New Year, New Blog
Just as I promised, with the new year starts a new semester, and so will my thesis project. From here on out, I'll be attempting to focus on it during my entries, and point out interesting things that I find.
Today's entry, however, is not so good. Remember that idea I had a few months ago about controlling Xen machines from a control panel? Yeah, it's been done. Over and over and over. I discovered this after I got approval for my idea, leaving me with a problem - do I keep going, knowing that I'll be duplicating the work? Do I abandon the idea of writing my own and attempt to patch (or even fork) that other little project known as Ganeti? (After all, I do have a few ideas to make it even better which they don't appear to have implemented.)
Nobody said this project was going to be easy, and I just hit frustration #1 - dealing with how I thought I had a great idea, while it's actually been done. I'm sure I'll learn quite a bit in the process if I continue, but should I give up and change topics? Do I accept the fact that the CS world is filled with really smart people (such as those at Google who came up with Ganeti) and continue on anyway? After all, not every single MSCS student in the country can come up with something new.
Is the process about learning new things for oneself, or generating new things for the industry in general by building on existing research?
Exchange 2007 Sucks
I write this post as a response to a friend's Facebook wall posting. I started to write a response to him, and ended up writing this much-longer-than-allowed entry instead.
My employer has moved to Exchange 2007 twice. The first time, it was completely unusable for Mail.app users, which also happen to be 100% of our development team. Of course, that's not going to fly. We moved back to 2003, time passed, patches were distributed, and it became time to move again. We're still on it after this current move.
So, why does Exchange 2007 suck? Oh how I can count the ways.
- The CLI (PowerShell) sucks. "Get-ExchangeMailbox -identity blah ..." is incredibly, unnecessarily verbose. It's like it tries to get GUI people to realize the power of a CLI, making it needlessly complex and wordy. This could be made better if tab completion gave you a list of options, like in Bash, but instead it picks the first option. Therefore, you have a 1/n chance that it'll actually be the item you want, less so if the first command (alphabetically speaking) is one you use less often. You might as well not implement it at that point. Also, I wouldn't have a problem with the CLI if the GUI wasn't half-assed - IMAP and POP3 GUIs didn't even show up until SP1.
- IMAP is a second class citizen. This goes for POP3 as well, though we don't have many (any?) users on it at this point. Mail.app used to speed along just fine with Exchange 2003, and now it's a dog on 2007. Granted, I have thousands of email messages in my Inbox, but I never had a problem before. Please fix this, so I don't have to wait 5 minutes in the morning just to get my email.
- Creating mailboxes is slower than before. I used to be able to create mailboxes when I created the user account. This is no longer the case, requiring me to log in to another application after the user's been created just to create a mailbox for them. Why?!
- Performance in general sucks. I am 100% certain that I could serve the same number of mailboxes on a PII or PIII server running Linux and get better performance than the quad core, 4G RAM, 10K in RAID 1 server we bought specifically for this purpose. Logging in to Server 2008 is incredibly laggy, waiting for the Admin Console to open up is even slower. Pathetic. Did I mention this is on Gigabit ethernet?
- Backups? Nah. Their "backup solution" sucks. On the aforementioned Linux box, I could rsync the backups to another folder, or another server, onsite or off. Cost: $0. Exchange 2007, however, is no longer compatible with the old ntbackup system. You need to get (read: purchase) Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007, a product with a horribly long name and dumb limitations. I'll admit, the shadow copy system is really nice; I like knowing that I could restore down to within an hour of a problem. Want to do offsite storage? HAHA, I don't think so, not without a tape drive. Yes, we use disks since we're small enough that they're economical. Also, we can't send a tape over the VPN to a different part of the country, can we? Nope. Of course, you could buy Cristalink's Firestreamer product to simulate a drive and use a file as a "tape" - but that'll cost you another $250.
- SSL? Don't need that either! I don't care if SMTP sends messages in plain text - I want to secure the connections between our clients and our servers with SSL to protect passwords! What happened to this? It was in 2003...
So, as it should be plainly obvious by now, Exchange 2007, despite it's new bells and whistles (which, incidentally, cost more money), sucks at its core functionality - being a mail server.
Whoops, Skipped October
Looks like I skipped October, and almost missed November too. So, quick update for everyone:
- Still taking classes @ CSUCI for my MS degree. Wrapping up Data Mining and Network Computing this semester, and moving on to Advanced Database Systems next semester while starting my thesis. Perhaps I'll use my blog as a sort of public thesis notebook. Not like I've been using it for much else these days.
- Went to Missouri twice; once in October for High Ed Web, and last weekend for some unfortunate reasons which I won't go into. However, I did learn how to kill, skin, and prepare hogs to become goodies like ham, bacon, and sausage. Sorry, didn't take photos - I was already getting called one of the "California kids" and didn't need the rednecks to have more reasons to make fun of me!
- Went to Disneyland on Halloween with Leigh Ann to start our annual passes we picked up at Costco. Unfortunately, our night at the Disneyland Hotel for last weekend had to be postponed due to last weekend's unexpected trip, but we've rescheduled for January, and I'm definitely looking forward to it. Who wants to go with us during December sometime to see the Christmas decorations?
And that about wraps it up, which is why there hasn't been much here lately. Oh well.
Oh, and before I forget, my past post about that MS mouse was wrong - the charging cradle supposedly plugs into the wall. Now if only I could actually find that thing for a reasonable price.
Is Bluetooth Too Much To Ask For?
I consider myself to be pretty easy-going when it comes to hardware input devices for computers. If I have a keyboard that is easy to type on, and a mouse that has more than 2 buttons and a scroll wheel, I'm happy.
Apparently though, I've come up with a requirement that's hard to satisfy. All I want is a full-sized Bluetooth mouse that doesn't come in a $150 keyboard + mouse set. By using Bluetooth, I won't have to plug anything into my computer; it'll "just work."
I first tried the Apple Mighty Mouse, and returned it after about a week of "maybe it will grow on me today." The scroll ball is pretty slick, but I just find the thing too uncomfortable to hold, and I grew frustrated with its inability to accurately discern which finger I had clicked with.
Next, I've found the Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 8000. Looks good so far. Except it has a catch - the batteries are rechargeable, and it requires a USB port to power the cradle. So, your wireless mouse still requires a USB port. Bummer. I guess I could use an AC adapter with a USB port on it, but that's a bit of a hack.
Logitech, my other preferred keyboard and mouse manufacturer, has nothing. The di Novo keyboard set does look slick, but I happen to like my Apple Wireless keyboard, and it's a bit of a stretch to buy a $160 keyboard and mouse set just for a mouse.
Seriously, is it too much to ask? Full-sized (not notebook) Bluetooth mouse. That's all I want. Apple met my requirements, but failed with the design. Microsoft still requires a USB port for it's Bluetooth wireless mouse, though not 100% of the time. Logitech doesn't even offer anything. I guess I'll have to try the Microsoft one, but it's really not ideal.