Dovecot 1.0.0

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Dovecot is an open-source IMAP server that quite frankly kicks ass.  I put it’s quality right up there with Postfix, the undisputed champion of SMTP servers.  Last year when upgrading from Courier-IMAP, we chose to go with Dovecot instead Cyrus (another very good open-source IMAP program) because of the direction that the project was heading.  Dovecot was being actively developed by a very smart individual named Timo Sirainen, with a goal of making it rock solid and secure.  And like most of the software that we use, we knew we’d be adding custom patches to it – so we also liked Dovecot because the C code is clean and easy to follow.

Over the past year Timo has worked extremely hard to find and fix all cases that can cause crashes, index corruption, security holes and other nastiness; as well as to make it as fast as possible without huge code rewrites.  Even when begged to do so by folks on the mailing list, Timo refused to release version 1.0 until he was satisfied that there were zero bugs.  Since August 2005, the pre-1.0 software has gone through 5 alpha releases, 9 beta releases, and 32 release candidates.  In recent weeks the bug-list has been empty, and only minor issues have been reported and immediately fixed.

And so the day has come…

On Fri, April 13, 2007 8:04 am, Timo Sirainen said:
> http://dovecot.org/releases/dovecot-1.0.0.tar.gz
> http://dovecot.org/releases/dovecot-1.0.0.tar.gz.sig
> 
> It took almost 5 years, but it's finally ready. I'm not expecting to
> release v1.0.1 anytime soon, unless someone's been sitting on a major
> bug just waiting for v1.0 to be released. :)
> 
> People wanting new features should start testing the upcoming v1.1.
> http://dovecot.org/nightly/ contains now snapshots from CVS HEAD. It
> already has tons of new features. I've been using it myself for half a
> year, so it should be mostly stable too. I'll write a separate mail
> about this later.
>

Congrats Timo!

Linux on my Dell Latitude 420

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I got my new laptop yesterday.  A super light-weight Dell.  It weights only like 3.5 pounds even after upgrading to the 9-hour battery.

My old Sony Vaio was a beast… 10+ pounds, 16.1" screen, awesome high res.  It was great for about 4 years, but recently has started to crash regularly.  Probably due to internal parts deteriorating because of how hot it’s non-mobile CPU and gig of RAM got.  And towards the end it had a battery life of only 15 minutes.

So last night I stayed up until 2:00am tweaking out the new laptop.  When I installed Ubuntu, I used 7.04 Beta (Feisty Fawn) because it had two new things I wanted… a sweet wireless manager and slightly newer versions of common apps (namely OpenOffice and Gaim).  Everything went very smooth and pretty much works.  But before I bravely wiped my Windows XP partition, I couldn’t find any posts about people successfully installing Ubuntu on this laptop.  I can happily say "it works!", and here are my notes on a few of the oddities I had to work through…

– "sudo apt-get install 915resolution" in order to get the 1280×800 resolution working.

– Turn off tap-click on the touchpad so it doesn’t click while you type… In /etc/X11/xorg.conf add this to the Synaptics Touchpad section: Option "SHMConfig" "on" …then log out and back in and install "sudo apt-get install qsynaptics".  Run qsynaptics to adjust the touchpad settings.

– Switch the two mouse inputs so that touchpad is primary and the other IBM-style pointer thingy is secondary so that the standard Gnome mouse speed controls affect the touchpad… In /etc/X11/xorg.conf, comment out this line in the Synaptics Touchpad section: Option "SendCoreEvents" "true".  Also comment out this line in the Configured Mouse section: Option "CorePointer".  Then at the bottom in the ServerLayout section add:  InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad" "CorePointer".  Log out and back in.

– Now, since Dell didn’t give us a middle mouse button, and I’m always going to use the touchpad buttons, change both upper buttons to a middle click.  In /etc/X11/xorg.conf, in the Configured Mouse section, add: Option "ButtonMapping" "2 2 2"

Fyi, ButtonMapping maps physical buttons to logical buttons.  For a 3 button mouse the first number sets the action for the left button, second for the middle, and third for the right.  So normally the values are "1 2 3".  A left-handed person might set it to "3 2 1".  And above I made them all middle-clicks by using "2 2 2".  It gets more complicated with 5-button mice.

– "sudo apt-get install libpam-keyring" in order to get it to stop prompting me for my wireless network keyring password every time I login.  Then "gksudo gedit /etc/pam.d/gdm" and add "@include common-pamkeyring".  Also need to set the keyring password equal to your root password, and delete your existing default keyring… "rm ~/.gnome2/keyrings/default.keyring"

– Lastly, 7.04 comes with Compiz.  To turn it on, Preferences > Desktop Effects.  But after you turn it on, it sets your workspaces to "1".  So right click on the work spaces and set it to whatever you want.  But then cube-rotate doesn’t work.  Disable Desktop Effects and re-enable it, and it will start working how you’d expect it to work.  But then never open the Desktop Effects preferences again, lol.  If you do, it will revert back to one workspace.  There is an Ubunto 7.04 bug open for this, so it should be fixed before it is released from beta (I’d hope).

Update: one more thing… comment out all of the dhcp lines in /etc/network/interfaces unless you need them.  This will make bootup speed a lot faster.

I think that’s most of what I had to figure out.  Everything else worked out of the box.

My 7 Day Driving Range Strategy for Golfers Who Have Never (Legitimately) Shot Less Than 100

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Each spring around this time I start hitting the driving range.  Up until last year I would usually go to the range a few times per week for a month before daring to step foot on a golf course.  However, given the fact that I don’t have a lot of spare time to dedicate to golf, and given the fact that I am not that good of a golfer and just want to go out and play, several weeks of practice really cuts into "my season".

So last year I started focusing on how I could get back into the game really efficiently.  I came up with something that worked really well for me.  My brother and I hit the range today, and this was only my second time out but I already feel comfortable with most of my irons.

Here is my strategy…

Day #1: Only hit irons 6,7,8,9,P,S.  Don’t mess with the bigger irons or any woods yet.  Hit one bucket of balls using these clubs in random order.  Figure out how much of your skillz you’ve retained from last year.

Day #2: Again only hit irons, but this time you’ll try to use all of them.  Start with your smallest club; the sand wedge.  Get to where you are hitting it consistently well, then move up to your pitching wedge.  Again, get to where you are hitting it consistently well, and then move to your 9-iron.  Continue to your 8, 7, 6, etc, until you reach a club where you are struggling to hit the ball consistently well.  At that point back down a club or two and then try to work your way up again.  Keep doing this until you break past the club that was giving you the problem.

For example, today my 5-iron started giving me problems.  So I hit my 6, 7 and 8 for a while and kept coming back to the 5.  Finally I was hitting the 5-iron well and broke past it.  I made it to my 4-iron before running out of balls.

Day #3: Repeat what you did on Day #2.  Do not attempt your woods yet.

(repeat Day #3 with one bucket of balls per day until you feel comfortable with all of your irons)

Day #4: Now that you are comfortable with all of your irons, lets work on stamina.  I tend to run out of gas on the back nine, so this is a critical step for me.  Leave your woods alone still.  Hit two buckets of balls using all of your irons in random order.  If you start having trouble with a particular club, go back to the small clubs and work your way up again.  Randomize it as often as you can whenever you feel you are hitting consistently well.  I tend to randomize it as if I am on the course – long club, short club, wedge… long club, long club, short club, short club, wedge… etc

Day #5: Warm up with your irons a bit, and then whip out the woods.  Start with your shortest wood and work your way to the driver.  The strategy is the same as you did to get good with the irons.  Just hit one bucket.  End with a few short irons.

Day #6: Repeat Day #5 until you are hitting all of your woods well enough to feel comfortable using them about 5-10 times on a course.

Day #7: Work on stamina again.  Hit two buckets of balls, randomizing the club selection between woods and irons.  Mix it up as much as you can and revert back to the small clubs, working up to larger clubs, whenever you get into trouble.

Now you are ready to hit the golf course.  Start with a 9-hole.  Actually, you were really ready after Day #4 because you don’t need your woods if you can hit your irons consistently well.

Oh, and as for putting, get to the course 30-minutes before your tee-time and put around a bit.  That’s all you need in order to be able to go out and enjoy yourself.  You can spend the rest of your summer working on your short game… you just need to be able to keep pace without losing your ball on every other hole.

Lol, Typepad’s Treo client goofed

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I’m not sure what happened on that previous post from my Treo, but what I was trying to say was…

Subject: Getting great customer service right now

My attempt at Dan Ciruli’s pushup (and situp) challenge ended last month on Day 72.  Since then I have been seeing a chiroproactor a few times per week.  I must have been doing the situps wrong or something, because that morning I could not get past number 25.  And a few minutes later I was on the couch and everything hurt.  I’m better now, but apparently my spine is abnormally straight and has been that way for a while, which might be what led to the injury.  So I’m here at the chiroproactor’s right now, lying on a table with electrical muscle stimulator things on my back.  In a few minutes they’ll “adjust” me.

Every time I’m here I am amazed at how great the doctor and the other two girls who work here are at customer service.  During my first visit I noticed they have three whiteboards on the wall with patient names on them.  One has a list of this month’s birthdays, one has a list of the patients who referred somebody to them this month, and one shows the patient of the month (not sure how I can earn that yet).  After my first visit , Dr Rathmann called me at home that night to check on me and to tell me that she can definitely help me out.  And every day, all three of them remember the names of everybody that walks through the door.  The also remember what each of us have going on in our lives and make good conversation with us.  And they always remember off the top of their head when my next appointment will be as they remind me while saying goodbye.  It is impressive.

They’ve given me a lot of information about taking good care of my back, such as proper sitting, sleeping and standing.  And I received a special ice pack from them in the mail during the first week.  On Monday they had a happy birthday balloon waiting for me when I got there (even though I do still have 4 more days left in my twenties) and I also got a birthday card in the mail from them this week.

They’re great at the details of customer service and you can tell that they genuinely care about the customer.  It makes me curious what their interview process is like.  It isn’t easy to find people like this.

It’s Tuck Chiropractic Clinic.  I highly recommend them.

Getting great customer service right now

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Hackathon 4 project demos

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Hackathon has moved upstairs to the big conference room.  Here are the projects being demoed right now:

Webmail
  – Right click
  – Task list improvements
  – Search improvements (frontend)
  – Search improvements (backend, speed)
  – Drag and drop improvements
  – Double byte language support
  – Preview pane enhancements

Control Panel
  – Bcc archiving for resellers
  – Ability to undelete mailboxes
  – Mail access controls (pop/imap/ssl)
  – Ability to disable "Login As User"

Outreach
  – First demo of the new email marketing system

Billing
  – Forecasting revenue report (internal project)