This is a pretty rare problem, but still: if you’re running the Exchange IMF on a machine with a 15-character NetBIOS name, the IMF won’t actually filter the inbound messages. This is kind of a silly bug.
New IMF hotfix for 15-character names
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Filed under General Stuff, Musings
Preset the language for OMA users
Imagine that you have a bunch of OMA users who don’t use English as their native language. Wouldn’t it be nice to set the default OMA language that they see when they log on, without making them learn enough English to navigate OMA’s interface and set it themselves?
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Filed under General Stuff, Musings
Configuring per-server IMF gateway settings
I hate it when this happens! I just sent off a Troubleshooter column question for the December issue on how to create separate settings on separate IMF servers. My answer involved multiple forests and was fairly ugly. I then decided to relax and do a little blog surfing. Lo and behold, It turns out that (courtesy of Evan’s blog) there’s a much more elegant solution to this problem.
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Filed under General Stuff, Musings
Rain Storm (Eisler)
I really enjoyed the first two John Rain novels (reviews here and here), so I had high expectations for Rain Storm, the third Barry Eisler book featuring John Rain. In this book, we find Rain in Macau, where he’s trying to kill an arms dealer on behalf of the CIA. Of course, the backstory is that Rain left Japan on the run and moved to Brazil, the better to live longer. His new identity is compromised, though, and so he takes on what he hopes will be one last job. Without giving away too many of the details, let’s just say that the best-laid plans gang aft agley.
Eisler does a superb job of setting locales here, perhaps more so than the preceding two books. The descriptions of Rio, Macau, and even suburban Virginia all gave me a strong and immediate feeling of being there, something that I didn’t get from the Tokyo scenes in this book. There’s less of the jazz-and-single-malt navel-gazing, which I found welcome (since I don’t drink and don’t know anything about jazz). This is not to say that there’s less introspection on Rain’s part; there’s more, and that’s one of the most charming features of the book. Despite what he does for a living, Rain is likable! This might seem odd, since assassins aren’t generally seen as sympathetic or likable in most contexts. However, like several of my friends with Special Forces experience (Todd and Ned immediately come to mind), once you get to know him, he’s a more sympathetic guy. Eisler gives Rain a great deal of emotional depth that I found quite resonant. Sure, the action scenes are great, and the weapons and gadgets are impressive. There are beautiful women, casinos, and all the other trappings we expect. What ultimately made this book work for me, though, were the scenes in which Rain evaluated who he was and what he wanted to be: a depth that’s missing from other thrillers.
I can’t wait for the next Rain book, due next summer. In the meantime, this one is highly recommended. (Bonus: don’t miss the FAQ at Eisler’s site). And, since I know he occasionally Googles for reviews: Barry, if you ever want to send Rain to south Louisiana or Ohio, let me know and I’ll hook you up!
Filed under Reviews
The Return of the Ken
The new season of Jeopardy starts Monday, and you know what that means: Ken is coming back. I’m prepared for another wave of comments on my previous post. In the meantime, check out this wiki, which has more than you probably ever wanted to know about his run so far.
What’s in a SID?
Larry Osterman has a terrific post up today on the guts of Windows security identifiers, or SIDs. A small taste:
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Filed under General Stuff, Musings
Order in the port: Port Reporter Parser released
Port Reporter is a nifty tool from Microsoft that you can use to log TCP and UDP activity on Windows machines; it logs port activity on ports that you specify to a text file. It’s extremely useful for monitoring traffic from specified machines or services, and it has a variety of useful features that I won’t enumerate– go download it already.
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Filed under General Stuff, Musings
VERITAS buys KVS
Well, this is interesting: VERITAS buys KVS for $225 million in cash. Considering VERITAS’ failure to turn their own archiving product for Windows into a real competitor for KVS, this is an interesting move.
Filed under General Stuff, Musings
E-mail free Fridays
Jeremy Burton has a good idea: declare Friday as an “email-free day” in his department. This story, which I first saw in the WSJ, has grown legs as people debate whether this is a good idea or not. I think the stimulus that led to Burton’s edict is something we can all identify with: he wondered how much time his folks were wasting on email.
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Filed under General Stuff, Musings
Vote early, vote often
There’s been a running discussion of election fraud on the IP list for several months now, mostly focused on electronic voting systems (here’s a sample). Recently, Jonathan Goldstein invited IP readers to come work with him on Election Day in Philadelphia to see what kind of non-electronic shenanigans go on. In that vein, I was surprised to see the Blade report on a New York Daily News story claiming that an analysis of the NY and Florida voter registration rolls found 46,000 voters who were registered to vote in both New York and Florida. The full story has some great quotes from several of the criminals (my favorite: “I’m not here right now”). In summary, there is no current means of detecting dishonest (or stupid) people who register, or vote, in multiple states; the process relies entirely on the honor system. Oddly, of the 46K duplicates that the NYDN story found, 68% were registered Democrats.
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Filed under FAIL
Great Toledo airshow photos
We didn’t go to the airshow Saturday because we were supposed to go fishing; when the weather prevented that, we decided to give it a miss. We didn’t go on Sunday because it was Sunday. (The Thunderbirds will be in Lafayette at Halloween, and the Blues will be in New Orleans the week before; maybe we’ll go for one of those). Anyway, Micah eases the pain with a trove of cool airshow pictures, including an album showcasing Air Force One’s arrival and a great clip of the Thunderbirds taking off. Micah, you can definitely put me down for a copy of the DVD when you get it done!
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Filed under Friends & Family
Hail to the Chief
On Saturday, we loaded up the boys and went across the street to Fort Meigs, where the President had scheduled a campaign rally. Several of our friends parked in our driveway, so we had quite a procession: three couples (plus Mom) with ten children, plus some stragglers (hi Fritz!) who came later. We arrived at the fort about 3:15; the gates were open from 2-4pm, and the President was scheduled to speak at 5:10. It was about 80° and very humid, but we figured we’d have no trouble finding a comfortable spot to stand. Well, not exactly. We found a spot, but it was airless thanks to the crush of people squashing together in an attempt to see the actual stage. (Reported attendance was 15,000, or 12,000 according to the Blade.) After about an hour of feeding the boys cookies and letting them take turns playing games on my phone, we moved to a much better location, with actual Fresh Air™. We then endured several local politicians, including Randy Gardner and Larry Kaczala. Kaczala, who’s running against arcy Kaptur, made several stupid and tasteless jokes about Kerry’s Vietnam service. I don’t think the arguments made by the Swift boat folks can easily be dismissed, but having this bozo make fun of Kerry’s combat experience didn’t sit well with me. (On the other hand, I’m not in his Congressional district, so I don’t get to vote against him).
Fritz had said that he’d heard a “national entertainer” would be appearing; sure enough, after all the politicans departed, we were favored by a few songs from Lee Anne Womack. I don’t remember the first one (might’ve been “Something Worth Leaving Behind”); the second was “I Hope You Dance” (which I liked a lot better live than the saccharine radio version), followed by “This Land is Your Land” and another patriotic song I’d forgotten. The boys were getting restive, so Arlene bought them some hot dogs and lemonade; that kept them entertained until the President made his entrance.
He gave a very energetic speech, almost entirely focused on the positive. There were a few jabs at Kerry’s voting record on the Iraq war (and the follow-on resolution), and an acknowledgment that Ohio’s unemployment rate is still higher than the national average. Since he was preaching to the faithful, I didn’t expect a real barnburner of a speech, but overall I was impressed with his delivery and message. David & Thomas were thrilled to see the President in the flesh, and it’s something I hope they remember.
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Filed under Musings
OnHD.TV launches
Philip Swann, a well-known TV pundit, has just launched a new site: OnHD.TV. It purports to be an all-in-one, consumer-focused guide to HDTV, including what shows are in HD, which ones are worth watching from a production-values standpoint, and how to choose suitable HD hardware. Stop by and check it out.
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Filed under HDTV and Home Theater
Barracuda Spam Firewall: first look
I’ve been testing the Barracuda Networks Spam Firewall 300 for the last couple of weeks. So far, I’m very pleased with it; it has done an effective job of filtering spam and virus messages. The best thing is that it incorporates rate control along with other more conventional filtering (including Bayesian and header analysis); this saved me from a huge comment-spam attack last week (see the big blue spike on the “daily mail statistics” graph in the picture below). The unit was very easy to set up and install, and it has worked without interruption since I installed it.
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Filed under General Stuff, Musings
Interesting tidbit on credit card bills
From this morning’s Al’s Morning Meeting:
But wait a minute. More Americans paid their credit card bills on time in June than they have in four years. Would anybody like to make a guess about why this is so and what it means?
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Filed under Musings
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