b2 consulting blog

Disclaimer: This has nothing to do with technology.

I’ve had a lot of dreams. When I was in junior high, I wanted to be a brain surgeon. As it turns out, my fingers were too big (and it ended up being way more school than I was willing to do). Then, my last year of high-school, I was into SCUBA diving, and I wanted to get into marine biology. Which is why I ended up at UC Santa Barbara…for a year.

Long story short, I ended up getting a degree in music. Specifically, I got a degree in classical vocal performance.

Here is a secret. Well, it isn’t really a secret. The one singer that everyone who is a vocal music major listens to is Luciano Pavarotti. Sure it makes sense for tenors to listen to him. His phrasing, his…heart. The way he effortlessly hit the high notes. Simply amazing. And yet, he transcended the singular voice definition. Sure the sopranos listened to Callas, but they check out Pavarotti as well. Baritones may have Fischer-Dieskau, but they heard the “King of the High C’s” . In short, there may be no more famous singer short of Caruso (who has his part in Bay Area history).

Sure he pimped out his voice in the latter part of his career. Sure his choice of singing partners off the operatic stage is…questionable at best.

But, when he brought it, he God Damn well brought it. He made more people realize that opera could be relevant, heart-felt, even beautiful, than any other person in modern history. His is a shadow that will not be easily filled.

Do yourself a favor. Imagine you are a painter unjustly thrown in prison. As you wait for dawn (and your death) to arrive, you write a farewell note to your lover. And then you sing one of the most beautiful pieces ever written for the human voice.

Go find a copy of Pavarotti singing E lucevan le stelle (from Tosca). Find a quiet place, turn down the lights and listen. You will not be sorry.

Soon (which in IT speak means in the next 30 days) I will be trying out a new appliance. It is an antispam device that has gotten a (very) few good reviews. An associate has already placed one on-site at a client’s firm and is very impressed. So, I am filled with hope, like a giddy school girl.

More once it is in place and up for a while.

Ok. I know. Picking on Microsoft is like picking on Ma Bell, or the Go’ment, or some other huge faceless entity. However, there is a major issue with what is otherwise a pretty cool piece of software.

As a small firm IT consultant, I work with a lot of small firms (duh). And, often times these firms are just beyond (or way beyond) what a peer-to-peer network can provide. And, in what is a pretty cool piece of software, Microsoft provides server software for the small business. It is called Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003, and it is pretty slick. Fairly easy to set up, and it comes with Exchange (and, if you pony up the cash for the premium software), SQL. All in all, a pretty sweet setup. With one major problem…when you go to replace it.

Since it insists on being the root of the domain, and since you cannot install two SBS boxes on the same domain for any real length of time, it can be a pain. Especially if you want to keep the same domain name. Even the white pages from MS state: “The source server and the destination server must have different full DNS names for the internal domains, as well as different NetBIOS domain names.” Which means that everything in the office that points to DomainA must now point to DomainB. And, while you can change a domain name after the fact, it is not fun. In fact, the Active Directory Migration Tool (ADMT) is no fun at all, and seemed to neither migrate everything, nor be an effective tool. Trust me; I did this twice, and each time it took over 24 hours with significant downtime.

But, to step to the rescue, are the fine folks at SBSMigration.com. And, while they effectively just rebundle available information, they do it in a pretty straight-forward manner. So, when I had to do my last migration, I was able to move a company of 25 users to a new server, from SBS 2003 – SBS 2003 in a weekend with about 6 hours of downtime, and most of that was because I was also re-wiring the network closet and dealing with slow USB ports for data transfer.

So, if you are looking for a migration solution, throw the folks at SBSMigration.com $200 and save yourself some sanity.

Oh…and the tools mentioned in the manuals are vaperware…but they weren’t needed anyway.

I have a friend. And this friend believes that if you are going to make a comment that is negative, you should start with two positives. For example: “Hey; I like what you are doing with your hair. You also look like you lost some weight. By the way, that tattoo is hideous, and should be removed from my sight.”

Well, I’m going to do something similar…except, I’m going to start with a positive, and end with two negatives…assuming I can remember what the second one is.

Here is why I love Macs, and why I use one in my day-to-day work, even though (or, perhaps because) I am around PCs all of the time. This week, I was at a client’s office, and I needed to print something. So, I fired up my mac, found what I needed to print, and searched for Bonjour-enabled printers, and printed. I didn’t have to find and download drivers, I didn’t have to run around the office to find printers; it just worked.

Hello. Welcome to the blog for b2 consulting. In this, I will post blurbs, insights, complaints, etc. Most, but not all, will be tech related. I will also link to interesting fixes I come across throughout my travails as an independent consultant. I hope you enjoy your stop here. Feel free to sit down with your favorite beverage and kick back.

Ben