The Howerter Blog

I tested my PBX a couple of days ago. It is almost ready to be deployed. I am ready to get it installed and start using it.

We leave for Florida on Saturday. It is going to be wonderful. I am so glad that I enjoy spending time with my family. My brother and sister-in-law seem more like friends than siblings.

Last night I spent the better part of three hours scanning/paying bills and updating two and a half months of Quicken records. This is something I don’t enjoy doing. If I didn’t put it off for so long, it wouldn’t be a big deal. It is nice to have my bills available in PDF form though.

Well, I am back from the canoe trip and ready for the next vacation. I am looking forward to the Colorado trip with the boys. I am also ready to get back so I can get start/finish some of my projects. Vacation is just so inconvenient.

Over the next couple weeks I am going on three trips. It is pretty hard to concentrate at work.

Our A/C broke last night. The repairman came this morning and said the blower motor was shot. Luckily, it was under warranty. That saved me $300. Praise God. He should have it fixed tomorrow. Thank God it is cool out today.

If you needed anymore proof to not click on URLs in emails read this story. This story talks about a  flaw in SSL (the secure protocol used be websites) that allows a hacker to fake a secure website and your browser will not warn you about it. Meaning, they can have a secure site that looks like PayPal and the security certificate will not come back as invalid. If you get an email from eBay, PayPal, etc don’t click on the link. Go to the site directly (for example, www.ebay.com) after you login you can find any messages that they want you to see. That way you know where you are logging into.

I am in Schaumburg, IL taking a Cisco class at Global Knowledge. It is the last class I need to take to prepare me for my certification tests. The instructor is knowledgeable, but I forgot how boring class was. It is from 8:30 am to 4:00 pm of lecture and labs. It is a little more tolerable because it is something that I want to learn. This is Wednesday so it is almost half over.

This morning I was able to get the setup on the Exchange server to complete. I have since restored everything. Wow, what a pain this all was. I am very glad it is over. I was dealing with Microsoft support on this one and I wasn’t impressed. I am very glad that I had backups of all the email.

Well I have been trying to successfully rebuild my Exchange server for 4 days now. I get to the configuring part and it errors out on one particular Exchange task. I am a little frustrated to say the least. I have a case opened with Microsoft so hopefully they can figure it out.