I wonder how many blog posts out there today say something about, “It’s been a while since I’ve posted ….”
It seems like many of these start with the best of intentions. As you can see, some of the links and stuff from the old posts are missing. I upgraded and decided it wasn’t worth it to migrate everything. If you need more info, take it to Google.
Tags: Other
First and foremost, I would like to thank the good people at Microsoft for introducing me to Virtual PC. It is quite possibly the mother of all resource hogs, but it does exactly what I want it to do. And it does it very well.
After installing Virtual PC and upgrading the memory on my laptop, I went about installing Windows Enterprise Server 2003. My objective is to use this virtual server to practice for my final MCDBA certification exam. My ulterior motive is to install SQL Server 2005 on the virtual server, so that I can finally start using SSIS.
Anyway, I ran into a hitch installing the OS on the virtual PC. It kept starting the install, then giving me a blue screen before proceeding with the install. At first, I thought it was because there wasn’t space on my drive. It looked like it was allocating 16GB to the virtual drive, and I only had 3GB remaining. So I spent all morning cleaning off my computer. Removing unused programs, running disk cleanup, even moving my MP3s onto my desktop. Then, I created a virtual disk of fixed space 10GB. Same error.
Next, I thought it was because of docking station and/or dual monitor set-up. (In case you haven’t figured it out already, I’m not really much of a systems person.) So I undocked the laptop, and tried it again. No dice.
Searched Google some more. No hints.
Finally, I changed media. I had been using an MSDN DVD. I tried using another MSDN DVD with ISO images of install CDs. I mounted that through Virtual PC, reset the instance, ran the install, and things are installing away as I write. I’m flummoxed as to why the Virtual PC won’t recognize the media at that point in the install. It’s already read all the drivers off the DVD when I get the blue screen, so it’s not that it can’t read the media. It has something to do with what it’s doing in the install immediately before it shows you the license agreement.
Oh well, as a non-systems guy, I can just shrug my shoulders and proceed.
Tags: WIMP
With the upcoming release of SQL 2005, .NET 2.0, and Visual Studio 2005; Microsoft has set-up a forum for community support. I like the idea. I’ve never felt like there was a reliable source for support from the developer community that was (1) open to everyone and (2) regularly monitored by experts.
One of the reasons I was so big on Allaire back in ‘96-’99 was their community support forums. I went there every day to read about what people were doing and answer questions where I could. Allaire got a heck of a lot of free support hours from me, and I in turn, got turned onto a lot of new things, especially in their beta forums. It was a win-win for both sides. I know at least one person who was offered a job at Allaire in large part because of the time he spent in the forums.
Community is important to developers. The quicker you can get people up to speed on your product, the more it will catch on, and the more sales you can make. Microsoft isn’t exactly an upstart like Allaire was in the mid-90s, but I’m glad to see them act like one.
Anybody know of a good community forum for Informatica?
I have a new home on the web. For the past few months, I’ve been hosting the site with GoDaddy.com. I had been hosting my DNS with them for some time and was happy, so after they added .NET functionality to their < $10/mth hosting plan, I jumped in head-first.
My problems started early. First, they had trouble getting my parked domains added to my account. I would set them up, and from what I could see, everything was OK, but any request to the domain names would time-out. Support was OK. They were a little slow to respond — anywhere from 8-24 hours — and the first-tier support would simply quote the FAQ in response to all my inquiries. (Which, from the perspective of a former support person, is something I always wanted to do.) The second tier support could usually fix the problem, but after a few days, it would go back to not working. Anyway, after months of on-and-off-again service, I finally got that resolved.
Then I tried installing some blogging software. At first, I tried .Text, the software that powers the MSDN blogs. Well, it required some permissions that my user didn’t have. After futzing with that for a couple days, I gave up for a while. When my friend Aaron asked about the blog, I decided to give it another try. Another software package — probably scavenged off of SourceForge — but the same result. The permissions weren’t set-up correctly.
Well, your website doesn’t do much good unless you can do something with it. So, I decided to go back to the PHP world. There are many excellent open source blog and CMS systems, and I figure I could pick up enough PHP/Perl to patch up the rest. So far, so good.
As a final reminder of GoDaddy’s incompetence, I was emailed a link to a survey after I cancelled my account. My first reaction was, “What have they done to warrant my time?” but that quickly gave way to, “Why not two minutes to vent; even if it winds up in somebody’s trash bin?” So, I clicked on the link, answered the questions, vented in the comments, and submitted my survey. This response says it all: