Friday, June 30, 2006

Happy July 4th from Paris

Due a hectic traveling schedule, I am going to find myself in Paris during 4th of July (for international readers, that is the U.S. Independence Day). I mentioned this to one of my friends and he commented that was kind of ironic "to be in France on July 4th". I thought it was perfectly fitting to be in France on Indepenence Day. The French, after all, supported the "colonies" bid for independence and financed the American revolution.

Monday, June 19, 2006

Directory Update - Developer's blog

Matt and Jordan, my developer/tester/coding gurus have started (after me encouraging them) a blog that tracks development, updates, and customer feedback for the Directory Update application. They are using WordPress; after looking at it myself, I'm pretty impressed. Even tempted to move my own blog.

Sunday, June 04, 2006

Active Directory Update web page - GALMOD replacement

One of my friends has been helping me design and build a .NET application that allows a user to update some of their own Active Directory attributes (telephone number, title, city, state, etc...). The administrator can specify which attributes the user can update. He has been working on this on or off for the last 6 months, but finally has something close to completion. He is planning on selling this for modest amount (probably around US$250 per Active Directory domain.)

After playing with it last night some, I'm pretty impressed. If you are interested, drop him a message at MattSuriya (at) somorita.com and include in the subject line Directory Update. For a expanded view click here.

Features in the version he is trying to get finished include:
  • Administrator controls which attributes a user can update
  • Common fields are populated via administrator customizable drop-down lists
  • Field labels can be changed by administrator
  • Developer can easily add additional attributes (such as custom attributes) to interface

He is calling this Directory Update; I think this is nicely positioned to replace GALMOD and other such tools.

Friday, June 02, 2006

McBee - Exchange Connections slide decks

I'm finally getting around to posting my slide decks from the Exchange Connections shows in Orlando and Nice. Paul Robichaux beat me to this by about 7 weeks. Thanks to everyone that attended my sessions and all the great feedback. The sessions were fun and I especially enjoyed the "Your Top Questions Answered" session; that gave me an opportunity to just do a brain dump on things I have learned about Exchange. I hope to put one of these together on Exchange 2007 at some point. The High Availability Without Clustering is a rehash of similar sessions I have done over the years, but it continues to be popular and I get good reviews for it, so I'm very glad it is valuable to the attendees.

- Anatomy of a Disaster Recovery
- Exchange 2003: Best Practices Day to Day
- Achieving High Availability Without Clustering
- Exchange 2003: Your Top Questions Answered

Yes, the all-day Security, Hardening, and Assesment session is missing from the above links. I'm presenting that one again at the Exchange Connections Conference in Las Vegas, so I did not want to put it up. If you attended that full-day session and want the slide deck, send me an e-mail.

Thanks again to everyone that attended and that I got to meet.

Battlestar Galatica - Most Excellent

I'm not a big TV fan, though I do tend to park in front of it and channel surf, but there is nothing I go out of my way to watch. Or even record on the DVR. I rarely find anything worth the effort to record. Friends was good. E.R. is good. Law and Order (the original) is good. Yet I never DVR'ed any of these. Firefly was GREAT, but I discovered it long after Fox had cancelled it.

BUT Battlestar Galatica is by far one of the most complex and excellent pieces of television I have ever seen. The characters are complex and usually likeable. I especially like
Adama, Boomer, and Laura Roslin. I just finished watching all the DVDs I have (up through half-way through Season 2) and I'm so impressed. After each episode I feel emotionally drained like I have been through some of the same things that the characters have.

If you even have a slight leaning towards liking a show like this, you need to buy / rent / watch the DVDs starting with the original miniseries. Even one my housemates, the Ann Taylor wearing, BMW driving, fashionable Thai babe has gotten completely hooked on it.