Last week, listening to my iPhone while traveling home, I heard the first verse of the song Calling All Friends by The Low Stars:

Calling all friends, and people I met on the way down.
Calling all friends, and people I don’t even know.
Calling on high, I wanna believe there’s a way now.
I’m too tired to pretend I don’t wanna be alone, I’m calling all friends.

For those working with Information Technology in churches, it’s easy to feel isolated and alone, trying to figure out what the best technology solutions are (and how to afford them!), how to best support your staff, recruit and manage volunteers, and figure out how to communicate your needs and solutions to leadership and users in ways they understand, go along with, and fund. Most churches have either a volunteer IT staff, a paid staff member who does IT as part of their job, or perhaps one full-time IT position. If you’re really large and fortunate, you may have a small team of two or more to support your environment, creating some camaraderie, but it’s still easy to feel alone, isolated and seldom understood.

Read the rest at IndyGeek.net. (NOTE on Dec. 12, 2011: IndyGeek.net is no longer operational. I am republishing the rest of the original article below, picking up from where I just left off above.)

Fortunately, Jason Powell, the IT Director at Granger Community Church (GCC) in Granger, Indiana felt that way himself several years ago, and decided to do something about it: he started blogging. The online community created by Jason’s blog led him to invite other church IT folks to GCC and have a “roundtable” discussion to see if they could benefit from sharing with each other. This was the first official Church IT Roundtable (CITRT), a term that now encompasses an unofficial group of people, discussions and community that connect from around the US and even the world so no one has to “go it alone.”

Roundtables are generally held a couple of times a year. The most recent Roundtable was held at Saddleback Church in Foothill Ranch, CA on March 10^th through 12^th. Approximately 75 people from churches around the country (and a small number of vendors) attended.

On Wednesday night, officially the optional “pre-roundtable” dinner, old friends and new ones gathered for some excellent dinner provided by the on-campus foodservices at Saddleback and some even more excellent socialization. Sharing technology and technique are excuses to have a Roundtable, and don’t get me wrong, the both were shared in abundance and the knowledge and experience is invaluable. But the real, just as tangible but less quantifiable, reason to get together is to share life with each other and forge long-lasting friendships with peers who just happen to often have resources they’re willing to share with you at and after the Roundtable. For all the technology, there’s at least a triple dose of inspiration and connection.

Why get together in person? That’s a good question, one that geeks of all stripes would probably ask in a similar situation. After all, technology and the Internet are pretty powerful now. Why not leverage blogs, social media, online chat and streaming video to accomplish everything remotely? Because that already happens, and it’s not enough! Relationships developed online can be good, and even somewhat deep, but it’s not often they are as rich, full and close as ones developed when eating, laughing, sharing and telling stories together around a table or tables. The “roundtable” events often happen around square tables, and the CITRT geeks enjoy pointing out the irony of this fact—however the national Roundtable at Saddleback actually took place around round tables! Additionally, it’s much easier to focus on sharing and developing friendships in an environment removed from daily workflow and life.

That doesn’t mean that the CITRT group foregoes the use of technology! In between Roundtable events, the group does leverage Twitter, Facebook, wikis, blogs, and IRC (Internet Relay Chat, a very old and once more widely used Internet chat protocol where the chat rooms are called “channels”) to communicate regularly, and for those who have met in person it’s that much easier to continue those friendships in between get-togethers when everyone is spread around the country. There’s a social aspect, but every day there are usually multiple technology problems and questions answered by others in the group in the IRC channel, saving those who ask countless hours of their own research, trial, error, and often even the cost of hiring a contractor or outside expert to provide advice and/or solutions.

And that is the focus of the daily Roundtable sessions in California on Thursday. In addition to a daily keynote speaker, there were two Roundtable discussion times on Thursday and one on Friday. Wednesday’s discussion started revolving around how the spiritual life of Church IT staff was affected by working in a church. Generally, a moderator stands up at the front of the room and takes topics from the group, writing them on a whiteboard. That’s how the rest of the sessions worked, but because most geeks would rather talk about technology, the spiritual discussion was a pre-picked starting topic foisted on the three rooms of Roundtable groups at the opening session (with 75 attendees, the sessions are much more manageable and more can participate if they are divided up into groups of around 25 each). After the spiritual discussion, the groups moved on to pick a set of topics ranging from email systems to storage solutions, networking to working with volunteers, and many more. The afternoon session on Thursday was divided up into four groups by type, with infrastructure in one room, management in another, helpdesk and user support in another room, and web design and support in the final, while the Thursday morning Roundtable was an open discussion of any remaining topics.

Attendees are admonished at the beginning: if the topic you have questions about isn’t covered, it’s your fault! Speak up, join the conversation, and participate so everyone can get what they need most from the group. Yes, geeks often are shy and reserved, but it’s much easier to open up with friends. Many in the group are already friends, some have met at prior Roundtable events and some were only friends online until this week, but even for those there for the first time, the pre-existing online friendships created a fast connection.

On Thursday afternoon, an unscheduled visitor stopped by, Pastor Rick Warren, founding pastor at Saddleback Church and author of the bestselling Purpose Driven Life book. For him to take an hour and a half out of his busy schedule to greet everyone individually, give a very insightful talk and stick around for individual pictures was not only unexpected and very welcome, but demonstrated a down-to-earth man with a heart for service and Christian ministry.

Friday morning was opened with a keynote from Scott Smith, CEO of Solerant, a company that was founded to provide IT services and support to churches, although they have corporate clients as well. Solerant has been a long-time supporter of the Roundtable online and in person, and Scott delivered a much-needed message from a CEO’s perspective about how communicating as a technology person to leadership needs to be carefully constructed to provide information that the leaders care about in a context of the things they care about, rather than spewing techno-speak that may very well be correct, but won’t translate into a concrete reason to provide support and resources. Scott focused on how to position projects and requests through high-level descriptions and especially by using stories and analogies that are easy to relate to outside of the geek mindset. Geeks in all fields could benefit from using his tips.

The daytime food and events were just the icing on the cake, as most attendees continued their discussions after dinner, often late into the wee hours of the morning in their hotel rooms, the hotel lobby, and for some, the pool and hot tub! This could range from group discussions to one-on-one or two-on-one teaching or assistance. The knowledge transfer happening at all levels is something most organizations probably wish they could leverage on demand.

It’s an event that’s hard to describe, as much as I’ve attempted here, and a lot of people who might benefit from the event, even if they already participate online, have wondered if it’s worth the time and expense (travel is most of the cost as the registration, including food, has always been under $100 thanks to sponsors who not only bring technology and services to display, but also in most cases participate in the discussions and truly help just like everyone else—the group encourages vendor engineers and technologists to attend and become part of the community, not just sales people!). However, without fail, first-time attendees enthusiastically said at the end that it was indescribably valuable, that they’d forged new and deep friendships, gathered excellent ideas to take home and implement, and that they couldn’t imagine not making this a part of their regular schedule whenever possible. This is my personal feeling after attending all but three Roundtable events since they started, but it was by far a widely shared opinion.

The CITRT main website is currently a wiki located at http://www.citrt.org/. The site provides links to participant blogs, Twitter lists, ways to connect to the #citrt IRC channel on the Freenode IRC network, and information and registration information for future in-person Roundtable events around the country as it becomes available (they move often or will break down into multiple regional Roundtables around the country in some cases), along with other information, and allows anyone to easily get involved. And because it’s a wiki, anyone connected to Church IT can request an account and add/update information on their own—just one more way to connect and collaborate! Every church, contrary to what it sometimes feels like, has many similar technology needs and those supporting them are not alone. And sometimes, that makes a big difference.

Also, for more technical notes, Tony Dye posted his excellent rough notes of Day 1 and Day 2, my article is a high-level overview but Tony provides a blow-by-technical-blow of the sessions he was in (and the main ones), even though it’s unedited there’s a ton of useful information there. Worth checking out, thanks for sharing Tony!

But, I’m still pretty young, and it’s time to move on to an environment that will provide some new challenges and experience in a wide variety of settings. So I’m moving to a small company with a Christian owner that provides residential and small business IT services to the Indianapolis and surrounding communities. Based in Fishers, IN, I’ll be working out of a new satellite office on the West side of Indy, not far from Lakeview in fact, and I’ll be working primarily with larger clients, including several churches in the area. What the job will look like day to day I can’t tell you precisely yet, but that will certainly be part of the excitement! And I’m still going to be involved with the Church IT Roundtable online and in person to a large extent (it’s still relevant as I’ll still be serving churches!), which I’m very excited about, as I have many close friends in the CITRT and their expertise has proved invaluable (and I have hopefully reciprocated with valuable tidbits of my own from time to time).

I’m really going to miss all of the Lakeview family on a daily basis. The staff are basically like close friends and family; it’s where I’ve spent all of my adult life in fact (and some volunteer time for years before that). God gave me peace about moving to this new position and I know He’ll provide, but I already miss everyone and I’m not gone yet!

There are still some details to be worked out about the transition, so I’m sure I’ll have some more to post later, and I certainly appreciate any prayers. It looks like I am going to the Church IT Roundtable at Saddleback Church in California on March 11-12! If you work in Church IT or you support or volunteer with Church IT in some way, you should be there! The cost should be under $100 plus travel, though final details should be coming soon.

My first day on the new job is set for February 10th, 2010 (though a few current coworkers said they hoped when I said Feb. 10th it meant 2011! Nothing like feeling wanted!).

I talked to my Zones sales rep, Eric Inabnit (Eric.Inabnit@zones.com, or 800-258-0882 ext. 3361), about it to see what the real deal was. He did some checking, and like James found out from his CDW rep, it appears that Adobe is consolidating their Educational and Non-Profit SKUs to simplify things, but it appears the pricing will stay relatively similar to its present levels, with a few minor adjustments. To quote Eric, he is hearing that, “they will be combining the nonprofit and academic price sheets to simplify management on their end. They are saying that if you qualified before you will still qualify, your sku’s will most likely change however pricing changes if any, will be negligible.”

Adobe will be shutting down its entire licensing system from October 7th to October 14th, however, so you cannot retrieve your license information for existing licenses nor can you order new licenses during that time. I can live with that, I wasn’t planning on any October Adobe orders.

This is good news, and while it’s by no means the final word, it does make me worry less about the potential budget impact it might have on churches! Adobe’s products are already some of the highest-priced software packages we buy that aren’t for servers (and frankly, much of our software (Microsoft, especially) costs a lot less than some single Adobe licenses), even with the reasonably significant non-profit discount.

If I discover any additional information I’ll update this post; send me any new information if you’ve got it! (Leave a comment or mention @dszp on Twitter.) Thanks, James, for bringing the Adobe changes to my attention and checking into it as well.

I have a few things I’d like to publish here that won’t fit on Twitter and will be easier to reference here than on IRC where I still may have discussed some of it already (in the #citrt channel). Now to find the time! Hopefully soon. Poor neglected blog… :-) Maybe with such a cool new backend I’ll post more often. Not that I posted at all while running the betas and release candidates…

It looks to me like the issue is the prongs break off in a power outlet sometimes. I move my adapter daily (until I get a second one so I can keep one at work and one at home) and haven’t had any issues. I’m not going to stop using it as they recommend, but I will be on the lookout for any problems and if it does break off, I’ll make sure to notice and take action to prevent any injuries or issues. If you can’t manage to do that safely, sure, stop using it and charge via USB all the time :-) Don’t blame me though, officially I’m telling you to stop using the adapters now and wait until October 10th to get a new one. Go ahead, I’m sure you’ll always be close to a USB outlet to charge your phone a few times a day!

Thanks to whoever I follow on Twitter who brought this to my attention; I’m not entirely sure at this point who it was. If you haven’t seen it here, you probably live under the tech news rock that I do much of the time (tech news can suck me in, so I often stay away for lengthy periods of time!).

Yep. That’s right. In case Firefox, Opera, and Safari all don’t satiate your burning desire to be rid of Internet Explorer (even if it is improving with age, after it started to ripen at least), Google said they are releasing the beta of a new web browser called Chrome today, Sept. 2nd, 2008. It’s been in development for two years, and they’re beta-testing it with thousands of webpages automatically after each build. How? Well, they have this little archive of webpages stored somewhere… :-)

They accidentally leaked the news a bit early but have now come clean and written a blog post announcing it, and have released the original leaked “comic book” describing the project, which will be open source and they claim has pulled from both Mozilla (Firefox) code and Apple’s Safari WebKit rendering engine. The comic book is very descriptive and indicates that each tab of the browser will run in a separate process, which will reduce memory usage over time and allow multi-threaded JavaScript, as well as allowing individual tabs to crash without taking down the whole browser. If this works as advertised, a few tab-users I know (with myself as the number one offender!) may flock to this quite a bit faster than users have moved to, say, Flock. Sorry, couldn’t resist…pun fully intended :-D

I, for one, will be grabbing the beta ASAP and taking it for a spin. As long as rendering is consistent enough to not intruduce more headaches for web designers (basically, standards-compliant, kind of ), I’m excited to see if it lives up to its claims! And I love testing new software. I’m always amazed at the things I haven’t thought of yet, that others have. Nowhere is it easier and quite flexible to showcase stuff like that than in software! Just bang a few keys, hopefully in the right order, and you have something new. The only thing easier? Web design (which is correspondingly more limited most of the time). Of course, both can be done very badly…

Now I’m rambling. But this is unexpected and exciting news! I would say, don’t knock it ’til you try it, and read the comic :-)

Why did I choose the iPhone? Well, I’m tired of my Treo 650, which is showing its age. I like the multi-touch interface, I like the data speeds, I like the screen size, and I like that, because it’s so popular, people are writing sites and apps (both!) specifically to work well on it. That means I can do more with it than with any other phone, or at least I can do so much so easily compared to other phone options right now. OK, I have to correct myself, will be able to do…gotta get the thing first! Oh yeah, and now it does Exchange ActiveSync with Push email, calendar, and contacts! That’s the one thing that made me sit up and take a look. Before, I at least told myself (and others) that I was OK giving the iPhone a pass–yes it was cool, but it wasn’t truly functional if you need Exchange access. Supposedly, that’s no longer true! It seems that the $30/mo data plan, unlike AT&T has been claiming per my previous post, works just fine with ActiveSync, which makes sense from a technical level.

It’s a 16GB black iPhone, if you were wondering, and I’m going to use it to replace my iPod Classic 80GB I think (the first Apple product I’ve ever owned) which is why I opted for the larger version; my iPod has over 20GB of podcasts and I’ll still have to pare that down to fit on the iPhone! Shouldn’t be hard; I didn’t try on the iPod because there’s plenty of space. I’m already with AT&T (but no longer in a contract), and the monthly plan will only cost me $10 per month more than what I’m already paying as part of my family’s FamilyTalk plan, so while I considered a 2G used iPhone, the 3G made enough sense given the subsidy for me.

This is just one more step in the growth of identify theft, which is becoming more and more of a problem (I won’t bore you with the details of other theft cases, if you’re in the IT field I you probably know about them already!). I hope they figure out a better way to protect this stuff before it gets as common as spam as gotten. But I know the technical sophistication required by every single business to make that a reality, and I don’t think the problem is going away any time soon.

On the personal front, I’m in Ohio this weekend for my brother-in-law’s wedding, and I only have one week of schoolwork left for this semester before being freed to spend some more time blogging; I’m looking forward to getting back into the swing of things! I have managed to stick around the #citrt Freenode IRC channel on a consistent basis, and I’ve stayed reasonably active on Twitter since MinistryTECH and the Roundtable, which I’m still catching up from at work (but getting close to the normal level of “behind” :-)

Terrell was concerned that the weather had caused enough disruption with local communications that he has so far been unable to call or email everyone scheduled to attend the conference, and hasn’t been able to get his internet access to work long enough to update the MinistryTECH website with an announcement, and hoped that putting the word out through blogs would be enough to alert everyone.

Hopefully the airlines and hotels will be understanding of the situation created by the weather and refund people’s tickets and reservations, or it may be difficult to afford travel when the events are rescheduled. Unfortunately, airlines are known for making up reasons for not giving refunds in such circumstances, but we’ll see how it turns out in this situation. An alternate idea might be to contact the government and see if they can assist with disaster relief funds, although this might be limited to people attending from organizations without any religious affiliation.

I was really looking forward to attending these events this week, but I guess there’s always the Roundtable this fall to look forward to…as long as there aren’t any hurricanes in the Carolinas this October!

Some Major New Features:

• Administration area redesign
• Widget-based administration Dashboard, customizable
• Draft auto-save improved
• Search now searches pages by default (no plugin required)
• Add unlimited copies of any widget to your sidebar(s)
• Semi-automatic Plugin upgrade
• New tag management area
• Built-in support for Gravatars (Gravatar is now owned by Automattic)
• Other cool stuff I can’t think of right now, plus minor cool stuff that adds up to coolness :-)

General Information:

Good info about WordPress 2.5, along with some upgrade information:

• Lorelle’s WordPress 2.5 Upgrade Preparation Checklist (there’s so much information here…read this before you upgrade, period!)
• Screencast of the new Admin Interface in action
• Lorelle made the announcement before I did about the release (her blog has a wealth of information!)
• So did WeblogToolsCollection, not surprisingly
• Are You Ready for WordPress 2.5? (has many links to other resources as well)
  
• WordPress Codex page with 2.5 features
• Codex: Upgrading WordPress
• Developer post with changes made a few weeks ago and this past week (peek into a bit of what went into this version!)
• The changelog of all 1300 individual changes for this version

I, of course, am now running the final WordPress 2.5 release on several sites already, including this one!

One thing I did notice: Even in the final 2.5, on all the sites I’ve switched, is that at the bottom of the admin interface it still says, “You are using a development version (2.5). Cool! Please stay updated.” That is usually only shown on the trunk revisions (hence the term “development version”) and not in a final release, so it looks like they may have forgotten to change that for the final release, unless I’m doing something wrong!

Upgrading with Subversion:

To upgrade WordPress, my recommendation, if your host allows shell access and has Subversion installed, is to switch over to running your WordPress installation based on a subversion repository checkout. There are instructions in the Codex on how to install WordPress using Subversion (using the “svn” command), and I have done this what feels like countless times with much success (Joost de Valk has a good post about this as well). The basics go something like this, to install version 2.5:

1. Start with an empty directory that is the folder to install WordPress into (make a backup of your existing install and move it first if you have one).
2. Inside that directory (using an SSH shell), type this (don’t forget the final period):
   svn co http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.5 .

3. Visit the URL to the directory you just installed into from a web browser and walk though the usual steps to create wp-config.php, set up the database and complete the installation.
4. If you backed up an old install, move your themes, uploads and plugins back into the proper folders in the new structure.

From now on, the files created by the Subversion checkout will be updated when you use Subversion to “switch” to a different version, but files you create (like plugins, themes, uploads, your wp-config.php file) will be left alone and are safe through upgrades. Subversion only updates files that have changed so it is an efficient upgrade method. To switch from one version to another, just run this command from a shell in the same folder as above:

svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.3.3/

That will change your installation over to version 2.3.3, but be careful in practice to never “downgrade” to a prior version, as Subversion updates files but not the database (after an upgrade, the next time you visit the administration area you are prompted to update the database if the new version has made changes). If you switch to a prior version, it will likely choke on the database that has been changed for a newer version! You can also install or switch to the trunk, which is where current development happens and may be broken or insecure, so only do this on test installations. To install the trunk, use this command (include the final period!):

svn co http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/trunk/ .

And to switch to trunk from a prior version, use:

svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/trunk/

In addition, if you’re running trunk, and you want to update to the very newest changes, just run this command:

svn up

If you know the shell at all, you have access to it, and the Subversion “svn” client is installed, running like this makes it very easy to upgrade–especially if you run multiple WordPress installations like I do! If it weren’t this simple, I’d probably be running WordPress 1.5 still :-)

One of the other excellent features in WordPress 2.5 is the ability to upgrade plugins from the Plugins panel in the administration area, as long as you know the FTP username and password. If you use Subversion for your main WordPress install and the new Plugin upgrade feature for your plugins, it should significantly reduce the time required to keep your WordPress installation up-to-date! (It is possible to add plugins to your Subversion install as “externals” so you get the trunk copy of any plugins you run updated whenever you run the “svn up” command, but this is a bit advanced and the new upgrade feature should negate most of these benefits.)

WordPress is amazing, I just wish there was enough time in the day for me to experiment with even some of the things I haven’t done with it. This list of 48 Unique Ways To Use WordPress is inspiring! I’ll take comfort that at least one thing on the list we’re already doing: using it for sermons (#34)!

So far this morning, I’ve tried hibernating three or four times, and as promised, TrueCrypt does not block me from hibernating any more. However, my experience resuming from hibernation has been, well…non-existent! After appearing to hibernate normally, when I try to resume I am prompted for my decryption boot password and then Windows boots normally. From scratch. No traces of hibernation present.

My only thought as to why this is happening is perhaps it’s because I decided to use Whole Drive encryption this time, as opposed to System Partition encryption. I didn’t realize when I started the encryption process that the version history was so specific, but it does say that one of the new features is, “Support for hibernation on computers where the system partition is encrypted (previous versions of TrueCrypt prevented the system from hibernating when the system partition was encrypted).” It specifically mentions encryption of the system partition!

I started the decryption process (estimated to complete in 6 hours, much slower than encryption) this morning and when complete, I will attempt re-encrypting just the system partition and see if that fixes the issue. I’ll update this post with information as I discover it!

UPDATE Saturday, March 15th, early morning: Yesterday, I re-encrypted just the system partition with TrueCrypt, but the same problem still occurs. I did discover (thanks to referrer logs) that someone had a similar problem and posted a thread to the official TrueCrypt Forums, linking to this post. Apparently, while the problem does not appear to be widespread, it does seem to still happen for others. I did not get a chance to try any of the suggested workarounds, but I did post an update to that thread with a few more details of my experience in case it helps resolve the issue. About a day after I posted my details, the developers posted a fix in the form of 5.1a Beta, which they requested be tested to see if the problem is fixed. I have installed the beta, but it requires a reboot before taking effect. Update coming later.

UPDATE later Saturday: The beta of 5.1a fixed the problem, and hibernation works now. Happy ending! Apparently there is still a problem with a couple of versions of Vista that are fixed but won’t be released in a beta, per Vertex on the forums:

This is a known issue in Beta 1 that affects users running Windows
Vista Ultimate and Enterprise. According to the developers, it was
discovered and fixed shortly after Beta 1 was released. Beta 2 is
currently unlikely to be released so if you use one of those systems,
you will need to wait for TrueCrypt 5.1a final/stable.

That’s great news Rob, thanks for the heads-up!

UPDATE: Chris Green linked to more details about the iPhone and ActiveSync straight from Microsoft. Microsoft’s Terry Myerson, VP of for Exchange, said, “We started talking with Apple about licensing Exchange ActiveSync before the launch of the iPhone last year. In fact, I met with Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller almost daily for a period of two weeks ironing out the details of the agreement. The result is a true collaboration between Microsoft and Apple.”

UPDATE at 3:15 pm: Apple has an Enterprise website for the iPhone including a beta signup to test the iPhone with ActiveSync using the iPhone 2.0 software! (hat tip to Jason Lee in the #citrt chat.)

Google also jumped on the synchronization bandwagon with its own Google Calendar Sync utility to keep your Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook calendar up to date (two-way or one-way). It’s not ActiveSync and it doesn’t sync with Exchange, but I can see a use for this even for personal use where friends have Google Apps set up and want to sync with their phones, but their phones will only sync with Outlook. Another, over-the-air option I’ve heard about is GooSync, but I don’t have any experience with that yet. It sounds good but I’ve heard mixed opinions. Thanks to Scott, also in the #citrt chat room, for this piece of news!

And don’t forget about the Church IT Podcast episode recording in just a few minutes this afternoon! (It’s at 2 pm Easter via TalkShoe on Thursday the 6^th, so if you’re reading this later–it may be over for this week, come back in two weeks!)

The main reason was the lack of hibernation support. I tried using standby, which seemed to work sometimes. I would verify that standby mode had been entered, and put the latpop in my bag. Less than 12 hours later, more often than not, the battery was dead and the laptop was off. Even within shorter time periods, I would sometimes take the laptop out of my bag and it would be running! This is dangerous, as carrying around a laptop when it’s off can be done much less gently than should be done when it’s on. And running in my bag prevents good heat dissipation, so it would be practically burning hot in this case (pun intended :-)

So, now hibernation works again. Which has worked well for me 99% of the time since I purchased the laptop. And it’s not encrypted, but it wasn’t in the past either. If they can make whole-disk encryption work with hibernation, and I’m not enthusiastic about the chances of this given the security implications that I think I understand but probably need to read more carefully, I’ll give it another try.

Note: I’m running Windows XP Pro on my laptop. At some point I may try Vista Ultimate, and may perhaps test Vista’s Bitlocker. I’ve heard it’s more complicated. I don’t know if it allows for hibernation or not. There’s an excellent overview of the two together at 4sysops, a blog I highly recommend overall.

UPDATE on March 15th: The problem with hibernation support has been fixed in TrueCrypt’s beta and soon the final release of version 5.1a. I am back to running an encrypted system for now!

Before you critique:

• Yes, the header image of our building (a holdover from the old site) will be replaced. Some areas already have new headers, we’re just waiting for the rest to be finished up.
• Most (if not all) of the pages, including the homepage, are valid XHTML. We checked.
• The sermon podcast feed is coming, we’re working on some technical details of the iTunes listing first, and I already took care of some of the technical issues of FeedBurner redirection (FeedSmith plugin required a few tweaks to forward a separate podcast feed).
• Print stylesheets are on the to-do list but aren’t implemented yet.
• Extended upcoming event information has yet to be entered.
• Some people listed on the site need to be hyperlinked to contact info. I’m researching the best way to do this without exposing them to spam scrapers, whether a contact form or perhaps a solution based on this email obfuscation article. There’s also this WordPress Plugin, which I like but have a few issues with. A combination of the two sounds best; whether I’ll leave this up to someone else or try and tackle it myself I’m not sure of.
• I’d like to add some Microformat markup in several places, using the hCard spec.

I’m sure I’m forgetting some things, but I think we have a pretty good foundation. In addition to the above finishing touches, we can now refocus our attention towards doing something about the Lakeview Worship site, desperately in need of equal attention but still the home of our excellent new worship CD, not that I’m biased or anything :-)

In the Windows and Linux versions a special bootloader is available that lets you encrypt your entire system drive. It doesn’t look like that option is available in the OS X version.

What? Whole-drive encryption of the system drive is now available in Windows and/or Linux? (Clarification: Only Windows is supported right now.) This I’ve gotta see. I’ve looked at some laptop disk encryption tools in the past, and they’re nice but generally not cheap (whether software or specialized hardware). But open source is better than cheap, and TrueCrypt is already considered to be high quality. It’s written well (important where security software is concerned) and is in active development. The new version also promises significant speed increases.

I’ve installed the new version on my laptop. Do I dare try out the encryption feature? I do have most (not all) of my data backed up, the important stuff at least. Maybe I’ll investigate this through the weekend, make a decision, and possibly try it out. Possibly. Fire is fun to play with and very powerful, but you have to know what you’re doing!

UPDATED after a night’s sleep: Yes, I dared. Before going to bed I started the process to encrypt the entire system partition on my laptop. I don’t know precisely how long it took; it was projecting 2-3 hours left when I went to bed (shortly after starting it) and was done when I got up. The process is slick, I’ll give them credit for that. They require that you burn a recovery disc (and verify it) before you can continue, just in case, and they also verify that the bootloader works before allowing the encryption process to begin. I haven’t used the system enough to know whether there is a significant speed penalty when the partition is encrypted. It seems a touch sluggish but still responsive, but within the normal operating parameters depending on the day! The biggest downside: hibernation is no longer supported. Standby is an option, but the system will not hibernate (if you try, TrueCrypt stops you and provides a helpful message about why it won’t work). I generally hibernate all the time when not using my laptop. I’ll try using Standby for a while and see how happy I am with it. Not sure if it’s a deal-breaker yet.

As a precaution, the boot loader offers the option to, with the correct password, decrypt the entire disk without needing to boot into Windows, if Windows gets corrupted. There are several other handy “rescue” methods in the boot loader (on the hard drive and on the bootable rescue disc). I am extremely impressed with the quality of the thought and effort put into this whole-disk encryption feature, and although I haven’t tried the Vista Bitlocker method, TrueCrypt certainly sounds a bit easier (but it doesn’t integrate with the TPM chip, if one exists). There are options in the setup to set up encryption to work with multi-boot systems, but it warns that this requires advanced knowledge to set up. And, of course, you need a dual-boot system, which I don’t have at the moment.

UPDATE: The new version 5.1 has hibernation support, and version 5.1a Beta actually makes it work on my laptop. I’m back encrypted!

I received an email response from my request for a sales rep regarding Postini at non-profit prices. Here’s what they (in specific, Peter from The Google Message Security Team) said, in part:

We don’t actually have the non-profit pricing available online at this time. We’re working on making the non-profit pricing available directly online. We don’t have a specific timeline for that, but definitely check back with us later!

If you would still like to move forward with the non-profit pricing right now, I can forward you along to one of our direct sales representatives if you are planning on making a purchase of $1,500 USD or more.

So basically, unless we’re over three times the size we are, we have to wait. This is going to leave a bunch of churches and other non-profits waiting out in the cold for an undetermined length of time. Education customers may, in general, have larger email user bases to qualify for direct sales, but that’s just my guess. I hope their non-specific timeline is shorter rather than longer; perhaps they’re working hard on it right now but don’t have it up since the change is such a new announcement. There’s just no way to know yet, given this response. A note of some sort to this effect would be appreciated on the pricing web page, but as much as I like them, Google will do what Google will do. I don’t think that’s going to change any time soon!

UPDATE the next day: My reply to Google went like this:

Thanks for the information and clarification. But you are still saying that if we are wanting to purchase a plan for less than $1500 we will need to wait for online availability, correct?

and Google Rep Peter’s reply was:

You’ve got it exactly. We’re making the $1,500 option available for people who are already planning on paying that much, or need the service deployed either right away, yesterday, or as soon as possible.

If that doesn’t fit your needs, I would recommend sitting tight while we get the Google Message Discovery online purchasing process up. We don’t have a set timeline for it, but it’s going to be sooner rather than later.

This is mostly good news. They aren’t committing to a date, but it seems to be coming soon. When it does, you can bet we’ll be jumping on it like a frog on a lily pad!

I’m waiting to hear from a Google sales representative to confirm pricing and details, but based on this pricing chart, it looks like the non-profit pricing for their highest level of service will only be $8.33/mo, or less than 70 cents per month, per user. We’re paying more than twice that for our current hosted anti-spam, anti-virus filtering service, and it doesn’t do message archiving! Basic spam filtering would be only $1/year/user, or the mid-range plan adding some security features would go up to a whopping $4/year/user. I sure hope I’m reading these prices right, ’cause if I am, Postini will be getting another customer!

Interestingly, the pricing chart is for Postini as an add-on to Google Apps for your Domain, which has a free premium version for non-profits. The chart is not specifically for the Postini stand-alone service. However, if necessary, that service does let you dual-deliver messages both to the Google webmail interface and to your own email server, so setting up a free account to get the Postini pricing wouldn’t be a humongous deal. However, I’m curious to see what the pricing will be for Postini without going through Google Apps! My suspicion is…it will be comparable. When I submitted a request to talk to them, they replied and said they have a lot of people to contact due to the new pricing. No kidding!

(Hat tip: Jason Powell via #citrt).

Tomorrow afternoon at 2 pm Eastern is the next episode of the Church IT Podcast, hosted on TalkShoe by Jason Powell, the King of Church IT (if you were at the Fall Church IT Roundtable last year where I accidentally coined that nickname, that joke might be funny :-) Don’t miss it if you can make it (I’m not sure if I’ll be there or not, unfortunately I may not have the opportunity this time). There is still the option to download a “Classic” Java client for TalkShoe chat, but they just introduced a new Web version that does not require a download ahead of time and looks more like an IRC chat window. It’s in alpha but looks nice; you can use either one you want.

Speaking of chat, if every two weeks is just too long to wait for the Podcast, you can jump in to the IRC chatroom “24/7 CITRT Roundtable” set up on the Freenode server (IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, has been around forever, or just about, in internet terms, but is not quite as common as it used to be). Justin Moore posted a couple of excellent posts talking about the #citrt chat room and about how to use IRC. He also links to Jeffrey Thompson’s screencast demonstrating graphically how to install the ChatZilla Firefox extension and join in the chat. If you’re a Church IT person, you need to be in there at least from time to time and build your network of geek friends while sharing technology tips!

So, there’s three ways you can get involved in the Church IT community without giving the seat of your chair the opportunity to rebound from your butt imprint. Go!