Substandard Evil Genius

Using PHP and Curl to login to OWA

Scott Milliken — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 13:56:14 GMT

We run OWA here at work and needed a way to check the status of it through Nagios. If you simply scrape the OWA address, you're only checking that the front end is up - unless you log in you will never actually check the back end to do a full end-to-end service check. Here is some code to log in to an OWA forms based authentication page and return a code as to whether or not you were successful. Of course, you can extend this script to pull the contents of the mailboxes or calendar, but that's not the purpose of this script.


// OWA Login Check
// Written by Scott Milliken
// Permission granted to use under the GPL
//

        $username = "myusername";
        $password = "sekretpassword";
        // You can just use the base URL for your default mailbox
        // or you can add on to it to specify a group mailbox
        // $mailboxURL = "https://email.mydomain.com" for default
        // or for a shared NOC mailbox in the IT department... 
        $mailboxURL = "https://email.mydomain.com/it/noc";
        $authURL = "https://email.mydomain.com/exchweb/bin/auth/owaauth.dll";

        // First go to the URL that a user would use so that you can get your session cookie set

        $pg = curl_init();

        curl_setopt( $pg, CURLOPT_URL, $mailboxURL );
        curl_setopt( $pg, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0)" );
        curl_setopt( $pg, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true );

        // You need to define a cookie jar to store and retrieve
        // the session cookies or this won't work
        curl_setopt( $pg, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, "cookies.txt" );
        curl_setopt( $pg, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, "cookies.txt" );
        curl_setopt( $pg, CURLOPT_HEADER, false );
        curl_setopt( $pg, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true );

        // Setting these to false is handy for checking multiple
        // frontends that may share the same SSL cert, such as
        // ones in a round robin DNS scheme, but you address
        // them by the "real name" of the host
        curl_setopt( $pg, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false );
        curl_setopt( $pg, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, false );

        // Set this to true for debugging
        curl_setopt( $pg, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, false );

        $response = curl_exec( $pg );
        $info = curl_getinfo( $pg );

        // Set the form data for posting the login information
        $postData = array();
        $postData["url"] = $mailboxURL;
        $postData["reason"] = "0";
        $postData["destination"] = $mailboxURL;
        $postData["flags"] = "0";
        $postData["username"] = $username;
        $postData["password"] = $password;
        $postData["SubmitCreds"] = "Log On";

        $postText = "";

        foreach( $postData as $key => $value ) {
                $postText .= $key . "=" . $value . "&";
        }

        curl_setopt( $pg, CURLOPT_REFERER, $info["url"] );
        curl_setopt( $pg, CURLOPT_URL, $authURL );
        curl_setopt( $pg, CURLOPT_POST, true );
        curl_setopt( $pg, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $postText );

        $response = curl_exec( $pg );

        // At this point you can either print the following
        // status to show the result of logging in, or you
        // can make another call to the web server for the
        // individual frames, such as
        // $mailboxURL . "/Inbox/?Cmd=contents" will give you
        // the listing of inbox headers (if you call curl again)

        $info = curl_getinfo( $pg );

        $needle = "close all browser windows when you finish using Outlook Web Access";
        if ( strpos( $response, $needle ) )
                printf( "Logon to OWA successful.\n" );
        else
                printf( "Logon to OWA failed.\n" );

?>

MythTV Upgrade

Scott Milliken — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:31:12 GMT

So now that we have the U-Verse service installed (it's quite nice, 25 Mbps downstream with 3 Mbps dedicated for internetz and the rest for video) I want to be able to capture HD output from the set top box and view it in MythTV. The only way to do that currently is through the Hauppauge HD PVR 1212, which I ordered today.

Next I'll be shopping around for a 1TB SATA II drive to add to the main server and I'll most likely be removing the HDTV OTA capture card out of it - after all, I still have the two tuner HDHomeRun for OTA capture and it seems to pull in the stations a little better.

When I'm done I should have 2 OTA HDTV ATSC tuners, 1 U-Verse HDTV capture input with 2TB of online disk space in a master backend and 2 frontends.

Chrimmas Prezentz!

Scott Milliken — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 17:33:57 GMT

So I heard on the radio this morning that AT&T was finally taking orders for U-Verse in Middle Tennessee beginning today. I had noticed them installing a new SLC at the bottom of the hill for my subdivision back in November, so there was a good chance that I'd be eligible for service. Sure enough, I checked online and it said that I was good to go. I just got a call back from AT&T saying that they could do the install tomorrow, but I asked them for Friday morning, instead.

What is U-Verse?

Fiber to the home. IPTV throughout the house. A DVR with the ability to view the streams on any other receiver in the house. Currently only 1 HDTV stream is available at a time, but that's enough for us. Most of what we watch is still NTSC or HD over the air, which I'll be keeping. Oh, and up to 18 Mbps down / 3 Mbps up internetz connectivity!

EPIC WIN

:HAPPY:

Batch #13 - Solstice Cider

Scott Milliken — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 01:25:28 GMT

I have been meaning to make another batch of cider and another of beer since PhreakNIC, but simply haven't had the time to gather up all of the required ingredients and then to make them. I finally decided to go ahead and do the cider by itself, but since it was already too late to have any by Christmas, I thought it would be nice to start a batch on Winter's Solstice. Four years ago today I was standing on the rocks of Stonehenge, watching the sun come up between the pillars. It was cold as could be and I nearly froze my everything off. It's cold here in Tennessee, too, but inside the house it's kept just under 70 F. To help make this a Winter Solstice batch I'm employing evaporative cooling - I have the fermenter sitting in the bathtub with about 2" of cold water in the bottom and a wet towel wrapped around the carboy. The bottom of the towel is in the water, so it will continue to wick the moisture up and keep the temperature of the fermenter cooler than the ambient temperature. This hack is also known as an Arizona Air Conditioner.
Winter Solstice is the first day of winter, the longest night of the year, and a time that I have always enjoyed, even before my trip to England. Those are the things I'll associate with this batch of cider, as well. I hope to listen to the Paul Winter Consort concert on NPR tonight, which I try to do every year.

Preparation Date : 21 Dec 2008
Kegging Date : 1 Feb 2009
Drinking Date : 14 Feb 2009

:HAPPY:

Children of the Corn

Scott Milliken — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 03:14:35 GMT

We (the family) went back out to Walden Farm in Rutherford County, TN, this year. I got some fun video of my son running through the corn maze, among other things.

Batch #12 - PhreakNIC Pumpkin Sice Ale

Scott Milliken — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 13:18:25 GMT

Name : pn0x0bian Pumpkin Ale
Recipe:
3.3 lbs. Plain Amber Malt Extract
2 Lbs. Plain Amber Dry Malt Extract
8 oz. Crushed Crystal Malt 60L
1 oz. Willamette Hops (Bittering, 60 min)
1/2 oz. Willamette Hops (Finishing, 5 min)
11g Nottingham Yeast
(Above ingredients are the contents of a Brewer's Best English Brown Ale kit)
2 Tbsp. Pumpkin Pie Spice
2 Tbsp. Imitation Vanilla Extract

Brew Date: 7 Sep 2008
Secondary Date: 21 Sep 2008
Kegging Date: 4 Oct 2008
Drinking Date: 10 Oct 2008

Starting Gravity: 1.053
Final Gravity: 1.007
ABV: 6.1%
Calories: 172.2 per 12 oz.
Carbs: 13.4 per 12 oz.

(Calculations from Mr. Good Beer)

Notes:
Tweaked this just a bit from the last batch that I had made. I put a half tablespoon less of Vanilla in it. I also added the pumpkin pie spice into the water before the grains. This seemed to do a much better job of dissolving the spices into the wort and the smell has carried over past fermentation.

Big PHPimpin'

Scott Milliken — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:24:50 GMT

So I've had my head buried in some code at work for that past couple of weeks, barely escaping pulling my hair out and looking like Kojak.

Let's step in the wayback machine. A few years ago I was tasked with implementing ITIL, at least in terms of Change Management and Incident Management. We had been using a web based app written by the medical center to manage changes, but were unsuccessful in getting them to make any modifications to the software, because they wanted us to migrate over to HP Service Desk with them. They wouldn't even give us the source to let us host it ourselves. The basic idea was that we would eventually get tired of using a bad tool and migrate to what they perceived was a great tool. The only problem is that we could recognize the web app for what it was - something that had flaws, but that we could mold to our own use. The new tool was a fat client app that couldn't be touched via API unless we went through the medical center's support groups and competed for time on their calendar along with all of the well funded doctors. I'm sure it's not much of a stretch for you to realize that we preferred to stick with the old system.

Now step back to the present. The medical center is tired of maintaining really old hardware running a really old version of IIS. They sent us the source and told us to get it hosted locally ASAP so that they could retire the old server. Yay! Er, wait. We don't want to run IIS 5.0 and interface to an Access DB backend! The first thing that I tried was to migrate to SQL server, which was a step in the right direction, but ASP recordset code doesn't quite work in an ASP.NET environment. I kept getting odd, inconsistent results back from queries.

I had to make a choice - convert all of the ASP to ASP.NET, or rewrite the entire thing in PHP. Since I don't really know ASP.NET that well and don't want to, either, I chose to rewrite the entire thing in PHP. I built class libraries around all of the database objects and built methods for everything but rendering HTML. Yesterday we rolled out the new system into production and the most common thing I keep hearing is, "It's so much faster now!" I've also managed to integrate two other tools that I had hosted locally for Change Management into one seamless interface, and get rid of all of the libcurl web scraping routines that I had been using. Yeah, the only way I was able to automate some tasks was to go back to the old school ways of screen scraping. Fortunately now, however, it's just a class method away.

Woot. I used to have the domain phpimp.com. Too bad I don't anymore. heh.

:HAPPY:

Batch #11 - PhreakNIC Apfelwein

Scott Milliken — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 22:01:07 GMT

I started the batch of Apfelwein for PhreakNIC on Wednesday night, so it should be just hitting the right maturity by the first or second week of October.

The recipe is the standard Apfelwein recipe with no changes on the front end. When I move it to secondary I will probably add some vanilla and cinnamon, but I have 45 days to think about it.

I will also be making a batch of Pumpkin Ale for PhreakNIC and another batch of something else that I haven't decided on yet.

Batch #10 - Limelight

Scott Milliken — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 13:49:55 GMT

Limelight

Recipe:
Brewer's Best American Light Ale
(Sorry, I threw out the directions before getting the exact ingredients)
6 fresh limes (purchase 1 week after you brew!)

Brew Date: 15 Jun 2008
Secondary Date: 22 Jun 2008
Keg Date: 29 Jun 2008

Starting Gravity: 1.039
Estimated Final Gravity: 1.009
Estimate ABV: 3.91%
Estimated Calories/Pint : 175

I decided to make a "lawnmower beer" for summer - something light and low in alcohol content so that I can drink a few while mowing the lawn, or sitting outside watching the grass grow. I decided to go a little south of the border, though, and make a lime flavored beer.

After only 1 week in the primary fermentation stage, I took 6 fresh limes and scraped the zest off of them into the secondary fermenter. I then cut each lime in half, squeezed out as much juice into the secondary as possible, then dropped the lime halves into there as well. Once I had all of the limes, zest and juice in there, I siphoned the wort from the primary to the secondary. This allowed the yeast to wake back up as I started getting bubble on the airlock around every 20-30 seconds.

Oh, no! You can't let kids think that sex and masturbation feel good!

Scott Milliken — Fri, 23 May 2008 18:16:26 GMT

I think the video clip speaks for itself.

Father and Son Ride the Poop Chute Together

Scott Milliken — Thu, 01 May 2008 14:10:08 GMT

This weekend I took 2.0 out to the Adventure Science Museum (formerly known as the Cumberland Science Museum when I was growing up) since we had a boys' day out. They have a lot of neat stuff there and one section is called Bodyquest. You get to explore the different areas of the body and see how many of the organs work. Part of the experience is to follow food from entry to exit, so you first toss some balls at an open mouth to feed it. Next you have to squeeze the food down the esophagus and it makes lot of neat, fun, disgusting and gross noises. If you push the wrong way it makes an upchuck sound, if you push the right way it makes a gulping sound. Anyway, the next part it to churn the food in the stomach and then finally you wind your way through the small intestine. Both 2.0 and I rode down the slide at the exit, which is basically the Poop Chute. There is a sensor at the end that triggers a fart/poop like sound to play when you get to it. It was enough to make any mother have a nightmare and any child or male laugh out loud.

:RASPBERRY:

Nashville 2600 Hiking Trip

Scott Milliken — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 15:44:55 GMT

Yesterday several of us got together for a great hiking trip at Burgess Falls State Park near Cookeville, TN. The hike is a very easy one - more like a short walk until you get to the main waterfall - and is considered to be one of the most rewarding hikes per step walked because there is so much for such a short trail. There were 11 of us hiking together and 3 more joined up later (Ob1Shinobi and his family were running late). Jeff Wee-Eng represented the 865 area code for us and Ob1 was there for the 931s. The rest of us were local to the Nashville metro area.

SkyDog even tried a new smoking cessation program with ware. Here you can see SkyDog applying the penalty for ware lighting up (which is now illegal in all TN State Parks, by the way).

After we hiked we went to Mamma Rosa's Italian restaurant in Cookeville and enjoyed an excellent meal. The stromboli there beats anything else in the entire Southeast region, and trust me, I've tried to find another as good. However, even after eating a giant stromboli, Jeff Wee-Eng ordered a sausage foot-long sub... to eat right then. Once the waitress got over the shock and brought him the sub, he ate it all up. When she came back to see if we needed anything else, he ordered a piece of chocolate layer cake. I think this boy can give Tim Ball a run for his money in eating contests.

Here is a short video of the waterfall and our resident ecotaku, Jeff Wee-Eng walking along the rocks at the bottom.

Fun Weekend in February

Scott Milliken — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 17:26:42 GMT

Last weekend we had a fun little outing. We started off at Chick-Fil-A where my son decided that playing in the indoor playground was much more interesting than eating chicken. We did eventually get him to come around and eat something, though.

Later that afternoon I decided that we should go bowling. We had a party at the bowling alley for his birthday back in November and he had a blast, and since the weather wasn't too hospitable, that seemed like a good indoor activity to burn off some of his energy. Here's the score after the first frame. It's amazing how hard it is to bowl your own frame when your son keeps trying to take the ball out of your hand.

He loved using the ramp to bowl with, but the 6 pound ball that they gave him to use was simply too light. He's got the strength to pick up my 16 pounder and the 6 pound one just doesn't have enough weight to build up much momentum. I think next time we'll get him something in the 10 pound range.

All was well until the end of the night when I tried to pick him up and carry him to the car. He wanted my wife to carry him, but she hurt her neck/back and couldn't lift him. When I went to pick him up he jumped right into my chin and made me bite a nice chunk out of my lip. We were both in pain after that, but everything up to that point was a great Saturday.

Trunk Monkey

Scott Milliken — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 14:22:37 GMT

I need one of these...

It's Alive!

Scott Milliken — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 23:06:22 GMT

(From Jan 12)

For Christmas I got a kit to convert my beer fridge into a kegerator. This weekend while I had the house to myself I ran to Lowe's for a 2.5" hole saw, got out the power drill and went to it. It didn't take long at all to do - about 1 hour - and looks as good as a pre-made kegerator. The only drawback is that as I was moving the kegs out of the fridge I noticed how close I am to being out of beer! Fortunately I realized that about 30 minutes before the home brew store in Murfreesboro closed and was able to make it down there in time to pick up one kit. I'll be making an American Nut Brown Ale tomorrow morning, apparently.

(Finally uploaded a picture on Feb 19)

Batch #9 - Apfelwein Me Dine Me

Scott Milliken — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 21:40:01 GMT

Batch #9 - Apfelwein Me Dine Me

I decided to give another try to Ed Wort's Apfelwein recipe, but with the correct amount of sugar this time (2 lbs). I did make some other alterations, though, which are the addition of:

2 tablespoons vanilla extract
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon

As with the Pumpkin Ale, the cinnamon tended to clump up and stick to the sides, so that is why I have such a high amount in it. My sampling before adding the yeast yielded a very tasty, yet very stout (in terms of sugar) cider. If that taste can hang on through the two months of living in the fermenter then we'll have a tasty batch indeed.

Mixing Date: 9 Feb 2008
Kegging Date: 29 March 2008
Starting Gravity: 1.065
Estimated Final Gravity: 0.992
ABV: 9.57%
Calories/Pint: 283

Final Notes : Since I left this one in the fermenter for so long it really kicked up the ABV. I took both the original and final gravity measurements three times each just to make sure that I was accurate on them. You can really smell the alcohol content when around the stuff, so it's truly that stout. Taste of the batch is very much like a wine, which makes sense because I used Montrachet yeast. There's a very slight taste of apple to it, mainly because so much of the sugars were converted to alcohol. You can also taste a hint of the cinnamon, but I can't detect any of the vanilla. However, it's a very nice batch all around.

Yay for Free HDTV

Scott Milliken — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 14:03:31 GMT

I've had OTA (over the air) HDTV for a while at my house, but whenever the smallest amount of cloud or rain activity came in I would lose the NBC station. I also had issues with picking up what used to be the UPN station at times. I'd been trying to coordinate with Mirage for months to make it over, but either it was raining on his weekends off, or he was sick, or I was sick. Anyway, that finally happened yesterday afternoon. We moved the Winegard SquareShooter (this antenna rocks) from the corner of the house to the very front of a dormer extension at the front of the house. Now there is a true clear line of site all the way back to Nashville, save for a few hill peaks. Since I'm near the top of a hill already, though, I'm picking up signals like nobody's business. With the HDHomeRun I'm now showing 100% signal strength on every channel except for the NBC station, but I've gone from 55% to 75% on it, now.

Mirage also helped me out in finishing up Batch #6 so that I could free up the keg and put Batch #8 in it! Publix has Juicy Juice on sale this week so I plan on going by there and picking up 5 gallons so that the next batch will be Apfelwein. I'm almost out of Batch #7, but Apfelwein stays in the fermenter for so long that I might even be out of Batch #8 before I keg it.

:HAPPY:

Batch #8 - American Nut Brown Ale

Scott Milliken — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 21:42:11 GMT

Name : Brewer's Best Kit - American Nut Brown Ale
Recipe:
6.6 lbs. Plain Amber Malt Extract
2 Lbs. Plain Amber Dry Malt Extract
4 oz. Crushed Crystal Malt 60L
4 oz. Crushed Chocolate
1 oz. Crushed Black Patent
1 oz. Willamette Hops (Bittering, 55 min)
1 oz. Willamette Hops (Finishing Flavoring, 15 min)
1 oz. Galena Hops (Finishing Aroma, 5 min)
11g Nottingham Yeast

Brew Date: 13 Jan 2008
Secondary Date: 20 Jan 2008
Kegging Date: 3 Feb 2008
Drinking Date: 6 Feb 2008

Starting Gravity: 1.062
Estimated Final Gravity: 1.013
ABV: 6.4%

Notes:
I thought I'd try a different recipe kit, but not too different since I'm still pretty new at this. I think the next batch I'll diversify even further and go for an Irish Stout or a Red Ale.

Holy smokes, I've had a blow out! I went into the closet this morning to discover that there was so much kreuzen (beer foam) that it had popped the airlock off and had spilled out all over the carpet, and some of my wife's clothes. Oops.

Mystery Shopping

Scott Milliken — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 14:21:08 GMT

There's one thing that I think everybody can agree on when it comes to strategies for paying off debt - you stop going out to eat.

I think there's one thing that everybody employing that strategy can agree on - they miss going out to eat.

So, I started scheming and plotting to come up with a way to continue to go out to eat without impacting the bottom line in an adverse way. When I was a teenager, my parents knew someone at church that worked for the corporate office of a company that owned some restaurant franchises. They got hooked up on a schedule to mystery shop one of their locations once a month, and we would be reimbursed for our meals. Knowing that having to send a paper letter to corporate headquarters to ask about mystery shopping was antiquated and frankly, barbaric, I started looking out on the internet.

The first thing that I found is that the top hits on Google for Mystery Shopping will yield you the sites you don't want to visit. First and foremost, never pay to get listings of mystery shops, because you're not dealing with the schedulers - you're dealing with information scavengers. Actual mystery shopping companies pay you, and you never pay them to get started. Certification is the only thing you should ever pay for, and that is through just one company, the Mystery Shopping Providers Association. There's also a job board on their site and it's where I got my list of places to sign up for shopping.

The second thing that I discovered is that there's a heck of a lot more out there than restaurant shopping. Department stores, big box retailers, pet stores, entertainment attractions, and even casinos. From September, 2007 through December, 2007, I have personally been reimbursed between $900 and $1000 to eat steak, seafood, pizza and fast food; buy household goods and pet supplies; shop for a motorcycle; and gamble. Even nicer is the fact that since most of that is reimbursement, and not income, it's not subject to income tax. While some of that $900 is for things that I wouldn't have otherwise spent the money on (like eating at expensive restaurants as often as I have), at least $600 of it is, which means we've been able to pay $600 more off of our debt in a 3 month period of time.

Now I'm sure that everybody has skipped the bulk of my post and is looking for the URLs to sign up. It's not ethical for me to say what companies are represented by the shopping companies listed in these links. However, it's perfectly ethical to simply list them and let you find out for yourself.

Nearly every provider requires a valid SSN to sign up. Some require a bank account for direct deposit. Practice safe depositing - set up a separate account for mystery shopping that isn't linked to any of your other accounts.

Best Mark
BARE International
National Shopping Service
Speedmark Vision
Nationwide Service Group

There are lots and lots of other companies out there, but these are the ones that I've found work best for my area - Middle Tennessee. One thing that you have to remember with every company, though - you have to do some of the smaller, pain in the ass shops before you'll get assigned the easy, high paying shops. For example, you may have to do a fast food shop that will take you an hour to complete and only pays for a burger combo meal just to get "rated" in the system, but once you've done that, you can get the $100+ steak house reimbursement.

Good luck.

Batch #7 - Spiced Pumpkin Ale

Scott Milliken — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 19:20:54 GMT

Name : pn0x0bian Pumpkin Ale
Recipe:
3.3 lbs. Plain Amber Malt Extract
2 Lbs. Plain Amber Dry Malt Extract
8 oz. Crushed Crystal Malt 60L
1 oz. Willamette Hops (Bittering, 60 min)
1/2 oz. Willamette Hops (Finishing, 5 min)
2 Tbsp. Pumpkin Pie Spice
2.5 Tbsp. Imitation Vanilla Extract
11g Nottingham Yeast

Brew Date: 11 Nov 2007
Secondary Date: 17 Nov 2007
Kegging Date: 20 Oct 2007
Drinking Date: 22 Oct 2007

Starting Gravity: 1.048
Final Gravity: 1.009
ABV: 5.2%
Calories: 157.1 per 12 oz.
Carbs: 14.1 per 12 oz.

Notes:
This is the same recipe as the pn0x0bian Pumpkin Ale, but with just a couple of tweaks. I dropped the light brown cane sugar from the recipe to hopefully bring a little bit of the bitterness of the ale back. I also added another 1/2 tablespoon of vanilla extract to bring out that flavor even more. We'll see how well it works.