So I have a Zune now, and I am really loving it. I have discovered podcasts for the first time ever. They are really neat and simple and fun. The nice part about having a dedicated media player is that there is a centrel location to get podcasts. Some of the ones that I really like and have found lately are Coffee Break Spanish, Hak5 and some of the G4TV stuff. Yeah G4 doesnt get a link, they can find themselves.

This post is a bit different as I am not using Microsoft's Live Writer, but actually logged into the web site to do an update. Not like Live writer was doing anything other then telling me when I had mispelled words. It didnt really help with grammer (thanks for pointing that one out Kolbold) So back to the randomness that is me being bored at work.

Actually my question is, do blogs actually help people? I am using google analytics and I am seeing I am getting google results for things like
headless windows 2008 install
nothing special about me
adding bluetooth to yukon denali
Based on those things, my blog is useless. So far I am just a talker and not really showing much in the way of technology, I can do a lot and would offer answers if someone emails me directly, but in general I just babble about useless information, just like every other blog. So I think it will be time to get starting and actually do some things and show how to do things.

Ok so I need to work out an actual blogging schedule, just to keep things lively. I also need to check my email more regularly, seems I have a few unread email messages.

I did a computer upgrade this weekend, it has been about two years since I got new hardware so I went slightly over the top with an Intel e8400 and Gigabyte EP-35DS3L motherboard, It is just fast. It is a 64bit CPU and as my first personal one, it is nice. It is just smooth and fast and quite. I had a Shuttle PC prior to this, and yes it was cute and small, but it was OMG loud, It also generated a lot of heat, the CPU temp was an average of 59 Celsius, while this one is 40 at idle. I have a co-worker who put OSX on his but I havent tried that yet, I am just getting to Vista x64, it is smooth and fast, and has some fun issues, such as Flash doesn't work with the 64bit web browser. I haven't gotten any father then that yet but I am still dinking with it.

On an amusing note I just found out about Leeroy Jenkins!

So I have been working with Exchange 2007 and it has a lot of advancements over previous versions. One thing that I feel it is missing is in the area of Unified Messaging. It can interact with a few PBXes and IP PBXs out of the box, and a few motivated people have been able to use sipX as a Sip Proxy to pass the traffic from an asterisk server to the Exchange server. It is actually really simple if you follow these instructions by Ryan Newington. It is a bit older, and some things you have to guess at because they have changed, such as trixbox configurations and layouts, but over all you can swap out trixbox for other asterisk distributions, just remember to RTFM.  It does help to have a familiar with Linux in general, there is a lot done on this with Red Hat distros, such as Fedora or CentOS. I had some interesting issues trying to get the trixbox virtual machine running, such as I had to re-install GRUB, and use VMWare Converter (thanks Kobold) to convert the machine image from an ESX image to a VMware Server image. At the moment though, my system is stuck at the authentication stage from one server to the sipX proxy. I can call from the trixbox to the exchange server, but I can not call from the outside to the exchange server. I will try to work this out tomorrow.

I am tired and starting to ramble so I will just leave it at this for tonight.

So with the new job I get time to actually do things. I figured out the certificate services thing I was working on, and kind of depressed about it because it was not the resolution that we, as a company, were looking for. I think I might revisit it in a few weeks. Since then I have moved on to Exchange Server 2007, more specifically Unified Messaging, where you can get email, voicemail, and calendar events all in one location. I know, you can get that with a smart phone as well, but what if your phone is not a smart phone? And what if your out of cellular range? you an use a pay phone/calling card and dial up your extension to check everything at once. The technical back end of this is odd as well The requirements for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 are monstrous, but then again exchange server has always had high requirements. There are some other neat feature of the new exchange server as well, what MicroSoft is calling an Edge server. It is a server that sits in the DMZ that has a list of allowed email addresses and domains, users can set their own blacklists and whitelists. Again that is PER USER not per domain, and one users rules won't effect anothers. The edge server also does not need to be connected to the domain directly, it can not user the ADAM transport services to get just the information that it needs, this is for those ultra paranoid people out there. When setting up the edge transport it will configure ADAM for you so there is no need to get overly technical on that subject. In the new exchange server you are also able to easily set up rules, such as one department not being allowed to email another, for reason I wont go into, but this is done with a few mouse clicks.

I know I am missing a lot of the normal screen shots I like to take, I will try to get some later, right now I am still in my test mode so it is just a general overview of how things work. Another part of how exchange works it can integrate with your phone system, there is a recommended and supported list, but we are already using Asterisk for ours so we had to be creative. There is a blog entry that goes over the details, and I have been able to get this to mostly work on my test lab, I have one last part to connect and that is the asterisk system to sipX, it should be pretty simple though. I say simple like I am an expert with VOIP and Exchange, I actually not that knowledgeable with either, I have actually just learned most of my knowledge with this one project.

Next in News of the world, my shuttle looks like it is dying, every time I tried to sync my Zune with it, it shuts down, this is not a happy thing. It has had problems with the USB ports for a while, I think this is just setting it off completely. It is an older machine, it was about a year old when I bought it two years ago. So I started looking around NewEgg for bits and pieces, I do not want to get another shuttle though. It is just LOUD, it is actually louder then the two 1U servers. It has been a good computer, I have been able to run EVERY operating system on it, including Linux (ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, Slackware, and E-Live) Windows XP and Vista, and OSX. So it has been a good computer, and has been running Vista since about November without issue, well with Minor issues, such as video drivers (damn nvidia) not working correctly, and random smaller issues that have since been resolved one way or another.

I am now a proud owner of a Red 8GB Microsoft Zune, I am such a Microsoft Whore. It is nice, it does not have the video out feature that I really wanted, need to learn to read all the details, but it does work by hooking the A/V cables to the AUX input in my factor DVD player in my SUV, and the cables are long enough to give me easy control while driving. It will also hook up to the DVD player in my Sonoma. The Zune Marketplace also has PodCasts, no apple doesn't own that term, and I have found some neat things with it. There is Coffee Break Spanish, the G4 stuff, Slashdot Review (yes i am this big a geek), and Microsoft TechNet Radio are the first ones I have found. Fun stuff to listen to while on the way to work. Also I signed up for their Unlimited Access pass, and that is amusing. Most stuff is covered under that, like songs and albums, if they have them, but videos, and Disney songs are not. I just cant figure out why the Disney stuff is extra.

Things that I missed in this post, Got the SUV back, I need to take some pictures of what is now different on it. It went to Vegas on a road trip and I won a long distance trophy from the New Ground show.