- NTS: Always install the TFS Power Tools
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Or you’ll wind up with:
TF10139: The following check-in policies have not been satisfied.
Internal error in Changeset Comments Policy
Well, you will whenever somebody else installs them on the TFS server and enables the Changeset Comments Policy...
See also:
- This explains so many things... Scott Adams explains compensation modeling?
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This metaphor can probably be extended to ‘splain corporate and governmental policies of all kinds!
Of course, it would actually be worse (at least for me) if compensation was tied to the performance of friends and family. Heh!
For the record, I used to work there... and I still ain’t laffing.
- In other words, if I get promoted that means what...?
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The way I read these alleged research results, a lottery is just as effective at picking people for promotions as what we’ve been doing for years?
But is there a better way of choosing individuals for promotion? It turns out that there is, say Pluchino and co. Their model shows that two other strategies outperform the conventional method of promotion.
The first is to alternately promote first the most competent and then the least competent individuals. And the second is to promote individuals at random. Both of these methods improve, or at least do not diminish, the efficiency of an organization.
Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: Why Incompetence Spreads through Big Organizations
I think some researchers have been playing The Sims too much lately...
From personal experience, I know that it matters quite a bit to cow-orkers’ morale who gets promoted... and it’ll be hard to convince even an average CEO or HR generalist that promoting people at random results in an organization that’s just as efficient as one produced by experience, interview selection, seniority and/or the good ole boy network connections.
Pick me. Pick me! Heh.
- Note to Self: Label shipping containers more innocuously...
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It almost reads like something from “When I am an Evil Overlord...”
The arrested men had setup an elaborate surveillance operation of the prison that involved a camouflaged tent, powerful binoculars, telephoto lenses, and motion detection sensors. But authorities caught wind of the plan when they intercepted the inflatable zeppelin as it arrived from the Italian town of Bergamo. Gizmodo - Spanish Police Foil Remote-Controlled Zeppelin Jailbreak – Zeppelins
I’m curious about how they intercepted said zeppelin. It was shipped from Italy after all. Was it labeled “R/C Zeppelin 4 Zee Beeg Escape”? Addressed to “Zee Preeson Break Teem”? Or were they silly enough to fly it all the way from Tuscany? Maybe they should’ve had it delivered to a ciudad a little further from a maximum security prison?
Actually, I’m even more curious about its remote control design. You never know when that could come in handy! Hey, Spanish police guys, are you interested in selling that contraband r/c blimp? I haz cash! Heh.
- If you need me, I’ll be in teh garage...
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Tim and I don’t see eye2eye on some things, but quite often he nails the the whole “married geek” thing. It’ll definitely be funny to watch Tim’s comix grow and change when they have kids. A lot like my own father enjoys watching the slow-motion train wreck of my life. Heh.
You don’t even have to know the rest of the plot leading up to this point to understand it and know that nothing good can come of this...
Tomorrow (assuming that I have a tomorrow, of course), I’ll list all the things my wife said she doesn’t want to hear coming out of the man cave today.
- Good cryptography is built to last.
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Dr. Smithline apparently lost some sleep over this cipher, but he cracked it.
The overall calculations necessary to solve the puzzle were fewer than 100,000, which Dr. Smithline says would be "tedious in the 19th century, but doable."
Two Centuries On, a Cryptologist Cracks a Presidential Code - WSJ.com
Interesting technique.
Good job!
- Two links I want to save for l8r: WM6.5 DTK and Windows API Code Pack for .NET 3.5
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From the MSDN Flash dated 20090623:
Download the Free Windows API Code Pack for Microsoft .NET Framework
The Code Pack is a source-code library that provides access to the new Windows 7 features (and some related Windows Vista features) from managed code. These features are not available to developers today in the .NET Framework. Minimum .NET Framework version required to use this library is 3.5.
Windows Mobile 6.5 Developer Tool Kit Released
While this has been a much-awaited release for the developer community, some confusion has arisen in the media. To clarify, the Windows Mobile 6.5 Developer Tool Kit (DTK) is not an SDK. The DTK contains emulators, gesture APIs, and samples useful for developing Windows Mobile 6.5 applications. Developers will still need to install Visual Studio and the Windows Mobile 6 SDK prior to running the tool kit installer.
Now back to my regularly scheduled interruption.
[Corrected the reversed links. Doh. Thanks, Chris! Now let’s see if Live Writer dupes the post or just updates it.]
- I would’ve blogged this yesterday, but...
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I got distracted. Heh.
The Brain: Stop Paying Attention: Zoning Out Is a Crucial Mental State
I’m not sure I buy the “inebriated zone out less” theory, though. Oh, if I read more carefully, it looks like the researchers agree:
But when we are drunk, that figure doubles. In other words, inebriated subjects report less mind wandering only because they are less aware of their own minds.
I guess I should pay closer attention. Meh.
What will be interesting to me is when they apply this research to:
In both cases, I think that there are some very interesting lessons to be learned for parents and teachers.
- Bing: there it is! My PPS setup problem(s) solved.
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Obligatory bing plug. The name is growing on me... Link #1 in the search results was Nick Barclay’s great post on sorting out PPS setup issues with SQL Server 2008:
"System.Web.Extensions" performancepoint "configuration error" - Bing
Useful reference linkages:
Neither TechNet nor Nick were 100% dead-on, but together gave me enough to get the missing AJAX bits and stopped app pools sorted out. Thanks, folks.
Note to self on install order:
- Windows Serve 2008 (x86 – if you want charting to work)
- Web Server role
- Windows Updates
- SharePoint Services 3.0 with SP1
- SQLNCLI 9.0 SP2
- SQL Server 2005 ADOMD.NET
- SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services
- ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 (setup won’t ding you for it, but it’s absolutely required)
- PerformancePoint 2007
- PerformancePoint 2007 SP2
- Configure SharePoint (with remote SQL Server 2008 databases)
- Configure PPS M&A (with remote SQL Server 2008 databases)
Also, I’m not sure why Hyper-V guests don’t like the HP NC373i Multifunction Gigabit Server Adapter, but the only way that I could get Windows Server 2008 (x86) to recognize the network adapter under Hyper-V as a guest o/s was to use the Legacy Network Adapter instead of the Network Adapter. Not sure why; it wouldn’t even show up in Device Mangler when I used the Network Adapter. The only thing I didn’t try was tracking down the drivers from HP and installing them in the guest o/s the old-fashioned way, since the Legacy Network Adapter works just fine (so far).
One more thing: Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 1 rocks! However, it didn’t play nice with PPS and PAS, so it’ll have to be lonely over there in its own little VM.
Maybe I’ll describe my adventures with the chainsaw tomorrow...
- Whoops. Got to uninstall all the .NET 4.x bits or Server Manager breaks...
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Fiddling around with TFS 2010 (x64) got me into a little trouble:
"MMC could not create the snap-in. The snap-in might not have been installed correctly. CLSID: FX:{18ea3f92-d6aa-41d9-a205-2023400c8fbb}"
Doh.
Fortunately, there were just two more .NET 4.x Beta 1 items in PAF (on 2008, formerly known as ARP on 2003) that I overlooked for a total of 4 items to uninstall to put the system back in order.
- If you finish reading the entire article...
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If you actually manage to read all the way through the entire article (the first time):
The Benefits of Distraction and Overstimulation -- New York Magazine
My hypothesis is that:
- You need more caffeine in your diet.
- You need a [new] job.
- A life.
- All of the above.
I *think* I got to page 3 before another shiny object caught my attention. It might’ve been an IM or a txt or a tweet. Who knows?
All I know is that unless I close Outlook, Live Messenger, Office Communicator, Internet Explorer, turn off my cell and office phones and plug White Zombie (or its equivalent) into the Zune upwards of 11 on the volume slider, I can’t concentrate enough to get anything meaningful done...
Meh.
- For want of a chainsaw, the trip was lost...
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About two or three weekends back, we took the Sequoia up toward the Glacier Peak Wilderness loaded with the family (wife, kids, me) and various pieces of what-if back country gear: important stuff like MREs, bonus water, rope and rappelling stuff, tire repair bits, etc. Of course, by now, you’ve figured out that I “forgot” something.
Well, you can’t really forget something that you don’t own. Can you?
If you look down the road further, you’ll see lots more downed trees. Even if we pulled the first couple out of the way with the tow chain, we’d still never have made it more than another 10 miles from Darrington before sundown. C’est la guerre. We still had fun playing in the April snow.
The upside is that now I have “permission” from the Mrs. to buy a chainsaw. Bwahahahahaha!!
- Log Shipping + Database Snapshots == Bummer, dude!!
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So, like most funny stories (involving me), this one starts with “Yesterday, I had this bright idea...” and goes downhill from there.
Database mirroring is great. Full stop. But there’s this one little catch: it can only have a single mirror copy of the principal. Awesome for HA, but not so good for scale out.
Because database mirroring with SQL Server 2005 and 2008 makes available this great way to leverage your failover partner database for reporting purposes (to get some value out of your high availability solution besides insurance and a good night’s sleep) using database snapshots... well, you just had the same idea that I did, right?
It only seemed logical that log shipping would allow for the same AND allow for multiple target servers/databases, right?
Not so much.
With 2005, the log shipping target in a warm standby mode is in a perpetually restoring state (sort of like a mirror copy, eh? *grumble*), but you can’t take a snap of a database in restoring mode. Of course, I tried it. Wouldn’t you?
And even though Katmai exposes the feature in the UI now that allows for a log shipping target database to be online and query-able in read-only mode (if memory serves, you could do it the “hard way” in Yukon), it’s not possible to take a database snap shot of it... because it’s read-only. Did you know that creating a database snapshot actually modifies the database being snapped? I’d never thought about it. And now I know the answer!
The error message when creating the snap of a read-only database isn’t intuitive, either (if you read from the bottom up – the first one’s pretty clear – don’t ask): “A database snapshot cannot be created because it failed to start.” Huh?
Read-only standby mode shows some promised BUT you’ve got to close all open connections to the database and put it in a restoring mode in order to restore future tran log backups to it as part of your log shipping. Doh!
Needless to say, it would be pretty handy [if this worked] for a scale out scenario where I need to keep, oh, say, 44 copies of the same database continuously in sync AND available 100% of the time for customers to query, but nooo... It couldn’t possibly be that simple.
But you know, I probably wouldn’t be happy (or have a fun job) if it was that simple. Heh. Besides, not I get to go Visio up a more complicated solution, right?
- I wasn’t concerned about warbots. Until...
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The quote is long to provide context, but the bold part is what worries me. Ruh-roh.
A recent study prepared for the Office of Naval Research by a team from the California Polytechnic State University said that robot ethics had not received the attention it deserved because of a "rush to market" mentality and the "common misconception" that robots will do only what they have been programmed to do.
"Unfortunately, such a belief is sorely outdated, harking back to the time when computers were simpler and their programs could be written and understood by a single person," the study says. "Now programs with millions of lines of code are written by teams of programmers, none of whom knows the entire program; hence, no individual can predict the effect of a given command with absolute certainty since portions of programs may interact in unexpected, untested ways."
Killer robots and a revolution in warfare (Reuters)
It’s not bad enough that we’re giving the robots guns, we’re not entirely sure what they’ll do when we tell them to shoot.
- To whom it may concern (code comments)
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I thought I was the only one who left warnings in my code for future maintainers... Or maybe Brian inherited one of my previous projects. Heh.
Funniest code comment ever...
Yes, today’s my last day in SQLBU, and I’ve left more than a few WARNING code comments alongside the TODOs and UNDONEs.
