Jason Powell - Church IT and Other Musings

coComment ... hooray! It does what it claims...

When I first heard about coComment I was pumped ... a tool that would track all the comments left on a blog post.  Problem was it only tracked the comments left by other users of coComment ... booo.

A few weeks ago the coComment folks released a new improved version which they claimed would finally let you see all comments posted on any particular blog post you wanted.  I was hopeful they got it right and started using coComment again full time.

I'm pleased to report that this product works as advertised.  I can easily track the comments left on a particular post I've commented on ... OR ... track the comments without even leaving a comment myself (nice!). 

It's really simple to setup and use.  They walk you through the steps ... but basically you create a browser favorite in IE, Firefox, Safari, or Opera and add it as a link ... 

Find a post you want to leave a comment on and click the coComment favorite before you submit your comment.  A small box will appear allowing you to add a tag if you so desire ...

If you want to track comments but not leave one yourself ... just click to leave a comment but don't fill any of the fields .. click the coComment favorite and a small box will appear under the comments area ... check the "track conversation" box

To view comments left on the posts your tracking you have 2 options.

1 - visit the coComment website and you'll see all the posts your tracking and the related comments ... along with other details and options.  (note: I'm only tracking my own blog comments for the purpose of making the following pretty graphic ;-)

Option 2 - you can subscribe to your coComments RSS feed ... and see all the comment threads you're tracking via your fav RSS reader ... in my case it's bloglines

So ... as a review I'm quite pleased with coComment.  I don't leave many comments, but when I do it's nice to see follow ups that might be directed to me.  And the ability to track comments with leaving one yourself is quite handy as well :-)
I doesn't yet with with all blogs ... for instance I have found that it does not work with Engadget's blog ... but the coComment folks say they're working on intergration with more blog engines.

So head on over to cocomment.com and check it out for yourself ...

July 28 - System Administrator Appreciation Day!

If you missed it ... today was System Administrator Appreciation Day.  http://www.sysadminday.com/

The day's not over ... send your IT staff a big thank you before they cry all weekend for being forgotten ... once again.

Mac Users Invade part 2

Several of you commented about wanting to know how our "bridging the gap" meeting went.  I decided to let our uber mac volunteer Brian run the meeting while I was working on other projects ... I figured dialogue might be more open if it was strictly mac users only :-)

Ed and I did get pulled into the meeting later once they were actually working to resolve issues.

Brian left a comment on my prior post which I'm going to post here in case you missed it:
Brian says...

Regarding the top 10 list, there were two consistent themes, email and printing.

Here's the list that we came up with:
1. Integration with Exchange
2. Printing
3. Mounted drives locking up Finder

We never got to point 4.

There are a few options for integration with Exchange and each option provides varying degrees of success.
1. Microsoft Entourage
2. Integrate Mail.app with Exchange
3. Outlook Web Access
4. Use Evolution
5. Replace Exchange with an open solution

I've never liked Entourage much, I found the interface cluttered and cumbersome. Moreover, it tends to be problematic because it depends upon option 3 to function properly. Changes to OWA have a tendency to break Entourage.

Mail.app seems to work well, however, it doesn't hide non-mail IMAP folders, causing questions such as "Why doesn't my Calendar work in Mail?". In order to create a Exchange account, the exchange server needs to accept IMAP requests.

I'm reviewing Evolution as a possible Exchange client for our next IT meeting.

Printing issues are due primarily to two factors, incorrect configuration or lack of driver support. Resolving these issues is usually possible since OS X uses the same printing engine that Linux uses. This fact enables OS X to use most of the printer drivers that are available on Linux machines. Visit http://linuxprinting.org for a complete list of drivers.

Older PCL based printers tend to be more problematic. In Panther, OS X was able to utilize PCL printer drivers, but this appears to have changed in Tiger. I need to do more research on that. Perhaps the extensive support for PDF output necesitated dropping rasterized drivers such as PCL. More research is needed. In the meantime, I will be setting up a Linux print server and making it's printers available to OS X clients via CUPS broadcasting.

So to summarize everything, we've got some work to do in order to complete the invasion. Till then, keep smiling and be patient. I'll do my best to resolve all of our issues.
----------------------------------------------------

For those interested here's a PDF doc from apple on Active Directory integration with OSX.

Download Leveraging_AD_on_MOSXS_1.1.pdf

I watched Brian add the macs into AD ... it wasn't too complicated although I'd need some screenshots to rememeber how to do it again.

David Drinnon of Second Baptist says they use this product with great results to manage their macs via Active Directory http://www.thursby.com/products/admitmac.html

By nights end it seemed like everyone was feeling very positive about the experience and some pain points were reduced.  From here out it'll be mainly one-on-one interactions with Brian to tweak on each persons individual needs.

Brian has also contacted some regional Apple dude and is setting up a meeting for him to come to GCC, see what our mac guys are doing, and hopefully figure out ways to support our guys better.

We still don't support Macs and I doubt ever will ... but thanks to volunteers like Brian we're doing what we can to help "bridge the gap".

Hugs and kisses to all my mac homies!

PS ... please don't leave stupid comments about how you think PC's suck, macs are superior and we should just switch to all macs.  You obviously are clueless about IT and your comment will be deleted.  :-)

Shelby Systems "Arena" coming Jan 07

Jon over at CCV let the cat out of the bag today on his blog ... Shelby Systems purchased CCV's membership system and it will be available for purchase Jan '07.  Product is called Arena and they have a teaser website up and running.

Yup...this is the browser based system Tony Dye got to see last month that "really impressed" him.

We all knew it was just a matter of time before other ChMS vendors followed Fellowship Technology and created a browser based product.  Nothing like a little competition to make things interesting :-)

Rick Warren is blogging

Bob over at OSMinistry.com mentioned today that Rick Warren of 40 Day's of Purpose fame is now blogging over at www.rickwarren.com

Kewl!  Welcome to the blogosphere Rick!

Another Church IT Blog to Check Out

Here's a great blog to add to your RSS reader ... http://www.anchorite.org/blog/

Andrew Mitry is the Director of Technology at St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Church of Washington DC, and Little Flock Christian School in Fairfax, Virginia overseeing 120 clients and 12 servers.

Andrew's got a couple of very indepth posts on their open source VOIP, DansGuardian and SpamAssassin implementations.  I was also very interested in his switch from Vonage to PhoneGnome as I've been contemplating a move to Vonage ... PhoneGnome sounds very interesting and I'll def give it a look now.

Geeks for Jesus!

How to make email REALLY SLOW!

Step #1 - Have very little experience with Ubuntu Linux

Step #2 - Install an Ubuntu virtual machine on the same physical server as your virtual Exchange backend server.  This is extremely simple to do with VMware Server ... gotta love VMware!!

Step #3 - Give the Ubuntu VM a Gig of ram and allow it to utilize both/all processors on your physical server.

UPDATE:  hmm, no guesses yet?  Here's a big hint ...
Step #4 - Leave Ubuntu unattended for 10 minutes then watch your processor get pegged!

SO ... can you guess what caused our email slowness?  Perhaps this graph of CPU utilization over time from Tuesday will be helpful ...

Mac users invade!

Most of our mac users came tonight to our first 'bridging the gap' meeting. Purpose was to meet our new mac guru volunteer and figure out where they're experiencing pain and ways to make their lives easier on a windows domain.

Very positive feedback ... the gap is shrinking! ;-)

Jason Powell ... sent from my Treo mobile phone

Home run baby!

Sox 1 Twins 0 Top of the 5th

update:  It's 1:36am and we just got home from the White Sox game ... free tickets rule!  I don't follow baseball, but this was our second experience to a major league park and it was great.  (last year we scored free Cubs tickets)

We were seated in the highest row and the view was quite good.  Comparing the Sox field to Cubs I'd have to say I like the Sox better.  Big screens, loud music, good crowd interaction, nice facilities (Kim commented how clean the restrooms were), easy close parking ... and considerably less distance from home esp if dealing with rush hour traffic.  Sorry Tom I have no allegiance to the Cubbies ;-)

tickets = free!
parking = $18
peanuts = $3.25
making family memories = priceless
somehow escaping rush hour traffic jams on the Dan Ryan (while under major construction!) = a miracle of God!

Where am I?

Guess where I am right now on this monday evening..

Blogging directly from my treo is pretty sweet ;-)

Jason Powell ... sent from my Treo mobile phone