Close to the end of the season we had some big event where all of the groups got together, all the weekend groups and all of the racing groups. Andrees son Michael there with some group of racing kids, most of whom were a bit older than the group I was teaching. Britt was hanging around there somewhere too, but I think she was already on a development team by that point so she was really just helping her mom out. For one reason or another all of my kids left early that day (it was a beautiful March day) and one of the coaches with the racing groups had to leave. That coach asked me if I’d ski down to the village with his group then let them go off on their own. I was about to head down for the day so that was fine with me. Michael happened to be in that group of kids.

Once we got started going down the hill I was flying down the hill, enjoying being able to ski fast and not worry about whether the kids I was leading could keep up or not. I thought I was keeping ahead of them no problem until I looked back over my shoulder to make sure they were all still there only to see Michael right on my heels and a look on his face of “Why the hell did we get stuck with the slow guy?”. I did everything I could to ski the fastest I possibly could, but I definitely couldn’t outrun any of those barely-teenage-kids. I like to think I did pretty good, but when I was skiing flat out I was barely keeping up with them! I won’t even get into how tough it was to keep up to Britt and her mom skiing out one day.

Now that both of them have been on the national team for years and Britt just came 6th in the 2010 Olympic downhill race I think my ego can bounce back from barely being able to keep up with them ;)

This had us puzzled as it was obvious that the policy was being applied since we also enforced those users to have a longer password than normal. We scratched our heads for a while, but then we set to some testing. We changed the MaximumPasswordAge to be 5 minutes, then changed a users password. Right away we knew this was going to work because as soon as we logged in we got the message from the desktop that our password was going to expire that day. Still, we waited the 5 minutes and sure enough, even though acctinfo was showing 90 days, our password expired as expected.

It looks like many tools that display password expiry are looking at the default policy and don’t yet take Fine Grained Password policies into account when constructing that information. I have no idea if there will ever be an updated version of the acctinfo.dll or not, but this might be something to keep in mind as you are implementing Fine Grained Password policies.

Fine Grained Password policy links:

AD DS: Fine-Grained Password Policies

AD DS Fine-Grained Password and Account Lockout Policy Step-by-Step Guide

Essentially, when installing an Exchange 2007 Mailbox cluster, the passive node is granted Full Control over the Clustered Mailbox server Active Directory object. This gives it Exchange Server Administrator rights and manifests itself by showing an error when viewing the Organization Configuration or when running the get-ExchangeAdministrator PowerShell command. The error that is given is: The account is not a member of Exchange View Only Administrators

To change the username you need to delete the Exchange sync relationship on the device (cant sync to two exchange mailboxes at the same time). Open ActiveSync then:

Menu>Options>Menu>Delete

You get an Alert message, click Yes and your sync relationship will be deleted. Once that is done you can follow the steps above to create a new one (associate with a new username).

One way trip to Ottawa from Toronto on Westjet: $11

Two travelers, round trip would be: $44

Have I got that right so far? How in the hell does that translate into $275 round trip for two people?! Yeah, yeah I know there are airport fees, taxes, surcharges, fuel tax….blah, blah blah. Come on though, there is no way that an airline should be allowed to advertise an airfare of $11 if that actually ends up being a hundred (or more) dollars more! I like understanding the breakdown of why my airfare costs so much, but if you’re going to advertise a rate, then I should just be paying that rate plus tax. $11+tax.

Airlines: do the right thing and stop jerking our chains with false low-sounding rates. I’m not asking you to lower your rates (that is a separate issue), just don’t advertise an airfare that is artificially low.

• Take the 40 minute drive to Chamonix and take the cable car to the top of the Aiguille du Midi, the view is absolutely incredible. If you’re a skier take some extra time and go skiing there
• Check out the many Swiss watch makers, most of them are based in Geneva and their watches truely are like works of art
  • Patek Philippe (My favourite watch maker, they also invented the wrist watch): www.patek.com/
  • Piaget (lots of flash and jewels): http://www.piaget.com/
  • Bucherer (they are not a watchmaker really, they sell many different brands/models and if you would like to compare different companies side by side this is a great place to do it: www.bucherer.com/
  • There are others (Audemars Piguet, Chopard, Girard-Perregaux, Breitling, Rolex), but Patek and Piaget are a good example of the pinnacle of watch making (although for very different reasons; Patek is the best in the business when it comes to the movement and it’s complexity while Piaget is all about the bling).
•  If you are into watches, or you get into watches after looking at some of the crazily expensive ones available from the Swiss watchmakers then check out the Patek Philippe Museum: http://www.patekmuseum.com/
• The European headquarters of the UN
• The WTO is also in Geneva, not sure if you can get in to check it out or not
• If you like chocolate as much as I do (and that is a lot!) then definitely check out this chocolate shop: www.chocolat-auer.ch/en/chocolate_factory.html
• Geneva is the home of Davidoff Cigars, anyone who likes cigars even a little bit should drop by their Geneva store. It’s not a big store, but it’s where Zino’s first shop was (and his father before him, but Zino is the one who really got them into cigars): www.davidoff.com/davidoff/

While you are there take taxi’s to get around, don’t bother renting a car. Parking in Geneva is totally brutal, especially during the workday. If you do rent a car, don’t take the car out for lunch or you might find yourself sitting in a long line waiting to get a parking spot again after lunch.

The old part of Geneva is a beautiful thing to see and shouldnt be missed. There is a train-like tour through the city that starts downtown near the main shopping area and takes you through the old part of town and past an incredibly beautiful church. If you’re like me and you love to see the old architecture of European buildings then take the tour, it doesnt take too long and is well worth it just for some of the views. Don’t forget to check out the Jet D’Eau, although that only takes a minute and you can do it from anywhere in downtown Geneva. Not the most exciting thing, but it’s cool to see (giant jet of water shooting out of the lake). Also there is a great little coffee shop type thing in a park right in the middle of the river just a little west of downtown. I have no idea what it’s called and can’t give you any directions so if that makes any sense to you or someone you’re with can decipher that then go check it out, it is a very quiet and relaxing spot in Geneva, although it might be a little too cool there now to sit out and enjoy. I believe that it’s just west of the Place D I’Ile in this map.

That is what I can think of quickly off the top of my head (with some quick searches for the links), anyone else have things they love to see/do in Geneva?

This caught be a bit by surprise and when I went looking for a button to change the language to English I couldn’t find one. I was using Firefox at the time and was getting the Google Firefox page, when bringing Google up in IE7 it does give a link to change the language which is good.

So this isnt really that important, but it was a minor little annoyance when I first saw it. If I lived here in Geneva (mostly French) and got the German page by default I might even be a bit put off, even though most of Switzerland speaks German primarily.

Phil

I know that Scoble isnt working for Microsoft anymore, but I’m surprised he hasn’t blogged this yet.

Xbox 360 home networking compatibility list

Phil