Tag Archives: Thursday

• My Kickstarter record of late hasn’t been so great. I’m still waiting for the Pebble I ordered, and today I got a notice from the Honey Badger BBQ sauce folks that said “DO NOT CONSUME ANY OF YOUR SAUCE; IMMEDIATELY DISPOSE OF YOUR SAUCE.” Oh well.
• Lots to say about the Surface Pro; I just need to collect and organize my thoughts first. I want one, I think. But with the next generation Intel CPUs promising dramatically lower power usage, I might wait.
• I’m not going to the MVP Summit this year; too much work and too little time. I have to be in Seattle the day before the seminar starts, so I may drop in for a short while on Monday though– hit me up if you want to meet.
• Ross Anderson’s seminal Security Engineering is now available online for free. You should read it (yes, even you, Mom.)
• Lots of events coming up! Next up: I’m doing a three-session webcast on Exchange 2013 at the end of the month. I’ve just sent off session proposals for TechEd North America and TechEd Europe, too.
• The first chapter of my book has gone off to Microsoft Press for editing; the second chapter, on mobile device management, has gone off to my crack team of volunteer reviewers. Onward…

Bonus fun fact: even FedEx isn’t immune to the charms of Mardi Gras.

• The boys and I have really enjoyed the Huntsville Havoc games we’ve been to. Our next one will be next weekend– can’t decide if we should go see the Havoc beat Pensacola or the dreaded Louisiana Ice Gators.
• The second chapter for Exchange 2013 Inside Out is well underway– this one is on Exchange ActiveSync and mobile device management. There’s a lot to say on that topic.
• Sadly I haven’t had time to fly since my cross-country with Matthew to Nashville a couple of weeks ago. I hope to remedy that really soon, at which point I’ll have some more aviation stuff to write about.

Bonus: if you didn’t see Wreck-It Ralph in theaters: a) you missed out and b) you probably haven’t seen the animated short that preceded it. In that case you are missing a real treat, and Disney was kind enough to post the full version on YouTube. Take a few minutes and watch it; you’ll be glad you did.

• Extremely cool story of the first known computer artwork. Unsurprisingly, it was of a pin-up girl.
• Is obesity an infectious disease? (Before you say “no,” reflect on Barry Marshall‘s discovery that ulcers are caused by transmissable bacteria.)
• Why not learn to program iOS apps by taking a free course.. from Stanford.. online?
• The first chapter for the book went off to my cadre of volunteer reviewers. It was 91 pages, I think. The next one will be easier…

No time for trivia this week, sorry. Instead, let me leave you with a mashup for your listening pleasure:

Or if your tastes run more towards Christmas music I strongly encourage you to give this a listen:

• I spent a day this week using my iPhone 4 as my primary device. I was shocked by how much better the Windows Phone keyboard works. It anticipates what I want to say (thanks to Word Flow), and its autocorrection mechanism is much easier to use.
• It seems like there’s a lack of good documentation on how to deploy smartcards with Windows Server 2008 R2 and Win7 on the desktop. Maybe I’m just not looking in the right place.
• Why would you inflict any of these names on your baby? I don’t get it.
• Today’s the 376th birthday of the National Guard. Who knew?
• “The system provides neurosurgeons the option of selectively destroying brain tissue without opening the skull or using ionizing radiation.” Well, alrighty then.. so does beer.
• Did you know that Exchange 2013 and Lync 2013 support higher-resolution photos in contact cards than their predecessors? Now you do.

• If you haven’t seen “100,000 Stars” yet, you really should. It is phenomenal.
• This kind of transparent, public statement is one of the key competitive advantages that Office 365 maintains versus Google Apps Premier Edition.
• I hope all of my liberal friends read this and take it to heart.
• Turns out Tom was right: you should add a little milk when scrambling eggs.
• A TSA employee gets more money for uniforms every year than a Marine second lieutenant does in his career. That’s just wrong… but par for the course with TSA. Thank you, collective bargaining.
• Car’s in the shop. I hate it when that happens. Let’s hope it’s not an excessively expensive visit.
• 11 December is my checkride. Yay!

• Rule #1 of aviation: don’t hit anything.
  Clear violation of rule #1
• Windows IT Pro has a new compendium of its articles and coverage of Exchange 2013. Check it out.
• The ability to do discovery searches from a single locationin Office 2013/Lync 2013/SharePoint 2013/Exchange 2013 is going to sell a lot of SharePoint seats.
• Halo 4 has been terrific so far and I’m only partway through the second mission. 343 has a winner.
• I think some new gadgets may be coming to join the stable in the next week or two.

• What I learned today: the difference between “unwatering” and “dewatering.”
• Just logged 0.8 hours of simulated instrument time. That means I have officially met all of the FAA requirements for the private pilot license except the checkride. Onward!
• It’s official: the VA has announced that Acuitus is doing a pilot program using the Digital Tutor to train unemployed veterans.
• Being back in Alabama reminds me that there is such a thing as fall weather; it was 33° this morning when I woke up.
• Does the Internet run on gasoline? Sort of, but it mostly runs on diesel. This article expounds on some of the things I mentioned the other day. tl;dr version: put your data center someplace safe.
• Here’s a playlist with some of the new music I enjoyed at Voodoo.

• Fascinating article discussing a simple question: how can you tell whether it’s safe to run a nuclear reactor for 80 years?
• After switching from Dropbox to SkyDrive, I had my first “uh oh” moment yesterday; I updated a file at home Tuesday night, then tried to access it through SkyDrive’s web interface Wednesday morning. The file wasn’t there. Turns out that the SkyDrive app can’t be run at logon unless it’s in the system Applications folder; I’d left it in the Downloads folder.
• I’m really excited to see 311 tomorrow in Mountain View. I saw them there last year, and saw them with the boys in Atlanta last month, and they were the two best concerts I’ve ever been to. I expect a repeat performance.
• The fifth season of Breaking Bad continues to excel. If you haven’t been watching the show before now, and you appreciate television dramas for adults, you really should be watching it.

And a bonus quote from mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell:

If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. If some one maintains that two and two are five, or that Iceland is on the equator, you feel pity rather than anger, unless you know so little of arithmetic or geography that his opinion shakes your own contrary conviction. The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion. So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants.

Application is left as an exercise for the reader.

• Aviation Week released its list of the top sources of graduates hired by aerospace and defense companies. #1 on the list: Iowa State. Georgia Tech, my alma mater, came in at #5. Too bad I didn’t get that degree in aerospace engineering…
• The new book If Life Is a Game, These Are the Rulessounds suspiciously like Mormon theology, although I rather suspect that was the furthest thing from the author’s mind.
• If you like gadgets, and don’t mind an occasional gross-out, I strongly recommend Medgadget. My two favorite medical gadgets this week: a glucose meter that measures glucose in tears and saliva (meaning no more needle sticks) and this story about a robot that does hair transplants.
• Brian Reid, a fellow Exchange MCM instructor, has written a stellar series of posts on how to set up an Exchange unified messaging lab. I recommend this highly as a textbook example of how to set up a UM lab for testing or experimentation.
• “It seems to me that being an author is a silly way to spend one’s day. ” No less than the great E.B. White said that. Sometimes I definitely think he’s right.
• It’s not too late to give me feedback on my question about what you’d want a junior Exchange administrator to know.