DNS Records

OK. This is something I nearly always do but got caught out this weekend because I forgot to do it this once. Microsoft products are notorious for creating html code that's many times the size of what it needs to be to get the job done. A prime example of this is the Quark IT Newsletter for November 2004 - the original Microsoft Publisher generated HTML (first page only) was 122 KiB (125,166 bytes) and the cleaned up version that is now 4 pages long is 45 KiB (46,165 bytes). Well, OK - it isn't quite identical, the code I hand-modified actually looks quite a lot better than Publisher's "Save as HTML" option. And did I mention that the hand modified code is 4 pages long versus Microsoft's single page? A masive difference in size, I'm sure you'll agree.

Anyway, an added bonus with all of this additional, superfluous code that Microsoft generates is the stuff that's hidden when you copy something from a website and paste it elsewhere. Microsoft has been generous to provide is with a Crud Filter for when you need to do this - it is a nice little application called "Notepad.exe" - and what you do is copy the text from the website, paste it into Notepad, then re-select and copy it from Notepad and paste it where you want it. And just like magic, it is the text you want without all of the MS-generated crud! Amazing, no?

Well, I was fiddling around with _autodiscover._tcp settings on the weekend and accidentally killed one of our domains because I stupidly copied and pasted without the required disencrudification step. I was alerted to the issue this morning and found the offending record, deleted it, and typed it in by hand, restarted DNS and all was well with the world once again.

It just goes to show that almost doing something properly can be as bad as almost doing it really badly! :)

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie