by ezs | Mar 21, 2008 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
(Not a rant; I’ve not had the Kool Aid or the Lobotomy yet..)
Really only of interest to US readers – those in Europe probably have no idea of the context here.
My 16 month old boy needed tympanostomy tubes (ear tubes or ear grommets) to drain off fluid from a recurring ear infection. A five minute procedure – but it does involve day surgery and a general anesthetic.
My previous health care benefits were excellent – friends in Utah kept telling us we had incredible insurance – with good coverage, choice and a reasonable deductible and co-pay. Even so we estimated that we would end up being around $750 out of pocket for the ear tubes.
Microsoft Health care is fully funded. No deduction from my pay; no co-pay; no deductible. Incredible.
Before I joined Microsoft everyone I knew who had joined raved about the benefits. Now I know it’s true.
Take a look at this: http://www.viewmyworld.com/ – especially the first video on Microsoft Perks.
by ezs | Mar 20, 2008 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
So what changed between running a laptop at Novell and Microsoft?
Desktop OS
Firstly my Novell laptop was primarily a Vista machine. I’ve been using Vista as my primary desktop since November 2006. It’s helped build a better ZENworks Configuration Management.
Microsoft is obviously standardised on Vista.
Collaboration
Email is the killer. I do miss a lot of the advanced features of GroupWise – particularly the email status tracking. Outlook/Exchange won’t show me the delivery/read/deleted status. GroupWise was a killer in knowing that your ‘red’ emails had been delivered and deleted without being opened.
I don’t miss GWIM at all; I still use Pidgin (formerly GAIM) as my IM client – running plugins to all of the major networks. I do really like the Unified Communications via Office Communicator and Outlook. One thing that Microsoft IT has done well is brought together IM, email, fax, voice and voice messaging into a single place.
Applications
Obviously most of the Microsoft internal sites are IE only. (Great UI, great user experience – but lots of ActiveX). I’m also running Firefox 3 Beta 4 – that’s my personal preference.
No OpenOffice – that’s a given; one thing that did surprise me was that everyone is using the newer Office 2007 doc formats; even to outside people.
Network and access
Wow. I was really impressed by the IT organisation. IPv6 on the wire; IPsec everywhere; smartcard and certificate security for wireless and remote access; Network Access Controls running with quarantine.
Certainly it’s given me some new ideas for my home network 🙂
by ezs | Mar 19, 2008 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
A new and faster server for the web site, blogs and photos.
by ezs | Mar 17, 2008 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
Back to the nightly builds. WordPress 2.5 beta 1 is sneaking out soon – and it’s running here.
Nice work on the admin UI – looks clean and fresh:
by ezs | Mar 15, 2008 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
Rumours were flying around last week – I even got a factually incorrect mention from Matt Asay on CNET which paid for this months hosting bill.
Well just to extinguish the rumours – I started with Microsoft – the Beast of Redmond, The Borg, the Monopolist – this week.
I’ll blog some time in the next day or so about my first week.
by ezs | Mar 8, 2008 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
In true geek style I’ve been using Backpack from 37signals for a while. I use it for work, planning and just keeping on top of projects. I also share it with Grania for packing lists when travelling and most importantly – the Honey-Do list.
Here’s an example:
Sheer joy. Coupled to an RSS feed so your feed reader can tell you when there’s more jobs put on the list.. 😉
As well as the household tasks I’m also spending the downtime updating the infrastructure. WordPress, Gallery2, plugins, anti-virus, patching, checking logs, cleaning logs – there’s a lot to be done.
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