Idle thoughts from the support queue

While I'm on hold (seemingly forever) with Symantec, I had a few thoughts drift through my head. So it's time for yet another random blog entry!

- As of today, you just can't complain about the Nomar trade anymore. Not only is his injury problem starting to rear it's ugly head in Chicago, but Mientkiewicz has been a rock defensively, and Cabrera's given us a defensive upgrade along with some newfound sock in his bat. They've gotten hot at the right time, and the Yankees are starting to finally feel some pressure. Since the trade, we've picked up 4 games on them (5 1/2 is the distance today).

- I read the penultimate Dark Tower novel this week (Song of Susannah), Not bad, but you can tell that King is trying to figure out how to wrap it up as neatly as possible in the next (and final) book. I also just read David Halberstam's The Teammates, about the relationship between Sox greats Ted Williams, Johnny Pesky, Bobby Doerr, and Dom DiMaggio. Short, but satisfying.

- The Symantec issue concerns VPN support on their Gateway Security appliance. Their IPSec support is apparently fine, but whenever I try and use the MS PPTP client to connect thru a tunnel to the Windows 2003 Server at my customer's site, the firewall decides it's being attacked and kills the session. It's a known bug that I'm told is addressed by a hotfix - but getting it has been an adventure.

- SP2 is out, and may well be the be-all, but I am not yet recommending it to my customers. I've had no difficulties with it so far, though, on three different test-bed systems.

- Earlier this week I added Novell to the list of companies I partner with. That gives me an "official" Linux channel to add to my Microsoft and Apple partnerships.

- The cold is receding fast, thankfully. Unfortunately, I had to blow off a time that was being held for one of my former employees who is being pushed out herself at month's end. I feel pretty bad about that, but the rest last night was sorely needed. My head still is a little stuffy, but not too bad at this point.

- I built a server for my friend in Connecticut this morning (converting an old IBM Aptiva). I'm going to send it down next week.

- Though I'm not a chat-o-holic, I do now stay online when I'm in the office - IM can be a handy way to answer a customer question without taking me too much out of the flow of whatever else I'm doing at the time. I can be reached at josht (at) mac.com, and that's for users of AIM and iChat. I can do video as well.

- Recently started learning MacOS X Server. Good stuff.

- If you're trying to run a Mac on Active Directory, look for Apple's tech article (ID=107800) on the topic. Basically, there's a conflict between Server 2003's default suffix of .local and Apple's use of the same for Rendezvous. The workaround is a simple hack to the MacOS resolver's search order. Once done, it plays nicely.

Yesterday, Our cat Danny actually let David pet him. The problem is that I think David's now convinced that they are friends, which couldn't be farther from the truth.