Platform Team

ISA 2006 and the fun of a corrupt rule

Tim Robichaux — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 22:07:43 GMT

It always seems like every time one thing if fixed, something else breaks. This morning I was working on Project A and I needed to look something up on our ISA 2006 firewall. While I was there I decided that I would look into, and fix, something odd that was happening with Project B's rule. Well, after fixing the rule into a corrupt state, I now had a Project C to work on as well. Corrupt rules are never fun, but I was able to figure out how to fix it, but I'm sure it's NOT a supported or recommended procedure.

When I was trying to find out exactly what machine we are routing FTP traffic, I wanted to take a look at why my IMAP connections seemed to be getting mail that was MONTHS out of date. Looking up and down the list of rules, I found a duplicate IMAP(S) rule that was pointing to an old IP address of our Exchange 2007 server. I figured that somehow, that might be a reason why I'm not getting the correct e-mail. I clocked into the rule, and changed the internal endpoint to our current Exchange 2010 server, clicked Apply and then OK.

On closing out of the ISA Management Console and looking at my e-mail, I noticed that my Inbox was starting to fill up with alerts from System Center: Operations Manager telling me that there was a problem with the configuration on one of our ISA machines, specifically the one that I was logged into. Side Note: I know I should have been looking at the configuration on the Configuration server, not one of the nodes of the array, but the Configuration server is having problems of its own!!!

Logging into the Configuration server, I opened up the Management Console and noticed that the rule I had edited was missing a bunch of information. Clicking on it (right or left) brought up an error dialog stating that "there is not enough memory to perform the action." After much fumbling and scrolling up and down, I realized that the name of the corrupt rule was the same as one farther down on the list, and when I changed the IP, the rules ended up being exactly the same. This led to the node pushing the change up to the configuration server before it was really sure that it SHOULD, and so, I am stuck with this dumb ghost rule. Since I know that I couldn't affect the corrupt rule, I decided to change the name of the good rule, so they wouldn't match! Brilliant!!! (:

Things weren't quite that simple, however, and when I made any changes to anything else on the server, I wasn't able to commit the changes! I kept getting an error that the corrupt rule needed more information before the changes could be saved. Oops! I even tried Exporting the rule set, removing the offending rule from the XML file, and then Importing it back in, but I ran into the same error.

It was time to bite the bullet and following the somewhat sparse directions from this forum post, I fired up ADAM ADSI Edit to remove the offending rule, once and for all.

Even though the directions weren't the best, it was enough for me to get there, so I'll post a little bit more coherent account:

Log into the machine that's hosting the ADAM database.
Open the ADAM ADSI Edit application by clicking "Start -> All Programs -> ADAM -> ADAM ADSI Edit"
Right-click the ADAM ADSI Edit node in the tree pane, and select "Connect to…"
Leave the Server name the default value of "localhost" and change the Port to "2171"
Select the Distinguished name (DN) or naming context: radio button and enter "CN=FPC2" into the box
Click OK.
In the tree pane, expand the My Connection [localhost:2171] node, and then the following nodes:
- CN=FPC2
- CN=Array-Root
- CN=Arrays
- CN={GUID of affected Array}
- CN=ArrayPolicy
- CN=PolicyRules
Once in the right set of Policy Rules, find the GUID of the offending rule and delete it
Restart the Microsoft ISA Server Storage service to re-populate the cache
Profit!

NOTE: I am pretty sure this is NOT supported. Any time you mess with ANY of the raw editing tools, you stand a big chance of messing things up beyond recovery. DO NOT USE these steps if you are not willing to accept total failure as a possible case.

Setting up a Domino Web Access redirect page

Tim Robichaux — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:43:52 GMT

I've been working with Domino and Lotus for a fairly short amount of time, but every time I have to touch it, I find myself gritting my teeth. I've been a Microsoft Exchange admin for a while, but I have a bunch of experience with several different e-mail platforms. While I am not as familiar with many of them as I am with Exchange, I can set up systems, start e-mail flow, provision users and just generally get by. One of the things that helps me do this is the rich environment of help and documentation that exists out on the Internet. Sometimes the gems of wisdom lurk in forums, sometimes they are on a product's support site, but more often than not, someone else has run into the same problem that I am having. This makes me feel a lot more comfortable and at home with a product, when I know that other people are actually using it and willing to SHARE their experiences.

Well, IBM, you have earned my ire in a bad way!

The situation is that one of Domino 8.0.1 systems I'm managing needed to have Domino Web Access set up so that the end user didn't have to know the whole long URL to his or her mail database file. In Microsoft Exchange 2003, 2007, and now 2010, this is a built in feature that, for the most part, works out of the box. So long as the user is configured for Outlook Web Access, they just have to navigate to a website that was installed on the server by default, enter in valid credentials, and off we go.

This is not the case, however for Domino Web Access. By default, once the user is configured to use DWA, they have to type in an exact URL pointing to his or her specific mail database file. I had known this and just ignored it, since Domino didn't install with any web sites enabled as default, but the client wants people to be able to test the DWA experience without having to know that information. So began the journey (my Google searches):

"how to create a lotus notes login page"
"how to create a login page for DWA"
"how to create a login page for Domino web access"

Now, these searches didn't really net me anything useful, so I headed over to IBM's web site and went to the Documentation section to do some digging. After drilling down, I found this page with some helpful steps:

Setting up Domino Web Access Redirect

The Domino Web Access Redirect template (IWAREDIR.NTF) is in the Domino data directory. To set up Domino Web Access Redirect:

Create an application using the IWAREDIR.NTF template.

In the IBM^® Lotus^® Notes^® client, open the application that you created.

Click Setup and follow the prompts to set up Domino Web Access Redirect.

Note If you select MailServer as the Redirection Type under Server Settings, the common name of the Domino mail server must be the same as its fully-qualified TCP/IP domain name. For example, if the mail server field in the Person document is set to serverA/domainA, the server's TCP/IP fully-qualified domain name must be serverA.lotus.com.

Now, I have to say, this was a WTF moment. Once more, I know that I'm not an expert, but I like to think that I can figure things out. This set of instructions, however, left something to be desired. After poking around on the server, I found the template, and with a right-click, I found that "New..." wasn't an option. How am I supposed to create an application?!?!? More Googleing:

"lotus domino create new application from template"
"lotus domino create new application template"

Which led me to this page with some more detailed instructions on completing the FIRST step in the previous set of instructions:

1. Open the Notes client.

2. Choose File-Application-New. The New Application box appears.

3. In the New Application box, select the Blank Composite Application template from the Template list.

4. Enter a title in the Title field. The File name is also created for you from your title. You may change the file name if you wish.

5. Click OK. A blank composite application container appears with a message that the application does not have any content

6. Choose Action-Edit Application to open the Composite Application Editor and begin working on your composite application. You can use the Composite Application Editor to edit the pages, components, and basic properties of a composite application

This set of instructions is not perfect, but I can steal at least the first two, verbatim, and then monkey around with the settings until I manage to create the new application! Woo! Now I'm getting somewhere...

Introduction to Database Availability Groups - Full of WIN! (UPDATED)

Tim Robichaux — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 23:36:10 GMT

Basic Overview

Now that Exchange 2010 has been released to beta, it's now time to talk about all the fun things that we've been working on and working with. To start off with, I want to point everyone over to the actual Exchange 2010 Official site.

Now that I've pointed you at the bits, let's get into some details about Database Availability Groups or "The DAG" as it's called! To start off with, it's a pretty simple concept. The DAG uses Windows Failover Clustering Services and a NEW component in Microsoft Exchange, called Active Manager, to allow automatic failover and uses continuous replication to keep copies of a Mailbox database floating on servers other than the one actually hosting the "active" copy. This is VERY simplistic, but I want to gloss over the details for a moment to build up to the details later. What this means is that now, we can host a bunch of copies of a Mailbox database on several servers (up to 16 servers can be in one DAG) and thanks to the magic of continuous replication, the log files are shipped and we can have multiple, concurrent copies of the database. In the event of a failure, Exchange 2010 "promotes" one of the copies of the database to "active" status and the Mailbox role then takes up the task of serving up the mailboxes on that database. Each database maintains separate status, so one server can host copies of multiple databases and only have some of those copies active at one time. This can be confusing, so let's draw a diagram (ooo, pictures!):

In this diagram, we have three servers, and three copies of each database, one on each server. The "active" database copy is the one with the star. The flow of data from the "active" copy to the "passive" copies is concurrent.

Hopefully, it's clear that a copy of each Mailbox database is hosted on two other servers in this scenario. There are actually several reasons for this, and let's start talking about some cases. In the first one, let's say that we lose MBDB01. In this case, it's just a simple failover and the next preferred server will elevate and start hosting the mailboxes (and for those of you wondering, YES you can set the preferred failover scheme, for example, if you want it to go 1, 3, 2 instead of 1, 2, 3, you can set that). That is a pretty simple case, why else would you want so many copies? In this case, we could use this type of architecture to fail a server, apply patches, and avoid nasty maintenance downtime, but will still be protected if one of the other servers fails during that time. Good 'ole double redundancy. The third case for maintaining at least three copies is that ensures that there are always enough servers in the DAG, up and running, to allow a quorum for the underlying cluster.

All of the mailboxes are hosted on one server, BUT, you are still able to have users access their e-mail, without long, expensive restores or complicated reconfiguration of your DNS or network!

How it actually works

Earlier on, I mentioned that the DAG uses Windows Failover Clustering and continuous replication to build the copies of the database. What is actually happening is (to me at least) much more interesting. The Windows Failover Clustering service is installed just for the purposes of the automatic failover. The way the databases are treated and how they are handled it much like the Exchange 2007 features of CCR with a few of the SCR features thrown in for good measure. One of the big differences between the DAG and CCR is that you can configure the number of database copies which allows you to make full use of the Clustering components. One of the reasons why I used the three server example, above, is because this is what Microsoft has recommended for the cluster to properly determine quorum decisions. You can get by with only two copies, but at least three is the recommended minimum.

One of the great features of using a DAG is that it is completely managed from Exchange. What this means is that when you are configuring the clustering you don't have to be a clustering wizard or HA guru to set it up correctly. Exchange 2010 takes care of all the configuration for you, and as my co-worker Devin says, this is a HUGE win.

What people are saying and doing

All this talk about clustering and data redundancy brings up an interesting conversation that is currently floating around, and that is, with a sufficiently robust DAG structure, do you still have a need for on-site backups? This has opened up a whole can of worms, and I can say that I feel confident that using a properly designed DAG scheme can easily replace many of the functions of standard backups. There are still areas that I would feel more comfortable with a reliable set of backups (database corruption or total site failure), but the DAG can mitigate some of the risks.

That being said, the way that we currently are using our DAG is a little bit different than the scenario I laid out above. To get even more complicated, I have plans to modify our structure to take advantage of Network Load Balancing and turning our current structure into one that it aimed at a high amount of availability! Here's the planned structure:

In this particular case, the plan is to basically mirror the servers using NLB to serve up one logical endpoint for the CAS, HT and UM roles (with the Hub Transport have to be careful to exclude the HT to HT traffic from the NLB, but that's a topic for another post). With that in place, and using the DAG to take care of two copies of a single database, we expand our ability to perform maintenance with minimal downtime to our internal clients while also providing a high amount of uptime in the case of a failure.

EDIT: It looks like, according to Microsoft, the combination of Windows Failover Clustering and Network Load Balancing is NOT SUPPORTED. They also say that it won't work, but I want to give it a try, anyway. This is a big pain since for a small to medium size business, you want to reduce the number of servers you have. This is what the documentation actually has to say:

Unlike Exchange 2007, where clustered mailbox servers required dedicated hardware, Mailbox servers in a DAG can host other Exchange roles (Client Access, Hub Transport, Unified Messaging), providing full redundancy of Exchange services and data with just two servers.

So, now I've talked about the DAG and what it can do, but there is quite a bit more. I'll follow this up shortly with some more advanced features like lag copies, off-site replication and other fun things!

Exchange 2007 and Disabled Mailboxes

Tim Robichaux — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 10:03:34 GMT

This is an information post, designed to make some information available to myself and others. I did NOT discover this but I thought it was something pretty important.

When disabling an Exchange 2007 mailbox, it sometimes will not automatically show up in the "Recipient Configuration | Disconnected Mailbox" bucket. It takes running the command:

clean-mailboxdatabase <mailbox database>

Once that command is run, you can reconnect it or do whatever you need to it. Thanks Missy and Amit (If you want the full explanation and pictures, click here)!

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 - A First Look

Tim Robichaux — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 02:36:25 GMT

You name it and OCS can do it. I know that might be reaching a bit, but I've been looking into the new features that R2 will bring to the table, and it is really quite impressive. I've been working with OCS 2007 for about a year now, and while I've been impressed, there are some cases where I've had to say, "well, OCS really isn't a product for that arrangement," or, "it's still early in the product life-cycle, it'll get better." Now, most of those phrases are going to go away and will be replaced with comments like, "yes, OCS can do that, and that, too."

Consolidated Edge Server -- This is a big deal. In the old release, you had to plan for a number of boxes to provide services to external users. Even if you had all of the services hosted on the same box, you had to have a couple of externally accessible IP addresses to assign to those roles, and some of the roles did not play nice with one another.
Improved Archiving (IM separate from Voice records)
- Better integration with 3rd party tools -- I don't think people are quite as touchy as right after Enron and all the other corporate fallout, but better integration with existing archiving and compliance tools was needed before a lot of health care and legal companies would ever consider a tool like OCS.
Support for SCOM -- This is a BIG deal for larger companies that have a great deal invested in System Center. When you have a central tool for monitoring the health of your infrastructure, you like everything that makes up that infrastructure to play nice with it.
Support for Virtualization in some roles -- While this is nothing new (we've virtualized all the roles before with only minor snags), having that virtualization be officially supported and given the golden stamp really makes this an attractive solution for companies that want to consolidate devices (Read: people who want to get rid of PBXs and move to a consolidated communications platform. Now you can do it with an even SMALLER footprint!)
The core experience is still MMC based with added functionality for new features -- This is something of a two-edged sword. It's nice that things won't be changing too much when it comes to how OCS is managed, but it really lacks a lot of the things that other Microsoft is moving towards. Where's the PowerShell? The interface reminds me a lot more of Exchange 2003 than Exchange 2007 (meaning that it is not intuitive or organized logically). With my complaints out of the way, I'll toss a little bone and point out that at least they've updated Certificate Management (Hey Exchange 2007... C'mon, make it at least a LITTLE bit easier to do certificates right!!!).
Huge reporting (performance and usage) improvements -- I was watching a video where some of the reporting was being demonstrated and I have to say that I was quite impressed. With the tools available, it will be a lot easier to justify your OCS implementation (and upgrades) when you can show just how much people are using the tools you are providing.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but this is a quick start of the things to come with the new release. I garnished these points from watching a video here. There are a bunch more OCS 2007 R2 videos, and I can't wait until it hits RTM so I can install and play with it!

Greetings from PDC

Tim Robichaux — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 16:59:01 GMT

I'm out in Los Angeles, supporting some of the demos for PDC and I have to say that tons of cool things are going on. Since I've been busy actually working, I don't have the time to actually summarize all of the things that have been presented on the stage, but I'll be posting several follow-up articles on some of the new things that are coming out. I'll also make sure to include some neat stuff about how demos are set up, run, and torn down, while the attendees are all going crazy over all the new products. Just to keep the pot warm:

Software as a service is big. Azure Platform.
Windows 7 is the R0X0R.
Live Mesh is full of Silverlight goodness.
.Net 4 is neat. I'm not sure I understand WHY, but it is.
Office 14 is going to blow the socks off the people who actually have to use it!

Triage of e-mail and how to get your e-mail read.

Tim Robichaux — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 22:07:48 GMT

I just was forwarded a great blog post about how one CIO manages the 600 e-mail messages he gets every day. I don't go through nearly as many e-mail in a day, but I think that these rules can apply to almost anyone.

The first rule he pointed out was:

1. E-mail marked with a “high importance” exclamation point must pass the “cry wolf” test. Is the sender a habitual “high importance” e-mailer? Are these e-mails actually important? If not, the sender's emails lose points.

I seem to rarely get messages with raised importance, and almost every time, it is about something that isn't important or time sensitive at all. It seems like most people don't think about what they are doing when it comes to e-mail. Most of the people I work with are very clear in their e-mail construction and I think one of the things I value most is that I've almost never received a "High Importance" e-mail from them. Most of the time, when an e-mail is tagged, it's because someone was sending out a joke or picture and added a "[HUMOR]" tag to the subject line.

It's the little things that will get your e-mail read by other people, so here are a couple of e-mail etiquette rules that I would like to post of my own.

If you are sending me a forward, clean it up. I understand that there are only six degrees of separation, but I don't need to see the entire history of the e-mail thread. Sometimes this means that some significant work would have to be done, and if that's the case, I'd rather you NOT send it to me. If I think a forwarded message is that wonderful, I'll take the time to correct the formatting and remove all the junk. I could go on, but I think we all get the point.
Use at least SOME punctuation. I know that most people think that typing (e-mail, text messages, IM, and blog posts) is a lesser form of communication and by that same logic, not in need of things like capital letters, periods and commas. This is not really the case, however. The more that an e-mail looks like it was typed by a cat walking on a keyboard, the more likely I am to just delete it without reading it.
Know your target audience. I don't want to get too mired in spouting what I believe in, but I just have to say that I don't need any e-mail that an action of mine will cause more angles to do anything. I don't particularly want to have a "blessed" day, and I don't need any kind of inspirational messages. Those people who know me, should know that I am not interested in those things, and should, by expansion, know that I don't want to get e-mail about it.
Make sure you include some context in a reply. I know that I said that I liked to clean up forwards, and I do like to clean up replies as well, but there still needs to be SOME context or continuity. It is very hard to respond to a request for information when you have no idea what the context of that request is in. The whole thread doesn't have to be preserved, but something will help!
Think before you send. Yes, I'll repeat that; think before you send. Just because it is so important, I'll say it another way; don't send an e-mail until you've actually thought about it. Some people think about the e-mail while they are writing it, but I know from looking at my inbox, this is not the norm. It doesn't take much. Just look it over quickly, read it out loud, do SOMETHING to ensure that you aren't sending a raunchy link to the CEO or a ribald joke to your grandmother.

All that ranting and raving aside, e-mail is a communication tool. As a tool, I have the option of using it, or choosing something to use instead. You don't even have to make the e-mail interesting or new, just make it something that shows you've done more than reacted out of reflex. It doesn't take much!

Activity tracking using a gadget

Tim Robichaux — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 22:22:11 GMT

One of the things that we are constantly working on here is better time management. I work on a number of different projects every day and I like having the option to multitask and split up my day between several different interest groups. While it is fun and it keeps me busy, it can be a pain when trying to track time and account for what I did all day long. In the past I've tried keeping Word or Notepad++ open all day, writing in the tasks as well as when I start on them. I've also tried to update my time sheet in real-time, filling the bits in 15 minute increments. Both of these methods failed miserably, not because they are bad ideas, but rather the swift nature of my changes in focus mean that I might only spend 2-4 minutes on any one given task at a time. When installing operating systems or software packages, or working on system maintenance and IT tasks, I normally will have 4-5 RDP sessions open. With all of those open, it's a quick flip to sort through all of them and then find the one that's complete and click "next" or reboot.

Because my focus changes so much, I've started looking at tools that will allow me to keep pretty accurate track of all the things I'm working on. Even when I've found something, I generally lose interest in it, especially if it isn't cross-platform.

Eariler today, I came across a tool that looks like it might be a good fit for me. This is my first day using it (first hour, actully), so it is mostly hope at this point (:

Right now, I've only popped a few items in it, but one of the things I liked about it was that it works both on the Windows Vista Sidebar and iGoogle. This means that even if it doesn't sync across versions, I can still use the same interface from any number of machines. I think I might look and see if I can actually code some improvements into it. I'm not an expert hacker but I would like to see:

Categories or Parents (For example, under "IT Schtuff", I would like to have one item called "Patch Management" where when I punch in, it ticks the IT clock as well)
List synchronization (I don't know how it works yet, but I would like to be able to keep the list synchronized through a website [read: SHAREPOINT] or txt/xml file that I can export across machines)
A little bit of UI clean up (when I first started using it, I thought that the green "IN" button meant that I was in that task and tracking time)

If anyone else out there has any tools that they use to track time like I need, I welcome the feedback!

P.S. In the writing of this blog, I switched to three tasks (blogging, logging in to the Exchange server to change the name on an Equipment Mailbox, and replied to a project e-mail) and punched in for each of them!

Cisco buying Postpath?

Tim Robichaux — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:15:52 GMT

I know that the rumors had been floating around for a while, but now the news is out. Cisco is purchasing the privately held Postpath for $215 million dollars. This is really interesting to me in that I've been working with Postpath for a short while and I'm really wondering about the value that Cisco is going to pull out of this deal. For starters, in this article, it's mentioned that Postpath:

"...provides a browser-independent AJAX Web client."

The reason I have a problem with that line is that the Postpath client is actually Zimbra's client.

I'm sure technical blogs are popping up all over the place talking about the things that Postpath can and can't do, but having installed it a couple of times and poked around inside, it seems like there is going to be a battle over some of the features. For example:

ActiveSync - Postpath reverse-engineered ActiveSync rather than licensing it (say, like Apple), and I'm not sure how Microsoft will react to a large company like Cisco selling reverse-engineered technology.
Exchange compatibility - I know that Postpath advertises that it integrates well with Exchange 2003 (and can exist in that environment), but how does it work with Exchange 2007, where there are significant changes to the architecture.
Price comparison - When I looked at Postpath the cost comparison felt a little bit shady, but I don't want to sink into a full teardown. The main point is that they make some pretty grand claims about the savings that they can provide a company.

I really don't want to turn this into a Postpath bashing blog post, but I really don't see why so many people think that this will allow Cisco to become a major player in the messaging marketplace. If they were purchasing something like Zimbra, then I would give credence to the idea that they were looking to field a product that would really be commercially viable.

Having installed and used at least 5 messaging platforms in the past year, I kind of have to wonder about Cisco's choice. At least it wasn't Lotus...

A new e-mail idea...

Tim Robichaux — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 22:36:46 GMT

Last night a co-worker and I were having a discussion about some of the things that we'd really like our e-mail clients to be able to do. One of the things that I was lamenting was the fact that there is no really easy way to have Microsoft Outlook tag e-mail so that you could build views that were built around tags rather than folders. This got us thinking and I think that I came up with a nifty way to do some e-mail-fu using metadata in a file system for some neat things.

The first idea that I had was that if you just were able to keep each e-mail item as a separate file, you could then use the built-in metadata features of some file systems to tag each item. If you did it this way, you could have a really light-weight e-mail client that would just build a view based on what tags you gave the e-mail. It would also be really simple to have the system (either server-side or client-side) tag e-mail as it came in. Then once it is looked at, it would get tagged as something else.

For example, one of the things that we talked about, was the idea that you could give your client the logic to thread and tag e-mail based on things like:

If it is a reply to someone in particular, it gets tagged for one view
If it is a reply in a thread, it gets tagged for that conversation
If it contains keywords that you have designated as important, a special tag gets added
On and on, in the same vein

The real beauty of this system is that all three cases could be applied to one e-mail that came in and all you would have to do is select a view or type of view to quickly sort through all your incoming and existing e-mail, based on those tags.

Another really cool idea that was brought up (I think he brought it up, but I can't remember at this point), is that you would be able to do some visualization that is not possible in a standard e-mail client. You could create views and viewers that would group your e-mail and messages and all that jazz as a tagged cloud. Then it would be really easy to analyze and comprehend things about your e-mail that it's not always easy to find. I know, personally, that I have a better time understanding complex relationships if I can draw them out or put them into a visual paradigm.

Another area that I think that this would make for some really neat features is in security, backups and speed. Instead of keeping all your data in databases, all of your information is in files. This way, you wouldn't need to have a client that was able to read or access a proprietary data format to access all those messages. Most of the file systems in use today support strong encryption and file-level security, so the integrity of the data is less at risk as well.

I think that this is a fun mental exercise and I would really like to see some changes to the way we look at messages, but I also know that this would require a lot of work and know-how that most people wouldn't want to sink into such a fringe concept. I think that with the changes we've seen in how messaging is approached (as in, the unification of multiple messaging formats and the convergence of information access devices like computers and cell phones), we'll see a lot more expansion into areas that are different in concept than we're used to. I would like to believe that changing the way we look at information was a quick process, but I know that there are many people who think that, "this is the way it's always been done and it's the way it'll always BE done."

This is getting to be a long post, so I'll wrap this up by saying that I really like the way that messaging of all types seems to be converging. I love the way that I can have a central place for all my communications. I like the fact, most of all, that I'm at a place where I can have these kind of discussions and really feel like I've come away with an idea that really fits who I am.