Well... for the handful of people wondering where I've been lately - wonder no more. I'm baaaack! :)
A few things have contributed to my lack of blogging:
- 60+ hour work weeks (this will change soon)
- Technical writing burn-out. I wrote two whitepapers for Microsoft to coincide with the launch of WSUS 3.0. Check them out here and here. All that writing combined with insane work demands pretty much burned me out.
- Wanting to spend time with family. Seems pretty straightforward to me.
OK - enough MySpace fodder... on to the juicy tidbits.
My Friday the 13th Surprise
I experienced my first Xbox 360 failure on Wednesday - the dreaded 'Ring of Death'. After a 30 minute call with Microsoft Support (most of it on hold) I was told a 'coffin' would arrive within 3 business days. No sweat, I thought... I have a second Xbox 360 upstairs. Or at least I did until Friday the 13th. Here's what I have now...
Note: I'm not a big gamer, but my family does rely on the Media Center Extender functionality for time-shifting our favorite TV shows. Trust me, once your family is addicted to Media Center Extender there's no turning back.
I guess all the reports of quality problems aren't caused by overactive gamers after all. And to think earlier in the week I was going to blog about how well my two units have performed over the last 9 months. What a joke that would have been ;)
Lotus Notes - How to Stop the Bleeding
My current employer uses Lotus Notes/Domino for messaging and collaboration. I won't digress into a rant about how much I dislike Notes (this guy has done a pretty good job already)... but instead I'll give IBM some free and unsolicited advice. For the most part my end-users don't care what server software controls their messaging and collaboration - they just want to run Microsoft Outlook. So here's my advice: "Fix Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook (DAMO)". DAMO allows users to access a Notes/Domino back-end via Outlook. However, the unfortunate truth is that IBM has pretty much abandoned DAMO. For example, it still isn't compatible with Outlook 2007 and doesn't even work that well with earlier Outlook versions. Trust me, I've tried. So IBM... keep the Notes/Domino server business alive by re-investing in DAMO. Your ancient Notes client is driving more and more people to Exchange/Outlook every day (my company included). Competition is a good thing - but I'm afraid Exchange is well on its way to crushing Notes/Domino. That's sad.
Speaking of Notes... July Microsoft Patches Cause Minor Issue
During our testing of the July Microsoft patches we've noticed quite a few instances where the default mail client is reset to Microsoft Outlook. If it were only that easy to migrate ;) Not sure how many readers of this blog run Notes... but keep an eye on this before you distribute the July patches across your company. I haven't tracked the problem down to a particular update yet, but I expect to get to the bottom of it on Monday.
Until next time...