it's informatical.

After much rumor and delay, PGP has just released version 9.9 of its flagship product, PGP Desktop, and for the first time the Mac version provides Whole Disk Encryption (WDE). Without delay I downloaded my free update (from 9.8)* and installed it. Here are my installation notes:

I wanted to backup this blog in preparation of doing some general maintenance and mucking about. However, MT's built-in backup feature uses the /tmp directory as the destination for backup files. As this blog is on a host where I don't have access to the /tmp directory, I needed to configure MT with an alternative directory to use in the place of /tmp.

A Princess Bride video game?

I'm still rather ambivalent about my decision, but there will be no mater's thesis for me. As I wrote earlier, it's hard to forgo the three extra electives that one has to give up in order to do a thesis. As it stands, if I did a thesis next year, I could only take one more elective (assuming 6-7 credits a quarter) before graduating next June. And there are so many electives I want to take! Now, if I could only give up my remaining core classes instead, it would be an entirely different deal all together...

I've uploaded a new applescript that will automatically generate UWExchange accounts in Entourage 2004/8. A very kind colleague pointed out that the previous one didn't work- probably because after all my testing, I made some changes to the commenting fields and accidently commented out an important command. Yikes. Shows to go that you have to continue to test even when you make a miniscule change you're *positive* won't have an effect. Because it probably will...

The Department of Surgery is in the midst of adopting UW Exchange as our department-wide calendaring/email platform (moving away from a hybrid approach of an internal Exchange server and Now Up To Date calendaring). As part of the adoption process, we are rolling out Office 2007 and 2008 to all of our users. I'll use Apple Remote Desktop to remove Office 2004 and push out 2008 to my Mac users, but manually setting up Exchange accounts for all of them is not my idea of fun. 

So, I adapted an applescript¹ to automate the process. It basically leaves any existing account such as Deskmail alone, and creates an Exchange account with all the UW Exchange server and user account info pre-populated (sans password). My modified applescript² can be downloaded and used by other University of Washington faculty, staff and students (requires UWNetID). Supplied "as is" with no warranty expressed or implied- use at your own risk.

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1.  Original script by William M. Smith

2. File updated May 20, 2008

My original post about using the GAL with Entourage 2008 caught UWTech's attention, and Greg Shymko was kind enough to update me on the Exchange Team's changes to the netid authentication scheme that is used by the GAL.

My proposal for ACM's SIGUCCS conference in Portland this October was accepted- I'll be presenting a paper on my department's deployment of PGP Universal. Unfortunately for me, the paper is due June 1... Bad planning on my part to add another assignment to go along with all the other papers I have for school this quarter!