September 2005 - Posts
To save a double post... I met Joel DeYoung today, and he is indeed still sitting across from me at the table here in the hotel room, having a few drinks :)
He has just posted an update on his site, regarding the work we are doing on Squawkbox 3. So, take a read - www.squawkbox.ca
Up at 5am again today… My body clock just isn’t working.
I got myself the 60GB Apple I-Pod from the apple store yesterday, along with the Griffin Roadtrip FM transmitter. Should be fun… now I need to figure if I can sync 37GB of music across the VPN.
I also took a trip down to the Pike Street Market, which has the most amazing flowers and seafood I have seen. The people were so pleasant, it is something I would recommend to anyone visiting Seattle.
In the evening Jeff Davis, the SBS MVP Lead, was kind enough to invite us lot around for a party. Thanks Jeff. That takes some doing! Even though I know a lot of these people… not a chance I would have 30 MVP’s round to my house :) Anyway… here are some pictures from the event!
Jeff Davis and Gary Wilson
Chad
Cheeky Jeff Middleton
Smiling (Still) Grey
Cal and a wild creature.... (Henry)
Frank, Jeff M, Jeff D and Mick Malloy
You would think that after being up for 26 hours yesterday, I could remain asleep until at least 9am.... Well, I got that wrong... 5am here and I am wide awake. Jet lag sucks.
The Red Lion hotel is nice, the rooms large and the staff friendly. I somehow miss the Hyatt lobby Starbucks however :)
Today I am going to see if I can't find some of the stuff on my shopping list... but in the mean time, here are some pictures of the trip so far:
First Class Food Rocks!
Spot Bill's house?
The Boeing Field, complete with Concorde
The Red Lion Room (Still tidy at this point)
The Hotel view... and sunny weather!
Ok. The funniest thing happened on the flight from Newark to Seattle!
Picture the scene… l am a young enough chap surrounded by “older” Businessmen in First Class. The “nut and lettuce” Salad, which has a fancy name, but I forget it, has been placed in front of us. We start to eat.
Now, in a flash it all happened…
My knife dropped onto the salad lettuce leaf, and everything flew through the air for what seemed an eternity. I turn to my right, and I swear on my life, the bloke next to me has a walnut, complete with dressing slowly moving down his forehead!
l am sorry, but I could not help but burst into laughter. Whilst this chap did not see the funny side, I did catch one of the stewardesses giggling, which of course set me off again. I tried to apologise but this guy had a stiff upper lip and was having none of it. Suffice to say, he did not speak to me for the rest of the flight.
Maybe riffraff like me should not be allowed in first class eh?
On to the hotel….
Here I am, at 32000ft in a beautiful Continental 767-400 on my way to the MVP summit at Microsoft Seattle. As my American friends say, I am “Super excited”.
This will be a busy summit for me, as I have to fit in to the Small Business Server and Flight Simulator product group schedules, but somehow I think I will manage!
I have a few things that I must remember to do this year. In no particular order…
1. Make sure to bring back my adoring wife, Rachel, something better than a “one size fits most“ Sleepless in Seattle nightdress.
2. Try to blog post about the summit.
3. Push for easier migration of SBS boxes.
4. Stop the release of patches until the SBS version (if indeed different) is tested and ready. No more “Oh, for that patch to work you need ANOTHER patch”
5. Push for improved community relations from the flight simulator team.
6. Push for improved “standard design tools” from the flight simulator team.
7. Buy a Sigma Zoom lens for my camera as they are so much cheaper in the USA.
8. … same goes for an IPod.
More soon, and hope fully some pictures…. Lets hope the blog server holds out!
I am a big fan of Skype. This year alone, I have saved in the region of €350.00 in call costs, especially the ones to the States...
One thing I was missing was integration with Outlook, and finally a company based in Australia have the answer! SkyLook! The product interfaces with Outlook seamlessly and basically makes using Outlook Contacts and Skype a doddle. There is a free trial available, and I suggest that anyone running Skype should also be running Skylook.
Go and get it from the site:
Neither did mine....
No matter how many times I defragmented the private information store file, which had hit the 16GB limit, it did not shrink much past 15GB. This did not make sense, as totalling up the mailbox sizes in the Exchange System Manager came to about 8GB.
What made this even more confusing was the fact that I knew that mailbox retention policies could cause this. But I had just removed them... from 30 Days down to 0. Still, no luck...
So, I walked away, and came back today.... guess what... it now compresses / defragments. I assume that exchange schedules itself to get rid of the deleted retention items.... I must find myself an Exchange MVP to figure this one out :)
Roll on Exchange SP2! Increase from 16GB to 75GB! However, I am still hearing that this increase on SBS2003 will require a patch... something that I and others are not too happy about. I, for one, will be bringing this up at the MVP summit at the end of the month.