Personal

In July 2007, I was originally awarded Microsoft MVP for Windows User/Shell. This area tended to confuse people because they thought it was related to batch files or PowerShell.

In the following months, I was nominated for Forefront MVP and OCS MVP. Both were very flattering because it meant I was getting attention from Microsoft from multiple sources. At the time, I had no idea you could have a 'primary' competency and a few secondaries. OCS and Forefront ended up as my secondary competencies.

2007 and 2008 were very busy years for this blog and for myself. Mostly positive, and I enjoyed what I was doing.

Thankfully, in July 2008, I was re-awarded the MVP and the category changed from Windows User/Shell to Windows Desktop Experience. This confused people much less and I was honored to be chosen again.

Midway through that MVP year, I was invited into the newly formed Windows Systems and Performance MVP group. It was a smaller group of MVPs and more in line with the topics I had been covering during that time. A great match, and I was able to keep my same MVP lead.

At the end of 2008, my work had a reorganization and I changed from being just a Microsoft Consultant to a Microsoft Unified Communications Consultant. This meant my day to day work life would revolve around Exchange 2010 and OCS 2007 R2 for the most part. Thankfully, I've been doing Exchange since version 5.5 and OCS since it was called LCS 2005, in beta.

Overall, this meant this blog would slightly shift focus as I worked specifically on UC projects.

In July 2009, I was re-awarded the MVP for Windows Systems and Performance.

After a lot of thought and consideration, I recently asked to be moved from the Windows Systems and Performance MVP group over to the OCS MVP group.

I'm happy to announce that they approved the move and now, I'm in my 3rd MVP category in 3 years, Office Communications Server.

In general, that doesn't mean I am going to leave the other aspects I've traditionally covered or gave speeches about, including Windows 2008 R2, Windows 7, Exchange 2010 and anything else that captures my attention.

Overall, I'm just excited to be in this MVP group as it aligns with my work environment.

At some point, I want to go for the OCS MCM (Microsoft Certified Master).

Meeting Location:
Partners in Dental Care
2565 Forest Hill Ave SE Suite #200
Grand Rapids MI

(lower level - use side entrance
from parking lot on North side)

Time: 6:00p.m. to 8:30p.m.

Between now and October 22, 2009 the new Operating System will be rolled out to the different channels and then available for the consumer to purchase.
Come listen to Matt Hester, Microsoft TechNet Presenter, as he shares with us the latest offerings and availability on Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2.

Do you have questions? Of course you do!

Oh yeah - if the topics don't interest, you maybe some of the door prizes he will bring for our members will change your mind ... but you can say it was the educational material and networking!

Unless something comes up last minute, I plan on being there too to answer any questions people might have.

See the black cat in the collection of Halloween photos? That is our cat, Dar, when he was about 8 weeks old. We submitted the photo in May of 2006. Keep a look out for the "Dread Apple" Jones Soda flavor at Target and other stores across the nation in October. If you spot a bottle, let us know.

Here is the original photo submission.

This is my wife's 14th Jones Soda label to hit the store shelves across the nation, and it looks like this one is in full color too!

Original


Label

I've been known to be a bit of a 'chronic tinkerer', which if you think of in health terms, sounds rather disturbing.
I'm referring to my habit of finding new ways to use tools or devices in ways they weren't originally designed for.
Our home's wireless network infrastructure and internet connectivity are shining examples of these mad scientist experiments.

This trend continues with the box that is sitting in front of me: The eBox-3300-JSK, as part of the Microsoft Sparks will Fly contest.

My daughters like working on projects with Dad whenever possible, especially if it involves computers or animals. It doesn't surprise me too much based on our household. My youngest daughter (now 5 years old) completely "owned" her computer in 2008, much to my chagrin. My oldest daughter (almost 8 years old) was showing me map exploit tricks to use in a popular XBox 360/PC zombie game this past weekend.

In an effort to put that kind of knowledge/curiosity to good use, we're going to build an embedded solution for our chickens. It will involve webcams, internet connectivity, motion detection and servos. I am mostly going to use items that are around the house, due to budget and time constraints. My free time to work on this in the short term will be limited, but I have some good ideas to run with. I like to dabble in programming when it isn't part of my regular job, so this will be fun.

In a somewhat related topic, I have some articles/postings coming up in the near future once work and life settles down a bit.

Late 2008 and all of 2009 has been a pretty crazy time for most people. Lots of job losses and uncertainty. As an experiment, if you are an employer or someone that has a job opening, feel free to e-mail me the details and I'll post them in one of the sidebars of this blog. No charge.

I know this site gets a decent amount of web hits from the Michigan area, so if I can help someone land a job or find the right person for your organization, all the better. No catch. No hidden agenda.

There is a lot of talk about "Local First", and if this helps out, great!

We live in the middle of a bunch of farms, by a lake, in the hard-to-describe and even more confusing to do taxes for, area of West Michigan that is almost in Muskegon county, almost in Kent county and in the far upper right hand corner of Ottawa county. We pay taxes to three different counties for various services. Anyway, that is supposed to give you a little background on the picture below. My 4 year old daughter is posing like a model, while I'm typing away on my computer. All the while, the chickens are walking around and pecking at things.

It is actually pretty relaxing. Cassandra, my wife, took the photo.

Overall, Hava v1.8.0.11 works great under Windows 7 x32 build 7000 and builds after 7000.

Unfortunately, when you first boot up and if you wait a few minutes before logging into the computer, havanet.sys will blue screen the system with a IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL.

I've performed a kernel debug crash dump on it, although unfortunately the symbols are not available for the build of Windows 7 I am running.

If I log into the computer in a hurry, the blue screen is avoided and the Hava works perfectly.

Also of note, it seems the Ulead SDK is a known 'problem app' with Windows 7 because it comes up as a 'potential blocker' when installing HAVA.

I never use the CD/DVD burning features of the Hava and uninstalling Ulead after the fact seems to work just fine. The bluescreens happen no matter if Ulead SDK is installed or not.

If you want to see the cut-and-paste of the crash dump and analysis, read my original post on the Hava forums here.

Next up, x64!

Elan Shudnow has been named a Microsoft MVP for his work in the Microsoft Community!

Elan has a blog at www.shudnow.net that covers Exchange and Office Communications Server topics. He has worked very hard over the last year to share topics of interest and step-by-step guides with the public. His blog has seen as many as 20,000 hits in one month, has numerous links to it from other highly reputable sources, and 400+ RSS subscribers.

Elan’s MVP profile can be found at this link. Please join me in congratulating Elan for his fine efforts!

Full disclosure: He is also a coworker of mine, but I'd be announcing this on here even if he wasn't. His step-by-step guides have been referred to by many clients and coworkers as top notch.

Bumped into this on the Something Awful forums:

Someone found the source code for the driver that's caused the problem in the Zune 30, from the Freescale website (http://pastie.org/349916)

[snip]
//Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
//Copyright (C) 2004-2007, Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
//Module: rtc.c
//PQOAL Real-time clock (RTC) routines for the MC13783 PMIC RTC.
[/snip]

Bad code:


It goes into an infinite loop at boot because of an off by one error!

It looks like the original report of the driver source discovery, with more detailed information, can be found here.

This doesn't bode well for the rumored upcoming layoffs at Microsoft. It seems the Zune group has egg on their face due to a bug that handles leap years in the internal clock driver code path of the Zune 30. On a good note, as soon as it hits January 1st, 2009, the devices will work again.

You can read the gory details here.

A cut and paste of the interesting aspects of that post:

Early this morning we were alerted by our customers that there was a widespread issue affecting our 2006 model Zune 30GB devices (a large number of which are still actively being used). The technical team jumped on the problem immediately and isolated the issue: a bug in the internal clock driver related to the way the device handles a leap year. The issue should be resolved over the next 24 hours as the time change moves to January 1, 2009. We expect the internal clock on the Zune 30GB devices will automatically reset tomorrow (noon, GMT). By tomorrow you should allow the battery to fully run out of power before the unit can restart successfully then simply ensure that your device is recharged, then turn it back on. If you’re a Zune Pass subscriber, you may need to sync your device with your PC to refresh the rights to the subscription content you have downloaded to your device.

We know this has been a big inconvenience to our customers and we are sorry for that, and want to thank them for their patience.

Q: Why is this issue isolated to the Zune 30 device?
It is a bug in a driver for a part that is only used in the Zune 30 device.

Q: What fixes or patches are you putting in place to resolve this situation?
This situation should remedy itself over the next 24 hours as the time flips to January 1st.

Q: What’s the timeline on a fix?
The issue Zune 30GB customers are experiencing today will self resolve as time changes to January 1.

Q: Why did this occur at precisely 12:01 a.m. on December 31, 2008?
There is a bug in the internal clock driver causing the 30GB device to improperly handle the last day of a leap year.

Q: What is Zune doing to fix this issue?
The issue should resolve itself.

Q: Are you sure that this won’t happen to all 80, 120 or other flash devices?
This issue is related to a part that is only used in Zune 30 devices.

Q: How many 30GB Zune devices are affected? How many Zune 30GB devices were sold?
All 30GB devices are potentially affected.

Shame on the firmware developers for letting something like this happen on the Zune 30. No fix yet. Thankfully our 4GB and 8GB Zune seem immune.

You can watch the story unfold on the Zune.net forums here. It is particularly unfortunate because music devices like this are popular for house mixes during New Years parties.

It has also hit CNN, which will only give it more bad press.

This is a first for her on Jones Soda bottles. Her sister has been on 6 or 7 bottles across the nation so far, so she needs to play catch up.
The actual picture was taken on the Coopersville train. She was in a crabby mood and was sticking her tongue out. Thankfully, it worked out to her advantage because it ended up becoming a cute picture.

If you bump into this bottle in the stores, please let me know. I might buy it off of you.

I always had a bit of a distorted reality of success and goals in my childhood, but that is to be expected, because you are a little kid.

The one that has lasted into my 30s, as a sign of 'making it', was a real Robotron 2048 cabinet. Strange, I admit. I never actually planned on owning one but it is always one of those little goals you setup for yourself to stay motivated. As time passed, less cabinets have survived in workable condition. MAME cabinets and emulators definitely fill a little bit of the void, but this game was always a bit of an oddball due to the dual joystick layout. It doesn't translate well to gamepads or keyboards.

Robotron has a long history with my family and our Rockford neighborhood back in the 80s. We'd typically play all day on a quarter or two in the downtown area. As with most early 80s video games, it focuses on game play instead fancy graphics. It is a little bit of a programming marvel because programming was started and completed over a weekend. Not many games that still hold up today have that kind of history.

By chance, I was watching a Woot off happen and I saw an item that I never even knew existed, the Midway 12 Game Tabletop Classic Arcade System. The price was much less than a real cabinet on EBay, so I took a chance on it.

Features:
14” full color CRT monitor with 12 Classic Arcade Hits built in
Accessible AV jacks allow you to plug in and play any of your other home video game systems
Dual Control Panel for Head-to-Head Play
No assembly required, plug and play

Built in Classic Arcade Games: Defender, Defender II, Bubbles, Splat, Sinistar, Rampage, Satans Hollow, Root Beer Tapper, Timber, Wizard of War, Joust, and Robotron.

It arrived this past Friday and much to my surprise, the kids have latched onto the cabinet like no other game system I've ever seen. They are literally fist fighting over who gets to play on the game system. The original Robotron only had about 18,000 upright cabinets produced and around 5000 sit-down versions produced. It looks like this product also had a limited run because our game is labeled "387 out of 486".

There still is a real Robotron cabinet at the GameWorks location in downtown Seattle, and every few months when I'm in the Redmond area, I try to make a quick stop over there to play on an original cabinet. I might not need to do that anymore with this at home. The trips to GameWorks have turned into a bit of a ritual, much like my trips for hot Thai food at Thai Ginger.

I mean, take a look at this snapshot of available sites that you can "digg/buzz/etc" a blog post.

This past month or two has been pretty insane with regards to illness around town.

For a few weeks, I had a killer cold/sinus/lung infection that robbed me of my voice for days at a time. I ended up going through 2 different antibiotics in an effort to kill off the secondary sinus infection for good. I don't smoke so I suspect I'd still be in a world of pain if I did. My lungs were working overtime to get the junk out. This finally cleared up midweek last week. This is also why everyone that gets prescribed antibiotics need to finish their prescription completely, even if they feel better, to prevent anti-biotic 'superbugs'. Amoxicillin wouldn't touch this infection.

Unfortunately, with two kids at public schools and a job that requires being when on site at healthcare sites/hospitals sometimes, you end up bringing home the "best" diseases.

Now, at the end of this week, Sabrina, my oldest daughter, started throwing up, after fighting off the original illness and now my wife started doing the same on Saturday. I've already had a flu shot, and I'm hoping they just have food poisoning but they haven't been eating the same things, so I suspect it isn't. So far, Juliana and I are the only healthy ones right now.

Update: As I was typing this, Sabrina just started throwing up again. The gift that keeps giving.

Why am I mentioning all of this? I'm not sure, but I try to post here a couple times per week and I haven't been able to. Family and work always comes first. I have some good OCS 2007 and Windows 7 posts almost ready, but this is why they haven't appeared yet.