Last week at ISOutsource

This is my last full week at ISOutsource and it feels a little odd. Of course, starting it out with three inches of snow on the ground makes just about any day a little wierder. I've only been as ISO for about three and half years but in a lot of ways, it seems longer. I guess it's because I've been so busy that seems longer. I'm going to working this week to write down some of the SOP and normal things I have running around in my head. Hopefully, it will help the guys who are hanging around.

17 days and counting...

Crunch time

My wife and I have been plowing through the list of all of the things we need to do over the next three weeks and it's kind of daunting. Even though she will be coming back to Seattle and staying for a couple of months, there is still so much to do. I'm below the two week mark at ISOutsource, too so there's even more to do at there. I really want to make the transition as easy as possible for everyone involved and that's kind of tough.

No one called on the PT Cruiser. There is a guy at ISOutsource that is interested, though so hopefully I can sell this quickly. Something else to worry about....

22 days until the flight out...

Anyone need a car?

http://seattle.craigslist.org/sno/car/546994381.html

I have my 2003 PT Cruiser up for sale and I need to find a buyer soon. If you know anyone looking, have them call or e-mail me at matthew.damp@sbworks.com.

23 days... and counting...

It's official - I got the visa

I picked up the visa from the Japanese consultate this afternoon. Everything is on track for my departure on February 14th. I've got to say that when I picked "late February" back in November, it felt a lot farther away. Now I've got a ton of stuff to do in the next three weeks.

27 days...

Visa is being a little slow

Assuming that the visa clears... 31 days to flight out.

Unfortunately, I haven't heard from the consulate yet and I was supposed to today. It's always unsettling when a governmental organization doesn't call you back when they were supposed to. Makes you wonder what's broken...

Is SharePoint really ready for prime time?

Assuming that the visa clears... 34 days to flight out.

I spent a lot of time today arm wrestling with a SharePoint installation today and it struck me again how main pieces seem to have to work together to have the site function correctly. The site was running on a domain controller and the system was having AD problems so I had to demote the box and move the site. Even before I could move the site I had to change:

• Modify the local security policies to allow the SharePoint service account to logon as a service and batch job
• Re-enter the passwords for the applications pools in IIS
• Re-assign the SSL certs (Why? What does that have to do with being a DC?)
• Logon to the administration website and re-designate the search server for the site

That's a lot of moving parts that can break. A lot of this was not really covered in Microsoft articles or Microsoft KBs. I had to dig through a lot of generic ASP and .NET 2.0 articles and try to figure out if they would actually apply to SharePoint.

I hope that there isn't a radical difference between the current v3.0 SharePoint and whatever comes with Windows 2008 so that 3rd party documentation can keep up with it.

The countdown starts

I have 35 calendar days to go until I hop on a flight to Japan. Boy, I've got a lot to do.