As I promised last week, here is the first of a two part interview with Rod Trent that took place the last night of MMS 2009. I hope to post part 2 sometime next week. Enjoy!
Rod Trent Interview – Part 1
Posted by Jarvis on June 4, 2009
Posted in MMS, SCCM, family, interviews, kids | 3 Comments »
Baby Observations
Posted by Jarvis on May 29, 2009
Having an infant in the house again has reminded me of many things that I had forgotten about after our daughters grew out of that stage. It has also caused me to learn a few new things. Here are a few that I have been reminded of lately:
- While it rarely happens, a child sleeping in on Saturday morning is a wonderful thing.
- Middle of the night diaper changes are often times the equivalent of attempting to wrestle a spastic octopus.
- There is nothing quite like seeing the unbridled joy on your child’s face when you walk in the door after being at work all day.
- Seventeen pounds doesn’t sound that heavy until that seventeen pounds is a teething baby that you’ve been holding for six hours.
- It is absolutely possible to fall asleep standing up. I’ve done it multiple times while holding a baby at 3AM. The feeling of knees buckling while holding an infant is scary.
- While the sight of a baby spitting up is bad, I promise you that feeling spit up is worse.
- Older children make great playmates for infants. Quite simply, older siblings rock!
- Sleep deprivation is a very effective form of torture…especially if inflicted by a small child.
- The sight of a content sleeping baby is one of the most beautiful things in the world.
- If a baby is going to sneeze during a meal, it will typically be with a mouthful of some dark colored food. Green beans are bad. Prunes are much worse.
- It’s really cute watching a baby smile in their sleep. I often wonder what they are dreaming about.
- Sometimes a clean shirt is nothing more than a target (for spit up, poop, puke, food, etc).
- Being a parent is exhausting work. There is a reason that God didn’t design us to do it alone. I have all the respect in the world for the single parents out there…you have a really tough job.
- If teenage kids had any real idea of how much work being a parent is, there would be significantly fewer teen pregnancies.
Posted in comedy, kids, life | 1 Comment »
New Interview Next Week
Posted by Jarvis on May 29, 2009
Just a heads up to check back next week. I will be posting part one of my interview with Rod Trent. You don’t want to miss this one. I got this one in the same day of MMS that I interviewed Sherry Kissinger.
BTW…apparently a lot of you were interested in finding out more info about Sherry. The day after posting that interview ended up being the most traffic ever on my little blog.
Posted in interviews | Leave a Comment »
Desktop Deployment Webcast
Posted by Jarvis on May 19, 2009
With as crazy as the last few weeks have been (traveling two out of three weeks to MMS and TechEd), I forgot to post about a webcast that I am going to be a part of tomorrow. I will be part of a joint webcast with Virteva (the company I work for) and Microsoft Consulting Services. The webcast is focused on desktop deployment and is designed more for the IT manager or decision maker…not necessarily for technical people…it will not be a technical webcast. I will be co-presenting with Steve Campbell from MCS.
The three main aspects of the session will be a high level overview of Desktop Deployment best practices, information on the “Desktop Deployment Planning Service (DDPS)”, and information on “Desktop Optimization Using Microsoft Windows Vista and 2007 Microsoft Office System (DOVO)”
If you would like to attend the webcast, it will be on Wednesday May 20 from 11:30-1:00 Central time. The link to register for the webcast is:
Posted in Microsoft | 1 Comment »
More Interviews Coming Soon
Posted by Jarvis on May 15, 2009
I am currently in the shuttle headed to the airport after a long week at TechEd. Over the course of the week I was able to get a few more interviews done that I will be posting over the next month or so. I still have the Rod Trent interview from MMS queued up. Last night I got to spend some extended time with Tim Mintner and Michael Niehaus. As we were leaving the closing “party” last night, I got to sit down with Tim for an interview. This morning I was able to interview Mikael Nystrom and Johan Arwidmark before leaving the convention center. Stay tuned for some very entertaining interviews. In light of the amount of traffic the Sherry Kissinger post produced, there is obviously a lot of interest in the personal side of these technology people.
Posted in MMS, TechEd | Leave a Comment »
ConfigMgr Child Labor Bloopers
Posted by Jarvis on May 12, 2009
By request of multiple people, here is the bloopers video from the ConfigMgr Child Labor video. Enjoy.
done
Posted in MMS, comedy, kids | 2 Comments »
Interview with Sherry Kissinger
Posted by Jarvis on May 12, 2009
Last year I had the idea to start a series of interviews with various people in the Microsoft management space. The concept was to have a personal interview with people that we all know because of their contributions to the online management community. The interviews are designed to allow others in the management space to get to know the personal side of the technology person. The first one that I interviewed last year was Wally Mead. Had a fun time sitting down with him while he was taking a break from TechEd.
While at MMS in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to sit down with the MOF Master herself, the one and only Sherry Kissinger. Sherry is a ConfigMgr MVP who works for Wells Fargo and is widely known as a expert in getting the most out of the ConfigMgr inventory by making modifications to the sms_def.mof file. Continuing the interview series, here is the conversation I had with Sherry.
Note: the player below requires Adobe Flash. If you don’t have Flash, you won’t see the player.
Posted in interviews | 4 Comments »
Camtasia Studio
Posted by Jarvis on May 12, 2009
While preparing for MMS and TechEd, I needed to record the demo that I would use in my session. This was a requirement for TechEd, and I ended up using the recorded demo instead of doing a live demo…partially because it is very difficult to perform a live demo of Operating System Deployment in the 75 minute time frame of the sessions at MMS/TechEd. It also allows me to show the entire OS Build and Capture process (about a three and a half hour process in my virtual demo environment)…I am able to speed up the video of that process to show it all in about 3 minutes. Overall a much better process.
Knowing that I needed to be able to record my screen for the demo I knew that there were a few options. One is LiveMeeting and/or WebEx. I don’t have access to either one, so I looked elsewhere. I learned about Camtasia Studio by TechSmith. They offer a fully functional 30 day trial of the software. Using that I was able to not only capture the screen while the demo was running, but was able to speed up sections, slow down other sections to allow me time to talk to it, and splice together two portions of the demo (server side and client side) into one video to use during the demo. Very nice piece of software. I was also able to use it to produce the ConfigMgr Child Labor video. It allowed me to pull in my raw video segments, have a separate narration track, add in opening and closing title tracks, as well as add the video from MMS 2008 in as a Picture-in-Picture.
Overall I was VERY impressed with the software. However…it’s not cheap. With as often as I would use it, there was no way that I could justify the $299 price tag. If I did more demos…it would pay for itself quickly. For the once a year or so that I would use it…not so much.
Well…tonight at TechEd there was an opening night reception in the Expo hall. Lots of companies. As I was wandering around, I saw that TechSmith had a booth, so I walked over to see if they were going to have a drawing for a copy of Camtasia…which they are. As I was talking to the lady at the booth I was telling her about what I had done with the software and that I loved it but couldn’t justify the expense. Heck I’ve been telling a lot of people over the course of the last month about the software. She then proceeded to pull over another lady named Betsy whose title is “Chief Evangelist” for TechSmith. After telling her what I had done, she pulls out a business card to give to me. On the back of the card was a sticker with license keys for Camtasia Studio and Snagit. SWEET!!! My 30 day trial expired yesterday…I get to keep using it!
Thanks Betsy and thanks TechSmith!
Posted in MMS, Misc, TechEd | 3 Comments »
Night Canoe
Posted by Jarvis on May 11, 2009
Last Friday night I took my daughters on a little adventure. The park service in Minneapolis sponsors nighttime canoe trips once a month during the full moon. Friday night was the scheduled “Moonlight Canoe” trip. Only trick is that it was overcast and had a light rain. We went anyway. Bundled all of us up and wore raincoats. It was a fun trip that we will definitely do again…hopefully with a visible moon next time.
Posted in family, kids | 3 Comments »
Rod Trent’s MMS v. TechEd Poll
Posted by Jarvis on May 7, 2009
Rod Trent put up a post this week about the possibility of MMS being merged into TechEd. In my opinion this would be disastrous. Merging what is hands down the best event Microsoft sponsors into an already too big and too broad event would simply destroy all that is good about MMS. As part of Rod’s post he includes a poll so that we can let our voices be heard about this possibility. Please, visit Rod’s post and continue on to the poll.
Posted in MMS, Microsoft | Leave a Comment »
Windows 7 – Problem Steps Recorder
Posted by Jarvis on May 7, 2009
Today I have been downloading and listening to various MMS sessions that I missed while at the event. Normally I have my schedule double booked (or even some time slots triple or quad booked). Combine that with the fatigue that sets in after the second day…there are a lot of really valuable sessions that I’m simply unable to make it to during the week.
One of the sessions I missed at MMS but listened to this morning was “SC15 – Windows Client: Roadmap and Introduction to Windows 7 for Enterprise Customers” by Jeremy Chapman. During his session he performed a demo of a Windows 7 feature called the “Problem Steps Recorder”. What this program allows you (or one of your users) to do is record what happened in the event of a “problem” on their system. You start the PSR, then recreate the problem that you were experiencing. It essentially takes screenshots as you are going through the process and spits out a zip file that has an MHTML file in it complete with screenshots and detailed steps of what the user was doing at each step along the way.
This will prove to be very useful. Back when I worked the help desk I can’t tell you the number of times (and honestly don’t want to remember the number of times) that I tried to get a user to accurately describe what they were doing when a problem came up. Sometimes it was a legit problem…sometimes it was a PEBKAC issue. This feature would have saved me huge amounts of time in figuring out what was actually happening.
The presenter mentioned that this app can be launched either manually by the user or…and I like this…you can build it into the application so that it launches automatically when the app fails and ask the user to recreate the problem.
Posted in MMS, Windows 7 | Leave a Comment »
System Center Roadmap
Posted by Jarvis on May 7, 2009
Last week at MMS in Las Vegas, Microsoft announced the general timeline for next versions of products in the System Center suite. For those who were not able to come to MMS, here is the slide from the second keynote laying out that roadmap.
Posted in MMS, Microsoft, SCCM | Leave a Comment »
ConfigMgr Front End HTA
Posted by Jarvis on May 5, 2009
During my session at MMS (and upcoming at TechEd) I used a Front End HTA and a back end VBS during my deployment demo. I mentioned that I would make them available for download (and have gotten multiple requests for this). Hope these help someone else out there!
Posted in MMS, SCCM, TechEd | 9 Comments »
More Interviews Coming Soon
Posted by Jarvis on May 3, 2009
One of the aspects that I have seen in the Systems Management community is that it really is a close knit group that is spread all over the globe. I have also seen a bit of a hunger from people that I have interacted with to know what some of the “big names” are really like. The way I have been phrasing it lately is that people would love to get to know “the personal side behind the technology face.”
Last year when TechEd was in Orlando (and I was living in Orlando) I had the opportunity to spend an afternoon with Wally Mead. At the end of that afternoon Wally allowed me to interview him…not a technology interview…we barely touched on anything related to ConfigMgr. I got lots of comments both on the blog and personally from people who enjoyed getting to know a bit more about Wally. My plan at the time was to do several more interviews, but for various reasons I haven’t been able to pull it off…until last week.
Last week at MMS I sat down and interviewed two ConfigMgr MVPs that I have gotten to know over the last few years. Soon I will be posting my interviews with Sherry Kissinger and Rod Trent. I have a bit of editing to do on the original audio…killing dead air between questions as well as extraneous noise that popped up at different times. I don’t know if I will be able to get it done before heading to TechEd, but I will be posting them soon…check back. I should be able to get the first one going in the next week or so…maybe the flight to LA for TechEd.
Posted in MMS | Leave a Comment »
Blooper Video
Posted by Jarvis on May 3, 2009
In a conversation with Garth Jones last week at MMS I mentioned that if I had time I was going to put together a blooper video from the various snippets that I shot for the ConfigMgr Child Labor video. I think I had somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 “takes” during the filming. Garth mentioned that conversation on his blog yesterday, so I guess I need to follow through on that idea! I’ll try to throw something together this week before heading to TechEd next week.
Posted in MMS, video | Leave a Comment »
Links from my MMS Session
Posted by Jarvis on April 29, 2009
Just finished my MMS session a while ago. Had a really fun time with it and felt like it went really well. Had a good time interacting with some of the attendees both before and after the session. In the session I promised a list of links that I referred to during the time. Some are on my blog, some are elsewhere.
By request, I will be posting the task sequence demo videos later…I want to do a voice over of the videos to make them more valuable. I will also be posting my Front End HTA and Back End VBS script later. I will update my post after doing so.
I think all of the links that I referred to that are on my blog are also on the My Favorite Ramblings page, so I will just link to that one. This includes the “Run a CMD Prompt as System” post that I referred to. Just scroll down past the personal section to the “ConfigMgr” section.
The “ConfigMgr Child Labor” video:
http://verbalprocessor.com/2009/04/29/configmgr-child-labor-video/
Johan’s blog and specific posts:
Johan’s post on Device Driver management
Michael Niehaus’s blog.
Deployment Guys blog.
TechNet forum.
myITforum.com ConfigMgr forum.
Posted in MMS, SCCM | 5 Comments »
Video at MMS 2009
Posted by Jarvis on April 27, 2009
Last year at MMS I had a touch with fame when Bill Anderson used a video (during the “State of the Nation” address) of me and my five year old daughter doing Operating System Deployment with ConfigMgr. It was shocking to me how much face recognition that video gave me last year.
Well…I am presenting at MMS this year on “Operating System Deployment in the Real World." If you are at MMS, that session is Wednesday at 2:15 in Bellini 2001B. During that session I will be debuting a follow up video to the one shown last year. If you want to see it, don’t be late. I will also be posting the video here after the session.
Posted in MMS, SCCM, kids | Leave a Comment »
MMS Bible Study – Last Call
Posted by Jarvis on April 24, 2009
Wanted to put out a final reminder…if you are interested in coming to the 2nd Annual MMS Bible Study, let me know ASAP. We will be meeting in Rod Trent’s room again this year. I will be sending location info via an email to anyone interested, but I will not be posting that to my blog…to protect Rod. Either email me directly or use my contact form. The Bible study will be Tuesday through Friday mornings before breakfast…probably 7:00-7:30am.
See you in Vegas…very soon!
Posted in Jesus, MMS | 1 Comment »
Update on KB955955 Error
Posted by Jarvis on April 20, 2009
A few weeks ago I posted about a problem I was having with the KB955955 update for ConfigMgr. I was having an issue with the update failing to apply, and I posted another way of applying the update that was supposed to work. (I was clear to point out that I had not tested it…I was relying on another post.)
Well…two problems. First…I read the documentation wrong…which is why I was getting the error. Second…if you use the method that I mentioned in the original post…your SUP won’t patch the system during the Build and Capture task sequence. So…ignore my original post.
The mistake I made in reading the documentation was regarding the installation properties…specifically which Package ID to replace in the following string:
PATCH="C:\_SMSTaskSequence\OSD\<Package_ID>\i386\hotfix\KB955955\SCCM2007AC-SP1-KB955955-x86.msp"
I goofed and put the Package ID of the ConfigMgr package that the KB955955 patch creates in the console. That should have been the Package ID of the ConfigMgr client installation package…which is clearly stated in the documentation.
Once I put the correct Package ID in the string and retested…not only does the patch apply…the SUP doesn’t break!
Posted in SCCM | 1 Comment »
