2007-10-09 · 09:17

Call for Papers, Exchange Connections Spring 2008

If it’s October, that must mean it’s time for… spring?!

Normal people are just starting to enjoy the autumn, but the Exchange Connections staff is preparing for our Spring 2008 show (April 20-24, 2008 in sunny Orlando!) As part of that process, I’m issuing a call for session proposals.

A few ground rules:

  • You need to submit at least 3 abstracts, but I encourage you to submit more than 3 to give us more flexibility in choosing sessions.
  • Speakers will be chosen within a few weeks of the closing date, which is currently 10/19.
  • All selected speakers will have their travel expenses (air + hotel) reimbursed; in addition you’ll be paid a stipend of $400 per talk.

What kind of talks should you propose? Anything having to do with Exchange (including DR, security, migration, and best practices), Live Communications Server/Office Communications Server, or related topics. The more technical, the better! (If you plan to repeat sessions from a previous event, please make sure you update the title and abstract to reflect the latest in the Exchange world.)

Please, no vendor “pimp sessions”. If you work for a software or hardware vendor, feel free to propose technical sessions that aren’t focused on your product. If you work for a PR firm, your principals are welcome to submit technical sessions.

To submit sessions, please e-mail me and I’ll send you the instructions. We’re using a SharePoint-based tool that takes much of the work out of the submission process. Please do not e-mail me abstracts!

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2007-10-02 · 11:50

Communicator Mobile 2.0 is out

I must have missed this during all the appendectomy flap, but MS has released the RTM version of Communicator Mobile (“CoMo”) 2.0. Get it here.

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2007-10-02 · 11:24

Hey ant! C’mere! I got something to show you!

David’s watching TV to help him recover from his appendectomy, and I was passing the TV I noticed that he was watching an “Ant and Aardvark” cartoon on Boomerang. Our whole family loves these, so I did a quick search when I got back upstairs and was delighted to find that Warner has issued a DVD of all 17 original Ant and Aardvark shorts: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000MTFDDI?ie=UTF8&tag=robichaassocia&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000MTFDDI">The Pink Panther Classic Cartoon Collection, Volume 5 – Ant Aardvarkvolume 5 of the Pink Panther collection. Yowza! I know what somebody’s getting for Christmas!

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2007-09-27 · 11:27

Upgrading OCS 2007 eval to full version

Good news for people who are considering building an OCS 2007 pilot infrastructure. It turns out that there *is* a way to upgrade the evaluation version of OCS 2007 to the full version. However, this approach won’t work with the MSDN version (which you probably shouldn’t be using anyway!)

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2007-09-25 · 16:28

OttawaFlood.com

Steve Teffenhardt has started a comprehensive new site, www.ottawaflood.com, centering on flood relief efforts for the people affected by this summer’s flooding in Hancock and Putnam Counties. Check it out.

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2007-09-24 · 21:10

Call path replacement in OCS

One of OCS 2007’s most useful new features has a variety of names. You can call it “simultaneous ring” or “call forking”; the idea is that an incoming call can cause all of your defined phones to ring at the same time. For example, your desk phone, logged-in Communicator session, and cell phone can all ring at once, so you can answer the call from wherever you happen to be. However, this leads to a question: doesn’t this tie up more phone lines?

The answer (as with so many other telephony issues) is “it depends”. (In fact, I should start a new blog category called “It Depends” just for this kind of question!) Consider two scenarios:

  • Alice is using Communicator and calls Bob, who’s logged in to Communicator and has a Tanjay phone on his desk. In this case, Alice’s call can ring Bob’s two devices without tying up any lines through the gateway– because there are no PSTN or PBX components involved, there’s no need to take any lines from the gateway.
  • Carol is an outside PSTN caller; she calls Dave, who has a TDM PBX phone, Communicator, and a cell phone. In this scenario, Carol’s already occupying one line (from her phone to the OCS gateway). When OCS rings his cell phone, that will use a PSTN line. Ringing Dave’s PBX phone may or may not require an additional line, depending on the connection between OCS and the PBX.

However, thanks to call path replacement, under many circumstances OCS can provide simultaneous ring without taking up additional lines. However, whether or not this works depends on the PBX (if any) in use, because not all PBX systems support this feature.

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2007-09-22 · 13:50

Troop 270 flood relief

This was great to see: John Cargill sent me a note about his Scout troop’s trip down to Ottawa for flood cleanup.

Thank you for your assistance in locating a relief agency that my Scouts and I could work with.
We traveled with 13 scouts and 7 adult volunteers. Scout Camp Berry hosted us at no cost for tent camping – and with thanks for our purpose in traveling to Ohio.
The agency you directed us to was very efficient and registered us quickly. They listened (some don’t) to our level of preparation and tried their best to assign us to matching tasks. We responded to one home where the owner had approximately 3 feet of ware in her basement and questioned whether there was mold behind the paneled walls. We carefully removed one sheet – found no mold, but some moisture, and recommended that the base molding be removed for better drying.
She agreed as she really didn’t want to strip off all of the walls unless there was a clear need. Her family had already spray bleached the external paneling so we
proceeded to Murphy oil soap the whole basement. Some furniture washing and yard work finished us up on that site.
We returned for additional assignment and responded to the need for re-insulating a shop garage and yard raking and cleanup of wet plaster scraps. While this particular home looked okay from the outside, we were aware that they had had to pull up all of the floors and part of the wet plaster walls – so despite our not being involved in demolition or internal reconstruction we were able to help with some work that they did not have time to get done.
All-in-all a good trip. Several scouts and parents said that they really enjoyed the recovery work and would be interested in future trips of the same kind.

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2007-09-11 · 11:00

How does Exchange UM find the caller’s name?

When you use Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging, one of the cool features is that the UM server will attempt to replace the caller’s phone number with a name. How does it decide what name to use? Ah, there’s the rub! The answer depends on whether or not the caller has a UM-enabled Exchange mailbox. Here are the four possibilities (courtesy of Microsoft’s Dave Howe):

  • If the caller is UM-enabled, then the UM server will find the user by the Exchange UM proxy address and the mail will contain the Display Name of the caller, as shown in Active Directory.
  • If the caller is not UM-enabled, but exists as a contact with extension in the called party’s Exchange mailbox, the mail will contain the Display Name of the caller. Note that this number will be whatever you put in, whether or not it matches what’s in AD.
  • If the caller is not UM-enabled, but you have added a custom Exchange UM proxyAddress containing his/her extension, the mail will contain the Display Name of the caller.
  • Otherwise, the mail will contain the only the extension or phone number of the caller. Whatever the PBX reports as part of the call diversion information is what you’ll get.

That raises an excellent question: how can you add a proxy address for users who aren’t already UM-enabled? It turns out that this is simpler than you might think, once you know the magic spell. You can do it with ADSIEdit if you know the format (which is simply EUM:extID;phone-context=dialPlanName). So, for example, my EUM proxy address is EUM:7285;phone-context=redmondDP.3sharp.com

However, there’s a simpler way: use Exchange Management Shell and just say:

Set-mailbox mailboxName –secondaryaddress extension –secondarydialplan dialPlanName

That’s it. One line and you’re done!

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2007-09-09 · 15:01

Walk to Cure Diabetes

The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation is dedicated to finding the cause of, and cures for, type-1 diabetes– the insulin-dependent kind. Using insulin doesn’t cure diabetes, it just postpones the inevitable slow degeneration of major organs that eventually leads to death. That’s no good.

Our martial arts school is sponsoring a team, the Black Belt Brigade. As part of that team, our family has signed up to raise $500. That’s a lot, on one hand, but on the other, it’s a very small fraction of the $90 million that JDRF hopes to raise this year.

If you’re reading this, please consider donating online. $2, $5, $10, or more will definitely help. You can donate, or just check our family’s status, here. (and if not, that’s OK too… but Dad’s ghost may come haunt you. No, wait, that was just a joke…. maybe!)

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2007-09-06 · 14:16

The UC box of goodies is IN

Remember all the goodies I mentioned here? They’re all here. Expect review-age in the next week or two.

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2007-09-06 · 14:15

David A. Robichaux: an eulogy

Below is the text of the original eulogy I wrote for Dad’s funeral. I ad-libbed a great deal of additional material; rather than edit the text to reflect what I think I might’ve said, I decided to go with the original. Writing this, and speaking at Dad’s funeral, was an extremely difficult experience. It was an honor I might rather not have had. However, I remember once turning down the opportunity to speak at a dear friend’s wedding and declining because I didn’t think I had anything to say. I still regret that, years later, and was determined not to make the same mistake again.

Continue reading →

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2007-09-06 · 14:09

Thanks

Arlene and my mom have both done an excellent job of sending out thank-you notes to the many, many people who have expressed their condolences on Dad’s death. The whole thing is still overwhelming, but it was made much less so by the love and concern of our friends, loved ones, and community members. However, I haven’t really done my part, except for writing letters to the hotel and the hospital. This post is by way of thanking the many people and organizations who have done so much to help us, including the Wood County Sheriff’s Office, the folks at the McVeigh and Witzler-Shank funeral homes, the members of TRAC and WCARES, and Dad’s co-workers from Dillin and Hoffman— to say nothing of the dozens of people who sent flowers, food, sympathy notes, and prayers our way. Thank you all so much.

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2007-08-31 · 11:43

Flood of Hope

Last night, 13 ABC here in Toledo did a short piece on “Flood of Hope”, my effort to “surge” volunteers down to Ottawa to help with flood relief. I haven’t had time to set up a formal website, so here are the details– hopefully people searching for “flood of hope” will find this article.

The Ottawa / Blanchard River Valley area has been badly afflicted by the recent flooding. More than 500 homes are uninhabitable, and the Red Cross estimates it will take several months of cleanup work to get the area back in shape. If you haven’t been there, you might not appreciate the scope of the destruction— it’s worse than you might imagine,.

I am coordinating “Flood of Hope”, an effort to surge volunteers from the metro Toledo area down to Ottawa on September 6th. The goal is to get teams from Toledo-area employers to go down and help with restoration and cleanup work.

Here’s how you can help:

  1. If you’re a business owner or manager, please consider giving your employees a paid day off or vacation day to participate. (A big shout out to Ritter and Associates, the first company to volunteer to do this!) The cost may even be deductible as a charitable contribution (but maybe not; only your accountant knows for sure.)
  2. If you’re not a business owner, consider taking a vacation day to come help anyway, even if it’s not on September 6th. The cleanup efforts will continue for some time to come, and they need help every day, including weekends.
  3. Spread the word. Tell your friends, neighbors, church members, and co-workers. We need all the help we can get.

The recovery efforts can use special skills if you have them—they need construction expertise, data entry and office skills, and good old-fashioned demolition and cleanup too. Whatever you can do will be appreciated.

If you want to join the Flood of Hope, please email me or call me at 419 873 8308 and I’ll get you signed up. It’s important that you call ASAP so I can keep the volunteer staffing coordinators apprised of how many people to expect. If you can’t reach me, call the volunteer center at 419 523 3288 and tell them you want to work on September 6th.

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2007-08-29 · 10:29

Flood cleanup, part 1

Yesterday I headed down to Findlay to help with cleanup. I didn’t realize the extent of the flooding until I got down there, mostly because I haven’t been watching the local news.
Matt and I first went to the LDS chapel in Findlay. The church has been designated the lead for all the church-based service groups participating in the cleanup; we drew cleaning supplies and a map to Ottawa, about 25mi W of Findlay. As we got about 10mi from Ottawa, the flood damage in the fields became readily apparent– miles of dead corn stalks, ruined tomatoes, and high-water marks on trees and greenery. When we got into town, it was even worse: the streets are lined with piles of debris. Many businesses are still closed, and many of the people whose homes were damaged have few local alternatives for housing– as a small town, Ottawa doesn’t have any hotels and little spare rental housing.
At the Ottawa center, we signed in and quickly got a work assignment. Matt and I teamed up with four missionaries (the Ohio Cleveland Mission has assigned 50 missionaries to the cleanup efforts) and headed out. We spent the day tearing out the interior of a two-story house. Wallboard, lath, and insulation all had to go; the homeowner had already taken out the carpet, but the trim and tack strips had to be removed too. It was hot (94° outside), messy work, but we could definitely measure our progress. It was rewarding work.
I’m going back down on Thursday with a few other folks, and I’m trying to coordinate a broader business-based effort for sometime next week. Drop me an e-mail if you’re interested in taking part.

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2007-08-28 · 12:27

The value of LinkedIn

David Pogue asks a good question:

…could somebody tell me the point of LinkedIn? … What I don’t understand is: If somebody knows me well enough to e-mail me with an invitation to join, why doesn’t he just e-mail me directly with whatever his problem or offer is?

Easy. LinkedIn has very little value for someone like you, David, because you’re already super-connected. For virtually any problem you have, you can easily find a resolution because you’re David Pogue. You have access to a huge audience, hundreds (if not thousands) of contacts from all walks of life, and the accumulated knowledge of the entire NYT staff (or, at least, those you get along with well enough to ask for favors).

For those of us not similarly blessed, LinkedIn is valuable because it provides a tool for finding contacts or expertise in areas where we’re not necessarily connected. For example, say I want to know about a particular market segment in depth, or I want to ask an alumnus what he thought of a given MBA program, or I want to find someone who works for Company X. LinkedIn makes it easy. I’ve used it to find contacts at famously opaque companies like Apple, as well as contacts at companies I didn’t even know existed. I occasionally get linkage requests from people I don’t know, and I don’t feel obligated to accept them, but usually I do. Why? For the same reason I accept business cards when I meet people at face-to-face events: a) it’s polite and b) that person may turn out to be a very useful contact.

So, David, feel free to send me a link request now that you have your answer. Heck, you can even write a recommendation if you like.

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