Tampa Code Camp 2007 – a good time

Posted on July 19, 2007 by ericgharrison
Last Saturday, the Tampa Code Camp for 2007 was held at the St. Pete College EpiCenter.
 
At that event, for the first time, I did a presentation on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0.  A good time was had by all!  Well, except for the minor projection issues, and the screen scaling issues.  Unfortunately, the session before mine ran long, and by the time I could take over the podium it was time for my session to start, so I didn’t have the opportunity to get everything set up before people were expecting things to get started.
 
Fortunately, everything got straightened out pretty quickly, and the session went well.
 
A few people left during the session, but from what I’ve observed at both Code Camps and other conferences, this is totally normal.  But having it happen to me for the first time was a bit disconcerting. 
 
At the end, I disclosed that we’re working on a Tampa Dynamics CRM User Group as well as the forthcoming training that we’re working with Dunn Training on (http://www.dunntraining.com).  More to come on both those fronts!
 
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Lenovo’s enthusiasm is amazing – new T60 and then some.

Posted on July 1, 2007 by ericgharrison
I complain so often about poor customer service that I thought it would be worth it to call out a company that takes servicing their customers seriously.  On June 20th I ordered a new Thinkpad T60 from Lenovo, with some very high end specs.  It shipped on June 22nd from Hong Kong and was at my door on June 25th.  That’s only two days in manufacturing, and 3 days to travel half way around the world!
 
Later that day the docking station I ordered was delivered.
 
Two days later another docking station was delivered.
 
Two days later another Thinkpad arrived.
 
I just found out that another docking station shipped today for delivery in a few days.
 
Yikes!  While I enjoyed having a spare Thinkpad and docking station laying about for a few hours, a quick call to Lenovo took care of returning it (they did charge my card after all!), but I’m hoping they the airdrops of new and expensive equipment stop in the near future!
 
In all seriousness, kudos to Lenovo for delivering so quickly, and handling the return of the unordered equipment with absolutely no hassles.
 
The machine kicks some serious ass too.  A Core 2 Duo 2.33ghz processor plus a 7200 rpm drive and 3 gig of RAM makes Vista a very happy OS, and the machine beats the tar out of my old and full sized HP XW6200 workstation with a 3.2ghz XEON processor and 2 gig of RAM.
 
In short, the Thinkpads are still expensive, but hopefully worth it, and Lenovo’s customer service (so far) seems to have stayed top notch.
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Urge, what are you doing with my hard drive?

Posted on May 29, 2007 by ericgharrison
I’ve been experimenting with subscription music services.  A while ago I started with Rhapsody, and while I despised their darn application (why not just be an add in in Windows Media Player?!), I enjoyed their service.  Unfortunately, after I converted to Windows Vista (super duper edition), I discovered that Rhapsody didn’t work with Vista.
 
So I cancelled my Rhapsody subscription which was a painless process, but it did require a phone call.  Kudo’s for Real (<shiver>) for making it easy to leave the services – it makes me more willing to go back to it.
 
I then joined Urge.  After a while, I kind of got used to the interface, but I still haven’t found an easy way to "tag" music that I want to listen to again, short of putting it into a big messy playlist.  Rhapsody had this part down pat.
 
Over the past month or so, I’ve noticed that my hard drive has been getting accessed nonstop.  At first I thought it was Vista doing some indexing stuff, but even after leaving the machine alone for 24 hours, the hard drive was still clicking.  I finally narrowed it down to Urge causing the problem.  A few seconds after I close Windows Meda Player, the hard drive quiets down.  I reopen WMP and it goes nuts again.  I uninstalled Urge and the problem went away.  I reinstalled Urge and it came back.
 
I have a fairly noisy 10,000 RPM drive, so having it clicking all the time is quite annoying.  I wish I knew if this is a problem that is going to be cleared up soon, or if I need to move back to Rhapsody…
<span class="entry-utility-prep entry-utility-prep-cat-links">Posted in</span> Computers and Internet | 1 Comment

Changing CRM server IP address resulted in massive slowdown

Posted on May 16, 2007 by ericgharrison
On Monday we moved our offices.  As part of the move, we changed the IP addressing scheme in our office.  As we started using CRM, we noticed that certain things were running quite slowly.  For example, if you attempted to open an Account window, it could take up to 15 seconds, even if you had just opened the same one a moment before!
 
At first I was ready to blame my desktop for this problem.  In troubleshooting it, I remoted into the server as administrator and tried opening some screens, and they opened quickly, making me think that it was my machine.
 
I then tried opening the screens from another computer, and found that they were opening slowly there too, which told me it was not my desktop, but server related.
 
It turns out that the IP address of the reporting server that CRM was pointed to was hardcoded as an IP address, rather than a DNS name.  The result of this was that every time a form was opened that referred to the reporting server, it was timing out waiting for the reporting server.  The reason the administrator wasn’t running into that problem was because as a "limited user" within CRM, none of the screens it has access to (or that I tested in any case) were tied to the reporting server.
 
The solution is to go into the following location in the registry: HKLMSoftwareMicrosoftMSCRM and correct the value in the SQLRSServerURL key.  In our case, I changed it from a hardcoded 192.168.0.2 to the proper DNS name (which is top secret :)).  Then I did a quick IISRESET and everything was golden.
 
Hope this helps someone! – Eric.
 
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XBox 360 – so much love, so much hate

Posted on May 2, 2007 by ericgharrison
It happened *again*.  Our XBox 360 died with the ring of 3 red lights.  This is the second time in six months this has happened.  Unfortunately, this time it was out of warranty, so I’m out $139 to get it repaired.
 
We use the XBox 360 pretty much every day.  Not so much as a game machine, but as a media center extender.  Our primary PVR is an HP Media Center equipped PC.  When we watch TV in the living room, we use the XBox 360 as an extender for it.  Due to this hardware failure, we’re going to have to use another extender while the 360 is off getting repaired.
 
Amazingly, when going through the process of getting the RMA, I was told that I was doing something wrong by plugging in the 360 into a UPS! The friendly tech support lady said that when you plug into a UPS, the 360 can not get enough power to drive the fans fast enough.  Why would they say this?  In the real world, you plug your valuable electronics into a UPS, especially when you live in the lightning capital of the world!  It’s pretty funny as I have my development workstation plugged into a UPS.  I’m pretty sure it draws a lot more power than a 360 does, and yet, it continues to run just fine.
 
Word is that later this year, a new revision of the 360 will be out.  It will feature a smaller die processor, which should help reduce heat.  If our 360 dies again after the renewed warranty expires (we get another year for paying for the repair), we’ll probably get a new revision model. If it isn’t out after that, I’m not sure we’ll get another one or repair this one if it breaks again.
<span class="entry-utility-prep entry-utility-prep-cat-links">Posted in</span> Entertainment | Leave a comment

Hitachi’s explanation of perpendicular technology

Posted on April 26, 2007 by ericgharrison
I’m pretty sure I’m not normal.  This Hitachi, um, demo of perpendicular storage technology appeals to me…
 
Enjoy the show, and make sure you can hear the song!
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Food poisoning sucks in so many ways!

Posted on April 4, 2007 by ericgharrison
Karmic retribution is a bitch.  While eating some Chinese food with friends on Friday night I mentioned that the last time I had been really sick was something like 10 years before and it was from food poisoning.  We all had a good chuckle.
 
At 3am Saturday morning I woke up and began the first of many rushes to the bathroom.  For the next 24 hours I was capable of only rushing to the bathroom and laying in bed.  I managed to eat one Ritz cracker.
 
Sunday was spent in bed recovering, with fewer rushes to the bathroom.  I ate a bowl of plain oatmail (a curse on that damn Quaker Oats guy!) and a bowl of soap.  Neither stuck around for long.
 
Monday I was able to be upright for about an hour and actually made a very short visit to a client to fix a system that had been disabled by a server upgrade the previous week.
 
Tuesday I was half normal and finally I managed to eat enough food to begin to sustain me. I went to a prospect meeting and got stood up.
 
Finally today I feel mostly normal, except for an entirely rational fear of Chicken and Mushrooms, and a bit of lingering weakness and queasiness.  Tonight I have to spend four or five hours at a client site.  Let’s hope I have the stamina to do it!
 
The killer of all this is that in addition to the physical aspects of being sick, it hurts a small and growing business.  A few weeks ago the sales side of our company was laid out for two weeks with that horrible lingering flu / cold that was running around, then I got struck down!
 
Let’s hope that everyone remains healthy, the business continues to grow, and that blogging will resume!
<span class="entry-utility-prep entry-utility-prep-cat-links">Posted in</span> Food and drink | Leave a comment

Can’t say anything nice?

Posted on March 21, 2007 by ericgharrison
You know how you’re told that if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all?
 
Notice how quite the blog has been this week after a burst of blogging last week?
 
Notice how I’m not saying anything about Microsoft right now?
 
That’s all I’m saying for now (glances over at the Mac Mini which just hums along quietly…)
<span class="entry-utility-prep entry-utility-prep-cat-links">Posted in</span> Computers and Internet | Leave a comment

Is your Media Center system not recording shows properly?

Posted on March 13, 2007 by ericgharrison
Even if your PC running Microsoft Media Center Edition was fully patched for the daylight savings time change, there is a problem effecting many people where shows that were scheduled to be recorded did not correctly change their record start and stop times.
 
Thus many people, including myself, have had shows missed.  I’m quite cheesed that I missed the latest Battlestar Galactica!
 
The fix, as discovered by someone over the www.thegreenbutton.com is to go into your channel configuration, deselect all but one channel (that you’ve never recorded anything from), click save, wait for the CPU to go back to idle, then go back into the channel configuration, reselect all the channels (or at least those that you watch), and save again.
 
At that point, all times for all recordings should be fixed.
 
Good luck!
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Great short video – Shift Happens

Posted on March 12, 2007 by ericgharrison
I picked this up off of Joe Healy’s business blog.
 
What a great video!  Everyone should watch it.  For those of us who have been around for a while, it just drives home that what we’ve seen so far is nothing compared to what’s coming! 
 
My first home computer had 4k of memory – notepad.exe in Windows Vista takes around 150k. 
 
The first terminal I used had a 300 (30 characters / sec) baud modem. My current broadband connection is 800,000 characters / sec.
 
The first floppy disc I messed with was 8" across.  The first one I owned was a 5.25" single sided floppy that stored 160k and it cost several hundred dollars, in the early 1980’s.  Hard drives will reach roughly one terabyte this year (something like 6 million times as big).  For $500.
 
The first LCD monitor I bought was 16" and cost well over $1000.  Today I run a 24" that cost under $700.  And that’s in just 5 years.
 
Imagine where the next 10, 20 and 30 years will take us!
<span class="entry-utility-prep entry-utility-prep-cat-links">Posted in</span> Entertainment | Leave a comment