March 2008 Archives

I needed to do a restore of some voicemails on a server and the calculations on how long it was going to take were slightly off as you can see from this screenshot - it actually got as far as 150 days before it reached the data on the file and started the restore off. Typically I have to do this when the voicemail server crashes (due to a power outage when it wasn't on a reliable UPS). Everytime the server crashes I would have to restore 2 peoples voicemails (out of about 70 voicemail boxes). They are the only two who have their voicemail wiped and Avaya don't care about the problem. What is weird is that this time the server had a controlled shutdown and not a sudden crash.
I sent the user this screenshot and told them it might take me a while but I'm working on it - they replied saying they didn't think they had *that* many voicemails!

I'm off to the Heroes Happen Here event in Columbus on Thursday - any other readers going?  I've not managed to get my hands dirty with the Windows2008 server yet so this event should be interesting and hopefully pretty fun too. The last Microsoft held event was packed which spoilt it a bit but I'm hoping this one won't be as crowded. It is a sellout which hopefully means they've only allowed enough people that they actually have room for this time.

One of the things that annoyed me about Lotus Notes was the inability to easily mark emails as unread once opened. However today I accidentally found out that by pressing the Insert key this will toggle the read/unread state of the email. However, if you have a mixed state of read and unread mails, then all the mails turn to one state which will be the opposite state of the currently selected email.
I asked around in the office and nobody knew this trick - I discovered it by accident when trying to delete an email and I missed the key. The only downside to the trick is if you miss the insert button and hit delete instead - I am not responsible for any sudden outbursts of swearing if this happens!

My taxes are finally filed and I've got about 3 times the refund that I got last year which is very nice. Most of this is due to the medical bills that Kristen had last year with her thyroid surgery. One neat trick that I didn't know is that Giant Eagle can give you a list of prescriptions purchased through them - very useful for the medical bill section of the Tax form - naturally this only works if you get all of your prescriptions from the same place. However I also found out today that Anthem can also provide this information but for ALL prescriptions filled and also for all the co-pays and Dr visits etc. It's a shame that the US doesn't have a prescription pre-payment form - in the UK you could buy a certificate that would last a whole year - Kristen's prescriptions (copays) were $735 last year!
I e-filed my federal taxes but used Ohio's pdf file to efile (rather than pay Turbotax $18 to do it). I did have to open the pdf with Adobe Reader rather than my default foxitreader. I also found I had to run the pdf twice as the first time it wouldn't recalculate the entries in the form for some reason.
Hopefully this year I won't have to wait about 5 or 6 months to get my Ohio refund back like last year.