Author: Brian

Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, Systems Engineer, Papa, and eccentric individual.

I am constantly conflicted with building my LinkedIn and online persona, and my desire for privacy and anonymity.

A Blackberry user is set free!

I have had one blackberry after another for the last 5 years. I have had enough! I finally gave up the crackberry addiction and supplanted it with a whole new beast of a device.

For years I’ve been pining away for a true “all-in-one” device that is capable of everything I could think I need. Wi-Fi, GPS, bluetooth stereo, MP3’s, email, web browsing, add-ons, applications and more are mine since I have purchased my first Windows Mobile 6.1 device. Yes… I went to a mobile device. And I’m not looking back too much. So far the only dissapointment I have is the alarm on the device doesn’t have a “browse” button so I can use an mp3 for an alarm as opposed to the ultra-annoying prepackaged tones most companies “value-add” to their products. Speaking of the value-add ability of companies. I followed the instructions on this website to clean that vendor specific applications out of my phone:
http://www.ezcomputerhelp.org/uninstall-att-software-from-your-att-tilt-htc-8925-windows-mobile-61/comment-page-1/#comment-12501

Unfortunately this does reduce a bit of functionality from the vendor branded product. It does turn out that most of the applications can be replaced by installing them from the \windows directory of the mobile install. So far there is not a ton of information available as to which .cab file installs which app, aside from the PT_manillia.cab being the TouchFlo3D app. The other ones I identified through a quick search was the opera browser, the printing add-on, the “black” splash screen, and the M$ security fix.

I’m not 100% positive I will keep the stripped-down version or retain the value-add software. I haven’t had the phone longer than 96 hours, so I haven’t tried all the applications that were provided out-of-the-box. I suspect most of the applications are worthless. Most of the apps provided by the vendor take up memory for running the programs I *do* want, and once added, they can’t be uninstalled. That means my system memory is being used for apps I won’t ever use.

As far as the apps I will be using, the RDP client has made the biggest impression on me so far. After dealing with third-party RDP apps for the blackberry, a native client is a very welcome addition. Beyond that I haven’t done much… I never used Opera on the blackberry, but I am finding it superior to the blackberry browser. Even the browser supported in 4.5 wasn’t as easy to use.

Where did blackberry go wrong? Why did I leave them and abandon my post? I am still a blackberry administrator at work, but I am also an Exchange 2007 admin now. With ActiveSync available, and direct push… why do I need to waste money on a server application that is additional to the infrastructure, but why do I need to waste money on CAL’s for it as well? I have a blackberry roadmap session to look forward to with the regional RIM manager in sight, but I am nervous about what RIM can do to catch up to the other offerings in the world.

In the meantime I found dozens of incredible ideas and possibilities for my new device. This includes the ability to use my camera as a business card scanner using OCR. Here are some other things you can do with a 6.1 mobile:
http://www.mobilitydigest.com/forums/showthread.php?t=367

Exciting!!!

Here is a plate full of HTML whitewashing

I’ve been fighting the good fight about a pure CSS website complete with properly aligned
DIV’s and everything for years. I am *SICK* of it. I do NOT have enough time to design this page properly, and I won’t until I somehow make it pay more than my full-time job. Since that isn’t going to happen anytime soon, I have been reminded again how my fight in the DIV vs. TABLE is a losing battle. When did I get suckered into thinking that a pure DIV rendering would score me points on the web because someone might notice I put some extra work into my site.
Since I’ve been playing wtih Internet Explorer 8 beta I have noticed yet again how Firefox has been paying more attention to W3C standards than I wanted to admit. If the first step is admitting you have a problem, then I need to admit I have a problem. The
nightmare on this page has grown beyond my capacity for control. It isn’t going to stop. I don’t think I can hold on much longer. The
TABLE’s are coming.

Here is an awesome slide presentation on more of the technical items that are changed with IE8 and what other part-time web designer’s need to know.

What You Need To Know About IE8 and Standards

Interesting problem with Exchange 2007 not finding a different

Late in the middle of the night one of the domain controllers in the same AD site as the Exchange servers stopped functioning (TBD why) and the Exchange servers continued to try using that particular DC/GC to perform lookups.

The DC wasn’t accessible via most means and the event logs in the CAS servers had a few items that were descriptive, but not terribly helpful:
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Event Type: Warning
Event Source: MSExchange ADAccess
Event Category: Topology
Event ID: 2116
Date: 2/13/2009
Time: 3:24:40 AM
User: N/A
Computer: HUB/CAS_server
Description:
Process IISIPM72AE0B7E-9F63-4D30-80F3-A58AB1DEDB01 -AP “MSEXCHANGEOWAAPPPOOL (PID=6904). The domain controller DC.domain.local is running Windows (Unknown Operating System) (Unknown Service Pack). Exchange Active Directory Provider requires that domain controllers are running Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 or later versions of Windows.
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So of all the questions I need to ask M$ this morning is why didn’t Exchange start using the other 3 domain controllers we had available? They were in fact out of site, but functioning perfectly fine. During the AD Topology discovery immediately after the 2116 Event was the standard AD Topology event, but it indicated that the DC’s OS being unknown is NOT enough for Exchange to want to switch to doing lookups on another GC. Pity.
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Event Type: Information
Event Source: MSExchange ADAccess
Event Category: Topology
Event ID: 2080
Date: 2/13/2009
Time: 3:24:44 AM
User: N/A
Computer: HUB/CAS_servers
Description:
Process IISIPM72AE0B7E-9F63-4D30-80F3-A58AB1DEDB01 -AP “MSEXCHANGEOWAAPPPOOL (PID=6904). Exchange Active Directory Provider has discovered the following servers with the following characteristics:
(Server name | Roles | Enabled | Reachability | Synchronized | GC capable | PDC | SACL right | Critical Data | Netlogon | OS Version)
In-site:
Domain.ad.local1 CDG 1 7 7 1 0 0 0 7 0
Domain.external.com1 CDG 1 7 7 1 0 1 1 7 1
Out-of-site:
Domain.ad.local2 CDG 1 7 7 1 0 1 1 7 1
Domain.ad.local3 CDG 1 7 7 1 0 1 1 7 1
Domain.external.com2 CDG 1 7 7 1 0 1 1 7 1
Domain.external.com2 CDG 1 7 7 1 0 1 1 7 1
Domain.ad.local4 CDG 1 7 7 1 0 1 1 7 1
Domain.external.com24 CDG 1 7 7 1 0 1 1 7 1
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