I would venture to guess that Microsoft’s “Remote Assistance” feature is rather underutilized; first, because it’s a pain to actually find, and walking a client or user through the request process is cumbersome too.  Remote Assistance actually works fairly well and alleviates the introduction of which ever flavor of VNC you choose.

We are in the beginning stages of rolling out a new ERP system that no longer uses Citrix, shadow sessions are out of the question now and deploying VNC wasn’t an option.  Enter “Offer Remote Assistance”.  By enabling a GPO settings, tech’s can now initiate the Remote Assistance session and the users just needs to accept it.

The setup is rather easy:

1. Open Group Policy Management and create a new policy or edit an existing one
2. Expand Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System and click on Remote Assistance
3. Double click “Offer Remote Assistance” and choose enabled
4. In the “Permit remote control of this computer” section, choose “Allow helpers to remotely control this computer”
5. Click the “Show” button and add the users or groups that will be allowed to remotely connect.  You must use the domain\user or domain\group format.
6. Close all the windows

The group policy is now setup.  Because getting to the “Offer Remote Assistance” section in Help and Support is also a pain, create a new shortcut on your desktop and give it the following path:

"hcp://CN=Microsoft%20Corporation,L=Redmond,S=Washington,C=US
/Remote%20Assistance/Escalation/Unsolicited/Unsolicitedrcui.htm"

Now when a user needs support, just double click on the shortcut and type their IP or computer name.  The user will be prompted asking for permission.

NOTE: This is really only good for users within your network.

Hayden and I headed up to East Lake Sunday afternoon to get some fishing in.  We had the boat in the lake and were headed off by 3pm.  It was a little windy and we didn’t see any rises so after about an hour of throwing various fly’s we headed off to the east shore to drag some cowbells.

We hooked a nice rainbow and plenty of weeds.

Hayden decided trolling is boring so we ran back across to the white slide to tackle the callibaetis hatch.  It wasn’t coming off strong, but enough to get into half a dozen decent rainbow and atlantic salmon.  We were both fishing emerger patterns, Hayden got some great strikes by some Atlantics, he had lots of fun with those suckers.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/corypratt/sets/72157621876447509/

The Hatch 2.0 is available on iTunes.  The update should be hitting your phones and ipods soon!

I’m still trying to get more photo’s of bugs for the database!  If anyone has any they’d like to have showcased in the app, please let me know!

Completely rewritten, an awesome new look, and pictures of the bugs are all coming in the new version of The Hatch. I’m still looking for entomology photo’s, if you have some, let me know!

Go get the update!

http://itunes.com/apps/thehatch

I’m pleased to be able to announce The Hatch and http://www.flyrecipes.com/ have teamed up to provide recipe’s and patterns for all the bug’s you find in The Hatch!

Flyrecipes.com provides a growing list of over 2100 patterns, complete with pictures, instructions, and recipes.  Users can upload their own patterns to share and the site is extremely easy to search and narrow down your search to find just what your looking for.

In version 2.0 of The Hatch, at the bottom of each detail section of the fly, you will find a link to patterns that match the fly your looking at.  Clicking the button will launch Safari on your phone and take you right to the patterns.

I hope to get version 2.0 out soon, just finalizing some things.  I’m still trying to get ahold of some good entomology pictures, but unfortunately I don’t have 10-15k to purchase them.  If anyone would like to donate entomology pictures, I’m more than happy to give credit on the photo and in my credits page!

You can get The Hatch at http://itunes.com/apps/thehatch

Cory

Justin and I headed up to East Lake Monday evening after work to see how we would fare.  It was windy in town so I figured it would be windy up there, and the hunch was correct, no white caps, but it was windy.  After launching the boat we headed over to the west shore in search of something, and we were met with nothing.  2 rises, a few lost streamers and 1 fish to hand.

We pulled anchor and headed off to the north shore to try and find some shelter from the wind and we were lucky to find some working fish all along that shore.  Small callibaetis and adams emergers seemed to work well enough to get a few decent size fish.  We fished till dark in hopes of luring one of the big browns but didn’t have any luck there.

All in all it was a good quick trip out.  East is one of my favorites because of the numbers of fish you can generally catch on dry fly’s.  It was a little cold and windy for the later hatch, but it was a blessing to get into some fish.

This last weekend my wife blessed me with a weekend to float a section of the John Day with my Brother-In-Law, Father-In-Law, and my wife’s cousin.  We generally go in late August and do a day trip hiking upstream from Priest Hole in search of 50-70 fish days.  We’ve never floated this section, let alone any section of the river, but thought we’d give it a chance before the levels got any lower.  A friend of mine at work was nice enough to lend us his Willie drift boat for the float.

We left Bend at about 5:30pm on Friday and started on our 2 hour drive to our camp spot at Priest Hole.  With one short stop in Prineville to grab the Krustez mix, we were on our way.

We were met by a 11yr old boy scout camp and loads of other people, but our tent was setup and we were fishing off the bank in no time.  I brought the spey with me to try and get a little practice in and found some willing bass on a black pencil popper.

The next morning, we had a great breakfast of egg’s, sausage, pancakes and coffee and we were ready for the fishing that would entail the remainder of our day.  We drove up to Twickenham and was on the water by 9:30.

The fish were eager and we were willing, the catching started not 5 minutes into the trip and lasted the remaining 8 hours we were on the water.  We couldn’t have asked for a better day, 95 degrees, light wind, lots of laugh’s and lots of fish.

The John Day River is a beautiful one.

We wrapped up the day, shuttled the cars and packed up camp that evening.  We were exhausted, the sun really drains you especially when you leave the sunscreen at the tent!  A quick stop at Dairy Queen in Prineville, we were finally back home around 10 that night.  Whirlwind trip that I’m still feeling today!

There are a few more photo’s at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/corypratt/sets/72157620633391345/

The Hatch is going under the knife for a major rewrite already.  Things are panning out pretty well and the application is going to provide for lots of future expansion.

The main area of improvement will be greater detail for each fly.  I’m hoping to get pictures of bugs, recommended sizes, etc.

I’m doing my best to gather as much information as possible, but some info is both hard to come by and getting needed permissions can be difficult as well.  As I’ve said before, if you have something you’d like to see, please ask and I’ll see what I can gather up.

I’m really excited about the new version and look forward to polishing it up and getting even more info out there!

Had an interesting issue today where all of a sudden Outlook quit opening .msg files off the users desktop.  Come to find out, the computer was missing the [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\msgfile] key.  Why?  I don’t know, but running a detect and repair fixed the issue.

Since I haven’t fished every river in every state, I need your help.  If you have a river you’d like to see information for, please comment below.  I would be more than happy to gather as much information as possible.  I’m trying to get the popular rivers across the country, but I know there are a lot more that I’m not even close to being familiar with.

UPDATE:

Thanks for the suggestions, version 2 should be out shortly, I’m just cleaning some things up and trying to make the new version look pretty.

One of the big features being built into the new version is a place for pictures of the bugs!  Problem is coming up with those pictures.  With the going rate on pictures these days, it will be thousands of dollars to get pictures of the fly’s in the application.  If anyone would like their photo’s of bugs published in the app, I’d be happy to include credits/watermarks, whatever.

Thanks,

Cory