Blog
Thoughts and things I care to shareSample post from Word 2007
So I’ve picked up Office 2007 Pro, and of course I need to try out the blogging feature that is built into the new version. We’ll see how this looks once posted.
links for 2007-02-01
- Super cool – I’ve been looking for something like this since Pluck was shut down. I used Pluck for 2 years and enjoyed having all my bookmarks and RSS feeds synced. Since Google Reader takes care of all my feed reading needs, it would be great to have a
Microsoft Lunch at the Launch
Yeah, why not blog about lunch. Cold turkey sandwich and a cookie.
The morning sessions was pretty good, the Vista/Office deployment features look like they’ll be usable. The Exchange Server Efficiency session was neat as well. We’ll have to include some of the topics they talked about, but we’re already on top of some other common items that you can do in 2003.
The afternoon session’s should be interesting as well; SharePoint, Vista/Office operational efficiency, one on Compliance, search, unified communications, data visualization, and project & portfolio management.
The Borg are among us… Geeks with headsets
Well, one thing for sure. There is quite a bit of geek pride that is on parade here at the Vista launch. I’d wager a good 30% of the attendies are sporting their BT headsets for the day.
Of course there are still some “old school” types with their corded headsets as well. As my wife would love to make fun of the scene, she’d say “We are dislexic of Borg – prepare to have your ass laminated!”
Don’t tell her that I’m wearing mine will you?
Realizing the power of mobile tech
So I’m at the Microsoft Vista Launch event in Minneapolis today and I’m reminded just how powerful mobile technology is. It’s been a very productive morning already, and that was before the keynote started about an hour ago.
I’m on my second blog post, have checked my 5 email accounts, managed some comment spam, managed email spam, read several RSS feeds, and have taken a number of notes. Not to mention registrer for at least 3 Zune give aways. All this was accomplished with mobile technology.
With my T-Mobile MDA & it’s wireless EDGE Internet access (yes its fast enough, I get > 128kbs), Bluetooth keyboard, Bluetooth mouse, I can literally accomplish everything I need when traveling. The Opera browser is key to some sites working well, but even PIE does an admerable job in getting many things done.
At the conference, almost all of the vendor prize registrations were done with PPC based bar code scanners, with wireless connections. The one’s that weren’t were the old-style business card bucket technology. 🙂
But seriously, there is a line for the public internet terminals, and I (along with several others) have either their PPC, Palm, or UMPC out and in use during the keynote. Very, very productive.
And fun!
Technorati tags: GPRS+EDGE, Zune, T-Mobile+MDA
Ready for a new day…
This morning I’m at the Microsoft Launch Tour 2007 event “Ready for a new day”. This is the Windows Vista and Office 2007 launch event. This one is at the Minneapolis Convention Center.
The registration is enormous, I’ve not seen so many people at a launch event in MN before. The VisualStudio 2005 event last year was almost this big, but this is much bigger.
The keynote starts in about 15 minutes and the registration line is still the length of the building. Good thing I always get in early! The swag from the vendors is mediocre, but the content of the presentations should be good.
I’ll snap a few pics and get more info as the day goes on. As for presentations, there are three “tracks”, one for IT Pros, one for Management, and one for developers. I’ll be attending some of each throughout the day.
More later, need more coffee.
Technorati tags: Ready+for+a+new+day,, Windows+Vista+Office+2007+Launch
Google Growth: $1 Billion Profit
It’s good to be the king.
The king of Internet search keeps impressive growth in 2006. Wish I had a piece of that action.
🙂
Via: BetaNews – Google Growth Continues with $1 Billion Profit
Future talk: Messaging
That’s one meeting I spent a few hours in – talking about future messaging plans for my employer. Yeah, we’re on Exchange 2003 just like about 90% of the rest of the world – and it works pretty good.
But you can’t rest on your laurels, and just because Exchange 2003 SP2 has been nice and stable, doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for improvement. Of course the varied interests around the table always brings a spirited debate that brings out great ideas. There were no revelations as there sometimes are in these types of meetings, but it was a great session on getting a game plan together for identifying our next steps.
The most interesting thing in our recent “Future Technology” discussions is that there is more focused discussion on solving and preventing problems than there is of wiz-bang golly-gee tech stuff. That kind of stuff is usually saved for the last 10 minutes or so, just to get it on the (bottom) of the list. Hey, I’m still a tech geek and like to push the envelope as much as possible!
Of course, you’d expect that kind of productivity from this group, we’ve all worked together, oh, coming up on 10 years now.
So what’s on the list? Oh, mostly boring stuff to simply make email work better, redundancy, DR contingencies and so on. Other things like an in-house conferencing server would be more fun down the line a bit, so I’m holding out hope. Got to have a stable foundation to build on as they say.
Ok, enough boring stuff.
DST 2007 & Microsoft Outlook or Exchange
WTF?
How many people have read the KB article (931667) over at Microsoft concerning the “Addressing the daylight saving time changes in 2007 using the Outlook Time Zone Data Update Tool“? Go read it, I’ll wait…
Ok, glad your back – now I know that it was really congress that passed this smelly turd along to everyone – thanks bastards – but it seems to me that Microsoft really dropped the ball on this. I mean, in the original design phase of Exchange and Outlook, they could have asked the question “what if the DST parameters change” and followed the conversation, just to see what ideas come up. Maybe there would have been a better design, maybe not. Maybe the way Exchange stores this information is the same way every calendaring system stores it. That’s a scary thought – that nobody ever thought of handling this kind of change on the fly!
Not only do you need to patch the systems so that the new range of DST for 2007 is properly set up in the system, but you have to run an update tool to convert all the appointment data in the data stores to the proper time for the meeting. That means that you have to run the tool on anything that stores its own calendar information.
So a stand-alone user needs to run the tool, and enterprises need to run the tool on their Exchange servers. This is all well and good, and hopefully will be a one-time deal, but what about all those archived PST files? What if someone pulls some archived recurring meeting and resends it to people? If you read the KB, there is a usage scenario that actually points out that it will not contain the correct meeting times.
There are more. If your mobile device (or other types) are not updated with the proper DST 2007 information, you could create an appointment or meeting (Task?) with a time setting that would not trigger a reminder at the time you expected it to – it would be an hour late.
Maybe I’m making too much out of this, but all I see for our help desk at work is a flood of calls that could have been prevented by MS long ago. Tell me I’m wrong!
Link to: Addressing the daylight saving time changes in 2007 using the Outlook Time Zone Data Update Tool
Windows CE is not Windows Mobile
As some may know, I’ve been a longtime PPC user, actually starting with the old “Palm-size PC” back in 1998 or so. But the topic of this post is the parent operating system of the Pocket PC (and Windows Mobile for that matter) called Windows CE.
So we’ve been working on some Windows CE based devices for our warehouse management system at work. The goal, of course, being a fast-booting, lightweight client device to use for a web-based WM tool.
The main trouble with the devices we had, was really the WinCE operating system and its ability (or lack thereof) to be able to use EAP-TLS to secure the wireless network. Eventually a network stack update from the manufacturer did the trick, but it was frustrating to have everything configured correctly, but have the damn software not be able to connect up.
So, it’s one more chapter in alternate operating systems. If it’s not this it would be something else, perhaps Linux of some flavor. I’d actually like to have the ability to work with a Linux system at work – I think there is a huge potential for the OS in what we use PCs for. But that’s another story.
Fortunately its almost over – its been kind of fun, writing some scripts and such. Scripts are something that I don’t get to write as much. We use most tools right out of the box (or try to), so there is as little custom work as possible. Still, once in awhile a need comes along for a good script, and this was one of them for me. 🙂
As much as I’ve liked Windows CE based systems in the past, I’ve had about enough of them at this point. Working with these systems has brought the operating system’s deficiencies to the surface, and they are not pretty.
@MAC_Arms Pay taxes when you make your money, pay taxes when you spend your money, pay taxes when you successfully invest your money, pay taxes when you save enough taxed money to afford a house, pay taxes to live in your house, pay taxes when you sell the house that you paid taxes on to
Yup, taxes are criminal and we need serious reforms. I've always said that if you want to see a tax revolt, make withholdings illegal and have Americans write a tax check every payday. They'll revolt for sure. You don't miss what you never had.
I think it’s safe to say that @GovEvers should stop blocking audits in Wisconsin and open the books…
“Only AMERICAN citizens should vote.”
Sen. @berniemoreno says voter ID and proof of citizenship are simply common sense.
“We’re talking about a very low threshold — identify who you are and prove you’re a U.S. citizen when you register to vote. I think we’re getting closer to
Wrong. Democrats are solely responsible for hours-long airport lines.
They voted to defund TSA three times and won’t even entertain a conversation about reopening it. Why?
They’re using it as leverage to stop enforcing immigration laws.