Chad Z. Hower a.k.a. Kudzu's Blogspace

I will be leaving Microsoft on September 30. This has nothing to do with Microsoft, and I wish I was able to stay on board as I love my role at Microsoft. However I have a family issue which will not allow me to continue in my position at Microsoft. ...

It appears after my last trip to Pakistan there is still some confusion about why some of my sessions were not presented as planned. I think it must be due to the understanding of the word "crash". More

Over the years I have encountered a lot of really weird computer problems. But my latest one has me more perplexed than ever. Can you solve the mystery of the cursed case? More

Unfortunately I will not be on this tour as I have conflicting events, but if you are in the Gulf area be sure to check this out! Cities included the tour are: Muscat, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Manama, Doha, and Kuwait City. Power up your engines for the Microsoft...

Having trouble with a disk shrink utility? Either it will not shrink the disk or will not shrink it as much as you would like? This is likely the problem. More

Hoping to spur interest among video game enthusiasts, creative types and students, Microsoft will offer a consumer version of the professional software tools used to create video games for its Xbox 360 console. More

Everyone knows software RAID is slower and because of this most RAID installations are using hardware RAID controllers. But most RAID controllers require special software drivers. And in many cases, that is just the start of your troubles. I just built...

Everyone told me RAID 0 was a bad idea. But I am always the odd man out. But in my case, RAID 0 really is a good idea. Here is why.

Ok, it is not really a super computer. But it is FAST, and it is portable. I will match it up against any laptop around, and it will best most desktops as well including a few servers. And I do not see many people carrying servers as small hand baggage...

I just built a new machine and loaded it up with RAM to 4 GB. Little did I know that I would need a 64 bit version of Windows to use it all. After all 32 bits allows for 4 GB of address space, and the Microsoft web site says Windows 32 bit can handle...

Do you work with a lot of computers? Always wondering how much memort it has, what CPU, how much disk spaces is free, what the IP is, etc? Here is a wonderful utility for that. It integrates all this information directly onto your desktop background....

I have not used a desktop computer for more than 10 years now. I have always used laptops. I did not even use monitors or keyboards because I hated switching. But finally I am gonig back to a desktop, or at least something with the roots of a desktop...

I use remote desktop a lot. But 800x600 is too small, and if I use 1024x768 then it goes full screen and its not convenient to move between host and guest easily. To compound this, I run multiple remote desktops as well as virtual PC's. What I really...

I am starting to see more and more applications which offer localization. It is important that more and more vendors realize that not everyone is fluent in English. However when localizing software there are some simple yet very important steps to take...

Looking for my slides from Pakistan Developers Conference? More info

I’m not blogging in multiple languages. Well to be fair, I’m blogging in English and MVP and other volunteers are helping with translations. The system auto detects your browser settings, or you can override. In addition if your selected language...

I am at TechEd US this week and have a new camera as well. If you are not able to attend TechEd but want to see what is going on, please check out .NET News .

I am collecting blog links of blogs in the MEA region. I will be cataloging these and linking these online. So if you have a blog and are MEA based, please contact me . Please send me the link to your blog, the country you are in, and if your blog is...

Pakistan Developers Conference is June 28-30th, 2006. It will be held simultaneously in Karachi and Lahore. More Information

I’m putting together a multilingual project. We will be targetting more language later, but initially we are targetting English, Urdu, Arabic, and French. The primary languages of MEA. Later on we will be adding support for Turkish and others as...

Microsoft has launched a community website for hosting of open and shared source projects. And best of all, its using Team Foundatoin Server. More information

Using only a few hundred kilobytes and an inexpensive processor, the Microsoft .NET Micro Framework allows developers to build applications for the smallest of devices. These devices are typically constrained by cost, memory, processor, and power consumption...

Microsoft has put online all of the sessions from the MIX 2006 conference. More information

I’ll be speaking again at SDC in The Netherlands . This year on Vista and various other topics. Hope to see you there!

I am still working on my more detailed SQL Express comparison with Oracle Express. But while browsing for something else, I ran across this useful article describing in detail SQL Server Express.