RoudyBob.NET

Monday, March 28, 2005

I'm sure you're all just eager to see my progress. Well, the theme is built. Check this out for a sneak peek:

http://www.roudybob.net/index.php

I continue to be amazed at the ease with which one can install WP 1.5. The theme building process was fairly simple as well once I learned the ins and outs of the structure of the blog. Next step: Move over relevant data and start posting to new blog. I'll leave the current data intact and, depending on how easy it is, move over what I want to keep.

posted @ 11:25 PM

Friday, March 25, 2005

I'm Going to be a Corporate "Puke"

You have to understand something about Microsoft - there's a very healthy competitive relationship between the folks in the field ("us") and the folks at corporate ("them"). It's probably the same rivalry that exists at just about every company in the world that has a large field sales organization and a centralized product development group. It's that spirt that inspired the notes included with the very thoughtful gifts I was given at my "going away" dinner last night. Where I'm going I will be one of "them" - the corporate types that don't carry a bag and have no idea what it's like to be in the field. It will be quite a change to be on the other side of this rivalry for a change. My dear co-workers wanted to make sure I was appropriately prepared:

The stack of "self-help" books above was accompanied by this sweet note:

"Every 'headquarters marketing type puke' needs to have these books as part of their library. Put them on your bookshelf in plain sight. Even if you don't read them, let people see them to make them think you did. The other book ['Start Your Own Wedding Consultant Business'] is just in case this gig falls through."

The Mont Blanc pen (very nice, I might add!) had the following text in the included card:

"Every corporate puke needs one of these. Best of Luck!"

Wow...feel the love. ;-)

posted @ 8:13 PM

Thursday, March 24, 2005

Happy Birthday, Benjamin!

"Happy Birthday!" to my son, Benjamin, who turns 4 years old today! Boy, how time flies...

posted @ 4:03 PM

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

I just realized it's been 20 days since my last post. That's quite a long time to go silent - at least for me. With a little perspective, though, you might understand why. And it hasn't been becuase I don't have anything to say, trust me.

One thing that has been sucking up a lot of energy is an upcoming career move. Yes, that's right. I am going to be leaving Microsoft and my job as a Partner Technology Specialist at the end of March to pursue an opportunity as a Product Manager at NSI Software. Now that I'm over the initial anxiety of trying to decide whether or not to leave the company that many "geeks" dream of working for, I am genuinely excited about the new job. For one, the folks I'll be working with are great people. They're incredibly smart and talented individuals from what I have seen. Second, it gives me a little more focus and allows me to do something that I've wanted to for quite some time - product management. Yes, there are plenty of PM jobs at Microsoft - I'm aware of that. The problem is that they are all in Redmond (at least most of them, anyway) and we're just not ready to move yet. And I think this is an excellent move regardless of how geography might have played into the decision. It will give me a chance to get out and see how the "real world" works. And I will be able to remain closer to home and spend less time away from family. I couldn't be happier with my decision.

Why bare my soul here, you ask? Well, perhaps it will prevent me from having to answer the question a thousand times individually. ;-) It's amazing the phone calls and e-mails I have received as this news started to spread. Folks I only worked with once or twice called me up to wish me the best and find out what I was going to be up to. So, to everyone that I work with on a daily basis that happens to stumble upon this, "So long, and thanks for all the fish. Honestly, though, thanks for making me look good for 5 years."

The other thing that has been competing for my attention is the upcoming move of this site to WordPress. I've decided to give it a whirl and have almost finished porting the look and feel of my site over to WP 1.5. I'm very impressed with the simplicity of the themeing process in WP 1.5 and how easy it is to modify the blog code to tweak things in just the right way. The administrative interface is just phenominal and the capabilities are very powerful: categories, plug-ins, editing, etc. Kudos to the folks who built this great software. This doesn't mean that I'm abandoning .Text and CS alltogether - the code is still alive and kicking over at GeoTraxFan.com as well as my wife's scrapbooking site. I just think WP 1.5 is the best fit for what I'm looking to do with my personal blog.

And by the way, did you see that I was "Grinded" yesterday? (Credit for the term "Grinded" to Ryan who sent me a congratulatory e-mail...) What an honor! I've read Mike's posts for well over a year and it's one of my favorite feeds.

More posting to come...I've got lots of things I've come across in the last 3 weeks that I can't wait to share!

posted @ 3:58 PM

Friday, March 04, 2005

[Google Blog] Google Weather Search

I just saw this at the Google Blog and gave it a try. What a cool idea - this makes finding out the current weather conditions easier than ever. Check out the attention to detail in the formatting of the results - very simple and polished:

Searching for weather, by web or phone

As a kid, I would stare for hours at repetitious weather reports on TV. Boring, you say? Not to me - I love weather. And since I've worked here, I've wondered why Google doesn't do weather. It seemed like a perfect 20% project for me, so now I'm pleased to report that you can get current conditions and a forecast by typing [weather Chicago], or whatever your U.S. location is (zipcodes are also fair game). If you prefer, use Google SMS to send a text message to the U.S. five digit shortcode 46645 (GOOGL on most mobile phones) followed by your meteorological query.

Ben Sigelman
Software Engineer

posted @ 11:31 PM

Thursday, March 03, 2005

[Miguel Jimenez] How to migrate to Community Server the Easy Way

Cool pointer from Miguel Jimenez to CSVerter. Worth a look if your wanting to upgrade your .Text blog to CS.

UPDATE 03-03-05: I've corrected the link to Miguel's site.

source: miguel jimenez's coding blog
Saturday, February 26, 1:36 PM

Guys at Interscape have released a tool named CSVerter that performs the migration from .Text 0.95 to Community Server 1.0... It converts everything in your .Text database to the new schema, including: blog author, comments, posts, articles, groups and much more. You can read the full specs in the Community Server Forums post by Interscape. And you can download this handy tool from Interscape servers at CSVerter 1.0

I will surely try this tool during this weekend to perform the migration of blogs.clearscreen.com after I finish my Community Server tests.

And one more thing about Community Server is that the source code has already been released... this way I can include my own anti-spam control, and perform some tweaks that I don't like in the compiled version. You can check the source code here: Community Server 1.0 Source Code.

posted @ 7:22 AM

I'm On A Streak

Diet Mt. Dew tends to be my drink of choice these days - which is cool, because it is one of the drinks that is part of Pepsi's current iTunes promotion. It seems that recently I have run into a bit of a hot streak:

So, last night I went to the iTunes Music Store and redeemed my prizes. Since I wasn't "paying" for these, I decided to branch out and look for some different kinds of "stuff". Here's what I picked:

"Heart of Mine" - Norah Jones & The Peter Malick Group

"Crazy Love" - Ray Charles & Van Morrison

"Here We Go Again" - Ray Charles & Norah Jones

"Lot of Leavin' Left to Do" - Dierks Bentley

"Awful Beautiful Life" - Darryl Worley

"The Benevolent One" - Dave Holland Quintet

"Serenade" - Dave Holland Quintet

I cheated a bit as I was already a Norah Jones fan. That woman has one of the greatest singing voices I've ever heard. Otherwise, it was (IMO) quite an eclectic combination of choices. But a great marketing campaign for both Pepsi and Apple. I bought a soda and then won a chance to "try" the Apple Music Store. Neat concept - and it was the first time I'd redeemed a bottle cap for a song. The last wave of free tunes must have fallen off of the Pepsi truck on the way to Indianapolis because I didn't get a single winner. ;-)

What did you use your free tunes for?

posted @ 6:47 AM

Sunday, February 27, 2005

From My Last Post...

It seems after the changes I detailed here, everything seems to be working okay. If you wouldn't mind making a quick comment to let me know that you're a subscriber that is still getting feeds, that would be great. An e-mail will also do if you're more inclined to send a personal note! Thanks!

posted @ 10:15 PM

Is This Thing On? (Redirecting .Text RSS Feeds)

It's been a week since my last post. An unplanned blogging vacation due to work schedules, travel and the side project of deciding what I'm going to do with this blog. From a technology perspective, at least. I doubt there's any hope that something can be done for the content. It's a lost cause. ;-)

One of the challenges I've faced with looking at different blogging engines (whether it be an upgrade to CommunityServer or a migration to something like WordPress) is how I can make such a change without alienating the 3 of you that subscribe to the blog and without breaking Goggle results. #2 is a big one - broken Google results annoy the p!ss out of me.

Well, the URL is easy. I just need to configure the new system in the root of the RoudyBob.NET domain.

The RSS feeds, though, are a bit more challenging. Different pieces of software handling RSS feeds and the links to them differently - Wordpress, for example, provides the RSS feed at your domain name/wp-rss2.php from what I can tell. I'm sure I could change this to match the existing feed of .../rss.aspx but that would cause all sorts of confusion with the web server's HTTP handlers since I hope (in the event that I migrate to WP, anyway) to keep the existing site intact and just "overlay" the WP software into the same directory structure. That means being able to service both ASP.NET requests as well as PHP requests appropriately.

A better solution, IMO, is to leverage a service such as FeedBurner.com to obfuscate what's really going on from a RSS perspective on my site. If I change things on my side, I merely need to point the RoudyBob.NET FeedBurner feed to the new URL. My readership is none the wiser... The challenge is this: how do I redirect everyone that currently visits the site via a news aggregator to the new FeedBurner feed? After a few hours of tinkering, I discovered this is pretty straightforward with .Text and requires only 2 lines of new code. And I'm stretching by calling it "code". It's brain-dead simple. As a matter of fact, if you're reading this in your news agreggator or via some other sort of RSS/ATOM magic, it worked without a hiccup!

Here's how I went about it:

Setup an account at FeedBurner.com.

I modified the web.config in the root of the .Text installation to handle requests for rss.aspx and atom.aspx differently. I created static rss.aspx and atom.aspx files for the purposes of my trickery, so this is the "backdoor" to access the dynamic RSS and ATOM feeds that .Text provides. There are two lines in the first HttpHandlers section of the web.config file that handle RSS and ATOM requests. I changed the "rss\.aspx" portion to "rss2\.aspx" and changed the "atom\.aspx" portion to "atom2\.aspx". I then saved the file...

My original RSS and ATOM feeds were now broken. I could still get access to the content, though, by going to http://www.roudybob.net/rss2.aspx or http://www.roudybob.net/atom2.aspx. Installation of syndication "backdoor" successful.

The next trick was to take any request to http://www.roudybob.net/rss.aspx or http://www.roudybob.net/atom.aspx and redirect them to the new feed. I did this by simply using a text editor to create a new rss.aspx and new atom.aspx and put them in the root of my blog directory. In those two files, I had two lines of VBScript (note, I can't figure out how to print the actual code as it gets messed up and turned into HTML):

Language="VBScript"
response.redirect ("http://feeds.feedburner.com/roudybob")

UPDATE: I've taken a screenshot of my editor windows with all three files open (atom.aspx, rss.aspx, web.config) if you're interested in seeing the actual syntax of the code I'm talking about here. And if you're smart like Ryan and know how to make code look pretty when you post it, I'd welcome any suggestions! Here is the link to the screenshot (JPG) - 135K (1024x768).

This VBScript simply redirects client requests to the specfied URL. Easy, huh?

Configured the FeedBurner.com feed to point to the "new" RSS feed on my site - living at rss2.aspx. This is a very important step! Do not direct the FeedBurner.com feed to .../rss.aspx. If you do, you will create an "infinite loop" situation. The old RSS feed of the site will redirect users to the FeedBurner feed which is pulling it's information from the old RSS feed of the site and so on...

That was it - I had accomplished my goal of redirecting my RSS readership to a different RSS Feed!

You could use this for more than just redirecting people to a FeedBurner.com feed...it could be used in any situation where you need to "covertly" redirect people to a different URL.

posted @ 8:03 PM

Sunday, February 20, 2005

Everything You Would Want To Know About Active Directory

For network administrators who deal with Active Directory, this is one of those things you'll only need three times in your life, but if you know where to find it when you need it you'll be a hero. Thanks to maarten over at Techlog.nl, here is a post from R.L. Mueller which contains just about every piece of information you'd need abut Active Directory properties, attributes and methods. Nice.

Active Directory attributes
source: Techlog
Thursday, February 17, 10:34 AM

The Microsoft Excel spreadsheets linked below document the Active Directory attributes exposed by the LDAP and WinNT providers. The terms "attribute" and "property" are interchangeable. The name of a property or attribute is similar to the name of a field in a database. The actual value of the attribute is stored in Active Directory. The Active Directory schema can be extended to include additional attributes. The ones documented in the spreadsheets are only the default attributes when Active Directory is installed.

Spreadsheet of User Properties in Active Directory Users & Computers MMC

Spreadsheet of all Active Directory attributes

Spreadsheet of User Object Property Methods

Spreadsheet of attributes exposed by the WinNT provider

posted @ 7:29 PM

Saturday, February 19, 2005

HP Virtualization Tools

Saw this on http://www.virtualization.info - HP has a set of tools targeted at virtual machine management and migration. The suite of tools looks *very* interesting as it promises to do not only P2V (Physical to Virtual) migration but V2V (Virtual to Virtual) migration and will work with both Microsoft's Virtual Server and VMWare's ESX/GSX products. Cost prohibits most of us from taking it for a spin - they're going for the true enterprise play here. But if it does what they say it does, it would be pretty handy for folks planning a rollout of virtualization technology on HP hardware.

source: virtualization.info
Wednesday, February 16, 9:48 PM

HP launching its new ProLiant server line also launched a tool easying physical server virtualization called ProLiant Essentials Server Migration Pack.

Quoting from official page:

The ProLiant Essentials Server Migration Pack radically simplifies server consolidation projects. Server Migration Pack (SMP), a companion product to the Virtual Machine Management Pack, automates the manual processes required for a physical server to virtual machine (P2V) migration. SMP raises the bar on P2V automation, so that a typical migration process can be completed in a matter of minutes. The SMP's advanced migration technology also provides the ability to support virtual machine to virtual machine (V2V) conversions. V2V provides the ability to covert Virtual Machines between different underlying virtualization layers including: VMware ESX / GSX and Microsoft Virtual Server.

posted @ 9:01 PM

[John Howard] Expanding disk partitions when deployign using ADS and VSMT

Nice article from John Howard on using ADS (Automated Deployment Services) and VSMT (Virtual Server Migration Toolkit) to change the size of the hard disk when you move a physical server into a virtual machine.

Here's John's Post

source: John Howard
Yesterday, 9:46 AM

At last nights Virtual Server 2005 Technet evening in Edinburgh, I was asked whether it was possible when migrating a system using VSMT if the hard disk could be expanded when deploying the image. Since arriving back home, I've now had a chance to try this out and can confirm the answer is yes. As an aside, I also discovered why the deploy step too quite so long, it was because I hadn't updated the virtual machine additions on the ADS controller - the whole deploy step takes no more than 3 minutes when I updated it. Oops. For the disk size change, here's what you do...

posted @ 4:18 PM

Community Server 1.0 (My $.02)

Congrats Rob, Scott and team. Nice work!

source: Rob Howard's Blog

I'm thrilled to announce the immediate availability of Community Server version 1.0:

Download Now!

We will release the source code within the coming days, we have also begun work on version 1.1. The theme for version 1.1 is:

• Performance - we intend to run both www.asp.net/forums and blogs.msdn.com on Community Server. Today these sites serve millions of users on the same 2 web servers and single database server. We've introduced new architecture into Community Server and we expect performance and scale to be better overall, but we know we'll identify some new issues with these high traffic sites.
• Simplification - We want to focus on simplifying the platform. We are going to introduce more wizard as well making the administration UI even more user friendly.
• Quality - A big goal for Community Server was to release a product that was of very, very high quality. We are shipping with defects - actually about 50 that we know about - but most are minor and have acceptable workarounds. We fixed over 900 bugs (that we tracked). Our goal for 1.1 is to make the platform even better than 1.1.

We also intend to move to shorter release cycles. There will be breaking changes to APIs between versions 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2. After 1.2 the APIs in Community Server will be locked. By locking the APIs in 1.2 we can provide smoother non-breaking upgrade paths.

We also will begin - when our already busy schedule permits - moving back into a mode where we enable participation in the development by people other than those employeed by Telligent.

Lastly, I'd just like to personally say thank you to our team for working some insane hours over the last 8 months and everyone in the community that believed that we were doing the right think with what was ASP.NET Forums, .Text, and nGallery. It's been a tremendous amount of effort but I can say with confidence that Community Server version 1.0 brings the best of its legacy together and has greatly improved it.

posted @ 4:13 PM

[Blogosphere News] Bubbler Blogging Client/Service

I saw this via Blogosphere News. Bubbler is a new blogging tool/service that appears to be focused on real-time publishing of multimedia-type content, although I suppose you could use it to publish any sort of content. Michael Sampson has a nice review of the product here. Note to self - Check this out.

posted @ 7:38 AM

[Meandering-Blog.Com] .Text to CS Migration

Cool! Now, anyone willing to work on a .Text to WordPress migration tool? ;-)

source: Meandering-Blog.Com
Monday, February 7, 4:55 PM

Jayson Knight has posted a DTS package for .Text to CS translation.

You can read about it on his blog.

posted @ 7:29 AM

[Forever Geek] Multi-Purpose Generator

Cool post from Forever Geek.

source: Forever Geek
Tuesday, February 8, 11:33 PM

Whatever your online, random stuff generator needs might be, chances are that The Generator Blog has already found it for you.

Among the listed generators:

• The Biblical Curse Generator
• Music Genre Name Generator
• Super Hero Generator
• Geek Code Generator
• Dear John Letter Generator

Good thing I found this blog just when I needed an evil plan generator.

Visit Site

posted @ 6:22 AM

"The Green Button" Improvements

This is cool stuff. The Green Button is my favorite source for MCE related information - the improvements are welcomed. Especially the speed fixes!

source: Chris Lanier's Blog
Tuesday, February 8, 7:47 AM

Interested in learning about what Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) is? Sharing your experience? Seeing others experience? If so, check out www.thegreenbutton.com. The server move is complete and load times are so much faster and it's just going to get better. We have more members then ever before and having been a visiter and member of the site since it started almost 2 years ago I can say that it's my favorite source of information for Media Center information!

The Green Button
http://www.thegreenbutton.com/

posted @ 6:16 AM

App Envy

Delicious Library. What a cool application. Via The Apple Blog.

posted @ 5:59 AM

CanSpamBlog Honeypots

Chrissy is getting all scientific now with her http://www.canblogspam.com project. She has setup honeypots in an effort to lure those nasty comment spammers into revealing their tricks. Great idea.

source: a tech-centric blog from the left
Wednesday, February 9, 2:09 PM

So tonight concludes my VSLive 2005 experience. I learned alot and hope to post some here. The most exciting things for me where IIS 7 and the SQL Server 2005 XML datatype.

Bill Vaughn, author of a ton of tech books including ADO.NET and and ADO Examples and Best Practices, was my favorite speaker. I like his style -- he kept me laughing and his sessions were educational & entertaining.

Until then, I setup a few honeypots for spambots. I think I missed the last harvesting session which may explain why the blog, http://wordpress.canblogspam.com, is cached in Google but has not been attacked thus far. I setup a MT engine to also test MT spambot patterns. That honeypot can be found at http://movabletype.canblogspam.com. In the event that URLS with 'spam' in them are ignored by spambots, I'll link the mirrors at http://wordpress.netnerds.net and http://movabletype.netnerds.net.

Here's to a quick harvest and learning more about the enemy!

posted @ 5:49 AM

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

[Niall Kennedy] WordPress 1.5 "Strayhorn"

From Niall Kennedy's Weblog...WordPress 1.5 is out. Should've known as I just installed the 2/14 nightly build on my test machine. Upgrading seems to be fairly straightforward, though.

WordPress 1.5 Strayhorn arrives: WordPress 1.5 is now available for download. If you are upgrading you should follow directions and "reward yourself with a cold soda and some candy." If you are in the San Francisco area Matt Mullenweg is hosting an upgrade party tomorrow night.

posted @ 5:21 AM

Friday, February 11, 2005

VMWare Adds "Technical" Category to Their RSS Feeds

I've blogged about VMWare's custom RSS feeds before - a pretty neat idea. According to their latest community newsletter, they have now added "technical information" to the list of available information types. You can create your own custom RSS/ATOM feed by visiting - http://www.vmware.com/wl/track/1317/0.

posted @ 7:41 PM

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

What's Your Smurf Name?

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mule/smurfgen.html

Mine is "Stankey Smurf". Go figure...

posted @ 9:35 PM

Newsgator Roadmap

Greg Reinacker "opens the kimono" (his words) on the future of Newsgator, Newsgator Online and two other to-be-released products that are part of the Newsgator "platform". I've always been a big fan of Newsgator and it's exciting to see what they have in-mind for the future. The "Enterprise" version of the product looks very interesting and is the first enterprise RSS play I've seen to-date. I don't get out much, so it is entirely possible that it isn't the first one. My opinions are worth exactly what you're paying to read them...

At any rate, check out the post - http://www.rassoc.com/gregr/weblog/archive.aspx?post=753. It's an insightful and interesting read for Newsgator fans.

posted @ 9:28 PM

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Google Maps Beta

Googlemaps http://maps.google.com. I'm most impressed by the speed of the thing. Results are almost instantaneously returned. For example, try looking for where I work. I said speed, dear readers, not accuracy. Note the search was for "500" and the result returned was "901". I've had similar experiences searching for other addresses. As usual, the Google interface is quite nice, though. Very simple and uncluttered. From the map above, you can easily get to directions to/from the address and the results are nicely laid out. It seems, for now anyway, that directions aren't sponsored. I wonder what the plan is for this service from a revenue perspective? My suggestion: Sponsored directions could yield results for McDonald's along the way or coupons for $1.00 off gas at Sherril's Eat Here And Get Gas if you happen to be going through Tipton, IN. Yes, folks, it's an honest-to-goodness gas station/diner. The food is quite good there, actually!