Eat, Sleep, Code

Windows 7 - Test Drive in VirtualBox

2009-07-11T20:41:00.000-07:00

I installed windows 7 on VirtualBox using Vista as the host. The VirtualBox drive is sitting on an external USB drive. I re-booted my laptop in to Ubuntu and made reference to the Windows 7 machine within VirtualBox. Now I'm typing in the Windows 7 VirtualBox running inside Ubuntu Linux 8.04 and using only 512MB of RAM dedicated to it and 128MB for video. It's working great!

Now I can play with Windows 7. I'm totally in love with VirtualBox...and it's free. I'm in geek heaven right now.

Oh, and for those of you that know I'm also in love with Firefox...that's the first thing I installed on the Windows 7 box. :)

Firefox or Firefix?

2009-07-09T10:13:00.001-07:00

I loooove Firefox.
But suddenly it won't open at all. I keep getting this...even in "safe mode".

Ok, now after rebooting, it's fine again, and I just noticed there's a new version "3.5". Woohoo! It claims to be twice as fast as Firefox 3, and so far, I believe them. This browser rocks!!!

Xmarks (formerly foXmarks)

2009-06-12T08:18:00.000-07:00

Xmarks (formerly foXmarks) is very cool. You can sync your bookmarks across machines and across browsers. This started with Firefox, but since it works with multiple browsers now, they changed the name.

iGoogle has a gadget too!

I looked this up and started using it this morning, after yesterday's iGoogle homepage fubar-ness. My links were all gone. They came back this morning, and I manually loaded them into Xmarks.

Gas: Yaris vs. Honda Shadow

2009-06-02T15:18:00.001-07:00

You'd think that riding my motorcycle to work would save a lot of gas money, but it's really not that much.

Here's the breakdown...

Meebo puzzler

2009-06-01T14:41:00.000-07:00

Meebo posted a JavaScript Puzzle today. The goal is to create a one line JavaScript function that takes any number of arguments, sorts them, and returns the sorted list.

I came up with this:

function SortArguments()
{
 return Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments).sort();
}

FireFox add-on TinyUrl Generator

2009-05-26T10:52:00.000-07:00

This is another cool add-on for FireFox. With a single click in your browser window, you can generate a tinyurl from your current url. It puts it on your clipboard so you can immediately paste it where you need it. The add-on is called TinyUrl Generator. It puts a little link icon in the tray. This is soooo handy, especially when you need to post a URL to twitter, and you only have 140 characters for your post.

Here's a link to the add-on (and I used tinyUrl to make the url tiny. heh heh)
http://tinyurl.com/casdu7

Firefox add-on: Organize Status Bar

2009-05-08T07:07:00.000-07:00

Once you get a few Firefox add-ons in your status bar, you might like to put them in an order that works for you. "What can help me with this?", you may ask. Another add-on! Get the Organize Status Bar add-on.

It adds an option to your Tools menu and lets you set the order of your status bar items.

In mine, I have FireBug, FireSizer, Gmail Notifier, Yahoo Notifier, and TwitterFox. I have the same set up on other machines, but the order was different. It's nice to be able to order them in the same way on all of my boxes.

Virtual Machines: VMWare, Virtual PC, and VirtualBox

2009-05-05T08:14:00.001-07:00

I've used VMWare. I've used Virtual PC at work. I'm using VirtualBox at work and at home.

VMWare
VMWare was cool. I used it at college and at one employer. At the employer we used ESX server, and all of our development machines were virtual. Cool idea, but things were very slow at times.

Virtual PC
Virtual PC is good and has awesome features, like differencing disks and undo disks. Differencing disks let you make a base install, then create new machines from that in just seconds. This comes in handy when you need to spin up a new VM quickly. Undo disks let you install software to test it out, then when you close the machine, you can choose to commit your changes or go back to what you had before you started messing up your machine. :)

VirtualBox
VirtualBox is great for day to day use. I use it at work and at home. At work, I keep an Ubuntu linux VM running at only 256MB of RAM. It's fast and when I close it and save the machine state, 256MB goes to disk in a few seconds. Likewise, when I resume the machine, 256MB loads very quickly--much faster than a fresh boot. Installing Ubuntu on VirtualBox was easy. Installing it on VirtualPC took jumping through some hoops...not fun. At home, I use Ubuntu, and keep an XP VM on VirtualBox to run Quicken basically. I also use that XP box for connecting to work because the Terminal Services client in Ubuntu is a little shaky when controlling machines within machines. For instance, when I remote a work server, then inside that remote my work desktop, the mouse is crazy slow. In any case. VirtualBox is awesome. I'm really happy with it, and when given the chance, will choose it over Virtual PC or VMWare.

Firefox add-ons: Testing Resoltion for Acer Aspire One Purchase

2009-05-04T08:33:00.000-07:00

I'm still kicking around the idea of buying an Acer Aspire One...now the 10.1". The only thing holding me back, aside from coming up with an extra $350, is the screen resolution. I'm not sure I can live with only 800 pixel vertical resolution. So, I'm using Firefox to help me make that determination.

I'm using the FireSizer add-on to set my Firefox resolution to 1024x600 (the max resolution on the AAO screen), and I'm using the Classic Compact theme to minimize the space that the button bar and menu bar take at the top. I'm doing all of my browsing in this mode. If I really can't stand it after, let's say, a month...then I'll wait for a netbook that has at least a 768 vertical resolution.

SharePoint Designer says I have a file checked out, but I don't

2009-04-22T08:42:00.000-07:00

Occasionally, SharePoint designer may tell you you have a file checked out, but you don't. It won't let you undo checkout, because it's not checked out, and it won't let you check it in, because it's not checked out.

To resolve this, you need to go manually (ugh) into the cache on your machine and delete the offending files.

On Windows Server 2003, I had to go here:

cd %userprofile%\local settings\application data\microsoft\websitecache

On Vista, I had to go here:

cd %localappdata%\microsoft\websitecache

Once you get there, go into the folder of the website you're having trouble with, and delete everything in it. The next time you open SharePoint Designer, your file will not be marked as checked out.

Also, you might want to be sure you have other files checked in before you do this. You don't want to screw up the status of other files to fix just the one file, so be careful.

SharePoint custom security trimming

2009-04-16T10:54:00.001-07:00

Ok, so this turned out not to be so custom, but it was annoying enough to figure it out that I wanted to share.

My problem: I've created some custom widgets in my master page, but I only want Full Control people and Contributors to see them, not Readers, etc. So, I tried to use the SPRole to figure out what roles the current user was in. It didn't work as expected, plus it's depricated. So I moved on to the SPRoleDefinition and SPRoleAssignment classes. These also didn't give me what I wanted. Finally I did a search on tapping into SharePoint's security trimming, and found this gem.

Wrap the following tag around the thing that you want security trimmed, and SharePoint will take care of it for you.

<SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl id="something" runat="server" PermissionsString="AddAndCustomizePages"> your stuff goes here </SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl>

The important bit is what goes inside the PermissionsString attribute.

Here's a list of possible values:

List Permissions
ManageLists
CancelCheckout
AddListItems
EditListItems
DeleteListItems
ViewListItems
ApproveItems
OpenItems
ViewVersions
DeleteVersions
CreateAlerts
ViewFormPages

Site Permissions
ManagePermissions
ViewUsageData
ManageSubwebs
ManageWeb
AddAndCustomizePages
ApplyThemeAndBorder
ApplyStyleSheets
CreateGroups
BrowseDirectories
CreateSSCSite
ViewPages
EnumeratePermissions
BrowseUserInfo
ManageAlerts
UseRemoteAPIs
UseClientIntegration
Open
EditMyUserInfo

Personal Permissions
ManagePersonalViews
AddDelPrivateWebParts
UpdatePersonalWebParts

Wonderful Windows

2009-03-24T09:25:00.000-07:00

Ahh. Is it still Monday? This is the last thing I had hoped to see this morning.

Songbird is the bomb!

2009-03-19T09:32:00.000-07:00

I've been playing with different music players on Ubuntu 8.04. I was fairly satisfied with Banshee, and had settled on that being my player of choice, but whoa baby...along came Songbird. I love it. The interface is pretty much modeled after iTunes, which is fitting, since I'll be using this with my iPod. They did find a bug recently in the iPod add-on, so it's down for now, but I'll wait...no problem. This player has my vote for best Linux music program.

Another Firefox gadget worth having - iGoogle Tab Remover

2009-03-02T15:15:00.000-08:00

I've been using iGoogle for a while, and am not happy with the left side navigation they added. I never use it and it takes up horizontal space. This little Firefox add-on gets rid of it, and makes it into a pop-out menu instead. Pretty sweet so far.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10113

Metallica & Five Finger Death Punch

2008-11-26T14:13:00.001-08:00

Tonight, on Thanksgiving-eve, we're going to see Five Finger Death Punch in Seattle. I'm pretty stoked. I liiiike these guys.

You know, writing this post I can't believe I didn't write one about seeing Metallica in Portland on November 1st. They absolultely rocked! Anyway, Happy T-day.

Wedding (aka Cool Party where we said stuff in the beginning)

2008-10-24T13:53:00.001-07:00

Just a quick note to mention how incredibly awesome last Saturday was. I'm a married man and have never been happier.

Custom Resolutions for Remote Desktop

2008-10-21T11:12:00.000-07:00

I’ve been using this for a while now, but I’m not sure who else knows you can do this, so…

If you want to specify a special resolution when you run remote desktop, you can do it. For example, if you’re running at 1280x1024 on two monitors, and want to take up both monitors with your remote desktop session, type this into your Run menu or command line, then connect to whatever machine you want. When you maximize it, it will take up both monitors.

mstsc /w:2560 /h:1024

You can also specify the machine, if you like, like this:

mstsc /v:myServerName /w:2560 /h:1024

8 hours to go

2008-10-18T10:07:00.000-07:00

Holy cow, 8 hours from now I'll be a married man. Woohoo! I'll post details and pictures later.

SharePoint Terrible Error Messages

2008-10-09T13:53:00.001-07:00

I've been staring at this one all day, on and off. It's so nice of Microsoft to give you detailed error messages like this. Grrrrr.

Red-Gate and .Net Reflector

2008-10-09T08:16:00.001-07:00

I just noticed that my .NET Reflector says "Red Gate's .NET Reflector" in the title bar, so I went to the red-gate.com site, and sure enough, they must've bought Lutz Roeder's .NET Reflector.

Red-Gate tools rock, by the way. They had their SQL compare and schema compare tools well before Microsoft made their own for Team System. They work flawlessly. I won free licenses at a .Net user's group once, and used it to sync between multiple servers. It was awesome, but when SQL progressed from 2000 to 2005, the tools needed to be upgraded and, well, Microsoft had come out with their own tool, which I could get under my MSDN license so I stopped using Red Gate tools, but I'd recommend them to anyone that doesn't have an easy method of comparing schemas and data and doing updates when there are differences. I repeat - they rock!

Here's a note on Lutz Roeder's blog..

Bachelor party

2008-10-05T16:25:00.000-07:00

Saturday, I had a bachelor party...and it was gooood. Steph and I were going to have separate bachelor parties, then meet up at the end of the night, but some of our friends couldn't make it, so we decided to merge the parties from the start. We started out at the Grand Prix Raceway and had a blast. Here's the team, well, except for John...where's John? Maybe in the John. ha ha. Left to right: Steve, Tom, Stephanie, Mark, Kayleen, Tere

Then we went to Hooters for dinner. We got some surprise gifts from Tere and Kayleen.

Then the Hooters chick made Steph and I stand up on some stools and she got the entire restaurant's attention and let them know we were about to get married. That was pretty cool. They made us make fools of ourselves for a moment before we could jump down.

We went to The Swiss after that and listened to the KryBoys.

Mark was our designated driver, and he had gotten up at 4am, so by the time we got home, he'd been up 22 hours, but was a pretty good sport. Thanks man!

Also: Steve, Tere, Petra, Erika, Jenny, John, & Kayleen. Thanks for coming! We had a great time!

28th Annual Oyster Run in Anacortes

2008-09-29T15:11:00.000-07:00

According to KOMO TV, 30,000 motorcycles visited Anacortes for the Oyster Run yesterday. It's a good thing we were there, or there would've only been 29,998!..kidding.

It was fun though, oh man, riding in with all those bikes. I wonder if the locals just lock themselves up in their houses for the day or actually come downtown to see what's going on. For being a bunch of bikers, it was a pretty tame crowd, but then again, we did leave in the afternoon. Steph and I didn't stick around for it to get dark; we had a long ride home. There were always plenty of bikes on the road, and the ferries were pretty stocked as well.

I forgot my camera, but probably had a better time not worrying about taking pictures.

Acer Aspire One - I can't find you..

2008-09-26T15:32:00.000-07:00

Where the heck can I see, in person, an Acer Aspire One? None of the stores around here have them in stock. I've seen videos and it looks impressive, but I also saw videos of the Asus EEE, and in person that thing is mega tiny...can't type on the small keys.

Does anyone know where to find an AAO that I can actually see? I really don't want to order one, check it out, then send it back if it's not what I want.

Virtual PC, VirtualBox, Vista, Ubuntu, XP

2008-09-26T11:45:00.000-07:00

I'm seriously gettin' my nerd on today. On my Vista box, I installed Virtual PC. On Virtual PC, I installed Ubuntu Linux. On Ubuntu, I installed VirtualBox. On VirtualBox I installed Windows XP. I won't go any deeper. This is cool enough. :)

GridView in UpdatePanel refreshes entire page

2008-09-24T13:49:00.000-07:00

I've been seriously banging my head against the desk for a couple of hours now. I've got two pages, each loads a different user control. The user controls have a GridView housed inside an AJAX UpdatePanel. When you sort or change page numbers, the grid should update without refreshing the whole page.

One works, the other doesn't. The settings on the two sets of controls and pages are identical.

I finally traced this down. One page has in it's web.config xhtmlconformance mode="Legacy"and that was the downfall. The Legacy setting mucks with the HTML a bit and the update panel doesn't work. The default is "Transitional" so I set it to that.

All is well with the world...now where's the Excedrin?