December 2005 - Posts
…by Journey is one of a couple songs I hope to sing tonight at Karaoke. I am in Dallas this week visiting friends and family for the holidays. The Nun and I have already been to Karaoke a couple of time this week, but my friend Glenn Lukin with On Stage Entertainment has a new show starting this week that we wanted to go out and support. You won’t find it on his website yet, but you will see us at Stratos tonight at 8pm.
Cheers!
Our presentation team had a meeting a few months ago where they brought out a professional photographer to take what were essentially publicity stills of our presenters to use on web and print materials. We had a little fun with it and each of us presented the corporate image as well as an alter-ego. You can view these secondary personalities for our Technet team here. Just mouse over the presnter picture for a glimpse into our other selves…..
You can see our MSDN counterparts here….
Cheers!
I have been in a blogging funk. The 19 people on the planet that read my blog have not seen much lately. I could blame the holidays… but it has been a good season for me since well before Thanksgiving. I could blame it on being too busy… but if I have had Xbox time, I have blogging time. Nope, nothing to blame it on except me. I just haven’t felt like blogging. I go to blog about something only to lose my passion about the post. Or I spend 2 hours typing a post up only to realize it didn’t say anything (I am not going to promise to fix that either).
I knew I was in a funk, I knew I had to fix it, and I wasn’t doing anything about it. A few weeks ago I started thinking about New Years resolutions and decided that I would get excited about blogging again and just do it. Tonight I found something interesting enough that I thought I would get an early start on the resolution. Tonight I found inspiration in….a pair of panties. A thong, no less.
(digression alert)
I am an American Idol fan. I didn’t become one till Season Two though. I heard a lot about Season One via The Nun who watched it mostly when I was traveling (the first season of Idol was also my first year in my current role…..which moved me from a 6x6 condo cube to a pretty significant amount of travel…..which limited my TV time…..which I was hardly going to waste watching some Christina Aguilera wannabe’s getting polished up by a bunch of corporate star-makers). The Nun gushed about the show and how she voted for Kelly Clarkson from the get go. I don’t remember seeing anything but commercials for Season One and none of it grabbed me. Season One passed me by and I was none-the-wiser.
One Year Later…
….I am a year into the new job, moved to SoCal, and things have settled into place. I now have some extra TV time. We also had a new Media Center PC which I had built for The Nun for Christmas (read this as, I wanted a new PC in the house and so I built the Media Center for her as an excuse to get it in…..it worked) so we were stockpiling shows I recorded as well as shows The Nun was recording. One day I watched an early episode of American Idol – Season 2 and….
…few months later….
…I am frantically dialing over and over and over to get through and register my vote to make sure that Clay Aiken beats out Ruben Studdard for the finale show. Ruben Studdard was ultimately declared the “winner” (define “winner” as “the person that was declared victorious by an American public that just doesn’t get it” - a strange phenomenon that seems to apply not only to reality shows but to our political processes as well). Clay Aiken, even though he lost (came in second place), has reaped much greater financial rewards, popularity, and overall success than Ruben.
In my opinion, there is no better proof of this than…..a pair of panties. A thong no less. (back on track). Now, before I start linking, I am going to ask you to adjust the sound on what ever you are using to read this with. No trickery here - just trying to help bring a smile to your face. Even without sound the link will still explain itself, but having the sound high enough to hear Clay speaking adds a certain surreal quality that shouldn’t be missed. If you are in an office space, no need to crank it to 11. Two or three should suffice…if there is no sound, check out the upper right side of the page underneath Clay’s mug…
…..a pair of panties. A thong no less.
Cheers!
This morning I delivered a webcast on MOM 2005 Sizing and Performance. Once of the questions that came up was this —
Can I use MOM 2005 Reporting with SQL 2005 Reporting Services?
I checked the MOM 2005 System Requirements and it notes that SQL 2000 Reporting Services would be required.
I also checked the MOM 2005 team product blog and did not see any announcement of being able to use SQL 2005 for the reporting services.
Finally, I pinged a couple internal distribution lists looking for some guidance and was told taht we do NOT currently support using SQL 2005 for either the MOM Reporting services *or* the MOM database.
I would encourage you to subscribe to the MOM blog above as I am sure it will be annouced there first, and to check the MOM site I linked to above as it will get posted there as well.
Cheers!
As promised, here are some WMV files of the demo sessions that I had to cut from this afternoon’s webcast. The upside is you can download these and view at your own liesure. Please email me if you have questions!
Demo 1 – Introducing System Center
Capacity Planner Pre-Req’s
Installing Capacity Planner 2006
A Brief Introduction
Demo 2 – Creating Architecture Profiles
Creating the Global Topology
Creating Usage Profiles
Creating Hardware Profiles
Demo 3 – Running Model Simulations
Exploring the Topology Viewer
Running the Model Simulator
Viewing Simulation Results
Cheers!
<**Updated** Fixed the picture links**>
I often think about the advances in technology man has made over the years. Not just the cool stuff like microwave ovens, wireless communications, and silly string either. I think about how simple it is for everyday people to do certain things that were either cost prohibitive, required specialized training (because it was complicated or dangerous), or required some sort of magical natural skill.
I think photography is one of those areas where technology has eliminated the barriers to entry to all but those not yet concieved in the womb (only a matter of time). Cameras are everywhere. Entire cities are wired with cameras. Camera Phones, something that any spy from the 70’s would have given up an identity for (except they would have been a little conspicuous talking into futuristic clamshell phone in 1975), are being used by grade school kids (which by the way…..to all the parents out there……come on? a camera I understand…..but does a 3rd grader really need a cell phone?).
But the real reason I rant and rave is because of digital cameras. They are cheap. Take excellent pictures. Simple to use (I will allow arguements here). Best of all, ANYONE can take good pictures. Today’s cameras have all kinds of hocus pocus features that will practically let you take a perfect picture of an American flag left on the moon while snowboarding.
I am no camera genius, but every now and then I take a picture or two worth bragging about. The Nun and I were chillin’ at the crib last night, when we caught a view of the back yard. I grabbed the camera and tripod and took these pics.
The tallest palm tree is my back neighbors and is about 60–75 feet tall. What sort of looks like a cactus to the right of the tall palm is actually our Christmas Tree from last year which was a live tree with a bulb that we moved to the back yard.
I don’t like this one so much. It reveals my fence which is badly in need of a whitewashing.
I am sure someone with a PhD in backyard sunset photography is grimacing right now. My answer to that is….you paid 6 figures for your PhD in backyard sunset photography, between 5 and 6 figures for your backyard sunset photographic equipment and likely spend hours setting up for the perfect backyard sunset photograph.
I took a total of 12 shots in 5 minutes with a 4.1 megapixel Sony Cyber-Shot on a rickety tripod.
nyah. nyah.
This one is from the same position but the angle twitches just slightly (note: it would have cost me a lot more money to get educated on the doctoral version of “twitchy angles” but I think everyone still gets what I am talking about.)
Same position but with a change in the landscape setting on the camera. This game me a different exposure which make sthe frame more red.
This is my favorite shot. Too much black at the bottom so I fired up Digital Image Pro and cropped it (below)
Change the orientation of the camera for a couple of shots.
The remaining pics were bad or not interesting. These turned out pretty good all things considered.
I have a Canon i9900 Photo Printer that I immediately sent a cropped photo to which turned out wonderful on 13x19 Glossy Photo Paper.
This is my favorite shot. It was cropped from “Sunset Red” above
You can click on any of the picture and get the full size version. They are a couple megs each if you are on dial-up.
All pictures copyright Chris E. Avis. Wanna use them? Have your people call my people and we can send them to lunch while we go have a beer and sort things out.
Cheers!
There have been many requests from across the country to post the scripts we use in our SQl Demos from the “Best Of…” and SQL Launch Events. Harold Wong zipped them up and sent them to me to post here.
Cheers!
Presentations and WebCasts –
New Video & Audio based information for developers is located at these links:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdntv/archive.aspx
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=14
http://msdn.microsoft.com/theshow/
http://msdn.microsoft.com/dotnetrocks/
MSDN TV: Late Binding in Visual Basic – Paul Vick and Erik Meijer discuss the role that late binding plays in Visual Basic, allowing a more dynamic style of programming than is possible in some other .NET languages. They also show some future ideas for how late binding might make programming against data such as XML radically easier.
Hotfixes, Patches, Updates, Service Packs —
DirectX9.0c Redistributable (October 2005) – Multilingual – This download provides the DirectX 9.0c end-user multi-languaged redistributable that developers can include with their product. The redistributable license agreement covers the terms under which developers may use the Redistributable. For full details please review the DirectX SDK EULA.txt and DirectX Redist.txt files located in the license directory.
This package is localized into Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and English.
Windows CE 5.0 Platform Builder Update – KB910869 – Fixes made in this update:
Component: DirectX
Description: Launching applications after playing video may result in an error.
Windows CE 5.0 Platform Builder Update – KB910643 – Fixes made in this update:
Component: DirectX
Description: Playback of WMA files may consume large amount of memory.
Australian Daylight Savings Changes for Microsoft Products for the Year 2006 – The Commonwealth Games are scheduled to be held during March 2006 in Melbourne Australia. Several Australian states including New South Wales, Victoria, Australian Capital Territory, South Australia and Tasmania, have changed the Daylight Savings transition end dates to the first Sunday of April 2006.
Daylight savings end for 2005/2006
For the Year 2006 only, the published Daylight Savings end transition dates (as at 14th September, 2005) for each of the states of Australia are:
Victoria 27/03/2006 To 2/4/2006
ACT 27/03/2006 To 2/4/2006
NSW 27/03/2006 To 2/4/2006
Tasmania 27/03/2006 To 2/4/2006
South Australia 27/03/2006 To 2/4/2006
Note: Clocks are advanced at 2am by 1 hour on start day to become Summer Time.
Clocks are wound back at 3am by 1 hour at end day to become Standard Time.
The change to Daylight Savings will affect the transition settings for the following time zone rules:
(GMT + 10:00) Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney
(GMT + 10:00) Hobart
(GMT+09:30) Adelaide
Currently supported versions of products shipped by Microsoft have Daylight Savings transition dates that do not cater for the abovementioned change. These products include:
Microsoft Windows ME
Microsoft Windows 2000
Microsoft Windows Server 2003
Microsoft Windows XP
Microsoft Windows CE / Mobile
Microsoft Exchange server 2000
Microsoft Exchange Server 2003
Tools and Apps –
Microsoft CRM 3.0 SDK – The Microsoft CRM 3.0 SDK is for developers, system customizers and report writers. It contains the following sections:
· Server Programming Guide – A guide for developers writing server side code, custom business logic, integration modules, workflow assemblies and more. This guide provides an architectural overview of Microsoft CRM, the entity model, security model, Web services, and sample code.
· Client Programming Guide – A guide for developers customizing the Web client or the Microsoft CRM client for Outlook, including scripting, integration of custom Web pages, and sample code.
· Report Writers Guide - A guide for developers writing reports for Microsoft CRM using Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services Report Designer.
CLR Managed Debugger (mdbg) Sample – To build and run the CLR Managed Debugger (mdbg) sample you will need to have the .NET Framework 2.0 SDK (release build – version 2.0.50727) installed on your system. This is included with Visual Studio 2005 and the Visual Studio Express Editions. If you do not have Visual Studio 2005, you can download and install Visual C# 2005 Express Edition to build the sample. In both Visual Studio 2005 and Visual C# 2005 Express Edition, you can build mdbg using the solution file included with the mdbg source. Additionally, the sample can be built using nmake (included in the .Net Framework SDK) and the makefile script.
Case Studies, Guides and Whitepapers –
Microsoft CRM 3.0 Implementation Guide – This Implementation Guide provides the information required for a successful Microsoft CRM implementation into your business. This guide addresses the planning, installing (both hardware and software), pre-deployment testing, and operating tasks for the maintenance of the Microsoft CRM system.
This guide is written for the computer system administrator. This guide also assumes that any organization implementing Microsoft CRM software will have the services of an independent software vendor (ISV) or value-added reseller who is partnered with Microsoft and will help you with the entire process of implementing and maintaining your Microsoft CRM installation. Because of this assumption, there are references in this guide to these "partners" who are expected to provide various services to you.
Microsoft KPIUtil.exe tool for Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 – KPIUtil.exe is a tool that allows users to connect to both a Microsoft® Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 server and a Microsoft SQL Server™ 2005 Analysis Services server to do the following:
- Generate SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services key performance indicators (KPIs) from Business Scorecard Manager KPIs.
- Generate Business Scorecard Manager KPIs from SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services KPIs.
- Save a configuration file that contains parameters (including the connection information to the SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services server and the Business Scorecard Manager server) that you entered by using KPIUtil.exe. You can use the saved configuration file either to generate KPIs from a command prompt or to open the configuration file in KPIUtil.exe at a later time.
Cheers!
First….the Bad…
In all my years of working with computers, I have never had a RAM chip go bad, in a machine, DURING normal operations. I have killed them off when swapping them. I have zapped them when laying out in the open. But never had one go bad, in the case, while performing it’s duties. But that is exactly what happened to my firewall server yesterday. Of course everything else is behind that server so when it died, my virtual world ceased to exist.
The Good…
I will have some additional downtime today. I am supposed to recieve two Buffalo Technologies 1.6 TB NAS boxes today.
That’s right……3.2 Terabytes of storage to ease my storage woes. I already have two terabytes scattered amongst the many machines that are on the network, but it has been quite cumbersome for a while now to remember what drives are where and more importantly, where I am putting things.
So that means some downtime later today as I move some things around and get a little better organized. Will post again when I have had a chance to play with the boxes and let you all know a mini-review of the Buffalo products.
Cheers!