Money vs. happiness

It’s been said many times that you can’t buy happiness with money.  The Washington Post runs the article about the research that begs to differ:

Not only did the extra income appear to lower the instance of behavioral and emotional disorders among the children, but, perhaps even more important, it also boosted two key personality traits that tend to go hand in hand with long-term positive life outcomes.

The first is conscientiousness. People who lack it tend to lie, break rules and have trouble paying attention. The second is agreeableness, which leads to a comfort around people and aptness for teamwork. And both are strongly correlated with various forms of later life success and happiness.

Office 365 Lync Online SRV DNS records on Amazon Route 53

One of the very few things we still rely on from Microsoft at work is Office 365.  Not because it is so great, but because I simply didn’t have the time to move away yet (quiet Christmas season is coming soon).  Most people don’t get exposed much to it anyway, using Evolution or Thunderbird email clients, or forwarding everything to Gmail altogether.  But as an administrator of the service I get constantly annoyed by the “there are problems with your domain” notification.  After ignoring it for about a year, I decided to finally fix it.  All that was needed is a couple of records in the DNS zone.

Unfortunately, the instructions Microsoft provides don’t quite well apply to Amazon Route 53 user interface.  It took me a few tries and some searching to find the right ones.  Here they are, thanks to a comment on this page:

First record:

1. Log into Route 53.
2. in the hosted zones window, check the box next to YOURDOMAIN.com
3. click  [ > Go to Record Sets]
4. Click  [Create Record Set]
5. Enter  _sipfederationtls._tcp , in the Name field
6. Switch type to SRV – Service locator
7. In the Value window Enter: 100 1 5061 sipfed.online.lync.com
8. Click [Create]

Second record:

9. Click  [Create Record Set]
10. Enter: _sip._tls , in the name field
11. Switch type to SRV – Service locator
12. In the Value window Enter: 100 1 443 sipdir.online.lync.com
13. Click [Create]

Dell to by EMC for $67 billion

Bloomberg reports on a largest technology acquisition ever (excluding telephony):

Dell Inc. agreed to buy EMC Corp. for about $67 billion in the largest technology acquisition ever, creating a corporate-computing giant that will use a wider product lineup to woo customers as demand slows and competition stiffens.

Dell plans to pay $24.05 a share in cash plus tracking stock in EMC’s prize holding,VMware Inc., valued at about $9 for each EMC share, the companies said in a statement Monday. The price of $33.15 a share is 28 percent above EMC’s closing level on Oct. 7, just before reports surfaced that a deal was in the works.

Continuous Integration Servers

build results

Here’s a list of Continuous Integration (CI) servers / solutions for those who is still trying to choose:

Via volkswagen.