Vlad Mazek – Vladville Blog

I often get asked where I find the time and energy to do all I do. I find the energy because I love what I do, the time comes in between projects, plans, meetings, partner events, development.. Even at 7am, even at 9pm, even at noon. I am a giant, furry energizer bunny banging the Exchange drum.

That takes its toll, after months of 20 hour days in a row I just need to recharge. I am typing this from the pool at Treasure Island at Las Vegas. Tonight I intend to destroy a buffet. Tomorrow, who knows.

Do not expect any blogs or emails for a few days. SBS Show will be on again this Sunday, we will talk to Jeff Middleton and Scott Buchanan, two disaster recovery victims, experts and active members of the IT community. Got a question for them? Ask it at sbsshow.com, we have a voicemail box if you want your voice heard by now over 15,000 SBS Show listeners.

Talk to you all this Sunday!

-Vlad

So for years everyone has been talking about getting a-la-carte TV programming from cable franchises in US. Apparently, they know us much better than we know ourselves. Not only are they pushing the $60-$100 cable bills, but now, for the low low price of just $0.99 per show, you can subscribe to a service that will deliver shows to your DVR without commercials.

Let me try to sum this up for the bunch that could not make it through a thick paragraph (you owe me $0.99 for the summary by the way): For $0.99 they will fast forward through the commercials FOR you.

NBC’s initial offerings will include the two spinoffs of its “Law & Order” franchise — “SVU” and “Criminal Intent,” as well as workplace comedy “The Office” and sea monster thriller “Surface.” Two cable shows also will be part of the mix — USA Network’s “Monk” and Si Fi channel’s “Battlestar Galactica.”

Hours after those shows first air on the network each week, they will be “pushed” to DirecTV Plus DVRs, where they will be stored digitally and available the next morning for customers to select and play at their convenience for 99 cents.

Is there a level at which stupidity and laziness stop? My friend Jen posted a story on her blog questioning whether Disney should be more protective of idiots who can’t read warning signs and jump out of logs on Splash Mountain and die on other extreme rides. Like a moron that didn’t pay attention to flashing “If you have a heart condition you may not make it through the space shuttle launch” signs is going to be literate enough to go through a statistical breakdown of injuries and medical side-affects of extreme rides.

So net-net, this may be a good thing. They’ll be spending $0.99 per show not to have to push fast-forward five times an hour and by the end of the year they may not have enough money to go to Disney World!

My PR agency, Tim Barrett & Associates, let me know that Microsoft has a new event management site designed solely for the non-commercial organizations. So if you have a community event to plan this may be a more appropriate site to use than the microsoftpartnerevents.com which is intended for commercial “Microsoft” purposes.

Don’t worry, it still publishes your event in clicktoattend.com site that is end-user friendly (if your end users are on AOL and can’t click on hyperlinks). Here is their take on it:

MicrosoftGroupEvents.com is our FREE new solution for non-commercial organizations that need web-based event registration and presentation content for their Microsoft-themed events, group meetings, and webcasts. Events setup using MicrosoftGroupEvents.com are published at the popular event site www.ClickToAttend.com where it’s easy for your guests to register for events and get directions..

A slew of new Microsoft programs launched with a lot of conspiracy theories to boot (not a big surprise, eWeek has turned into little more than just a Microsoft bahing community) but the rest of the playa haters have concluded this will be the last Microsoft big product launch. I wonder what they will talk about in a little less than a year from now when Microsoft Windows Vista launches with the record marketing budget for a software product?

Not that Microsoft doesn’t deserve a fair bit of criticism for releasing a product they fully knew was not up to the quality standards, but at some point you have to sit back and look at the big picture: This is a new platform and the first major big release in half a decade that transforms how we store, manage and manipulate data. Microsoft has committed to the shorter release timelines and is giving away a lot of its software for free to encourage development (look below) but I don’t think most of this will be enough to convince the people that make their living off whining and complaining. For the rest of us professionals in the IT world, here is some stuff to enjoy:

Microsoft has launched a series of free development software “Lightweight, easy-to-use, and easy-to-learn tools for the hobbyist, novice, and student developer” and they are up there free of charge:

Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition: Productivity that is ideal for first time or casual Windows programming.

Visual C# 2005 Express Edition: A great combination of power and productivity for the Windows developer.

Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition: Horsepower with a finer degree of control than other Express Editions.

Visual J# 2005 Express Edition: Ideal for those with prior Java-language experience or learning the Java language.

… and for us web monkeys:

Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition: An ideal environment for dynamic Web development.

SQL Server 2005 Express Edition: A powerful and easy-to-use database to complement each Express Edition.

All the development tools will remain free for one year, while SQL Server 2005 Express Edition will remain free without time limitations. Yes, you can use them all for commercial purposes, there is no academic restriction to them at all.

I just got this email form Rene Alamo, our regional Microsoft SMS&P Technical Specialist. (scroll down for details)

Go to www.microsoft.com/events/default.mspx and search for event code 1032282411. This event is in Orlando on November 30th from 6:30 – 8PM. It is free and open to Microsoft partners only but you have to register for it up front so they know how much pizza to order. Just like Orlando IT Pro meetings, this is not a high-class red-carpet event but the amount of sales and technical information you will walk away from will beat up any vendor wine-and-dine thing you’re accustomed to. Rene and James are covering this event, same guys that did the one in August on DPM.

JJ Antequino will also have the TS2 event (search for event id 1032282485) on Thursday, November 17th from 1-5 PM at Waterford Lakes. Don’t have much to say about TS2, if you don’t know what it is or can’t think of a reason to attend I honestly don’t expect you to survive much longer in this business.

Still working on the content for this months meeting, will announce it shortly. In the meantime, take a listen to the SBS Show (http://www.sbsshow.com) we just recorded episode #3 and the previous one had over 5,000 downloads during the past week. For a 15 meg podcast that’s a very huge audience and this week we really stepped up the quality and the amount of good advice. This week was all about general business disaster recovery and continuity planning. Next week we’re talking to Jeff Middleton and Scott Buchanan about disaster recovery. We’re in no way, shape, form or patner agreement affiliated with Microsoft, at all, and this show is end-user friendly:

Download SBS Show Episode #3 – Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning for SBSers

It’s a big and long awaited day for many of our friends at Microsoft, it marks the release of SQL Server 2005, Biztalk 2006 and Visual Studio 2005. This has been long awaited and unlike some other products, it is accompanied with a ton of documentation, code samples, trial software, webcasts and free live in-person events.

I will be teaming up with the Microsoft SST team as they make it through Florida with this product tour. Orlando IT Professional Association is also helping launch SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 on December 8th in Orlando and we also have two group meetings (in Tampa and in Orlando) for the SBS community to get familiar with SQL Server 2005.

“These three together continue to provide much better capabilities for the biggest enterprises,” said Microsoft vice president Steve Guggenheimer. “For enterprise customers (these) give them another reason to look at Microsoft technology.”

Thats your token touch of SBS land, Steve delivered the keynote at SMB Nation earlier this year. This launch is coming with an unusual amount of community skepticism. There are many rumors that the Visual Studio 2005 is being launched way ahead of its time with a number of stability issues. What is even more shocking is that they nearly admit to it by promising a prompt service pack. I’m not sure how I feel about this one. For one, I don’t think I should be paying a full price (or even better a premium Microsoft has tacked onto these solutions) if they are knowingly releasing faulty software. Security issues and pesky bugs are one thing and a part of all software, that I can live with, but here is to hoping this is the last of the legacy software Microsoft is pushing out the door and the recent restructuring provides for more rapid, more responsive and more solid software from Microsoft.

It’s a big and long awaited day for many of our friends at Microsoft, it marks the release of SQL Server 2005, Biztalk 2006 and Visual Studio 2005. This has been long awaited and unlike some other products, it is accompanied with a ton of documentation, code samples, trial software, webcasts and free live in-person events.

I will be teaming up with the Microsoft SST team as they make it through Florida with this product tour. Orlando IT Professional Association is also helping launch SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 on December 8th in Orlando and we also have two group meetings (in Tampa and in Orlando) for the SBS community to get familiar with SQL Server 2005.

“These three together continue to provide much better capabilities for the biggest enterprises,” said Microsoft vice president Steve Guggenheimer. “For enterprise customers (these) give them another reason to look at Microsoft technology.”

Thats your token touch of SBS land, Steve delivered the keynote at SMB Nation earlier this year. This launch is coming with an unusual amount of community skepticism. There are many rumors that the Visual Studio 2005 is being launched way ahead of its time with a number of stability issues. What is even more shocking is that they nearly admit to it by promising a prompt service pack. I’m not sure how I feel about this one. For one, I don’t think I should be paying a full price (or even better a premium Microsoft has tacked onto these solutions) if they are knowingly releasing faulty software. Security issues and pesky bugs are one thing and a part of all software, that I can live with, but here is to hoping this is the last of the legacy software Microsoft is pushing out the door and the recent restructuring provides for more rapid, more responsive and more solid software from Microsoft.

After over 5,000 downloads of our first two shows I decided to dive into a very serious and sensitive subject that a lot of SBS shops need to pay attention to: disaster recovery. Not just from the standpoint of keeping good backups but from planning, designing and executing a backup strategy for small business. I was joined by experts from various walks of life: IT consultant, published authors, business advisor and the Small Business Specialist / Gold Certified Partner. We attacked the “backup” strategy from all angles and I pushed everyone to give their single best way to get a disaster recovery plan started with just $300, one-time. Lots of points of view, lots of things to consider and great advice from some of the best SBS consultants out there:

Warning: Adult (explicit) language, serious and sensitive business topic. All advice is provided as is with no warranty or guarantee, whatsoever.
Download SBS Show Episode #3 – Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning for SBSers

Note: This is a 2 parter: Episode #3 is on general topic of small business disaster recovery planning and business continuity. Episode #4 (next week with Jeff Middleton) will be a more technical and focused view of implementing backups and disaster recovery for SBS 2003.

It’s a podcast Sunday folks, get them now while they are fresh.

Mark Stanfill’s Inside SBS (the official SBS support podcast) was released earlier today and its another great one. They plugged us so thanks a lot guys, we appreciate the pointer. Its one thing to impress SBSers and quite another to also do it for the folks that make their living being the lifeline for SBS technical issues.

They covered a lot of stuff on Exchange, some road warrior stuff and gigabit ethernet. I am still working my way through the podcast, very much worth your time in my humble opinion. We’re putting together some guides on how to subscribe to these podcasts and listen to them without installing additional software. This is SBS support teams 7th podcast, so if you’re familiar with their podcast its time to subscribe to that feed.

Every now and then I am entitled to a weird personal post… So I’ve spent the past 7 days building the new clusters and systems, mostly stuff for my personal development and test/troubleshooting and it finally crashed me. I spend most of my 20 hour workdays in front of a monitor coding, hacking, tuning, analysing… not lifting 80lb servers and bleeding profusely over cheap motherboards. Yesterday around noon I just couldn’t take it anymore, sat down and the next thing I remember is waking up around 1 PM today.

Celeron D, 64Bit, DEP, Dual Core
First of all, let me come out of the closet on Celeron processors. My entire next-gen Vladlab is being built on these and I am impressed. Not only are these Celeron D processors Dual Core, but they are also 64bit (64EMT) and they have that no-execute bit that Windows tries to emulate with DEP. Best part, they run cool and cheap – at $80 a chip this puny little Celeron D is beating up my P4 3.2G E which costs more than 3 times as much. Talk about wasting too much money on P4 and HyperThreading.. again, Dual Core. Need I say more?

SBSshow.com
Now that I’m back up and going through 800 emails – I have good news. We’re over 4,000 downloads of the first show which makes it over 5,000 total. Looks like my long-standing claim that most SBSers are not ITPRO / consultant crowd is coming to surface. I am shocked at the amount of traffic and positive feedback coming in from everyone. We’re taping our third episode later today, it will be a far more serious topic on disaster planning and business continuity.

What happened while I was gone?
Haven’t been connected for 24 hours, how much weird stuff can possibly happen? Well, according to my RSS subscriptions, quite a bit. First, the cast of Star Trek is re-enacting The War of Worlds on public radio. Then my buddies at Google are paying $1 to everyone that downloads Firefox and installs Google Toolbar. To top that off, Linspire is offering to replace all Windows computers in South Korea with Linux for just $5 million, saving tat country about quarter billion in licensing fees (roughly 10 cents per head). And to top it all off: Pirates open fire on cruise ship off Somalia. Pirates? Argh, patch eye and parrot? Talk about a strange, strange world.