With everything going on last week in the land of video, I had this one thought in the back of my mind… it was like a splinter, causing me to cringe out of nowhere and sometimes causing severe discomfort.

That thought?  DST updates.

I don’t think it could’ve happened on a more hectic week.  What with 10 video pieces to crank out, all airing on or BEFORE Sunday, I was really wondering “where on earth is this going to fit in?“  I already had plans to set up WSUS, but I wasn’t sure how that was going to work out, and after reading all the KB articles on the Exchange Calendar Tool, I was about sick to my stomach wondering how this was all going to come together.

I decided that we would go the WSUS route to get our updates.  I set up a VM, and ended up taking the host machine to my house to download the updates (yes, I have MORE bandwidth at home than I do at the office….for now).  After I downloaded what we needed (and then some), I took the server back to the office, reconnected it, and set a GPO to point all of our computers at the new WSUS server, now loaded with every critical and security update we would possibly need at the time.  After doing some random spot checks, it appeared that on Friday, every last server and PC (except our lonely Win2k box in the control room), had received the DST update and was ready to roll.

*whew*… ok.  So far, so good.  Now, it was time to update Exchange and all of our calendars.  The Exchange patch installed with no issues, but I had MAJOR issues trying to update everyone’s calendar using Exchange Calendar Update.  I decided that since there were only about 30 calendars to update, and since everyone worked in the same office area, I would load up the Outlook calendar update onto a flash drive and spend my Monday visiting everyone and updating their calendar.  Was this the most desirable course of action?  No, not by a long shot.  I’m all about remote administration, so this was not in my Top 10 List of Things I Wanna Do On Monday.  However, it worked out very well.  The update tool worked like a charm, and by the end of the day, everyone’s calendar was back in order.

Was this smooth?  To me, yes.  The process went MUCH smoother than it could have.  It amazes me sometimes how God shows up on the scene when we humans think that we’re pretty much hosed.  I honestly don’t know HOW the update process went as smooth as it did… it just did.  I’m amazed, but really, should I be so surprised?  No… that’s just how God works.  I just kinda stand there with my jaw dropped.