- “Learned helplessness” is totally a thing, but perhaps some people are more prone to it than others.
- If I were critically injured, I would be totally OK with having my blood replaced with freezing salt water to “pause” my metabolism long enough for the ED docs to fix me up.
- In the past two weeks I’ve started watching 3 new shows: Longmire, Orange is the New Black (thoroughly enjoying it so far), and Halt and Catch Fire (atmospheric, but they muff a lot of technical details and the MacMillan character seems a straight ripoff of Don Draper). However, that’s all about to go by the wayside for two reasons: my “pre-order” list at Amazon is about to blow up with new books, and the World Cup is starting today.
- Hopefully the airplane will be fixed in time for our scheduled trip to Perrysburg. If not, second prize is the Fathers’ Day Weekend Inferno at Anaheim Chili.
Tag Archives: Thursday
Thursday trivia #107
Filed under General Stuff
Getting ready for Lync Conference 2014 (bonus Thursday Trivia #106)
So, first: here’s the view from my second-floor home office:
Actually, I had to walk across the street to get this particular shot, but it was worth it. We got about 4” or so of snow in my neighborhood; I got out of Raleigh just in time to miss their snowmageddon, which suits me fine. The boys and I had a good time about 10pm last night throwing snowballs and watching big, fat flakes fall. The roads are passable now and will get better as it warms, but tonight it’ll be cold again and they’ll probably refreeze.
I’m making my final preparations for Lync Conference 2014 next week. I’m presenting a total of four times:
- VOICE401, “Deep Dive: Exchange 2013 and Lync 2013 Unified Messaging Integration”, is on Wednesday at 1pm in Copperleaf 10. This session will cover some of the internals of Exchange UM; it’s targeted at Lync admins who may not have much knowledge of Exchange but are already familiar with SIP signaling and the like.
- SERV301, “Exchange 2013 and Lync 2013: ‘Better Together’ Demystified”, is on Tuesday at 2pm in Copperleaf 9, and there is a repeat scheduled for Wednesday at 430p (also in Copperleaf 9). This session covers all the places where Exchange and Lync tie together so that you get a bette experience when both are deployed.
- On Tuesday at 430p, I’m taking part in an informal session on Exchange-y stuff at the Microsoft booth in the exhibit hall. This is super informal, so it’s probably the best place to drop by and say hello if you can.
Dell has a pretty heavy presence at the show; Michael Przytula is presenting a session covering the Lync device ecosystem (Wednesday, 230p, Bluehorn 1-3) that I think will be pretty neat, because who doesn’t love shiny devices? George Cordeiro and Doug Davis are both doing sessions around how to identify the actual ROI of a Lync deployment, which is something customers often ask about before deployment. Even if that doesn’t sound interesting, the Dell booth will be staffed by some of our hotshot Lync guys (including Louis Howard and Scott Moore), and we’re giving away a Venue 11 Pro and a bunch of very nice Jabra and Plantronics headsets.
Now, your trivia for the week:
- Watch this video and you’ll see why I want to be an airline pilot
- Now that I like guacamole (and that’s probably worth a blog post on its own), I’m eager to make some Oaxacan guacamole sauce
- Apropos of the fact that the kids here in Huntsville had three snow days this week, here’s a map showing the estimated amount of snow required to close schools across the country.
- Buying an airplane is hard. I’ll have much more to say about that another time.
- The Unwritten Laws of Engineering have a lot of useful lessons for engineers and non-engineers alike
Filed under General Stuff, UC&C
Thursday trivia #105
Welcome, 2014! So far my year’s off to a great start; I ran a race at midnight New Year’s Eve; I have some idea of what my major 2014 goals are, and I now have a pet again. I hope you’ll join me in welcoming Pancake the cat to the blog. I promise not to be one of those tiresome people who regales unwilling audiences with tales of their pet’s accomplishments and behavior, but I must say the boys and I are excited to have a family pet again.
- I bit the bullet and signed up for an accelerated IFR ground school with Aviation Ground Schools. Why them in particular? They had a schedule that fit my needs, they got good reviews, and then they had a one-day sale. Expect a full report once I attend the seminar next month.
- The hardest thing I ever had to do as a business owner was fire people. Firing people in your personal life can be just as difficult, but sometimes it’s necessary.
- After nearly six months I am finally feeling settled into the house: everything is unpacked, there are doormats, pictures are hung, and so on. I celebrated New Year’s Day by replacing the fill mechanisms in all 3 toilets. (Cue the “you know you’re a homeowner when…” jokes)
- I’m excited to start the next round of group training with Roman and Mike Vacanti. Here’s to crazy gainzzzz.
Filed under Musings
Thursday trivia #104
- Last week I had a fantastic visit to Louisiana for Thanksgiving, bracketed by perfect flying weather. It was great to see my mom, grandmother, uncles, and cousins.
- Next week I’m headed to Dell World in Austin, where I’ll get to meet my boss for the first time, help run some nifty hands-on labs, and see a number of family members and long-time friends. I’m also looking forward to Elon Musk’s keynote.
- It amazes me that PayPal continues to prosper with as many problems as their back-end systems have. For example, my account contains ship-to addresses going back at least four years and there’s no way to remove them except by calling support. Ooops.
- This article about what it was really like to fly commercially in the 1950s was fascinating. I know that I am much happier with the navigation and communications technology available to modern pilots than I would have been using the 1950s equivalents.
- My friend Glenn posted a photo to Facebook of one of Amazon’s new drones labeled “Amazon drones: Skeet Shooting With Prizes”. Yep.
Filed under Friends & Family, General Stuff
Thursday trivia #103
- This was a big week! I spent the first part of the week in Redmond for the annual Microsoft MVP Summit. It was amazing— great content (all under NDA, at least for now) and a wonderful chance to catch up with my MVP peers. While there, I found out that my session proposal for the 2014 Lync Conference was accepted, so I’ll be presenting to an audience from what Jeff Guillet has started calling the “Skype Pro” community.
- I’m also going to be working in the hands-on labs at Dell World. No word yet on whether I’ll get to take Michael and Elon Musk out for BBQ but it will be neat to catch up with family, friends, and coworkers in Austin.
- Just bought John Ewing’s Concise Guide to IFR. I’m looking forward to reading it. I haven’t spent as much time studying for my instrument written as I need to, so I grabbed the Sporty’s Study Buddy app as well.
- I sold my Surface Pro because I had planned to take advantage of an MVP discount on the Surface Pro 2 that Microsoft was going to offer at the Summit… then they withdrew the offer. I can’t decide if I want to buy a Surface Pro 2 or a Dell Venue 11 Pro; they seem similar in specs in most respects. The original Surface Pro was a great device for me but if I can get an employee discount on the Venue 11 Pro that might tip the balance in its favor. (I also like that the Surface line is starting to grow an ecosystem of accessories, too.)
- Weather permitting, I’ll be flying to Louisiana for Thanksgiving, probably with a side trip to Texas. Have airplane, will travel…
- This is very well said: weightlifting gives you the serenity of the iron. I certainly find that when I am lifting or running (not as much for cycling, meaning I’m probably not doing it with enough intensity) that it clears my mind wonderfully well.
Filed under General Stuff
Thursday trivia #100
Boy, it’s taken me a long time to knock out 100 of these updates.
- I’ve proposed 3 sessions for MEC 2014 and one for the Lync Conference. Let’s see which ones make it into the goal. Worst case is either 0 or all 4: in one case I have to pay for my own conference attendance, and in the other I’ll be so busy speaking I won’t get to really enjoy the shows.
- I haven’t been flying much lately, but I aim to remedy that shortly. Every time I have a spell where I don’t have time to fly I am reminded of why people don’t buy their own airplanes. They cost you money whether you have time to fly them or not.
- Fitness progress continues. I have an upcoming post on that in the queue.
- This story (which has been mislabeled as “hacking”) is a great example of why optional mobile device management (MDM) isn’t worth a hoot: if you want to manage your organization’s mobile devices, users cannot be allowed to opt out. The LA Unified School District tried to go cheap and not spend money on a “real” MDM solution, and they paid for it.
- Deb Fallows, wife of the estimable James Fallows and a noted author in her own right, has a great set of articles exploring aviation lingo (not surprising, given that she’s a linguist). Here’s one excellent example.
- I’ve enjoyed using iTunes Radio, but the current version of iTunes for iOS is super buggy. I hope they fix it soon.
- Apropos of music: the GDR2 + Amber update for my Nokia Lumia 920 has introduced Bluetooth stuttering and problems displaying song/artist data on my car stereo. GDR1 worked flawlessly. GDR3 claims to introduce a bunch of BT fixes, so I hope these problems disappear too, along with the iTunes 11.1.1 bugs.
- PhotoReviewer sounds like exactly what I want: a tool to quickly triage large numbers of photos and decide which to keep and which to get rid of. I can’t tell from this review whether it works on existing iPhoto libraries or only on pictures you haven’t imported yet, but I’m going to try it.
Filed under General Stuff, Musings
Thursday trivia #99
- I’ve gotten to know Tim Bauer through the group fitness program we’re both in. What an inspiring guy: sample 1 and sample 2. Check out his blog.
- Mike Vacanti is one of my coaches. This blog post on feeling insecure about your own fitness compared to others was very thought-provoking for me. It applies much more broadly than just fitness, too.
- Speaking of fitness: you’d be amazed at all the stuff you can make with protein powder. There are so many flavors and varieties! I like the Optimum Nutrition stuff that Costco sells because Costco, but I’m always interested in trying new kinds. BioTrust is pretty good, but it’s expensive and they spam their customers. GNC’s stuff is edible but not great (at least the vanilla and cookies & cream flavors; haven’t tried any others).
- Amazon’s new “Mayday” customer-support feature has the potential to be a huge game changer. It will be very interesting to see whether they can scale it and provide good quality service. (If you haven’t seen it, it’s like OnStar, but for your tablet.)
- I’m always interested in a good invasive-species story, like the one about the testicle-eating fish spotted in New Jersey. However, of more local interest, the plague of little white bugs we’ve been having here in Huntsville is actually the result of the Asian hackberry woolly aphid, an invasive species that was first spotted in Georgia in 1996 (no one’s sure exactly how it got there, it turns out) and has made its way north– and west, having been spotted in Texas. (It’s also in California but it’s not clear if it was imported from Asia to California or somehow made it from Texas westward).
- I’ve mentioned the use of precision robotics for filming high-speed stuff before, but this video takes the cake. Projection mapping has huge potential for theatrical applications… and just think of what Disney could do with it if they wanted.
- Like Bo, I have not had good experience refilling printer cartridges. The first time I tried it, everything went well, but it wasn’t my printer. The second time, it was, and I never could get the printer to recognize that the refilled cartridge was usable. When a refill kit costs $6 and an off-brand cartridge costs $13, you know what? I’ll pay $7 to not have to deal with toner backsplash and fiddling with the stupid flag gear.
Filed under Friends & Family, General Stuff, Musings
Thursday trivia #98
- I took part of a day this week to open a business bank account, get Alabama license plates, and get my concealed carry pistol permit. Surprisingly, the trip to the credit union took the most time by far. The DMV and sheriff’s office were both quick and the people there could not have been more pleasant. Now it’s a race to see whether my driver’s license or my license plate arrive first.
- In possibly-related news, I am excited that Last Resort Guns is about to open their new range… at the end of my street. (Well, across a 4-lane road, but still!) I bought a membership, so a couple of days a week I’ll probably eat a sandwich as I walk to the range, get some practice in, and then walk home again. Sounds like a great lunch hour.
- Got my complex endorsement and checkout in the Piper Arrow this past week. Sadly, of the club’s two Arrows, one is grounded and the other has a broken autopilot, so I’ll probably stick with the 182 for my long trips until that’s fixed… or until I get checked out in the 182RG, which is next on my list.
- I also shot my first practice ILS approach under the hood. Wow. Lots to learn. I blew right through the glideslope because I was busy managing power and tracking my heading. Can’t do that.
- Monday marked the start of my fifth week of my coached fitness program, and brought with it a completely new set of workout routines. Ouch. However, over the past month I have gotten much stronger; my bench, deadlift, and squats have all improved and I am starting to see some actual hypertrophy in my upper body, so that’s all good.
- Heading to Perrysburg again this weekend to run the Rotary River Run 5K. Since I haven’t run a race since Memorial Day, and haven’t been running much, I am not looking for great results.
- I just noticed that Exchange 2013 Unleashed (which I haven’t read, and which I hope is better than the 2010 version) is available from Amazon as a rental book. Ouch.
Filed under Friends & Family, General Stuff, Musings
Thursday trivia #95
Wow, it’s been one day shy of three months since my last Thursday trivia! Time flies indeed. I should be able to post these more regularly now that my summertime madness has died down a bit.
- The book is content complete, and now I am working my way through technical edits and adding new material where needed. Expect another post on that shortly.
- My oldest son just started his freshman year… of college. Boy howdy, that makes me feel old.
- This week’s project: build a building-block Exchange design suitable for use at a customer with operations in some countries (notably Israel, Russia, Taiwan, and Turkey) where they are not legally allowed to use HA or DR services that migrate data from the home country to outside. For example, if you have mailboxes in Israel, you can’t have a stretched DAG to the UK, as that would violate local law. Fun times, and certainly educational.
- I have started a group strength training and fitness program coached by John Romaniello. So far it’s been awesome; I love the workouts and the adjustment to my eating habits has been manageable so far. If you’re on Fitocracy, follow me here. I still have to measure my current body fat percentage, but don’t expect any before/after until I get much further into the program.
- From the TMI department: resting pulse rate 52, total cholesterol 136, blood glucose 92. Looks like I am good to go for another year.
- I just booked my flights for IT/Dev Connections! Now I need to finish building my slide decks and demos.
- One of the fun things about being back in Huntsville is discovering new restaurants and rediscovering old ones. Bo has given me some very valuable tips, but I am going to have to cut back to make sure I stay on my nutrition plan.
- Speaking of Bo: if you’re not reading his series on marriage, and you are, or want to be, married, you should probably read it. It’s been very thought-provoking so far.
- FOOTBALL SEASON APPROACHETH. I am excited.
Thursday trivia #94
- My heart goes out to all those in Oklahoma affected by the May 20 tornado. If you can help, please do.
- Microsoft releases lots of documentation on how they do things for their internal network. Here’s an example: two papers on best practices for securing Active Directory.
- I am delighted to report that a whole bunch of my students from the Navy school I helped run in Pensacola have been promoted to IT2. Well done.
- You could pay $817 for this book on Amazon, or you could read the PDF for free: Introduction to Machine Code for Beginners. Very well worth a look if you’re at all curious about programming. (Old guy note: I learned to program in Z80 assembly about… well, a long time ago.) It’s less than 50 pages.
- Speaking of programming: this guy got a lot of press by writing a Wall Street Journal editorial saying that he’ll only hire people with some fundamental knowledge of programming: “Sorry, College Grads, I Probably Won’t Hire You.”
- The boys and I saw Star Trek Into Darkness the other day. It was good, but I preferred the 2009 Star Trek better. I have high hopes for Man of Steel, though.
- TechEd North America starts in less than two weeks! I’m putting the finishing touches on my slide deck and demos. If you’re there, stop by my session or the Ask the Experts booth and say “hi”.
Filed under General Stuff
Thursday trivia #93
Wow, lots of catching up to do. I’ve been writing a weekly set of notes for students at Acuitus’ school for veterans, and that’s taken all my Thursday material for the most part. It just dawned on me that I could have been posting those notes here too. Oops.
- If you’re feeling handy, why not build your own working digital computer out of paperclips? That’s how they did it back in 1967.
- Steve Sinofsky ran the Office and Windows divisions at Microsoft. Every article he writes is worth reading carefully, but especially this one: Using meetings to be more effective.
- If you don’t have two-factor authentication enabled, you really should. Why? It can save your bacon. Here’s how to do it for Microsoft accounts, Google accounts, and Facebook.
- Really interesting paper, “Marching Towards the Sweet Spot: Options for the US Marine Corps in a Time of Austerity“
- I now have my FAA high-performance endorsement (which doesn’t mean what you probably think it does) and am checked out in the flying club’s Cessna 182. Time for some more flying!
Filed under General Stuff
Thursday trivia #91
- I went from hale and hearty on Monday morning to throwing up and feeling miserable by dinnertime Monday evening. After two days of incarceration on my sofa, I can say a) I blame my commercial flight Saturday for getting me all germed up b) thank you, Instacart, for bringing me needed supplies so I didn’t have to go out in the rain and c) I am thankful for my general good health.
- With the impending death of Google Reader, I’ve switched over to Newsblur. So far I am semi-impressed. It looks good, but it has had terrible performance and uptime problems, brought on by the onslaught of tens of thousands of new users. The iOS client is only OK, and the two Windows Phone clients I’ve found (Feed Me and Metroblur) are both slow and clunky. I hope to see NextGen Reader and Byline support Newsblur; if not I’ll be stuck with the web client, I guess… still, better than nothing.
- I’m loving “The Americans,” although they’re showing signs of falling into the “Game of Thrones” trap of including too much gratuitous sex as a substitute for actual plot or character development.
- My condolences to the families of the seven Marines killed in the mortar accident at Hawthorne Army Depot earlier this week. (And shame on Senator Harry Reid, the shameless one, for linking their deaths to budget cuts brought on by sequestration.)
- It’s funny how Intuit always manages to jack up the cost of TurboTax about 3 weeks before the April 15th filing deadline. They’ll get their extra money this year, as I am in no way ready to file my taxes yet.
- I’ve been accepted as a speaker for TechEd 2013– in both North America and Europe! I’m doing a talk on developing mobile applications with Exchange Web Services. Should be fun; I love New Orleans and haven’t ever been to Madrid.
Filed under General Stuff
Thursday trivia #90
- Had my first sample of Vietnamese food yesterday, courtesy of (and thanks to!) Bo Williams. The food and company were both top-notch. For the record, I had the clay pot.
- Damnit, Google. Why couldn’t you have killed Orkut, or one of the other worthless services you offer, instead of Google Reader?
- This morning two of the newspresenters on WAAY-TV were handling a large snake. Is it ratings week, or has the Bay Area just changed my tastes in TV news?
- Just wrapped chapter 6 (Exchange 2013 message hygiene) of the book and sent it off for review. Now I’m working on chapter 4, the client chapter. Lots to say about Outlook and the all-new Exchange 2013 version of OWA.
- Two more books added to my reading queue: The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us (think: the opposite of Malcom Gladwell’s Blink) and Broken Hearts: The Tangled History of Cardiac Care (which claims, among other things, that most catheterizations and other invasive procedures don’t actually improve survival outcomes). Finding time to read them, of course, is a completely different matter.
- Apropos of which, my reading lately has focused on the study guides for my instrument flight rating…
Filed under General Stuff
Thursday trivia #89
- I spent Sunday with my extended tribe in Seattle– I had coffee with Tim and Julie, then lunch with my old friend John Peltonen of 3Sharp (who looks just like he did the last time I saw him– no aging at all!), then an afternoon get-together with several Exchange MVPs, including Jeff Guillet, Tony Redmond, Michael van Horenbeeck, Steve Goodman, Paul Cunningham, Sigi Jagott, Brian Desmond, and Clint Boessen. Then Tony and I had a very productive meeting with Karen Szall, our editor at Microsoft Press. (On that note I think there will be some interesting news coming from MS Press in the near future… stay tuned!)
- I couldn’t stay for the MVP Summit because I needed to be back in California to help kick off the second class of students for the school we’re doing for the Veterans’ Administration. My first week teaching is next week and I’m looking forward to it; I’ve been in bug-fixing mode for a while and look forward to more classroom time.
- I’m still loving the Surface Pro. I was able to find a Surface 128GB at the Best Buy in Issaquah, and Windows Easy Transfer worked flawlessly to move over all of my settings and accounts. It didn’t transfer purchased apps from the Microsoft Store, but it turns out that swiping down from the top of the screen while in the store app reveals a link that will download all your previous purchases.
- Fascinating article in the New York Times about the junk food industry and the science and technology used to make junk food addictive. It’s interesting to consider this in light of the LDS Church’s “Word of Wisdom“, which says that the famous Mormon dietary law was given “in consequence ofevils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days.” Purposely making unhealthy foods addictive sure sounds like “evils and designs” to me.
- I haven’t flown much lately, but this weekend I’ll be doing my rental checkout at the Redstone Arsenal Flying Activity, where my instructor is an honest-to-goodness rocket scientist. It’s also about time for me to start learning how to fly the Cessna 182 (and its retractable-gear sibling, the 182RG). After that, once the book is finished, it’s instrument-rating time!
Thursday trivia #88
- Happy birthday to the one and only Julie A. Robichaux! My dear sister is a terrific writer who can tear a strip off of a miscreant or write a sweet paen to motherhood and apple pie, sometimes in the same post, while making it look easy. I’m grateful that her rapier wit, good looks, and artistic sense help raise the family average of same above my own mediocre levels.
- In the third quarter of calendar 2012, Huntsville was the #1 airport in the nation… for airfare, with an average fare of $522. When I only pay $500 for a trip SFO-HSV I consider myself lucky.
- Surface Pro observation du jour: thé Staples in Madison, Alabama has gotten “tons of phone calls” about the Surface Pro 128, and has run out of stock every day on the 64GB model– as soon as they get one or two in, they sell them again. “I could have sold 10 or more on Saturday,” said the manager to me tonight. Anecdotes, of course, but if a smallish city like Huntsville has strong demand…
- Got to do a presentation to a group of MVPs this week on how to get into the publishing business. It was fun– thanks for coming, y’all!
- This article is a decent summary of why I fear the upcoming merger between American and US Airways. I prefer to fly Delta when I can, but American’s schedule from the Bay Area to Huntsville is better, so I often fly them… but if they descend to US Airways’ service level, I won’t.
- Speaking of publishing: the first two book chapters are in Microsoft’s hands, and I’m busily working away on the third. I’ve also edited the first two of Tony’s chapters. More to follow.
- Nice to see the Toledo Blade in the news again.
- Right after I posted my thoughts on auto-kill-drone-scary-things, I saw this article about the “domestic drone industry” pressuring the FAA. Good luck with that, guys; the FAA doesn’t pressure all that well.
Filed under General Stuff
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