cellio | random bits

Sometimes I am too optimistic when it comes to other drivers. I left work at 6 tonight, expecting to go home (not quite four miles away), feed the cats, take care of a few other things, and then drive over to my synagogue (a mile away) for a 7:00 meeting. Heh. Right. It took more than half an hour to go the first mile. The roads in question weren't icy, just wet. I should have known better, I guess.

My bathroom scale isn't accurate enough to weigh Erik, but it feels like his ribs are getting less prominent. He's still bony and underweight, but I think he's gaining. I hope so. We have an appointment with the vet on Monday where I'll find out. (On average he's been eating 7-8oz of canned food per day. More on the weekends and sometimes less on weekdays, because it works better in small doses every few hours.)

I've been at my synagogue for something every day for the last week. We just interviewed a candidate for a rabbinical position, which is a big part of that. That's been an educational process for me.

In a few weeks our comapny's network configuration will change in major ways. One change is that we'll be using an Exchange server for mail instead of our current IMAP server. (No, we don't get a vote on this.) So all of us who have been using other mailers have to move to Outlook, and we're being smart and doing that part of it before the server change. It'll be fine in the end, but I keep feeling like I've just moved five years' worth of mail and now I can't find anything. (I had to move all of my saved mail onto the server so I could then download it into Outlook, as no direct translation path existed.) On the bright side, the tech-support person the company sent to get everyone configured was one of the most fun I've worked with. I'm pretty sure she's a Unix user when her employer isn't looking; she definitely groks geeks.

Seen in a locked entry: "You know you're living in 2006 when... you pull into your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in your groceries." Guilty. :-) Hey, calls between our phones are free...

A lab report that's more honest than most (link from ian_gunn).

The Slow Crash argues that civilization will fall not with a bang but with a whisper (link from brokengoose). I'm reminded of one episode of the short-lived Dilbert TV show where there was some sort of economic crash and the very next day everything looked like a scene out of the middle ages. It was a nice spoof.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

One of the most common questions on the mailing lists for the major UNIX mail packages starts out "We need to run Exchange because corporate overlords demand it, but we can't handle the volume of mail we get and do effective spam and virus filtering without buying thirty more Exchange boxes. Is there a good way to put a couple of $REALMAILSERVERS in front of Exchange to handle the real work?"

Just saying.

Hmm. Thanks for that idea. We probably won't get away with it, but it's worth keeping in mind just in case.

I've sometimes heard that the biggest problem with Exchange is that it requires a full-time expert administrator. I hope that in a company this size they have one of those, but I don't actually know.

I'm simply predicting trouble -- which in this case is like predicting rain in Florida.

My condolences on your misfortune. This is another sign that your new corporate owners value some things more than "known to work well".

We already knew that; I have so many unnecessarily-different passwords for different corporate systems that I've been forced to write them down. :-(

I regularly hear about two problems with Exchange: one is the problem

dsrtao mentioned; the other is "our Exchange server got corrupted, is there a way to recover all our lost mail?" — to which the answer is usually "no". Were I you, I'd archive my important messages somewhere other than the Exchange server.

(Outlook .PST files can suffer the same kinds of corruption, but are somewhat less likely to kill themselves that completely.)

We will be forced to archive our mail somewhere other than the Exchange server. We have -- get this -- a 50MB quota per user. With all the documents and zip files and stuff that get mailed around sometimes, that could be 20 messages...

Thanks for reminding me to explicitly back up the PST file periodically. There will, of course, be official backups of our desktop machines; I predict that actually accessing those backups won't be any easier than it is now (which is to say, not very).

Be Sure to backup your .pst and .ost files, because if they go, your address book will go, as will all your identity settings.

An unnamed Fortune 500 company uses Unix-variety servers as the connections to the Internet and gateway to the Exchange servers to handle the volume, spam control, virus filtering, etc.

Archive messages onto your local files, and back them up.

Exchange, especially if they're using the Directory services for the variety of services available, needs several full time administrators.

I remember, back in High School, I turned in a lab report that stated that falling objects gain velocity as per the cube of the time that the spend falling. I got a B on it -- a D based on my crappy lab technique, bumped up two letter grades because, well, that WAS what the data I got from my crappy technique showed and I didn't fudge it.

"You know you're living in 2006 when... you pull into your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in your groceries." Guilty. :-)

Especially when Duncan has locked the front door and is wearing his headphones for the iPod!

"You know you're living in 2006 when... you pull into your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in your groceries." Guilty. :-)

montuos has done that to

killernurd more than once.

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Comments from the war zone.

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Guilty as charged

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