November 2007 Archives

This is the first time in a long time (like, nearly 15 years) that I've been to Alexandria twice in one year. We were there earlier this year for a great family reunion; this time, sad to say, I was visiting my seriously ill grandfather in the hospital. Despite the reason for the visit, it was great to see everyone-- Ray, Dan, Ashley, Melissa, Grandmaw, Betty, Clayton, Laura, and Chris were all there. Ashley is only a few months away from graduating from high school; Melissa and I had fun learning how to balance chemical equations (OK, not really; I don't think she enjoyed it much); I watched Oprah with Betty (cracking wise all the way)  and Chris cooked two splendid meals. Last night, I had the first fried trout I've had in at least 20 years, and as a bonus he cooked the best hush puppies I've ever tasted. Tim arrived last night, so we got to visit for a bit (and he told me about his new blog, which has some hysterical pictures so far.)

BTW, the Alexandria airport is terrific! The terminal is beautiful (although there are no concessions in the gate area), and there's free WiFi. I only wish the Toledo airport were as attractive, clean, or well-maintained.

Get ready, folks. Exchange 2007 SP1 ships on the 30th.

Arlene just returned from Best Buy with a brand-new box of win: Rock Band Deluxe Edition. It's a Christmas present for the boys, but I wonder if they believe in early Christmas? It seems a shame to leave it boxed up given the upcoming four-day Thanksgiving weekend. Maybe I can sneakily rock out after they go to bed tonight...

Wow, this is neat-- NewsGator just alerted me to a book review of a book called McIlhenny's Gold: How a Louisiana Family Built the Tabasco Empire. This sounds like my cup of tea. Or something.

I'm still really enamored of the Microsoft RoundTable conferencing camera. IMHO it's a real breakthrough, and I can't wait until we can get one of our own and start using it regularly for the meetings I have to attend. We faced a problem for the roadshows, though: the RoundTable is an odd shape and doesn't disassemble for transport. I couldn't see shipping a $3000 device in a cardboard box, so I did some digging. As far as I can tell, there's only one company that makes RoundTable-specific cases. Titan Cases of Seattle. We ordered one, and it wasn't cheap (about $335). However, just look at the darn thing. It's practically indestructible. In fact, it should say "CRAFTSMAN" on the front.

Titan offers two models: one with wheels and one without. We took the wheel-less one in hopes that it would be easier to take aboard airplanes. It's done an admirable job so far, but we'll be ordering the next one in 3Sharp green.

It turns out that there are at least two ways you can build custom applications that take advantage of OCS 2007's capabilities for presence, IM, conferencing, and voice. First, you can use the Communicator SDK to do client-side stuff, like asking Communicator to initiate a voice call or change your presence status in response to some action. (I need to find out if Communicator is smart enough to set your status to "away" when you lock your workstation; if not that will probably be my first project.)

Second, you can use the OCS SDK to write server-side code for things like IM content filters. This is also a handy way to write server-side response bots. You can also integrate presence and IM with SharePoint using a fairly simple web part; I'll write more about that later.

Super cool: Devin is this month's MVP of the Month! Congratulations!

Technorati Tags: 3sharp

One common question (or family of questions, I guess) that I get concerns how voice mail messages are handled in the Exchange 2007 transport engine. In particular, a couple of people at the "It's Time to Deploy" events have had questions about how voice messages are journaled. Depending on your organization's records management requirements, you may want to make sure that VMs are journaled, or you may want to affirmatively block them from journaling. It turns out that you can easily do this with the Set-TransportConfig task in EMS. A quick

Set-TransportConfig -VoiceMailJournalingEnabled:$false

will do the trick; the flag is set to enable VM journaling by default, and this command just turns it out.

Technorati Tags: Exchange 2007, Unified Communications, Unified Messaging

A few notes gathered during my trip, now that I'm on the way home (yay!) I got up early, finished packing, and ran into my friend Rick Taylor at breakfast. We had a great chat about the perils of raising kids (he has two girls and a boy about the same ages as our three boys). He also told me that Joel Oleson got to go to a sacrament meeting in Barcelona, and I confess to being a bit jealous.

First, airport security in Barcelona is a far cry from what we see in the US. My boarding pass underwent a cursory check, but no one checked my passport. At the screening point, no one asked me to take off my shoes or remove my laptop (though I did have to go back through the metal detector because my watch and class ring together were enough to set it off.) There were no shouting uniformed bullies, and no screening for liquids. This might be because of a casual attitude towards security at this one airport (security at Amsterdam is much more US-like), or it might be a more realistic assessment of the actual threat.

Second: my KLM flight BCN-AMS was delayed by about 45 minutes, but no one at BCN seemed to care. I thought I could call Northwest to get protected for my AMS-DTW leg, but once you check in, only the airline operating your first segment can modify the ticket. No one ever made announcements about the flight status or delay time, and two of the three gate agents I spoke to didn't know how long the BCN-AMS flight was supposed to take. I guess that's better than getting bogus announcements every 15 minutes, as sometimes happens on Comair. I just barely caught my AMS-DTW flight. Good thing AMS is uncrowded and easy to navigate. I never would have made a 30-minute connection at CDG, for example.

Third, intra-Europe business class isn't what you think. I was seated in seat 2C, in what would be "domestic first" in the US. The seat pitch and size are identical to the coach seats, and seating on the 737 is 3-3, just like in coach. The difference? One, there are no complimentary upgrades (at least as far as I can tell) so it's only about half-full. Second, they serve your choice of two hot entrees, plus hot bread. I had a grilled chicken breast with mango and pepper coulis, trout tartare, and a small square of chocolate-banana cake. All were delicious, way better than domestic US first-class food-- and all this on a two-hour flight. (Extra bonus: KLM 737s have in-seat power using regular outlets.)

Fourth, the video-on-demand system on NWA's A330 is really slick. I watched the Simpsons Movie (laughing my butt off the whole time) and was able to start and pause it when I wanted-- almost as nice as being in my living room with ye olde Tivo.

Finally, I'm looking forward to having a couple of weeks without any air travel.

Birthday bonus: NW lost my bags. Thanks, guys. (The FA did offer me a birthday bottle of champagne, though, so I guess that outweighs the temporary hassle of being bag-free).

For dinner, I went out with a group of MS folks to a local restaurant called 7 Portes. It's been here since 1837, if that tells you anything. Wow, it was good! Our table of about a dozen people shared four or five different appetizers, including jamon iberico (which I put on Catalan tomato bread to make a tasty open-faced sandwich), fried salt cod balls, and anchovies (skipped those!) I ordered something that was described as crayfish-- turns out their web site menu has it right in saying langoustines. I was mildly surprised to see giant non-crawfish on my plate, but they sure did taste good. The food overall was excellent-- everything I had was top-notch. I am now a huge admirer of jamon, which is illegal to import into the US. More's the pity; I know lots of people whom I think would enjoy it.

As always, I have more stuff now than I did when I left home, so I'm in the midst of packing it all for my return tomorrow. BCN-AMS on KL, followed by AMS-DTW on NW, followed by a quiet evening with my family-- I can't wait!

I'm typing this from Danny Bohm's session at IT Forum in Barcelona (he asked me to sit in to help cover Forefront for Exchange questions.) While I have a minute, I wanted to jot down a few of my impressions of Barcelona and IT Forum.

First, if you don't speak Spanish or Catalan, you're probably going to have trouble outside the normal tourist spots. I tried to shop for a Christmas sweater for Arlene yesterday, and it was an equal mix of hilarity and frustration. I can speak pidgin Spanish thanks to my French fluency, but that doesn't help much with people who primarily speak Catalan. Everyone I've encountered has been very friendly, which helps a lot, but before my next visit I'm going to brush up on both languages.

Second, it would be much nicer here if the sun came out. The show is at CCIB, which is right next to the water. It's beautiful, but the overcast and haze remind me a little too much of Seattle. It's been around 60 degrees F, which means that lots of the locals are bundled up in scarves, big jackets, and so forth. (Boots are incredibly common here, both for men and women-- a little surprising.) I'm hoping to see the sun on the water at least once before I leave.

The event itself has been lots of fun. Ask the Experts last night was very well attended, as was my session today; I had probably 250 people (in a room with 300 capacity). It's fun seeing and hearing the variety of attendees, from pretty much every country you can think of in the Western hemisphere. Danny's session is in a big rigid tent that, on the inside, looks like a traditional meeting room. It's nifty. 

The event support was great: my speaking room had a clock, a cue box that showed red/yellow/green lights from the staff to indicate my remaining time, and an excellent AV setup. It's much nicer than the setups I'm used to at other Microsoft (and non-Microsoft) events in the US. There are some other aspects of event support that are drastically different here, too, like the snacks (lots and lots and lots of fruit, plus other stuff) and the large designated work areas for attendees (called delegates here).

There's a large mall, the Diagonal Mar centre, right next to the CCIB. I went there shopping yesterday and bought some treats for the kids. I stopped for dinner at Sagardi, but couldn't find even one thing on the menu that sounded appetizing. I hit Canas y Tapas instead and it was OK; I'm not sure what I'll have tonight; I'll post an update sometime between now and the time I get home.

Right now I'm in the Northwest WorldClub at O'Hare, waiting for my KLM flight to Amsterdam (and thence to Barcelona). This show, IT Forum 2007, is the first time I've been invited to present at a Microsoft event in Europe, and the process has been quite a bit different from that of the US shows. The content development process is somewhat different, and the logistics folks have done a very good job of taking care of signup, reservations, and the like. Unfortunately I'll only be there for a very short time, so I won't be able to work in much sightseeing. In order to get an upgraded seat, I had to fly DTW-ORD-AMS-BCN, which isn't exactly convenient. However, I scored seat 1K on my flight, which means I should have a great view of downtown Chicago on the flight out. Counterbalanced against that is the fact that KLM's 747s don't have in-seat power. Since it's Sunday, that's OK, as I won't be working anyway. Tomorrow is another story altogether, though.

In War Times

by Kathleen Ann Goonan

Goonan writes mechanically well, but the story she tells doesn't make any sense. To summarize: Sam Dance, the protagonist, is accosted by a mysterious female physicist who gives him information about a device that can help reduce the human propensity for war, apparently by editing human DNA. Or something. After that, things get worse; there's a lot of pseudo-scientific mumbling about quantum physics and many-worlds theory. Worse still, Dance is a jazz musician, and that leads Goonan to a lot of elaborate descriptions of various jazz-y things. I loathe jazz, so that was a problem too. (Oh, I almost forgot: her dialogue is terrible-- stilted and fake-sounding.) So, not recommended.

In days of yore, Exchange admins had their own conference, the MEC. For some reason I've never completely understood, Microsoft rolled Exchange content in to TechEd, along with developer-focused content and pretty much every other thing you could think of. What started as an admin/IT pro-focused show turned into a giant behemoth that embodied a paradox: every year, it would offer more sessions, and yet the number of sessions relevant to any given topic area tended to decrease!

I'm pretty sure Microsoft heard the screaming, because for the last couple of years their European show, IT Forum, has been split into two separate developer and IT pro events, held on consecutive weeks. I just got a note from my MVP lead announcing that the 2008 US TechEd will have the same split! This is tremendous news because now it means that IT and developer topics won't have to butt heads any longer. I expect dramatic growth in the number of Exchange-focused sessions, which should be great. (Of course, it kind of stinks for the MS folks who now have to spend two consecutive weeks in June in Orlando!)

Despite this change, I expect Exchange Connections to remain the premier Exchange-focused conference. It's a smaller, more focused, and more intimate conference that lets us dive deep into Exchange and UC topics. I'm excited to be chairing the fall 2007 show next week in Vegas and the spring 2008 show in Orlando. See you there!

Courtesy of my Marine mailing list, here's a video of this year's Marine Corps birthday message from Gen James Conway, Commandant of the Marine Corps.

I know what Julie's getting for Christmas.

This really isn't a review, because I haven't been able to use WorldMate enough to get a feel for it. The desktop software crashes every time I try to run it, and the handheld software is almost unusable for entering itineraries. It's a far cry from the usability of TravelTracker for the Palm OS. I'm sure the time clock, weather, and flight timetable features are useful for some people, but all I want is the ability to enter flight itineraries and have them end up on my calendar. No such luck.

I have a long list of stuff to blog about, but I'm far behind. Expect a stream of short (and possibly pithy) posts over the next few days as I get ready for my trips to Vegas and Barcelona. I've got book reviews, trip reports, and more!