Today's quote

"Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime."
- Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.

Serenity out on DVD on Dec 20!

Serenity the Movie! It ships on DVD on Dec 20th! This is my favorite movie of the year and it was one of the best TV shows (Firefly) that has been on TV in years. Here is the Synopsis from Amazon:

The crew of the Serenity is getting desperate. They have lain lower and lower to protect their doctor, Simon Tam (Sean Maher), and his telepathic traumatized little sister, River (Summer Glau), from the alliance, whom he rescued her from a year earlier. This has made getting jobs harder and now they are desperate. When they take River on a robbery during which Reavers (humans who have gone crazy and turned into cannibals) attack, Simon decides that its time to leave the crew of the Serenity for his and River's safety. She then mutters "Miranda" and goes berserk and nearly shoots Capt. Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion), until her brother says the safety word to put her to sleep. Reynolds decides to take them back on board for safety, only now an alliance operative (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is on their tracks and making Reynolds determined to find out what "Miranda" is and what the Alliance is hiding.

The Definitive Guide to Exchange Disaster Recovery and Availability

Paul Robichaux's "The Definitive Guide to Exchange Disaster Recovery and Availability" eBook is now completed and the full guide is published at on realtimepublisher's web site (www.realtimepublishers.com) I was the technical editor and contributor on this eBook, but being a contributor or editor for Paul is one of the easiest jobs in the world because Paul is quite thorough. The eBook is easily read and understood by not only IT techies, but decision makers as well. Here is the chapter breakdown:

Chapter 1: Basics of Exchange Protection
Chapter 2: Availability Building Blocks: Disaster Recovery
Chapter 3: Availability Building Blocks: High Availability and Business Continuance
Chapter 4: Availability Building Blocks: Validation, Testing, and Deployment
Chapter 5: Designing for Disaster Recovery and High Availability
Chapter 6: Implementing Disaster Recovery / High Availability with Exchange
Chapter 7: Building an HA-Ready Infrastructure

This eBook makes for good and relevant reading for anyone concerned about the stability of their e-mail system!

Microsoft Security360 Web Cast (with me being interviewed!)

Hello (again) from Redmond. The Tuesday, December 20th edition of Mike Nash's Microsoft Security360 includes an interview with me. The topic of discussion is essentially multi-layer e-mail security which ties in nicely with an e-mail security e-book that I'm e-working on. :-)

Cool lava picture

Greetings from sunny Redmond, everyone!
More on why I'm in Redmond in a later posting. I have been meaning to post this picture for the past couple of weeks. This picture came from an article in the Honolulu Advertiser on December 1. A 44-acre, 60 foot high wall of rock collapsed in to the ocean and exposed a lava tube. What you see in the picture is a 6 foot high stream of lava poring out of the rocks and in to the water below. Very cool.

Exchange ActiveSync Web Administration Tool released

Microsoft today released the Microsoft Exchange Server ActiveSync Web Administration Tool. I saw a demo of this tool at Exchange Connections back in November and it is most cool. This tool is designed to allow an administrator of moible devices to manage devices remotely by erasing mobile devices that may have been lost/stolen/compromised. Using this tool, the mobile device administrator can:

• View a list of all devices that are being used by any enterprise user
• Select/De-select devices to be remotely erased
• View the status of pending remote erase requests for each device
• View a transaction log that indicates which administrators have issued remote erase commands, in addition to the devices those commands pertained to

The Exchange server must be running Exchange Server 2003 SP2 and the mobile devices must run Windows Mobile 2005 with Feature Pack 1 installed. The feature pack must come from the vendor of your mobile device.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra

I heard some interesting Christmast music last week and went off in search of the CD. In fact, I found many. The Trans-Siberian Orchestra is the alter-ego of a rock band called Savatage. One reviewer of their music said they often contain flashes of brilliance. I would have to describe what I have heard so far as a mixture of classical and rock. Sort of like what would happen if the New York Philharmonic and Metallic collide. So, for a different (and very welcome take) on Christmas music, get one of their CDs or listen to some of their music on Amazon. I'm hooked.