It's like the day after X-Mas...

Okay, I've waited so long for VS 8 (aka 2005) and now that I finally have it all installed, now what? LOL

The install was smooth and seemed fast. I'm running VS2003 & VS 2005 side by side, and SQL 2000 & SQL 2005 Express (upgrading that to SQL 2005 Dev next) side by side with no problems (so far).

SourceSafe 2005 will not run side by side, BUT it can access 6.0 SS hives, so I felt it was okay to uninstall 6 and replace it with 2005. I've accessed our SS hive with 2005 and no problems so far.

So now that I have all this coolness installed, I have to actually use it all.

It's like the day after X-mas. With so many things to play, it's hard to decide which one to start with...

SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and .NET Framework 2.0 have shipped...

Somasegar's WebLog : Visual Studio 2005 and .NET Framework 2.0 shipped!

"Earlier today, we shipped Visual Studio 2005 and .NET Framework 2.0!

This is by far the best Visual Studio and .NET Framework release that we have ever done. I am very proud to be a part of the team that did a phenomenal job of delivering this fantastic product. I also want to take this opportunity to thank the community and early adopter customers for their incredible help and invaluable contributions in helping us ship the right product.

Later in the day, the final bits will be up on MSDN for our MSDN subscribers around the world to get access to the product. ..."

Euan Garden's BLOG : SQL Server 2005 shipped!

"SQL Server 2005 RTM'd today, it will be available on MSDN in a couple of hours and through other channels in a few weeks. ..."

Rock on...

And guess what? I'm downloading it NOW! Yeah! Come on... come on.... faster, damn it!

:)

Update #1 10/27/2005 @ 10:54am PDT:
:(

I lied. While I can see the ISO images on MSDN, I can't download them ("Error while initiating file transfer. Error Code = 11001.")

Damn it.

Retry... Retry... Retry... Still not working... Retry... Retry...

Update #2 10/27/2005 @ 1:12pm PDT:
:)

Downloading for real now... They've pull the CD images and replaced them with the DVD images. Downloading SQL 2k3 Dev ED DVD, VS 2k5 Developer DVD, Visio for EA 2k5, SS 2k5, and VSTO 2k5. What I don't see are the MSDN Lib CD's. Maybe that's on the VS DVD?

Well we'll see soon enough. The download speeds are outstanding, at the max of my cable modem. Transfer Manager is in flux between 550 and 590 KB/sec. I love my cable modem... :)

Update #3 10/27/2005 @ 7:20pm PDT:

Downloaded, mounted with the XP Virtual CD ROM Control Panel and about to install it.

Besides VS, the VS for Team Developer DVD also contains Visio EA (so I can delete that ISO) and VSS (so I can delete that ISO now too). It also contains MSDN for VS 2005.

Fingers are crossed and here I go...

Simi Valley Sunset

Simi Valley Sunset on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

This is why I like living in Simi...

SoloSub

Have you heard about SoloSub?

Duncan's posted about a cool new feed subscription service called SoloSub. Like him, I've been thinking about adding more RSS/ATOM aggregators widgets. But being lazy I didn't want to have to hunt down all the services, find their Subscription widget pages, etc, etc.

Well SoloSub does all that for you.

"SoloSub allows you to point subscribers to one url (see example), and then your subscriber selects which Feed reader they are using. We hope to eliminate the subscription button clutter found on the web today."

Added to my sidebar...

PDC 2005 Session Videos Now Online For Your Streaming Pleasure

Wim Verhaeghen's Blog - PDC 2005 Videos and Hands-On-Labs

"If you were unable to attend the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2005, but you want to see and hear for yourself what the PDC05 was all about, you can watch 250 hours of PDC videos online, for free! ..."

Nice... The PDC2k5 sessions are now online. You can stream it, download it or download just the PPT.

I like the new format. Seeing the speaker at the same time as the slides is a very nice touch.

And being able to jump around in the session, not having people behind you talking on their cells and not kicking the back of your chair makes it almost better than being there... ;)

The only minor problem is that when the session kicks into demo mode, you need more than 1024x768 to see it all (and it's a little fuzzy, but still better than if you were in the back row.)

All in all it's very nice...

Related Past Post XRef:
PDC05 DVD Set Coming Soon

"How many users will your Team Foundation Server support?"

bharry's WebLog : How many users will your Team Foundation Server support?

"We're deep into our load testing and server sizing efforts and I thought I'd share with everyone what we are doing and how we are thinking about it.

How big of a server do I need to support my team? Should I use a "single server" or separate Application tier and Data tier configuration? If I double the size of my team, will I need to increase the capacity of my server? We'll provide high level guidelines for a mapping from team size to server configuration but if you want to understand how we do it and replicate it yourself, I'll describe it for you.

..."

Now how did they know I was about to start hunting down hardware for our test TFS server? Gee, those MS guys... ;)

Nice to see for smaller sized groups (<20) all I'll need is one piece of hardware. The question is if I'm ready to fight the whole admin battle to get this server. sigh...

"Idiot's Guide to Replacing SourceSafe with SubVersion"

Idiot's Guide to Replacing SourceSafe with SubVersion

"My PowerPoint presentation from the DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper! from 22 October 2005 is now available for downloading at http://codecorner.tigernews.co.uk/codecorner/presentations/ddd2-subversion.zip

It comes complete with speaker notes containing all the step by step instructions for the demonstrations within the presentation."

You might think that since this is a PPT, that there's no "real" value? Well the note above about Speaker Notes is the key... The Speaker Notes are, as mentioned, step-by-step and appear to be very complete.

If you're interested in using SubVersion with VS, you should check this out...

VMware Player (Free way to run VMware and VPC VM's)

VMware Player

"What is VMware Player?
VMware Player is free software that enables PC users to easily run any virtual machine on a Windows or Linux PC. VMware Player runs virtual machines created by VMware Workstation, GSX Server or ESX Server and also supports Microsoft virtual machines and Symantec LiveState Recovery disk formats. "

Wow, very cool. And nice move by VMware/EMC. What a great way to introduce more people to their VMware product line.

And not only are they giving VMware Player away for free, they are also providing some free, pre-built VM's to download. Red Hat, Novell/Suse, stacks from IBM, Oracle, OSS, etc...

Sure I have VPC installed and use it a bit, but there's a barrier to sharing the VPC images. There are some I'd like to share my images with who don't own VPC... Based on the VMware Player sales lit, I can now have those same people install the free Player with which they can use to access the VPC. Nice end run.

And with a free Player, I expect the number of download-able pre-built VM's to jump dramatically. I'd also bet that most/all OS/stack providers will find themselves strongly encouraged to provide VM's.

MS's counter? Continue the push to build virtualization into the OS. i.e. building VPC++ into Vista. So everyone (or maybe those buying the upper tier Vista SKU's) gets it for free and provides one more reason to upgrade to Vista (or to purchase that upper tier SKU).

Anyway, installing it now...

(via Nauman Leghari's Blog - VMware Player ... for free)

Update #1 10/23/2005 @ 12:55PM PDT:
Installed with no problem (and that's with already having VPC installed). Does require a reboot at the end.

Downloaded the VMware Browser Appliance and it fired right up, including network/internet access. And it's zippy too (but then again I have 2GB of RAM and a new model notebook so I'm sure that helps ;)

FYI, many/most of the other VM's listed require registration with the vendor and are eval versions of the OS.

Also there appears to be a bug in this beta build. I can't get it to open Virtual PC VMC's. And based on the feedback in the forums, I'm not alone... I've RTFM, such as they are, and there's doesn't seem to be anything special I'm supposed to do to open VMC's. I'll keep an eye open and keep playing...

Blogger Backup with Tortuga Blogger 2.0 .NET Component

Not having a life, I just gave the Open Intelligence Data ™/Tortuga Blogger 2 .Net component that I posted about here, Free Blogger 2.0 .NET Component, a quick try.

The MSI was a simple file copy and appears to be safe. I do need to run reflector on it to confirm there’s nothing bad in there though (said after I’ve already used the component… Dogh!)

Using it is very easy. And it could almost be perfect as a Blogger backup. The only problem is that it can only access your last 100 posts!

Damn, so close. And it’s almost perfect too. The BlogPost.SaveToXml is great. It does seem to have an nbsp issue, so the XML won’t load into IE. But that’s easy enough to solve.

All I need is a way to get my TotalPosts and then a method to get a post by TotalPostIndex. I wonder if this is a problem with the Blogger API and not this component? Time to do more R&D. I’d really rather use the API to backup my blog instead of spidering it…  

Anyway, below is a very quick and dirty VB7.1 code snip that shows how to use Tortuga Blogger 2 .Net component to log into Blogger, get your first blog and download to xml all your recent posts (up to the most recent 100).

    Dim Blogger As New Tortuga.Blogger

    Blogger.LoginName = "Put your Blogger User ID Here"
    Blogger.Password = "Put your Blogger Password Here"

    If Not Blogger.Login Then
      MsgBox(Blogger.LoginFailReason)
      Blogger.Dispose()
      Return
    End If

    Dim blog As Tortuga.Blog = Blogger.GetBlogByIndex(0) 'Get 1st blog
    If blog Is Nothing Then
      Blogger.Dispose()
      Return
    End If

    blog.DownloadRecentPosts()

    Dim RecentPostCount As Integer = blog.NumPosts

    For BlogPostIndex As Integer = 0 To RecentPostCount - 1

      Dim blogpost As Tortuga.BlogPost = blog.GetPost(BlogPostIndex)

      blogpost.SaveToXmlFile("C:\test\" & BlogPostIndex.ToString("000") & ".xml")

      blogpost.Dispose()

    Next

    MsgBox("Done")
    blog.Dispose()
    Blogger.Dispose()

MSMQ Queue Message Count in VB6

Today I need to find a simple and easy way to get the number of messages in a private MSMQ Queue on a remote server.

After googling for a while, there seems to be three ways.

1. MSMQ 3.0 COM Object (via the MSMQManagement and MSMQQueueManagment objects)


2. WMI


3. MSMQ Admin API

A. WMI is cool, but I’d rather a more direct method.

B. The MSMQ Admin API is not fun (to say the least) to call directly from VB. A C++ wrapper would really be needed. So this method is tabled for now.

C. MSMQ 3.0 COM is very cool, but requires XP or 2003 (and we’re still on Win2K in production. But we are moving toward XP in the very near future…)


So MSMQ 3.0 COM looks like the only viable method given the time and resources available. And it will give our XP rollout that much more oomph…


Here are come relevant links I found while searching, as well as a VB6 MSMQ 3.0 queue message count sample.

Counting messages in Queue - the .NET version
Counting the number of messages in a queue
How to GET the message count of MSMQ in .NET without Performance Counter?
FILE: MSMQ Local Admin API
MSDN - Message Queuing COM Components

VB6 Sample using MSMQ 3.0 (XP and Win2003)

‘Add Reference to “Microsoft Message Queue 3.0 Object Library”

Private Function GetPrivateQueueMessageCount(sServerName as string, sQueueName as string) as Long

  Dim Mgmt As MSMQManagement
  Set Mgmt = New MSMQ.MSMQManagement
      
  Mgmt.Init sServerName, ,"DIRECT=OS:" & sServerName & "\PRIVATE$\" & sQueueName
  
  GetPrivateQueueMessageCount = Mgmt.MessageCount

End Function

Sonny, the Uber-Cat

Do you know what this is?

“ujjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj
jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj
jjjyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
yyyyyyg;///////////////////////7jjjjjjjjjjjjjjj”

It’s the IM message my cat just sent… LOL

I had am IM window open, where my son and I were chatting about a homework assignment. Finally got up and walked the 10 feet separating us so I could see just what the heck he was talking about...

As we talked, all of a sudden an IM window popped up with the above message. From me! Wondering what the heck, we ran back to the living room.

Standing on my keyboard, very proudly, was Sonny the IM’ing cat.

I’m just glad he didn’t send an email to someone at work. Damn cat….  ;)

Team Foundation Beta 3 Virtual PC Coming Soon

Buck Hodges : Team Foundation Beta 3 Virtual PC is headed your way

"The beta 2 Virtual PC image was hugely popular. The new Team Foundation beta 3 VPC image is now making its way up to MSDN. So, later today or Monday you'll be able to download and run a single-server and client beta 3. Just make sure you have plenty of RAM since you'll be running everything on one machine (say 2GB+). "

Rock on!

I just checked the MSDN subscription site and didn't see it, so it looks like Monday is the day...

Related Past Post XRef:
MSDN Subscriptions - Visual Studio 2005 Team System Beta 2 VPC

SQL Server 2k5 "SELECT TOP" Bug

Beware! SELECT TOP is BUGGED!

"Yes it is true. And this bug has just been discovered by me and confirmed by the Query Optimizer Project Lead (Conor Cunningham) himself, that i have the chance to meet at SQL PASS 2005.

He has been very kind and after I exposed the problem to him, after a little bit of suprise :-), in few days he confirmed that in some circustances SET ROWCOUNT, which is deprecated, is faster than the usually better SELECT TOP.

You can test it yourself, downloading the script right here. I must say that the problem only shows when you need to limit the rows returned by your query while you're sorting over a colum with no index. At least this is my experience. Fortnately this is really an uncommon scenario so the bug is not really a tremendous one, but ouy should better know it since using SET ROWCOUNT under this cirumnstances can speed up your query by more that 3/4 times!

I've been also confirmed that this bug will not be fixed in the forthcoming version of SQL Server 2005 but will be fixed in the first service pack. ..."

An interesting bug.

Given the reported speed impact, this is something I need to look into when we move to SQL 2k5... (Which will be agressive as there are some features in SQL 2k5 that I can use ASAP).

FrozenTech's LiveCD List

FrozenTech's LiveCD List

298 (at this time) Live OS CD's & DVD's. 98% Linux CD's, with Dos, Windows, BSD and Solaris also in the mix.

What's nice is that each has a summary link as well as download links. Also what's cool is that each has been tagged with the categories it falls into. And the list can be filtered by these categories.

So if you are looking for Forensic (7), Gaming (11), Desktop (138), Development (13), etc, you can easily find them here.

Free Blogger 2.0 .NET Component

Blogger 2.0 .NET Component (free)

"This is a free .NET component that can be used in C# and VB.NET applications, as well as in ASP.NET web sites. It provides a Blogger API for managing blogs at blogger.com. It can create new posts, edit existing posts, delete posts, and download blog posts. ..."

Very cool. And if you like this, you have to check out all the other free tools on the Open Intelligence Data ™ home page.

There are ActiveX and .Net libraries for Movable Type, Yahoo Site Explorer, Technorati, MetaWeblog, RSS, Atom, Social Bookmarking (i.e. del.icio.us), plus some more utilities (like a spider, domain info, web search, etc).

So pretty much tons of fun. It looks like a binary distrib only... Since it comes in MSI form only, I'm going to try and find some time to spin up a VPC to check it out first (or most likely I'll be lazy and just install it... sigh)

I wonder how hard it would be to whip up a Blogger backup utility with this? That was my first thought when I saw this. Based on the API docs it looks easy (famous last words).

As I've posted before, I've used htaccess WinHTTrack to download my site in the past. I've also used Acrobat's ability to grab web sites. Using Acrobat this last weekend to grab my entire site took about 40 hours and ended up with a 6K+ page PDF. I've pretty much hit the wall with that method... :

Gee another off time project? Imagine that! :)

(via del.icio.us/oazabir/.net/)

Component Workshop Releases Open Source Windows Forms Explorer Bar Control

Component Workshop

"Open Source Windows Forms ExplorerBar Control

Add stylish XP style ExplorerBar's to all you .NET applications.

Make use of FULL XP theme support, including custom theme classes and parts.

Drag and drop support that allows your end users to customize the gui at runtime.

Use any Windows Forms control as an ExplorerBar item allowing you to turn a simple explorerbar into a complex gui.

Download full source code and a sample application here.

NOTE : The download contains a Visual Studio 2003 solution and two VB.NET projects

Component Workshop have made this component free for any purpose and therefore take no responsibility for is usage or support, however community support if offered through the company forums. "

This is kind of cool...

While Explorer bars don't really float my boat, I do have users who do like them. And while there are about a billion of these available, this one is not only free but also VB.net OSS.

I think this is a smart approach, that I've also tried to encourage at my work. Release non-competitive advantage work/projects/utilities/code/etc as free or OSS to earn credibility, mind-share and good will.

Getting free stuff is cool. Getting cool free stuff is better. Getting cool free stuff with source is the best...

And guess what? It works...

The next time I need a product like Component Workshop sells, I will think of them early due to the good will they've earned in my mind by releasing this component as OSS...

(via The ServerSide.Net - Component Workshop Releases Open Source ExplorerBar Control

WinFX Sept CTP And Vista 5231

WinFX Sept CTP Will Not Install on Vista 5231 - ANSWER

"The WinFX Sept CTP will not install on 5231 rendering this build of Vista ... Rob Ralyea on the Avalon team that this build doesn't and will not have a matching WinFX version. The great news is that “we have since fixed this problem, so all future Windows Vista public releases will include WinFX with it.” Thank you! "

Thank god.

Coding Slave Author Is Job Hunting... (Or "Maybe I should take a close look at ...")

Coding Slave: The Blog: Q: What do you call a tired, middle aged programmer with an attitude?

"Q: What do you call a tired, middle aged programmer with an attitude?

A: Fired.

Let's cut to the chase. I got fired last week. That's right, the guy that wrote Coding Slave, Mr. 15 Years Experience in the woe and sublime of software development got fired-- ..."

Ouch.

Seeing something like this happen makes me look at my life, profession and behavior...

Double ouch...

Litigation Support Technical Standards, Free eBook

Free Document Helps Eliminate Issues with Litigation Technical Goods

"San Diego, California (PRWEB) October 17, 2005 -- Author and Litigation Support veteran, Mark Lieb bridges the gap between firm technical needs and vendor product in his free online document, Litigation Support Technical Standards. Located at www.ediscovery.org, the site provides a template of technical specifications for as many types of litigation software as possible along with file naming conventions and network standards.

LSTS is a technical supplement to Litigation Support Department – a book specializing in management of case technology, department operations and firm finance. While LSD provides management strategies, LSTS details the technical specifications needed to generate a consistent product regardless of vendor. There is also a “what not to do” section where errors relating to media labels, load files, transcripts, and general issues are illustrated and discussed. All examples are drawn from real life experiences and can help any firm or vendor avoid unnecessary headaches which delay review, productions and the efforts of litigators, paralegals and the Litigation Support Department technicians. ..."

Kind of interesting... Downloaded the PDF and will take a more detailed when I can.

What comes after a Petabyte?

Binary Powers of Ten (10)

"1 bit =
1 byte =
1 kilobyte =
1 megabyte =
1 gigabyte =
1 terabyte =
1 petabyte =
1 exabyte =
1 zettabyte =
1 yottabyte =
1 ?1byte =
1 ?2byte =
1 ?3byte = "

Cool... I want a yodabyte hard drive (oh, it's "yottabyte"... ;)

(via digg - Beyond the Petabyte)