This is pretty neat: an OS X driver for using the Xbox 360 controller with Mac games. I’ll have to give it a try, assuming I can pry myself away from the Xbox 360 to try it.
My new calling
I’ve been the first counselor in our ward’s Elder’s Quorum presidency for a little over two years now. On Christmas Day, I got a present of sorts: I was called as a Primary teacher. That means that every Sunday, I teach a class of 8 and 9-year-olds: Michael, Max, Kaitlyn, Adam, Heather, and Ethan. Since I have three boys, this isn’t as daunting as it might seem; I’m already pretty familiar with how kids that age tend to act: they ask lots of questions and they go off on tangents all the time, but they also can surprise you with what they soak up from classes and lessons.
My first class this Sunday went well, though it was a little odd to be in the Primary room with all of the other Primary classes instead of the more familiar environment of my priesthood quorum. Because I’m an adult convert, I don’t know most of the Primary songs, which is definitely going to take some effort to correct. Fortunately, several other new teachers were called at the same time as I was, so I’m not the only one who has to try to adapt. I’m looking forward to this new challenge, and I’m reminded of this article explaining that your spiritual growth isn’t necessarily driven by the calling you hold. I think I’ll do just fine as a teacher.
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Filed under Spiritual Nourishment
Back from the holidays
I’m finally getting back into my normal groove after an extended vacation. The kids were out of school from 12/22 until today; I took a solid week off, during which I did no work. It was wonderful, and we could not have had a better Christmas– we were all together, and that made it something to remember. Baby Charlie learned a few new tricks (including patty-cake); we ate like kings, and everyone got to spend time with everyone else in various combinations.
Coincidentally, even after that week was over, I didn’t have much to do because I’m waiting on go-aheads for several projects. Things are starting to pick up, though, so I’ll be posting here slightly more regularly.
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TechEd ’06 session proposals in
I just sent off three session proposals for TechEd 2006. I didn’t bother to submit anything last year, and– big surprise– didn’t speak. It was nice to take a break and attend without having to speak, but I missed it, so this year I’m back to my normal MO. I’ll also be speaking at Exchange Connections 2006 and the newly added Exchange Connections Europe– more info on those coming soon!
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Filed under General Stuff, Musings
Threats and Countermeasures version 2.0
I’m delighted to announce that Microsoft has released updated versions of two of its key security guides: the Threats and Countermeasures Guide 2.0 and the Windows Server 2003 Security Guide 2.0. Devin and I put in a lot of hours updating these two guides to reflect updated settings in XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1, and there’s some very useful new information therein.
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More Xbox 360 streaming
So, last week I wrote about trying to get my iTunes music onto my Xbox 360. I noted that using Windows Media Connect on Virtual PC seemed to work OK, but I noticed something odd: only about 1/3 of my song library showed up on the device. It turns out that the 360 can’t stream AAC files (protected or unprotected), and– wouldn’t you know it– that’s the default format I’ve been using. This is odd, and frustrating, given that the 360 can play AAC files just fine from an iPod, so clearly it’s got an AAC codec installed.
I discovered this while trying to set up a Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) computer to stream videos to the 360. After an evening of fiddling, I still can’t make the MCE and 360 work together; each reports that it sees the other, but I can’t stream any content. However, I learned that if you install the 3ivx filter pack, then Windows Media Player (and, by extension, Windows Media Connect) can see and play unprotected AAC files. At least that much is now working.
Update: no, this still isn’t working. WMC won’t show AAC files, so neither the Xbox 360 nor the LRM-519 I have in the bedroom will see two-thirds of my accumulated music connection. Frustrating.
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Filed under HDTV and Home Theater
Imperial Grunts (Kaplan)
by Robert D. Kaplan
People who know me know that I have a special interest in the US military; in addition to my own service, I have many friends and acquaintances who served, or are serving, and I care deeply about how our military is equipped, trained, organized, and used as an instrument of US policy and power projection.
Kaplan has written a remarkable, and important, book about the US military around the world, but rather than focusing on three- and four-star generals (cf. Atkinson’s biography of David Petraeus, or on the dry details of an individual campaign or battle (cf. The March Up), Kaplan writes about the troops he meets while deployed with the First Marine Division and various Special Forces units. Strictly speaking, this isn’t a war book; it’s a book about the remarkable ways in which individual US military members are forging US policy. My favorite example is probably Tom Wilhelm, one of the US military advisors to Mongolia; Kaplan’s profile of himin the Atlantic was excerpted from the book, but there are many other examples from places like Basilan, Lamu Island (which I’d never heard of), Fallujah, and northern Afghanistan.
Kaplan puts the work done by these “iron grunts” in perspective. The US, he says, has already built an empire; like the last days of the British empire, it’s one focused as much on imperial power projection through the distribution of information, technology, and ideas as on pure military force. Kaplan frequently cites precedent for US engagement in various places from our previous engagement in “small wars” like the US pacification of the Philippines, the settlement of the American West, and the US Marine involvement in Central America at the start of the 20th century. Kaplan puts these in the context of empire building by peoples as disparate as the Ethiopians, the Romans, and the series of Khans.
Kaplan writes with a vigorous style that does an excellent job of conveying the no-baloney straightforwardness of the people he meets and talks to. He is direct and clear, both in his explanations and his opinions. His writing is also suffused with a clear appreciation for the work done, and sacrifices made, by these soldiers and Marines for their country. He does this without shying away from pointing out what America has done wrong in the past, or could improve upon in the future, and that’s part of what makes this such a remarkable book.
If I could give this book six stars, I would; I’m eagerly looking forward to the next volume.
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Filed under Reviews
Don starts blogging
Normally I wouldn’t mention this here, but it has security relevance. Don recently started blogging. Why do you care? Because he’s an attorney who works for a really large software company in western Washington. In that capacity, he’s written some amazing stuff that I hope shows up in his blog over time.
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Cliff Reeves blogs
I had the opportunity to work with Microsoft’s Cliff Reeves earlier this year, and thoroughly enjoyed it– Cliff is scary smart, quite personable, and really “gets” the collaboration space. I urged him to start a blog, and whaddya know? he did! Check it out at http://cliffreeves.typepad.com/dyermaker/.
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Exchange Performance Troubleshooting Analyzer
I just attended a Live Meeting hosted by Microsoft’s Nicole Allen and Mike Lee. Nicole is well known in the Exchange community as being an expert on Exchange performance analysis, and her presentation covered some of the guts of the Exchange Performance Troubleshooting Analyzer (ExPTA). If you haven’t used ExPTA, you’re missing out; it’s a terrific tool for analyzing the performance of your Exchange server and identifying problems, including problems experienced (or caused) by individual users. Mike Lee also did a similar presentation on the Exchange Disaster Recovery Analyzer (ExDRA). (For a good tutorial on what ExDRA does, see Marc Grote’s article here.)
The interesting thing to me is the degree of investment that Microsoft is putting into these free add-on tools for Exchange. They fill a void that no third party vendor has effectively exploited, and customers love them because they greatly simplify the process of finding current or latent problems with an Exchange configuration. Between ExBPA, ExDRA, and ExPTA, Microsoft is assembling quite a formidable set of analysis and troubleshooting tools.
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Exchange 2003 gets Common Criteria certification
I meant to blog this, but with all the other things that’ve been going on, I forgot. Exchange Server 2003 has passed the evaluation process for receiving the Common Criteria security evaluation at Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) 4. There’s a good article at the Exchange team blog that covers the certification process and what CC certification means. Interestingly, I haven’t found any evidence that any version of Domino is CC-certified, but I probably just wasn’t using the right search terms (I note that IBM’s talked a lot about the EAL-3 version of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9).
Filed under General Stuff, Musings
Microsoft releases Exchange 12 beta 1
It’s a closed private beta, but there’s some good information at their beta 1 preview site: http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/preview. Expect more information after the first of the year…
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This year’s corporate holiday gifts
In 2003, I blogged about why 3sharp chose to make donations to SmileTrain in lieu of giving our key customers some kind of food gift or tchotcke. This year, the same reasoning applies, in spades– instead of a transient goodie of some kind, we chose to make donations in our customers’ names to the New Orleans chapter of Habitat for Humanity. I haven’t figured out what I want to do for my own customers, but I think something similar is probably the best way to both thank them for their support and to do something worthwhile.
Filed under Spiritual Nourishment
Nikon battery recall
Turns out that Nikon has a recall for some models of the battery used in Arlene’s camera. I just stumbled across the info on the recall today; hopefully the replacement, non-exploding, battery will get here before the holiday fu gets into full swing.</pP
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Filed under General Tech Stuff
Why I want a corn-burning furnace
Last winter, I was out on a teamup with the missionaries and we went to visit a family whose house was heated by a corn-burning stove. That’s right; it burned dried corn kernels. It worked great, too; it was probably 80° in their family room. That’s nice to consider when it’s 10° outside. My interest was recently rekindled by this WSJ article that talks about corn-fueled heating. Here’s the kicker:
Calculating the new post-Katrina prices, [Penn State professor Dennis Buffington] figures that to make a million British thermal units of heat it takes $22.64 of heating oil, $33.80 of propane or $16.47 of natural gas. But burning corn can do the job for $8.75. “The truth, in my opinion, is that corn is such a good deal that the data don’t need to be hyped,” he concludes.
The idea of being able to cut a $300/month winter heating bill to $75 or so is awfully attractive. Oh, and the exhaust smells faintly of popcorn.
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