Tim Russert died today at the age of 58. I’m incredibly shocked and saddened by this, more than I can ever recall for the death of a television personality or reporter alike. Tim Russert brought a level of trust and integrity to political journalism that is sorely absent in today’s highly polarized partisan landscape. Going into a landmark presidential election season makes it even more difficult. It’s hard to image watching election night totals roll in without Tim’s constant presence and analysis. My prayers go out to his friends and family. Watching MSNBC right now, and seeing the responses of his friends and coworkers, it’s clear this man will be missed by all. I can only say good night sir, and thank you for your balance and professionalism.
Author Archive for Steven
Evernote looks to be the sort of capture software I’ve been looking for my whole life. Cross platform desktop and mobile clients, all synced to a web service. I want it badly, but it’s invitation only right now. Grrr….
Never having been a huge fan of Family Guy, I regarded the recently released Blue Harvest DVD with indifference. That is, until I wandered over to Adult Swim’s website for my weekly Robot Chicken fix, and stumbled across many, many clips from the Star Wars: Episode IV parody. I must say, it’s some of the funniest TV I’ve ever seen. More consistently funny and on-topic than the Robot Chicken Star Wars special, this is actually watchable by anyone who’s even a casual Star Wars fan. This has promptly been placed into the #1 spot on my Netflix queue so I can see the whole thing in sequence. Giggty.
I’m posting this from my Dell Optiplex 755 running Mac OS X 10.5.1. Awwwww yeeeaaahhhh.
YouTube Rickrolls the World - I generally hate April Fool’s Day because it makes it impossible to read tech news for 12 - 24 hours. However, this is the best prank I’ve ever seen…
Who does a better “James Brown”?
Eddie Murphy [NSFW]?
Pros:
- Spot-on vocal impression.
- Unintelligible lyrics.
- “What the f**k is James talkin’ ’bout Man? I don’t know, we gettin’ paid, keep singin’.”
Or Weird Al?
Pros:
- The dancing, or parody thereof.
- The hair, outfit, and set.
- The “caped, hardest-working man” scene.
You decide…
Last week I mentioned a bizarre problem that occurred during an Exchange 2000 to 2003 migration for a client. Shortly after posting that little expository, I discovered another.
The customer called to indicate one of his user’s Inbox had been moved to his Deleted Items folder. I had never before seen this, as Outlook prevents users from making such “mistakes” with special folders. I’d heard rumors that previous versions of OWA would allow users to do this, however he insisted that it just appeared this way after the migration. What was really strange was that new email continued to be delivered to this seemingly “deleted” inbox. No attempt to move the folder back to the root of his mailbox would work, and Google turned up little helpful information this time. Deleting the Outlook profile and all of its offline cache goodies proved futile, and I was on the verge exporting his mailbox to a PST file and nuking it, when The Google finally answered.
Turns out some random bloke on a Technet message board had this problem when moving users from Exchange 2003 to 2007, and after some of the same steps I had taken, he had found the solution that worked equally well for me. Moving the user back to the old server, then back AGAIN to the new server put the Inbox back where it belonged. While I don’t understand the root cause of this problem, I’m glad to have solved it without the pains of nuking a mailbox. Just further proves that keeping an old Exchange server around for a few weeks after its migration is a Smart Move™.
After a nasty power outage a few weeks ago at Key, I realized that I had never installed APC’s wonderful Network Shutdown tool on our VMware server. The Network Shutdown tool is a service that runs on just about any OS, and communicates with APC’s network-enabled UPSes. When the UPS detects a power failure and reaches a battery life threshold, it will issue a command to each computer running the Network Shutdown tool to, obviously enough, shut down. I’ve installed this on many Linux boxes in the past, so I figured this would be no different.
A quick Google search turned up numerous hits about a VMware specific RPM available from APC for v2.21. A quick search of APC’s website turned up no such thing, and downloading the newest release for Linux didn’t get me very far. During the installation it through an error about VMware not being supported. After some further Google digging, I finally found a direct link to the RPM buried on APC’s FTP site. Installing the RPM worked like a champ, and once I opened up the requisite firewall ports in ESX I was able to access the web interface and get it configured.
To save others the same headaches I encountered, I’ve preserved the RPM file on my site until APC decides to support VMware in new releases again. The file is available below.
Windows XP: Going, going … gone? - The most thorough article I’ve seen yet regarding Windows XP’s support future. If anything, the article reafirms my decision to stick with XP at Key for as long as possible. Hopefully, I can bypass Vista altogether…
I upgraded my Verizon 8703e to Blackberry OS 4.2 about two weeks ago, one out of the desire for “new stuff”, and two because someone developed a Blackberry companion to KeePass that required 4.2 or newer. It’s a pretty nice upgrade that brings some of the look and feel of the newer Curves and 8800 series to my trusty email warrior. In particular, the newer, brighter Dimension theme, options for a Today-style screen, and a decent media player that finally lets me listen to the WAV files my unified voicemail software delivers to my inbox.
Generally, the upgrade process was smooth, but not without some hiccups, plus I had to do a fair amount of work to get the much-sought-after Today screen working. Just to help others that may experience the same pain, here are the tips and gotcha’s I encountered: