Jeff’s Birthday

Whist we were over at the Dev Experss offices in LA, we took a break from producing training videos to celebrate Jeff’s birthday:-

LA Baby!

Currently I am out in LA working on some training videos (yes honestly it’s really hard work ). Anyway a few of them are up on the DevEx site, you can check them out here if you are interested.

Technorati tags: Developer Express Videos

Developer Express Flying High

In the video below you can see two of the DevEx guys at the iFly, Universal Citywalk, CA. Honest I’m here to work…

Technorati tags: Developer Express, iFly

Sql Server Install Weirdness

Needing a database for development work I installed Sql Server Express Edition. In April I was fortunate enough to be made an MVP, an award that comes complete with a MSDN subscription. I decided to take advantage of this and install the Standard Edition of Sql Server on my machine. So, not knowing any better, I went ahead and installed that edition. Although it installed okay, the management tools failed to install correctly and left me with only the Express Edition of the Management Studio.

Okay, thought I, it’s obviously gotten itself in a twist – time to uninstall all versions of Sql Server and start again, and that is where the weirdness started. First off, when I tried to uninstall Sql Server I received this error message:-

Well obviously, how could I have selected it for uninstall if it weren’t installed in the first place?! So, there is obviously some problem with the installer software so I had to remove the software manually, always fun (hack, hack, delete, delete, snip, snip). Eventually, I removed all the software and started the install process. Where upon I was informed by the Sql server installer that it couldn’t continue due to the fact that I didn’t have IIS installed, which I do:-

and the service is running. Hmm, I wondered to myself if this was some sort of privileges problem, so I ran the installer as “Administrator” and it spotted that I had IIS and installed with no further problem.

Great! So now I fire up Management Studio and try to connect to the database and… it fails with a not authenticated for user MyMachine\Me error. Sigh. So, I run management server as “Administrator” and it connects to MyMachine\Me perfectly. Grrrr! Now, all I have to do is to remember to run Management Studio as “Administrator” and all will be fine LOL.

Technorati tags: Sql Server

Arwen Singing a Song

Well here’s a gratuitous video post of my dog, which is here for no other reason than I wanted to know what it would look like in this new blog theme.

Technorati tags: Singing dog

No Taxation Without Representation!

So my eldest daughter has just left school and she’s gotten herself a job whilst waiting to go to University. She got her first pay packet and paid her first tax; welcome to the adult world! Only, she’s not an adult, in fact she’s only recently turned 17 which means she’s too young to vote. So a government that she didn’t vote for, nor can she vote to remove, still feels it has the right to tax her. Hmm, that just doesn’t feel right to me. In fact I seem to remember a certain Reverend saying the same thing in Boston a while back and that didn’t end well for the government of the day. If you are too young to vote, you are too young to pay tax I say!

Technorati tags: UK Government, Taxation

New Blog

Well I decided to move my blog onto WordPress. There are a number of reasons for this, but mainly it’s just because I don’t want the hassle of updating my own blog software. Moving to WordPress means that someone else can take care of making sure everything is kept up to date. Me? Well now I can just concentrate on writing the posts, plus the ton of other stuff I have to do of course.

Technorati tags: Moving to a new blog, WordPress