One of the things I like best about the martial arts school we attend is that they offer a variety of elective classes. In reality, some of these electives are actually required for advancement beyond a certain rank. For example, to earn a black belt, you have to show proficiency in several grappling and striking techniques that aren’t taught in the basic curriculum. Coincidentally, these electives are usually lots of fun; the boys and I really like the Saturday sparring and grappling classes. There’s also a “Fight Class” elective that offers fewer restrictions: strikes to the legs, groin, and head are permitted, and so are some types of takedowns and ground fighting. The class is only open to students age 13 and over, so David and I have been going for the last two weeks. It’s a blast! It’s really energizing to get in the ring and apply what I’ve been learning for the last year or so. David and I have had fun sparring with each other, and it’s fun for me to show him that youth and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.
Red Army choir sings “Sweet Home Alabama”
I didn’t post this yesterday because no one would have believed it (and I was skeptical myself). Here’s a video of a Finnish rock group, the Leningrad Cowboys, singing “Sweet Home Alabama”– accompanied by the Red Army Choir. Yes, that Red Army Choir. No word on whether the audience demanded an encore of “Free Bird“.
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Filed under General Stuff
IBM suspended from federal government contracts
Apparently IBM has been suspended from participation in any contracts with the US federal government. Declan McCullough has the story here. It appears that the suspension is unusual in that IBM hasn’t had a chance to respond to the original charges. More news as it develops.
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“Hello World” with iPhone Interface Builder
The latest release of the iPhone SDK includes a version of Interface Builder that understands Cocoa Touch objects.
Fortunately, Muthu Arumugam has a solution. It didn’t work at first because I had created my first nib as a view, not as a window. (I understand that it was also in the release notes for IB, which I will go back and read as penance.)
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Bernie Marcus is a great American
Bernie Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot, is opening his own checkbook to help cover the cost of treatment for veterans at Atlanta’s Shepherd Spinal Center:
Marcus got involved in January after he heard of a soldier who was treated at the Shepherd Center and was improving, but faced the loss of funding. “It angered me,” said Marcus, a co-founder of Home Depot and now a billionaire philanthropist. “It is disgraceful and it is not something that we should have to tolerate in this country.”
I don’t know about you, but I plan to go spend some money at Home Depot tomorrow.
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Certificate Use in Exchange 2007 Server
Microsoft has posted a very useful document called “Certificate Use in Exchange 2007 Server” that outlines pretty much everything you need to know about how Exchange 2007 uses certificates. In particular, it nicely explains the use of subject alternative name (SAN) certificates. Check it out.
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Filed under General Tech Stuff, UC&C
Tech Toy of the Week (3/27/08): GN 9350 headset
Here’s how much I like the GN 9350
The 9350 is a lightweight wireless headset that features two connections: a USB plug that enables it to work with Communicator or other computer applications, plus a conventional headset connector. Two buttons on the headset base let you switch back and forth between modes. This allows you to quickly switch between a regular desk phone and applications like Skype, Mac Messenger, or Office Communicator.
Audio quality is excellent, as is range. My base unit is on my desk, in the northeast corner of the second floor. I can talk on the phone from anywhere in the yard, or even in the southwest corner of the basement. I particularly like this feature for long phone calls, as it means I can grab a diet Coke when I need one. (Sadly, there’s no mute button on the headset itself, so ix-nay on wearing it into the athroom-bay.) I easily get a full 9 hours of battery life, and the battery is replaceable so you can keep a spare on hand.
The 9350 features two headbands: one goes over the top of the head, and the other wraps around the back. I prefer the wraparound, but I appreciate that I got to make the choice. There’s also an optional remote handset lifter, the RHL-1000. I haven’t bought one because it’s only useful if you’re close enough to the phone to hear it ring, which generally I’m not.
At an MSRP of $299, this is an expensive piece of equipment (though you can find refurb units at Hello Direct for $199 or so). However, it’s made a huge difference in my ability to talk for long periods on the phone, which has ultimately made me quite a bit more productive. I give it two thumbs up.
Filed under General Tech Stuff, Reviews
Happy anniversary, Flying Bean!
Mad props to John and Becky, who are celebrating the first anniversary of the Flying Bean. I’m not a coffee drinker, but I am an aviation enthusiast, so I love going there. John and Becky are superbly friendly, and they actively support the local community. (Plus they make great hot chocolate!)
Filed under Friends & Family
Tough travel day
So, I left my partner meeting early today to get home before the snow. First we arrived early but had to wait about half an hour for an open gate. Then I found that I’d lost my drivers’ license, so the fine folks at Alamo wouldn’t give me my rental car without it. They called me a cab, only to find out that it was some random guy (not a licensed cab) who already had a fare… in downtown Detroit. Somewhere along the way, I also managed to lose my headphones. Plus I missed supper. Grrrr.
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Exchange and OCS licensing
Microsoft licensing confuses lots of people, me included. Fellow Exchange MVP Michael B. Smith has two great posts covering Exchange licensing and OCS licensing. They make for interesting reading if you’re not up on the intricacies of these licensing terms.
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Debby Robichaux Verret, 1944-2008
We just got back from a draining trip to visit my aunt Debby, Dad’s sister. She was diagnosed earlier this year with small cell lung cancer, no doubt brought on by a combination of a lifetime of smoking and a lifetime of living in Louisiana. Recently her health worsened quite a bit, so we moved up our plan to visit her during the kids’ spring break. Instead, Arlene and Tom left Thursday (TOL-CVG-ATL-BTR) and Matt, David, and I left first thing Friday (DTW-IAH-LFT). It took a lot of fancy dancing on the part of Delta’s Medallion desk, but we ended up with five frequent-flyer tickets, though we couldn’t get in to New Orleans because of the Jazz Festival. Sadly, Debby passed away early Friday morning, so we extended our trip to attend her funeral on Monday.
Debby was a very practical, level-headed woman with a wonderful sense of humor. When I was a kid, she used to call me “Professor” because of my bad habit of correcting everyone around me (fortunately I don’t do that much any more!) I wish I had videotaped her description of her trip to Rome to visit the Pope last year; she had us all in hysterics with her descriptions of Italian men and her banter with the priest from her home parish who organized the pilgrimage. She really helped a lot as we struggled to come to terms with Dad’s death last year, and I will forever be indebted to her for teaching my dear wife how to cook a number of Cajun dishes, as well as how she welcomed Arlene into the family and made her feel immediately at ease.
It was really great to see everyone, though it was under sad circumstances. (Well, OK, I admit it: I was only somewhat pleased to see John, Lee Anne’s dad there. He kept going on about how great Texas is for some reason.) On the bright side, we got to meet Doug’s wife Shawn (who is a real keeper! welcome to the family, Shawn!), and all of us got to play with Russ and Allyson. That helped take the sting out some.
Having recently experienced it myself, I know how hard it is to lose a parent, the more so because Jody and Eric lost their dad in 1986. That puts them in the unenviable position of having to handle all the estate details themselves, precisely at the time when it’s most difficult to do so. Fathers Ron and Pat conducted a beautiful funeral mass, and that helped, as did having so many extended family members around. As always at any family gathering, the food was excellent. We made a side trip to Dave’s Cajun Kitchen, which I recommend in the strongest possible terms.
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Tech Toy of the Week: 3/19/08
I’m inaugurating a new feature here: the Tech Toy of the Week. Heaven knows I have enough of them to post a short weely review of one of them.
This week: the Speck line of cases for laptops. In particular, the SeeThru cases, which are essentially plastic clamshells that snap around your laptop to protect the actual case from abrasions and dirt. I have the clear SeeThru for my MacBook Pro (see some example photos here) and it works very well. Minor annoyance: the clear color shows dirt. I should probably have gotten the red one instead; the colored ones look great with the monochrome silver color scheme of the MBP. Speck also makes lots of other cases for laptops (notably the Sony Vaio series), iPods, and iPhones. Check ’em out.
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Maybe it’s brain surgery after all
Craig Hockenberry is a smart guy. He’s been around for a while, and has an impressive track record in the Mac software world. I don’t, but that’s not going to stop me from arguing with him about background apps on the iPhone. His argument has two parts.
Part 1 (here) essentially says that gackground apps will kill the battery life and usability of the iPhone by allowing application developers to willy-nilly make network connections, thus keeping the device radios on more than needed (or wanted).
Part 2 (here) says that even if we could magically solve the problems he describes in part 1, the user experience on the device would quickly get out of hand.
Why don’t I agree with part 1? I have experienced just the opposite with Windows Mobile. There’s a great deal of institutional knowledge around exactly these two problems in the Windows Mobile world. I get better battery life with my Treo 750 running Windows Mobile 6 than I do with my iPhone, despite the fact that the Treo has an HSDPA radio. This is despite the fact that I run a number of always-on apps on my Treo, including Communicator Mobile and Outlook Mobile with Direct Push enabled. If you take a look at the Direct Push protocol, you’ll see that it’s designed to keep a connection alive while still allowing the radio to go dormant when there’s not actually any information to transfer. The same thing is true of the UC AJAX protocol that Communicator Mobile uses. This is not a new idea, and Microsoft’s not the first to implement it. Craig’s argument– that ill-behaved or poorly written applications will kill your battery faster than Eliot Spitzer’s political career– is true. However, that’s not necessarily an argument in favor of blocking background applications. Let people ship background applications, then let the market decide which ones should survive based on their performance. (Note to Craig and others: remember, when we get that Exchange ActiveSync support we’ve all been jonesing for… it’s a persistent network connection!)
I give Craig’s arguments in part 2 a little more credence. The iPhone offers a lovely UI, as pleasant to look at and touch as any other well-designed, well-engineered artifact (whether a Glock, an engine block, or a summer frock.) It is a bit painful to think of having all sorts of buzzing, boinging, and screen flashing horning in on SJ’s Zen-like user experience. However, Apple has already solved this problem, at least in part: look at the way that the SMS, phone, and e-mail applications notify users of available data by using a number superimposed on the application icon. This paradigm works well for some sorts of applications. For others, the solution isn’t to ban applications from posting notifications– Craig rightly points out that several different notification-brokering APIs exist on the desktop Mac platform. So where’s the API for the iPhone? Where’s the mobile equivalent of Growl, or (better yet) a supported framework from Apple? That’s essentially what WM has, and it allows application developers to post notifications that the user can control. My Treo makes one distinct sound for a new SMS, one for a new e-mail (well, actually, two: for high-priority e-mails, Voice Command reads me the subject line), and one for a device or calendar alarm. Simple, powerful, and easy to customize. Given how good a job Apple has done with almost every other aspect of the iPhone UI, it sure seems like a problem they could solve if they wanted to.
I’m personally very disappointed by Apple’s decision not to allow background apps. I was planning on using UC AJAX to build an OCS client for the iPhone, but I probably won’t bother if there’s no way to background applications; a foreground-only IM client would be pretty worthless. I do have a few other projects in mind, though…
Filed under General Tech Stuff
Apple licenses Exchange ActiveSync
Finally, they admit it: Microsoft licenses Exchange ActiveSync to Apple for use in the iPhone. (For a play-by-play of the announcement, see Engadget.) This is great news for both Apple and the Exchange team, but much less so for the Windows Mobile team. I suspect that they have a few aces up their sleeve, though. First is SCMDM, which ups the ante for mobile device management by adding Group Policy Object support for Windows Mobile devices. When you can domain-join a mobile device and push policy to it using the same tools you use for desktops and servers, that’s the dream scenario for managed enterprises. The iPhone software update won’t support SCMDM’s policy extensions, and I’m betting that it won’t implement 100% of the Exchange 2007 version of Exchange ActiveSync policies either. Of course, the Windows Mobile team has their own set of surprises planned for their next release. We’ll have to wait and see.
Technorati Tags: Exchange 2007, iPhone, Windows Mobile
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Exchange 2007 SP1 setup error
On Friday, I set myself up for the hat trick: I was going to upgrade my primary desktop to Mac OS 10.5, my work laptop to Vista SP1, and my home Exchange server to 2007 SP1. I only got one of the three done because I ended up busy with actual, y’know, work— my Exchange box was the only one I got around to. However, during the upgrade, I faced an annoying problem: the Exchange setup utility failed when it tried to upgrade the UM service.
I checked the event log and found that the UM service was failing with event ID 1183. As far as I can tell, that’s a totally undocumented error. It turns out that, when the UM service attempted to issue itself a new self-signed certificate, the service was throwing an error and crashing with an unhandled exception. Because the UM service wouldn’t start, Exchange Setup (quite sensibly, IMHO) wouldn’t continue.
The fix ended up being to restore the correct permissions on c:\documents and settings\all users\application data\microsoft\crypto\rsa\machinekeys. This is the location of the computer account’s personal certificate store, and for some reason, the permissions on it were incorrect. Adding NETWORK SERVICE:F and Domain Admins:F back to the ACL fixed the problem and allowed the setup utility to finish its work. (The longer-term fix comes in two parts: fix New-ExchangeCertificate so it doesn’t fail with an unhandled exception in that case, and then figure out who borked the permissions on that folder.)
What about the Leopard and Vista upgrades? Hey, tomorrow’s another day!
Technorati Tags: Exchange 2007, Unified Messaging
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