I Love Xobni

I love Xonbi (inbox spelled backwards), I can't tell you how much time this add-in has saved me.

http://www.xobni.com/

Coding4Fun Book Code Downloads

http://www.c4fbook.com/default.aspx

All the downloads and source code that you've seen and heard about at TechEd 2008 and PDC 2008 are now available for the coding4fun series and the book. 

http://www.c4fbook.com/media/

I am going to enjoy InnerTube. Get the downloads while you can.

Obama Birth Certificate (is faked?)

Here is Obama's Birth Certificate.

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn227/Polarik/BO_Birth_Certificate.jpg

Updated: This is apparently a fake birth certificate, this begs the question as to why the Obama campaign hasn't released the real one. This is all my politics for today. 

Record iTunes streaming radio music

Download UrlHelper and follow the instructions on the page below. It actually works.

http://www.streamingstar.com/How-to-record-iTunes-radio.htm

Don't know how legal it is since ripping music seems to be off limits nowadays but what the hell, go for it.

Create a digital collage

This very cool tool from Microsoft Research creates a digital collage for you.

http://research.microsoft.com/AutoCollage/

Job Justifications, Systems you manage... my experience is not good

At my previous employer my manager came to me one day asking me to detail what I work on i.e. what systems do I manage and to provide a weekly percentage of this work in an Excel spreadsheet. I thought ok, he just wants to know what I do everyday. Not quite, 2 months later the company announces they are being acquired by another. People get cut, my manager did, somehow I remained.

What I learned: When a manager asks for this type of information it might indicate the company is about to be acquired.

Current Day: My manager asks all of us to provide information about the systems we support and what we work on weekly. This scares me a little as it sounds a lot like my previous employer.

My list is going to be 10 pages long this time.

Anyway, for those of you out there that encounter this type of situation, either come up with a huge list or pack your bags. In my case, I was young and had a lot of potential, I think that's why I was kept, plus I was making dirt for pay.

TechEd 2008 DVD Set Arrives

Today I received the completed DVD set of the sessions, keynotes and presentations given at this year's (2008) TechEd down in Orlando, FL.

Again I'll have to reiterate that I wasn't blown away by TechEd. It seemed a little elementary and I was expecting more deep dives into the technologies. Maybe that's what the PDC is for. Either way, I won't be going to next years in L.A., maybe the year after when it's in New Orleans.

Missing WebTrends Hit and Visit Filters after 8.5 upgrade

After upgrading to WebTrends 8.5 I noticed that all my hit and visit filters disappeared. I didn't bother to write down all the configuration of these filters before the upgrade because really who would. I called support and they were easily able to get my filters back with a minimal amount of work.

First stop a couple of WebTrends services. First stop the User Interface and then the Scheduler Agent.

Next browse to your WebTrends directory most likely C:\Program Files\WebTrends\storage\config\wtm_wtx\datfiles\filters. You should see a bunch of .bak files. Take the most recent .bak file it may be named something similar to hits_webtrendsdatetime.bak. Make a backup copy of hits.ini and call it hits.ini.old. Now take the hits_webtrendsdatetime.bak file and rename it to hits.ini.

Now start up the WebTrends service in the opposite order, so start the Scheduler Agent and then the User Interface. Log into the WebTrends console and you should now see your hit filters back. This same process will work for visit filters as well just use the visits.ini file and the visits_webtrendsdatetime.bak files instead.

Also notice that when you stop the WebTrends User Interface service that the WebTrends Tomcat service stops as well, and when you start the User Interface service the Tomcat service will start.

Hope this helps someone.

Blogger favicon.ico

Wondering how I got the cool favicon by the url within your web browser. I followed the instructions found http://tips-for-new-bloggers.blogspot.com/2007/02/adding-favicon-icon-to-blogger-url.html to add it.



I think Blogger should make it easier to put a favicon within the url but since they don't you can just follow the instructions in the link above to add the favicon to Blogger.

Upgrading WebTrends from 8.1 to 8.5

The upgrade from WebTrends version 8.1 to 8.5 did not go smoothly. The big difference between the 8.1 versions and 8.5 is that instead of using mysql databases 8.5 now uses SQL databases specifically running on SQL Server 2005 Express Edition. During the upgrade 8.5 installed SQL 2005 Express and converted the mysql databases to SQL databases. This all seemed to go fine except when the WebTrends site came up it still pointed to the old mysql databases even though the SQL databases were created and converted successfully.

Support had me first uninstall 8.5 and then reinstall 8.5, after this we tried restoring the converted databases over the empty 8.5 databases. This did not succeed as when the site was browsed a SQL error was displayed. So support had me uninstall 8.5 and reinstall 8.1 specifically 8.1.0.5164. After we had a blank 8.1 installation running I stopped the WebTrends services and made copies of the storage, wt_sched and wtmaster folders that exist within the WebTrends folder within Program Files. I then copied in my backup folders of these (I made backups of these before doing any upgrade, apparently all the data is stored in these folders). I then restarted the WebTrends services and browsed to the WebTrends site. Success, the site came up, I was able to login and all my analysis data was there.

After we verified some of the data in the 8.1 version, we upgraded to 8.1a which I believe is 8.1.0.2048. After the upgrade we again logged into the WebTrends site and verified the data. Just a note here, one of the many technicians I spoke to told me that the upgrade would only be successful from 8.1a to 8.5. This explains why my 8.1 to 8.5 upgrade didn’t go well. The data was correct so we then upgraded to 8.5, we logged into the WebTrends site again and finally the data was all there.

You can verify version and database platform by logging into the WebTrends site, going into the Administration area and then into Install Components. On that page is a link to About WebTrends which displays the version number and database platform.

Lessons learned: Upgrade to 8.1a before attempting to upgrade to 8.5.

Sample valid credit card numbers

I often need to test my forms with credit card information, so here are some valid numbers for each type of card, although I doubt they will work in reality but they pass the Luhn Algorithm for my testing.

Visa
4111 1111 1111 1111

MasterCard
5500 0000 0000 0004

American Express
3400 0000 0000 009

Discover
6011 0000 0000 0004

Funny video for developers

Stupid sales people should learn how to use the software they are selling. I can't tell you how many times I had to help people learn about the MS software that they had no idea how to use but were trying to sell it to our clients.

http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/

Free favicon for your site

This is the site I use to get free favicon.ico images for my sites.

http://www.favicon.cc/

It has a nice search feature along with a bunch of other ones I don't use.

Web Based Link Checker

I currently use LinkAlarm to check my web site for broken links, this service has worked great but it eats into my yearly budget. I found a nice example of how to write my own link checker at the following site.

http://blogs.iis.net/tomkmvp/archive/2008/06/26/web-based-link-checker.aspx

As soon as I get some time I will start working on this application and should be able to modify it to fit my needs. Basically go through my entire site, check links and produce a report of what needs to be fixed.

How to get a top level domain name

ICANN has indicated they will allow companies to submit proposals for top level domain names or TLD names. It looks like the initial cost will be in the six figures to obtain one of these bad boys and the process looks like it has been well planned. See link below.

http://www.praxagora.com/andyo/professional/icann_tld_approval.html

I can only hope it is that easy.