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• How TiVo is messing up customer support.

  - by James Fleming

  Ok,  So I've gotten a TiVo and overall, I'm happy, but there have been issues and I suspect I've a defective unit. - Now the nice folks after many service calls were happy to swap it out, and to ensure continuity of service, they sent me a new unit (after a $109 deposit).  That was yesterday. Today, when we go to watch a little TV, and wait for our replacement unit to arrive we find our TiVo service has been suspended. WTF? They have an exchange program, but your unit your waiting to exchange is as dead as a doornail until the replacement arrives. How hard is it to keep the old unit active for an extra week? Here is the exchange w/Tivo below... You are currently number 1 in the queue. We apologize for the delay. We will assign you to an agent as soon as one is available.The average amount of time a customer has to wait is 00:13.  Kaylene (Listening)  Kaylene: Thank you for contacting TiVo! My name is Kaylene. So that I may better assist you, are you an existing customer?  james Fleming: yes I am, but I'm now having second thoughts about being one    Kaylene: Thank you for verifying your information. How may I assist you today James?  james Fleming: I've been having issues w/a tivo box & I'm getting a replacement sent out to me (after paying an additional deposit) and now my current unit is no longer activated  Kaylene: I can help you today!  Kaylene: When we process an exchange we do transfer over the service to the replacement box so it is active and ready to go when you receive it.  james Fleming: which is to say you also make my current box worthless until such time I receive a new box?!?!?  Kaylene: I apologize that your original box was deactivated so we could activate your replacement box.  james Fleming: Why on Earth would I bother to pay in advance for a new box if you were going to kill my existing box.  Kaylene: What features are you needing to use on your current box?  james Fleming: I need to be able to access my netflix subscription (if I'm lucky enough to have it work without rebooting)  Kaylene: Can I have you verify the TiVo Service Number of your TiVo box please?  james Fleming: 7460011906979b4  Kaylene: We have your current box temporary service but not all features are available with temporary service as it is not paid for service.  Kaylene: If you like I can transfer your service back to your current box for now. Then once you receive the new box you will have to call in and have the service transferred back to the new box.  james Fleming: Not paid for? Let's see> one tivo box + 3 year service plan + monthly service + $109 deposit on a second box = what?  Kaylene: Would you like me to transfer your service back to your current box?  james Fleming: Yes - that would be helpful  Kaylene: All you will need to do is contact us again once you receive the new box so we can transfer it back.  Kaylene: I have put your service back on TiVo box 7460011906979b4.  james Fleming: What would also be helpful is your firm informing me to how you'd be cutting service in the interim.  james Fleming: Again - I opted to pay to have a second box delivered BEFORE returning the box I have - thus trying to have a continuity of service..  Kaylene: This is not something we normally do so it is important when you contact us to transfer the service back to the new box when you receive it that you reference this case number: 110622-006089.  Kaylene: I apologize about the inconvenience. You may need  force a few connections for the box to recognize the service again.  james Fleming: If it's not something you normally do than WHY would you have a $109 fee and a term for the service.  james Fleming: I am not mad at you, but your company is not impressing me and I'm blogging about this experience  Kaylene: Again I apologize about the inconvenience but you should be good to go now. Is there anything else I can help you with today?  james Fleming: so I need to go through the re-actviate process or is that somethign you do  Kaylene: When you receive the new TiVo box you need to contact us so we can transfer the service to the new box for you.  james Fleming: sure  Kaylene: Is there anything else I can help you with today James?  james Fleming: Nope - please email this transcript to me  Kaylene: I apologize but we do not have the ability to e-mail you a copy of this transcript. You can view it online at  http://www.tivo.com when you sign into your account or you can copy and paste it now to save it.  Kaylene: Thank you for contacting TiVo today. Your reference number for our conversation is 110622-006089. You can save this for your records, and if necessary, provide this to a later agent to pull up what we discussed. There will be a brief satisfaction survey emailed to you. We would appreciate any feedback on your TiVo Chat Support experience today.  Kaylene: Thank you for using TiVo Chat and have a great day James! Good-bye.  Kaylene has disconnected.

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• 2011 PASS Board Applicants: Rob Farley

  - by andyleonard

  Introduction I am interviewing 2011 PASS Board Nominee Applicants. As listed on the PASS Board Elections site the applicants are: Rob Farley Geoff Hiten Adam Jorgensen Denise McInerney Sri Sridharan Kendal Van Dyke I'm asking everyone the same questions and blogging the responses in the order received. Rob Farley is first up: Interview With Rob Farley 1. What's your day job? I run LobsterPot Solutions out of Adelaide, Australia. We're a SQL & BI consultancy, and were the first Microsoft Partner...(read more)

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• @CodeStock 2012 Review: Rob Gillen ( @argodev ) - Anatomy of a Buffer Overflow Attack

  Anatomy of a Buffer Overflow AttackSpeaker: Rob GillenTwitter: @argodevBlog: rob.gillenfamily.net Honestly, this talk was over my head due to my lack of knowledge of low level programming, and I think that most of the other attendees would agree. However I did get the basic concepts that we was trying to get across. Fortunately most high level programming languages handle most of the low level concerns regarding preventing buffer overflow attacks. What I got from this talk was to validate all input data from external sources.

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• @CodeStock 2012 Review: Rob Gillen ( @argodev ) - Anatomy of a Buffer Overflow Attack

  Anatomy of a Buffer Overflow AttackSpeaker: Rob GillenTwitter: @argodevBlog: rob.gillenfamily.net Honestly, this talk was over my head due to my lack of knowledge of low level programming, and I think that most of the other attendees would agree. However I did get the basic concepts that we was trying to get across. Fortunately most high level programming languages handle most of the low level concerns regarding preventing buffer overflow attacks. What I got from this talk was to validate all input data from external sources.

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• Rob Blackwell on interoperability and Azure

  - by Eric Nelson

  At QCon in March we had a sample Azure application implemented in both Java and Ruby to demonstrate that the Windows Azure Platform is not just about .NET. The following is an interesting interview with Rob Blackwell, the R&D director of the partner who implemented the application. UK Interoperability Team Interviews Rob Blackwell, R&D Director at Active Web Solutions. Is Microsoft taking interoperability seriously? Yes. In the past, I think Microsoft has, quite rightly come in for criticism, but architects and developers should look at this again. The Interoperability Bridges site (http://www.interoperabilitybridges.com/ ) shows a wide range of projects that allow interoperability from Java, Ruby and PHP for example. The Windows Azure platform has been architected with interoperable APIs in mind. It's straightforward to access the various storage facilities from just about any language or platform. Azure compute is capable of running more than just C# applications! Why is interoperability important to you? My company provides consultancy and bespoke development services. We're a Microsoft Gold Partner, but we live in the real world where companies have a mix of technologies provided by a variety of vendors. When developing an enterprise software solution, you rarely have a completely blank canvas. We often see integration scenarios where we need to exchange data with legacy systems. It's not unusual to see modern Silverlight applications being built on top of Java or Mainframe based back ends. Could you give us some examples of where interoperability has been important for your projects? We developed an innovative Sea Safety system for the RNLI Lifeboats here in the UK. Commercial Fishing is one of the most dangerous professions and we helped developed the MOB Guardian System which uses satellite technology and man overboard devices to raise the alarm when a fisherman gets into trouble. The solution is implemented in .NET running on Windows, but without interoperable standards, it would have been impossible to communicate with the satellite gateway technology. For more information, please see the case study: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=4000005892 More recently, we were asked to build a web site to accompany the QCon 2010 conference in London to help demonstrate and promote interoperability. We built the site using Java and Restlet and hosted it in Windows Azure Compute. The site accepts feedback from visitors and all the data is stored in Windows Azure Storage. We also ported the application to Ruby on Rails for demonstration purposes. Visitors to the stand were surprised that this was even possible. Why should Java developers be interested in Windows Azure? Windows Azure Storage consists of Blobs, Queues and Tables. The storage is scalable, durable, secure and cost-effective. Using the WindowsAzure4j library, it's easy to use, and takes just a few lines of code. If you are writing an application with large data storage requirements, or you want an offsite backup, it makes a lot of sense. Running Java applications in Azure Compute is straightforward with tools like the Tomcat Solution Accelerator (http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/winazuretomcat )and AzureRunMe (http://azurerunme.codeplex.com/ ). The Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus can also be used to connect heterogeneous systems running on different networks and in different data centres. How can The Service Bus be considered an interoperability solution? I think that the Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus is one of Microsoft’s best kept secrets. Think of it as “a globally scalable application plumbing kit in the sky”. If you have used Enterprise Service Buses before, you’ll be familiar with the concept. Applications can connect to the service bus to securely exchange data – these can be point to point or multicast links. With the AppFabric Service Bus, the applications can exist anywhere that has access to the Internet and the connections can traverse firewalls. This makes it easy to extend or scale your application or reach out to other networks and technologies. For example, let’s say you have a SQL Server database running on premises and you want to expose the data to a Java application running in the cloud. You could set up a point to point Service Bus connection and use JDBC. Traditionally this would have been difficult or impossible without punching holes in firewalls and compromising security. Rob Blackwell is R&D Director at Active Web Solutions, www.aws.net , a Microsoft Gold Partner specialising in leading edge software solutions. He is an occasional writer and conference speaker and blogs at www.robblackwell.org.uk Related Links: UK Azure Online Community – join today. UK Windows Azure Site Start working with Windows Azure

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• NDC2010: Rob Conery I cant hear you, there is an ORM in my ear

  In this session Rob Conery tried to show of the new Shiny toy NoSQL in as many forms as possible, discussing the pros and and some cons. He based much of the talk on his experiences with building TekPub and the requirements they had around that. He tried to illustrate that this wasnt a magical [...]...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Edinburgh this Thurs (25th) - Rob Carrol talks about how to build a high performance, scalable repor

  - by tonyrogerson

  Scottish Area SQL Server User Group Meeting, Edinburgh - Thursday 25th March An evening of SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services Scalability and Performance with Rob Carrol, see how to build a high performance, scalable reporting platform and the tuning techniques required to ensure that report performance remains optimal as your platform grows. Pizza and drinks will be provided! Register at http://www.sqlserverfaq.com/events/221/SQL-Server-2008-Reporting-Services-Scalability-and-Performance.aspx...(read more)

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• SQLPeople Interviews - Jamie Thomson and Rob Farley

  - by andyleonard

  Introduction Late last year I announced an exciting new endeavor called SQLPeople . At the end of 2010 I announced the 2010 SQLPeople Person of the Year . Interviews I'm pleased to announce the first two interviews have been posted. They are with my friend and co-SSIS-professional Jamie Thomson and Rob Farley , someone I had the pleasure of meeting in person at the PASS Summit 2010. I plan to post two or three interviews each week for the forseeable future. Conclusion SQLPeople is just one of the...(read more)

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• Linq to SQL and concurrency with Rob Conery repository pattern

  - by David Hall

  I have implemented a DAL using Rob Conery's spin on the repository pattern (from the MVC Storefront project) where I map database objects to domain objects using Linq and use Linq to SQL to actually get the data. This is all working wonderfully giving me the full control over the shape of my domain objects that I want, but I have hit a problem with concurrency that I thought I'd ask about here. I have concurrency working but the solution feels like it might be wrong (just one of those gitchy feelings). The basic pattern is: private MyDataContext _datacontext private Table _tasks; public Repository(MyDataContext datacontext) { _dataContext = datacontext; } public void GetTasks() { _tasks = from t in _dataContext.Tasks; return from t in _tasks select new Domain.Task { Name = t.Name, Id = t.TaskId, Description = t.Description }; } public void SaveTask(Domain.Task task) { Task dbTask = null; // Logic for new tasks omitted... dbTask = (from t in _tasks where t.TaskId == task.Id select t).SingleOrDefault(); dbTask.Description = task.Description, dbTask.Name = task.Name, _dataContext.SubmitChanges(); } So with that implementation I've lost concurrency tracking because of the mapping to the domain task. I get it back by storing the private Table which is my datacontext list of tasks at the time of getting the original task. I then update the tasks from this stored Table and save what I've updated This is working - I get change conflict exceptions raised when there are concurrency violations, just as I want. However, it just screams to me that I've missed a trick. Is there a better way of doing this? I've looked at the .Attach method on the datacontext but that appears to require storing the original version in a similar way to what I'm already doing. I also know that I could avoid all this by doing away with the domain objects and letting the Linq to SQL generated objects all the way up my stack - but I dislike that just as much as I dislike the way I'm handling concurrency.

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• Asp.Net MVC - Rob Conery's LazyList - Count() or Count

  - by Adam

  I'm trying to create an html table for order logs for customers. A customer is defined as (I've left out a lot of stuff): public class Customer { public LazyList<Order> Orders { get; set; } } The LazyList is set when fetching a Customer: public Customer GetCustomer(int custID) { Customer c = ... c.Orders = new LazyList<Order>(_repository.GetOrders().ByOrderID(custID)); return c; } The order log model: public class OrderLogTableModel { public OrderLogTableModel(LazyList<Order> orders) { Orders = orders; Page = 0; PageSize = 25; } public LazyList<Order> Orders { get; set; } public int Page { get; set; } public int PageSize { get; set; } } and I pass in the customer.Orders after loading a customer. Now the log i'm trying to make, looks something like: <table> <tbody> <% int rowCount = ViewData.Model.Orders.Count(); int innerRows = rowCount - (ViewData.Model.Page * ViewData.Model.PageSize); foreach (Order order in ViewData.Model.Orders.OrderByDescending(x => x.StartDateTime) .Take(innerRows).OrderBy(x => x.StartDateTime) .Take(ViewData.Model.PageSize)) { %> <tr> <td> <%= order.ID %> </td> </tr> <% } %> </tbody> </table> Which works fine. But the problem is evaluating ViewData.Model.Orders.Count() literally takes about 10 minutes. I've tried with the ViewData.Model.Orders.Count property instead, and the results are the same - takes forever. I've also tried calling _repository.GetOrders().ByCustomerID(custID).Count() directly from the view and that executes perfectly within a few ms. Can anybody see any reason why using the LazyList to get a simple count would take so long? It seems like its trying to iterate through the list when getting a simple count.

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• An MCM exam, Rob? Really?

  - by Rob Farley

  I took the SQL 2008 MCM Knowledge exam while in Seattle for the PASS Summit ten days ago. I wasn’t planning to do it, but I got persuaded to try. I was meaning to write this post to explain myself before the result came out, but it seems I didn’t get typing quickly enough. Those of you who know me will know I’m a big fan of certification, to a point. I’ve been involved with Microsoft Learning to help create exams. I’ve kept my certifications current since I first took an exam back in 1998, sitting many in beta, across quite a variety of topics. I’ve probably become quite good at them – I know I’ve definitely passed some that I really should’ve failed. I’ve also written that I don’t think exams are worth studying for. (That’s probably not entirely true, but it depends on your motivation. If you’re doing learning, I would encourage you to focus on what you need to know to do your job better. That will help you pass an exam – but the two skills are very different. I can coach someone on how to pass an exam, but that’s a different kind of teaching when compared to coaching someone about how to do a job. For example, the real world includes a lot of “it depends”, where you develop a feel for what the influencing factors might be. In an exam, its better to be able to know some of the “Don’t use this technology if XYZ is true” concepts better.) As for the Microsoft Certified Master certification… I’m not opposed to the idea of having the MCM (or in the future, MCSM) cert. But the barrier to entry feels quite high for me. When it was first introduced, the nearest testing centres to me were in Kuala Lumpur and Manila. Now there’s one in Perth, but that’s still a big effort. I know there are options in the US – such as one about an hour’s drive away from downtown Seattle, but it all just seems too hard. Plus, these exams are more expensive, and all up – I wasn’t sure I wanted to try them, particularly with the fact that I don’t like to study. I used to study for exams. It would drive my wife crazy. I’d have some exam scheduled for some time in the future (like the time I had two booked for two consecutive days at TechEd Australia 2005), and I’d make sure I was ready. Every waking moment would be spent pouring over exam material, and it wasn’t healthy. I got shaken out of that, though, when I ended up taking four exams in those two days in 2005 and passed them all. I also worked out that if I had a Second Shot available, then failing wasn’t a bad thing at all. Even without Second Shot, I’m much more okay about failing. But even just trying an MCM exam is a big effort. I wouldn’t want to fail one of them. Plus there’s the illusion to maintain. People have told me for a long time that I should just take the MCM exams – that I’d pass no problem. I’ve never been so sure. It was almost becoming a pride-point. Perhaps I should fail just to demonstrate that I can fail these things. Anyway – boB Taylor (@sqlboBT) persuaded me to try the SQL 2008 MCM Knowledge exam at the PASS Summit. They set up a testing centre in one of the room there, so it wasn’t out of my way at all. I had to squeeze it in between other commitments, and I certainly didn’t have time to even see what was on the syllabus, let alone study. In fact, I was so exhausted from the week that I fell asleep at least once (just for a moment though) during the actual exam. Perhaps the questions need more jokes, I’m not sure. I knew if I failed, then I might disappoint some people, but that I wouldn’t’ve spent a great deal of effort in trying to pass. On the other hand, if I did pass I’d then be under pressure to investigate the MCM Lab exam, which can be taken remotely (therefore, a much smaller amount of effort to make happen). In some ways, passing could end up just putting a bunch more pressure on me. Oh, and I did.

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• An MCM exam, Rob? Really?

  - by Rob Farley

  I took the SQL 2008 MCM Knowledge exam while in Seattle for the PASS Summit ten days ago. I wasn’t planning to do it, but I got persuaded to try. I was meaning to write this post to explain myself before the result came out, but it seems I didn’t get typing quickly enough. Those of you who know me will know I’m a big fan of certification, to a point. I’ve been involved with Microsoft Learning to help create exams. I’ve kept my certifications current since I first took an exam back in 1998, sitting many in beta, across quite a variety of topics. I’ve probably become quite good at them – I know I’ve definitely passed some that I really should’ve failed. I’ve also written that I don’t think exams are worth studying for. (That’s probably not entirely true, but it depends on your motivation. If you’re doing learning, I would encourage you to focus on what you need to know to do your job better. That will help you pass an exam – but the two skills are very different. I can coach someone on how to pass an exam, but that’s a different kind of teaching when compared to coaching someone about how to do a job. For example, the real world includes a lot of “it depends”, where you develop a feel for what the influencing factors might be. In an exam, its better to be able to know some of the “Don’t use this technology if XYZ is true” concepts better.) As for the Microsoft Certified Master certification… I’m not opposed to the idea of having the MCM (or in the future, MCSM) cert. But the barrier to entry feels quite high for me. When it was first introduced, the nearest testing centres to me were in Kuala Lumpur and Manila. Now there’s one in Perth, but that’s still a big effort. I know there are options in the US – such as one about an hour’s drive away from downtown Seattle, but it all just seems too hard. Plus, these exams are more expensive, and all up – I wasn’t sure I wanted to try them, particularly with the fact that I don’t like to study. I used to study for exams. It would drive my wife crazy. I’d have some exam scheduled for some time in the future (like the time I had two booked for two consecutive days at TechEd Australia 2005), and I’d make sure I was ready. Every waking moment would be spent pouring over exam material, and it wasn’t healthy. I got shaken out of that, though, when I ended up taking four exams in those two days in 2005 and passed them all. I also worked out that if I had a Second Shot available, then failing wasn’t a bad thing at all. Even without Second Shot, I’m much more okay about failing. But even just trying an MCM exam is a big effort. I wouldn’t want to fail one of them. Plus there’s the illusion to maintain. People have told me for a long time that I should just take the MCM exams – that I’d pass no problem. I’ve never been so sure. It was almost becoming a pride-point. Perhaps I should fail just to demonstrate that I can fail these things. Anyway – boB Taylor (@sqlboBT) persuaded me to try the SQL 2008 MCM Knowledge exam at the PASS Summit. They set up a testing centre in one of the room there, so it wasn’t out of my way at all. I had to squeeze it in between other commitments, and I certainly didn’t have time to even see what was on the syllabus, let alone study. In fact, I was so exhausted from the week that I fell asleep at least once (just for a moment though) during the actual exam. Perhaps the questions need more jokes, I’m not sure. I knew if I failed, then I might disappoint some people, but that I wouldn’t’ve spent a great deal of effort in trying to pass. On the other hand, if I did pass I’d then be under pressure to investigate the MCM Lab exam, which can be taken remotely (therefore, a much smaller amount of effort to make happen). In some ways, passing could end up just putting a bunch more pressure on me. Oh, and I did.

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• PASS Summit Feedback

  - by Rob Farley

  PASS Feedback came in last week. I also saw my dentist for some fillings... At the PASS Summit this year, I delivered a couple of regular sessions and a Lightning Talk. People told me they enjoyed it, but when the rankings came out, they showed that I didn’t score particularly well. Brent Ozar was keen to discuss it with me. Brent: PASS speaker feedback is out. You did two sessions and a Lightning Talk. How did you go? Rob: Not so well actually, thanks for asking. Brent: Ha! Sorry. Of course you know that's why I wanted to discuss this with you. I was in one of your sessions at SQLBits in the UK a month before PASS, and I thought you rocked. You've got a really good and distinctive delivery style.  Then I noticed your talks were ranked in the bottom quarter of the Summit ratings and wanted to discuss it. Rob: Yeah, I know. You did ask me if we could do this...  I should explain – my presentation style is not the stereotypical IT conference one. I throw in jokes, and try to engage the audience thoroughly. I find many talks amazingly dry, and I guess I try to buck that trend. I also run training courses, and find that I get a lot of feedback from people thanking me for keeping things interesting. That said, I also get feedback criticising me for my style, and that’s basically what’s happened here. For the rest of this discussion, let’s focus on my talk about the Incredible Shrinking Execution Plan, which I considered to be my main talk. Brent: I thought that session title was the very best one at the entire Summit, and I had it on my recommended sessions list.  In four words, you managed to sum up the topic and your sense of humor.  I read that and immediately thought, "People need to be in this session," and then it didn't score well.  Tell me about your scores. Rob: The questions on the feedback form covered the usefulness of the information, the speaker’s presentation skills, their knowledge of the subject, how well the session was described, the amount of time allocated, and the quality of the presentation materials. Brent: Presentation materials? But you don’t do slides.  Did they rate your thong? Rob: No-one saw my flip-flops in this talk, Brent. I created a script in Management Studio, and published that afterwards, but I think people will have scored that question based on the lack of slides. I wasn’t expecting to do particularly well on that one. That was the only section that didn’t have 5/5 as the most popular score. Brent: See, that sucks, because cookbook-style scripts are often some of my favorites.  Adam Machanic's Service Broker workbench series helped me immensely when I was prepping for the MCM.  As an attendee, I'd rather have a commented script than a slide deck.  So how did you rank so low? Rob: When I look at the scores that you got (based on your blog post), you got very few scores below 3 – people that felt strong enough about your talk to post a negative score. In my scores, between 5% and 10% were below 3 (except on the question about whether I knew my stuff – I guess I came as knowledgeable). Brent: Wow – so quite a few people really didn’t like your talk then? Rob: Yeah. Mind you, based on the comments, some people really loved it. I’d like to think that there would be a certain portion of the room who may have rated the talk as one of the best of the conference. Some of my comments included “amazing!”, “Best presentation so far!”, “Wow, best session yet”, “fantastic” and “Outstanding!”. I think lots of talks can be “Great”, but not so many talks can be “Outstanding” without the word losing its meaning. One wrote “Pretty amazing presentation, considering it was completely extemporaneous.” Brent: Extemporaneous, eh? Rob: Yeah. I guess they don’t realise how much preparation goes into coming across as unprepared. In many ways it’s much easier to give a written speech than to deliver a presentation without slides as a prompt. Brent: That delivery style, the really relaxed, casual, college-professor approach was one of the things I really liked about your presentation at SQLbits.  As somebody who presents a lot, I "get" it - I know how hard it is to come off as relaxed and comfortable with your own material.  It's like improv done by jazz players and comedians - if you've never tried it, you don't realize how hard it is.  People also don't realize how hard it is to make a tough subject fun. Rob: Yeah well... There will be people writing comments on this post that say I wasn't trying to make the subject fun, and that I was making it all about me. Sometimes the style works, sometimes it doesn't. Most of the comments mentioned the fact that I tell jokes, some in a nice way, but some not so much (and it wasn't just a PASS thing - that's the mix of feedback I generally get). One comment at PASS was: “great stand up comedian - not what I'm looking for at pass”, and there were certainly a few that said “too many jokes”. I’m not trying to do stand-up – jokes are my way of engaging with the audience while I demonstrate some of the amazing things that the Query Optimizer can do if you write your queries the right way. Some people didn’t think it was technical enough, but I’ve also had some people tell me that the concepts I’m explaining are deep and profound. Brent: To me, that's a hallmark of a great explanation - when someone says, "But of course it has to work that way - how could it work any other way?  It seems so simple and logical."  Well, sure it does when it's explained correctly, but now pick up any number of thick SQL Server books and try to understand the Redundant Joins concept.  I guarantee it'll take more than 45 minutes. Rob: Some people in my audiences realise that, but definitely not everyone. There's only so much you can tell someone that something is profound. Generally it's something that they either have an epiphany on or not. I like to lull my audience into knowing what's going on, and do something that surprises them. Gain their trust, build a rapport, and then show them the deeper truth of what just happened. Brent: So you've learned your lesson about presentation scores, right?  From here on out, you're going to be dry, humorless, and all your presentations will consist of you reading bullet points off the screen. Rob: No Brent, I’m not. I'm also not going to suggest that most presentations at PASS are like that. No-one tries to present like that. There's a big space to occupy between what "dry and humourless" and me. My difference is to focus on the relationship I have with the crowd, rather than focussing on delivering the perfect session. I want to see people smiling and know they're relaxed. I think most presenters focus on the material, which is completely reasonable and safe. I remember once hearing someone talking about product creation. They talked about mediocrity. They said that one of the worst things that people can ever say about your product is that it’s “good”. What you want is for 10% of the world to love it enough to want to buy it. If 10% the world gave me a dollar, I’d have more money than I could ever use (assuming it wasn’t the SAME dollar they were giving me I guess). Brent: It's the Raving Fans theory.  It's better to have a small number of raving customers than a large number of almost-but-not-really customers who don't care that much about your product or service.  I know exactly how you feel - when I got survey feedback from my Quest video presentation when I was dressed up in a Richard Simmons costume, some of the attendees said I was unprofessional and distracting.  Some of the attendees couldn't get enough and Photoshopped all kinds of stuff into the screen captures.  On a whole, I probably didn't score that well, and I'm fine with that.  It sucks to look at the scores though - do those lower scores bother you? Rob: Of course they do. It hurts deeply. I open myself up and give presentations in a very personal way. All presenters do that, and we all feel the pain of negative feedback. I hate coming 146th & 162nd out of 185, but have to acknowledge that many sessions did worse still. Plus, once I feel the wounds have healed, I’ll be able to remember that there are people in the world that rave about my presentation style, and figure that people will hopefully talk about me. One day maybe those people that don’t like my presentation style will stay away and I might be able to score better. You don’t pay to hear country music if you prefer western... Lots of people find chili too spicy, but it’s still a popular food. Brent: But don’t you want to appeal to everyone? Rob: I do, but I don’t want to be lukewarm as in Revelation 3:16. I’d rather disgust and be discussed. Well, maybe not ‘disgust’, but I don’t want to conform. Conformity just isn’t the same any more. I’m not sure I’ve ever been one to do that. I try not to offend, but definitely like to be different. Brent: Count me among your raving fans, sir.  Where can we see you next? Rob: Considering I live in Adelaide in Australia, I’m not about to appear at anyone’s local SQL Saturday. I’m still trying to plan which events I’ll get to in 2011. I’ve submitted abstracts for TechEd North America, but won’t hold my breath. I’m also considering the SQLBits conferences in the UK in April, PASS in October, and I’m sure I’ll do some LiveMeeting presentations for user groups. Online, people download some of my recent SQLBits presentations at http://bit.ly/RFSarg and http://bit.ly/Simplification though. And they can download a 5-minute MP3 of my Lightning Talk at http://www.lobsterpot.com.au/files/Collation.mp3, in which I try to explain the idea behind collation, using thongs as an example. Brent: I was in the audience for http://bit.ly/RFSarg. That was a great presentation. Rob: Thanks, Brent. Now where’s my dollar?

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• How do I stop Python install on Mac OS X from putting things in my home directory?

  - by Rob

  Hi, I'm trying to install Python from source on my Mac. (OS X 10.6.2, Python-2.6.5.tar.bz2) I've done this before and it was easy, but for some reason, this time after ./configure, and make, the sudo make install puts things some things in my home directory instead of in /usr/local/... where I expect. The .py files are okay, but not the .so files... RobsMac Python-2.6.5 $ sudo make install [...] /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 ./Lib/anydbm.py /usr/local/lib/python2.6 /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 ./Lib/ast.py /usr/local/lib/python2.6 /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 ./Lib/asynchat.py /usr/local/lib/python2.6 [...] running build_scripts running install_lib creating /Users/rob/Library/Python creating /Users/rob/Library/Python/2.6 creating /Users/rob/Library/Python/2.6/site-packages copying build/lib.macosx-10.4-x86_64-2.6/_AE.so - /Users/rob/Library/ Python/2.6/site-packages copying build/lib.macosx-10.4-x86_64-2.6/_AH.so - /Users/rob/Library/ Python/2.6/site-packages copying build/lib.macosx-10.4-x86_64-2.6/_App.so - /Users/rob/Library/ Python/2.6/site-packages [...] Later, this causes imports that require those .so files to fail. For example... RobsMac Python-2.6.5 $ python Python 2.6.5 (r265:79063, Apr 28 2010, 13:40:18) [GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5646) (dot 1)] on darwin Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> import zlib Traceback (most recent call last):     File "", line 1, in ImportError: No module named zlib Any ideas what is wrong? thanks, Rob

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• Two network adapters on Ubuntu Server 9.10 - Can't have both working at once?

  - by Rob

  I'm trying to set up two network adapters in Ubuntu (server edition) 9.10. One for the public internet, the other a private LAN. During the install, I was asked to pick a primary network adapter (eth0 or eth1). I chose eth0, gave the installer the details listed below in the contents of /etc/network/interfaces, and carried on. I've been using this adapter with these setting for the last few days, and every thing's been fine. Today, I decide it's time to set up the local adapter. I edit the /etc/network/interfaces to add the details for eth1 (see below), and restart networking with sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart. After this, attempting to ping the machine using it's external IP address fails, but I can ping it's local IP address. If I bring eth1 down using sudo ifdown eth1, I can successfully ping the machine via it's external IP address again (but obviously not it's internal IP address). Bringing eth1 back up returns us to the original problem state: external IP not working, internal IP working. Here's my /etc/network/interfaces (I've removed the external IP information, but these settings are unchanged from when it worked) rob@rhea:~$ cat /etc/network/interfaces # This file describes the network interfaces available on your system # and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5). # The loopback network interface auto lo iface lo inet loopback # The primary (public) network interface auto eth0 iface eth0 inet static address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx netmask xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx network xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx broadcast xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx gateway xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx # The secondary (private) network interface auto eth1 iface eth1 inet static address 192.168.99.4 netmask 255.255.255.0 network 192.168.99.0 broadcast 192.168.99.255 gateway 192.168.99.254 I then do this: rob@rhea:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart * Reconfiguring network interfaces... [ OK ] rob@rhea:~$ sudo ifup eth0 ifup: interface eth0 already configured rob@rhea:~$ sudo ifup eth1 ifup: interface eth1 already configured Then, from another machine: C:\Documents and Settings\Rob>ping [external ip] Pinging [external ip] with 32 bytes of data: Request timed out. Request timed out. Request timed out. Request timed out. Ping statistics for [external ip]: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss), Back on the Ubuntu server in question: rob@rhea:~$ sudo ifdown eth1 ... and again on the other machine: C:\Documents and Settings\Rob>ping [external ip] Pinging [external ip] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from [external ip]: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=63 Reply from [external ip]: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=63 Reply from [external ip]: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=63 Reply from [external ip]: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=63 Ping statistics for [external ip]: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms So... what am I doing wrong?

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• Windows 7 search not finding files

  - by Rob Nicholson

  Can anyone please explain this quirk in Windows 7 search (not a big fan of it - preferred XP method or least both). With Outlook, you sometimes have to find and delete your OST file. It resides in the user's profile folder. How come searching the entire C: drive for *.ost files works - they are in c:\Users\rob.nicholson\appdata somewhere but starting the search from c:\Users\rob.nicholson fails to find the files??? Cheers, Rob.

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• simulate backspace key with java.awt.Robot

  - by Tyler

  There seems to be an issue simulating the backspace key with java.awt.Robot. This thread seems to confirm this but it does not propose a solution. This works: Robot rob = new Robot(); rob.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_A); rob.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_A); This doesn't: Robot rob = new Robot(); rob.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_BACK_SPACE); rob.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_BACK_SPACE); Any ideas? Thanks!

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• Collation errors in business

  - by Rob Farley

  At the PASS Summit last month, I did a set (Lightning Talk) about collation, and in particular, the difference between the “English” spoken by people from the US, Australia and the UK. One of the examples I gave was that in the US drivers might stop for gas, whereas in Australia, they just open the window a little. This is what’s known as a paraprosdokian, where you suddenly realise you misunderstood the first part of the sentence, based on what was said in the second. My current favourite is Emo Phillip’s line “I like to play chess with old men in the park, but it can be hard to find thirty-two of them.” Essentially, this a collation error, one that good comedians can get mileage from. Unfortunately, collation is at its worst when we have a computer comparing two things in different collations. They might look the same, and sound the same, but if one of the things is in SQL English, and the other one is in Windows English, the poor database server (with no sense of humour) will get suspicious of developers (who all have senses of humour, obviously), and declare a collation error, worried that it might not realise some nuance of the language. One example is the common scenario of a case-sensitive collation and a case-insensitive one. One may think that “Rob” and “rob” are the same, but the other might not. Clearly one of them is my name, and the other is a verb which means to steal (people called “Nick” have the same problem, of course), but I have no idea whether “Rob” and “rob” should be considered the same or not – it depends on the collation. I told a lie before – collation isn’t at its worst in the computer world, because the computer has the sense to complain about the collation issue. People don’t. People will say something, with their own understanding of what they mean. Other people will listen, and apply their own collation to it. I remember when someone was asking me about a situation which had annoyed me. They asked if I was ‘pissed’, and I said yes. I meant that I was annoyed, but they were asking if I’d been drinking. It took a moment for us to realise the misunderstanding. In business, the problem is escalated. A business user may explain something in a particular way, using terminology that they understand, but using words that mean something else to a technical person. I remember a situation with a checkbox on a form (back in VB6 days from memory). It was used to indicate that something was approved, and indicated whether a particular database field should store True or False – nothing more. However, the client understood it to mean that an entire workflow system would be implemented, with different users have permission to approve items and more. The project manager I’d just taken over from clearly hadn’t appreciated that, and I faced a situation of explaining the misunderstanding to the client. Lots of fun... Collation errors aren’t just a database setting that you can ignore. You need to remember that Americans speak a different type of English to Aussies and Poms, and techies speak a different language to their clients.

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• Remote file access.

  - by Rob Rob

  Hi, We're needing to provide remote (read/write) access to a number of files on our network to several users (some technical, some non-technical) who will be running Windows. The non technical users will need to be able to access their files in an easy to use manner. From previous experience, we could do this with: (some sort of) VPN SSH and something like Dokan (i've only previously done this on linux with sshfs) WebDav FTP VPN and SSH access are more open that we need at present, so I'm leaning towards webdav, however I only have limited experience of it (setting up an SVN server several years ago), but my understanding is that users can access it through windows explorer. FTP I haven't had much experience of, as I've always used SFTP via ssh - but i'd imagine we could make this work in a similar way to ssh. So my question is - have I missed any obvious candidates for this task, or if webdav is (or isn't) suitable what are the security implications of using it for this (obviously https will be used for the transfers, etc). Thanks, Rob.

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• How Can I Install LibreOffice Base?

  - by Rob

  Useful info: I have tried running sudo dpkg --configure -a and sudo apt-get install -f with no result. I am running Kubuntu 11.10 (the updater is far too unreliable to ever be trusted with performing a version upgrade) The rest of LibreOffice seems to work fine (apart from an annoying bug where tooltips are shown as black text on black background...) I have need to use LibreOffice Base to complete a mail merge document. However, I noticed it's not installed. When I go to install it however... rob@hydrogen:~$ sudo apt-get install libreoffice-base [sudo] password for rob: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies. libreoffice-base : Depends: libreoffice-core (= 1:3.4.4-0ubuntu1) but it is not going to be installed Depends: libreoffice-base-core (= 1:3.4.4-0ubuntu1) but it is not going to be installed Depends: libreoffice-java-common (>= 1:3.4.4~) but it is not going to be installed Suggests: libmyodbc but it is not going to be installed or odbc-postgresql but it is not going to be installed or libsqliteodbc but it is not going to be installed or tdsodbc but it is not going to be installed or mdbtools but it is not going to be installed Suggests: libreoffice-gcj but it is not installable Suggests: libreoffice-report-builder but it is not going to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages. I'm bemused as to which packages it seems to think I have held. As far as I'm aware, Kubuntu doesn't give you the option to hold packages... So, how do I get out of this dependency hell?

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• wcf http 504: Working on a mystery

  - by James Fleming

  Ok,  So you're here because you've been trying to solve the mystery of why you're getting a 504 error. If you've made it to this lonely corner of the Internet, then the advice you're getting from other bloggers isn't the answer you are after. It wasn't the answer I needed either, so once I did solve my problem, I thought I'd share the answer with you. For starters, if by some miracle, you landed here first you may not already know that the 504 error is NOT coming from IIS or Casini, that response code is coming from Fiddler. HTTP/1.1 504 Fiddler - Receive Failure Content-Type: text/html Connection: close Timestamp: 09:43:05.193 ReadResponse() failed: The server did not return a response for this request.       The take away here is Fiddler won't help you with the diagnosis and any further digging in that direction is a red herring. Assuming you've dug around a bit, you may have arrived at posts which suggest you may be getting the error because you're trying to hump too much data over the wire, and have an urgent need to employ an anti-pattern: due to a special case: http://delphimike.blogspot.com/2010/01/error-504-in-wcfnet-35.html Or perhaps you're experiencing wonky behavior using WCF-CustomIsolated Adapter on Windows Server 2008 64bit environment, in which case the rather fly MVP Dwight Goins' advice is what you need. http://dgoins.wordpress.com/2009/12/18/64bit-wcf-custom-isolated-%E2%80%93-rest-%E2%80%93-%E2%80%9C504%E2%80%9D-response/ For me, none of that was helpful. I could perform a get on a single record  http://localhost:8783/Criterion/Skip(0)/Take(1) but I couldn't get more than one record in my collection as in:  http://localhost:8783/Criterion/Skip(0)/Take(2) I didn't have a big payload, or a large number of objects (as you can see by the size of one record below) - - A-1B f5abd850-ec52-401a-8bac-bcea22c74138 .biological/legal mother This item refers to the supervisor’s evaluation of the caseworker’s ability to involve the biological/legal mother in the permanency planning process. 75d8ecb7-91df-475f-aa17-26367aeb8b21 false true Admin account 2010-01-06T17:58:24.88 1.20 764a2333-f445-4793-b54d-1c3084116daa So while I was able to retrieve one record without a hitch (thus the record above) I wasn't able to return multiple records. I confirmed I could get each record individually, (Skip(1)/Take(1))so it stood to reason the problem wasn't with the data at all, so I suspected a serialization error. The first step to resolving this was to enable WCF Tracing. Instructions on how to set it up are here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms733025.aspx. The tracing log led me to the solution. The use of type 'Application.Survey.Model.Criterion' as a get-only collection is not supported with NetDataContractSerializer.  Consider marking the type with the CollectionDataContractAttribute attribute or the SerializableAttribute attribute or adding a setter to the property. So I was wrong (but close!). The problem was a deserializing issue in trying to recreate my read only collection. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa347850.aspx#Y1455 So looking at my underlying model, I saw I did have a read only collection. Adding a setter was all it took.         public virtual ICollection<string> GoverningResponses         {             get             {                 if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(GoverningResponse))                 {                     return GoverningResponse.Split(';');                 }                 else                     return null;             }                  } Hope this helps. If it does, post a comment.

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• Ubuntu 12.10 is reading mouse battery as a laptop battery

  - by Ross Fleming

  I have a bluetooth mouse connected to my laptop. Much to my delight (I posted the suggestion!) the mouses battery is now displayed along side the laptop's battery. Unfortunately is is named simply "battery" in the drop down and "Laptop battery" once the power statistics windows is opened. The details of this battery correctly say that the model is a Lenovo Bluetooth Mouse, but it is still displayed as a "battery" and "laptop battery". Is there anyway to change this? Edit: Plus the "Show time in menu bar" shows the mouse's remaining battery percentage as opposed to the laptop battery's remaining time.

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• Can only connect to file server on second attempt

  - by Ross Fleming

  I have a FreeNas file server on my local network and I usually connect to it from Windows and Ubuntu computers. Ever since I have upgraded from Ubuntu 12.04 to 12.10 Ubuntu will only connect after a second attempt. By which I mean, I will browse to it via the file manager and once I click on the link in "Bookmarks" it complains that it could not connect. If I then try again it connects successfully and will keep up it's connection until the laptop is suspended or looses connection to the LAN for whatever reason. This isn't much of a problem as I don't mind having to click twice but my real problem is that this means that my scheduled backup will complain that it cannot connect to the storage device if it has not already been accessed during the current session. If there is some way to either stop the issue all together or to force the backup tool (default) to immediately have a second attempt at connecting.

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• Macbook Pro (2011) Install of 12.10

  - by William Fleming

  I have installed Ubuntu on another partition on my macbook only to find when i boot using refit im greeted with a screen that reads Missing Operating System I have chosen to install grub on the root partition so i assume after the EFI boot-loader has done its stuff it will then load grub in the " / " partition. Any thoughts on this i couldn't find anyone with this problem. I can only assume its a problem with the GRUB install on the partition. But i have tried to reinstall it and it did not work....? Any thoughts would greatly appreciated. Bill

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• How do I get my Lenovo T61 to connect to a wireless network?

  - by Ross Fleming

  I have a Lenovo Thinkpad T61 and the wireless works just fine so I installed Ubuntu straight away only to find that the wireless will not connect, it will see the networks but just not connect. Has anyone managed to solve this all the forums seem to relate to Ubuntu 9.04 and before. Edit:Sorry about that, I didn't realise that there were 2 models mine is the Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN [Kedron] Network Connection. Any help is much appreciated.

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