I should have known, from first thing yesterday morning, what kind of day it was going to be. Starting with sleeping through the alarm I’d set so I could get up and get a headstart to a long day, right through trying to change the roll of toilet paper and ending up by dropping the fresh roll into the toilet bowl, I had signs it was going to be a difficult day.
We did finally manage to make it to all of our errands in Redmond, including my eye exam and subsequent purchase of not one but two new pairs of glasses (luckily, we were able to turn a $410 purchase into a mere $155, through clever use of an eye plan discount we get through our bank and by recycling my existing set of frames, which were in remarkably good shape after three years of living with me). Yes, I now have driving glasses and reading glasses. I’m having to get used to the reading glasses — anything beyond about 10 feet gets blurry. This is more than fine for my daily computer work and reading books, but I’ll have to figure out the best way to keep both pairs on my person (or at least near me) at all times so I can switch, because if I’m not looking at something up close, the reading glasses will get me sick in a hurry.
It is nice to be able to read my monitors again without having to crank up the font size or get a headache, though.
We also managed to swing by the office so I could get the lowdown on some stuff I’ve been asked to do. We also picked up a new ATX power supply for Steph’s computer, dual-1GHz motherboard with processors, 512MB of RAM, and even a 40GB hard drive thrown in — all for very cheap, courtesy of the Seattle Craigslist. These will go into the Exchange server, giving it a much needed upgrade, freeing up other components so Steph can have my old system and we can get her back up and running on her own machine.
All in all, it ended up being a productive day; everything just took longer than we’d expected. I ended up working on day job stuff well into the evening. Thank goodness today is Friday.
On the calendar for the weekend: some good clean RoboRally fun with new friends, a Saturday evening visit to Church of the Apostles, some computer upgrades, and hammering out Chapter 5 of my ebook.
I know I’ve been on a Windows Mobile kick for the past few days, but it’s not all I’ve been doing. I just recently turned in the final draft of Chapter 4 of my DCAR (Discovery, Compliance, Archival, and Retention) ebook to my editors at Windows IT Pro, so I expect to be seeing that go live on the website in the very near future. As always, I’ll let you know once I know it’s up.
This chapter was a very difficult one to write, because it (by design) had very little to do with technology. The technological challenges of DCAR — especially the regulatory compliance aspects of DCAR — get a lot of airtime in our industry; we’re a tech-oriented industry, and frankly, tech solutions are a heck of a lot easier to figure out than people and process problems.
So, chapter 4 is all about people and processes. I have a fairly firm theory: any time you have an issue and need to make a change, it is either going to be a process change or a tech change. You won’t have to do one or the other — and if you find that you do, it has been my experience that you’re really making two changes, or solving two problems, at once. This leads directly to a quote from Exchange MVP Ed Crowley:
There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems.
One of the groups I’ve worked with at Microsoft, Microsoft Solutions for Security and Compliance(MSSC), is spending a lot of time focusing on regulatory compliance as a pain point for their customers. Via their secguide blog, I recently discovered the Regulatory Compliance blog, which is turning out to have some interesting and thought-prooiking posts from a variety of really smart and talented people. Give it a look-see.
I’d like to highlight one recent post of note: Regulatory Compliance Planning Guide Beta Coming. I eagerly await this guide; I think it’s going to be chock full of the same kind of crunchy usefulness as previous guidance produced by MSSC. Paul and I worked worked with them last fall to help produce the Windows Server 2003 Security Guide v2.0 and the Threats and Countermeasures Guide v2.0.
Don’t forget to check out the secguide blog as well; they have a lot of interesting and useful security content, much of which is applicable to DCAR solutions and concerns.
