Posted by jpluimers on 2010/07/02
My Windows XP VM’s all use the classic logon, so logging in as Administrator involves just typing in the Administrator name and a password.
Recently though I had to use a VM with a “Frienly Logon” configuration (the one where you see icons for all available logon users), which did not list the Administrator user.
As a reminder to self: how to logon as Administrator when that account is not visible in the “Friendly Logon” account list. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/07/01
I recently needed to undo a TFS checkout from a user on another workspace.
This particular user had an exclusive lock on the document, was scheduled to be away for considerable time, and I was supposed to finalize that document.
I know that performing the undo is not possible from the Visual Studio UI: you need use the TF command-line application for this kind of work.
Fiddling on my own with the TF undo syntax didn’t get me the results right away, so I was glad to find this “Undoing a checkout that belongs to another user” post by mrod (Mario Rodriguez) from Microsoft.
The trick was to include the bold part: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Development, Source Code Management, TFS (Team Foundation System) | 3 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/06/30
It seems quite a few “web 2.0” apps too have the same glitch: they throw away user input when the first page finishes loading.
This is especially noticeable on slow connections (UMTS, DSL that is a long distance from the phone company, EDGE, GPRS, etc): the connection speeds that a lot of developers don’t seem to test on.
So, the sequence of events goes like this:
Or more general:
when you start typing in a Web 2.0 app which is still loading, almost all the times you loose your input.
And since there is usually no visual clue when the Web 2.0 app has finished loading, you have to wait until you feel comfortable not loosing your input.
Bad!
Examples that get this wrong:
Please add your own in the comments…
–jeroen
Posted in Development, Opinions, Software Development, UI Design, Web Development | 1 Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/06/29
For my own memory: a small script to list SQL Server databases and their data/log files.
"%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Binn\OSQL.EXE" -S .\SQLEXPRESS -E -Q "select name from sys.databases" "%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Binn\OSQL.EXE" -S .\SQLEXPRESS -E -Q "select name,filename from model.sys.sysfiles" "%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Binn\OSQL.EXE" -S .\SQLEXPRESS -E -Q "select name,filename from master.sys.sysfiles" "%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Binn\OSQL.EXE" -S .\SQLEXPRESS -E -Q "exec sp_msforeachdb 'select ''?'',name,filename from ?.dbo.sysfiles'"
SQL Server maintains a list of databases in the system table sys.databases.
It also has an unsupported procedure sp_msforeachdb that you can use to investigate for instance performance issues.
In the above example, sp_msforeachdb just builds a statement (filling the ? with the database name) to execute.
–jeroen
Posted in Database Development, Development, SQL Server | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/06/28
Recently, I had to print multiple months or weeks from within Google Calendar.
The default UI does not allow that, but it is in fact pretty easy to do.
These are the steps to get PDF versions of a whole year.
Edit 20100714: thanks to Kilian Croese, I could explain a few more parameters, and cut out the steps for Fiddler, so it now works with most browsers on most platforms.
All text that is not relevant any more is marked deleted, so you can still read it if you want to use Fiddler.
It works from Google Chrome and Internet Explorer on Windows (FireFox works if you install FiddlerHook) Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Development, Fiddler, Google, Google Apps, GoogleCalendar, ISO 8601, Power User, Software Development, Web Development | 19 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/06/26
Pēteris wrote about Adding wordpress.com blog as connected site in Google Buzz.
Thanks – that saved me a lot of time!
–jeroen
Posted in Development, Google, Power User, Software Development, Web Development, WordPress | 1 Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/06/25
Recently, I had to configure a pretty up-to-date Windows XP SP3 VM with SQL Server 2005 for a proof of concept.
The SQL Server 2005 setup failed consistently on installing MSXML 6.
I tried making the XP VM really up-to-date.
But the SQL Server 2005 setup still failed at the same reason.
In the end it appeared that the MSXML 6 install that is included in the SQL Server 2005 install barfs when MSXML 6 SP2 is already installed. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Database Development, Development, SQL Server | 5 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/06/24
Recently I took over some system management at a client.
They run Windows 2008 Server x64 and a Windows Server 2008 VM under VMware Server 2.0 and a LAN with some client machines
A lot of things were not covered, backup, power outage, etc, so I’m implementing those step by step.
They now have an APC UPS connected through USB.
There are a lot of references on the internet about the APC software (well, more like UPS vendor supplied software in general) being crap.
Luckily, Windows Server 2008 (and 2003) have built-in support for APC UPSes.
Furthermore when Windows Server shuts down, VMware Server needs to perform some actions on the guests as well.
This post covers the configuration of both :-) Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Power User, VMware | 8 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/06/23
Sometimes you want to hava a NIC in a VMware VM to have a static MAC address in stead of a dynamically generated one.
This sanbarrow.com page explains what to change in the VMX configuration file.
From:
ethernet0.addressType = "generated" ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:40:7e:22" ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"
To:
ethernet0.addressType = "static" ethernet0.address = "00:50:56:3e:86:29"
VMware also has a few docs on this for workstation and ESX installs and a KB article for both.
–jeroen
Posted in Power User, VMware | 1 Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/06/22
I always seem to forget the solution for the error messages about DsgnIntf or DesignIntf.dcu not found when porting old (D# projects) to new (D####) projects.
Googling for this always gets a few false hits at the top, so for my memory,
here it is: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Component Development, Delphi, Designer Development, Development, Package Development, Software Development | 2 Comments »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 