Entries for Larsenal

Easiest way to install Win2008 as guest OS in Hyper-V [Easiest way to install Win2008 as guest OS in Hyper-V]

Larsenal — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:10:22 GMT

I have a new dedicated server. I'd like to run a copy of Win2008 on a VM within Hyper-V. Since you're already running Windows 2008, is there any quick and easy way to install the OS to the VM? I was hoping that a typical install of Windows 2008 included an ISO or something that you could use to install Win2008 on VMs.

Thanks in advance for any pointers.

in reply to Easiest way to install Win2008 as guest OS in Hyper-V

What do you call.... (can't think of the words) [What do you call.... (can't think of the words)]

Larsenal — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:38:48 GMT

For the life of me I can't get the right terminology to come to mind... I'm sure the Niners can help me out.

In website design and navigation, you can provide paths based on the type of mindset of the user. They might be focused on their identity, so you can sort of ask the question "Who are you?" Others might already know the specific task they want to achieve, so you can ask "What do you want to do?"

Cheesy Example:

A boat manufacturer might provide "person-oriented" navigation such as:

Prospective Customers
Boat Owners
Boat Mechanics

The "task-oriented" navigation could be:

Register my boat
Download User Manual
Buy Parts and Accessories
etc...

What are the common terms for these two approaches to navigation? I recall reading articles about this, but I can't for the life of me make any progress with my search.

in reply to What do you call.... (can't think of the words)

Office 2007 adoption numbers, anyone? [Office 2007 adoption numbers, anyone?]

Larsenal — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:05:36 GMT

I'd like to get a sense of the current install base. Where can I find some data? So far my google skills haven't got me far.

in reply to Office 2007 adoption numbers, anyone?

PDC Predictions [PDC Predictions]

Larsenal — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 04:08:53 GMT

Let's collect our best guesses and wishes for PDC announcements. I'll start with a few of mine:

1) We'll get a proper version of BigInteger in the core .NET framework.

2) Windows 7 will boot in less than 10 seconds out of BIOS.

3) Some sort of magic whereby traditional WinForms/WPF can be deployed and consumed in a sort of hybrid Silverlight / Virtual Machine setup so that the exact state of your app is shared among devices. Something beyond the typical Terminal Services approach.

4) Yet another programming language... functional, verbose... like F# for VB programmers.

in reply to PDC Predictions

Potential SSL problem [Potential SSL problem]

Larsenal — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:26:12 GMT

I'm trying to get to a particular website (myopenid.com). My browser keeps showing "Connection Interrupted." Digging into the TCP packets, I see that the checksums are incorrect. My guess is that's part of the problem.

In a "corporate" type of network, what are some of the things that I should check?

in reply to Potential SSL problem

Students @ PDC [Students @ PDC]

Larsenal — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 16:32:56 GMT

Are there any special programs to promote student attendance at PDC? For students in the area, it would be neat to have even limited access to the event... maybe just the keynotes or something.

Does anything like this exist?

in reply to Students @ PDC

Japanese localization [Japanese localization]

Larsenal — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 23:10:53 GMT

I'm localizing a site into Japanese( and French).

First, what's a good text editor for this sort of thing? I've been using EditPlus for years, but it renders the Japanese text as the ugly boxes.

Second, having never done a Japanese site, is there anything tricky to getting a page to display Japanese correctly?

in reply to Japanese localization

BlogEngine.NET -- any good? [BlogEngine.NET -- any good?]

Larsenal — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 23:57:56 GMT

Has anyone tried BlogEngine.NET? Is it any good?

in reply to BlogEngine.NET -- any good?

TSQL question... name of primary key [TSQL question... name of primary key]

Larsenal — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 23:31:21 GMT

Given the name of a table, I want to PRINT the name of the primary key for the table.

sp_Pkeys nearly does the trick except that it returns a table. I just want to PRINT the column name.

Thanks in advance.

in reply to TSQL question... name of primary key

Send a Niner to PDC [Send a Niner to PDC]

Larsenal — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 19:23:53 GMT

In the spirit of the new C9, I propose that we hold some sort of contest to send a Niner to PDC.

I realize C9 contests have historically been fraught with pain and sorrow, but certainly it's worth another shot. My initial idea was a contest in which we create something to promote C9 for PDC attendees.

in reply to Send a Niner to PDC

Web Hosting for .FR Site [Web Hosting for .FR Site]

Larsenal — Wed, 14 May 2008 19:16:00 GMT

I'm putting together a domain for a French audience that will be hosted on a .FR domain. It's not going to have super high volume traffic and there is no data-intensive media on the site.

Will going with a hosting company who has their servers in the US cause much discomfort to a French audience?

I suspect the answer is some form of "it depends," but I'd appreciate some pointers on areas that I may not have already considered.

in reply to Web Hosting for .FR Site

Field Lengths Survey [Field Lengths Survey]

Larsenal — Thu, 08 May 2008 23:13:08 GMT

There are a lot of common fields used in databases. When you create a table, what size do you set for each of the following fields:

Username
Password
FirstName
LastName
Company
Address
Address2
City
State/Province
ZIP/PostalCode
Email
Telephone/Fax
(Any other common ones I've forgot)

I'm very curious to see whether there is a consensus.

in reply to Field Lengths Survey

C9 Shirts [C9 Shirts]

Larsenal — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:31:49 GMT

Was having some fun with Illustrator and thought these would make cool shirts for the C9 friends. I can probably create designs for different colored shirts if anyone is interested. Click images for details. You can order one and it should arrive in a few days.

Wild Burgundy, get your own here
Cool Blue, get the gear here

in reply to C9 Shirts

Bare bones CLR profiler [Bare bones CLR profiler]

Larsenal — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 18:08:40 GMT

What would it take to, for example, profile the execution of some CLR code and generate a list of all the methods that have been run?

in reply to Bare bones CLR profiler

What's happeneing with WCF? [What's happeneing with WCF?]

Larsenal — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:11:33 GMT

Seems all the buzz these days is around Silverlight and some aspect of Parallel or Functional programming. I'd love to hear what developments are being made on the WCF (read SOA) front. Charles? Team?

As I'm just now learning WCF, I'm awful curious to know how many Niners use it, how often, and with what degree of enthusiasm. I'm about half-way throug Juval Löwy's WCF book, in which he WCF is awesome.

in reply to What's happeneing with WCF?

Microsoft Communities Bar Feature Request [Microsoft Communities Bar Feature Request]

Larsenal — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 18:08:29 GMT

It's quite frequent that I see a link come through, it catches my eye, BUT it goes to the link MICROSECONDS before I click the link. A simple back button to cycle through previous links would warm my heart.

in reply to Microsoft Communities Bar Feature Request

SQL Server in the Cloud [SQL Server in the Cloud]

Larsenal — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 17:25:52 GMT

Is SQL Data Data Services super new? I'd be interested to hear the feedback from those currently using S3.

(apologies if this is old news)

in reply to SQL Server in the Cloud

App Architecture Feedback [App Architecture Feedback]

Larsenal — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:27:33 GMT

I thought I'd request some feedback on a system I'm developing. I realize there's more than one way to skin a cat, but I would be curious to know if the Niners see any big areas for improvement.

My application is a number cruncher. I've got an EXE that I spin up in two differrent modes. Running in GUI mode, it sets up a TcpListener and responds to specific requests from clients over the web interface. Running in Batch mode, it crunches numbers on the entire set of data, waits a few minutes and does it again. So for every set of data, I'm starting two unique processes. Each set of data is approximately 20 MB.

For each client, we may have to deal with a dozen or so sets of "real" data at any given time. Furthermore, data is time sensitive, so we may be preparing several new sets of data for the next cycle and we may have to leave old data sets for auditing purposes. As you can see, spinning up 50 processes--per client--is not out of the realm of possibility.

Now because our code in that executable isn't perfect, I've got a "managing" process which monitors all these instances of the application. It polls them every few minutes to make sure they haven't crashed. This managing process has the responsibility of starting up these new instances. Each new instance gets configured via command line arguments set when the managing process starts it. A database stores a list of all the data set instances which should be running. The managing process syncs up with the database right before it polls.

Now the plan is for each client to have its own managing process. The idea is that if I have to do some maintenance on any client, I can generally keep from interfering with the other clients.

Having so many processes to keep track of seems like a terrible way to do this. I imagine that the implementation of web servers might shed some light on my situation.

I'm open to any suggestions. I feel like I've been working on it so long, it's tough to think outside the box I've already built.

EDIT: Another "problem" is that I have to keep a user session open for all these console apps to run. Accidentally close that session and you kill the whole system.

in reply to App Architecture Feedback

VS 2008... should I go Pro? [VS 2008... should I go Pro?]

Larsenal — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:49:21 GMT

Will I hate life if I just go with the Standard SKU rather than the Professional SKU? I do most work on my own, and projects aren't huge.

Looking at the Product Comparison, I see a few differences:

"Standard" has...

No Object Test Bench (is this super useful?)
No 64-Bit Visual C++ Tools (don't care)
No Database Project
Database Explorer rather than Server Explorer
No SQL Server Project
No Crystal Reports (probably irrelevant)
None of the Office Development Tools
No Smart Device Development tools
No Code Quality Tools (For a single developer are the built-in TDD tools any good? I've never done much Unit Testing, but I've been meaning to start.)

The two items which I think I may regret not having ar the Object Test Bench and the Code Quality Tools. Are these must-have components?

in reply to VS 2008... should I go Pro?

Who loves the Nine Guy? [Who loves the Nine Guy?]

Larsenal — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 02:36:34 GMT

Olivia Munn, for one.

in reply to Who loves the Nine Guy?

Where does LINQ fit? [Where does LINQ fit?]

Larsenal — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 03:23:02 GMT

So after having watched a few of Scott Stanfield's LINQ videos, I'm excited to get my hands dirty with some LINQ.

I want to understand best practices about how LINQ would be used in a complex application. In some of the videos, Scott shows how you can hook into the OR-generated classes for tasks such as data validation by creating a partial class and implementing a partial method.

What are the general guidelines for adding business logic? Is it a bad idea to just extend the generated classes and add biz logic?

Or should you create separate modules as a separate layer to encapsulate the logic?

I suspect the answer is "it depends" but I'd love to hear a discussion of what y'all have learned from implementing LINQ so far.

(update: LINQPad is awesome.)

in reply to Where does LINQ fit?

Check for open TCP port [Check for open TCP port]

Larsenal — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 22:22:34 GMT

I've got an app which carries out some messaging over TCP/IP. In the course of running the app, I spawn all sorts of threads. I'm running into cases where the port is already in use. I'd like to check that the port is avilable before I spin the entire application into gear.

After a bit of googling, I haven't seen any better suggestions than just trying to create a socket and catching the SocketException if the port is already in use. Is there a "proper" way to check that the port is open and avoid using the catch for control flow?

in reply to Check for open TCP port

Plugin Detection in IE [Plugin Detection in IE]

Larsenal — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 01:52:50 GMT

So far, the examples I see for plug-in detection in IE work as follows:

<script language="VBscript">
hasPlugin = IsObject(CreateObject('activeXControlName'))
</script>

This loads the assemblies for the control into memory. Is there any other way to detect the presence of a plugin without trying to load an instance of it?

in reply to Plugin Detection in IE

Spot the Bug [Spot the Bug]

Larsenal — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 00:48:05 GMT

UINT __stdcall CreateUUID()
{
   UUID uuid;
   HKEY hOpenKey = NULL;

   if( UuidCreate( &uuid ) == RPC_S_OK )
   {
        char *oldStr = NULL;
        char *tmpBin = NULL;
        int ret;

        tmpBin = (char *) &uuid;
        oldStr = new char[22];

        ret = base64encode( tmpBin, oldStr, sizeof(UUID), 22);

       // now add bytes
       char* newStr = new char[44];
       for (int i = 0; i < 22; i++)
       {
           newStr[i*2] = oldStr[i];
           newStr[i*2 + 1] = 0;
       }

       DWORD dwDisp;

       if( RegCreateKeyEx( HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, TEXT("SOFTWARE\\My Company\\Client"), 0, NULL, REG_OPTION_NON_VOLATILE, KEY_WRITE, NULL, &hOpenKey, &dwDisp ) == ERROR_SUCCESS )
       {
           // only update key if it doeson't exist
           if(dwDisp == REG_CREATED_NEW_KEY){
               RegSetValueEx( hOpenKey, L"MyUUID", 0, REG_SZ, (unsigned char *) (newStr), 44 );
               RegCloseKey( hOpenKey );
           }
       }
   }

   return ERROR_SUCCESS;
}

in reply to Spot the Bug

ActiveX upgrade problem--Solved [ActiveX upgrade problem--Solved]

Larsenal — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 22:19:35 GMT

I have an ActiveX control that I need to update on users systems. Now it seems that if IE had instantiated an instance of the control during the current browser session, then the installer (or uninstaller) would prompt you to close the browser to continue the install process.

How could I achieve an upgrade that didn't require you to close the browser? Is there a way to force IE to abandon it's handles to the control's DLLs?

UPDATE: As it turns out... there is no way around this. If the browser loads the control, the only way to ensure it's unloaded is to close the browser completely.

in reply to ActiveX upgrade problem--Solved