November, 2008

I was browsing one of my favorite sites espn.com and noticed they have a new online show called Mayne Street starring Kenny Mayne.  If you like his humor and want to have a good laugh check out his show it is pretty funny.  I have included my favorite show so far.  For the rest of the shows go here:
Mayne Street

I caught up with Pete LePage again, this in time in Barcelona.  More importantly I caught up with him on my own turf at TechEd among all the wonderful IT Pros.  Now he was the stranger in the strange land.  We had a great conversation around how to think about Internet Explorer 8 and compatibility.  BTW, yes that really is the Mediterranean Ocean behind us.

Check out the interview here:

One of concepts we discussed in the video was the x-ua compatible tag you can put in the HTTP Response Headers of your web servers.  Look for a quick screencast to show how this is done in the near future.  This metatag would affect all of the websites on the server:

"X-UA-Compatible value="IE=EmulateIE7"

Additionally the web developer can add a similar meta tag to the site or page.  The fun question is what meta tag wins, if there is a conflict between the server, site, page or user setting?  The answer is simple the page setting will always win in the case of a conflict.

Resources:

• Great article on IE 8 and compatibility: Compatibility and Internet Explorer 8 
• Additional information for adding custom HTTP response headers on various versions of IIS and Apache servers: 
  IIS7.0, IIS6.0, Apache 2.2, Apache 2.0, Apache 1.3
• Compatibly center: Internet Explorer Compatibility Center
• First interview with Pete: Interview: Talking IE 8 Developer Tools with Pete LePage @ PDC 

During PDC I got a chance to chat with Pete LePage, a PM on the IE 8 team to talk about some of the improvements in the developer tool set in Internet Explorer 8.  If you have not seen them yet, press F12 while using IE 8 or even take a look at the view source from the page menu.  Check out interview:

Last weekend was a great training weekend.  I had a great run on Saturday and I ended up running 10 miles instead of the 6.  Thanks Larry and Brian, I had a much better round trip run, I was basically running block to block.  Helped break up the run!  I also think I had a good run because of the need to justify the adult libations and wings I got to eat as I watched Ohio State crush the school up north 42-7!!!!!

OH….

This week marks an exciting week and I admit I am a little nervous.  The excitement comes from my weekend runs, 10 miles on Saturday and 20 miles on Sunday.  Seems daunting, but I feel I am ready.  So as your eating your leftover turkey think of me as I am out an about. 

Speaking of left over turkey, I am going to try this recipe this year:

Mexican Lasagna 

What is your favorite left over Turkey recipe?

This weeks running and have a great Thanksgiving:

So what do you really think about Cloud Computing?  I know you all have an opinion.  Whether it is good, bad, or ugly we want to hear from you!  Tell us what you think via the online survey below.

Click here, tell us more, and make your opinion heard:

Tell Us What You Think About Cloud Computing

NO!!!!!! but man I wish we were!

I think it is official I have finally hit the grind of training, and I am ready for the run to hurry up and get here!!!!!

I love running, and I know these training runs are very important for the last few weeks prior to goofy challenge.  I think all the travel and time changes are catching up with me, but I keep pressing on.  On the bright side I have a few long runs next week so I get to justify the big family thanksgiving dinner next Thursday.

So I guess the challenge now becomes what ways can I make the training more fun and interesting.  Part of the fun is still coming from the training with the varied mileage.  The other part is how I am choosing to break up the runs and doing some fun mile intervals with a little rest to calm down a bit after the interval.  Seems to make the mileage go by a lot faster.

So my question to you, is how do you break up the training when you hit the grind.   What kind of tips and tricks do you use to make the time fly by?

Have a great day and happy running!

This week is the same as next week, I actually looked at the schedule and discovered I am 2 weeks ahead.

Doing a lot of work with Windows Search I have learned how the tool works and I have worked with a lot of great folks at corporate to help put together some fantastic information on performance tips and considerations.  Also in this post I wanted to talk about some of the key improvements we have discovered with Windows Search, does a 84% faster query time get your attention?  Well read along!

Here are some general tips, and as you can see some of the improvements are only seen in Windows Vista:

• Initial index build requires time
  • Expect to index 20-40 items per second
  • WS4 rearranges the property store indices supporting fast query
• Incremental Indexing
  • File System is scanned on startup
  • Most changes handled through notifications
• Smart Indexer Back-off
  • Keyboard and mouse use
  • High CPU utilization
  • High I/O
  • Low Pri I/O (Vista only)
  • Power Mgmt (Vista only)

We have also improved the overall Stability of Windows Search, take a look below at some of the highlights:

• Critical Watson errors addressed
  • Fixed ~85% of reported Watson crashes in filterhost, protocolhost, indexer
• Index resiliency improved
  • Improved ability to recover on index corruption
  • Improved ability to recover from registry corruptions
  • Enabled additional trace logging

To help prove out the improvements in Windows Search the folks at corporate put the performance to the test, below is there testing environment and the results in the charts below:

I picked this month’s book on the way out of the store at the checkout lane.  It is an eye catching title: How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else.  At first I thought it might been a book about the wonders of caffeine and how this can improve a persons response time. 

However what I got was a very inspiring true life story.This book by Michael Gates Gill tells a wonderful story about a person can change and learn from any circumstance.   The book talks about how Michael, later in his life, had found himself, divorced, jobless and diagnosed with a brain tumor. 

Part of his troubles as Michael admits were partly his doing, whether it was allowing himself to be taken away by his job or his own personal choices.  The book talks about how one can still learn and grow given any circumstance.  I really liked how Michael candidly laid out his story and how he was able to learn from his new boss and grow into a job that allowed him to improve and grow.  Even though one of his primary motivations was to receive the health benefits of Starbucks.  I truly recommend this book if you need a daily dose or motivation or a reality check.  I really enjoyed it.

The book truly helps you be thankful for the things you do have and grow a greater appreciation around you.  As you go through the holiday season this year always remember to take time with the ones you love.

Hey all you MVP rockstars are you out there?  Are you working hard on putting together your screencasts to win some cool prizes?  Remember the contest we started:

Do you want to win* a Lenovo T61P ThinkPad or Xbox 360 Pro with 60 GB? 

As of yet we have not seen any entries for the contest yet and we wanted to to see if anyone is currently working on their screencast.  Keith and I want to hear from you, everyone has been awfully quiet and this is a cause of concern for both of us.  If no one is in process for the contest we are considering cancelling the contest if we do not have any participation. 

So if you are working on the contest or planning to have this contest please drop myself mhester@microsoft.com or Keith Combs' Blahg an email and let us know if your planning on participation. 

Also Keith has secured an upload location on some nifty streaming servers so if you do have a screencast and are looking for a place to post it drop Keith and I an email and we can get you the info for the upload location.

We truly want to give all this cool stuff we have in our closets away, so if you have not started and still want get involved, you have time!

*No Purchase Necessary. Open only to active Microsoft MVP members of the 50 US States (includes D of C). Game ends December 15, 2008. For full rules click HERE.

Previously I posted an article about how a divorcee killed her ex-hubby’s avatar.  Well now it seems people love their avatar wives more than their real counterparts:

UK couple in real-life divorce

I took a look at this great article about Internet Explorer 8.  The article provides a nice overview and interesting conversation on IE 8.

Check out the full article here:

What does Internet Explorer 8 mean for you?

I wanted to create a quick post to highlight some of the key improvements in Policy and Security for Windows Search 4.0.  We released Windows Search 4.0 for the desktop a few months back, to help get everyone up to speed on the versions, I wanted outline a brief timeline of the different versions we had:

•  WDS 2.5 x and 2.6x: was really where Windows Search technologies started getting deployments with corporate customers. They provided a search experience that featured fast performance and rich previews, but also accounted for easy deployment and management and corporate class security.
• WDS 3.0 – 3.0: which also happens to be the same index in Windows Vista, moved WDS to a system level service, instead of just a user experience. As a result of this move, the platform became extensible for all developers to build on, and users saw a marked increase in stability and performance.
• Windows Vista: – Windows Vista builds on the desktop search functionality in WDS for Windows XP, but it also adds advanced functionality like deeper search integration throughout the desktop experience, file tagging, advanced views, and more.
• WDS 3.01: 2k7– is an incremental release to WDS 3.0. It is only available for Windows XP and the main difference between 3.0 and 3.01 is that there are some additional group policies available in 3.01.
• Office 2007 – Outlook 2007: both feature integrated search capabilities directly within the application experiences themselves. These search experiences are powered by Windows Search and do not work unless you have Windows Desktop Search 3.0 or higher or Windows Vista.

So that brings us to the most current version: Windows Search 4.0. 

Windows search 4.0 is the next update for XP and Windows Vista, and has some dramatic improvements in performance, and IT management.  They have re-addressed several key customer concerns, including support for indexing encrypted files. Moreover, performance and stability were key focus areas in this update.  As you can see we have quite a few excellent enhancements to the tool.

We have added several new group policy settings and below is a list of some of the new settings:

We have also taken into account a lot of the index security considerations. Windows Search 4.0 really does a great job around the privacy and security of the  index.  Here is a list of the main  index security considerations:

• Access Control Lists (ACLs) honored
• Default content inclusions
  • Email, Documents and Settings
  • Shared folders
  • Group Policy Control for scope inclusions / blocks
• Email Attachments
  • Indexed in a sandbox
  • Indexing can be disabled by group policy
• Excludes potentially sensitive data
  • Internet cache
  • Contents of IRM & password protected files
• Index file Protection by default
  • ACLs allowing access to BUILTIN\Administrators and NT Authority\System users
  • Obfuscated
  • Search service runs under the LocalSystem context
• No personal information shared to MSFT
• Consider full volume encryption
  • Recommend BitLocker or a 3rd party solution
• Supports indexing encrypted documents (EFS)
  • Properties and content
  • User & Group Policy control
  • Consider full volume encryption on index files
• Access Control Lists (ACLs) honored
• Access restricted to Local search
• Smartcards
  • Cached certificate hash and SID
  • Requires caching-capable settings
  • Consider allowing user control

Hola! 

Sorry I missed last weeks post but I was way out of town in Barcelona!  I was asked to deliver a breakout session at IT Forum in Barcelona, it was my honor to do so.  It was a lot of fun and my training took a back seat to this opportunity.  At least for a couple of weeks but I am back in the states and back on track.  BTW it was good getting to see the Powershell guy, Marc van Orsouw in Barcelona, and thanks for following the blog!  BTW if you have not checked out his blog on PowerShell you need to, it has some excellent information, check it out here: The PowerShell Guy .

One of the great things about running is that you can do it anywhere, and I was even able to get my weekly runs in, difference was that my backdrop was the Mediterranean ocean.  It was nice to run outside and enjoy the sites and sounds.  I even thought it would be fun to put my hand in the ocean, just to say I did.  Well lets say I misjudged the wave and my feet up to my ankles got soaked, included my shoes.  Good thing I did this on my return to the hotel, albeit it was a little squishy sounding.  :-)

What I found interesting is that all runners share a kindred spirit that a tip of the head, a smile or a wave is almost always returned.  Even as I was running in Spain, this unspoken language made me fell at home.  I am glad I have a lot of people to wave and smile at as I am running.  As if to say, are we there yet.  Unlike my buddy Brian, who never gets any one to smile: Smile out There, I always seem to get folks to smile.  With that said if you see me or Brian running down the street return that smile or wave.  :-)

Here is what in store this week:

Take a look here for more information:

Office 2007 The Ultimate Steal 

That includes:

• Word 2007
• Groove 2007
• Excel 2007
• Publisher 2007
• PowerPoint 2007
• Access 2007
• Outlook 2007
• InfoPath 2007
• OneNote 2007
• Accounting Express 2008

So who is eligible:

1. You must have a valid e-mail address at an educational institution ending with the domain suffix .EDU (ie, leina@contoso.edu) OR have a valid email address at one of the educational institutions listed here.
   
   AND
   
2. You must be a student at a U.S. educational institution and must be actively enrolled in at least 0.5 course credit and be able to provide proof of enrollment upon request.

Full Terms and Conditions

Keith and I got to go to PDC well we decided to chat about what we saw after they announce Windows 7 launch: