Look Closely

I wish I had today - would have saved myself hours of work.

Not that it will mean anything to most, but I accidentally deleted a computer object out of our Windows 2003 Server Active Directory. I mis-read the name of it and mistook a colleague's laptop for an old name of mine. Oh, I can see you're coming out in sympathy as soon as I mentioned it, you clearly know what was coming eh?

If you really want to know, it led to:
- a longish headscratch as I couldn't log into the local admin account to rejoin it due to an unknown password
- a failed attempt at using the ldp.exe support tool to manually restore the deleted computer object into the AD by changing properties in the hidden DeletedObjects OU
- a failed attempt to reinstall the OS from the recovery partition due to the lost local user password
- installing Windows 8 onto the laptop and getting it configured for classroom use
- discovering the quirkiness of Windows 8 as I'd not used it before yesterday
- finishing the damn job at 22:00 tonight so I won't have to faff with it over the weekend (as I clearly need to get out more)

I had heard a lot of bad things about Win8, and thought Win7 was pretty good. For a first day's use, I think it looks OK actually. Not too far from Win7, but clearly aimed at the mobile market.

A recycle bin for AD would be nice for tired/multitasking geeks like me please Microsoft.

(secretly enjoyed it in a way, I used to work in IT for 10 years before I went back to Uni to be a teacher and I do like a fiddle)

Possibly the nerdiest post I have ever done, not sure why I shared all that.