BiggAndyy the Magazine

I live in an old, drafty, damp, old, falling apart, insect ridden, old, junky, old house. In my basement there is an abandoned coal cellar that I don’t keep much in, some old books that have become ruined from moisture, some old computer parts that have become ruined by moisture, you get the picture. There is not much (and by not much I mean none) insulation or moisture control in the basement so when it rains it gets a tab humid down there.

Well, over the last few months it has become more musty smelling, even during dry spells. So finally, after putting up with the must for too long, we opened the long unopened door to the coal cellar. Yikes! Looked like a mold and mildew farm in there! Talk about sick house syndrome, the place was disgusting.

So I went to the hardware store and got as much lye as I could afford at the end of the month (not much) and came back and threw it around the small room and closed the door. The lye did not have a chance. I think the mold ate it. We decided that when the cold weather came around we would empty the room entirely, get some cement sealer and spray down the entire inside of the room and the wall inside our laundry room that it shares. Then we will brick in the small window that is letting in moisture like Niagara Falls.

But… in the meantime the mildew and mold decided to preemptively strike inside the house proper. And by inside I mean ANYTHING that was in contact with the shared wall of the coal cellar became infected with mold and mildew. Again, a shelf containing old books that would never be read again were the first victims. Some clothes that we long outgrew. No big deal so far.

Until… I thought the Gun Cabinet I bought would supply some protection against the mold. It was made of metal after all. But where I had it just leaning against the wall rather than anchored, the unused anchor holes in the metal frame of the cabinet became a biological superhighway for mold and mildew. I did not find this out until I was going to go shooting this weekend. It turned into a clean everything in the gun cabinet weekend. Sheesh!

The Yugo SKS got it the worst. I had to field strip the stock from the receiver and barrel to get at all the mildew and mold growing on it. Luckily only the surface of the wood was contaminated. A light wiping with Hoppes #9 and a heavy oiling and everything was back to normal. The barrel was another thing. Since the moisture content was so high these last couple of months the barrel has begun to pit a tad. Lots and lots of oil for that. Good thing I only own shooters and nothing that has any real monetary value. Everything I have is for shooting, either for hunting or SHTF or TEOTWAWKI.

So remember kids, if you are going to spend a measly hundred bucks on a gun cabinet remember, all you are buying is a metal box with a lock to keep the kids out of it. Don’t forget for a moment that your guns are not at all protected from anything. I have sealed the unused anchor holes and have a can of Damp Rid on the bottom. But these are only temporary moves. I still need to get a better place for the cabinet. And I still need to get a better house. Anyone have any gold bars lying around?

One of the biggest reasons for switching from IMAP to Pitt’s Enterprise Exchange is to access the shared resources Outlook 2003 provides. Specifically the sharing of calendars is very useful to the departments with which I work.

Quick note: CSSD will act very swiftly to get a group of people onto Enterprise Exchange. One department was moved from IMAP to Exchange in less than 2 days! Dan and Dianna over at CSSD get Extreme Kudos for that great work!

But back to the calendar issues. The first person who was switched was a fairly knowledgeable user of Outlook and Windows based computers and added the Enterprise Exchange Server to his own Outlook Profile. Caveat Number 1: you must be running Outlook 2003 in order to take full advantage of the calendar sharing CSSD has enabled.

So we checked with the Department Administrator to make sure he had a license for Office 2003. Caveat Number 2: Pitt Faculty and Students are covered by programs that provide them licensees for Microsoft Products. Pitt staff is NOT. Make sure you have a license for Office and Windows for your computer. Department wide software audits are performed all year round by CSSD.

We now have the Enterprise Exchange added to the default Outlook profile, AND a newly upgraded Microsoft Outlook 2003 client running. We open Outlook, click on Calendar in the Navigation Pane and do NOT see the option to Share My Calendar. Arrrggghhh!

Reboot, even though Office 2003 says you don’t need to reboot after an upgrade, reboot anyway. No help.

Update, even though Office 2003 hits the Microsoft Update Server after upgrade there are updates out there AFTER the first update. No help.

Here is the situation. Since Enterprise Exchange was ADDED to an existing profile it assumed the local calendar in the .PST file was the one we wanted to use. Since it is a LOCAL calendar it is not shareable no matter how hard we wanted it to be shared. Once the problem was identified it was a simple fix to create a new Outlook Profile for Exchange. New profile, new calendar that is shareable.

You can now reopen all the stored .PST files and IMAP locations as before. But in order to share calendars the Exchange server must be the first server in the profile.

Simple once you know the secret.