One of the important things that I’ve tried to keep in mind at work is that I really am concerned about the image of the company. It’s one of the things that I’ve loved about working at my company, and it’s really awesome to work with people who also care. This has fostered a commitment from me to always do my best.

I know that in the past, there were times when I was happy with “good enough.” It’s not really something to be proud of, but I think everyone’s had at least one of those days. Well, since I came to the place I now work, I’ve felt different about the work I do and the finished product that I turn over to the customer. Sure, there have been times when I was not as happy as I wanted to be with the finished product. This is usually a result of giving the customer what they want instead of what I think they need.

One of the ways this has manifested is that I’m very interested in how the final product looks and how it will look to the customer. I remember my mom and my sister quoting my grandmother, saying, “because nice matters!” This is something that I’ve really taken to heart. I like to make sure that the fonts look good in documents. I take a little bit of extra time and configure BGInfo on VMs for clients. I want the customer look at the finished product and think, “well, that is money well spent!”

As I was mentioning earlier, I get to work with some people who feel that same way. Even though the base product is technically all they asked for, we want to make sure that we are giving them that little bit extra that shows we care about our work. I think it shows, and I know for a fact that customers have come back to us because of that little bit.

One of the things that’s always been important to me is my music. I’ve always had a pair of headphones or speakers on my computer, and in the car, on a bike, or even just walking around, I’ve always loved having something to listen to. Since I’ve been driving, this has also meant that it’s important to have a music player in the car that can keep up with me.

In almost every car I’ve ever had, I’ve upgraded the sound system in some degree. In my current car, that was taken to the max when I got the “head unit” that I’ve got in it now. It has the ability to plug in modules that extend the capabilities of the standard radio and allow me to listen to more things. I started off with a satellite radio module plugged in, but then I switched it out for an iPod module. Now, looking at getting a new car, it’s time to see what the market offers.

One of the challenges with finding a new car stereo is that I’ve upgraded over the years from a plain ole’ iPod to my iPhone. The current stereo I have and module will WORK with my iPhone, but they don’t quite work all together. For one thing, the old stereo won’t charge the iPhone, and considereing that it plugs into the dock connector of the iPhone, that means I have to make sure my phone is fully charged. Since in my new car, I’m going to be driving quite a long distance, I had to look for a new product.

After looking around on the web, I found out that Alpine has an officially certified product line! This means that not only will it work, but it is supported as well! The model I’m looking at is the CDE-102.

This car stereo looks like it will do it all, but I have to make sure that I also get the special cable (the KCE-433iV). Doing this research ahead of time is so much nicer than walking into a store and talking to their “technicians.”

So, what I’m thinking about doing is purchasing the stereo and cable online and then having them shipped to where I’m picking up the car. I’m going to have to wait on the wiring harness and the car frame, since I’m not sure the year or model of the car. Once I’m in town, I can either put it in myself, or pay someone to install it for me. Since I’m going down to Louisiana to visit my family, I might pick the do it myself option so I can invite my nephews to help! I’m sure that Tom will be up for it!

We can’t embrace the losing formula that says only tax cuts will work for every problem we face; that ignores critical challenges like our addiction to foreign oil, or the soaring cost of health care, or falling schools and crumbling bridges and roads and levees. I don’t care whether you’re driving a hybrid or an SUV — if you’re headed for a cliff, you’ve got to change direction.

In that one bit of quote (I’m not sure where it’s originally from, I got it here), I have been convinced that he is a President who is dedicated and interested in solving some of the root problems that we, as a country, are facing.

I get sick and tired of the debate that is thrown back and forth over the nitpicking and pigeon-holing. One of the people I work with does the same kind of thing as so many politicians. He picks an edge case/fringe case argument and defends that case like it’s the majority of problems in the world. It does not matter what kind of car you drive, hybrid or SUV, if the driving if it still keeps you dependant on foreign oil.

This is my first “political” post, and I know that there won’t be many more, but the one thing I’ve always hated about politics is that when talking about them, people always devolve into the gritty single-case issues and examples. It’s time to fix the school systems, not worry about the 1% of kids who will get left behind. That’s life. Too bad. Cope.

With all the nifty features and functions that are available in the new version of OCS, I can’t really see a reason to hold back and NOT migrate. Being the type of company that we are, it’s important to keep up with the latest products and show that we can make them work. That being said, sometimes it’s hard to hit the ground running when you don’t have a large customer base for that type of work.

One of the struggles with any small company is that with the limited resources available, sometimes you can’t set up a whole new lab environment just to test the new software. In my case, my work on other paying projects put a lot of internal IT projects on hold. This is not to say that the projects were being ignored, just that they took a much lower priority than I would have liked to assigned them.

My current project of love and devotion is our migration as a company to Office Communications Server 2007 R2, which was recently released. This is a big deal to me, being a Unified Communications consultant, so I’ve taken the time at work and at home to learn about what needs to be done.

I don’t want to sit here and outline all the dinky step-by-step screen shots, since I’m sure that there are other sites out there that have those. What I’d rather do is outline the thought process and planning steps that are required for the migration.

Okay, on to the fun stuff… Let’s talk about migration paths!

Supported Migration Paths

Microsoft has put a bunch of OCS 2007 R2 documentation on Technet, but none of it is available for download, so I’ll just sum up some of the recommendations and provide the link so that you can get more detail about them on the site. Oh, wait… There isn’t any more detail!

To start off with, there are two supported upgrade or migration paths:

• Side-by-side migration
• Uninstall/reinstall

Side-by-side Migration

This is the one that sounded like a really good idea for us, due to my limited time to ensure that everything was set up correctly. In this scenario, you stand up a second pool in the same Forest and then migrate users at your leisure.

Pros:

• You have the ability to deploy the environment and validate/test it before you deploy it
• It could be done with minimal downtime for users, theoretically no loss of service
• Pool co-existence allows for cross communication and migration

Uninstall/reinstall

For this install, the process is dead simple. You remove all the old stuff, and you install the new stuff. Of course, there are more steps to it than that, but the idea is pretty simple. I didn’t think that this would be a good fit for us because of the downtime that would be incurred. Okay, who am I kidding? I didn’t want to take the time to listen to people complain about downtime. I think we, as a company, could handle it

Pros:

• It minimizes the use of extra hardware (rebuild on the same platform)
• The installation is simplified when dealing with back ends (more on this in the details)
• This is a good chance to completely rebuild and redesign your OCS infrastructure

The Devil is in the Details

When the dust settles, it’s all comes down to what actually the details of the situation are. In the case of migrating any production system from one version to another, there are going to be a host of issues and minor settings that can either slip through the cracks, or come back to bite you, later. The details always start out as a high level overview and then drill down to individual check boxes and radio buttons.

In Part 2, I’ll cover the details of the Side-by-side Migration and in Part 3 I’ll cover the Uninstall/reinstall details. More to follow!

You know, like feed the hungry or pulling their noses out of other people’s business?

My buddy Kevin posted a blog entry about how scary religious people are. This is something of a concern close to my heart. I just really have a problem with people acting like what I do or think is any business of theirs. I am not going to get wound up and rant about this, but I do want to thank all the people who have let me develop my own sense of right and wrong, learn what works for me, and didn’t force me to give up my freedom of choice.

Next up on the plate, commercials from people telling us to spend money:

“Now is a great time to buy a house..”

“We’re going out of business because you’re too selfish to spend at our store…”

“The best way to fix the economy is to go out and spend, spend, spend…”