Archive for: November, 2008

So long, Exchange!

Nov 29 2008 Published by Devin under Computers

This holiday weekend, I finally accomplished a task I’ve been meaning to do for a while: I got rid of my email.

More precisely, I’m no longer hosting my email domains on my own server here in the house like I have been for the past eight years. I’ve finally made the switch to hosted email. With all of the free email domains out there, this may have been an easy choice, but Steph and I are not your run-of-the-mill email consumers. We’ve gotten used to having the calendar and scheduling features of Exchange and Outlook here at the house, so it was pretty clear I needed a hosted Exchange solution.

Last night, I flipped the switch — I double-checked that all of our domains and email addresses were configured and then changed our MX records to point at the new service. (An MX record (Mail eXchanger) is an entry in DNS that tells the rest of the Internet who to send your email to. Almost all email systems use at least one of these records.). As a result, some time early this morning all mail to us started going to our mailboxes on the new provider. Over the next couple of days, we’ll be transferring our existing messages up to the new mailboxes and shutting down my trusty Exchange 2007 server here at the house.

Actually, I’ll be recycling the hardware — it’s one of my beefier servers, and I can use it to do some other tasks around here and upgrade some of my low-end machines. This helps me consolidate servers, shut down more boxes, get rid of more clutter, and lower my bills. It also means that we no longer need to have our current DSL line and static IP address; we can explore newer, faster options that will better fit a household with multiple Xbox consoles. It also helps de-clutter my time; running a healthy email server takes time that I wasn’t putting into it here. (I shamefully confess that I went to run backups on my email a couple of weeks ago and discovered, rather to my horror, that it had been over a year since I’d last done so!) Now I don’t have to worry about those tasks. I also don’t have to worry about spam; the hosted service includes a really decent anti-spam service (the same one we use at work).

Still, after a decade of being responsible for managing my own email services (eight years running thecabal.org here at home, plus another couple of years being a sysadmin at an ISP), it feels rather strange to no longer be able to put my hands on the physical box hosting my email.

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Oh, Alaric Ganger, no!

Nov 17 2008 Published by Devin under People, Writing

For the most part, we have good kids. We get compliments on their public behavior all the time. Usually, this is because we’ve taught the kids to hold it together until they get back home, where we give them a bit more leeway. However, what it also means is that when they mess up in public, they tend to do it large and with style. Witness Alaric’s current example: getting caught taking his new pocketknife to school. In Washington, this is a bad thing, although not as bad as it could have been in another school district that has a “zero tolerance” policy. At least our district gives the principal leeway on how they handle things. Alaric’s a very lucky boy; he avoided suspension and has instead been spending the weekend writing two reports.

I’ve copied the first of the reports below, because I’m really proud of how it came out. He turned this out after three drafts and a day of research and notecard activities. All of the wording is his own.

The Importance of Responsibility
This is a report on the importance of responsibility and making responsible choices.

I found the definition of “responsibility” in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. One definition of responsibility is, “the quality or state of being responsible.” I think the definition that fits responsible is, “able to choose for oneself between right and wrong.”
This is what responsibility means to me: the habit of making the right choice. When I’m responsible, I make the right choices most of the time. I don’t make bad choices so bad stuff doesn’t happen.

Responsibility is important because it will result in affecting the people around you in a good way. Responsible behavior helps keep bad effects away; for example, if I eat too much junk food and not enough healthy food, I’ll get fat. One of the results of being responsible is making people pleased.
When you make choices, consequences come along. The type of consequence usually depends on whether the choice is good or bad. For example: I take my sister’s doll; I get grounded for the rest of the day. Some consequences will affect other people around you.

A responsible choice is a choice that is good. An example of a responsible choice is: I want to bring a toy to school, and it’s not toys from home day, so I don’t. When you make a bad choice, you get a bad consequence; when you make a good choice, you get a good consequence.
Making good choices is not always easy, so we need guidelines from other people. There are many ways to tell if a choice is responsible. Here are some of them: parents, teachers and principals, or the student hand book.

Now you know the importance of responsibility and making responsible choices.

He still is working on the one about the law on weapons at school.

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After slight technical difficulties and a simple but complicated operation, the patient has recovered

Nov 16 2008 Published by Devin under Computers

I don’t remember which day it was two weeks ago that I discovered that my web server was no longer accepting queries, but I do remember the distinct annoyance I felt when I got home from work, made my way through the back room to the computer rack, logged on to the management console, and saw that the server was powered off.

That’s nothing to the irritation I felt ten seconds later when it wouldn’t power back up.

This server is an oddity in my collection; it’s not the standard desktop/server size for motherboards and power supplies. As it turned out through some testing a couple of days later (when I found some free moments), the power supply had given up the ghost. Unfortunately, I didn’t have another power supply that would fit into that particular case, nor could I locate one in the local area.

So, today I got to do a motherboard-ectomy. For the uninitiated, that’s where you take the contents of one computer (in this case, the motherboard and the disk drive) and transplant them into a new case. It’s a relatively straightforward process, just long and (usually) cramped in a couple of places. This process was actually simpler than normal — the web server motherboard is so much smaller than a regular one that the usual cramped space problems didn’t happen — but was complicated in other ways by the need to jury-rig a couple of things in place (very minor tweaks; the delay was more from finding the right pieces to do things as close to The Right Way as possible).

However, it all went well — and as you can now see, the web server is now back up and running. With some of the changes coming in my network in the next month, this is a temporary measure, but at least Steph and I can blog again.

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What happens in Vegas gets blogged

Nov 14 2008 Published by Devin under 3Sharp, Exchange

Update (11/15/08 1240PST): Fixed the URLs in the links to point to the actual decks. Sorry!

Time this year has flown! Hard to believe that I’ve just finished up my last conference for the year — Exchange Connections Fall at the fabulous Mandalay Bay resort and conference center in Las Vegas. This was my second trip to Vegas this year (the first was in May for the Exchange/DPM session at MMS), and I really prefer the city in November: far fewer people, much more pleasant temperatures.

I gave the following three sessions yesterday:

  • (EXC16) The Collaboration Blender — This session is adapted from the Outlook and SharePoint: Playing Well Together article I wrote for Windows IT Pro magazine (subscription required). Exchange and SharePoint are both touted as collaboration solutions and have some overlapping functionality, so this session explores some of the overlaps and compares and contrasts what each is good for. (In other words, we spend a lot of time talking about Exchange public folders.) And where does Outlook fit into this mess? There’s even a handy summary table!
  • (EXC17) Exchange Virtualization — As I confessed to my attendees, this session was a gamble that paid off. Back when I proposed the topic, there was no official statement of Microsoft support for Exchange virtualization (no, “Don’t!” doesn’t really count). I guessed that by the time November rolled around, Hyper-V would have finally shipped and they’d have shifted that stance — and I was right. Because I focus more on the Hyper-V side of things, I invited VMWare to send a representative to the session to present their take on the subject. The resulting session was very good, and I learned a bunch of things too.
  • (EXC18) Exchange Protection using Data Protection Manager — Although a lot of the content here was the same material that I’ve already presented this year (what, 4-5 times now?), I did have to make some changes thanks to the brilliant curve ball that Jason Buffington and his crew in the DPM team threw me. You see, Connections now has all Microsoft speakers speak on one day (imaginatively named “Microsoft Day” for some reason), and that day was Tuesday. While Jason couldn’t be here, Karandeep Anand (who is the DPM bomb!) was — and I’ve been trading decks and VMs and material back and forth with Jason and Karandeep for over a year now. Rather than give a less brilliant copy of the session Karandeep had already done, I added in some new material focusing on the internals of the Exchange store and how that affects Exchange protection, removed the demo, and really attacked the topic from the Exchange side of things. I think it worked. Either that or it was people staying to get free copies of the DPM book that my publisher thoughtfully provided.

A lot of my fellow speakers dread speaking on the last day, but I’ve found that I’ve come to enjoy it. Sure, you have smaller attendance numbers — but the people who are there (especially if you get lucky enough to do the last session on the last day) are the people who really want to be there. I also encourage questions from the audience during the presentation, with the caveat that if they’re too detailed or going to be answered later I’ll defer them; I like the interactivity. I usually learn something from my attendees, which makes it a good time for everyone.

Back to the grind. I know I’ve been way too quiet on the blogfront lately, and I promise, I’ve got some fresh new content in the works. First, though, I have to catch up on the paying work. For some reason, my corporate overlords seem to expect me to do billable work too, not just speak and blog. Ah, well. At least I didn’t get RickRolled on my birthday!

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This is just the start

Nov 02 2008 Published by Devin under Life, Politics

Despite the fact that I’m now counting the hours until the election is officially over — election season has been *so long* and so incredibly divisive from all angles — I’m aware of the fact (and even somewhat excited by the fact) that no matter how it turns out, it’ll be one for the history books. The hope, of course, is that it’s one for the history books for the right reasons.

However, there’s a very disturbing trend I’ve seen here and there, both online and in interactions with various people, and that trend is this: if we can just make it to election day and choose The Right Candidates, we’ll be fine. All the wrong-thinking people will be shown the error of their ways during the next four years, the economy will be fixed, energy problems will be solved, and the world will be saved.

This, my friends, is magical thinking, and it’s precisely the sort of thinking that has led us to this point in history. It is the manifestation of the human wish for easy, single-solution problems and for immediate fixes. It is the failure of courage to realize that we’re in this for the long haul; if we really want to make a difference, we can’t just get riled up for a couple of months, go vote, and then go home and wait for everything to just suddenly get better. It is the ability to ignore or excusing the problems and deficiencies in Your Guys while fixating on those of the Other Guys. It is a failure of accountability and responsibility, the unwillingness to take meaningful action when confronted by broken promises and campaign lies.

Let me be clear, even though many will say that I’m being a defeatist: no single election will save the world, let alone America. There are too many people out there focused clearly on their goals (good or bad) who are willing to expend the type of energy and effort every day that some people have lately discovered in this election process. If you’re one of those people and you’re ready to step back down to a comfortable life after election day — you’re ready to end the last few months of reading and research and activism and just get back to “normal” — then here is my advice to you:

Don’t vote.

No, seriously.

If you aren’t willing to sustain that level of energy and drive forward with it for at least the next four years — to check up on your elected officials and make sure that they’re doing the things they said they would, that they’re being the responsible leaders they claimed to be, that they’re working towards the ends that you put them in office to work for — then don’t vote to put them in office. In order to do the job you want them to do, they need your support not just to get into office, but to actually do the work. If you’re not going to be there to support them, that’s like pledging to a charity and never writing the check; it makes you feel good, but there’s no real impact to you.

America’s problems will not get fixed overnight. They will not get fixed during a single Presidential term. They will not magically go away. Now that you’re up off the sidelines, if you really want things to get better, you have to stay up and active. Your elected officials cannot and will not make the changes themselves; experience has shown us this time and time again, regardless of party or affiliation.

If you haven’t already, go vote. But when you vote, realize that this is just the start. You’re in this for the long haul. If you’re not prepared to make that commitment, you’re got some thinking to do.

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Masters update: short form

Nov 01 2008 Published by Devin under 3Sharp, Exchange

I have gotten a lot of email from people who wished me well and wanted to find out the status of my recent Masters rotation. I’m working on a bigger write-up, but here’s the short form:

  1. It was intense. I had a ton of fun, I learned more than I thought I could, and I met a lot of great people who are scary smart. I was also exhausted after it was all said and done.
  2. It was worth the money. Paul breaks it down for you here, and I agree with every data point. I think it’s fair to ignore the cost of travel, because no matter where you go for training, you’d have to pay it.
  3. I’m not yet a Master. There’s four tests you have to pass, and I only nailed three of them. I’m now patiently waiting word for retests, as are several of my classmates, and then we’ll knock ‘em dead.

Thank you, everyone, for your well-wishes and questions. As I said, I’m working on a longer post or series of posts, but those will be a bit delayed in coming because I want to run them by the folks at the MCM/MCA program to make sure that I’m not talking about stuff I shouldn’t be.

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