Keep it simple stupid…

Yesterday I came into work and immediately noticed that our email server was dragging it’s feet. Emails took forever to come up and in many instances I would get the waiting for server dialog box. I immediately started listing things in my mind that have changed recently. Hmmmm. Well I installed MSFT’s latest critical updates on Wednesday, it shouldn’t cause that sort of issue but you never know. So I began researching everywhere I could. I found several things in our configuration that could be possible issues but they were configured that way for a long time, nothing new. I spent the majority of the day tweaking, changing and rebooting the server with little or no improvement. Damn it. Late in the day I get a notification about the main back up job failing. When I looked at the log it all became clear, the email server was being backed up that entire time which was causing it to drag. Evidently there were some problem messages that were making it go very slow.

In retrospect it wasn’t such a bad thing for me to have to go through all of that as it uncovered several things that needed to be fixed anyway. However my failure to check the simple things first resulted in a whole lot of frustration.

This weekend the big event is my trip up to Tampa to pick up my replacement mower. I’m excited to pick up my new tool of yard mastery. I am also getting several accessories that will allow me to expand my grass maintenance capabilities.

One thing I forgot to mention regarding the MLB All-Star game. I found it ironic and a bit annoying to see George and Barbara Bush in every close up batter shot during the game. They were sitting right behind home plate. It seemed like George was pigging out most of the time he was on camera.