Happy Birthday America!
Filed Under (Ramblings, Fun, Rants) by MikeAzocar on July-3-2008

 

Today is the anniversary of the signing of the declaration of independence.  The founding fathers of this country were not perfect men. But they were the right men to bring freedom and liberty into the world.  Our revolution was not predestined as many believe.  When you look back and study at the poor army under the command of an experienced George Washington and a congress of colonies who often did not agree, you begin to understand that their was a higher power involved.
American Revolution - Signing of the Declaration of Independence, painting by John Trumbull in U.S. Capitol - In Congress, July 4, 1776. The unanimous declaration of the thirteen United States of America.
With the U.S. elections coming up in November, it is time to remember what the men, all of whom where marked for death by this point, depicted in this painting from the imagination of John Turnbull  stood for. Now get out and get involved in your community and let freedom ring!
Happy Birthday America!
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Why are we not energy independent?
Filed Under (Rants) by MikeAzocar on July-2-2008

 

Wonder why you are paying 4 bucks at the pump?  It’s Economics 101.  More demand raises prices.  More supply lowers prices. Do we need to increase supply?  You bet.  Do we not have any oil in the US?  Not at all.  Check this out.

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The red zones on the map below show areas where oil may exist or does exist and we are blocked from drilling.  The yellow area is the area that China and Cuba are currently exploring so they can drill it out from under us.    In the northern middle of the country there is something called Shale Oil (or oil shale) which we currently have 62% (I have heard the number was higher, but found this on wikipedia) of the world’s supply and do nothing with.   Why do we do nothing with our own oil?  Because lobbyist have blocked us and pushed regulations to make the extraction and production of this oil expensive if not impossible.

 

Make no mistake, the free world runs on oil and we have plenty.  So what are you going to do about it?

 

Happy Driving!

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Turning off the annoying Shutdown Event Tracker
Filed Under (Windows 2003, Windows 2008, Administration) by MikeAzocar on July-2-2008
If you are like me and are using Windows 2008 or Windows 2003 as your primary OS, when you shutdown you get this annoying window:
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Honestly, this window annoys the heck out of me.

If you want to turn this off, do the following:

  1. From the Run menu type “gpedit.msc”.
  2. In the tree view, navigate to Computer Configuration | Administrative Templates | System Folder.
  3. Double click on the Display Shutdown Event Tracker setting.
  4. Select the Disabled radio button and click Ok.
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Happy Coding!
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Cool Agile Estimation Tool that is Free
Filed Under (Uncategorized) by MikeAzocar on July-1-2008
If you have read Mike Cohn’s book on Agile Estimation, one of the techniques he recommends is something called Planning Poker or Estimation Poker.  This is an interesting technique that helps team reach consensus on the estimate for each user story, scenario or requirement.   I was doing some research on this technique and I came across a web site that can be used facilitate the game of planning poker for your team.

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Happy Coding!
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SQL Server Sample
Filed Under (SQL Server) by MikeAzocar on June-30-2008

I was looking for the AdventureWorks database and I discovered that the SQL Server samples have been moved to Codeplex.  Pretty nice!

Check it out when you have a chance.

 

Happy Coding!

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Tools for Agility
Filed Under (Whidbey, Agile, Scrum, MSF Agile, Visual Studio, Orcas, VSTS) by MikeAzocar on June-28-2008

Kent Beck (a signer of the Agile Manifesto) has written a white paper on the relationship between agile and tools.  It is an interesting read and may make some of you “true believers” think again about only using 3×5 note cards.

 

Thanks to Ajoy Krishnamoorthy from Microsoft for helping to facilitate this!

Happy Coding!

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Tech Ed Online ALM Panel
Filed Under (Speaking, Tech Ed, Visual Studio, VSTS) by MikeAzocar on June-26-2008
A couple of the Team System MVPs did a panel discussion during Tech Ed back in June.  This was a fun discussion on Team System, ALM and development processes (especially Scrum which is my favorite).  We actually argued a lot more  than I remember…
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Jeff (on the left) is actually crying at this point.  Check it out when you get a chance.

 

Happy Coding
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MS Access and TFS?
Filed Under (MSSCCI, Source Control, VSTS) by MikeAzocar on June-26-2008

 

One of my first Windows applications was an Access 2.0 database.  Man has Access changed since then!  Recently one of my customers needed to be able to source control some of their Access 2003 database.  I knew about the MSSCCI provider for TFS, but I had not used if for Access before. 

Here is what I did to get this working:
  1. Installed the Access source control Add-in
  2. Installed the Office 2003 SP 3
  3. Installed KB 945674 (this fixes a problem with source control)
  4. Installed the TFS MSSCCI provider

Once everything was setup, I got this error when I tried to create the .mdb from TFS:

      Failed to import file ‘C:\path\file name.acf’ into Microsoft Access.

 

Grant Holiday (now a blue badge) found the fix for me.  Turns out to be a setting in the options of Access on the Advanced tab.  The Default File Format must be set to “Access 2002 – 2003”.

Here is where you set this:

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Hope this helps you.

Happy Coding!
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Diskeeper 2008
Filed Under (Administration, Tools, Vista) by MikeAzocar on June-25-2008

 

My personal laptop is a Dell Inspiron XPS (It’s a first generation and pretty much a piece of crap by the way) with a 60 gig hard-drive which is almost completely full (less than 10%).  The Windows defrag tool was useless because the drive was so full.  Being a MVP has some perks.  One of those is that I get lots of software for free.  I remembered that I had seen a product called Diskeeper on the private MVP newsgroups and thought I would give it a try.  I was amazed!  First, the limited space did not give Diskeeper a problem.  Second it defragged the heck out of my drive!
Here is the before:
Defrag
Here is the after:
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You can get a trial for Diskeeper on their web site and the home version is only $29.95.  Give it a try when you have a chance.
Happy Coding!
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I am now a Geek with a Blog…
Filed Under (Uncategorized) by MikeAzocar on June-18-2008

Ha!  I just setup my blog on Geeks with Blogs.  I will be cross posting to both sites from now on!

Happy Coding!

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