Corey Gouker's Machine Inside the Mind

I've been running Exchange 2007 for a while now. It was actually pretty quick to set up and maintaining it ever since hasn't required more than 5 minutes a month. There was the initial hurdle of needing the Edge Transport and the Hub Transport on different machines. Solved that with a 64-bit install of Server 2008 in a Hyper-V VM. Running your own Exchange server is definitely overkill, at the same time there's also something inherently geekishly cool about it. I mean I've got Outlook Web Access from anywhere and I can have one Outlook session download all my RSS feeds into Exchange which I can read anywhere or while mobile.

But why then have I removed 100% of the RSS feeds from Outlook and switched to Google Reader? Why now, am I considering becoming close friends with the Archive dialog and just keeping all my existing mail in a PST? Why am I considering just redirecting mail from my domains to a Gmail or Hotmail (oops sorry Windows Live Mail) account?

Email is the life force behind Microsoft, without it I'd be reduced to actually speaking to the person next to me , okay not really, I enjoy the cube work style at MS, I couldn't stand it if it were like Office Space but at MS it's a great social thing. Getting back to the point though, there are times where I'll email the person sitting next to me, it's just easier there's a record, and it usually moves work along. I couldn't give a percentage but Outlook is never closed, never. I don't know how many emails I get daily, the rules sort them all out.

Email at home... there isn't a whole lot to say about email at home. I get random red neck, McCain, and other weird emails from my Dad, I get emails from people warning about viruses and other crap which is usually fake or old, so I reply back with a link to the virus database or snopes.com. Oh and I get emails from family at Hotmail, at work, and 2 different domain addresses. The only other "real" email I get is all related to accounts I have online, whether it's NewEgg, Amazon, or the electric company. After that it's all spam, Exchange blocks it all, and I never see it. But when I look at my email for the past 3 months and see only 4 real emails that I've kept, WTF is the point!? Email for me personally at home is just dead.

So I don't know, I'm not sure why I even bother keeping my mail the way I do going back to the days of 1997. I should probably just export everything to a PST and then redirect all the mail to Hotmail then forget it, no reason to even import the old stuff really. Another option I have is to migrate my mail to a hosted Exchange account that's managed by the borg, even that seems like over kill.

Anyway, still not sure what I'm going to decide on, I've still got Outlook open at home, no real email since Thursday, I guess I should just start telling people that my email is dead and to never email me. Send me an instant message instead.

I really love Netflix and I'm sure I'll love it more once it's built into the Xbox. Still though there's a couple things I really want.

1. Maintain a complete history of every movie that I've been sent and have watched instantly. Denote these movies with a different icon or something. I can't really remember half the time if I've seen something or not. The rental history is obscure and annoying.
2. The new releases feature is kind of annoying now, not at all useful. I'm sure some love it, I personally hate it. What would serve me better and I'm sure anyone else who prefer home theaters to the overpriced counterparts would be a release history similar to what IMDB does for movie releases. Just list movies by release date in the theater from now until 6 months back. Even if the movie isn't on DVD yet at least then I could save it for later.
3. Allow me to share my list of watched movies in a nice view on the web more easily. Especially if it were possible to tag movies as "owned".

Heck, if there were a Media Center app to expose this that also worked on the Xbox as well that'd take care of one other little thing I'd like to have :).

I just moved to West Seattle and I love it. From the first day I woke up in my new place I think I knew I'd love it. I haven't even had a chance for everything to sink in and for me to discover all the new surroundings but no matter.

1. Running on Alki beach rules.
2. It reminds of all the good things I missed from SoCal, like the smell of salt water and real sandy beaches.
3. I'm close to everything, at least it feels that way. I've got a Safeway around the corner which I can walk to. Plus 10 other stores that I frequent.
4. Metro Market, PCC, and soon a Whole Foods. I went to Metro Market 2 miles from home and can only say that this place rules, and I'll probably stop buy most of my produce from Safeway or QFC. The yellow corn I bought today was the sweetest ever.
5. Real record stores within walking distance.
6. Sunday farmers market.
7. Awesome restaurants nearby.
8. Pagliacci pizza, best delivery I've ever had.
9. My commute to Issaquah is under 30 minutes, period.
10. There's a great feeling of being in a huge city like Seattle yet having the small town feel, people actually say hello and strike up conversation out and about.

I'm sure I'll end up having 10 things I hate, but so far, I can't really think of one. I think there's also something I love about the place I'm in, which was meant to be a half million dollar place but couldn't sell. So I'm getting a great deal on rent. One of the rooms is making for an awesome home theater and I can finally crank the volume up and can keep on having people over without any issues.

This rules!

Today I finally managed to prevent history from repeating. For the past two or three weeks I kept on thinking of stuff I needed to do before and after work. The odd thing is every single time I thought of something I'd make a mental note to remember it. Then I'd just forget it. I'd get to work or get home and realize how stupid I was for forgetting, and then... nothing. I'd not bother making a note to remind myself the next day.

Self defeating really, I know my memory sucks when it comes to a lot of stuff, why I don't make notes is things is beyond me. I guess I just figure it's a waste of paper and I'd lose track anyway. Making notes electronically doesn't work for me either since it's too slow and I never have the method for input readily available.

So the bottom line? Well, yesterday and today I broke out of it. Not sure why but I finally remembered to bring the Silk coffee creamer from the fridge at home into the one at work. Lame? Yes, but it's a perfect example of the crap I forget on a daily basis. In this case I bought the stuff over a week ago, and every day I'd arrive at work and forget it and slap myself mentally for being a dumb ass.

How to combat this mental block is beyond me. I just figured I'd finally remember to write about this sort of stuff instead of thinking, "oh I should make a note of that on my blog" then never doing it.