General Election on April 1

I’m not trying to ruffle feathers here. In fact, politics is becoming too much like sports. This is not Yankees-Red Sox. We can disagree and still be friends like that new Sheraton NCAA commercial.

The April 1 election is right around the corner. I know you (the three of you out there who read this) have all been dying for my endorsements. Now, you might be thinking “That’s rather presumptuous for one to think their endorsements matter.” You’d be right, but that doesn’t stop the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Editorial Board, does it? (By the way, what sort of diversity can one expect to find in a 21^st Century newspaper staff, especially the Milwaukee JS?)

My endorsements are pretty much the opposite of theirs. Which brings up a good story: One year, I was clueless about the MPS School Board Election. I was driving to the polls after work and wondered how I would make an educated decision in the race. It took me a scant sixty seconds to call MTEA (the Milwaukee Teachers’ Union), ask who they endorsed, and write down the names. I got to the booth, made sure to vote for the opponent of the MTEA endorsee, and voila! How does that go? The enemy of my enemy is my friend. (With the exception of the USSR in WWII, of course.) With that in mind, here are my choices…

City of Milwaukee

• Mayor: Tom Barrett – Like we have a choice.  At least he got Chief Flynn, right?
• Alderman, 5^th District: Jim Bohl – Right on taxes, spending, and crime. As if that weren’t enough, I’ve known him since I was four, and he sends his kids to Our Redeemer.
  
• Attorney: Grant Langley – Does Pedro Colon really need to be on another public payroll?

Milwaukee County

• County Supervisor: Scott Walker – God help us If he loses.
• County Supervisor, 15^th District: – Undecided, and leaning heavily toward Lynne De Bruin. Not enough details from Mr. Wyckclendt.
  

State of Wisconsin

• Supreme Court: Michael Gableman – This is the other big one. Judges are judges, legislators are legislators, and never should the twain meet. The world would be more perfect were I able to correctly substitute “shall” for “should”.
  

Happy voting!!!

The Real James Bond

I’m currently reading my fifth James Bond book by Ian Fleming. I’d venture a rough guess that maybe 1% of people who have seen a 007 film have actually read one of the books. Too bad, because they’re missing out. I love watching the Bond Flicks, but compared to the books, that James Bond is a caricature, not a character. Real characters are flawed, have feelings, and don’t always win. Other observations on the printed bond:

• The Soviet union (namely SMERSH) is usually the enemy, not S.P.E.C.T.R.E. or the megalomaniac du jour. Fleming did take license with SMERSH’s scope and size.
• Bond is much less the playboy in the books. My readings have only seen him with one woman per story (if at all)
• There are virtually no gadgets from Q Branch (I have not seen a character by the name of Q)
• Bond often uses disguise in his exploits
• Bond drinks more than Vodka Martinis, shaken not stirred.  That’s a whole different subject. 

The only thing I’d change about the books is the racy cover art. They make the books seem racier/slimier than they are.

Stuff White People Like

My colleague and homeboy Matt sent me this blog link. Be sure to check out the full list as well.

Adieu’ Bucky

I wish I could say I was saddened at the spanking Wisconsin took tonight, but I can’t. Jackson and I were pulling for Davidson all the way. It could have been Schadenfreude from a Marquette fan, or it could be that a small liberal arts college is more my speed than a big monstrosity where it’s possible to die and never be missed in a senior-level class.

For those of you who are shocked, know the Wildcats played Duke, UNC, and UCLA tight to open the season. What I saw was the better team winning. Don’t take my word for it; Stewart Mandel agrees.

Allowing Internal Relaying in Exchange 2007

It’s not atypical for a network admin to setup Exchange to relay mail from another internal server. Most people with a modicum of Exchange 2000/2003 experience knew to go to the SMTP Virtual Server in Exchange System Manager.The one constant in IT is change; enter Exchange 2007, which of course means finding a new way to do the same thing. Without further adieu, I direct you to the MS Exchange Team Blog post about this. You’re a geek if you appreciate the blog title.

Fortinet

Add Fortinet to our list of partners. More to follow.

Café Hollander

We took our third trip to Café Hollander last night. The beer selection is out of this world, including many Belgian beers on tap. Most places don’t have this kind of beer selection in bottles. The frites are good, and their unique menu has something for everyone. In order:

• Grimbergen Abbey Ale
• Kwak Bosteel (wild glass)
• Konigshoeven Quadruple

Others in our party had Hoegaarden and a Lindeman’s Kriek.

As if the beer and food aren’t enough, they sponsor the Café Hollander Bicycle Team.

Deleting a link from your MySite Quick Launch

If you hadn’t guessed, the SharePoint interface is a bit quirky. The question arose about how to delete links in the Quick Launch Section of your MySite. The Quick Launch is highlighted in pink:

To delete a link, click Site Actions, Site Settings, Look and Feel, Quick Launch. So far so good. Now one would expect to delete the item here, but instead you have to click on the item, then choose Delete. See below.

Great Chocolate in the Fox Valley

Having lived in Oshkosh for two years, I already know that there many fine of independent chocolatiers from Oshkosh to Green Bay. We patronize Oak’s any time we can, and we’ve tried candy from almost every other place listed in this JSOnline article. Though not in the Fox Valley, there’s one other I need to add to the list, and that’s Beernsten’s in Manitowoc.

David Mamet on politics

David Mamet is just like E. F. Hutton: when he speaks (through his writing), people listen. His dialogue is unique, and catchy. To get a feel for his talent, I recommend Glengarry Glen Ross and The Spanish Prisoner. He recently published an article on politics in The Village Voice. It’s a call to sanity and unity in these times of heated, divisive, and visceral political discourse. A good read for those on both sides of the aisle, so to speak.

Credit goes to Mr. Sykes once again…

Why do (some) kids stink at math?

One of the challenges in Information Technology is finding qualified people to do the work.

Here is a video from a University of Washington Professor about how his students just aren’t as good as math as they used to be. When he keeps mentioning NCTM, remember it stands for National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. I’m glad to see Jackson scored on the 100-problem fact sheets I used to do when I was a kid. Another cool anti-new math site is Weapons of Math Destruction.

I must give props to Charlie Sykes on this one, too.

Lena Taylor’s MySpace Map

Charlie Sykes mentioned it this morning, and being such a big fan of Lena Taylor (NOT!), I had to check it out.

Turns out Lena Taylor has a picture on her MySpace Account called “The World According to Americans”. It doesn’t surprise me that something so bizarre and childish would come from her mind. But to put it out on a public MySpace profile? And she wants to run Milwaukee County. Hmm…..

The National Tithe

What’s better than a 59° day before the Ides of March? A 69° day before the Ides of March.

One of the interesting things about life is where, when, and how one stumbles upon new and fascinating information. Take for example my KnowledgeLake training here in St. Louis.

I expected to learn more about SharePoint and ECM/Document Management. I never in a million years expected to learn about National Tithes.

Our trainer, Mike Mora, belongs to an Evangelical Free Church here in the St. Louis area. While talking about our beliefs over lunch, he was telling me about a past mission trip to Budapest. He remarked that there were a lot of churches in Europe but not a lot of relationships with Jesus being built. As we discussed how the idea of a government-sanctioned church had something to do with that, he brought up the Austrian National Tithe. The government collects taxes for the church in Austria. He mentioned it dates back to Hitler, and there’s some evidence to back that up. While checking this out, I found that this was/is common place in other European Countries. Of course, more details can be obtained by clicking on the links in this post.

Pretty wild, hey? Please feel free to comment by clicking the “comment” link below or send this or any other blog post link via e-mail.

KnowledgeLake Training, Day 3

Instead of discussing everything we learned today, I thought I would focus on two highlights:

• KnowledgeLake Capture
  
  • Allows for batch capture and indexing of documents. It offers IT departments the ability to control how much or little control users have to documents. It allows one to use an OCR engine and bar codes to break up documents, batches, and index fields.
• KnowledgeLake Connect
  
  • This program allows one to use Windows Explorer, Office, Outlook, etc. to interact directly with KnowledgeLake and SharePoint. I can’t wait to try this out when I get back.

I also learned about the Austrian National Tithe over lunch. Look for that in my next post.

But really officer…

One of the drawbacks of being an attorney is having to make stuff like this up.

Here’s a question: why doesn’t Mary Ann just say that the she thought it was ground palm leaves the Professor gave her to help her sleep? It would be more believable. Apparently her propensity to cook was just from a bad case of the munchies.

33 + 100 + 25 + 5 = Heaven

Here goes:

33 Beers on tap

100 Beers in bottles

25 Single Malt Scotches

5 Small Batch Bourbons

All at Growler’s Pub here in Creve Coeur. No I didn’t drink all of that. Thanks to small glasses I got to try:

1. Schlafly Pale Ale
2. Schlafly Hefeweizen
3. Boulevard Unfiltered Wheat
4. Tucher Hefe Weiss

Their whiskey selection includes two rare finds out on the town: Macallan 25-year scotch and Blanton’s bourbon.

Throw in a little pork schnitzel and you got yourself a good dinner. (Guess you have to heat, right?)

I might just get through the trip without going over to the dark side (AKA drinking Budweiser).

KnowledgeLake Training, Day 2

Greetings from St. Louis, where it’s sunny and a balmy 59° outside.

Day two of training led us through the rest of the KnowledgeLake Imaging suite, including:

KnowledgeLake View

A web-based viewer that installs on a SharePoint Server allowing one to view, edit, index and annotate images.

KnowledgeLake Print Server
Allows for large-scale printing of documents out of KnowledgeLake to printers without affecting SharePoint or KnowledgeLake Performance. Now why would you want to make more paper from an ECM/DMS system? There is a practical use: allowing users to print file without having the program installed (Visio, etc.)

KnowledgeLake Query Builder
This rocks! It allows you build queries against all things SharePoint, including of course a document library.

KnowledgeLake Export
Exports documents to external file location.

KnowledgeLake Scan
If you don’t know, then give up.

We’re working through KnowledgeLake Capture now. Check the next post to hear about a great bar/restaurant.

Peace out!

Pimp My PC!!!

For all of you who want to bump up your street cred, pick up a fan like this for your PC. It’s like having Sprewells for your car. Off Da Hook!

Hubris by any definition…

Hubris:

Pardon the sarcasm, but it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. TIME and The Economist have nice commentary on Eliot Spitzer’s indiscretion. Oh to see Dick Strong’s face now…

In my glass (past-tense): Schlafly Dry-Hopped APA

With my recent martini kick, I don’t drink as much beer as I used to. But on a warmer spring day (pretty sad when temps in the 40s pass for warm) a good hoppy beer hits the spot. My friend Mike turned me onto the Schlafly Brewing Company, and one of their many fine beers is a Dry-Hopped IPA. If you’re ever in the St. Louis area, I suggest you try it, whether from a store or at one of their brew pubs. The thrill of barley without the agony of… Bud Light. As Chuck D and Flavor Flav say: Fight the Power!

However as good as the beer and Ravenswood Zinfandel were, they pale in comparison to the great dinner and conversation. There’s no substitute for a well-prepared meal in a warm and inviting home. Props to my homey (and fellow MLHS alum) Mike, his lovely wife Jenny, and their two kids Ethan and Owen. We hope to see them in Wisconsin (for good) soon!