exchange 2003 vs active directory distribution/securituy lists

A simple problem I thought, I use Active directory security groups for group email list.
I know this isn't best however when I set the security group up I needed it for security of folders not for distribuiton of group emails and it worked as an group email address for my users in outlook.

However when new users were added to the group they would/would not appear int he DL.
After much umming and arring I decided to change the security group into a DL.....Not advisable unless you check where its used and if you do it may not take effect straight away, it can catch up with you.
And got the message that some of the users in the security group had the group as their 'Primary Group'.
Each user user in this position were missing from outlook's group email list.

Fixed by editing the users primary group to be 'Domain Users', all done.
It never occurred that having your primary group would remove you from the email list?

Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' or one of its depend

Have been building www.nffw.net for Northland Family Four Wheelers (New Zealand off road club my family helped set up).
The site was working fine on my test server, however once it was ftp'd this message appeared:

Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

After deleting the problem lines out of the web.config file I realised the problem was the Ajax extensions. Although I never used them in the site I had created the site form the Visual Studio Ajax template (not the Atlas Toolkit one the new Ajax 2.0 release) which it seems you need to have installed in the host server GAC.

The old Atlas Toolkit still works on any server running .net Frameowrk 2.0, as it has its own .dll that sits in the bin folder of the project. However the Ajax release for .net is part of the framework so need to be installed onto the server.

Be careful: Make sure the hosting company has it installed before you start developing the site, if they dont you will have to unpick the entire application and replace all controls with the ctp/version (if they existed).

ext link to asp.net forums: http://forums.asp.net/thread/1499963.aspx

hotmail blocking emails

It looks like hotmail is blocking emails, possibly in a bid to stop spam?
I have emailed my hotmail account from 5 different domains, and only one is going through without any delay (tiscali) 1 is taking an age and the other 3 are being dumped, there is no 'NDR' - Non Delivery Report, no bounce message, no notification that the message hasn't gone anywhere.
Very frustrating, they (hotmail) used to dump a lot of emails into the junk mail folder, now it seems it just doesn't arrive at all?

3 weeks in new zealand

Well after one week of work its time to think about my holiday again...
3 weeks in New Zealand, a well needed holiday, I spent the entire time at my brothers/parents farm without broadband (not even rubberband speed), so checking an average email account is painful... I went to an internet cafe in whangarei, but they didn't have plug and play capibilty for my laptop....
I spent about 4hr online at 56kbps.... and sent 5 email, and read few here and there that looked important.

The world without broadband is a bit unusual, from using the web for everything - tv schedules, music, recipes etc I was left pondering what to do next.
So I braved the outside world, and remembered that pre internet life wasn't that bad. Okay I couldn't buy stuff on ebay or buy songs online, so I went to a record shop (they even had records) and bought 5 LPs (dont have an LP player....) and 3 CDs (all of which are now part of my MP3 library).

I realised I spend way too much time at the monitor/keyboard, not a life changing revelation but a good reminder to get out a bit more.
Broadband in the north of New Zealand is fairly few and far between, you can get dialup 115kbps, or 336kpbs on GPRS/3G but pretty much anything over that is a business only level.
Telephone exchanges are being upgraded all the time, but with only 4million people living there and a land mass approx same as most of england you can see where the problem is.

One thing that made my holiday was the music, NZ has a massive rock following, try www.therock.net.nz for a very good rock station - definately 5 stars for quaity of music.

I will post a few holiday snaps up on my site shortly, my brothers wedding went well (a week later and it would have bee 400mm under water) photos here http://www.craighogan.com/hogan-tucker , goodluck to Brett and Jo as well.

server flood in the uk

Well the first week was fairly busy, we had a flood in the server room while I was away, luckily the water was no deeper than the height of the proliants plastic feet....(I would have really like a photo of this situation, bit sadistic, but ot see a room full of servers up to their bottoms in water and still running would make a cool poster to remind everyone to have a backup system in place),I will never take these off again, so lots of checks on systems etc to make sure all is well, looks like the the pc on the floor shorted out once it became submerged and blew the fuse, and all systems went down.

In the event we lost 2 desktops, one plugged in the other just full of silt now, very lucky, used all 9 server lives in this event.

I am not sure how we would have coped with the possibility of no database/files/data and a mail server under water....
I am guessing I would have built two virtual servers up as 'clones' until newhardware could be purchased via insurance etc. Not something have practised or even run through in my head before.

But in my backup system I never had a section for complete annihilation of company servers, I do now and am in the proces of setting up an offsite server (across a vpn) which will have copies of all data, mail, files etc.

Still a big job to recreate an office, but at least its a starting point.