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November 2005 Entries
More Software Gripes
I really am turning into a grumpy old man. SQL Server 2005 Management Studio this time. I've got VS 2005 open on my left monitor, and SSMS on the right one. I'm attaching an existing database to SQL, and the attach dialog opens on the left monitor, not the right where my attention (and mouse) is focused. The security dialogs do the same. This is despite my Matrox display settings which indicate that dialogs should open on the same window as the mouse; obviously these aren't true dialogs. Some windows appear on the right, some don't, which from a consistency point of view is appalling.
[Listening to: Liquid Silver - Beth Quist - Silver]
posted @ Wednesday, November 30, 2005 3:38 PM | Feedback (7)
We Share Your Pain
Looks like it is becoming a reality.
[Listening to: Love Resurrection - Alison Moyet - Alf]
posted @ Wednesday, November 30, 2005 2:09 PM | Feedback (2)
Software Bloat
First off, I admit to being old; I remember the days of computers the size of 5 or six fridges, with 16Kb (yes Kilobytes) or memory. But this isn't a nostalgia trip, but a comment on the current state and size of software. Over the past coouple of years I've had three boot partitions on my laptop: 1 stable with .NET 1.1, one with beta 2, and one with post b2 builds. Each was a 10bb partition (I keep the data on a separate one). With the release of 2.0 I needed a partition with both 1.1 and 2.0, SQL 200 and 2005, and VS 2003 and 2005 (plus the normal sundries such as office). A 10Gb partition doesn't cut it anymore. So I scrapped all three partitions and went for a single 20Gb one, leaving me a spare in case I need it for a beta of something. My main dev machine is now, rather worryingly, in a similar position. It has a 40Gb main drive, partitioned into two (the reason for this I forget, but I quite like having a spare partition that I can dump stuff onto, knowing it's not critical space). Data is on a hardware mirrored 40Gb partition. Having finally fixed my VS install problems, I realised I've run out of space on the boot partition - yes, that's 20Gb of just software - no data. Office, two lots of .net, two lots of VS, two lots of SQL, plus a ton of other software. I even had to uninstall some software just to get SQL 2005 installed, which required 2.6Gb for the installation, despite only actually needing 1.6Gb once installed. Why can't the installer give you the option of using another disc for temporary files? I know setting TEMP to another drive would support that, but that's not really much help when you're already half-way through installing. I'm not sure I really have a point to this post, I just fancied a moan. Disc space is cheap and I'd have no worries about buying a larger disc, but I reckon it would take two days just to reinstall all of the software and reconfigure all of my settings.
[Listening to: Sonata in A major K305(293d): Allegro di molto - Itzhak Perlman - The Violin Sonatas]
posted @ Wednesday, November 30, 2005 12:22 PM | Feedback (1)
VS 2005 Installation Issues Solved
Thanks to Matt Reynolds who archives public newsgroups, I've finally found the solution to my install woes - http://dotnet247.com/247reference/msgs/26/130535.aspx. It seems that any directory under \Documents and settings\[user | All Users]\Microsoft Help (mine was named with a GUID) caused the install to fail. I moved the directory and the install works. Hoorah.
[Listening to: Stronger Than Dirt - Tom McRae - Just Like Blood (04:39)]
posted @ Tuesday, November 29, 2005 2:33 PM | Feedback (1)
Not just George Best ...
While not taking away from the loss of George Best, he is getting all of the news. Hidden among the headlines and not reported much, we should also remember that Richard Burns lost his fight for life. A sad time.
posted @ Monday, November 28, 2005 11:08 AM | Feedback (0)
MSDN ASP.NET 2.0 Provider Toolkit
In case anyone is interested, I've converted the provider toolkit into VB and you can get the code here. This code has a database ready for use with SQLEXPRESS and the config files reflect this.
posted @ Friday, November 25, 2005 1:06 PM | Feedback (1)
VBUG Conference Code
The PPT and code for the ASP.NET 2.0 Provider talk is now available, with VB code.
posted @ Friday, November 25, 2005 1:03 PM | Feedback (1)
Launch Tours and Events

Following on from last weeks event, I've had two more this week. On Monday night I headed over to Coventry Flying Club for the Midland VBUG evening, which has to be one of the funniest events I've been to. Very silly indeed. Videos from various luminaries saying "Have a great time", including Scott Guthrie, Don Box and Steve Ballmer. Yes Steve actually made an effort to record something - that's pretty cool.

Many people, myself included, had proposed our favourite feature and these were voted on by all present. I went for master pages and was the only one to say so live - everyone else did videos. The winning feature was code snippets, by Mike Taulty, but I reckon he only won because his video was so funny. Inspired. And fueled by some strange substances I reckon. James missed a great evening because he got lost. With a GPS and TomTom. Sad, very sad.

Tuesday was back in the big smoke for the second launch day in London, once again on the Ask The Experts area and a Chalk and Talk on ASP.NET 2.0. Mostly a Q&A, but with Mike Ormond doing some demos. A pretty good day.

Next week it's Vienna and Reading.

posted @ Wednesday, November 16, 2005 2:14 PM | Feedback (4)
SQL Server 2005 Install Woes

So, this is the second time I've tried to install this on my main development machine (fine on my laptop) and it's failed. The installation tells me to look at the logs, but to be quite honest these are useless. They are huge and it's impossible to find the reason for failure; it's not put at the end of the file, but buried within the rest of the logging information. Wouldn't it make sense to include the error information at the end, where it can easily be found? The only nice part is this line:

Hello, I'm your 32bit Elevated custom action server.

Nice that it's polite, but I'd settle for it working.

posted @ Monday, November 14, 2005 10:53 AM | Feedback (3)
Visual Studio .NET Launch Tour

"About time too" are the words that first pop into my head. I've been working with .NET 2.0 for around 2 years and have excited about it for that long. For some of the time I wasn't allowed to talk about it at all, then it became public, and now it's finally here. What a relief.

As part of the release I've been involved in the launch tour, and popped down to London on Monday for the official press launch and to watch the live stream from San Francisco. I was a bit disappointed that Steve Ballmer was so serious, as we are so used to his whacky stuff now. We then hopped onto the Fun Bus (a few pictures here) for the 3 hour trip up to Birmingham ICC where the first event was to ben held. My duties were to man the Ask The Experts area, along with a number of other people, and then hold a Chalk and Talk with Richard.So on my feet answeing questions almost non-stop from 9am until 7pm. Some excellent questions, many around upgrades and a fair number on VSTS. All in all a good, but tiring, day. All to be repeated in London on Tuesday, where Ben & I will be doing the C&T.

I can't make the Monday on Londong because I'll be attending the evening event - the Midlands VBUG launch party, which will be a real blast. Speakers have selected their favourite ASP.NET 2.0 feature, either made a video or will present it there, and the audience have to vote for the feature they think is best. Sadly I think they are actually going to vote for the best video, in which case it's "nil point" for me.

posted @ Thursday, November 10, 2005 9:05 AM | Feedback (3)
Greatest spam ever

I've just had a spam message to the Dave and Al Feedback page, which says:

Some of my clients are searching online for different types of sheds. My
job is to find one place to send them to.  I'd like to discuss an
arrangement with you about this.

At first this seems in no way related to normal spam, but makes a weird kind of sense when you realise that on the Dave and Al site we have Al's Shed. I just found that funny, the tenuous link between trying to sell us something (which I'm sure is what the spam was really about) and a single word on our site. I wonder how many others get spam like this, just because they perhaps mentioned they were going to buy a new shed this weekend. Damn, I;ve mentioned it again; now I'll get even more spam.

posted @ Thursday, November 03, 2005 6:51 PM | Feedback (6)
Call me dumb, but ...

... isn't a RAID system supposed to protect you against disc failures?

So the story is that I installed my new RAID system - RAID 5 using 3 discs, with a hot spare. Installed Server 2003 and then Exchange (and why does the exchange install require you to put the product key in three times, once for each step?). Configured the users, set up OWA, and was just about to attempt configuration of RPC over HTTP.

Prior to getting everything running, I'd removed the floppy drive due to lack of room. After all, who needs a floppy these days, you can boot from CD/DVD. But, dumber than dumb, the ASR disc has to be a floppy? What? How 1980s is that? Deciding that I really wanted an ASR disc I power down, plug the floppy back in, and boot, whereupon I receive the dreaded "Your disc drive needs to be checked". So off it trundles and proceeds to eat its way through my nice new configuration. Now IIS and Exchanged are hosed and I'll have to try installing Exchange in disaster recovery mode, as I don't want to lost what's there.

So the question is, how can I get disc errors, when the c drive is a raid array? How does that work?

I think a cup of tea and a calm down is required before I take an axe to this heap of expensive hardware I've just bought.

posted @ Wednesday, November 02, 2005 5:11 PM | Feedback (3)
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