Windows Admin Wench

Just like gapingvoid, I have been stung also by that nasty site quechup.com. To quote Hugh:

If you’ve received an e-mail from them, on mine or anyone else’s behalf, please delete immediately.

I’m really sorry about that, Folks. Not to mention, mortified and embarrassed.

I am sure everyone has heard about Forbes report on the World’s most powerful women that was published today. It is of interest always to all working women how other women fare; one of the follow up articles pointed out how these women often use humor to assist them in breaking through barriers.

My favorite quotation came from Margaret Thatcher, former Prime Minister of Britain and a leader on the 2004 list: “I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end,” she said. Indeed!

Oh my goodness, how is it that we forget keyboard shortcuts? They can make life so much easier than always mousing. F2 for renaming for example. Read on here: Keyboard shortcuts

 And in happier news! I start a fun new position in a couple of weeks and I can’t wait! Admittedly, I am one of those folks who gets all scared when starting a new assignment, so much to learn about a new environment. But this is a good kind of scared! Appreciate the support SO MUCH. Thank you.

The decision was made by the executive team at the tiny firm where I work to abandon the infrastructure and m0ve to 100% hosted services. Here are some of the ‘gotcha’s’ if you have an existing Active Directory infrastructure and you move to a hosted provider:

1) Don’t forget to export your old profile in Outlook to an archive file before you create your new profile. You will long to see that history in, oh, about five minutes after you see a shiny bright (but empty) new mailbox.

2) Your migrated calendar items will not allow you to edit them. Outlook (correctly) thinks you are a new user. You will have to destroy and recreate the item if you need to change it.

3) Your mobile phone profile must be recreated (same reason as above)

4) Shared resources should not have their items moved, rather, they should be recreated all together

Of course, it goes without saying that you should research your vendor thoroughly in advance to understand:

1) Support. I mean like, do you get to talk to a live person if you need it? The selected vendor in this example prefers that you do NOT call; rather, post your issue on the support site and wait for an answer. While this is expensive in terms of your time, with this particular vendor it proved valuable in the sense that the extremely poor advice they were giving was documented.

2) SLA’s. Yes, yes, everyone claims 99.999% uptime. But what recourse do you have when the provider posts a message on their website apologizing for Exchange 2007 being down, we are working with Microsoft now, check back later please?

3) What services are they actually providing? Using the vendor that my soon to be former employer chose as an example, while their website states things like, “standard 14 day deleted items retention for Exchange 2007 subscribers”, this translated to eight hour deleted item retention unless you ‘upgraded’ for a ‘nominal fee’.

Michael Osterman, a leading analyst in the messaging and collaboration space, I wish we could have retained you to help choose a vendor rather than the ‘Picked the top Google search vendor’ approach.

Technorati Tags: Corporate Life

PostSecret is one of the best ways to spend a Sunday morning in my humble opinion.

ENT news wrote this evening that “Some have even wondered if Microsoft’s various Update services have made service packs obsolete.”

I hope not!

Let me just state for the record now that there are instances when “hotfixes” cause more trouble than the issue itself. 85% of my user population of consultants are client facing and not getting their updates from me, rather, they use Automatic Updates. It can be a real challenge to straighten out issues when you have remote clients.

I try to provide the best support for my folks as possible and test everything that I can in advance including service packs. Inevitably, they are using specialized tools from large vendors like IBM and the like and I can let them know of any ‘gotchas’.

Microsoft, please don’t roll service packs into Automatic Updates.

http://www.dmv.state.va.us/webdoc/general/news/news.asp?id=5029

No More Using Cell Phones for Drivers Under 18
New Law Designed to Keep Teen Drivers Safer

RICHMOND - Effective July 1, 2007, Virginia drivers younger than 18 years of age may not operate a motor vehicle in Virginia while using a cellular telephone or other wireless communications devices. The new law prohibits the use of cell phones, even if they are considered to be hands-free. It also prohibits text-messaging while driving….
…All Virginia drivers under the age of 18 are issued provisional driver’s licenses. A provisional license carries other limitations as well, such as restrictions on the number of passengers and driver curfews. The ban on cell-phone usage while driving is considered a secondary violation, similar in Virginia to safety belt laws.

Apparently Virginia is a significant source of spam and the courts here have real expertise in adjudicating antispam cases. There is a new court case expected to be filed against spammers by ”seeking the identity of individuals responsible for harvesting millions of e-mail addresses on behalf of spammers.”

“It is clear that the key to stopping spam is identifying those responsible for it, and getting that information into the hands of those capable of doing something about it,” [the prosecuting attorney] said.

“… if we can take two or three major spammers offline, that’s a huge victory for the Internet as a whole.”

Vacations are good. I recommend them. I am back from a cruise in the Caribbean and to a person everyone at my place of employment has commented on how rested & relaxed I look.  Heh.

Naturally I come back to a full plate, so I will be sharing some of those challenges with you as the week progresses.

I was in shock this afternoon when I read that Kathy Sierra has been receiving death threats on her blog. Read what others are saying over at Techmeme or Scobleizer since they can probably articulate this issue better than I.

We are truly living in a mad world when someone is attacked in this manner. I think Kathy said it best when she said:

“If you want to do something about it–do not tolerate the kind of abuse that includes threats or even suggestions of violence (especially sexual violence). Do not put these people on a pedestal. Do not let them get away with calling this “social commentary”, “protected speech”, or simply “criticism”. I would never be for censoring speech–these people can say all the misogynistic, vile, tasteless things they like–but we must preserve that line where words and images become threats of violence. Freedom of speech–however distasteful and rude the speech may be, is crucial. But when those words contain threats of harm or death, they can destroy a life.”

Update: Climb to the Stars seems to have the best set of links to help understand the background of this issue