Thoughtsofanidlemind's Blog

  • International rugby in Cesena

    The upheaval in the technology market over the last few weeks has made me remiss in terms of updating this blog with details of what’s been going on with rugby. Right now it’s an important time for the national teams who are scheduled to play in the Rugby World Cup…

  • Some reflections on what’s been happening @HP

    I retired from HP in March 2010 and clearly a lot could have changed in the company since that time. Even so, I wasn’t prepared for the seemingly incoherent set of announcements that came out on August 18. I’ve pondered on the topic for a few days and captured my…

  • I wish I’d spent more on redundant network components…

    The outfall from last week’s networking failure that stopped service to Exchange users of Microsoft’s Office 365 in North America rumbles on. My rambling on the topic is some reflections on just how much a network outage has cost Microsoft as they’ve decided to refund customers 25% of the monthly…

  • Back to Kilkee

    Kilkee is a seaside resort in County Clare on the west coast of Ireland. Originally developed as a resort in the late Victorian era, Kilkee continues to be a popular destination for tourists from all around Ireland and elsewhere. My family used to be frequent visitors to Kilkee in the…

  • BPOS and Office 365 cloud outages – not quite nirvana yet

    Last night (my time) TweetDeck exploded with a mass of customer complaints, observations, witticisms, and moaning about the problems that afflicted the Exchange Online component of Office 365. On this occasion I wasn’t affected because the network problem that Microsoft reported as the root cause only caused problems for their…

  • Another looming fiasco because IE9 doesn’t work with MMC

    Just posted this blog to express some frustration on behalf of the Exchange technical community that Microsoft hasn’t been able to fix the problem that IE9 introduces for Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010. Essentially, once IE9 is on a server or workstation that runs the Exchange Management Console (EMC), you end…

  • Office 365 sessions at Fall Exchange Connections

    One of the factors that drives the selection of sessions for a conference is the kind of information that the conference organizers want to offer to attendees. In the case of Exchange Connections, that information is linked to Exchange Server. And right now, the biggest influence on Exchange Server is…

  • Preparation continues for (last) Exchange 2010 Maestro event in October

    Just posted on WindowsITPro.com, some idle thoughts about the Exchange 2010 Maestro training event that Paul Robichaux, Brian Desmond, and I will be running in Greenwich, CT on October 26-28. This will probably be the last such event – see the post for the reasons why! – Tony

  • Ambling up to Cherbourg

    Driving from the Cote d’Azur to Cherbourg is a 1,350km trek over thirteen or so hours behind the wheel, depending of course on the number of “bouchons” (traffic jams) that you encounter on the French autoroute system. To be fair to the companies that operate the autoroutes, they do their…

  • Microsoft tells BPOS customers to wait until they can be migrated to Office 365

    I just made this blog post on WindowsITPro.com. It reflects on some issues raised by Microsoft’s August 7 post on TechNet that explains that basic steps required to migrate an organization manually from BPOS to Office 365. If you are skilled with Exchange Server migrations and PowerShell scripts and can…