Over ten years after the “Midnight Madness” launch of Internet Explorer 5, Microsoft is set for yet another launch of another odd number release. The circumstances are similar – Microsoft is bringing little to nothing new to the table, playing catchup and building on the (in)security record worse than nearly any other Internet-aware application. Personally, I do not intend to upgrade until Vista cycle when Microsoft will try to force it down my throat… which interestingly enough is how they managed to position themselves with IE5 and eliminate Netscape in the first place.

So, history repeating itself or a revolutionary new step for Microsoft security? Click here to find out. Personally I’m going to bed, the browser wars may no longer be relevant and I feel IE7 proves that with a me-too-er they just put up for download. Good luck boys.

So I went through the lineup of webcasts Microsoft has lined up for November and things are really starting to heat up. First of all, these webcasts are delivered by TechNet presenters, friendly speak for “coherent technical people”, so you know its going to be great. I’ve registered for these, and will unfortunately miss the UC overview one since I’ll be in Vegas that week… but these look quite impressive:

An In-Depth Look at Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 (Level 200)
Wednesday, November 01, 2006 – 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM Pacific Time

TechNet Webcast: Microsoft Unified Communications Overview (Level 100)
Friday, November 03, 2006 – 9:30 AM – 10:30 AM Pacific Time

TechNet Webcast: High Availability and Clustering in Exchange Server 2007 (Level 300)
Monday, November 06, 2006 – 9:30 AM – 10:30 AM Pacific Time

TechNet Webcast: Introduction to Windows PowerShell Scripting in Exchange Server 2007 (Level 200)
Friday, November 17, 2006 – 9:30 AM – 11:00 AM Pacific Time
Kevin Remde, TechNet Presenter, Microsoft Corporation

Momentum Webcast: A Sneak Peek at Outlook 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 (Level 100
Monday, November 27, 2006 – 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Pacific Time

Optimizing your Infrastructure with Windows Vista, Exchange Server 2007, and the 2007 Office System (Level 100)
Wednesday, November 08, 2006 – 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM Pacific Time

Earlier today I caught up on all the emails and phone calls and finally decided to do a very brave thing… email bankruptcy.

Now I am not as brave as Eileen, but nuking mail for me is a very big step. I have email dating back to my elm days (“Back when I was your age we didn’t have a ribon, we had monochrome Sun terminals and cursor interfaces and walked six miles through snow, uphill both ways, yada, yada) and around the turn of the year I switched to annual email. The amount of stuff in my mailbox keeps on growing so when I finally caught up….. I just exported my mail to a PST and restarted Outlook in a new profile. Eileen makes a very good point, tracking back conversations rarely happens and in most cases I just refer to the Desktop Search anyhow. I also took a huge step back from the mailing lists, I’ve made it exceedingly difficult for myself to be in 60 different mailing lists all day long so hopefully that will leave all the extracurricular activities to afterhours moments.

So here’s one to productivity….

I’m back in Orlando on Monday — feels like I’ve been gone for ages. This will be the first week of the quarter that I will be in and am likely to lose at least the remainder of the month in meetings, callbacks and management stuff. We have some very impressive stuff coming out this quarter at Own Web Now:

• Launch of ExchangeDefender 3.0 along with the new global additions from new EU and AUS data centers.
• Full rollout of Shockey Monkey helpdesk modules
• Revised partner program and sales assistance from Own Web Now Corp
• A whole lot more training on Vladville

I have written about this extensively here but OWN took a lot of hard work and years of long hours to put together. I have made a promise to my fiance, now wife, that I will be working less than 6 hours a day once we got married. I intend to live up to that. OWN is stronger now than it ever has been, I have put some impressive people in charge of the infrastructure in Dallas… we could be a little more organized but all the pieces are in place now, just time to oil them up.

I have been traveling, listening and working on all of your feedback over the past six months. I really have. May was a big month for us and I’ve put in some crazy hours to fix all the problems we have. I will detail those along with the gameplan over the next month or so, in the meantime drop me an email as I tend to keep the distractions  (IM, Skype, etc) to the minimum.

Thak you for all your support!

-Vlad 

If you have Windows Mobile 5 and Vista RC1 you might find that the Windows Mobile Device Center is missing from Vista RC1. As a matter of fact, you won’t even be able to get your device to be recognized by Vista RC1, it will keep on prompting you for a “Generic Serial” driver when you plugin your device. This was not the case in previous versions of Vista and there are some great details on why/what/who/where at Mel Sampat’s blog.

There’s just one little problem. If you try Windows Update today, it will not detect the WMDC download. This is because one additional step needs to be performed to allow this detection to take place. Unfortunately that step is restricted to internal Microsoft beta testers at this point. The friendly Program Manager for WMDC, Lydia O, sits in the office next to mine. So I asked her what was preventing external RC1 testers from using WMDC. She explained that they’re still working on some critical issues which make it necessary to restrict public testing. Judging from the steady stream of people walking in and out of her office all day, it looks like Lydia’s team is working as hard as possible to resolve those issues and release WMDC publicly to Vista RC1 testers very soon. We don’t want to keep you from enjoying the great WMDC experience, but it simply isn’t available externally at this time. When it’s ready, it will automatically show up in your Windows Update list without any further action on your part. WMDC will certainly be ready in time for Vista RTM and hopefully long before that - sometime in the next few weeks.

Mel also points out that the Windows Mobile Device Center download for Vista RC1 is available as a separate download on Microsoft’s Windows Mobile site. WARNING: still a beta but if you’re running Vista that’s not a major concern now is it? On the positive side, the feature set for mobility on Vista looks very impressive:

• Streamlined setup – A simplified new partnership wizard and improved partnership management.
• Robust synchronization – Synchronization of business-critical data such as e-mail, calendars, contacts, tasks, favorites, and files.
• Photo management – Picture management helps you detect new photos on your Windows Mobile powered device, tag and import them to the Windows Vista Photo Gallery.
• Media synchronization – Use Microsoft Windows Media Player to synchronize and shuffle music files on your device.
• File browsing – A new device browsing experience enables you more quickly browse files and folders and open documents on your device directly from your PC.
• Enhanced user interface – A simple and compelling user interface helps you to quickly access critical tasks and configure your device.

You can take a geek out of a data center, but you can’t take the data center out of a geek. Earlier this week a support call for the favorite HTTP_500 error (ActiveSync error 0×85010014) floated up to me in Maui, HI. Here is the scenario, cause, solution, etc.

Microsoft Windows 2003 Enterprise Server SP1

Microsoft Exchange 2003 Enterprise Edition SP2

Single-server deployment, both front-end and back-end Exchange & ActiveSync on the single server.

Symptoms

0×85010014 is basically an indication of a few dozen server errors that Exchange can throw your way (via Exchange, OMA, exchange-oma, Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync) and other directories. This error can be encountered on SBS in many permutations but is usually related to a corrupted Outlook/ActiveSync profile. Not the case here as these are all virgin servers, devices and emulator images. Chris De Herrera, MVP and defacto god of Microsoft mobility problems, has a great article detailing all ActiveSync error codes.

The problem: Devices and emulator were not syncing with the server. Via SSL or without SSL, same error – 0×85010014. The server reported two error codes:

OPTIONS /Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync User=vlad&DeviceId=1012&
   /DeviceType=PocketPC 80 – 1.1.1.1 MSFT-PPC/5.1.2200 401 2 2148074254
OPTIONS /Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync User=vlad&DeviceId=1012&DeviceType=PocketPC&
   Log=VNATNASNC:0A0C0D0FS:0A0C0D0SP:0C0I0S0R0S0L0H 80
   X\vlad 70.217.166.196 MSFT-PPC/5.1.2200 200 0 0
POST /Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync User=vlad&DeviceId=1012&DeviceType=PocketPC&
   Cmd=FolderSync&Log=V4TNASNC:0A0C0D0FS:0A0C0D0SP:
   1C1I491S336R0S0L0H0P 80 X\V 1.1.1.2 MSFT-PPC/5.1.2200 500 0 0

Slightly obfuscated but you get the picture. OPTIONS request kicks back an HTTP_401 error which is an authentication issue. This is where most KB articles will make you believe that IIS had Kerberos disabled. Not the case here.

Causes

Because with a single server deployment all Exchange roles sit on a single box, there is only one /Exchange directory. This directory is used by devices and clients to access mailboxes. Server based ActiveSync (/Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync) cannot function if FBA (Forms Based Authentication) is enabled… which on a standalone server it is in order to provide pretty OWA logins. So, catch 22.

Microsoft’s solution (kb 817379) to this is to create a secondary /Exchange virtual directory and hack the registry and point it to this new alias. The KB article gives an excellent summary on how to do this. However, if you have just the right mix of steps you can really shoot yourself in the foot and it can take a long time to find the solution to the HTTP_500 error.

Solution

Make sure you turn off FBA BEFORE you export the /Exchange configuration.

Because the FBA conflicts with Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync, exporting the configuration and importing it as another Virtual Directory really does not do much more than create the identical problem, just with another alias 

So, check, before you get to the step of exporting your /Exchange settings, make sure you first clear the FBA checkbox. This box is under:

Start > All Programs > Microsoft Exchange > Exchange System Manager

Servers > (Your Server) > Protocols > HTTP

Right click on Exchange Virtual Server

Click on Settings, uncheck Enable Forms Based Authentication.

Follow the rest of kb817379 article to create exchange-oma, setup a new MasSync registry key, etc. FYI, SBS uses the same aliased virtual directory as mentioned in the kb article so if you’re having issues with this error you might want to follow the KB with this slight tweak to recreate it.  

I have a lot more friends than I thought! So on behalf of me and my soon-to-be-bride, thank you all!

I got a ton of emails from folks wanting to send us all sorts of stuff (short of an Xbox, shocked that never arrived even after all the wonderful and loving things I said about Microsoft CRM, live.com and R2) and even asking for a PayPal button. While I’m not quite ready to sell out my wedding via PayPal, if you absolutely feel like sending us stuff please address it to:

Own Web Now Corp
c/o: Vlad Mazek
8131 Vineland Ave #102
Orlando, FL  32821
USA

One request I would like to make is that if you’re really sending something over, please send girly things as everything I want I’ve already bought myself or am not buying out of spite. Also please remember to include your return address so we can send back a thank you note and a DVD of our wedding. The clean version. The dirty version will be available here shortly as a mothly subscription, $39.99.

This is about as far off topic as its going to get but since most of my family and friends already read my blog I figured I start here.

Pictures from our pre-moon are up on our web site. There are 824 pictures and videos of us goofing off in Los Angeles. We will be keeping all our personal stuff over on www.VladandKatie.com from now on so please update your bookmarks.

We get married tomorrow evening!

Someone asked yesterday just who this poor, poor girl that is going to marry me really is. Here she is, naked in a theme park:

Now as for the introduction, I have two videos. Both are unedited raw avi so it will take a minute to download but should give you a pretty good idea of who, what, why, where, etc.

Video of Katie (11Mb)

Video of the two of us spinning (28Mb) *Potentially offensive

So there you go. Thats her. Katie is the only girl on earth that ever appreciated my twisted sense of humor and what’s more shared it (as you can figure from that second video); She is also the only one that ever left me speachless with her comments. And she cried for the Borg collective when they got destroyed in Star Trek Voyager. What more could you ask for?