Home - Izzy's (Jason Sherry) Blog

6/29/2009

Had a great weekend, went white water rafting (class III - IV) and to see Robert Cray.

Saturday I went with a singles group rafting down Clear Creek with Clear Creek Rafting. It’s been a very wet spring, at least for CO, and the water is much higher than normal. There were 52 people in the group, most turned out to be in their 40s, a few in their 50s, and a couple I think were 60 something. I was pretty surprised by this since there are many younger members and I figured rating would bring more of them. Out of the seven boats, two flipped and out of the ~16 swimmers two of them ended up falling out a second time. Two people lost their shoes, and had to get out of the water at the next spot possible, and I think a couple of others called it quits early. I think about 10 or so people in the group had been rafting before, so lots of beginners. But a fun time was had by all, including those who ended up falling into the water twice. The trip was a bit over 1.5 hours and there were maybe 4 class "IV" rapids, one of which flip the two boats. Our boat didn't flip or lose a passenger and we rescue one swimmer. Pics are posted here.

Sunday night I went to see Robert Cray with The Delta Sonics at the Boulder Theater. I’m glad I got their early and saw The Delta Sonics. Their lead singer/harmonica player, Al Chesis was smoking hot. Later in the set the 7yr old son of the guitarist, Erik Boa, came on stage and he awed the crowd with his virtuous harmonica playing also. The band is from Boulder and play around there, Longmont, Denver, and other places quite often. I will be going to see them again.

I took a break between the sets and grabbed a quick bite to eat at George’s (which is part of the Boulder Theater) and got back out to get a center spot right at the stage. The only disappointment in the night was how few people were there to see the opening act and missed a great band.

Robert and his keyboard players were on fire tonight. This was probably the #1 or #2 show I have seen on him, of the five times I’ve seen him now. If you haven’t seen Robert Cray before and you love blues and/or great guitarist you MUST see him. Robert is probably one of top 10 guitar players alive currently and put on a great show!

I fly to Raleigh, NC on 7/22 to see Robert Cray, w/ Shemekia Copeland, in Cary the next day for my 6^th time seeing Robert.

Posted at 12:48 AM by Jason Sherry | Category: Entertainment | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

5/12/2009

Had a great 50 mile ride this weekend

I went out to Rampart Range, which is about 1.5 hours from my house in Longmont (I miss it being 5 minutes from my previous house in Woodland Park).

I get there about 1ish and road till about 6PM. About half way though the ride I met up with a fell rider who is a member of NCTR and we ended up riding together the rest of the day. The great thing about riding with someone else is that you can push yourself harder because you know there is someone else around if something goes wrong.

Google Maps Track Data

Tonight I'll be going to the monthly NCTR meeting and I'm hoping to get out A LOT more than last year, which isn't saying much since I only got out twice in 2008 :(

Posted at 3:36 PM by Jason Sherry | Category: Riding | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

3/10/2009

MVP Summit 2009

This year was another GREAT MVP Summit. Microsoft really goes all out for the MVPs to make this event one of the most content filled events in their areas of expertise. Now my experience might be a little different than others since I'm in one of the best MVP groups, Exchange J The Exchange product group dedicated four full days of deep technical content with senior members of the group, who gave great sessions and did a lot of Q&A. I went to all of the Exchange sessions, over 10 total, and the amount of detail that is shared about the upcoming release, Exchange "14", (which is almost "old news" to Microsoft) and some ideas\concepts for future release was outstanding. You can tell Microsoft really values our input "from the field" and our honest (sometimes brutally) responses we provide.

I know all of the Exchange MVPs who made it to the Summit cannot say Thank You enough to Microsoft! There were 700 sessions, a great party at the EMP, hotels were covered, breakfast & lunch, dinner one night, and free beer. What else could a geek want! It's a real honor be one of the ~4,000 MVP worldwide and one of the 124 Exchange MVPs.

Microsoft covered a lot of info at the keynotes about Windows 7 (I've been running it for about a month), Windows 2008 R2 (did you know it was only going to be x64?), Window Azure (Windows in the "cloud"), and some forward think was provided by Steve Ballmer (if you're a geek and haven't seen Steve speak your missing out).

The only negative… well the 1^st rule of MVP club is you can't talk about MVP club… Almost all of the info is under very strict NDA. I've started posting what little public info I can on my blog, Exchange posts. So check back or get an RSS feed of it.

Post from MVP Summit 2008

Posted at 11:58 PM by Jason Sherry | Category: Exchange | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

OWA coming to most browsers soon fully decked out

On February 12^th the Exchange product team released a bit more info on Exchange "14", check out the blog post & video here. Got to love KC and the Exchange Team for sharing J

Here's a summary:

OWA in Exchange "14" will support a "full" experience in Firefox, Safari, and IE
E14 will offer a MUCH better "conversation view" to help mange or ignore those long e-mail threads
OWA will include IM integration

I can't wait for the conversation view, there are lots of mailing lists with lots of threads I'm on and I get 1,000s of e-mails a month. So anything that can help manage those e-mails more efficiently is desperately wanted!

Posted at 10:47 PM by Jason Sherry | Category: Exchange | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

2/3/2009

Note to the Dogs & Cats

The following was found posted very low on a refrigerator door.

Dear Dogs and Cats: The dishes with the paw prints are yours and contain your food. The other dishes are mine and contain my food. Placing a paw print in the middle of my plate and food does not stake a claim for it becoming your food and dish, nor do I find that aesthetically pleasing in the slightest.

The stairway was not designed by NASCAR and is not a racetrack. Racing me to the bottom is not the object. Tripping me doesn't help because I fall faster than you can run.

I cannot buy anything bigger than a king sized bed. I am very sorry about this. Do not think I will continue sleeping on the couch to ensure your comfort, however. Dogs and cats can actually curl up in a ball when they sleep. It is not necessary to sleep perpendicular to each other, stretched out to the fullest extent possible. I also know that sticking tails straight out and having tongues hanging out on the other end to maximize space is nothing but sarcasm.

For the last time, there is no secret exit from the bathroom! If, by some miracle, I beat you there and manage to get the door shut, it is not necessary to claw, whine, meow, try to turn the knob or get your paw under the edge in an attempt to open the door. I must exit through the same door I entered. Also, I have been using the bathroom for years - canine/feline attendance is not required.

The proper order for kissing is: Kiss me first, then go smell the other dog or cat's butt. I cannot stress this enough.

Finally, in fairness, dear pets, I have posted the following message on the front door:

TO ALL NON-PET OWNERS WHO VISIT AND LIKE TO COMPLAIN ABOUT OUR PETS:

(1) They live here. You don't.

(2) If you don't want their hair on your clothes, stay off the furniture. That's why they call it 'fur'-niture.

(3) I like my pets a lot better than I like most people.

(4) To you, they are animals. To me, they are adopted sons/daughters who are short, hairy, walk on all fours and don't speak clearly.

Remember, dogs and cats are better than kids because they:

Eat less
Don't ask for money all the time
Are easier to train
Normally come when called
Never ask to drive the car
Don't hang out with drug-using people
Don't smoke or drink
Don't want to wear your clothes
Don't have to buy the latest fashions
Don't need a gazillion dollars for college
If they get pregnant, you can sell their children

Posted at 9:10 AM by Jason Sherry | Category: Humor | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

1/14/2009

Finally some “public” info on Exchange 14 (E14)

I've been working with E14 a bit for the last few months and have been reading PPT and other info on it for over a year. But due to my NDA requirements with Microsoft, as a Microsoft Exchange MVP, I cannot speak/post publicly on any information that Microsoft hasn't made public yet on pre-released products/fixes. So this is my 1^st blog post on E14 J

Today KC Lemson, Lead Program Manager for Exchange, posted on the EHLO blog a video with her and Jim Lucy, Product Manager for Exchange Labs (EHLO blog post on Exchange Labs), talking about how Exchange Labs is using E14, a short "demo" of E14, and some info on the focus of E14. The information below comes from this EHLO blog post only.

One of the key points mentioned is that the development E14 was focused on reducing the cost of Exchange. Microsoft did a great job with Exchange 2007 in this area; Ferris Research release a survey saying it cost roughly 50% less to run Exchange 2007 verses 2003 that proves this point. On top of this, Microsoft is hoping to further reduce the cost of running Exchange by another 50%! In order to do this, they are making several changes to the fundamental way Exchange operates and scales out. Currently, Exchange Labs is running E14, and has been since October 2007, which hosts over 3.5 million mailboxes. Scaling out to this many users wasn't possible with Exchange 2003 at all and probably not even with 2007. So there has been a lot of work done to re-designing Exchange to run better as a service in the cloud and to scale. Therefore, E14 should allow organizations to easily let Microsoft, or other providers, host some or all of their mailboxes in a seamless fashion. While this has been possible for awhile with Exchange, it was not that easy to setup, nor was it fully seamless in some cases.

In the video they cover some of the features I have been wanting for awhile, web based administration. They didn't show much of the details but E14 will have a web based admin console that will allow creation and management of mailboxes, groups/DLs, contacts, and more. So from anywhere in the world, without VPN or RDP access, Exchange admins will finally be able to carry out some of the theiro most common admin tasks. E14 will add to and enhance web based functionality in OWA. From OWA users will be able to share calendars, view user information in the GAL better, and even create e-mail distribution groups! Some of the features they showed, like viewing Office documents in IE without Office being install locally and Inbox rule management, is already in Exchange 2007 but will be improved upon.

Finally, Microsoft is make many improvements for organizations that run Exchange in-house, but I can't go into details on this yet since Microsoft hasn't posted any information publicly let in this area.

Posted at 3:55 PM by Jason Sherry | Category: Exchange | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

1/12/2009

Sirius Playlist search and more!

For those that have satellite radio I know you love it as much as I do. But it bugged I could not more info or lookup who played something since I was in the car.

Well know, not sure how long it's been up, there is a website that gives you search, scheduled/guild of what's playing. It also integrates with the Sirius Radio web player. From the Guide you can choose which station you want to listen to and it will change the player for you. Finally it has several saved searches, like most played song per channel. Jethro Tull owns Classic Vinyl this week, 693 spins/plays verses Beatles with only 78 spins this week :)

On the negative side the web design is pretty poor and they are funded by Ads.

Check out DogStarRadio.com: http://www.dogstarradio.com/sirius.php

You can even filter out what channels you don't like, something I wish I could do on my radio.

Bonus:

Curious which direction the satellite are in or where the closes radio repeater is, go here: http://www.dogstarradio.com/sirius_map.php

Posted at 5:34 PM by Jason Sherry | Category: Electronics | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

1/8/2009

Mimosa Exchange Expert chat log posted

Update 1/13: Added link to next chat sign-up page:
http://www.mimosasystems.com/TechChatJan09

On December 17^th, 2008, Mimosa hosted their 1^st Exchange MVP/Expert Tech Chat. This technical chat was open to anyone and questions were answered by Pat Richard, Steve Bryant, Martin Tuip, and myself (Jason Sherry). All four of us were Exchange MVPs in 2008, have been working with Exchange since the pre-Exchange days, and agreed this was a great event to help the community. Over 370 people joined in and over 200 questions were answered during the chat, or afterwards for those that required a bit of research. This chat session has so successful Mimosa has decided to try to do this on a quarterly basis. The next one is planned for 1/21, goto this link to sign up: http://www.mimosasystems.com/TechChatJan09.

The questions covered everything from Exchange Architecture, virtualization, eDiscovery, disaster recovery, archiving, Mimosa NearPoint, PSTs, and several other Exchange topics. The Q&A chat log can be viewed here: http://www.mimosasystems.com/mimosachatlogs/mimosa_exchange_techchat.htm. Due to volume and format of the chat we had to answer the questions as quickly as possible and keep our responses fairly short. Please forgive us for any typos, spelling, or other errors. If you see any technical errors in the chat log please e-mail me (JSherry@mimosasystems.nospam.com) and I will try to get them corrected in the chat log.

If you are interested in attending our next Exchange Experts chat, please start off by reviewing the chat log from the previous one to see if your questions might have already been answered and to get an idea of the type of Q&A that will occur. Then, keep an eye on our website or this blog post. Once we have the data set for the next one, I will update this blog post with a link to register for the chat.

Posted at 11:32 AM by Jason Sherry | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

1/1/2009

Got my Microsoft MVP Award again for the 4th year!

I just got my MVP Award e-mail in the area of Exchange for the 4th year.

It is an honor to be selected as a Microsoft MVP since there are only around 30 or so Exchange MVP in the US and 120 world wide. In order to become an MVP you must be nominated by others in the technical community you work with, Microsoft employees, or other MVPs. Each year a panel of Microsoft employees reviews the contributions of each nominee for quality, quantity, and level of impact on the technical community.

So basically you have to write articles, blog post, or otherwise contribute to the technical community and be recognized for your work.

In order to keep your MVP status each year you must continue to contribute to the community. This year I was so busy with my new job at Mimosa Systems (blog post on this topic), who creates an Exchange E-mail archiving solution called NearPoint, that I haven't had time to contribute as much as I normally do.

Here's what I did in 2008:

Participated in an "Ask the Experts" live chat on Exchange

We have over 350 people connected and over 200 questions asked that Steve Brant, Pat Richard, Martin Tulip, and myself (all Exchange MVPs) answered.

Tips & Tricks posted on my server: http://info.izzy.org/Technical/Lists/Issues%20%20Tips/By%20Year.aspx
Posting on ExchangeNinjas.com: http://www.exchangeninjas.com/_Recent?mode=user&user-username=IzKen
Posting on OutlookExchange.com: http://www.outlookexchange.com/articles/JasonSherry/default.asp
Group leader
FaceBook – Exchange MVPs & Microsoft MVPs
LinkedIn – Exchange MVPs & Microsoft MVPs
Did have much time to post in the forms this year
Google search for “Exchange” posting in 2008
Live search on “Jason Sherry” Exchange
Created script for the Exchange community to track Exchange activity over time (the data can be used as an input for the Microsoft Storage Calculator)
http://info.izzy.org/Wiki/EXCollect.aspx
Other scripts and bit from this year:
http://info.izzy.org/Technical/Scripting/Documents/Forms/Recent.aspx
Attended Exchange Center of Excellence/Ranger training on Exchange 2007
Testing E14 betas
Participate on most E14 and 2007 calls with product and support teams
Provide feedback on above
Working on E14 book (but nothing public yet J )

Posted at 12:50 PM by Jason Sherry | Category: Microsoft | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

12/3/2008

Have pressing Microsoft Exchange questions?

Update: 1/8
Here's a follow-up blog post this chat

Whether you are struggling with today's challenges or planning 5 years out, we would like to invite you to bring your questions and issues to our panel of Microsoft Exchange Server MVPs.

During a live chat session you will also be able to learn about issues your peers are having as you get helpful tips and information from Exchange product experts. Our MVPs are open to any Exchange issues you would like to discuss such as: