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Author Archives: Devin
Setting Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging codecs on a per-user basis? Genius!
I was completely floored to discover, via Paul, that you can control which codec the UM role uses to record voicemails on a per-user basis. This is seriously cool stuff, and if you can’t see why quite yet, let me … Continue reading
Posted in 3Sharp, Exchange, OCS
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A few thoughts on email
Email clients need to be more intelligent. For example, I can appreciate the Request Read Receipt feature that Outlook/Exchange and other email systems offer; it makes sense in a corporate environment, or when sending correspondence with business partners. However, all … Continue reading
Dear iPod
Dear iPod, Over the years that I’ve had you (as your second owner), we’ve had our rocky times. You’ve worked well with both my Windows and Mac workstations — that’s a plus. Your battery life is damn near useless (and … Continue reading
Posted in Computers, Humor, Music, Recreation
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Security and the OCS 2007 A/V Edge role
When people start digging into the specifics of the A/V Edge role in OCS 2007, they usually have a strong and immediate knee-jerk reaction something along the lines of, “No way!” (Mine was, “Oh, heck no!”) This reaction is usually caused … Continue reading
Posted in 3Sharp, OCS
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Exchange protocol documentation now available
Per the announcement on Tuesday (08 Apr), Microsoft has released a lot of new documentation for various Exchange and Outlook-Exchange protocols. This is some cool stuff — just check out the list of what’s available. However, as the web site … Continue reading
There’s no service like Web service
One of the cool things about Exchange 2007 is the new Web service interface into the store. In theory, having mailboxes and contents exposed via Web services makes it a lot easier for developers and casual dabblers to use Web … Continue reading
Geeks will get this. The rest of you — not so much.
All Hell is breaking loose in the Seattle area today because it’s snowing. Hello, people. We get a lot of rain here. This is the Pacific Northwest. There are real, honest-to-goodness volcanic mountains here (remember that lovely “view” thing you … Continue reading
Posted in Humor
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Too tightly wound to know how to react
This has not been one of the best weeks I’ve had. That’s not to say it’s been all fire and brimstone — it hasn’t been an Old Testament kind of week — but the victories and good things have been … Continue reading
Posted in Life, People
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Two minor things you may or may not know
For the record, Aly & AJ’s Potential Breakup Song is one hell of an earworm, but it sounds really good on my work desktop’s speaker/subwoofer. I’ve got it cranked up loud before anyone else gets here.I have finally found out … Continue reading
Posted in Music, Recreation
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A letter to my bank
Dear Big-Ass Bank, Many years ago, we switched our accounts to you from one of your competitors because they had crappy customer service and you did not. In fact, your customer service rocked our socks off. Sadly, it has become … Continue reading
Posted in Rants
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A connection I hadn’t noted before
Archiving 101′s post today made a connection I hadn’t thought about before. Share this post:ShareFacebookDiggRedditEmailStumbleUpon
Posted in 3Sharp, DCAR
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Getting to know Hyper-V
Because of a fun new project I’m working on, I’ve been starting to get my hands dirty with Windows Server 2008 and the beta version of Hyper-V this week. So far, I’m impressed — Microsoft has clearly put a lot … Continue reading
My son, the alien
We found out today that Alaric has a second set of armpits. No, it’s true. You and I would call them “elbow joints” but in Alaric’s world, they’re “second armpits.” Bet you didn’t know that. Share this post:ShareFacebookDiggRedditEmailStumbleUpon
Posted in Humor, People
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New Exchange 2007 migration whitepaper
A couple months back, I was able to work with Quest Software on a new whitepaper for Exchange 2007 migrations. As you probably already know, Reader, Quest makes some of the slickest migration software on the market. They also make … Continue reading
Posted in 3Sharp, DCAR, Exchange
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Gary Gygax, requiescat in pace
E. Gary Gygax died yesterday at the age of 69. They say that anything you do more than once is tradition. I guess that mine is to offer the words written by Annie Lennox, Howard Shore and Fran Walsh, as … Continue reading
Posted in Life, Recreation
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New form of spam
I came across an interesting article yesterday on a new form of spam: using webmail providers’ Out-of-Office features to do a new type of backscatter spam. This is an excellent example of how unsecured messaging does not mix well with … Continue reading
Posted in 3Sharp, OCS
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Sweet PowerShell lovin’…for free!
And yes, that’s “free as in beer,” not “free as in what some people think all information wants to be.”[1] Frank Koch and Marcel Trümpy of Microsoft (in Switzerland) have created not one, but two Windows PowerShell ebooks, and you … Continue reading
Posted in 3Sharp, PowerShell
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DPM book hot off the presses
Early this week, Ryan and I received our authors’ copies of Mastering System Center Data Protection Manager 2007, the book we co-wrote about, well, mastering DPM 2007. Amazon says it’s in stock, so if the topic is at all of … Continue reading
Posted in 3Sharp, DPM
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New books!
WOrking on my latest book, Mastering System Center Data Protection Manager 2007, was a long process. However, Monday I got to experience my favorite part of the writing process — getting the box from the publisher with the author’s copies. … Continue reading
Posted in Computers, Writing
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Passwords in the 21st century
I am sick and tired of the shoddy programming practices most companies still have in place today with their websites. I can understand the desire to not provide certain types of downloads to users unless they have an account that … Continue reading
Posted in 3Sharp
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Expanding Alaric’s world…and getting mine expanded in return
Recently, we decided to do something about a problem we’ve been noticing with our kids. While they’re both avid readers, they both tend to re-read the same books — tens of times serially if we’d let them. Alaric was not … Continue reading
Posted in People, Recreation, Writing
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Webcast on Unified Communications
Tomorrow I’m going to be giving two webcasts for Quest on What You Need to Know about Microsoft Unified Communications – one at 9am EDT, the other at 2pm EDT. (Yes, that’s 6am and 11am here, so my morning tomorrow is … Continue reading
Posted in 3Sharp, Exchange, OCS
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Received in the mail: Exchange Server 2007 training from TrainSignal
A couple weeks back, I received an offer for a review copy of the Exchange Server 2007 video training from TrainSignal. I, of course, gleefully accepted. Over the next few days, I’ll be checking it out and will let you … Continue reading
Liveblogging the Unified Communications Voice Ignite conference, day 5
Last day. It’s been a blast, but my brain is getting full. (You can see my day 4 notes here.) 9:45: When you’re deploying a multi-site Edge server deployment, be aware that you can’t have multiple sites with the Access Edge role … Continue reading
Posted in 3Sharp, Exchange, OCS
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Liveblogging the Unified Communications Voice Ignite conference, day 4
Just 2 days left — on with Thursday! (You can see my day 3 notes here.) 09:57: The RTAudio codec suite is pretty cool. Finally found out why there’s all those new devices (like USB headsets) that are marked as Microsoft UC-compatible. Regular … Continue reading
Posted in 3Sharp, Exchange, OCS
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Proof I’m in Sydney…and working…
Chilling at the conference. The lovely brownie-tart thingies they fed us today. My work blogs posts. Share this post:ShareFacebookDiggRedditEmailStumbleUpon
Posted in Life, Work
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Fighting PKI inertia
I’ve noticed something for a while now — people are really reluctant to install a proper PKI system. If you’re a Windows-based organization, I have three words for you: Get over it. The Windows Certificate Service (WCS) is powerful and … Continue reading
Liveblogging the Unified Communications Voice Ignite conference, day 3
Good morning! Back for day 3. (You can see my day 2 notes here.) 09:13: Back when I first started doing OCS, the vision included “hybrid“ gateway devices which included the Mediation Server role functionality in the gateway. Well, they exist … Continue reading
Posted in 3Sharp, Exchange, OCS, PowerShell
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Interesting definitions
The speaker just said, and I quote, “regular expressions, which are fairly straightforward.” That’s, um, well, interesting. And wrong. Share this post:ShareFacebookDiggRedditEmailStumbleUpon
Posted in Computers, Humor, Work
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Thoughts from the break part 1
So, I’m in Sydney for a training conference that I’m talking about in my work blog if you’re interested. There’s a lot of interesting small differences that have more of a mental impact to me than the big ones: The … Continue reading
Posted in Life, Music, Work
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Okay, this is cool
If you like the Discworld novels, you’ll think this is cool. If you like cake, you’ll think this is cool. You might think this is cool anyway. The Discworld as a cake Thanks, Nick! Share this post:ShareFacebookDiggRedditEmailStumbleUpon
Posted in Recreation
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Liveblogging the Unified Communications Voice Ignite conference, day 2
Good morning! Back for day 2. (You can see my day 1 notes here.) 09:13: Talking about dialing requirements. Just heard the best explanation of E.164 I’ve heard — very simply, it’s a format for writing phone numbers that makes … Continue reading
Posted in 3Sharp, Exchange, OCS
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Liveblogging the Unified Communications Voice Ignite conference, day 1
Greetings from Sydney, Australia, where I’ll be spending the next week (along with Kevin) at the UC Voice Ignite event. (If you’re one of my readers and you’re here too, look me up.) I want to capture some neat bits … Continue reading
Posted in 3Sharp, Exchange, OCS
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Heading for the underside of the world
In just a few more hours, I’ll be on my way to do something I’ve never done before — cross the equator. I’m just going to kayak down to the big black line floating on top of the ocean, nip … Continue reading
Posted in Life, Work
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A thought to think
I’ve been knocked off my sleep schedule this week — I had to test some sleeping medication I need for an upcoming business trip and verify that I wouldn’t have any unanticipated side effects before I was in Australia and … Continue reading
Posted in Life
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Things that make me happy
That I’ve managed to successfully get myself back on an “into work by 6am” schedule for nearly three weeks now. Even though I am not a morning person, I find that this schedule has a number of benefits, the most … Continue reading
Posted in Life
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Matching DLLs with a .NET executable
Yesterday, I ran into an interesting problem; I needed to give a small executable to a co-worker. However, this executable had simply been archived in a directory containing a wide variety of other programs, scripts, data files, and accumulated junk, … Continue reading
Posted in 3Sharp
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Halo there, stranger!
It’s been a while since I’ve blogged much. There’s been a few reasons for that, but I just finished the lastest one last night. Yes, that’s right, our Christmas houseguest and I have been working back through Halo and Halo … Continue reading
Posted in Recreation
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Oops! Forgot to link this!
Wrote this Christmas 2007 newsletter over two weeks ago and forgot to link it here until now… …blame the meds. Share this post:ShareFacebookDiggRedditEmailStumbleUpon
Posted in Life, People
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Christmas 2007 Newsletter
INTRODUCTION Merry Christmas to you all from the cold and wet northern Puget Sound region, the jewel of lovely Western Washington and the place we like to call home. If you’ve seen our fair state on the news lately because … Continue reading
I guess I’m just not a real Mac geek
I’ve been using Mac OS X for a couple of years now and I just today learned about Quicksilver, thanks to an offhand comment in a friend’s blog. Holy crap — Quicksilver is so incredibly scrumptious and I’m not even … Continue reading
Posted in Computers
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So true…
…so very, very true. Share this post:ShareFacebookDiggRedditEmailStumbleUpon
Posted in Humor, Life
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More TechNet “Q&A with the Exchange MVP Experts” chats coming up
I’m pleased to announce that I’ll once again be participating in one or both of the two upcoming TechNet chats on Exchange. One’s on December 5th, 2007 at 10AM Pacific, the other is on December 12th, 2007 at 5PM Pacific. … Continue reading
Posted in 3Sharp, Exchange
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Exchange and DPM data protection myths
[Edited 12/12/2007 to correct KB/MB error in the log file sizes; thanks to Chris Scharff for catching it.] Recently, I’ve seen a couple of pieces of misinformation about Exchange 2007 and DPM floating around in the ether. Rather than let … Continue reading
Posted in 3Sharp, DPM, Exchange
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My ambitions
To finally learn (and never forget) how not to take my wife and kids for granted. To write a sung SATB Eucharist liturgy and get it recorded with Alison Krauss, Sara Evans, Sting, and Josh Turner. To always have a … Continue reading
Posted in Life
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Coolest musician on the planet
The more Steph and I listen to Brad Paisley, the more impressed we are. (Those of you who don’t know who he is, he’s a country singer. If you don’t like country, that’s fine, you can stop reading, although I … Continue reading
A couple of quick links
I’m on my way out the door to fly to Chicago to present the last session of a Unified Communications show, but I want to give you a couple of quick tidbits: I’d like to welcome former Exchange MVP and … Continue reading
Posted in 3Sharp, Exchange
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Post-Connections report
Vegas was great again, this year; the hotel was as lovely as ever, but the overlap with the Latin Grammys sure did some interesting things to the elevators. Mandalay Bay felt full this year! On the other hand, the beach … Continue reading
Posted in 3Sharp, DPM, Exchange, PowerShell
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Upgrading a hard drive in a Macbook Pro
Okay, I have a question for you Mac users out there.Say you’ve got a Macbook Pro with an 80GB hard drive. Due to the accumulation of data, including a 30GB Boot Camp partition, you’d really like to upgrade the hard … Continue reading
Posted in Computers
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A letter to IT marketing people
Dear IT Marketing people; You are required to immediately cease and desist from using the phrase “perfect storm” (example: “the current regulatory environment creates a perfect storm for compliance vendors”) in any subsequent communications or materials. You may be under … Continue reading