Saturday, June 30, 2007

See how my garden grows

Left to right we have carrots, garlic, lettuce, spinach, peas, cucumbers, tomatoes, butternut squash, peppers, and some more tomatoes.

Garlic scapes

Last spring I planted garlic purchased from Gourmet Garlic Gardens. On their site they said that after the scapes shoot up it will soon to be time to harvest. Had no clue what he was talking about. Now I do. This is a "scape". This photo take a couple weeks ago. Many of these scapes have blossomed and exposed myriad tiny garlic cloves. I figure this is some sort of flower and a method of propagation in the wild. The site mentioned that some gourmets harvest these scapes and cook them up as a delicacy. I sampled one of the little cloves. My gawd that was about the hottest, garlikiest thing I've ever eaten. Not really knowing what to do with the scapes I've just been cutting them off and adding them to the compost bin. I wonder if I'll get random garlic plants growing in my compost heap now?

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Monday, June 18, 2007

Spring Soccer

Both kids just finished their soccer season. Chloe and Evan both benefited a lot socially from just running around with other kids and getting some exercise. Evan especially really grew over the sprint. In Evan's league his team, Sidewinders, finished the season in first place. They then had a tournament and it was very exciting watching him go though the rounds all the way to the Finals! The final game wound up tied 1-1 through overtime and then went to penalty kicks. Sadly, we lost the shootout, 2-1. But wow, was that ever exciting and, frankly, quite nerve wracking. Evan mainly played as the goalie and a little bit of defense. In goal he made about 10 saves throughout the tournament. Most were easy scoops, but four were real shots on goal. I think I may remember each one vividly for a long time. Two he caught, one he deflected with a good kick. And one did get through, but it was a heck of a kick to the corner and there was zero defensemen helping him. And he tried so hard to get to it! I am one proud papa!

Friday, June 08, 2007

How to Recover a mailbox when User Account is Deleted

The Recovery Storage Group in Exchange is great. It allows you to recover a mail store while leaving production mailboxes online. You can then ExMerge data from the RSG to PST. Problem: If the user account is missing then a ExMerge returns an error for that mailbox and doesn't present it in the GUI.

The error is: Error! Cannot identify the user with the msExchMailboxGuid \FE\40\D1\9C\DEOEA\A2\9C\A2\2E\7FHkx. The legacyExchangeDN is /O=RHD/OU=FIRST ADMINISTRATIVE GROUP/CN=RECIPIENTS/CN=JDOE.

Microsoft's KB919088 gives a workaround. I found I needed to add a step.

Essentially what you do is:

1. Recover from tape to the RSG normally, then dismount the RSG.
2. Create a new Storage Group
3. Create a new store, don't mount it.
4. Copy the EDB & STM files to the new stores database folder.
5. Rename the EDB & STM files to match the filename the new store is looking for.
5.5 Here's the extra step, go into properties of the store and set it to allow database to be overwritten by a restore.
6. Mount the store.
7. Create a new account, without a mailbox.
8. Attach the mailbox to be restored to the new account
9. Move the mailbox to a production store. Not sure why this step is necessary but it seems to be. I can never get ExMerge to read this new store. It may be due to replication delay. I'm not sure. The KB says to do this.
10. ExMerge the new account's mailbox normally. Note: the original legacyExchangeDN is preserved so the you need to find the account using the original user name.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Spelling bee champion

interview on CNN with spelling bee champ. I've become oddly enamored of watching the spelling bee lately. This kid's interview with CNN in which he clearly displays autistic characteristics has sparked my interest too. I've been busy defending this unfortunately-named entry on Digg.

read more digg story

Monday, June 04, 2007

Bike Commuter

I'm officially a bike commuter now. I successfully survived riding my bike into work and home again. Admittedly, this ride is a bit long (about 14 miles). I'm taking a lot of back roads right now. Once I get more confident riding with traffic I may be able to shorten that to about 12 miles. The ride in seems to be more downhill so that's pretty easy. Takes an hour and 15 minutes. Ride back took almost 2 hours though. Best part of the ride? Ordering a peach smoothie at Ralph's Italian Ices at the end of the trip home. :-)