We made a Thanksgiving-night run to Meijer for milk and bread; while we were there, I saw that they had a Thanksgiving-only special on the Syntax Olevia LT27HVX, a 27" flat-panel LCD television with good specs (1280 x 720, with 480p, 720p, and 1080i support). For $499, I jumped on it-- that ended up being my anniversary present from Arlene. On Friday, BestBuy had a sale on their DirecTV HD receivers: $199 with a $199 mail-in rebate. Matthew, Thomas, and I headed out to BestBuy about 0830 and it was jam-packed-- talk about crowd-fighting! It was worth it, though, as we eventually emerged with a shiny new H10. Its OTA tuner isn't as sensitive as the one in the living room HR10-250, so I ended up having to put an inline 10dB amplifier on its cable run, but now it works really well. It's a treat to be able to watch HD under an electric blanket :)
November 2005 Archives
Thanksgiving was especially good this year.
I took half a day off on Wednesday and ran errands with the kids, then had a blissful and uninterrupted four days of only occasional computer use. No work. No articles, no papers, no competitive work, no nothing. It was great. (I wasn't even distracted by the Xbox 360). On Thanksgiving Day, we had leftover red beans and rice because Mom was still down in New Orleans; I got plenty of time to play with the kids, and I even managed to take a nap-- something that virtually never happens.
Friday Arlene and I got up early and stuffed a 20-lb turkey with cornbread dressing made the previous night. I'm not normally a big fan of dressing-- I prefer rice-- but this stuff was so good that I kept eating it out of the bowl. Arlene really outdid herself. We had a big traditional dinner with Mom, Dad, Tim, and the five of us. (the leftovers were good, too!) How wonderful it was to have everyone together! We went around the table talking about what we're thankful for, and not surprisingly, family and health were among the top items.
Saturday Dad, Tim, and I took the boys to our annual fall pilgramage to Cabela's. Matthew and Thomas love the fish and animals, and David tries to pretend he's too cool for them but only partly succeeds. Oddly, we didn't buy any of our usual Cabela's candy; in fact, I don't even remember seeing it out. Sunday was a quiet day; Arlene had to teach in Relief Society, and I went with our elders' quorum president to give blessings to a couple of people who were sick. Speaking of thankfulness: I'm thankful to be able to hold the priesthood so that I can do things like this.
To really kick off the holiday season, we put up our two Christmas trees, although we only had time to decorate one (mostly because we let the boys do it!) Yesterday, alas, was back to normal; David had his regular 8a school-play rehearsal, basketball practice, homework, and so on.
Thanks to a 0430 wakeup call and an 0510 arrival at our local Sam's Club, I have a brand new Xbox 360. I'm trying to decide if I should keep it or sell it. Each has its pros and cons. In favor of keeping it, if I sell it now I may not be able to get another one until next year. On the other hand, people are selling NIB 360s for crazy prices on eBay, and it's hard to ignore the notion of an instant profit-- I could make enough to pay for a replacement and some games. Complicating things is the demand factor: demand is high now, so I could get a good price. Will demand go up or down as we get closer to Christmas? Only the shadow knows.
Update: I put it on eBay with a ridiculously high "buy it now" price at about 6:20p last night. I then went out with the missionaries to visit a family in our ward. By the time I got back in the car-- less than two hours later-- someone had bought it.
Need a good laugh? Go to this article and check out the targeted ads. Obviously Google is channeling the feelings of people who've worked with OCS.
I didn't make it to the Seattle temple, sad to say, but I got a lot of lesser tasks accomplished during the 25 hours I was on the ground there! I managed to get my new Windows Mobile device resurrected, I finished a couple of projects that have been hanging over my head; I ate Dungeness crab macaroni and cheese (pretty good, on the whole; John dragged me to Hector's), and I was treated to a glorious sunset on our landing approach over the Great Salt Lake—an infinite number of shades of pink, orange, and gold limning the mountains and reflected in the water. Plus, I thought I'd get home at a semi-reasonable time. Unfortunately, when I got to DTW, National didn't have a car for me.
After a 45-minute wait, they scraped up a Tahoe, and off I went. I finally stumbled in to my bedroom at about 0245. Not my favorite by any stretch, but it was good to get home sooner than the typical redeye allows. My flight SLC-DTW was delightful again: friendly crew, comfy seats, shiny clean airplane.
The folks at SearchExchange have been kind enough to turn chapter 2 of my current ebook, The Definitive Guide to Exchange Disaster Recovery and Availability, into a short "10 tips in 10 minutes" article. Check it out here, or get the entire book (well, the first 6 chapters; I just turned in the final chapter yesterday) here.
My Jasjar wasn't really dead, it was just playing dead. I let the battery run down completely, then plugged it in to my Thinkpad and tried the firmware update again. This time, it worked like it's supposed to. John and I had fun playing around with it at the office; it flawlessly plays video that was encoded for his iPaq hw6315. I have several TiVo-to-Go shows on my laptop that I want to transcode to watch on the device, but WMP10 obstinately refuses to recognize the Jasjar, and since I'm on an airplane I can't check the Internets to see what the likely problem is.
I'm also having problems with ActiveSync 4.0, but that's nothing new. Every version of ActiveSync I've ever used has been troublesome. Come to think of it, so has every version of the Palm OS sync software (man, the stories I could tell about their Mac products…) Maybe that helps explain why Nokia just dropped US$430 million on IntelliSync.
Jim McBee has posted the slides for his (excellent) presentations at Exchange Connections. Get them here. Now, maybe I should do the same...
So, yesterday I turned 37. I had a great birthday weekend nonetheless.
It started Friday morning, when the first words I heard from my dear wife upon awakening were "We really need to wash that gray off your temples." Hmm. Maybe not. I earned this gray, dontcha know. Anyway, we had dinner plans with our friends Matt and Anita to celebrate my birthday and Anita's (a week early, but who's counting?), after which we planned to watch a movie on the projector.Mom and Dad agreed to keep the boys overnight so we could make an early-morning trip to the Detroit temple. We had a great dinner at Biaggi's, but I noticed that Arlene was acting a little oddly-- before we left the house, she closed all the blinds, and at dinner, she jumped up from the table and (almost literally) ran off to the ladies' room at one point, and I saw her fiddling with her phone under the table-- usually I'm the one doing that as I check mail or my calendar _ When we got back to our house, I walked into the kitchen and heard an odd sound accompanied by a bright flash of light-- followed immediately by shouts of "Surprise!" I just about fell over; I never in a million years would have expected Arlene to throw me (or, more properly, "us" since it was Anita's party too) a surprise party. I suppose that's what makes it surprising! We had a delightful time with our friends (thanks to everyone who came!) and hit the rack for a 5am wake-up the next morning.
Our temple trip was wonderful. I always enjoy going to the temple, but this time I'd taken the time to prepare better through prayer and scripture study. What a wonderful learning experience! Since we accepted President Hinckley's challenge to try to read the entire Book of Mormon before the end of the year, I've definitely noticed that I have been more attuned to spiritual experiences, and this has made attending the temple much more rewarding. I'll make an extra effort to go to the Seattle temple when I'm there this week.
To top things off, we were able to stop off at the Whole Foods in Troy and load up with gluten-free goodies (plus some more of my favorite potato chips), followed by a delicious in-car breakfast (organic banana, a bottle of some kind of smoothie, and a really tasty raspberry cream cheese croissant). Matt and Anita are wonderful conversationalists, so the trip passed quickly in both directions.
Saturday night we had the Rotary auction, which is always fun. There weren't any good electronics (apart from the ones I donated), but I got some Mud Hens tickets, a year of lawn treatments, and a few other cool odds and ends. The highlight of my evening came when I beat Cory Eckel (our bishop, a former BYU football player who has more athletic talent in his pinky than I do in my whole body) in two games of mini-basketball :)
After two late nights, Sunday was best of all-- we didn't do much of anything, in keeping with it being a day of rest and all. Matt and David were both sick, so it was a fairly low-intensity day.
Monday was my actual birthday; the boys got me some sweatpants and a new bicycle pump (since they broke the old one), and Arlene gave me a much-needed Books-a-Million gift card and a big pot of chicken and sausage gumbo. We also got our outdoor Christmas lights put up. It may seem early to those who live in more temperate areas, but while we were hanging the lights it was about 45 degrees, overcast, with a steady 10-15kt wind. That's as good as it's going to get until April or so.
Off this morning to Redmond for some meetings (or, more properly, sales calls, since I'm trying to drum up some new business for my team). This time, I'm flying TOL-CVG-SLC-SEA-SLC-DTW; this is a little bit of an odd routing, but it combines a fairly early arrival in SEA (plus Chick-Fil-A for breakfast in CVG) with a good return time home. (Unfortunately, my SLC connection is too tight to have a Dick Clark's pork chop. Oh well.) This morning at TOL, I was surprised to find that the TSA folks were requiring pax to take off their shoes. This is new, and unwelcome; TOL was one of the only airports I've encountered where de-shoe-ing wasn't mandatory. Apparently they got a new memo or something.
Breaking news: Exchange 12 will be 64-bit only. I have a lot more detail to post on this, but they're about to close the forward boarding door-- more when I land in Cincinnati in an hour or so. Here's a link to the umbrella press release from IT Forum.
Why the change? x64 technology is already widely deployed, and using it with Exchange reduces the I/O count dramatically-- by up to a factor of 4. This is huge, since IOPS are much more expensive than RAM or CPU. (If you don't believe me, try pricing 16GB of DRAM and a dual Opteron server compared to an EMC SAN and get back to me).
One objection I anticipate hearing is that this will strand customers who aren't on x64 hardware. I'm resistant to this argument, though, because even low-end servers now often include x64-capable CPUs, and this trend is only going to accelerate between now and the time Exchange 12 ships next year. Organizations that are planning to move to Exchange 12 after it ships can easily buy x64 hardware any time between now and the time they upgrade, usually without any increase in cost. Of course, I expect to hear criticism of this move because some customers won't be prepared to move to x64, but the fact is that there will always be customers-- for any product-- who don't want to, or cannot, upgrade when the manufacturer wants them to. Sure, there will be Exchange customers who will cling to their existing versions, but that has always been (and will always be) true for Exchange, Notes, Workplace, OCS, SAP, and any other software in this class.
The big news here, to me, is that Exchange is once again breaking ground in delivering a new technology-- and in this case, it's one that has the potential to radically alter the scalability and cost factors we're used to working with. I can't wait to get my hands on some E12 bits and start testing!
I got my JasJar last week and was all set to take it on my trip to Redmond tomorrow. Unfortunately, I killed it while upgrading the firmware, so it won't be going with me. Too bad; it was beginning to grow on me despite its considerable heft. (in the meantime, see this review to tide you over.)
I wish I had more time to write more, but I don't. A few brief notes: user admin is still kind of a mishmash, because you have to create directory users and provision them through one tool, then manage their rights in each application through that application. If a component isn't installed or running, you can't provision it. For example, if you don't start the mail service, when you create a user account, it won't have any email attributes. (It's simple to go back to oiddas and add that capability, but it stinks that you have to.)
Second, your first move ought to be to grant the orcladmin user email admin rights, then create a domain. This isn't well described in Oracle's documentation-- the steps required to complete these tasks are, but not the fact that you have to do them in the first place. If you don't do this, you'll have all kinds of hassles.
My copy of the Burleson and Garmany book got here today, but I've been too busy to read any of it yet. Perhaps tonight.
Oh, and when you create a new user, don't put in a FQDN for the email address. If you do, you'll end up in a catch-22: you can't create an email domain for the RHS of the address, but you can't remove the existing email address (or log on to the OCS mail page) because... wait for it... the domain doesn't exist.
Johnson has written an interesting and engaging memoir that combines trivia and historical facts about Antartica with a series of vignettes of his own experiences as a contract garbageman (yes, a garbageman) for Raytheon Polar Services. Johnson doesn't have a lot of good things to say about the National Science Foundation or Raytheon, and he makes some fairly outrageous claims about how capricious Raytheon's management of the polar workers are. He intermingles lyrical descriptions of the natural beauty of the area away from the actual polar stations with vivid commentary on how dirty, ugly, and noisy the stations themselves are. Since I'm not likely to ever go to Antarctica, this book will have to tide me over; at the end, I felt like I'd learned something, but I wouldn't necessarily want to invite the author over for dinner.
I've been having a hard time getting in the groove the last few months. Some parts of my work are much more interesting than others, and I've had a hard time staying engaged with the less interesting parts. I've also been feeling generally lethargic, so I decided the best solution was a little good old body rockin'. So, I started this week.
First step: the Hacker's Diet. No, it's not pizza and Mountain Dew; instead, it applies time-tested hacker principles (including a fetish for data analysis) to weight loss. Basic upshot: eat fewer calories than you burn, and you'll lose weight. Keep doing it over time and you'll reach your target weight without deprivation or undue cost. My target daily calorie intake should be around 2520 (the average of the range for my height and build, 2240-2800); thus if I take in around 1800-2000 calories per day, I can potentially lose up to a pound a week.
Second step: getting off my lazy butt. I'm trying to run every other day and hit the Crossbow on the alternate days. This will be easiest when the weather's good, but if I establish the habit I should be able to stick with it. I've been running a simple two-mile stretch to and from the boys' school.
Third step: goal setting. I'd like to get down to around 180 lbs, +/- 10%. More importantly, my goal is to be able to run a first-class Marine Corps PFT-- something I never did when I was actually in the Corps-- by May 1. I got this handy PFT score calculator for my Treo and now I'm set. Minimums: 3 pull-ups, 45 crunches in 2 min, and 29:00 or less for the 3-mile run. If you hit those three minimums, though, you'll still fail! As a baseline, I did 53 crunches in 2 min this morning, and if I ran a 3-mile course I'd expect to come in about 32:00, so I definitely have some work to do. I think I can hit 24:00 for the run, 70+ crunches, and 10 pullups-- that would give me 65 + 70 + 64 = 199 points. I'll post progress updates here.
Domino and Exchange are easy to start. Workplace is moderately easy (or, at least, the start procedure is well documented). None of these things are true of Oracle Collaboration Suite (OCS).
There are actually three separate OCS tiers: the database itself, the infrastructure tier, and the midtier, which is actually where most of OCS functionality is implemented. The problem is that you have to already be an Oracle DBA to know which services to start in what order. The documentation describes the process in general terms, but Oracle was kind enough to provide sample scripts to do the job for you: search Oracle's docs for "ocsctl_sample" and you'll find them.
One side note: if you've done a one-box install, you must manually reset the ORACLE_HOME environment value before running ocsctl_sample (or its equivalent) because the infrastructure and application components go in two separate places.
While Devin beavers away on Workplace, I'm digging in to Oracle Collaboration Suite 10g. So far, I can report that the install experience is about a million times better than OCS r2 or (gack) the original version. However, the documentation isn't greatly improved, and now that it's installed I'm having a heck of a time getting it to actually work.
Metalink article 331666.1 has a ton of very detailed guidance in it which is absolutely worthless until you manage to get opmn and the other baseline services running. I've just ordered Burleson and Garmony's Oracle AS 10g book, so I'll see if it helps any.
I just got back last night from my trip to Exchange Connections (more details here). I was originally scheduled to take Delta's redeye SAN-ATL-TOL, which would have put me in about 10a this morning. Arlene suggested checking flights into Detroit; I did and was pleased to see the new SLC-DTW service operated by ShuttleAmerica. I'd forgotten all about it, though it was discussed extensively on FlyerTalk. I rebooked my ticket over the phone; for some reason, DL's website wouldn't let me do it online. The first agent I spoke to said he'd updated my reservation, but he didn't, so I had to call back. Neither agent believed me when I told them that the Embraer 170s flown on this route (and SLC-CMH) had a first-class cabin, but the second guy reluctantly put me on the upgrade list.
I got to SAN on time, and had an uneventful (if cramped) CRJ flight SAN-SLC. In SLC, I finally got a chance to eat the famous pork chop dinner at Dick Clark's American Bandstand. It was outstanding (but then I was hungry because I skipped lunch). The onion strings were particularly good when dipped in the gravy, to boot. When I got to my departure gate, I found that only one of the 6 F seats had checked in; I was #3 on the waitlist, so I cleared easily. Interestingly, we pushed back with two empty F seats; although standby upgrades were for sale for $100, no one took the bait.
I was delighted with the whole SLC-DTW trip. The aircraft was well-lit, clean, and new; the seats were very comfortable, and the flight crew was attentive and friendly. I'll definitely try my next return from SEA as SEA-SLC-DTW; that gives me a solid half-day of work and still gets me home the same night, as opposed to my habit of taking the redeye SEA-ATL. (Interestingly, when I tried booking an itinerary with SLC-DTW, DL's website let me get on the upgrade list for that segment-- maybe yesterday's problem was transient.) We left about 20 minutes late and got into DTW about 30 minutes early, which was great...
until I made it to baggage claim and found that Expressions Limousine hadn't sent a car to come get me. Oops. I called them several times, but they were already closed, so I called National and rented a car to drive from DTW to home. I picked a Chevy Impala GTZ off the lot, mostly because I could see it had an XM Radio antenna on top. What a pleasant surprise! This is the first GM car I've ever driven that I would actually consider buying; it drove and handled well, had a nicely appointed interior without the usual crappy GM plastics, and felt solid and stable.
This morning, I called the Expressions folks at TOL to complain. They explained that the night-shift dispatcher was at fault, apologized profusely, and offered to give me my next TOL-DTW trip free. That's a nice offer, but I'm still nervous that they'll leave me standing at the curb again-- I'll keep it in mind, though.
Microsoft was handing out beta refresh bits for their very cool new System Center Capacity Planner (SCCP) tool at Exchange Connections this week. Unfortunately, they made a minor error that results in the bits not linking to the community support site as intended. Jonathan Hardwick explains here.
I flew in to SAN Tuesday, just in time to do my (or, more properly, Don Livengood's) session on Rights Management Server. That was a fun session, since I get excited about what RMS can do in terms of making it easier to give iWorkers control over what happens to the work they produce. Lots of good questions. In fact, I was able to share the little-known fact that you can use RMS with Lotus Notes-- 'tis true. More details later. After my session, I had dinner with the staff of Windows IT Pro and several of my fellow authors at Bella Luna. If you happen to go there, try the pear ravioli-- I promise you won't be disappointed.
Yesterday was my big day: I did a webcast for MailFrontier at 9, followed by back-to-back-to-back sessions. All three sessions went well, especially the Exchange security session. Scott Schnoll was kind enough to drop by and demo the new SP2 mobility and remote wipe features. I'm waiting for my JasJar to arrive so I can get some hands-on experience using the EFP (formerly known as the Mobility and Security Feature Pack). I also spent some more time on the show floor, where I had some great conversations with the folks at Cemaphore and a few others. More details when I have more time to write up my impressions. I also had dinner with the Zenprise management team to do some advisory board stuff; oddly enough, we ate at Aqua Blu, which is next door to Bella Luna. I was exhausted after all the talking, so it was nice to get back to the hotel and sit in an absolutely silent room for a while.
Today I have a single session, on connectors and the metabase, then it's home (via SLC and DTW). Interestingly, DL now flies Embraer 170s from SLC-DTW with 6 F seats, so I'm hopeful that I'll score an upgrade. Ill get home late, but earlier than I would if I took the redeye-- and that's a good thing.
It's been a great show so far, and I'm glad to have had the opportunity to meet so many readers. The added perspective I gain from talking to admins in all sizes of organization (including the four or five people migrating from Notes that I met yesterday) really helps flesh out my understanding of the issues admins face on a daily basis.
This week's UPDATE column, posted here because I don't have time to write a separate entry on this right now
One of my favorite things about IT conferences like Exchange Connections is going to the exhibit floor to talk to vendors and see their products. Sometimes large vendors like HP and Symantec have interesting things to say (like Symantec's announcement of a new version and pricing strategy of their Exchange security products), but for my money the real goodies are usually found in the booths of smaller vendors. They tend to be more enthusiastic about their products, and more engaging when discussing them. I'll do a broader review of some of the cool things I saw here next week, but with my deadline looming I had to pick one thing to write about, and it's… RSS.
Now, you may wonder what RSS has to do with Exchange. Over the last year I've mentioned RSS a few times, but it's always been as a client-side technology that enables individual users to find the information sources they want and display them in a web browser or a rich client like Outlook. However, there are some problems with client-side RSS use:
- you have to install an RSS client on each desktop; this is a non-starter for organizations that are trying to reduce the number of desktop touches. It also encourages end users to install and manage their own software, another hot-button issue that many firms are trying to clamp down on.
- users make duplicate requests; if you have 500 users, and 200 of them are making hourly requests for the latest content for a particular RSS feed, you're using excess bandwidth to pull the same data over and over. (Of course, the owners of the servers providing the RSS feed might take issue with getting a large number of requests from your organization, which is why heavily-trafficed sites often include a throttling feature that will block requests from IP addresses that are making requests too often.)
- users are left on their own to find the information sources they need. This is an advantage insofar as it allows users to make their own choices, but it makes it difficult to effectively share and consolidate useful information.
NewsGator Technologies has been making client-side aggregators for several years; their NewsGator for Outlook plug-in is my primary aggregator. I run it in a VM to let it collect RSS data that is then published to a tree of folders in my Exchange mailbox; that way, I can access it through OWA, Outlook, Entourage, or even an IMAP client. This addresses the first two of the problems I mention above, but it doesn't do anything about the third, and it doesn't scale well.
Enter a new product that NewsGator is showing on the expo floor: NewsGator Enterprise Server. It's a slick piece of work that effectively addresses all three of these problems by collecting and consolidating feed data in a centralized SQL Server database, then publishing it to users' mailboxes via WebDAV. This eliminates the need to license or install individual client plugins, and it makes the collected RSS data available to any client that can access an Exchange mailbox through IMAP, WebDAV, or MAPI.
This functionality in itself is very useful, but NewsGator architect Lane Mohler surprised me by showing me two other features. First, NewsGator Enterprise Server lets you specify default feed sets for individual mailboxes, or for sets of mailboxes as defined by Active Directory groups or OUs. For example, you can define a default set of feeds for users in your sales organization, and those feeds automatically appear in those users' mailboxes. Add a new employee, and she automatically gets access to whatever content you've identified as most valuable for people in that position. This neatly eliminates the problem of helping new users find the right set of resources when starting a new task or position.
The other cool new feature is called clippings. It addresses the problem of sharing relevant information by allowing any user to select an individual article and add it to their clipping set—to which other users can subscribe. I think of this like a librarian-in-a-box. Say you have someone in your company whose job it is to find articles about the company or its competitors and share them with appropriate groups. They probably do this by mailing URLs or articles to people, but the same task is more easily accomplished by using clippings; as the librarian finds relevant articles, he can add them as a clippings that are then automatically published to the appropriate users and groups.
What really gets me excited about the potential of NewsGator Enterprise Server is that it works with any kind of RSS feed, not just blogs. You can produce RSS feeds from SharePoint data or other back-end systems, making it easy to slip notification or status data automatically into users' mailboxes—a very cool potential that I expect other vendors to exploit.
