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Greyhawk68

About Greyhawk68

Posts by John Roling:

Microsoft Exchange Hosted Filtering

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Well I’ve always been a big fan of Frontbridge as an outsourced anti-spam/anti-virus service, but when they were bought by Microsoft, I got really worried. I learned a few days ago that they were changing their name to Microsoft Exchange Hosted Filtering. This had me wondering if my days on the service were numbered. But, according to the article, Notes and Domino will still be supported for at least the filtering part (which is what we use.)

Now I think it’s just really funny that my filtering is now called Microsoft Exchange Hosted Filtering, I feel dirty 🙂

Keep sharp objects away from my wife, and fingers away from my dog!

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Last night was interesting. My wife is a very good cook. Excellent in fact. As such, she owns some really good, really sharp knives. Most of them were bought for her by myself in fact. The problem with sharp knives is that they cut really really well…

You know where this is going don’t you? Yup, Jen cut off part of her thumb last night while making dinner. She was chopping up the last bit of parsley for a corn chowder she was making when she heard a noise in the other room (probably the girls fighting) and when she looked up, she chopped off the corner of her thumb. Instead of her thumb having a nice rounded corner, it now has a nice angular look to it.

Yes, she went to the emergency room where they finally stopped the bleeding and bandaged it up good. She also got a tetanus shot which she says hurts worse than her thumb.

Now, here’s the really funny part. After she had done it, she found the piece of her thumb she cut off, and as she was carrying it across the kitchen, she accidentally dropped it on the floor, where our dog Shadow promptly ate it! So now that Shadow has had a taste for human flesh we have to watch our backs. Who knows when we might awaken to find Shadow looking at us with “that look.”

I stayed home today to take care of her and the kids, and now I can finally use the excuse “Because my dog ate it!” 😀

V for Vendetta

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After the bad taste left in our mouths a few weeks ago by Date Movie, the wife and I really needed to see something to restore our faith in the movies again. Thankfully, V for Vendetta did just that.

If you are a person that is at all concerned about how our government has been acting lately, then you should see this movie.

The plot is about 20-30 years in the future in England. The U.S. is in Civil War, and England is being ruled by a high chancellor that has imposed curfews (for your protection) mass surveillance (illegal wiretapping anyone?) and banned homosexuals as well as alternative religions (for example, it’s a crime to simply own a Koran.)

A vigilante (or terrorist if you ask the government) named V is causing headaches for the government, and as unrest and dissent rise, the government cracks down more and more.

Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith in the Matrix) plays V, and Natalie Portman plays a girl named Evie. They were both excellent in their respective roles, especially Hugo who had to portray his character while always wearing a Guy Fawlkes mask. It’s no easy task to convey emotions when people cannot see your face, and Mr. Weaving was excellent in that regard.

Also, Natalie Portman is the real deal as an actress. Forget about the Star Wars movies where she was the victim of stilted dialog. She has chops and has been believable in every movie I’ve seen her in, from Garden State, to Closer, to V for Vendetta.

Now I KNOW that V for Vendetta has been out as a graphic novel for about 15 years or more, so it’s not like this was written as a response to the Iraq war or pointed in those directions. But, the scary thing is, the state of their government was so believable. If you don’t come away from this movie thinking about your own country, then you are simply one of the mindless sheep…

Now beyond the political feelings it brought out in me, the movie is excellent in it’s own right. Some of the action and pyro is very cool, and the storyline flows very nicely. This is one of the better movies I’ve seen in a long time. You should check it out.

Blackberry 4.1 Update progress

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I’ve had several of you ping me to ask me about my Blackberry Enterprise Server 4.1 upgrade and how it went. So I wanted to give you a heads-up as to where I am in the process right now.

To give some perspective, here’s our (rather small) environment:

  • Domino 7.0
  • Windows 2000 Server
  • The Microsoft developer SQL edition (the freebie that comes in the install)
  • We have 60 users
  • We were at BES version 4.0

First off, the documentation gives you a bunch of checklists to make sure you have everything ready to go, and then it has info on how to upgrade from the various previous version that are out there. Coming from version 4.0 I could do an in-place upgrade, or several other options (like cut-over or phased.) Anyway, in-place upgrade it was.

Now at this point, the documentation starts to suck. My documentation consisted of this (verbatim):

1. Double-click the setup.exe file.
2. Complete the on-screen instructions.
3. When prompted to restart the computer, click Yes.
4. Sign in using the same account that you used for the setup program.
5. Complete the on-screen instructions.

This is all well and good unless you’re not sure what some of the “on-screen instructions” mean. Because they really aren’t “instructions” per se, but rather “fields with minimal information on what the hell they do.” This doesn’t really intimidate me, they simply annoy me. So, I go through the install, filling in whatever I think I need to, and we get to the reboot part. So far, so good. The machine reboots and comes back to finish the install. Still good until it gets to the last item:

Installing MDS Services

This churns for quite awhile, 10 – 15 minutes maybe before it comes back and says that it has failed and I need to check logs. It simply has an EXIT button. So I hit exit, not sure what to do next, and looking at the logs aren’t much help. But, while I’m doing this, the Blackberry server is actually up and running. So I run some tests:

Wirelessly reconciling email? – CHECK
Able to send out email from the device? – CHECK
Able to use the Blackberry Browser (the one through MDS) to browse the web? – CHECK
Able to view attachments? – CHECK

Hmmm, so everything that WE are using as a company is working absolutely fine. Let me reboot and see if it still works? Yup. Everything is fine. So I go into the Blackberry Manager, and the ability to connect to MDS (and all the options with it) fail with an Unable to Connect to Server error.

At this point it was the end of a 13 hour day, so I decided to call it a night. All today everything continues to work. I’ll be calling RIM’s tSupport in the next couple of days to have them give me a hand. I’m pretty sure that I will need MDS actually working if I want to get Blackberry devices talking to Sametime. I’ll let you know how it goes…

SnTT: Using Domino as a cheap and dirty software distribution system

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Hey all, quick one today. As I’m a Domino admin responsible for servers all over the country, I find myself upgrading servers and installing software remotely. Using Terminal Services or VNC really saves on time and headaches. The problem I have sometimes is that I have to get an install package to each one of those servers before I can do my work. A couple of the more remote offices have smaller pipes too, so pushing out the install packages gets to be kind of a pain.

Well, here’s an easy fix, a Lotus Notes-based software distribution database!

We have a small database here that has a VERY basic form with a place for attachments. It has a replica on every Domino server in our environment. Whenever I need to get something to all of my servers, I simply attach the install files into a form in the database. I normally do this right before I leave for the day. Then, overnight, Domino works it’s magic and replicates the database to all of my servers.

Mind-bogglingly simple, yet something I frequently see people have a need for. Hope it helps you “one person admin” shops! 🙂

Upgraded to Blogsphere 2.5

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I’ve upgraded to Blogsphere 2.5 and so far so good. If you folks see any wierdness in the site design or feeds or anything, please let me know.

One thing we did find was in the Mail It config, I had an apostrophe in there and that seemed to anger the Javascript gods. So be forwarned!

The biggest thing I like in this release is the CoComment.com integration. Now people using CoComment.com to track their comments around the blogosphere can track their comments on Blogsphere sites too! Spiffy…

SnTT: Do not dereference shortcuts in file dialogs

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This week I ran into an issue that allowed me to uncover a new feature (or a new preference at least) in Notes 7.

The issue in question is with attaching files to an email. In version 5 of Notes for Windows, you would open the attach dialog, and then if you saw a shortcut (or .lnk file) and clicked on it, you would be taken to the destination of the shortcut. In version 6 of Notes, you wouldn’t be taken to the destination of the link, but rather the .lnk file would simply be attached to the message. In order to drill down in directories, you had to use real file paths as opposed to shortcuts.

The problem we ran into was that it seems Notes 6.5.3 had a regression bug where the shortcuts worked like version 5. It would simply allow you to drill to the shortcut’s destination. We upgraded a person who had been on 6.5.3 for a LONG time, and had used it exclusively this way. She even had shortcuts set up for every place she kept files so she could get to them easily. Once we upgraded her to 6.5.4 then it only wanted to attach the .lnk file instead.

Needless to say, this made Notes “broken” in the user’s eyes. After digging around, I found out about the regression bug, and how things were supposed to work in R6. The user understood, but was bummed that she couldn’t use it the old way.

So, being on 7.0.1 myself, I decided to look at the User Preferences for the client, and lo-and-behold, Lotus has actually made this a new User Preference! It’s called:

Do not dereference shortcuts in file dialogs

Check that preference, and you will attach the .lnk files when in the attach dialogs. If you UN-check the preference, it will drill down to the destination of the shortcut.

I know this is going to save me some headaches…and make one user really happy!

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If you liked Jim Gaffigan at Lotusphere…

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If you liked Jim Gaffigan at Lotusphere and wondered how to get a copy of his set, it’s pretty easy. He has a CD (and DVD) out called Beyond The Pale. I downloaded it on my Yahoo! Music Unlimited service and listened on the train the other day. It’s recorded in Chicago, and is pretty much the exact same set he did at Lotusphere. So, if you liked his set, you can find a copy pretty easily out there.

Hot Pockets…

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