# uptime 6:07am up 493 days, 23:19, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
Granted, all the box does is server an ipsec tunnel between the two offiecs at work, but that's still a nice uptime. We had to reboot the one out in MA this morning--I'm guessing it is dying a slow death. We'll see when we have to reboot this server.
My gripes about Reply All and Slow Connections have been solved for now.
I found that the reply-all was a residual problem caused by the Windows 2003 UpgradeMigration that our company did back in September. When there are multiple people in the address book with the same name, Outlook doesn't know which one is which when doing a reply all. In this case, there were multiples of me in my address book, and it didn't know which one was sending the email, so it didn't know if it should remove the one that was sending hte email. You'd think it would be able to tell by email address, or some sort of GUID or something, but alas it doesn't. I had created a new profile in the same install of Lookout to handle the new account. With both profiles, Lookout knew about two different address books (even though they were attached to different logins/accounts), and this got it confused. To solve the problem I got rid of the other profile and accompanying local files.
To correct the slow link problem, Jeromey was nice enough to point me to a KB article (870926) on Microsoft's website and a document entitled "Enabling a Superior Client Experience with Outlook 2003" that described cached exchange mode. I won't go into details, but I really don't understand why this isn't enabled by default on EVERY install (upgrade or otherwise) of Lookout 2003? I would think that it would greatly improve the performance not only of Lookout, but also the Exchange server.
I think the next step in improving general Windows networking from our remote office is to setup an Active Directory server at our office, and possibly put our exchange mailboxes on that server as well. That is currently in the works, and we'll see if that helps some of the other issues we are having with connecting to fileshares, etc.
Well, I guess security through obscurity is not the best way to go. Actually I knew this, but hadn't done anything about it.
This morning I opened my inbox to find over 600 new comments posted to my blog entries. I guess I have been found by the comment spammers. Up until this point I haven't had to worry about it, but this morning, after cleaning up all the crap comments, I installed MT-Blacklist to help at least a little bit.
I am re-enabling comments for now, but we'll see how well this does, and how long this lasts. As with any blacklist, it's only as good as the updates. If this causes more work that it's worth, I will have to look into something else.
This is something you don't see every day....
load average: 132.53, 359.10, 185.94
Wow.
As many of you know, tomorrow (tuesday) is Election Day here in the US. It is your duty to vote for the turd sandwich of your choice. If you don't vote, you cannot complain about how the country is being run.
In light of that, there was a very amusing message on my answering machine this evening. It was from the Republican party reminding me to vote tomorrow. This was not amusing because the call happened, but more because the lady that left the message sounded like she would be more enthusiastic about watching paint dry. For something that many people are so "flamboyant" about, this lady saw these phone calls as something that was keeping her away from Monday night TV--even though she probably volunteered for it.
Illinois is a "Strong Kerry" state, so regardless of who I vote for in the presidential election, it really doesn't matter.
I was going to leave my election reform stuff out, but couldn't resist touching on the issue. If I want to make a difference, I really believe that it starts at the state level. Get more independents into local office, and you will start to get rid of the two-party system that the current electoral college fosters and grows. If you really want your vote to count, this is the first step.
I even used being tags this time. I hope Nick and the W3C are happy.
