Corey Gouker's Machine Inside the Mind

I'm sitting exhausted at my desk which I've just finally finished setting up again. I'm too exhausted to even begin to properly write about the entire move and the past 4 days. Needless to say I've arrived safely in Redmond. My only injury was a cut to my right index finger while wearing some latex gloves. Quite cool actually since the skin never got cut, it just bubbled up with blood (that is till I cut it). Yes, too much information, but never mind. My ego was also nicely demolished when I realized just how weak I've become since losing access to my weight machine at my Mom's place. I tried lifting an 18x24x24 inch box filled with books and while I was able to get it into the 10' U-Haul I nearly fell over backwards. So after getting the box into the truck I decided it would be best if I removed half the books before trying to lift the box once more onto another box to hold other stuff tightly behind it. I have to, and I mean have to, start using the facilities that are available here. 24 hours access to a heated pool, gym, sauna, and get this... a tanning bed. I'm not sure about the last two. Mostly because I'm fine not having a tan, it's how people know I'm a geek. But geez do I miss having my gym and a pool.

So what else? Well I'm NEVER moving again (lies!), and I've realized that no matter how much I plan and how well I start out things just go pear shaped sooner or later. Case in point. I had everything fitting nicely till I got the truck filled to about 20% capacity. After that I realized there's no way I could pack properly and manage to fit everything and be able to unload it easily. So at this point I just started placing stuff where I could. I've also realized that no matter how tired I get I'll be fine in the end; no matter how daunting the task may seem I'll probably get lucky like always and have some amazing story to tell about how it all worked out. Lastly, a piece of advice. Never ever take twice the recommended dosage of No-Doz... Your body will not stop shaking for at least a day.

With that I say good night, or good morning. I've got my speakers set up nicely and have the Riven soundtrack to fall asleep to at last. Tomorrow I must finish unpacking everything, sorting everything, shopping for some essentials (why the hell didn't they provide at least a temporary shower curtain?), and who knows what else. After all that is finished by what I hope will be 5PM, I'll finally be able to fix my NewsGator problem (annoyed with blogs going into parent folders because of NewsGator Online folders) then catch up with the rest of the world. Oh and, once again, thank you Dom for not only flying down but driving my car up in one piece; thank you also to my neighbor who helped me unload half of the U-Haul till 3AM. You said you had a blog running next door, as soon as I get the URL I'll link accordingly .

So after a nightmarish search for a moving company and every one of them saying that I'm nuts for trying to get a mover to do 775 pounds worth of stuff I've been given a solution!

Dom has *cough* graciously *cough* offered to have me fly him from SEA to SJC. He can then drive my car back up to Washington so that I can drive the 10' U-Haul up, trailing him by half the distance.

Dom you're not a doormat, you're brilliant, and I owe you big time!
Thanks a million.

Thanks to Alex Seigler and Dom for pointing me in the right direction on this one. Last night after Dom and I tried figuring out the inner workings of using ldifde and dsquery I ended up stumbling along and found KB842273. Which I then figured would work since Alex copied over some output which I've not got a clue how he pulled out still, dsquery maybe? At any rate my public folder store ended up getting the alias corey@ when I tried fooling with the default recipient policy. It looks like when I did that Exchange added a corey*@ to every place that had or could have an address. Anyway I just followed the blue bits and got things sorted.

1. Start the Active Directory Service Interface (ADSI) Edit tool. To do this, click Start, click Run, type adsiedit.msc in the Open box, and then click OK.
   Note ADSI Edit is included with the Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Support Tools and with the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Support Tools. To install the Windows 2000 Support Tools, double-click Setup.exe in the Support\Tools folder on the Windows 2000 CD. To install the Windows Server 2003 Support Tools, double-click Suptools.msi in the Support\Tools folder on the Windows Server 2003 CD.
2. Connect to a domain controller if you are not already connected.
3. Note In this step, "contoso.com" is a placeholder for your domain name, and the other italic words are also placeholders.
   Expand Configuration Container [computername.contoso.com], expand CN=Configuration,DC=contoso,DC=com, expand CN=Services, expand CN=Microsoft Exchange, expand CN=OrganizationName, expand CN=Administrative Groups, expand CN=AdministrativeGroupName, expand CN=Servers, expand CN=ExchangeServerName, expand CN=InformationStore, and then click CN=First Storage Group.
4. In the right pane, right-click CN=Public Folder Store (EXCHANGESERVERNAME), and then click Properties.
5. In the Select which properties to view list, click Both.
6. In the Select a property to view list, click proxyAddresses.
7. In the Value(s) box, determine whether an e-mail address is assigned. Typically, the public folder store is stamped with a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) address that appears similar to the following:
   SMTP:ExchangeServerName-IS@contoso.com (for me it had something similar to this plus SMTP:corey@auroravisions.com)
8. In the Select a property to view list, click mail.
9. In the Value(s) box, verify the SMTP address is the same as the SMTP address that is displayed in step 7.

Anyway, removing the somewhat hidden proxy address for the public folder store fixed things quite well. In Outlook all the mail that already came in as Public Folder Store (Server Name) still remains that way, but I think if I delete the .OST and let Outlook sync all over again from scratch that that might fix things in Outlook, not too sure about that one.

Oh and I'm still trying to figure out an easy way of migrating from a IIS NNTP file system store to an Exchange NNTP public folder store. I'm afraid if this doesn't actually get sorted soon I may switch back. Oh well.

UPDATE: Deleting the .OST and letting Outlook recreate it didn't change the previous emails which showed the To as Public Folder Store (Server Name). So I guess I'll just have to ignore those.

After much searching and a pretty large Excel spreadsheet plus countless phone calls to countless property managers I've finally picked an apartment. It's the 2 bed 1 bath path seen here. I ended up getting them to do a 6 month lease for $883 a month. Which is quite good compared to all the others I was looking at. There was this one place, Lionsgate, that was really really nice but outrageously expensive.

Pluses... I should still be close enough to ride a bike to work. I'm 5770 from the CO, RDMDWAXA, so 6000/768 service from SpeakEasy on OneLink is easily available. Line quality tests come back excellent as well.

Minuses... It's not walking distance to work. Would've liked to been able to bring my coydog up from my Mom's place in Joshua Tree. Can't really think of any others right off hand, unless of course I have annoying neighbors that don't like Zep late at night .

I should be out of here hopefully a couple days after Sam's left. It seems as if any mover I go with will take a day or two or three so ideally I should have my stuff packed the day Sam leaves. Wow! Talk about stressful, loads to do and loads to pack. This time I think I'll definitely try and get all the geek stuff into the car without the boxes.

Bah, I hate moving!

Well Dom now knows and I saved one long rant about how big of a twat I am for trying to surprise him only to end up pissing him off.

So before I left for Vegas after much discussion with Dom, who gave pretty good advice, I decided on Archstone Redmond Campus for their last 1 bedroom apartment which was on the top floor. I called up the girl, Tracy, and gave her my details and gave her my email address to send me the PDF's so I could FedEx the paperwork over before I had to try and get some sleep that night (I even printed the label). Waited till 5 minutes before 6 and still no email, called again and spelled out my email once more and she confirmed that she had it right and that she'd send it straight away. Still nothing. Called back 10 minutes later and they were now closed so I left a message.

Left at about 5AM the next morning for Vegas in the pouring rain. It didn't stop raining once while I was driving. At one point when Alex's Belkin GPS software running on his PPC Phone said we were off road we were driving through snow at about 75mph. That was fun. Alex and Sam fell asleep on and off and I having only slept about 30 minutes since waking up the day before at about 11AM was still going strong. At some point along the I5 we stopped at Starbucks and had Alex's famous quad espresso. Still going strong. Went through hundreds of tumbleweeds then at some point finally decided to switch with Alex and let him drive my 2 door Accord. I don't really remember falling asleep but I'd guess I got about an hours rest.

We get in, condo is great, nice, better than my dinky 1 bedroom apartment in San Jose. After having a quick break and changing we hit the show floor with the exhibitor passes that MS graciously provided MVP's. Tony Hynes was there which was slightly unexpected but awesome. Susan Leiter, who I'd met a number of times before at previous events was also there. Sam was worried the entire time about whether or not she'd get in and whether she'd also get to be another brilliant exhibitor . All was fine as usual when you're in the hands of the MVP peeps.

DMD MVP shindig and I'm exhausted. I don't remember anything at all except that Zeb and Matt were bugging me about only having 1 drink even though I was driving us back to the condo and still had had very little to eat that day and even less sleep.

Bright and early on Saturday (?) had a semi decent brunch buffet at can't remember where then back to the show floor. Parking was crap. Tram was crap (the bloody thing ran on wheels) and it cost $3 each trip with a day pass being $10, RIP OFF! Felt sick the entire time on the show floor from the excess amounts of caffine from the previous day. Candice Pederson and Susan saved us again with water and some Aleve. What a difference that made, we were actually able to walk around now. Starbucks queue was ridiculous so we passed. Didn't see ANY other MVP's on the show floor which was odd. That night the MVP meet up was nice at the foundation room of the House of Blues. Chris Hassler was there from Idaho, forgot he was going. Got to meet with Amir Majidmehr and argue briefly with Pirillo about whether or not it was really likely some person would download a random WMA/V with the “DRM exploit”, etc. Not to mention some other WMP annoyances like the lack of quick access to any track via a Jump hot key. Went for food after with Joel, Kasey, Matt, Zeb, Alex, Chris, and Ponzi, and “her/she” aka Sam. Sam and I sat with Chris and Ponzi and had a nice chat about the entire woman vs. beast type thing. I decided geeks really can get laid. Went home, fell asleep, don't remember anything after that (obviously because I wasn't awake).

Left condo at 10AM, had breakfast at Bellagio (?). Better than the day before, but still bad. Alex was working on a Home Screen plugin for the SMT5600 for some WA based company and needed it finished like 2 days ago so went to work on it in the car to send it out via the SmartPhone... All that just to convince Attgular to keep offering the SMT5600. Oh well, what he was doing seemed cool and hopefully Cingular will like it. Started the drive back which ended up being like 2 iirc. Yet more rain. At some point before the I5 I switch with Alex and the rain just stops! WTH!? Stop at Starbucks and grab a Subway at the same time. We sit at this small table and Sam places her bag under the table without me noticing, so when we leave I never think to ask her if she grabbed it. We were all extremely tired. Alex gets us back at some point before midnight and takes off in his Jeep. Then Sam's Dad calls to tell her that a guy from Starbucks called him on her mobile to say that she's left the bag. Sam freaks, I laugh, and say oh well, don't worry about it. Immediately I figure it's too far to drive. Like 8 hours, an entire day lost, ~$30 worth of gas. Cuddle her to say it's okay and not to worry because her geek boyfriend will take care of it without even leaving the house. Call up FedEx give them my account number and say that I need a purse picked up from Starbucks in Buttonwillow. So that's all taken care of. Call up Starbucks at 12:45AM and tell them to expect FedEx and to make sure the bag is safe along with a note explaining to whoever will be working there later.

Monday morning and I check for my email from Archstone and nothing. Call up and find out that she didn't send the email and that they've leased the place to someone who actually came in on Saturday or Sunday. Now looking for another place in Redmond or Bellevue, tired, annoyed, and totally out of it. Then later I notice a SMS from Jon and he's said that he was feeling ill last night and is now on the way to the hospital. The, uh, oh crap, moment happens, tell Dom, call Jon's cell, of course it's off being in a hospital and all (stupid stupid stupid rules). Send him a SMS from Messenger. Call his home number and talk to his Mom who's said she's in the “emerg” with his Dad and that it's probably appendicitis. So I guess we'll find out how that and my apartment end up tomorrow morning.

Obviously by writing this I'm letting him know something is up. Of course he doesn't have a clue. Sadly that also means I can't write anything here yet till I make up my mind, luckily this won't affect the outcome of Dom's shock one way or another. What to do... Whatever I decide I've got to do it in the next day so I can decide by the 20th 

Well, I'm not sure what I did but I definitely can't seem to get it back. Basically I was fooling with Exchange 2003 the other day trying to migrate my one NNTP group from the old IIS file system store to Exchange's Public Folder store. Tried and failed at that, with the only semi suggestion from a MVP that I:

“Setup another Exchange box, pull the newsgroups into PFs on it, create a replica on the one you intend to use, turn off the FS based NNTP, turn on Exchange, break replica, remove temp server from organization. That's what I'd do, at least.”

Sure I could do this since I've already got Exchange setup on a VPC but that seems like such a hassle. At any rate, I started messing with something else. I ended up getting it set up so that NewsGator would store my feeds on the server that way I could read them and such through OWA and maintain the state of them across the laptop and desktop. Quite cool really.

At this point I'm not sure what I did, I think I looked at and applied the Default Recipient Policy (Exchange System Manager - Recipients - Recipient Policies). I remember adding the removing the other property page as well as applying the default policy again. Other than that I honestly can't remember doing anything else. I'm using a really awesome tool that Dominic wrote that allows me to just edit a nice little XML file and magically have catch-alls, forwards, and the like in Exchange (something I needed to have from MDaemon).

Anyway ever since that day I've been getting mail delivered to my account catch-all with a To line of PUBLIC FOLDER STORE (SERVER NAME). It's really pissing me off since I've no idea how to undo whatever I did. I'm also trying to figure out how I allow myself to email one of the catch-all aliases that Dom's tool handles from my cgouker@ account. So for example, email corey@ from cgouker@. Right now Exchange doesn't like that, I get a lovely “The message reached the recipient's e-mail system, but delivery was refused.  Attempt to resend the message.  If it still fails, contact your system administrator. <element.auroravisions.com #5.2.1>”. If anyone has any ideas on these 3 issues please comment!