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Posted on October 31st, 2006
Yesterday afternoon I got my spiffy new Dell in which will be my desktop in my home office. I decided to plop Windows 2003 Server on it since I want to setup several different things to play with.
So, I popped in my trusty CD, fired up the installer, and began. I got only part-way in when I got the dreaded message that Setup couldn’t find my hard drives. Which is strange, because my hard drives are IDEs, not SCSI, so it shouldn’t have a problem.
Turns out I’m not the only one. I stumbled across this post which helped me solve it. Here’s the relevant bit:
Reboot your system and hit F2 as soon as you see the Dell startup screen (the options are F2 for setup, F12 for boot sequence).
In the System Setup screen, do these steps.
- Select Drives:
- Make sure your Diskette Drive (3.5 floppy) is set properly (Usually set to Internal)
- Make sure that “Drive 0: SATA-0″ drive is set to “ON”Go to “SATA Operation”:
Your system proabaly came set to “RAID Autodetect / AHCI” – THIS SETTING CAUSES YOUR SYSTEM TO GO INTO AN IDE LOOP AND DOESN’T ALLOW IT TO FIND YOUR FACTORY INSTALLED SATA DRIVE.
CHANGE THE SATA OPERATION SETTING TO “COMBINATION”
Reboot – make sure that the boot sequence is set to CD rom before HD and make sure that the reinstall CD is in the drive. Setup will load, hit enter to reinstall XP. Your HD should now be detected and you should see the licensing agreement.
And with that, I was up and running. Thanks most excellent internet poster!
Posted on October 31st, 2006
So, I’m jumping on the Live Writer bandwagon here. Since I have 3 or 4 different blogs I post to, and because I’ve heard so many good things about the tool, I decided to give it a test drive.
Posted on October 25th, 2006
Have you been using VSTS and have questions, or taken a look at want to see more of what it is all about? On November 8th, members of the VSTS product group are going to be available for an interactive chat about the features in the many different flavors of VSTS, and what’s new in the latest Community Technology Preview. Here’s the scoop:
Visual Studio Team System Chat – Wed, Nov 8th
Join members of the Visual Studio Team System product group to discuss features available in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server, Team Editions for Architects, Developers, Database Pros, and Testers. In addition, discuss what’s new in the latest Community Technology Preview (CTP).Join the chat on Wednesday, November 8th, 2006 from 10:00 am – 11:00 am Pacific Time.
See you there!
Posted on October 24th, 2006
One of the most striking things that I noticed when I first installed IE7 was that, of all things, the address bar was above the menu (File..etc) bar. And there was no simple way to just drag it up.
Luckily someone was able to point me at the Registry fix, but I also stumbled across a whole bunch of tips for tweaking IE7:
Posted on October 24th, 2006
Love or hate Microsoft – they have some cool tools and IDEs out there. Of course, who has the time or machines to download all of those cool toys and play with them – not to mention licensing fees if you aren’t an MSDN subscriber?
It looks like Microsoft is doing it’s best to help out by providing something I just stumbled across – Virtual Labs. Want to play with VS 2005? No need to set up a machine, buy a license, etc, etc. Just log on, and pull up the machine. Viola, 90 minutes to go crazy. Want a more structured approach? They offer walkthrough and demo guides so that you can be guided through building different types of solutions.
It’s very cool, and over my cable modem connection was very responsive. Well worth checking out at http://msdn.microsoft.com/virtuallabs
Posted on October 14th, 2006
A couple of nights ago, some colleagues and I were discussing music over dinner. Well, we were talking about priacy and P2P, but it led into music.
Music and songs are a unique thing. Often times one has to work to find a band they like, or a style of music. Before you invest in a CD, you generally want to listen to at least some of the songs once. And after you buy it, you are going to play it over and over for a long time coming.
Contrast this with movies, which generally someone goes to see just based on ads or word of mouth, and usually sees once or twice. Even if they buy the DVD, watching it more than once a week for any sustained period of time is probably rare.
So, going back to music. Having been a working musician, and still enjoying to play, the whole Napter/Piracy thing has a special place in my heart. Heck yeah, I used Napster. And Audiogalaxy. I never could find myself willing to use Limewire or Kazaa, but I do buy music from iTunes. And, of course, I own a lot of CDs. But, as a musician, I know that downloading the songs does hurt the musicians to some degree (no matter how I justify inside). So most of the songs I downloaded fell into 4 categories:
- Songs I already own on CD or something similar
- Songs I owned at one time (like my Pearl Jam Ten album which has gotten lost along the way)
- Songs that interest me and might convince me to buy the album
- Songs I couldn’t buy anywhere else, or couldn’t find (a lot of my live songs fall into this category)
Sure, there were some songs whose albums I never intended to buy, and there were songs I needed for a one time thing. Most of that has gone away with the iTunes model, since I don’t mind shelling out 99c for a song I am wanting to hear.
Anyway, the conversation led, as it normally does, to the point being made that artists don’t make any money off of the songs – they make it off merch and concerts. True to some degree, but it doesn’t make taking the songs any righter. But, my friends pushed to say that what they really wanted to do was to be able to tell someone, “Hey, I found this awesome group – listen to it!”. With a CD, you would just let them borrow it, perfectly within your rights. But if you send them an MP3, they might do the right thing and buy it if they like it, but why would they – they already have a perfectly good version of it!
So this is where I see the application of DRM. If I could send a song to you, but put some restrictions like you can listen to it 3 times but then have to buy it, I don’t feel guilty about giving you the song, and if they decide to keep it, that’s fine, because they can’t listen to it without buying it.
This is also where I see DRM break down. If, instead of sending you the DRMd song, I want to burn you a copy of the CD, I might just do that. And I should be able to do that. Or, in other words, DRM shouldn’t be used to restrict what I can do with it – it should be used to allow me to choose to restrict it to others.
So, here’s my model. I purchase a song, or a CD. When I purchase it, I get it as an MP3, with no restrictions. So, if I choose to send that to my friend, he can choose to listen to it over and over without buying it. But, I have another option. Either something on my computer, or something online, allows me to send a DRMd version to my friend to listen to. So, I can send one that expires after 3 plays, or 5 days, or something. It’s easy to do, I get to spread the music but not feel a little dirty about sending over a version which he could just copy and never buy.
In other words, give people the choice to send things as DRM. Make it an easy option for people to use, both in sending it, and using it. Develop a single consortium which all devices can play – like MP3s. And don’t make me sell my soul to do it.
So that’s it. That’s the model I’d be willing to live with. Give me the choice to do whatever I want, but entice me to use DRM by making it easy, universal, and, most importantly, optional. Force it down my throat and I’ll run the other way.
Now, if I can just get that gig as CTO at Universal…
Posted on October 11th, 2006
This afternoon I got a chance to have lunch with Tobin Titus, who moved from Charlotte up here to Redmond about 6 months ago to join the IIS team. It was great fun, and we got the chance to talk about many things.
Afterwards he dropped me off at the Patterns and Practices group’s building. Alan Ridlehoover and I have been chatting, and he met me there and gave me a whirlwind tour of the space. In short, it is very cool, and everything Brian Button said it was (though they said that anything else Brian might have said was a lie ;) ). They have neat open workspaces that are pretty configurable, with floor to ceiling whiteboards/glass, and some offices on the perimeter. I’m glad I stopped over – it was well worth the shuttle ride.
Finally, this evening I got up on Flickr pictures I’ve been taking from the last week. You can see them here.
Posted on October 5th, 2006
Last night I finally broke down and bought a PDA phone – the XV6700 from Verizon Wireless. Basically my new position will have me on the road a lot, so I needed a phone which could sync with Exchange, have Bluetooth, and most importantly has a decent keyboard.
So far I am very impressed with the phone. It’s a larger form factor then the tiny cell phones I’m use to carrying, but much smaller than a lot of the Pocket PC phones I’ve seen in the past. I bought it just before we went out to dinner, and before our food came I was able to set up the ActiveSync with our Exchange server without any instructions or guides. And it worked.
I also set it up to check one of my POP accounts, and again, it worked like a charm.
It has EVDO, and in browsing several sites last night, it works great. Very fast, and easy to use. I haven’t figured out how to get Flash movies to play (mainly so I could pull up Taco Town! which you really should check out if you haven’t seen that SNL skit), but I think it’s just a matter of time.
I’m somewhat nervous because I don’t have the best track history with phones. The insurance protection definately went on this one. ;) But hopefully I can figure out how to keep it in my hands.
Oh, and even though it supports bluetooth, I couldn’t bring myself to by the borg-like bluetooth headset-ear attachment thing. Yeah, I know, it’s the cool thing to have if your phone has bluetooth, but I’m going to wait to see if I can get away from using it.
So, all in all, I’m very happy with the phone so far, and am very glad I made the decision.
Posted on October 3rd, 2006
Today was NEO (New Employee Orientation) here in Redmond. We broke a record with the number of new people in one orientation class – over 300! It was really great being able to see that much talent together, and even more amazing hearing all of the different places people are coming to Redmond from – Colombia, Ireland, India, Texas – all the big countries represented. ;)
It does remind this Americanized employee how many quirks there are over here that new citizens have to understand. Like tax forms (“Fill out your W4! And think about your 401K if you want it pre or post tax or Roth – and you can choose your health plan and have it roll over if you do a Health Savings Plan, but if you have a Health Savings Account it is pretax but is use it or lose it…”). But also simple things like Sick Time being really time-off for anything you need to get done (meaning, no, you don’t need a doctor’s note). Or where certain states are geography-wise.
It also showed me how passionate people are about working for Microsoft, and how really comprehensive their benefits are. In addition, a lot of discussion surrounded things that have changed to make the company more open to the employees. So it may not be the devil (as one friend called it), but I’m still reserving the evil empire barb for now. ;)
Speaking of Microsoft, it turns out I was quoted in an article in the magazine Application Development Trends sometime last year. Occasionally I do Google searches for my name to see what is out there, but seeing as how I’m an MS employee, I thought I would give Live Search a spin. Turns out it found the article – something I had not seen on Google. So congrats to that team – I might have to add a bookmark soon.
Speaking of Google – there’s an interesting discussion going on at the Maverick Software Development list about Google and Agile. Interestingly one of my new coworkers has also interviewed with Google, and also left with a bad taste in his mouth – though his interviewer called him “dense” – much worse that just being told that they “don’t like the way you think”.
I’ll close out with a post from my friend Ted Carnahan who got his first acknowledgment in CPAN for some work he did on Test::Class. He’s doing some cool stuff with Perl – and I hope he keeps blogging it. ;)
Off to bed to get some rest before bootcamp starts tomorrow.
Posted on October 1st, 2006
So I’ve made it to Seattle (well Bellevue at least) to start my orientation with Microsoft. This afternoon 3 of us on the PFE team met up at the airport to carpool together. We ended up heading to a great place called the Crab Pot, and had the waitress dump a big ol’ pot of seafood type stuff on the table, which we promptly picked through. It was delicious, and great for a we’re-having-dinner-at-3pm-because-it’s-really-6pm-to-us meal. ;)
Over dinner, we were talking about how we were recruited, and our backgrounds. The other two seem to be more SQL heavy, and have been up here for various SQL conferences, Tech-Ed, etc, etc. I, on the other hand, use Linux as my primary home system, talk about Ruby at MSDN Code Camps, and blog about agile and other fun topics. I’m like this strange black sheep, and in fact, when the other two heard about Linux, et al, the first words were “blech!”.
Tomorrow starts new employee orientation, then on to the bootcamp. It will be interesting to see how things go with me in the culture. Kind of makes me wish I had talked to Ward Cunningham about his time in Microsoft. Although he was with P&P;, which is arguably more agile. ;)