Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer answers your Exchange operations questions, such as:

1. Can my Exchange server receive inbound Internet/SMTP email?
2. Can my Outlook Anywhere (aka “RPC over HTTP” in Exchange 2003) clients connect from outside the firewall?
3. Can my mobile users connect using Exchange ActiveSync phones/devices?
4. Does AutoDiscover work for Outlook 2007 clients?
5. Does AutoDiscover work for Exchange ActiveSync clients?
6. Are the certificates used for these services valid?

I cannot tell you how useful this tool has been in my server admin work. If you haven’t tried it yet, take it for a spin. Let me know if it has helped you! With thanks to Dave Shackelford at ThirdTier for this great resource.

Look around you, how many women in IT (technology) do you see? Yeah, not so much huh?

I used to be a secretary. Not a very good one mind you, because I was bored to tears. Then the universe gave me a big ol gift of being slammed into by a garbage truck while driving my little Honda Civic down 28^th St. in Minneapolis. Now most people wouldn’t see this as a positive and I sure didn’t at first. But here’s the deal. My left hand was broken in about a bazillion places. Not so good for typing eh? I simply had to change careers, or least change jobs. I ultimately landed another admin position but I loved it, I was doing simple admin stuff but not very much typing. I was surrounded by technical people as I have been in most jobs. But somehow this was different. My bosses noticed that I had some talent, some drive and I was progressively given interesting tasks. I was still very young and didn’t know all of the “rules” and kept asking and pushing the envelope. There were actually technical women in the department I worked in and it was very inspiring.

Bump in the road

I loved my work but really disliked Minnesota, I couldn’t deal with the cold and the snow any longer. A great opportunity came along to relocate to California. This was it! I was so excited, I couldn’t wait to get there and work with people to do and learn even more. Slam! Reality sets in. Turns out that in this particular company’s west coast division, strong women’s voices in tech were not welcome. I spent nearly three years trying to change things and sadly, gave up. There were no mentors, only backstabbers and gossipy rumor hounds. What a horrid environment it was!

Ick!

The next position I took was really a lateral move, sadly just to get away from the previous environment. After 4 months of Sarbanes Oxley and helpdesk work, one day I was sexually harassed by not one but TWO people at the same time. Now that was devastating. I thought I was strong, I thought I could take it and be okay. Turns out that the company’s “zero tolerance policy” was completely unenforced and I was actually made to feel guilty for what I was wearing on the day in question and “did I really want these guys to lose their jobs?”  I quit that job immediately. I probably should have sued the company but I didn’t have the energy.

Hmmmm, this could be cool.

During the last few weeks of that icky job, I had been recruited by a company who did IT support for celebrities in their homes. I don’t really care that much about celebs but I was intrigued by the idea of solving problems and the immediate gratification – it’s either fixed or not. I started with the company but after 8 months realized that I while I was a huge cash cow for the company, I wasn’t being compensated for the value I brought. Clients loved me. They did not love the company. They often complained of feeling “ripped off”, overbilled, sneaky tactics, etc.

Today I am my own boss.

My ethics are rarely challenged because I won’t tolerate it. I work for clients who value their time, who appreciate the rare woman in I.T. who has top skills but doesn’t need to bring ego to every interaction. I offer them the discretion and privacy they so rarely see in vendors and I pride myself in being easy to do business with. I just love this work; it’s technical, analytical and logical yet I still get to care about people. I am the ÜberGeekGirl!

To every woman who is considering I.T., whether sys-admin, programmer, helpdesk. I want you to know that you can enjoy your work, you can be a great tech and you do not have to put up with the abuse that keeps most women out of I.T. You just have to say no and stand up to people who would otherwise put you down. It will NOT be easy. There will be days where you just want to stay home. Go ahead, but the next day, get up and keep saying YES to yourself, your values and ultimately be a mentor for the next generation.

That’s why I still do I.T.  How about you? Comments and questions welcomed!

Once I made that decision, a great thing happened. A former colleague contacted me about a possible employee. I spent several months interviewing, background checking and just putting them through my paces. As it turns out, I’ve gone ahead with hiring this person and I look forward to the benefits my clients will experience with additional support.

Feel the fear and do it anyway!

After performing some routine maintenance, I stopped and just looked at the problem with a “beginner’s mind”. As I watched the page load ever so slowly, I noticed in teeny tiny writing at the bottom of the Safari window “resolving host….” As the light bulb went off in my head, I said to myself it’s DNS!

I called their ISP to see if there were any particular issues with the standard DNS servers.  Of course their answer was no and that their servers were working just fine. So after using this very cool utility from Google http://code.google.com/p/namebench/ I replaced  AT&T’s DNS server entries with Open DNS which was reportedly 300% faster.

Wow, what a difference. It’s pretty rare that I change the DNS servers from the ISP, but I’ll be doing it more often after this experience.

In prior versions of Outlook, in order to see another user’s contacts in your “windows address book” you had to follow a convoluted 10 step process that was a nightmare to implement in any reasonable amount of time. Now we can simply add a second exchange account and see the additional address book. This is a big time saver.

With BES services, we can wirelessly sync your Blackberry to your Outlook folders. However sometimes we need to sync the Blackberry to a different folder, perhaps your boss’ contacts folder. Now we have to install Blackberry Desktop Manager and disable wireless sync on your contacts. Then we can specify an additional folder to sync.

Throughout the different versions of Outlook, there have been lots of issues with compatibility with Blackberry Desktop Manager, most notably in the scenario above, we cannot use cached exchange mode. But now with the release of Outlook 2010, the desktop manager won’t connect at all. There are various workarounds, none of which are realistic for consultants or clients for that matter.

I believe that this failure of RIM to stay in compatibility with what I consider their main partner is just another reason they’ll continue to lose users and market share. If I as a consultant, cannot do what my clients need and expect, then I won’t use or recommend the product anymore. The most frustrating part of this is that in many stores, I can no longer purchase Office 2007.

Now for the good experiences… I was so pleasantly surprised today with a call I had to make that I just needed to share it. A year or two ago, my husband gave me a Skil iXo2 drill. This little screwdriver has made my work so easy, I just love it. Well all of a sudden it would not charge. I take very good care of my equipment so you can imagine my frustration. I called the company, was only on hold for a few minutes and spoke with a representative. I expected to pay for a new charger base. Surprise and shock when the rep said she’d be sending me a new charger at no cost. I said she didn’t have to do that but it was very kind. I’ll never forget her words. “I don’t want anyone out there to be unhappy with our products”.

Thanks to Skil for not only making a great product, but taking the time to make it right when there is a problem.

This phone is arguably the most hotly anticipated device release since the iPhone. For the most part, the biggest question people have is “what is android”?  It’s probably easiest to say what it isn’t. It is not iPhone, it is not Blackberry, rather it is Google’s operating system designed for mobile devices. There are “apps” like the iPhone but not as many.

I was excited about the ability to finally use my Google Voice number natively on a device. This handset has that feature built in and I can toggle whether to use Google Voice for all calls, international calls, or prompt before all calls.

Costs: The phone carries a typical smartphone cost of $199 on a 2 year contract. I opted for a 1 year contract and paid $269.

Setup: Within 15 minutes, I had entered my exchange credentials, my facebook and twitter accounts and was generally thrilled. It has a great voice recognition feature and wherever I would normally type, I can just speak and it’s transcribed quickly.

Uh Oh: Fast forward a few days and I have a major problem. The battery lasts about 5 hours. Literally, from the time I unplug it in the morning; I have about 5 hours with even light use! A call to Verizon tech support leaves me wondering if I should just return the phone. Because of all the great features I decide to research the issue to see if I can find an acceptable solution. I came across a great app called “Juice Defender”.

http://www.thegeekengineer.com/juice-defender-how-to-save-battery-of-your-android-phone/

http://www.androlib.com/android.application.com-latedroid-juicedefender-pFAx.aspx

I paid a few dollars for the full version and basically it tweaks quite a few settings and extends the battery to about the next morning. This is again, light use, hourly email checking, 3-5x a day twitter updates/ facebook, etc. I use Bluetooth in the car and wifi at home, so I also use a handy widget that makes these easy to turn on and off.

Must have apps: Advanced Task Killer, ShopSavvy, Goodlink, Remote Desktop, WifiAnalyzer, WordPress, Google Voice, Zendesk and TimeDroid.

I’m really enjoying the vastly improved reception on Verizon so with all the great features and the improvement of the battery life issue, I think I’ll keep this phone (at least for now).

It never fails. I will come to your home or your office for the first time and 9 times out of 10 I will see how badly neglected your cable management is.  Sometimes I feel like I am the only IT person who gives a darn about ugly cables.

Next I will solve 98% of your computer issues and then I’ll politely ask your permission to spend 30-60 minutes re-doing your cables. Why should you let me do this? Because I’ll sleep better at night. No, really, the real reason is that it IS actually important. You have 16 power strips daisy chained together and that is going to be a problem someday. You’ll unplug or step on the switch in the middle of THE most important work you’ve ever created. Then you’ll curse everything and everyone and that gets you nowhere (Trust me). One thing you’ll never see me using is cable ties though. If your IT person uses cable ties, you should fire them immediately. The best tool for the job is Velcro.

You’ll feel better knowing what plug is what and you won’t trip and fall. The best benefit of all? It just looks better.

Perhaps this is a secret plot to get us Los Angelenos to stay off the phone whilst in the car. While I truly believe it’s safer to not use the phone in the car, for small business owners who need to stay in touch with clients, there aren’t a lot of other options.

I found a great site www.cellreception.com where you can read actual users experiences with the different networks in and around Los Angeles.

Just google “at&t dropped calls los angeles” to see how bad it really is.

I’ll be taking my business lines as well as those of my family over to Verizon. I will hopefully have much better results!

Nokia E71

My Thoughts: Nokia sure knows how to build a beautiful, solid device with excellent aesthetics. I get so many compliments and questions about this phone! I ordered this after being frustrated with Blackberry and Apple.

Look, Feel and Durability : The operating system on this phone is Symbian. It is not very popular but I love it. The menus are pretty clearly laid out, customization is easy and the applications are pretty easy to install. It took me a few days to get the hang of how to use the phone and all of its features and I’m still discovering new ones all the time.  I love the physical keyboard and overall build of the phone. It’s very sleek and dare I say, sexy.

Apps and Email Connectivity: I only use a few apps and it was easy to find and install them for the Nokia. I like Snaptu for social networking, Google Mobile for search and the free Mail For Exchange. The setup of the connection to my exchange server was challenging to say the least, not very intuitive. But once I had it configured, it just worked.

Who’s it for? If you are the tinkering, DIY type then this device is great for you. Don’t expect any help at the AT&T store though, they do not have any training on supporting this device. It is also very challenging to buy accessories for this phone because the charger and headsets are all proprietary. Order these items from Amazon for the best selection.

Verdict? Great for the DIY, technically savvy user. Not the best choice for technology challenged folks.