There’s SO much stuff going on in my life I just can’t talk about publicly right now … and it’s eating me up!  There’s the whole big [redacted] that I can’t talk about.  Plus there’s another possible [redacted] that I can’t tell you about either.  And then for the next two days I’m going to be [redacted] which I think is completely cool and am really looking forward to … plus it pays really well!

Whew … okay, thanks for letting me spill the beans about all that. 

I hope to be able to share my thoughts more about all this before the week is out.  I don’t know if I could go another weekend without having [redacted] finalized and put to bed.

Speaking of bed … it’s 11:30p!  Yikes!

I came across an interesting post today from Tim Heuer about the site Line Rider moving to Microsoft’s Silverlight version 2.  Now forget about the fact that you’re not interested in the technologies behind this website and how it does what it does.  Just know that by watching the video below you’re about to waste an afternoon on YouTube.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you! 

Check out Steve Gillmor’s post over at TechCrunchIT about his best guess at the future of Microsoft’s online services/platform strategy.  Pretty compelling arguments, and perhaps we’re seeing an opportunity for Microsoft to climb out of 3rd place in the online ecosystem.  Only time will tell, but this sure seems plausible!

As Bill Gates closed the door for the final time Friday on his ex-office (Ballmer takes over Monday) the rhetoric about continued one day a week doesn’t match the reality. Whether you believe Bill will have an ongoing role in Office and Windows futures, I bet most of Bill’s input is already factored in by the owners of those two dominant sources of Microsoft revenue.

What comes next depends on whether Microsoft can pivot to the open Web paradigm as predicated in the Live Mesh strategy, or meander along while attempting to catch up in search and failing to buy Yahoo. You can find plenty of the latter analysis elsewhere, but here we’ll go for the throat of Microsoft’s disruptive opportunity by using a time-honored approach when faced with few facts but a lot of clues. Namely, building a case out of circumstantial evidence. And a smoking gun.

[ … GO READ THE REST!!! … ]

The Live Desktop is Mesh plus Silverlight. A Silverlight Office, however iteratively it is rolled out, will provide Microsoft the leverage to frame the discussion of an Internet Operating System. By mandating openness at all costs combined with a clear user contract trading software for services, the strategy puts Google and Apple in the position of explaining how they too get from here to there. Perhaps a SIlverlight-like runtime from either company is in the pipeline, but more likely are the Gears and SproutCore developer frameworks which are lighter-weight and less fundamental to each companies’ current success.

Contorting the words of Johnnie Cochran, if the glove fits you must convict. Will a Silverlight-only Live Desktop emerge soon after Election Day? If so, what will Microsoft or its developers do with it? Will Ray Ozzie, who spent the first half of his career as the most successful third-party application developer in Windows NT’s history with Lotus Notes, lead a wave of Live Desktop development under the rubric of Services with just enough Software? If the Himel post goes 404, maybe not.

The Smoking Gun
Steve Gillmor
Sat, 28 Jun 2008 20:28:27 GMT

My wife and I have pretty eclectic tastes in music: we’ll listen to just about anything.  However, neither Alicea or I listen to what I like to call “twangy” country music (some of the more rockin’ stuff isn’t half bad).  We spent 11/9 years (respectively) in the South … and we haven’t looked back.

Alicea’s working over at a certain global technology firm based in Redmond, WA these days as an admin, and her office mate loves country music.  Check out Alicea’s Twitter feed from this morning…

Alyleth: Got my smoothie - ready for work! Unfortunatly my officemate’s music of choice is country…. KILL ME NOW!

Alyleth: lyrics… no shoes, no shirt, no problem… WTF?!?!?

She just told me the chorus to the next song that came on, and I can’t make this up, shouted to the world (and Alicea’s office), “she thinks my tractor’s sexy.”

Wow.  And I thought “John Deere Green” was a lame song.

BUMMER!  I actually kind of like having media available at the checkout.  I’ve scored a couple nice selections that way (2-disc Police set, and the movie Juno).  Oh well…

Report: Starbucks scaling back music offering | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

I just read in Engadget that there’s a new suitcase out on the market that has a battery and motor to assist you in hauling your treasures from place to place.  “The PA series of checked baggage features a 12V NiMH rechargeable battery pack supplying power to the wheels when the handle is gripped and the bag is tilted. The bags weighs 10.6kg (23-pounds) which is about 3kg (6.6-pounds) more than standard hard luggage, according to the manufacture.”

HOLY CRAP!!!  This is just really sad.  So let’s get this straight, not only am I giving up nearly HALF of my allowable luggage weight per bag (50 pounds … that I get to pay $15 for the first bag on some airlines) but I get to spend $1365 for the pleasure!?!

I get my luggage from Target, or Fred Meyer, or Costco.  I try not to spend more than $100 for a bag, because it’s going to get just as trashed by the airlines as the expensive stuff, so why bother?

So here’s the deal, why not just rent a luggage cart for $1 and buy a $100 suitcase?  Then you can have the other $1264 to pay for the too-narrow, too hard, no legroom, next to the engines, no free soda, middle seat in the back of the plane of your dreams.

There’s nothing like a little bit of shameless self-promotion every once in a while.  :-)  We just sent out the following email internally to remind everyone of what IT “brings to the table”.  Fun times.

There are some things normal people can do. For everything else, there’s IT.

Number of employees and contractors that keep clients happy, loyal and paying: 600+

Number of distribution lists delivering vital targeted information to interested people: 711

Number of emails a month that attempt to infiltrate unsuspecting inboxes under false pretenses: 1,255,000

Amount of MBs it takes to backup all Civica files so that there’s no bloodshed when a server crashes:13,000,000

The 11 IT staffers who keep it all running without concern for a life, limb or sanity: Priceless

Without our IT department, most of what we do every day wouldn’t be remotely possible. So if you cross paths with any IT staffers in the near future, tell them thanks. Don’t send them emails though… they’re kind of busy.

If you’re interested, take a look below for all of the gritty details. Sure we don’t necessarily all know what some of these things actually mean, but IT says they’re important, so we should probably take their word for it. Either way, these are some pretty impressive numbers.

·         570+ employees

·         40+ contractors

·         9 offices in 7 cities on 2 continents, plus a number of “remote” folks in additional cities and countries

·         Servers

o   90+ physical servers in production and hosting of dev VM’s

o   220 IT/AMG hosted dev virtual machines and 22 production VM’s (142/12 in Bellevue alone)

o   8.75 TB of SAN storage capacity in the Civica datacenter (6 TB of capacity allocated)

o   6.8 TB of file server storage used across the organization

·         Email

o   875 Exchange mailboxes (users, testing, project use, etc.)

o   38 Conference Room scheduling mailboxes

o   711 Distribution Lists on Exchange

o   1.54:1 ratio of DL’s to employees (!!!)

o   520 GB of mailbox and public folder storage

o   Monthly inbound email traffic from Internet (through MXLogic filters)

§  1.4M messages sent to company-owned accounts (multiple domains)

§  84% denied, 5% quarantined as spam or virus infected

§  145k messages delivered (11% of total received)

·         Backups

o   13+ TB of data written to tape each week

o   22 tapes used per week (600GB/tape)

o   50 hours to do a full back up the Civica file server (includes data replicated from other offices)

·         Network

o   28 data circuits and 35 voice circuits (230 lines) across all offices

o   57 Mbps of Internet connectivity across all offices

o   144 Mbps of inter-office backbone connectivity

o   93 networking devices in use

§  15 firewalls

§  11 routers

§  47 switches

§  20 wireless access points

·         Civica Datacenter

o   15,000 Watts / 52 Amps of load the UPS (40kW/139A capacity)

o   72,000 BTU’s of heat generated in the room (average gas grill puts out 35-45,000 BTU’s)

o   6 tons of cooling used to keep equipment cool

TechEd 2008 is this week, and once again I’ve been able to talk the powers that be into letting me attend.  Really looking forward to it, even though it’s in Orlando again where it’s in mid-90’s for heat and humidity.  Thank goodness all this stuff is inside!

First up is a full day demos on Windows Server 2008.  Tomorrow we get a keynote from Bob Muglia, MSFT VP of Server and Tools Business Unit (Bob was actually on my flight from Seattle).  Then it’s non-stop breakout sessions, labs, community group meetings, etc.

I’m a total geek – and I’m in heaven!

I love that NPR’s “best of” CD sets for stories on Morning Edition and All Things Considered is called “Driveway Moments.”  The folks at NPR have a chance, because they’re not trying to give you a story in 30 seconds or less, to really dive deep into a topic or an interview.  At least once a week I find myself reaching my driveway or parking spot at the office and sitting in the car listening to the end of a story … a driveway moment.

This morning I just had a “desk moment” listing to the last hour of Morning Edition here in the office.  The story that captured my attention was an interview with Bill Eppridge, a photojournalist who covered Robert F. Kennedy’s campaign for President in 1968.  Today is the anniversary of RFK’s assignation.

Now I wasn’t alive in 1968 (heck, my parents got married in 1970), but this story completely rocked me.  I completely felt the empathy and sense of loss that rocked the nation when he was killed.

credit Bill Eppridge
Bill Eppridge was following Sen. Robert Kennedy into the kitchen when shots rang out. He continued snapping photos, sensing he should document the moment. Life/©Time

It’s definitely worth 7 minutes of your day to listen to this.

I added the Microsoft TechNet Radio RSS feed to my Zune desktop a long time ago, but never got around to listening to any of them.  While I’m working today I’m finally getting a chance to rectify that oversight. 

I’m currently listening to an interview with Alan Levine from April 2006 (“TechNet Radio Security Series – an interview with Alcoa’s CSIO”).  At that time (maybe still today?) Alan was the Chief Security Officer for Alcoa, the aluminum company.  At one point (about 18 minutes in) he makes a great observation on how some people in IT try to secure everything for the simple fact that they can … “security for security’s sake” as he says.  It’s a bad idea, Alan explains…

“and if you don’t believe that, tonight when you go home park your car in the driveway with your wife.  You both get out and you go into the house, and before she can come in lock the door.  You’ll find out that security for security’s sake serves no purpose.”

I’m a huge fan of giving real-world, non-IT examples of tech scenarios to help people better understand what’s going on.  This is an awesome example of that … and one I’ll have to borrow!

For those of you who know me, you know that one of my standard answers if asked “how are you doing?” is “hanging in there.”  Well today I can honestly say that’s an apt description.  I haven’t felt this crappy in a LONG time.

These last 6-8 weeks have been the absolute worst season for my allergies I’ve ever experienced.  EVER.  It’s so bad that I’ve even been diagnosed with allergy-induced asthma – oye vay.

So if you see me around and I’m not my normal cheery self, now you know why.  Bleh.

I just called Comcast support to get them to undo a filter that was placed on our home Internet connection a couple years ago.  We used to use a program that sent a challenge email to each spam message we got to give the sender a chance to prove they’re human.  :-)  We’re not using that anymore, rather our home email is filtered by Postini before it even gets to our server mailbox.

I got a tech on the phone after a couple minutes of waiting - not too bad really.  I explained to Neil that we were being blocked from sending email, and how I know WHY we were getting blocked and that we’ve stopped using that tool.  I also mentioned that having SMTP (email sending) traffic blocked made difficult to my job at times, since it’s hard to test email if I can’t send an email. 

He said he’d take the filter off, but it would take a reboot of our cable modem, which runs our Comcast phone line, so he’d call us back in a few minutes.  He did, and then he gave me a present.  He said that he increased my upload bandwidth 4X to over 2Mbps!  WOOHOO!

This is Comcast’s new “Blast” service, and Neil told me they just started the beta of the program here in the Seattle market a few days ago.  Blast is an enhancement to the top-tier of cable modem service that gives you constant faster bandwidth, not just short bursts.  They’re slowly rolling it out around the country, and I had heard a while back from my good friend that it was coming here this summer.

So much for the wait!  :-)  2.7Mb uploads instead of the previous 500-700Kb.  OH YEAH!

Thanks Neil!!!

Windows Server 2008 Core is an old new concept in the Windows world.  We’ve spent the last couple decades trying to put a fancy user interface onto our computers to make tasks easier for the user.  The server world has followed suit as well with the same GUI advancements.  And I’ll be the first to admit that I like working in a GUI for most small or one-off tasks on a server.

The problem is that with all that code to make a pretty interface you get a much larger attack surface for your environment.  All of a sudden you need to apply patches Internet Explorer and media player to your critical SQL server!

So along comes Windows Server 2008 and the option of a “Core” installation.  Server Core removes pretty much all of the user interface components leaving a greatly reduced attack (and patch) surface that you have to manage.  I recently heard the comment that if Windows Server 2000 had a Core install mode only 40% of patches for the platform would apply (60% for Win2003).  Check out more about Server Core here.

So great - I’ve got a lot fewer patches to deploy … but I DO need to still deploy patches.  I work in a smaller-scale environment; roughly 50 servers in my core datacenter with another 40+ scattered in local offices around the country and the UK, and about 650 users.  We’re not big enough to have the right folks on staff to run Microsoft’s System Center Configuration Manager (formally SMS) to push out applications and patches to computers.

Instead we rely on Windows Server Update Service (WSUS) to manage the Windows Update agent already on each machine (the local agent actually does the install).  Our user and dev machines automatically download and install patches, but our servers just download the patches (pre-staged for install) so we can manually manage when each server installs and reboots.  This way we make sure servers are rebooted in the right order and are around to ensure everything comes back up. 

The problem comes in with Server Core … there’s no way for you to see the “you have updates to install” notice in the system tray when you log on to the computer because, well, there’s no system tray!  I looked and looked and couldn’t figure out how to still leverage WSUS to push patches out and kick off an install.

I recently attended an event on the Microsoft campus in nearby Redmond where I had access to some of the key players in the Windows 2008 product world.  The event is under NDA so I can’t give a lot of details, but let’s just say I’M TOTALLY SOLD!

I reached out to a couple of Microsoft contacts from that event to get some help and was rewarded with a link to an MSDN article the solves my issue!  Effectively you get a command-line representation of the Windows Update user interface by calling a VBscript!

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa387102(VS.85).aspx

Copy the code to a Notepad window and save the file as a .vbs file accessible on the Server Core machine you want to patch (I copied it to a directory on the local disk).  From the Server Core command line execute that script via ‘cscript nameofscripthere.vbs’ and let it work it’s magic.  You’ll see the patches it scans and finds you need (according to your WSUS group policies … guessing this would work against the public Microsoft Update servers too), will download them (or leverage the pre-staged bits already downloaded), and then ask if you if you want to proceed to install.  Give it a “Y” and you’re on your way!

Special thanks to Brendan and Paul for finding this solution!

As an aside, you can also manually download each patch’s .MSU installer to the Server Core box (using a file copy from another machine) and then call each patch individually from the command line using ‘wusa.exe patchnamehere.msu’.  You’ll actually still get the standard Windows Update user interface dialog where you can prompt it not to reboot.  You can even use a couple command line options to make wusa.exe run in a quite mode and not reboot, thus allowing you to apply multiple patches via a batch script.  Still kind of clunky though.

The problem is that the WSUS/WUA tools don’t download the .MSU files (or if they do they store them in an “exploded” form) so you can’t use that combination to push out the patches to your boxes for deployment - thus the need for the VBS script above and my 4 day search for a good solution.

Sure it’s sad that I have one-thousand three-hundred thirty-seven unread messages in my inbox.  On the other hand, I’m leet!

I’m not exactly fond of Pontiac’s, but they’ve got one sweet commercial coming out.  They’ve put the new G8 into the classic Spy Hunter driving game.  Fun times!

http://www.autoblog.com/2008/03/14/video-pontiac-g8-invades-spy-hunter-circa-1983/

Driving over here in England is “great fun”.  I’ve actually gotten to the point where I’m comfortable driving on the wrong side of the road, and on the wrong side of the car.  I can even take roundabouts at maximum speed! 

The flat I’m staying at in Reading is across the street from a major mall with lots of restaurants, so that’s nice and convenient!  Ironically there’s a Chili’s, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, McDonalds, and even a Krispy Kreme, along with a handful of other restaurants lining both sides of the river next to the mall, so a taste of home is not too far away.  I’m still getting my morning Starbucks hot chocolate!

This morning on the drive to the office (in Kingsclere - about 25 minutes south on a bunch of back roads) we discovered a new style of music on the radio I’ve never heard before: punk rock with bagpipes.  Only in the UK!

Well, back to work!  If you’d like to catch up with the travels of one of Kaitlyn’s favourite toys, Milk Dud, keep an eye on http://novaks.smugmug.com/gallery/4450616_eVN9K#261634527.

A la “Office Space”…

This is what happens when you get tired of servers crashing on you.  You make a preemptive strike.  This one won’t be bothering us anymore (okay it’s been off for over a year, but it still felt good after everything we’ve been through).

In addition to a couple screw drivers and a hammer impaled into the box, I discovered you can make a great musical instrument (a shaker) out of a hard drive.  If you hit it hard enough the platters inside shatter into thousands of little pieces that then float around inside the case.

Don’t piss off IT guys. 

What’s a FLD?  That’s a F#%$ Load of Disk. 

We just put hooked up a Dell PowerVault MD1000 RAID array to a file server in our Spokane office.  The chassis has 15 750GB drives in it, arranged in a RAID 50 array (2 sets of 7 disks in RAID 5 with a RAID 0 stripe across both RAID 5’s, 1 global hot spare).  Over 8TB of online storage … that’s 8,000GB!

My good friend John can’t STAND the font “Comic Sans”.  You know, the one that looks like this:

John - I give you this from Indexed…

I’ve been working (my butt off) to integrate a new company into our email system over the past week and weekend.  It’s an ad agency so there are a lot of Macs around … which definitely complicates things and created about an extra day of work for me.  I’m not a Mac guy, so a lot of my work has been trial and error with a healthy bit of intuition and a pinch of luck.  That being said, I just had this conversation…

Lead Mac Guy: I just want to say we’ve had more Mac tech support around here in the last 3 days than we have in 9 years.

Me: Wow - thanks, but that’s sad because I don’t have a clue.

[banter about PC's vs Macs...]

LMG: You’re just jealous because you use a second grade system.

Me: Better second grade than kindergarten!  [walks off to a room of raucous laughter knowing he got in the winning shot]

To quote Toyota … oh what a feeling!

“JCB Construction’s new 60 MPH, state-of-the-art HMEE, built for the U.S. Army and poised for deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan.(PRNewsFoto/JCB)”

Um … yeah.  So evidently we can’t protect our work sites and roads leading to them in Iraq and Afghanistan very well.  So the solution isn’t to better protect them, it’s to order a backhoe that can outrun the insurgents.  I wonder how well this handles the Top Gear test track?

Anyone else see the irony here?

I thought this was a great comparison of the current market forces behind competitive high definition DVD standards Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.  KC is a HUGE Thomas fan. 

http://gadgets.fosfor.se/the-death-of-hd-dvd/

My better half finally updated her blog last night with a post about some things that she likes.  Did you know a window could fart?

Check it out!

I was listening to some call in show on the radio here in Baltimore this morning driving to the office from our hotel.  There wasn’t a lot of moderation beyond “Hello caller…” and it pretty much just seemed like a call in and rant show, with most folks dancing around various different radical ideas.  It was interesting.

There was a caller saying that the Republicans are behind the push to computer-based voting machines so they could easily rig more elections, “just as they have been for years.”

There were callers lamenting the disenfranchising of voters because of ID requirements to prove you actually are the person on the voter rolls.  Specifically one lengthy complaint was that it was too difficult to get yourself down to the DMV to get a drivers license, or even just a simple state ID card (no driving privileges, but it’s a photo ID).

The last call we heard was a rebut of this notion, and it was truly one of the best calls to a radio show I’ve heard ever.  The main point was driven home like this…

I live in a fairly poor area of town … it’s the ghetto really.  If people ’round these parts want to vote they can put the ribs down and the malt liquor and take a couple hours to get their butts to the DMV and get an ID.  They don’t seem to have any trouble finding time to go to clubs or buy lottery tickets.

NICE.

It can’t be a good sign for the Biden, Gravel, or Thompson campaigns when their candidates got fewer votes in New Hampshire than write-ins.  Yikes!

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Most-Viewed-Photos/ss/1778/im:/080109/480/2b54377b19a64ddc8592f647e057bffc