Year: 2007

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I’m laughing at Windows Vista right now.

What a letdown. I ran it during beta testing and found nothing special about it. I though Microsoft would certainly add something to it that would entice me to have it on a system once the retail release came around. We got a few copies of Vista Business at work this week. Here are the differences I found between XP and Vista with an explanation as to why none of these features are new, exciting, or even worth a d@#!.

  • Windows Defender = Yet more annoying Windows security prompts. Thanks.
  • Instant Search = Google Desktop Search
  • Windows Aero Desktop = Yippee. Now I can flip through 3-D windows on my desktop. How this makes me more productive, I don’t know.
  • Meeting Space = Little, tiny Netmeeting. A subscription is required for full functionality of Livemeeting. Citrix Gotomeeting is cheaper, easier, and established.
  • New backup features = Very slightly enhanced MS Backup. It’s not anywhere near as innovative as System Restore Points were in XP.
  • New Interface = The primary reason PC users tired of XP quickly declare “ooh, I like it”. Just what Microsoft was counting on. It’s finally a different desktop environment for them but hardly new to anyone who’s used alternative NFS operating systems all along.

Once again Microsoft has proven they are not innovative. Just like when the announced Active Directory with a thousand trumpets and anyone who ever used Novell NDS, or directory services on NFS said “oh look, it’s LDAP 10 years late”.

Needless to say I haven’t found one technical reason to go out and put Vista on any machine I own permanently. Now if you’re a gamer who just “must have” DirectX 10 by all means, do your worst. But for those of us who check email, write documents, script, or use remote administration utilities there is little this operating system offers past transparent task bars. Just like the ones I had when I was running the Blackbox windows manager on BSD eight years ago.

How come Microsoft didn’t sit down and try to come up with something that would actually entice a few Apple or Linux fans to give Vista a day in court? It’s almost as if they are so arrogant about their market share that they’ve decided not to try anymore. They’ll just roll with the existing user base and try not to lose anyone by throwing a bone in the form of a lousy graphical interface change every once and a while. A copied, un-innovative, bloated interface at that.

I really was hoping for more and stood ready to give Vista my endorsement in the shadow of ridicule from the Apple and Linux promoters. But I cannot. All I can think is, the hype lasted 5 years for what?

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Something interesting…

I learned today…

 

“In a recent Institute for Traffic Safety study, listening to right-wing talk radio was found to be nearly twice as distracting while driving as listening to NPR.”

 

Hmmm….  Nothing bad can come from this.  Attention Neocons: Please enjoy more right-wing ranting.  You can thank Rush for the higher insurance rates.

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Updating Exchange 2003 and BlackBerry Server the Daylight Savings Time Change

There are two updates that must be completed to update Exchange 2003.  Three if you haven’t already upgraded to Service Pack 2.

The first is the cumulative time zone update for Windows 2003 Server which can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931836/.

The second is the Update for daylight saving time changes in 2007 for Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2 which is at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=926666.

If you have a Blackberry Server there are no specific patches that are required by RIM on the server itself.  There is a patch that needs to be run on the handhelds which can be pushed to the devices from the server.  More information is available directly from Blackberry at:

 http://www.blackberry.com/select/dst2007/resolutions/enterpriseserver/exchange.

Here’s the PDF that explains how to cofigure the software push to the BlackBerry handhelds from the BlackBerry Server:

http://www.blackberry.com/select/dst2007/Deploying_DST_2007_Update.pdf

It works.  I just pushed to my unit as a test.

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Internet Explorer 7 – No more duplicate “home” tabs

I’ve started using IE7 instead of Firefox. Why commit such blasphemy? Because the tabbed browsing is functionally better. For a long time I’ve been setting multiple tabs as my “home” page. Long before IE7 I disliked the way Firefox opened all of the tabs set as the home pages as duplicates (except for the currently selected tab) when the “home” button is pressed.

IE7 did away with this nonsense while I can’t find much reference of it as an acknowledged problem or future enhancement by Mozilla. Now when you press the home button in IE, while the first tab to the left is selected, it will only refresh, not re-open, all of the pages you have set as the home page tabs. To me this is a critical function that I think has been long overlooked by Mozilla. Strange that I can find no reference to it bothering anyone else.  I don’t think I’m being too picky.  It bothered someone at Microsoft.

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How do you feel about Global Warming?

Personally I’ve felt guilty about the amount of energy I waste long before it became a media spectacle and a consensus of international scientist confirming we’re responsible for killing our own atmosphere. Amazingly there are still Neocons who swear the the problem doesn’t exist much less that humans cause it. My own father falls directly into this category. But like the majority of Americans I hear about it and think it’s terrible but do absolutely nothing to change my personal behavior.

I’m not paying extra for recycled paper towels, my company isn’t going to give me $3000 for buying a hybrid vehicle (the Timberland shoe company does) and I’m not going around the house unplugging all of my power supplies and battery chargers. In fact, if I had to turn off my desktop PC when I’m not using it you wouldn’t be reading this and I’d be paying a monthly fee for web hosting. In short, there’s no incentive.

I admit there’s a problem but I’m too selfish to sacrifice my personal desires and routines for universal positive gain. Welcome to America. This is precisely why our government is lax on the environment. There’s no monetary or political benefit to requiring corporations to implement expensive environmental controls. One suggestion I heard an environmental consultant recommend on a news program was “stop flying so much, use video and web conferences”. I’m sure the airline industry loves that idea. Again, where’s the national economic incentive? We don’t see where saving the atmosphere is going to provide anyone with a commission check. The only thing that governs America is money.

Until there are financial or personal incentives for individual Americans and corporations to cut back on greenhouse emissions it’s simply not going to happen. There’s not even social or cultural incentive. You’re stereotyped a “tree hugger” if you drive a hybrid or anything less than a 4-door SUV. The only reason Americans buy fuel efficient vehicles is to save money at the pump, not to stop emitting carbon atoms. It would be completely deceptive for us to tell the rest of the world we’re going to do our part to help when we have no intention of doing any such thing. It’s perceived to be too inconvenient, time consuming, expensive and socially embarrassing to be environmentally concerned in America. Yet we will give awards to the movie “An Inconvenient Truth”, which is now required viewing in several European countries. Please enjoy American hypocrisy at it’s finest.

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Fine Art. Finally.

Where would we be without the Internet? Still strolling through antiquated “modern” art museums looking at “interpretive” crap that could be mistaken for the homework of a 4-year-old, that’s where. Thanks to the web we can be introduced to art that would be worth traveling to see. Like the sidewalk chalk drawings of Julian Beever. “Striking” is my new word for the week and this art is the definition. Julian’s images can be over 30 feet long on the sidewalk but appear to be only three or four feet high in perspective. Crazy.
http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/pave.htm

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My six minutes on Iraq and no more.

Last night, during a 60 minutes interview, Bush used the word “succeed” again when there has never been a true definition of “success” in Iraq presented by Rebuplicans or Democrats. Is it defined as a stable Iraq? Clearly there won’t be a Wal-Mart ribbon cutting ceremony in downtown Baghdad any time soon. So at this point what exactly is our mission? Too keep Sunni’s and Shia from killing each other? This is something they’ve wanted to do for hundreds of years and we removed the only thing stopping it: A “strong man” who basically said if there’s any killing that’s gonna be done in these parts, I’m the one who’s gonna be a doin’ it. Anyone with any knowledge of the middle east could have predicted this outcome. Many did and their warnings were ignored.

So now we stand in the middle and try to break up the fight using the lives of Americans and tax payer dollars. If we stay 100 years the minute we leave these people will try to kill each other. They are driven by religious, sectarian ideologies we cannot deter. Neither Republicans or Democrats want to present their idea as anything but the path to stability. When will it be admitted that we cannot “give” freedom and stability? We might as well get out of the way and let them settle it. As for those who argue this course would jeopardize western security I would like to ask how? How will it put us in harms way to call our troops back for national defense (novel idea) and let the Sunnis and Shia have it out? Tragic, yes. Our problem? – I don’t see it that way.

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Holidays be gone.

After at least five Christmas celebrations our holidays are thankfully over. I took the last of the decorations down yesterday. We do four family Christmas celebrations each year, three of which are all out gift giving extravaganzas. It becomes quite tiring and old after about the second or third time.

Connor got a battery powered 4-Wheeler and now we will never have another living flower in the yard again.  It rained on Christmas day so he spent the morning crashing it into the walls.  It was a good but busy holiday season.

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2006 Roundup.

Holy crap life has gotten routine lately. Hold on, I’ve got to go kill a spider for Amy. Okay, now that I’ve killed it she’s mad at me for not putting it in a cup and letting it go outside. What are we Buddhist now?

Where was I? The same ‘ol day to day going into 2007. I go to work, get harassed to solve other peoples problems, make 50 phone calls and come home to spin Connor around in the living room for 20-30 minutes before cooking and bed time. That’s it, every week day of my life. We do have the baby coming in a few months and Amy and I are real happy with everything. Bored but happy.

Despite managing the IT deployment of 21 new franchise and corporate facilities this year for 1-800-Pack-Rat I wanna do something that has a bigger impact with more personal satisfaction. So I decided to get my Project Management Professional certification from the Project Management Institute. If I could eliminate the amount of “dead time” I spend during my work week supporting end users through routine tasks and providing basic PC instruction I could be designing some serious wide area networks, back-end server architectures (farms) and negotiating major telco contracts through agency.

That may not sound like fun to most people but it would mean a sense of accomplishment and money to me. The accomplishment part would come from acting as the agent for unsuspecting corporate primes who are routinely getting ripped off by integrators, telco vendors and even unskilled internal staff who allocate money for the wrong technology. I see it happen all the time and Executives are unable to determine right from wrong in the midst of disenting opinions. There are CEO’s of SMB’s out there who need unbiased assessments and I’d like to be the impartial voice helping to determine what will really take their company in the right direction, not boost the Integrators profit margins.

It’s easy to see why I got out of being a Consultant for a VAR relatively quickly back in 2000. As hard as I tried I couldn’t stomach proving unnecessary recommendations to clients on behalf of a sales rep knowing the same technologies could be implemented faster, more securely and cheaper (or free).

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Now this is interesting…

For some reason this fact from Gullible Info really intrigued me once I thought about it for a minute:

“Due mostly to increasing life spans, the number of living people is set to overtake the number of people who have ever died by 2008.”

Brings to mind lots of questions for the next two hundred years like mandatory cremation?

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