Searching for my lost shaker of salt

Found this out the hard way doing a demo this morning.  I am using VMWare Workstation 6.5 running on Windows 7 Ultimate.  The guest OS is Windows Server 2003.  The issue is the mouse pointer actual location was not the same as where the pointer was on the screen (a parallax error).

I’ve rebooted both OS’s and ensured the screen resolutions made sense.

The issue appears to be with the host OS, Windows 7.  For demo’s I often increase the font scaling of both my guest and host operating systems, so things are readable on projector screens.  The moment I restored the Windows 7 (host) font scaling back down to 100% everything was fine.

There is a setting on Outlook Express that forces all messages to be displayed as plain text.  This is especially true on Windows Server 2003.

Now, before I get flamed the ONLY reason I am running Outlook Express on a server is for a demo.  I do not, would not recommend running OE on a server unless you have a really good reason.

This is the perfect reference that lists all versions of SharePoint, the various cumulative updates, patches, and service packs, links and all.

The easy way to determine what version number you are running is to go into Central Administration | Operations, then click "Servers in Farm".  You'll see the version number next to the server name and roles.

I was wondering why there wasn’t the steady stream of spam or occasional inquiries coming from my new blog… it wasn’t set up right!  So I apologize to anyone who has tried to contact me and thought I was blowing you off.

The issue is an odd setting.  When I filled out the E-Mail section of the settings screen, I filled in what I expected:

The error message is wonderfully cryptic:

Could not connect - Mailbox name not allowed. The server response was: sorry, your mail was administratively denied. (#5.7.1)

Inquiries from GoDaddy support was less than inspiring, basically saying there was a problem in my code.  Great.

So I tried every single e-mail account and password I have with GoDaddy and continued to receive the same error message.

On a whim, I changed the first e-mail address, where the messages should be going.  I changed it to one of my GoDaddy accounts.  Bazinga!

The issue is GoDaddy doesn’t allow relays to “free” e-mail providers like GMail, Live, AOL, etc.  So by keeping that e-mail address, using SMTP server relay-hosting.secureserver.net on port 25 with no other settings, it works fine.

Windows Live Writer is a great free tool for authoring blogs.  Aside from a nice WYSIWUG editor, it also handles the uploading and resizing of images, making this a painless process.

Setting it up this time was a little more challenging before and I didn't see any good guides out there, so I felt it needed capturing for others who may be having problems.  This wasn’t an issue for me with earlier version of WLW (circa 2008) but is with the one I just downloaded via Windows Update.

When configuring your blog account, select “Other blog service”

Now add the URL of your blog, including “metaweblog.axd” along with your BE.NET admin account.

WLW doesn’t detect the blog type, so tell it to use the MetaweblogAPI.  You again type in your URL with “metaweblog.axd” appended to it for the Remote Posting URL:

Give your blog a nickname and you are all set. 

Yes, this works as I am typing this post with WLW!!

This past weekend I finally upgraded my laptop from Windows 7 release candidate (build 7100) to the letterbox version (ultimate). Somehow I manage to find an excuse to reload my operating system every 6 months or so, so I have the pattern down pat. Image the hard disk, write down all my installed apps, copy over the data folders, export bookmarks, e-mail settings and rules, etc. Then wipe the drive and install clean. I will say that the Windows 7 install process was probably the most smooth I've had to date. I was reinstalled and fully patched within an hour, taking only another two to reload my apps and copy over data.

The only hitch was on Outlook 2007, which I use with my GMail account. It installed fine. I changed the data file over to my backed up copy and all my e-mail was fine. But for some reason, every time I would connect to GMail and download, it would download two copies. Reading online I found posts that suggested you check the box to leave mail on the server, which was already the case. I deleted my GMail account and recreated it in Outlook, still nothing.

Then I noticed something... it wasn't downloading e-mail for every folder, just the ones with rules on them. Bingo!

Sure enough, as part of my restore process I reimported my Outlook rules for moving things to various folders. That, it turns out, is now unnecessary. In prior versions of Outlook (and possibly pre SP2) the rules were stored as part of the application and didn't carry over with the data file. That's no longer the case; your rules are now stored in the data file and backed up when you back e-mail up. Kinda cool. So once I removed the duplicate rules everything started working as expected.

I remote into servers... a lot.  And by default, Server 2003 only allows two concurrent connections at any given time.  There are plenty of other posts on how to configure this, but it doesn't do any good if you can't get to the server.

Fortunately, there is a brute force way to bypass this.

If you receive the error "The terminal server has exceeded the maximum number of allowed connections", simply launch remote desktop from the command line as such:

mstsc -v:0.0.0.0 /f -console

Where 0.0.0.0 is the IP address or server name of the server you want to remote into.

If that doesn't work, another option is to go into admin mode.

mstsc /admin

And remote in like normal.

You can also use this nice little tool to find out who is logged in:

qwinsta /server:[servername] 

Welcome to the new blog.  Or really the old blog with a new blog engine and a new host.

I've been wanting to get back into blogging with numerous reasons preventing me.  Mostly because I didn't have the time, but there were legit issues with the old WordPress blog on my old host.  Or just call it laziness.

So the new blog engine is BlogEngine.NET, not surprisingly a .NET based blog engine (guess you figured that by the name, huh).  I must say this has been the EASIEST blog engine I've worked with to date.  Conversion couldn't be easier, working with layouts was a snap.  So far its been a very positive experience... including a 1.4.5 upgrade to 1.5.x which took 5 minutes.  Good stuff.

I've also left WebHost4Life as my webhost.  Their renewal was simply too expensive.  I'll continue to give them props for available features but not at their price point.  So I am going to the other end of the spectrum and going with Godaddy.  The price verses feature set seemed right, and so far their control panels have been pretty easy to work with.  Not a single ticket needed to get my site working and fully transferred.  The hardest part was getting DNS transferred, which took me 10 minutes to figure out.   If you can read this, well, guess it worked.  So the total site migration took about 2 hours. 

Oh, and if you were looking for the consulting part of GP Consulting, well, that part of my business has been closed down for years except to service my prior customers.  That doesn't mean there won't be new things coming... 

Hopefully this will the beginning of new rants and raves.

We had troubles installing SP1, which consists of two components; WSS 3.0 SP1 and MOSS SP1.  The WSS 3.0 SP1 failed toward the end of the set up process, for a familiar yet troubling reason.  Once upon a time several past lives below, I blogged about the loss of intellisense because I had used the ASP.NET Configuration utility.  Well, apparently that little helper app is completely evil since it caused this error as well when it changes the schema in your web.config.  Here are all the ugly details from my co-worker, Denise:

The install for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 failed when it attempted to update an extended site that was using a host header.  If we removed the site from SharePoint, the install completed successfully.  We initially thought the issue was because we were using an extended site.  After some troubleshooting, we discovered the problem was in the web.config for the site. The second line of the web.config contained:  <configuration xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/.NetConfiguration/v2.0">.  As soon as we removed the schema reference from the <configuration> tag, the install completed successfully.  The altered tag was in only one of our sites and, after further research, we discovered that it was inserted when we ran the Web Site Administration Tool in Visual Studio 2005.  It does not appear to be a valid schema and the sites work without it.

I have the pleasure of starting this article from somewhere in the Caribbean toward the end of my 7-night cruise.  This is the first real vacation I’ve taken in, well, more than 5 years.  After a stroll on deck this evening I became inspired to write this post.

One thing that has been dramatically different about this trip is my total isolation from the outside world.  By choice, I have no Internet access and my cell phone has been disabled.  I have no contact with my employer, or my friends and family for that matter.  And that is a good thing.

My inspiration came from thinking about the one activity that I did for hours on this trip; while laying in the sun I watched the clouds fly overhead.  I would expect most of us as children did this, and then at some point we become too busy to do it (or its not “cool”).  But that’s the point of a vacation; to do something different from your daily life, not do the same thing in a different location.  That’s called telecommuting (while on vacation).  Our world has become extremely connected, which is a very good thing.  And because of this connectivity we can do more work from home or on the road than in the office (that whole “productivity” thing).

By now you know where I’m going with this post; we are working more and playing less, and just plain burning out.  Yes, our Business 2.0 highly competitive world demands fast response times and certain skill sets are often held by single individuals in an organization.  Blah, blah, blah.  We are working more and more just to keep our jobs.

The bottom line is that my vacation was relaxing and recharging because of the things I did do, as well as the things I didn’t do.  I’m ready to come home and feel a new sense of energy and perspective.  I will be a better employee.

And as a manager, I need to ensure my folks actually take a vacation… and when they are away, give them the peace of mind that I will not be calling for some silly little question.