….well….not for another two years anyway. It seems Bill has decided to focus on his philanthropic efforts with teh Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This transition is supposed to take place in 2008 so we still have a couple of years left with Bill at the helm.
There will, of course, be lots of speculation, lots or questions and lots of rumor-mongering. Lots of predictiong what will happen to the stock price. For me, it is going to mean that I come to work tomorrow….exactly the same way I did today. With the same desire to work with the great products we have and making sure people can use them simply and efficiently.
Bill leaves…..I stay….life goes on.
Cheers!
You — “What the hell is that?”
Me — “It’s cool…..stuff”“
You — <blank stare> (I get that a lot….)
Me — “The Technet Resource DVD contains whitepapers, admin tools, KB articles, software, podcasts, screencasts, webcasts and more pertaining to the topics of the quarter.”
You — “...and just what are the topics for this quarter?”
Me — “The topics for the DVD I am about to complete are, Windows Vista and Exchange 2007 with a little bit of Office 2007 thrown in for taste!”
You — “….and how do I obtain some a fabulous DVD?”
Me — “Attend a FREE Live Technet Briefing!!!”
Seriously though, the DVD is a wonderful resource of information for IT Pros. The DVD always contains information relevant to the topics we are discussing for the quarter. I toss all kinds of stuff on the DVD for IT Pros (and even a little dev information for people who wear multiple hats). I try to include the slides from the presentation for you to reference later, as well as videos of the demos we do so you can review them as well. I am not sure if we will get those on this DVD because of production deadlines but if not, the info will get posted here.
I noted we are on a quarterly cycle. If you go to the previous link now, you will find the slide decks and demos of out current Wireless Security, Incidence Reponse, and Vista Security sessions. These should be online till about Aug 1st when it should be updated with our the Vista and Exchange presentation info.
Register for an event, meet the presenters, and let me know how I can make the Resource DVD better!!
Cheers!
I will be delivering two security seminars in SoCal next week.
Jun 20 at the Edwards Mira Mesa Theater in NE San Diego and repeating the same seminar on Jun 22 in Garden Grove.
I will be discussing three primary topics:
Session One deals with Wireless Security. The differences between PEAP, PAP, CHAP, WPE, WPA, etc. We will also discuss using certificates for securing your wireless network.
Session Two revolves around what to do *if* you are compromised. How you respond to an attack while it is happening and after can have a tremendous impact on your business.
Session Three discusses the future of security. I will be showing off Windows Vista and some of the new security technologies that it will bring to the table such as Windows Defender and BitLocker.
We will also have Connections, TS2 and MSDN at these seminars to provide a full day of access to Microsoft representatives for Consumers, Small Businesses, Partners, Developers and ITPros.
Come on out to see us!
Cheers!
here is a little more regarding the server issue I had. Two days ago, i tried logging into my web server and was told it could not locate the DC. This lead me to the DC where I discovered a drive going bad on the RAID array. Now I don’t have a fancy array. In fact this array is composed of four 4gig Seagate drives in a RAID5 set managed my Windows. The data on the drive was the pagefile, the Exchange Logs, SQL Logs, and some junk I dropped them from time to time.
The best I can tell is that something in the pagefile got whacked, which in turn whacked AD, which in turn whacked “something” because even my Authoritative System State restores did not resolve the issue. I mentioned before that I would probably rebuild anyway which is what I did. The original DC is offline as I still have data to pull off. I have already mograted my mail from that server to the new one and restored service. The blog was offline for a long while as I made a change in my firewall that inadvertently knocked the blog out.
Still on the blocks is to suck the remaining data off the failing DC, and then rebuild it as a secondary DC. The rebuild cleaned up the server substantially but I have afew services to get back in place such as IAS and Quarantine to provide for remote access security.
I have bee detailing the rebuilds (yup…plural….I decided to put a new ISA server in place) and will post the details to the blog when it all gets wrapped up.
Cheers!
Belly up. That is what happened to my DC’s on my home network. I just got around to identifying an issue with my firewall that has apparently kept the blog offline for quite awhile. I still have to move some hardware around to accomodate for some new configs but should be stable enough to finish the CS 2.0 update this weekend.
Cheers!
…so I sit down with my handy copy of Ghost to image my web server before making some last minute updates on the way to the CS upgrade. Only when I go to logon, I get a message that the system is unable to contact a domain controller. Quite odd since I have two at home. So I logon to my DC, check the event viewer and it is solid red. I have spent a LONG time today troubleshooting only to find that hardware is a culprit.
So now I have a domain controller to work on, the CS site to build out, and that just gives me all the reason I need to wipe out the home network and go it again from scratch. Expect yet more down time in days to come.
Cheers!
….I have trimmed my Category list significantly. No need to be so granular and if I need to I can create a new category. Also, looks like I am going to stick with CS.
Cheers!
…..well…sort of. It isn’t a bad thing either. Unless, of course, you consider randomly changing the load locations of DLL’s each boot cycle to help stifle malware, a bad thing.
Go check out Michael Howard’s post about Address Space Layout Randomization in Vista. There is also a brief article about ASLR over at Security Focus.
Cheers!
….is officially my longest and geekiest subject….wow.
I am delivering a webcast on the afformentioned geek topic today at 11am. Two things make this web cast special. 1) The webcast content is good, 2) this will be the first webcast I deliver using Vista as my host platform. I have been running Vista Beta 2 as my primary machine for a few days now and slowly working through issues. If I can pull off the webcast, I will consider dumping my much loved XP Pro Image.
Come see how things go!
Cheers!
I just loaded up the latest version of BlogJet. The install seems to have gone flawlessly. Even on Vista Beta 2. This is the first post I am making. I am noticing that BlogJet is highlighting words like hyperlinks. We will see what they do.
Posting….Now!
Cheers!
I have taken the leap and started using Vista and Office 2007 on a daily basis. It has only been 2 days but I must say I am quite pleased. I have manged to get most of the apps that I run on a daily basis up and working with Vista. I have yet to put Office 2007 Beta 2 through it's paces, but to be honest, I rarely leave Outlook, Excel, Word and OneNote these days.
I am still pondering what blogging server I am going to make use of. i am poking around dasBlog and, via a comment, someone suggested 'subtext'. I have to say I am trending toward Community Server for two big reasons 1) Already familiar with it, 2) If all goes well I keep all my previous posts.
In other words, there will have to be something truly unique and convincing to get me to move over to one of the other platforms.
Comments?
Cheers!
So I am nearing the end of my tweaks on Community Server and decide to grab dasBlog as an alternative blogging server. So I am delaying the roll out of the new blog for at least a few more days while I play with dasBlog…
Cheers!
Moving. It is stressful, time consuming, costly and physically demanding if you do it all yourself (we did). The Nun and I have spent the last two weeks painting rooms, cleaning up, and trying to make furniture from the previous home work in the layout of the new place (of course she sees it as an “opportunity” to redesign and make things “better”. Sigh. So on top of the cost of the move there is the impending cost of replacing furniture. My poor wallet.
Anyway….all of this lead to me missing the first of Jun – The date I committed to becoming active with my blogging again. It has just been hectic.
But here I am now and ready to go. I am still working on getting the site updated to the latest version of Community Server. Expect a little downtime still till I get that all worked out. I am also going to trim the categories WAY down to narrow the focus of the blog.
Look for a post to follow-up the webcast I delivered yesterday on the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer. I have gathered some resources that provide more information on how the ExBPA can help resolve issues and truly simplify the maintenace of your Exchange Org regardless of the number of Exchange Servers you have.
I am also (like all of my co-workers) spending a lot of time with Vista and Office 2007. Look for a LOT of postings on both of those.
Vista Ultimate and Media Center is looking sweet. I happen to love Media Center and plan on digging very deep into MCE features and functionality.
Some of you may have heard about the new version of Internet Security and Accelleration Server (ISA). I will be working more with that in the newxt few months as well. I have to make sure that my home network plays well with ISA, in particular my Vonage VoIP phone which currently sits behind my ISA firewall. So look for ISA postings.
Of course Longhorn Server is going to play a big part in my postings as will the new Exchaneg Server product.
Finally, I am going to be heading back to my roots with the Small Business Server product. I worked tech support for SBS for 5 years before coming into my current role. It is a fabulous product and I want to stay on top of it.
So that is the basically outline of how things will pan out over the next few months!
Cheers!
Check out this 3D desktop Interface video….and another showing a little more. Sure it runs on a Linux box, but it is still a great looking interface. It would be nice to see something like this on a Windows platform. Especially for admins who do remote admin works with RDP. Place a different server desktop on different sides of the cube (and why does it have to be a cube?…..do we have to limit the number of “sides”?).
Cheers!
The move is complete…..almost. Everytime I have moved in my life it seems like it is months before things are truly in place. So far, The Nun and I have lined out the main living areas and our bedroom. We have painted a couple of other rooms and still have most of the house left. baby steps.
Anyway….the real reason for the post is to annouce that I am settled and I will be blooging again with regularity starting Monday (tomorrow!). I am also going to convert to Community Server 2.0 and get the site all updated. So do expect some up and down time for the next week.
Cheers!