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April 21, 2009

CTRL+X

Dear Microsoft,

I'd like CTRL+X (remove an entire line – as per Visual Studio) added to all programs you make.

Thanks,

--Mike

Posted on April 21, 2009 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 31, 2009

Video Card Woes

Nearly 2 years ago I bought a new gaming work rig.

It's hands-down been one of the best investments I've ever made. Since purchasing it, I've upgraded it into a new case (one that looks nicer, and has better airflow with a slightly smaller footprint/chassis), upgraded it to 8GB of RAM, and slapped in an SSD RAID-0. It's still so snappy and responsive that it's hard to even quantify. Eventually I'll probably put a Core 2 Quad into it, and maybe swap out my slower RAM for some faster RAM, but otherwise, the system is great.

BaseScore

GeForce 8800 GTS
There has been one let down though – my 8800 GTS video cards. Despite how INSANELY awesome they were from a performance standpoint – and despite how insanely awesome it was to have TWO of them, they just didn't seem to like being a part of my awesome system.

8800GTS

As you can see from the picture of pure awesomeness above, I had 2 EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS cards (okay, so the photo only shows one card) with 320MB of RAM each. Paired up, that was 192 stream processors, a whole bunch of GHz and MHz of Memory and Processor speeds, and 640MB of Video Memory.

Only, about a year ago, one of them just up and died on me. (Sadly, after the warranty had expired.) So I ponied up for another one… and things have been just fine. Until last Friday, when the OTHER one died. So, in less than two years, the failure rate on both of these pigs was 100%. Which, despite their insane awesomeness, just wasn't well… awesome (or, frankly, even acceptable).

The New/Lesser Coolness
So, rather than taking another gamble on a now discontinued card, I decided to downgrade a bit. Truth is, I never really ran in SLI other than a few times to see what it was like – because as cool as SLI is, you only get one monitor. So, as much as I liked having an SLI compatible machine, all I really need 2 video cards for is to be able to run more than 2 monitors. (I'm up to three now and would TOTALLY grab a fourth except three kick off a lot of heat and I'm worried about what 4 would do.)

8600GTS

So, I snagged an EVGA GeForce 8600 GTS. It 'only' has 32 stream processors, and only has 256MB of RAM, but actually has faster bus speeds than my 8800 GTS (as it came out later). So, while it's not a gaming replacement for my remaining GTS 8800, it does JUST fine running a third monitor (and will support my need for a fourth if I ever decide to just take a risk on the heat issues). And since it uses the exact same driver as my 8800GTS, I can run Aero Glass JUST FINE on it and so on.

Best of all, it was only $55 instead of $180… and comes with a 2 year warranty instead of a 1 year warranty. And, for the record, I swear I read something about NVidia having problems with HIGH FAILURE rates on some of their cards – and I blame them, NOT EVGA because EVGA literally has the best customer service and support of any hardware vendor that I know of…

Posted on March 31, 2009 | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

January 20, 2009

CTRL+X Syndrome

I hate when I've been spending lots of time in Visual Studio, and then find myself wondering what's up with Word, OneNote, Outlook, and other applications when I try to remove an entire line by pressing CTRL+X.

To me it's almost as integral as middle-clicking.

Posted on January 20, 2009 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

January 07, 2009

My List of Demands For Windows 7

I haven't had time to blink in the general direction of Windows 7. But the few things I've read about (or glanced at) seem to indicate it will be cool.

Lots of attention seems to be focused on the new 'superbar' too.

And I'm fine with the notion of a super-bar. But there are some things I really want from that Super-Bar and from Windows 7 if I'm going to get all giddy about it.

1) Native support for Multiple Monitors. You know what that means. (Sadly it means bye-bye to Ultra Mon, but MS should just buy those guys-out anyhow.)

2) I want transparent task bars - even if i'm a super-bad-man (TM) and maximize one of my apps.

3) I really want to be able to middle-click on an app in one of my taskbars (i.e. per monitor) to close the app. And I don't care if FireFox did invent middle-clicking. It's insanely convenient, and I'd love to be able to close my apps that way.

Anyone that's played with Windows 7, let me know if any of the stuff above is already in place!

Posted on January 07, 2009 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

December 29, 2008

I'm Not Sure

Frankly, I'm not sure who's more stoooopid:

Exhibit A: Politicians
They couldn't wait to shell out $4 Trillion to MAKE SURE that we wouldn't go into a recession.

Well, it didn't work.

That, and while I SUCK at math, the way I see it, 300M Americans and $1T equals more than $3K for every man, woman, and child in this country that will eventually have to be paid back. For my family of 6, that amounts to a paltry $72,000  ($4T/300M x 6).

Exhibit B: Environmentalists
While my idea of a good time isn't burning styrofoam or acres of tires, I'm SICK TO DEATH of environmentalists pushing their religion off on me.

That, and how stupid do they think I am?

Once again, we see another group of hand-wringing, "let's save the POLAR BEARS", self-righteous, knuckle-dragging, numbskull, environmentalists trying to equate human calamity and misery with Global Warming.

And, once again - they're trying to equate EARTHQUAKES as proof of global warming:

Natural disasters killed over 220,000 people in 2008, making it one of the most devastating years on record and underlining the need for a global climate deal, the world's number two reinsurer said Monday.
...
Just days later an earthquake shook China's Sichuan province, leaving 70,000 dead, 18,000 missing and almost five million homeless, according to official figures, Munich Re said.  

Uh... yeah. The way I see it, nearly 1/3rd of those deaths were tragically caused by human negligence. But not of the sinful carbon-emissions kind. (Unless those corrupt Chinese builders wasted the money they should have spent on building strong buildings on gleeful and wanton tire, coal, and jet-fuel burning. Bastards!)

A Fitting Solution
My guess though is that there's probably some way we can get American Tax Payers to bail out German Re-Insurers - given the HELL that volcanoes, earthquakes, and meteor-strikes are going to cause with humanity's refusal to pay attention to global warming ...

Posted on December 29, 2008 | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

December 18, 2008

An Open Letter to SSD Manufacturers

Dear SSD Manufacturers,

No seriously. Go ahead. Just do it.

Start making your gnarly SSD drives in 3.5-inch form factors.

It will make it easier for real IT wonks to take you more seriously.

It will also make it tons easier to mount SSD drives in non-laptops.

That larger form-factor will also likely give us enough extra GBs that we won't be able to look the other way any longer.

--Mike

P.S. Toshiba, I'm talking to you - cuz you've got the speed where I want it, and the GBs are great. But do I REALLY have to buy conversion brackets?

Posted on December 18, 2008 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

November 26, 2008

Dear IE,

Could you possibly suck any more than you currently do?

This is a great error message, with PLENTY of decent details:

uselessIE

But without the name of the flipping file where the error occurred, what use is all that info?

And you've been like this for like 4+ versions now. (And I don't even have the energy to point out that lines and chars would be different even IF you were able to give me a file name. *sigh*)

Sheesh,

--Mike

Posted on November 26, 2008 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

November 20, 2008

Mommy!

SSDs.

I've been watching these great little 64GB SSDs (128GB are just as good), and thinking about getting 2 of them. (In a RAID-0 I'd get insane performance. Insane.)

Then this comes along:
Insanely fast Samsung 256GB SSDs.

2 of those would melt my face off.

Posted on November 20, 2008 | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

June 28, 2008

Why Securing MS Apps is a PITA

As a Developer and IT Pro one of the things I really hate is seeing an example install everything as Administrator, or just completely fail to use good security practices.

Therefore as a Technical Evangelist, one of the things I really strive for in the examples and content I create is to use something OTHER than Domain Admin to run my services in and so on. Though... I'm starting to rethink that based on the hideous number of hours it always cause me to lose.

Case in point, I'm working on some content for a pretty cool new product from Microsoft. And there are a lot of components that make up this product. Those components can be installed on a single machine or distributed across a number of machines.

Rather than just installing everything on a single machine, I went with the more real-world approach of doing it like people would do it in... the real world. And I created separate domain accounts for my services and so on.

And, when interacting with the tool, I'm doing it like a real users would - as I think that makes my tutorials more viable and realistic (especially when part of my job is to watch out for 'icebergs' if you will - and steer readers, viewers, whatever around those problems when they're working with these tools).

Only, I'm really getting sick of the way Microsoft makes security exponentially more and more difficult. By spreading it out over so many different control points, gateways, ACLs, and other points of interaction.

For example, while working with this project I'm on now, there's the ability to deploy my projects to a 'preview' location that's a web site. I try to push to that location, and I'm told, very bluntly, that 'deployment failed'. (Yeah... killer error message there.)

Hmmm. Let's see... there's my security context, the context of the web service I'm working with, and the context of the site I'm routing to via the WS. That also means a couple of places to put ACLs on folders.

That's tedious enough, but hey... it's all ... part of the job of using the principle of least privilege. So I go through all those possibilities and make sure the account I'm using (and the account the service is using) has the right perms on sites and folders.

No love.

Ahhh wait.. the service itself has it's own security accounts and authorization (i.e. like SQL Server). Maybe the account I'm using or the service account I'm using needs the 'Creator' perms/role?

No love.

Google? A few people reporting the same problems - and aside from the obvious suggestions of checking perms.. there's still no love.

Well... it IS a demo after all... and...just to see what's up as part of troubleshooting I make the service account an admin.

No Love.

Just to see... how'z about: Domain Admins?

Still: No Love.

Damnit! What more could you want????!!!111

Fine. Log out as CONTOSO\Mike, log back in as ADMINISTRATOR.

Love. Only... now I don't want it.

Posted on June 28, 2008 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

May 05, 2008

An Open Letter to My Keyboard

Dear Keyboard,

There's really, never, ever, ever, ever, ever a time when I don't want the NUM LOCK key off. I have a keyboard with a 10-key because I like those keys.

And I don't use that side of my keyboard as a drink-holder. Ever.

So, I'd prefer it if we could work something out where my 10-key always worked. Cuz having the ability to turn off my 10-key/Toggle NUM LOCK is tantamount to having keys that turn off 'right hand' or 'left hand' keys - i.e., totally useless.

Love,

--Mike

No, really: When did 'they' decide that a 10-key was just too much for some users to handle? What was the conversation like?

"Dood, this 10-key thing is nice, but it's just too much power. Stop the insanity and give people a way to turn that thing off for the love of all that's holy - otherwise someone will shoot their foot off with that thing"....

Posted on May 05, 2008 | | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

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