Archive for: February, 2009

A long-overdue status update

Feb 26 2009 Published by Devin under 3Sharp

So, you haven’t seen a lot of me on the blog lately. The sad part is that I have three or four blog posts in various states of completion, I just seem to have very little time these days to work on it. I think part of it is that ever since my MCM Exchange 2007 class last October, I felt like I had a big burden of unfinished business on my shoulders.

Happily, that’s not the case anymore. Yesterday I retook and passed the lab and received word that I am have officially earned the coveted Microsoft Certified Master | Exchange 2007 certification. While I’m taking this moment to express my utmost relief about this, be assured I’ve got plenty more to say about it in an upcoming blog post, but it’ll have to wait.

I’ve also been re-awarded as an Exchange MVP — 3 years, wow! — and continue to be going full-bore with that. I have become very deeply aware that my continued presence in the Microsoft communities is in large part due to the fantastic caliber of people who are involved in them. A friend once mentioned the “open source community” as if it was a singular community and I had to laugh; from my experience, it’s anything but. Consider the following examples:

  • KDE vs. Gnome
  • Linux vs. BSD
  • Linux distro vs. Linux distro
  • Sun Java vs. IBM Java
  • Tomcat vs. other Java frameworks
  • Sendmail vs. Postfix vs. Exim
  • Berstein vs. everyone else
  • Stallman/FSF vs. everyone else

I made the initial mental leap from “Unix IT pro who knows Windows” to being a “Windows IT pro who knows Unix” because of the management challenges I saw Active Directory and Group Policy addressing, but I stayed for the people. Including people like you, reading my blog.

On that note, since I know many of you started reading me because of seeing me at conferences: I will not be at Spring Connections this year. I know, right? Anyway, it’s all for the best; things are shaping up to be busy and it will be nice to have one year when I’m not flying to Orlando. This is even more awesome because I will be at Tech-Ed, giving both a breakout session and an Interactive Theater session. More details as we get closer. I’ve also got a great project that I’m working on that I hope to be able to announce later.

Oh, hey, have you seen 3Sharp’s new podcasting site, built entirely on the Podcasting Kit for SharePoint that we were the primary developers for? I’ve got a few podcasts in the works…so if you’ve got any questions or ideas of short subjects you’d like me to talk about, let me know!

Alright, folks — it’s late and my Xbox is calling me! (My wife and kids probably want a word with me too.)

  • Share/Bookmark

2 responses so far

Outlook Performance Goodness

Feb 26 2009 Published by Devin under 3Sharp, Exchange

Microsoft has recently released a pair of Outlook 2007 updates (okay, technically, they’re updates for Outlook 2007 with SP1 applied) that you might want to look at installing sooner rather than later. These two updates are together being billed as the “February cumulative update” at KB 968009, which has some interesting verbiage about how many of the fixes were originally slated to be in Outlook 2007 SP2:

The fix list for the February CU may not be identical to the fix list for SP2, but for the purposes of this article, the February CU fixes are referred to synonymously with the fixes for SP2. Also, when Office suite SP2 releases, there will not be a specific package that targets only Outlook.

Let’s start with the small one, KB 697688. This one fixes some issues with keyboard shortcuts, custom forms, and embedded Web browser controls.

Okay, with that out of the way, let’s move on to juicy KB 961752, an unlooked-for roll-up containing a delectable selection of fixes. Highlights include:

  1. Stability fixes
  2. SharePoint/Outlook integration
  3. Multiple mailbox handling behavior
  4. Responsiveness

From reports that I’ve seen, users who have applied these two patches are reporting significantly better response times in Outlook 2007 cached mode even when attaching to large mailboxes or mailboxes with folders that contain many items — traditionally, two scenarios that caused a lot of problems for Outlook because of the way the .ost stored local data. They’ve also reported that the “corrupted data file” problem that many people have complained about (close Outlook, it takes forever to shut down so writes to the .ost don’t fully happen) seems to have gone away.

Note that you may have an awkward moment after starting Outlook for the first time after applying these updates: you’re going to get a dialog something like this:

image

“Wait a minute,” you might say. “First use? Where’s my data?” Chillax [1]. It’s there — but in order to do the magic, Outlook is changing the structure of the existing .ost file. This is a one-time operation and it can take a little bit of time, depending on how much data you’ve got stuff away in there (I’ve currently got on the order of 2GB or so, so you can draw your own rough estimates; I suspect it also depends on the number/depth of folders, items per folder, number of attachments, etc.)

Once the re-order is done, though, you get all the benefits. Faster startup, quicker shut-down, and generally more responsive performance overall. This is seriously crisp stuff, folks — I opened my Deleted Items folder (I hardly ever look in there, I just occasionally nuke it from orbit) and SNAP! everything was there as close to instantly as I can measure. No waiting for 3-5 (or 10, or 20) seconds for the view to build.

 

[1] A mash-up of “chill” and “relax”. This is my new favorite word.

  • Share/Bookmark

No responses yet

Live from Facebook: 25 Random Things about Devin

Feb 02 2009 Published by Devin under Life, People

Over on my Facebook profile, I got tagged by about five people with this whole “25 Things About Me” meme. I finally decided to respond. Am I glad I did — I’ve been having a great amount of fun with the ensuing comment thread. In fact, it’s so much fun, I figured I’d repost it here. (If you read this and my Facebook profile, you’ve already seen this; feel free to skip it.)

  1. When I was a child, I once typed out over 3/4 of my favorite book so I could have my own copy to read. I couldn’t afford to buy one at the time.
  2. I learned to read when I was four; we moved to a new house and couldn’t get TV reception, so my parents got rid of our TV. The next year, I figured out people got paid to write books. I’ve wanted to be a published writer ever since.
  3. I enjoy karate, now that I’m taking it. I know that martial arts the world over teach a variety of armed and unarmed techniques, but I’ve always secretly thought of the bo staff when I think of martial arts. Now that I get to work with the staff, I *feel* like a martial artist.
  4. I love peppermint ice cream, caramel, and Girl Scout thin mint cookies. However, my favorite dessert is chocolate chip cookies. My wife makes a killer variant: orange chocolate chip cookies. YUM!
  5. I’m a sucker for all things feline, except for some pure-bred Persians and Siamese that are too stupid to breathe. When I was a kid, I got to play with a white tiger cub; white tigers are my favorite cat. I like some breeds of dogs, but not the small yappy ones.
  6. I think that forgiveness isn’t a “get out of jail free card.” It’s a process designed to help victims divest themselves of the continuing karmic damage they inflict upon themselves and let go of any claims of vengeance or retaliation. True forgiveness does not absolve the offender of consequences, but it does open the door to mercy and breaks the cycle of anger and revenge.
  7. I hated high school. I’d home schooled for five years, then moved to a new town and started public high school. So much wasted time and energy, especially on social hierarchy games! I wonder if I would feel the same if I’d been one of the popular kids…but we’ll never know.
  8. After my son was born and my daughter was a toddler, we found out that my family has a history of autism. If you ever wondered why I was so weird, you can thank Asperger’s Syndrome. However, that only gets 65% of the blame; the rest is all me.
  9. My first trip outside North America was a speaking gig at a roadshow in Lisbon, Portugal. I’ve always wanted to visit Portugal; they were the home of some of history’s greatest navigators and explorers.
  10. I have discovered that I enjoy speaking in public; the bigger audience, the better. However, I typically dread question and answer sessions, even though I’ve been told I do them well.
  11. The first time I saw Steph I knew I would marry her, even before we were introduced. The universe gave an audible and tactile “click” that was impossible for me to miss! This is why I was able to not get all nervous around her.
  12. As I have gotten older, I have become more concerned with uncovering the structures and principles that events work on, and less concerned with arguing the particular details of a given situation. Getting axle-wrapped about details is a great way to keep anything from being resolved. Boring!
  13. My favorite food? The Cheescake Factory’s Spicy Cashew Chicken. Screw dessert — I gorge myself on the chicken. Yum! If we’re talking homemade, then it’s the pizza that my wife makes, based on a modification of my mother’s recipe.
  14. When format allows, I always leave blank lines between paragraphs. I also insist on serial commas in lists unless the style guide says otherwise. (Real writers can do whatever the style guide says, or rewrite to avoid the points they disagree with.) The sentence “I’d like to thank my parents, God and Ayn Rand” gives me all the justification I need.
  15. My daily work involves Microsoft Windows and Exchange, and I’ve just been recognized for my third year as a Microsoft Exchange MVP. If you’d told me ten years ago I’d not still be working with Unix, Sendmail, and Postfix, I’d have laughed at you.
  16. I don’t like kids, mainly because I hated being one. Adults always talked down to me and condescended in other ways. As a result, I try to never talk down to kids myself. I find they are better listeners than most adults and respond well to more advanced instructions that most adults would believe.
  17. Before the Internet got popular, I used to run an electronic BBS. I had no games and the only files I had for download were basic utilities; I specialized in message forums no one else in my area would touch. My BBS was always busy, and over 80% of my callers came from out of state.
  18. To me, the difference between a “friend” and an “acquaintance” is how much work is put into the relationship. You can’t really be a friend if both sides don’t work to make it happen.
  19. I’ve been sporting a shaved head since college, when my best friend’s dad talked me into it. Although I occasionally grow my hair out, I’m resigned to shaving my head for the rest of my life. Nothing else really works well.
  20. I have a simple philosophy about shopping: do your research and buy an well-made item that will last (even if it’s expensive) instead of buying for price and having to replace it multiple times. Your time is worth more than your money.
  21. I can’t stand thrift stores, second-hand shopping, or even most garage sales. There’s a psychic residue to most of the items there that is very unpalatable. I’ve had to learn to let Steph do her bargain-hunting thing, but she knows how to find the good items.
  22. I was never a Cub Scout, but once I got into Boy Scouts, I was a den chief to both a Cub Scout den and a Webelos Scout den. My favorite part of Boy Scouts, though, was being on the ceremonial Native American dance team for our Order of the Arrow lodge.
  23. I’ve really enjoyed the Halo universe, both video games and novels. In fact, I’d like to build a set of Mjolnir armor, and one of my friends and I are planning to build a working Warthog. Geek!
  24. I often have insomnia. Part of it is that I resent the time I lose to sleep. It feels like dying a little bit, especially because it can be a struggle to wake up again in the morning.
  25. I want my wife to be a ninja. I mean, who wouldn’t

If you’re reading this for the first time, consider yourself tagged. Your turn! Post a link to your blog (or wherever you post your “25 Things” list) in the comments so I can go read it too.

  • Share/Bookmark

2 responses so far