E12 Beta

We just shipped the first beta of Exchange 12 this week, as covered in this brief article. Using Monad to setup stuff on the server is one of the areas I own. Well, technically, those areas where Monad and Store overlap, and Store is the database that's used to store new users, storage groups, mailboxes, and a bunch of other stuff that probably is not making much sense.

Thanksgiving, lil Sis & a new phone

Ok, it's been several weeks since I've posted, but it's been such a fun and busy few weeks haven't had much time for blogging. For Thanksgiving, Neal and I took the bus over the mountain pass to stay with his family a few days. We had a great time, and even got to see some snow! Quite a bit of it too. The ride back over Stevens Pass was beautiful; it was snowing pretty hard at the top, and the trees were just covered! Yeah, we didn't get much snow in Texas. :)

This past weekend Jennifer flew up to stay with me a few weeks, it's been a ton of fun taking her dancing and staying up all night chatting. We went with Neal to see the Narnia movie opening weekend, and (unlike certain other fantasy movies based off well-loved books) I thouroughly approve. There were very few differences from the book that I noticed, and they kept the overall storyline and message very clear. I do admit however that it's been several years since I last read it, whereas I read the LOTR books the month before the movies came out. My biggest complaint so far is the White Witch's dress, something just didn't look quite right there.


I also got a new phone last week. As Exchange has some new features for accessing your email/calendar/tasks/etc. from a Pocket PC, they gave us PDA phones to test it. It has a pretty nice lil camera (for a phone that is), and I just came across this photo my sis took of herself with it. And now I'll see how often she reads my blog based on how long it takes till she kills me. :) It's definitely the coolest phone I've ever had, as it's a full-fledged PDA, a 1.3 megapixel camera that can take short video clips, and with the built-in wireless I can check my email from anywhere at work or my apartment. Though after the novelty wears off, not quite sure why I would want to do that. But for now, I'm still having fun checking my email from the cafeteria. Gadgets are such fun!

Paying people to search?

Ok, I hadn't heard anything about this one, but just ran across a Motley Fool article about Gates' considering rewarding regular users of search.msn.com with free software, money or other goodies. Curious marketing indeed!