2004-11-10 · 10:15

My last word (for now) on GOExchange

I’ve had a long series of email discussions with Troy Werelius, CEO of GOExchange’s parent company. I’m now convinced that the sales rep didn’t intend to be dishonest, but that he was trying to bolster his case that eseutil is complex (true), dangerous (true), and not for use by the unwary (true). He pointed out that it was unfair of me to criticize GOExchange as “little more than a scheduling engine that wraps around eseutil” without having used it. That’s a fair criticism, although in my defense he has been reluctant to talk about what the product actually does do. To avoid confusion, I’ve removed my earlier post.

However, let me make something perfectly clear: I do not think that it is a good idea to run eseutil except in certain specific, well-defined circumstances. It is not a tool for routine or casual use. Reasons to use eseutil include fixing a damaged database or running an offline defrag, neither of which are routine maintenance operations. I think that’s where the central point of disagreement between my viewpoint and Troy’s lies.

Troy is working on arranging a technology demo for the Exchange MVPs that will help all of us understand better what the product actually does– I’ll post my impressions of its functionality after the demo.

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Filed under Smackdown!

2004-11-10 · 06:26

Huntsville and Nazi rocket scientists

Interesting article on the front page of the WSJ today: “In Huntsville, Ala., Rocketeer’s Legacy Has Complex Echoes“. The article talks about the fact that von Braun, Stuhlinger, and other key players in NASA’s early booster development were participants (with varying degrees of culpability) in Nazi Germany’s industrial program. The primary source for the article’s claims of heavy Nazi involvement on the part of the scientists is Linda Hunt, a “media critic” who wrote a book on the topic. I haven’t read it, but it certainly didn’t get good reviews. It’s not clear to me that it would have been better to prosecute the lot of them immediately after WW II; doing so would certainly have made the not-yet-prosecuted much more reluctant to work here instead of for the fUSSR. However, it’s unpleasant to be reminded of the kinds of compromises that governments routinely engage in, One cool note, though: the article quotes my former coworker at NTI, Dave Cornutt,

1 Comment

Filed under aviation, Musings

2004-11-10 · 06:15

And good riddance

So, John Ashcroft got fired:

John Ashcroft, one of the most powerful, controversial attorneys general in American history, abruptly and reluctantly quit yesterday… Sources said Ashcroft submitted his handwritten, five-page resignation letter before Election Day but was “energized” after Bush’s victory and told the White House through his aides he was willing to stay on indefinitely as the nation’s top cop.
The White House said no. Ashcroft will remain in office only until his successor is chosen.

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2004-11-09 · 11:39

DCT-6412 arrives

If you need me, I’ll be in front of the TV. The Buckeye installer just dropped off a shiny new DCT-6412 HD DVR. It doesn’t have a full set of program guide data yet, so I can’t set up all the scheduled recordings I want. However, I did set up a few test recordings, so we’ll see how well it works. The iGuide interface is a huge improvement over the crappy TV Guide guide for the DCT-6100, although it’s not quite as sharp as TiVo’s interface. More on the unit after I’ve had a few days to wring it out and read the manual.

3 Comments

Filed under HDTV and Home Theater

2004-11-02 · 09:21

MT-Blacklist 2.0 installation instructions

They stink (not least because they tell you to use the directory structure of the zip archive to figure out where to put things). However, if you read these instructions instead, you will be on the short track to enlightenment.

3 Comments

Filed under Musings

2004-11-01 · 15:07

Technical difficulties

I think all of the major problems are fixed, except that there are still some CSS uglinesses around. Too bad. Comments are on, except that I have to manually moderate them– MT-Blacklist still isn’t working, but I’m too aggravated to work on it right now.

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2004-11-01 · 14:34

Technical difficulties

Thanks to the brain surgeons at SIxApart and Pair Networks, my MovableType upgrade has quickly gone off into the weeds.

  • Pair’s resource limits are killing the mt-upgrade30 script before it can finish, so there are no comments.
  • All my comments disappeared because the upgrade script can’t put them in the new format
  • MT-Blacklist doesn’t work, in no small part because of its terrible documentation, but also because Pair doesn’t give enough detail in their error logs for me to figure out what’s broken
  • Some part of the upgrade ate all my CSS, so my layouts have reverted to standard.

I’ll get it fixed eventually. In the meantime, please be patient.

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Filed under General Tech Stuff

2004-11-01 · 14:34

Technical difficulties

Thanks to the brain surgeons at SIxApart and Pair Networks, my MovableType upgrade has quickly gone off into the weeds.

  • Pair’s resource limits are killing the mt-upgrade30 script before it can finish, so there are no comments.
  • All my comments disappeared because the upgrade script can’t put them in the new format
  • MT-Blacklist doesn’t work, in no small part because of its terrible documentation, but also because Pair doesn’t give enough detail in their error logs for me to figure out what’s broken
  • Some part of the upgrade ate all my CSS, so my layouts have reverted to standard.

I’ll get it fixed eventually. In the meantime, please be patient.

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Filed under Smackdown!

2004-11-01 · 11:03

Dies the Fire (Stirling)

Ever read a book where you are simultaneously unable to put it down and aggravated by it? That’s exactly the situation I found with S.M. Stirling’s Dies the Fire, which I can best described as an extended wank. The central plot device is a machina ex deus: all high-energy-density technologies just quit. No gunpowder; no explosives; no internal combustion; no batteries, or anything else electrical. We see “the Change” through two primary characters: a strapping outdoorsman/ex-Marine and (get ready) a guitar-playing Wiccan bar musician. By novel’s end, these two folks have assembled large fighting forces, battled all manner of evil, and joined forces for what I assume will be a long series of novels exploring this world; at the end of the book, there’s a major bad guy still running Portland, and he has dreams of expanding eastward…

It’s well enough written for the most part, but there are several things that really bugged me. First, describing the characters as cardboard is doing a disservice to all the folks who toil at the corrugating machines. In particular, it’s very, very hard to swallow the sudden transformation of a peace-loving, tofu-eating witch with apparently no useful skills into the self-actualized leader of a community of 200. Second, the plot is obvious. There are no twists; the fate of every character Stirling introduces is pretty much clear from the outset. Third, there are so many fortunate coincidences that suspending your disbelief gets pretty hard– the good guys just accidentally happen to end up with bowmakers, doctors, and horse trainers; given how scarce those occupations are in real life it’s hard to imagine that the odds against finding all of them are that high. Fourth, it’s a religion thing. The few Christians in the book are all portrayed as hateful, intolerant, and bigoted, while the Wiccans are just precious. Their rituals (which may or not be authentic; beats me) are portrayed in some detail, and that becomes boring and repetitive fairly quickly.

The biggest problem I had, though, is the smarmy tone as we’re told, again and again, that the only survivors are people who spent time before the Change learning how to fight with swords and make their own chain mail, e.g. SCA members and other such. Imagine being locked in an elevator with the avid SCA members you knew in college, and you’ll get the idea.

The shame of it is, I’ll probably read the next book in the series to see how it turns out, but I’ll probably fume all the way through it. Not especially recommended.

9 Comments

Filed under Reviews

2004-10-29 · 13:23

The hypoallergenic cat

Now I know what Thomas is going to want for Christmas: a hyopallergenic cat. Allerca is busy “working to produce the world’s first hypoallergenic cats”. They’re trying to suppress the gene that expresses a protein called Fel d 1, which is actually what most cat-allergic people react to. It turns out that different breeds of cat produce different amounts of Fel d 1, but I don’t know which breeds make the least (or most; this page lists a few breeds, none of which I’ve ever heard of). I did find one cite that said that female cats make much less than males do– good to know.

Anyway, Allerca will sell you a hypoallergenic cat– assuming they figure out how to suppress the gene– for a mere $3,500, with a $250 deposit due now. Perhaps Thomas would rather have something else.

2 Comments

Filed under General Tech Stuff

2004-10-28 · 18:16

New white paper on Exchange regulatory compliance

What do you get when you combine Exchange Server 2003, KVS Enterprise Vault, KVS Discovey Accelerator, and SharePoint?

Continue reading →

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Filed under General Stuff, Musings

2004-10-26 · 13:26

New white paper: MSIT experience with Exchange 2003 mobile messaging

Microsoft has what’s probably the largest deployment of OMA and Exchange ActiveSync. What have they learned about how to scale and provision these services?

Continue reading →

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2004-10-26 · 10:07

Spamusement

Spamusement: poorly-drawn cartoons inspired by actual spam subject lines. Some of these are pretty hysterical.

Update: they also have an RSS feed. (Here’s one just for Julie).

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2004-10-26 · 10:00

Total lunar eclipse tomorrow night

Good news: it’s time for a rare astronomical event! Tomorrow night (27 October 2004), a total lunar eclipse will be visible across most of North America. Sky and Telescope calls this the “ideal lunar eclipse” because the eclipse will reach totality “after dark but while most people are still awake and about”. It just happens to fall during Game 4 of the World Series, too. Check this handy table for times in your area.

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2004-10-26 · 02:47

Buckeye launches 6412 PVR 11/7

I just got mail from Judy Carter at Buckeye Cable: they’re launching the Motorola DCT-6412 HD PVR/cable box on 11/7. By “launching”, I mean that starting on the 7th you can call them to schedule an install appointment, or you can swing y their Southwick office to pick one up. They’re charging another $5/month for PVR functionality, which I can live with if it means I can finally PVR all of the network shows I want to watch in HD.

Update: trabblc asked two good questions: will the new units have the “iGuide” guide rev, and will both tuners be activated? Buckeye’s answer: yes to both. Good thing, too, because without dual tuners this would be mostly worthless to me.

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Filed under HDTV and Home Theater