environments Internet-scale Web Sites… And MORE! Join us at this FREE full-day hands-on event to experience the power of Hybrid Cloud. Our field-experienced Technical Evangelists will guide you through the process of jumpstarting your knowledge on Windows Azure Storage, Virtual Machines and Virtual Networking for key IT Pro scenarios. Complete all of the hands-on labs and you'll walk away with a fully functional Windows Server 2012 R2 or Linux cloud-based test lab running Windows Azure!
Build Hybrid Cloud Solutions with Windows Azure and System Center 2012 R2
You CAN have the best of both worlds! With Windows Azure and System Center 2012 R2, IT Pros can easily extend an on-premises network to embrace the power and scale of the cloud – securely and seamlessly. These Hybrid Cloud scenarios present real solutions that you can implement today to solve pressing IT issues such as:
Join us at this FREE full-day hands-on event to experience the power of Hybrid Cloud. Our field-experienced Technical Evangelists will guide you through the process of jumpstarting your knowledge on Windows Azure Storage, Virtual Machines and Virtual Networking for key IT Pro scenarios. Complete all of the hands-on labs and you'll walk away with a fully functional Windows Server 2012 R2 or Linux cloud-based test lab running Windows Azure!
"Sounds great, Kevin! Where are you going to be, and where can I sign up?"
Here are the list of cities in the central part of the U.S.:
** I'll personally be facilitating the events in Minneapolis (Edina) and Saint Louis (Creve Coeur).
Don't wait to register. Seating is limited and these tend to fill up quickly. For the full list of events throughout the U.S., go here: http://aka.ms/AzureITCamps
See you there!
Well.. Now that you've had a chance to take in all the great news (//Build) and new updates from Microsoft over the past couple of weeks, we thought it was finally time to wrap up our series for IT Pros entitled "Windows 8.1 for Business". For this final article of the series, I'm going to leave you with some useful resources that you should be watching and following regularly (other our blogs, of course).
The Build 2014 SiteKeynote and session recordings are available. Whether or not you're a developer, you'll find some good information there.
The Windows Client page on TechNetThis is the starting point for all Windows client information that IT Pros will need to know. "Presented by the Springboard Series for IT professionals, this site offers technical resources, free tools, and expert guidance to ease the deployment and management of your Windows client infrastructure."
The Windows Blog"Scaling Windows Phone, evolving Windows 8."
The Windows 8.1 Enterprise Evaluation
The Springboard Series BlogWell worth following, this blog is a great source of information on the latest and greatest. For example, every IT Pro should read Ben Hunter's excellent entry – "Windows 8.1 Update: The IT Pro Perspective"
The Springboard Series Insider Newsletter"Get the latest news, resources, tools, and guidance to help you deploy Windows 8.1, migrate from Windows XP or Windows Vista, and manage your existing Windows client infrastructures successfully—and with less effort."
And of course, follow @msspringboard on Twitter.
"Anything else coming up, Kevin?"
I'll see you in Houston May 12-15 for at TechEd!
At our IT Camp in Minneapolis a few weeks ago, Kris asked me a valid question.
"How does a Hyper-V Server (not the full windows install) do clustering if you can't install the cluster role?"
Kris's question is a good one, because we had just been discussing how limited Hyper-v Server is in terms of what it can do, while at the same time supporting all of the same virtualization features and scale that a full Windows Server 2012 R2 machine with the Hyper-V Role installed does; including the ability to be joined to a Windows Failover Cluster.
In fact, during the discussion of what roles are supported on Hyper-V Server, I showed this screenshot:
So if you thought Windows Failover Clustering was a role, you'd be scratching your head at this one.
"Ah.. so what's the catch?"
No catch. Windows Failover Clustering is not a role. It's a feature!
It's actually in the list of features rather than roles. It's not enabled by default, and the Create Cluster wizard actually enables it when needed.
Pretty slick.
PS – In case you missed it, we did a 6 week series of blog articles comparing VMware to Microsoft virtualization. Check it out, here: http://aka.ms/VMWorMSFT.
Are you a VMware Pro? In an increasingly multi-hypervisor world, more and more IT organizations are using Microsoft Hyper-V and Microsoft Azure to achieve superior performance and workload flexibility at the best possible price. With nearly two-thirds of businesses on more than one virtualization platform, adding Microsoft virtualization and cloud skills to your technical repertoire can improve your career options and prepare you to face new IT demands.
Microsoft Early Experts is a free, online study group for virtualization professionals who want to extend their Microsoft Hyper-V, System Center and Microsoft Azure knowledge with official Microsoft certifications. We've organized our high-impact learning resources into online Knowledge Quests that include concise videos, prescriptive study materials and hands-on practice with real products. Complete the weekly quests at your own pace and enjoy the flexibility to stop and review certain topics when you need more time.
Complete the online Quests and receive a completion badge suitable for printing or sharing online to showcase your new skills with Microsoft virtualization! In addition, IT Pros located in the U.S. are eligible to win one of several cool prizes during monthly prize drawings in April, May and June 2014. **
If you're located outside of the U.S., you're certainly still welcome to join us and take advantage of the Early Experts study materials to help you prepare for certification.
Early Experts study groups are forming now for existing VMware / Virtualization professionals targeting the following Microsoft certification:
**NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Open only to IT Professionals who are legal residents of the 50 U.S. states or D.C., 18+. Sweepstakes ends on June 30, 2014. See Official Rules.
It's the day before TechEd, which leads to my 3rd favorite week of the year (just behind Christmas/New Year and Easter/Holy week). My flight appears to be on-time. The day here in Minneapolis will be a good one, weather-wise. It will be nice in Houston, too. I haven't packed much yet, but a quick hour of playing today's game #1: "Which old conference or funny t-shirts best represent who I am?" is going to be playing out very soon.
Last night and early this morning I suffered through all the tweets and Facebook messages from friends in #theKrewe. These are the folks who arrived a day or two earlier than I could and have already had dinners and parties and (I'm assuming) far too many drinks. Oh, how I wish I were there already! But not to worry. I'll catch up with (and to) them this evening.
Later today I'll be playing another favorite TechEd travel game: Spot the Geek. At the gate and on the plane, I'll notice other funny-or-geeky t-shirts or old conference bags or other tech-logo'd apparel. And I'll settle in comfortably, noting, "yes.. these are my people!" I'd say hello and talk to one of them, but I'm way too introverted for that. (True!)
I'll land in Houston later (defying death again), wait for my t-shirt-carrying luggage, and check social media (or just look around) to see if someone else is around that might want to share a taxi downtown. I'll check in to my hotel, drop my bags, and if there's time I'll head out to the convention center to register and take a few photos. (Yes, dear TechEd diary, I'll share them with you.) This year I'm not taking my Canon or my Sony; relying instead on my new kick-a** Lumia 1020 for all photos and videos. I even got the camera-grip / spare battery power thing for extra comfort and extra usage. Rock-n-Roll.
"What's on the agenda for the evening?"
Tonight is the "Krewe Meet-n-Greet" at the House of Blues. This leads to playing today's game #3: "What was your name again?" I'm horrible with names. I really do need to work on that.
But more importantly, which t-shirt should I wear to the party?
Oh.. PS – Happy Mother's Day.
In Part 3 of our "Virtualization: Did you Know…" series, Jeff Woolsey and I conclude our Top 10 list of Virtualization solution facts.
Missed Part 1 or Part 2 in this series? Click the links and get caught up!
Experience Microsoft's latest products with these FREE downloads! Build Your Lab! Download Windows Server 2012 R2, System Center 2012 R2 and Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 and get the best virtualization platform and private cloud management solution on the market. Try it FREE now!
Don't Have a Lab? Build Your Lab in the Cloud with Windows Azure Virtual Machines. Try Windows Azure for free with no cost or obligations, and use any OS, language, database or tool. FREE Trial
If you're interested in learning more about the products or solutions discussed in this episode, click on any of the below links for free, in-depth information:
Websites & Blogs:
More Videos:
Follow the conversation @MS_ITPro Become a Fan @ facebook.com/MicrosoftITPro
Connect with Kevin @KevinRemde Become a Fan @ facebook.com/KevinRemdeisFullofIT Subscribe to our podcasts via iTunes, Stitcher, or RSS
IT Professionals: Have you ever been deep in the guts of a gnarly infrastructure deployment, automation, configuration, trouble-shooting or similar task, and thought to yourself something like this:
"Why didn't that darn product team at Microsoft make this tool work better, more like what I need it to do?"
If you see yourself in this story, we have an opportunity for you!
The Windows Server System Center design and development team is looking for IT Pros with knowledge & experience in all aspects of infrastructure and services management. We need to know how to make Microsoft technologies supporting these scenarios work better for you.
IT Pros like you with these specialized knowledge and skills are hard to find, so we'll make it worth your while. Here's what you get from participating in the panel:
1. Opportunities to influence WSSC design and development in areas such as
2. A thank you gift! After participating in a study, you'll have the option of selecting from a list of Microsoft software, hardware, games, and more. (And I'm told that since IT Pros are the hardest folks to find, you'll get the best gifts!)
If you'd like to be considered for the IT Pro User Panel, please complete this brief survey.
If you want to know more about Microsoft User Research overall, see the Microsoft User Research page.
Note: Microsoft full or part-time employees, vendors, or contingent employees are not eligible. Sorry.
In this episode I welcome back Jeff Woolsey to the show for Part 2 of our three part "Virtualization: Did you Know…" series, where we cover four more quick facts about Microsoft's Virtualization solution.
Experience Microsoft's latest products with these FREE downloads! Build Your Lab! Download Windows Server 2012 R2, System Center 2012 R2and Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 and get the best virtualization platform and private cloud management solution on the market. Try it FREE now!
Don't Have a Lab? Build Your Lab in the Cloud with Windows Azure Virtual Machines. Try Windows Azure for free with no cost or obligations, and use any OS, language, database or tool. FREE Trial
Today I welcome Varun Chhabra to the show as we kick off our three part "Virtualization: Did you Know…" series.
In this series we will discuss facts and facets of Microsoft's Virtualization solution that, if you are currently using some other virtualization platform, you probably didn't know but definitely should.
In this two part series with Sr. Knowledge Engineer Yuri Diogenes, we explore the world of "Bring Your Own Device" (BYOD) scenarios and how more IT organizations are trying to support it.
In part one we try to help explain the benefits, challenges and considerations that need to be made around BYOD.
Download the "BYOD Survival Guide" Here!
Experience Microsoft's latest products with these FREE downloads! Build Your Lab! Download Windows Server 2012 R2, System Center 2012 R2 and Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 and get the best virtualization platform and private cloud management solution on the market. Try it FREE now!
Don't Have a Lab? Build Your Lab in the Cloud with Windows Azure Virtual Machines. Try Windows Azure for free with no cost or obligations, and use any OS, language, database or tool. FREE TRIAL
Follow the conversation @MS_ITPro Become a Fan @ facebook.com/MicrosoftITPro
Connect with Kevin @KevinRemde Become a Fan @ facebook.com/KevinRemdeisFullofIT Subscribe to our podcasts via iTunes, Stitcher, or RSS


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Hi, I am restoring a Miller Thunderbolt 225v, and in the process of removing wires going to on/off switch I broke one of the ends off the switch trying to loosen a nut. My question is where can I find a switch for one of these? Or where can I find a switch that will fit in it's place that is made the same way. I have tried the miller site, Lowes, Ebay, internet. I can not find anything. I would appreciate any help in finding a replacement switch. Thanks in advance.
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Thread: restoring a thunderbolt 225v
11-07-2010, 06:37 PM #1Junior Member
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- Nov 2010
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restoring a thunderbolt 225v
11-07-2010, 06:48 PM #2Senior Member
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- Jan 2008
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Try a switch for Lincoln
In the early 1990's I bought a Thunderbolt and wanted a longer cord. Upon tightening the new cord lug onto the switch, I cracked the switch. The switch for Lincoln 225 stick machines and 200 series Powermigs fit in. The new 216 PowerMig has a different switch. Actually if the welding store doesn't have a 40 amp switch that looks similar to yours they can order one directly from Miller.
11-07-2010, 06:49 PM #3Senior Member
- Join Date
- Sep 2005
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- 16919 Pole Rd. Brethren, MI 49619
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11-08-2010, 08:43 AM #4Junior Member
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- Nov 2010
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Thanks for the help guys


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Satisfaction comes in many forms, but there's no treat quite like a super-savory burger. Sinking your teeth into a scrumptious patty and wrapping your lips around a yummy toasted bun fills the belly bill like no other.
Since Los Angeles obviously isn't lacking in this department, we set out on a journey to bring you nothing but the best. From the tried and true (hello, In-N-Out!) to utterly gourmet grub (truffle oil, anyone?), take a drive through our top picks and get ready to melt. Oh, and you may want to find a designated driver for the food coma that's sure to strike afterwards. Don't say we didn't warn ya.
Photographed by Erin Yamagata


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Fog will affect the area tomorrow morning
Rises at 6:33 AM with 13:12 of sunlight, then sets at 7:45 PM
Rises at 8:58 PM with 13:02 of moolight, then sets at 10:00 AM
Water sports are one of the best parts of summer and even if you might not realize it at the time, these activities are putting you through a killer workout.
Michigan's Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has stocked the state's water with over 20 million fish, weighing more than 325 tons.
When you think about switching up your fitness routine, you might consider joining a gym, finding a group class or breaking out your old sneakers and taking up a sport you once loved.
See hammerhead sharks up close, climb an active volcano and 8 other adventures in Latin America
Summer is in full swing, but that doesn't necessarily mean that your "get fit for summer" plan is, too.
When you choose to travel by bike in a large metropolitan area (or really, anywhere for that matter) you want to know that you can do so safely.
The sound of whirring blades, the feeling of liftoff, and the stunning views of the ground falling away from you can only be found one way: aboard a helicopter.
When it comes to choosing the perfect place for a camping trip, the US has no shortage of scenic and adventurous campgrounds to choose from.
Nov 10, 2012; 5:00 AM ET Hunting can put your heart at risk if you have not properly prepared for the season. Jeannette Calle Explains.


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