Brian H. Madsen - .Net Powered by Caffeine

Team System Web Access error - Client found response content type of '', but expected 'text/xml'. The request failed with an empty response.

For a while i've been battling with a little annoying error in Team System Web Access (formerly known as TeamPlains) and the fix was hard to locate, but easy to implement.

The error i was getting in the Reports tab in Team System Web Access was this:

Client found response content type of '', but expected 'text/xml'. The request failed with an empty response.

I got no other indication of what the error was so i started to look around for it. Primarly, the error would come up IF permissions hadn't been set up properly in the reports administration console on Reporting Server. So that was the first instance to check out - ensure that the user permissions were correct. Yes, the account which was used had Content Manager AND System Administrator access to the reports. So far so good - note - in many instances you can have problems if your reporting server is NOT located on the SQL Server box and in some cases you'll need to implement kerberos as the authentication, though for my problem that wasn't a fix.

The environment I've set up is as follows:

Windows Server 2008 64-bit running SQL Server 2008 (configured with full text search and SSIS)
Windows Server 2008 64-Bit running Reporting Server
Windows Server 2008 64-bit running Microsoft Office SharedPoint Server (MOSS) 2007
Windows Server 2008 64-bit running a Web Front End for the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007
Virtualised Windows Server 2003 32-bit running Team Foundation Server 2008 (App Tier) and Team System Web Access

Initially I wanted to run another Windows Server 2008 64-Bit for the Team Foundation Server, but that's currently not supported so i virtualised the server instead (which imho is a good move anyways)

Some of the errors i found in the log file on the Reporting Server was:

Query execution failed for dataset 'WorkItemTestResults'
DataPrefetch abort handler called for Report with ID=. Aborting data sources ..
Data source 'TfsOlapReportDS': Report processing has been aborted.
AdomdErrorResponseException: Query (22, 9) The set must have a single hierarchy to be used with the complement operator.

None of those seemed in any way helpful - so i turned to some outside help and got Aaron Block [MSFT PM for Team System] and the brilliant guys from OZTFS (TFS mailing list run by Readify and managed by Mitch Denny, thanks guys - www.oztfs.com) and it was mentioned that SP1 may, or may not, have been applied across the entire range of products properly. So i set out to ensure that all clients and servers had SP1 installed.

Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1 - Check
Visual Studio 2008 SP1 - ahhh...not all instances, fix == add SP1
Team System Web Access - check...or rather, v9.0..which is NOT SP1

Ok, we seemed to have made some headway with this one - SP1 should definitely be applied to TSWA, but no SP1 installer, only a full install which contains SP1 - namely version 9.1. Uninstall TSWA v9.0, and install TSWA 9.1 (SP1) and voila the Reports now show up in TSWA's Reports tab.

Second problem i was battling, and still am, is that the Team Foundation Server 2008 SharePoint Extensions x64 Power Tool keeps failing to install. It would "nearly" complete, then stop and roll back - problem was, that the system noted that it was installed but a lot of features were missing (such as tfsredirect.aspx and the templates) - easy part was to get hold of tfsredirect.aspx - simply just open up the LAYOUTS folder and grab it BEFORE you close down the installer. Copy it to another folder.

The problem with the templates seemed to be the wrong version. you can apply a WSS 2.0 template to the templates directory on MOSS, but you can't use it for anything. MOSS wont run WSS 2.0 templates it seems. Another search got me a zip file which included WSS 3.0 templates (MSF Agile and MSF CMMI) - added those manually and dropped the tfsredirect.aspx file back into the LAYOYTS folder and i was running again.

I've attached the download i got with the templates.

Anyways, big problem (eg. its not werkin'!!) but simple solution - check TSWA version and grab the zip file.

Embarrassing as hell…

After lunch today, rice and chicken something, i decided to head down to the bank for the rest of my lunch break.

I’d nearly made it, with probably 50 meters to spare, when i started feeling a bit queasy – i stopped next to a bin on St Georges Terrace (there’s a ton of these round metal waste bins along the terrace) and thought “i’m going to throw up now”.

Nothing happened and it resided..phew..

I started moving away in the direction of the bank’s front doors when my mind went “NOOOOOO – DO NOT MOVE!!” so i quickly went back to the bin again…next thing i new i was throwing up, rice, peas, chicken et al – whole of my lunch just went down the bin.

A girl with a trolley suitcase full of files nearly screamed and jumped to the side as if i was a leper – So, standing in the middle of St Georges Terrace i was heaving my guts out.

First off, it’s not pleasant, secondly there must have been hundreds of people looking at me, wondering why the hell i had my head in a bin.

I finish off my business, grab a mint and chomp it down just to start throwing up again.

Man, when i stood up again i was severely embarrassed – everybody at the bus stop was looking at me..5-6 people were just standing there..people in cars had stopped (yeah, i’m one handsome devil!!).

So lesson learned – the outfit where i got my lunch from isn’t going to see a visit from me anytime soon…second lesson, always carry puke-bags with me.

Anyways, 20 minutes later i’m literally empty and i decide to go home. As i move away from the bin once again, everybody is just smiling and nodding to me, most likely thinking this poor bloke should get a job and stop drinking his social welfare up.

Nice…How’s that for a sunny wednesday afternoon.

Decided to head on home as i seriously just wanted to curl up and sleep.

Think way outside the box

Frank Arrigo, one of the Australian developer blogosphere founders, put this one up on his blog - i like it too Frank!

It looks pretty cool so i'm going to "poach" the image and post it here too..

So what does it link to - well as Frank puts it, a little "teaser"

I guess this means that Microsoft PDC 2008 will see some amazing stuff presented - things out of the norm...now we just need to find out how many manwhores/geekwhores it's going to take to get something this awesome to Australia - http://www.microsoftpdc.com/

Here's the link i'm referring to: http://blogs.msdn.com/frankarr/archive/2008/10/07/think-way-outside-the-box.aspx 

Perth gets two (sorry, three) brand new MVPs – Congratulations to the both of you!!

The communities i Perth are thriving – evidence of this is that we now have two (yes, 2) three (i stand corrected, we have 3) new MVPs.

The first is Mitch Wheat – everybody knows Mitch as the leader and organiser of the Perth .Net Community of Practise user group. Mitch has been running the group for quite a while and as i’ve said before he does so brilliantly.

So welcome and congratulations to Mitch.

Mitch was awarded in the C# group, so we now have another developer based MVP in Perth!

The second person is Sezai Komur (apologies to Sezai for the terrible cut/paste job for his blog url) – whom got awarded in the SharePoint group.

I’ve been following his blog for quite a while now and he definitely know what he’s talking about.

I hope to see more from Sezai in the future and want to welcome him into our little cozy family.

Congratulations Sezai – SharePoint is THE platform of choice for many these days and i’m certain you’ll be busy!

RDN in October– SharePoint development and best practises

Another instalment of the Readify Developer Network series is coming to Perth – this time the hottest topic in the industry is being presented on – namely SharePoint.

SharePoint development and Best Practises – eg. How to do it and do it right!

Here’s the details for this free event:

Event Details:

ReadiPrimer Topic:

ReadiPrimer sessions offer a snapshot view on specific developer technologies delivered.  Each ReadiPrimer session runs for approximately 30 minutes.

“Getting Started with MS SharePoint”

Presented By Hadley Willan, Senior Developer, Readify

MS SharePoint is a large application framework providing many out-of-the-box benefits and is geared toward customisation.  If you've been daunted by how to get in to SharePoint and what benefits SharePoint can provide, then this ReadiPrimer is for you.

Hadley Willan will introduce the SharePoint technology. This will cover summaries about Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS), v3.0 vs. v2.0, what SharePoint can provide, how to identify when to apply SharePoint and getting started in SharePoint 3.0 technologies.

ReadiDepth Topic:

ReadiDepth sessions are in-depth presentations for a specific technology.  Each session is presented by a Readify Senior Consultant or Developer who is an expert in their field.  ReadiDepth sessions bring you the most advanced and up-to-the-minute technology previews and technical sessions available in the country. 

“SharePoint Development Best Practices”

Presented by Jeremy Thake, Senior Consultant, Readify

SharePoint is an extremely powerful Platform that Developers can leverage to kick start their projects. With all technologies there is the right way, the wrong way and the grey area in the middle. A lot of the Best Practice areas learnt in ASP.NET can be applied to SharePoint such as: environment configuration; source control; automated build scripts; team development; code manageability; code analysis; and more.

SharePoint also has multiple approaches to achieving the same end functionality and some may seem easy on the surface but are hard to enforce standards and repeatability. Key concepts discussed will include: InfoPath vs. ASP.NET Forms; Site Features vs. Site Templates; SharePoint Designer Workflows vs. Visual Studio Workflows; and more.

Jeremy will present some lessons learnt from real world scenarios and also some key Best Practices to adhere to in your Development Teams.

When and where?

Again, thanks to Readify for bringing quality content to Perth – and as this low cost…did i say cost?? it’s free so no excuses.

Blog This button gone from Windows Live Toolbar

I’ve been racking my brain for the last couple of days, either thinking i must be getting old and simply forgotten something or the “Blog This” button has gone into the ethers.

I’m running IE8 at the moment and have gotten the new Live Betas installed (great work guys, am really loving this – especially the new look of Live Messenger).

First i figured i’d look in the gallery for it – but i can’t seem to locate one there either. I can find the Windows Live Writer Gadget for the sidebar – but that’s not the one i’m thinking of.

This was a small button, located in the IE Toolbar…

So, have i gone bonkers and am simply imagining things here? or has it actually dissapeared?

Wardy IT Solution – free SQL Server 2008 breakfast in Perth – 17th of October

Peter Ward, the chief solutions architect at Wardy IT, is going to hold a free SQL Server 2008 breakfast in Perth on the 17th of October.

Details: SQL Server 2008 Breakfast in Perth – Peter Ward, Wardy IT Solutions.

Perth – Friday 17^th of October

Microsoft Perth, Level 14, 250 St Georges Terrace

Catering from 8:00am for an 8:30am Start

To attend either of these events simply email contact@wardyit.com

To see the announcement i full, click here: http://wardyit.com/blog/blog/archive/2008/10/05/free-sql-server-2008-breakfast-s.aspx

Update:

Peter Ward just updated the session details for the breakfast:

SQL Server 2008 Manageability features
SQL Server 2008 introduces a number of new features for managing SQL Server including Policy Based Management, Management Data Warehouse and Extended Events. These new management features have been designed to assist with diagnosing and resolving common performance issues. This session demonstrates how to troubleshoot various scenarios using the new management tools within SQL Server 2008. It demonstrates how to use the tools to assist with the management of multiple instances, how to monitor the performance of your severs over time and provide a greater insight into SQL Server.

SQL Server 2008 Security
SQL Server 2008 provides a number of security enhancements that help provide effective management of security including strong authentication and access control, powerful encryption and key management capabilities and enhanced auditing. The session will provide an overview of some of the most important enhancements including Transparent Data Encryption, Extensible Key Management and new Auditing functionality. In this session you will learn how these features can be utilised to keep your data as secure as possible. This session will demonstrate how to install SQL Server securely and ensure that security is maintained as applications and users make use of the data stored.

Here’s the link to the newly published event details page (WardyITs monthly newsletter): http://www.wardyit.com/newsletters/PerthBreakfastOct08.html

Considering the quality of Peter’s previous presentations at the user group, this event should promise a lot of industry relevant information. Peter’s not one for filling his sessions with Lorum Ipsums.

PSSUG: Peter Ward presents on Business Continuity with Backup and Restore

We're running again and this time around we have Peter Ward (again, yay) delivering a business orientated presentation.

There's more news - indeed big news, which will be announced at the event, so be certain that you come along.
We have changed venue (yes i know, again) and this time it's with bells and whistles with food as well.

As you know, we've had Peter present on a number of occasions, so that it's almost fair to say that he's one of our biggest numbers. For you that's been attending a presentation with Peter, you know already that it's going to be great!!

A little bit about Peter:
Peter Ward is WARDY IT Solutions Chief Technical Architect. Peter is an active member in the Australian SQL Server community and President of the Queensland SQL Server User Group. Peter is a highly regarded speaker at SQL Server events throughout Australia and is a sought after SQL Server consultant and trainer, providing solutions for some of the largest SQL Server sites in Australia. Peter also writes the editorial for the daily SQL-Server-Performance.com newsletter. In the last year Peter was selected as a speaker for Tech-Ed Australia and America, SQL Server Open World in and as a Spotlight speaker for the PASS Community Summit, the largest SQL Server event in the world. Peter has been awarded as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for his technical excellence and commitment to the SQL Server Community.

Topic:
Business Continuity with Backup and Restore

The Backup and Restore commands are the most important SQL Server commands in a Database Administrators arsenal. In the event of a system failure or user error, the Backup and Restore commands provide the ability to recover from what otherwise could be a catastrophe. With the release of SQL server 2005 and 2008 these commands have been enhanced significantly. For example, the ability to take an adhoc backup without affecting the restore sequence and the ability to revert a database from a snapshot. In this session, Peter Ward from WARDY IT Solutions (www.wardyit.com) will explain how to utilise many of the new recovery features as part of your SQL Server business continuity strategy.

Venue: Level 15, 191 St Georges Terrace (that's Fujitsu's main offices at the Parmelia House, Corner of Mills St and St Georges Terrace).
Time: 5:30pm - 7:00pm
Date: 16th of October, 2008

If you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact me (brian.madsen[at]live.com).

Be mindful, that this is a new venue (right across from where we used to hang out!).

To register for this session, click here:

http://www.sqlserver.org.au/Events/RegisterMeeting.aspx?EventId=358

Looking forward to seeing you there.

Service and support when it matters…Applied Innovations

A little while ago I was contacted by Kentico (www.kentico.com) with an offer for a free enterprise license of their CMS system. As I had planned on moving the Perth SQL Server User Group over to a site where we’re have a lot more control it came at a very convenient time.

With the offer came also a further offer for free web hosting for the CMS system – this was provided by Applied Innovations (www.appliedi.net (my apologies, got .com/.net switched around)) which is a hosting company.

We got the CMS system set up (or rather Kentico configured it for us) and we were off. The along came the first problem i face – the domain name. Naturally I wanted a .au domain name, but for me to get a .org.au domain name the user group needs to be incorporated (eg. a registered non-profit organisation), which carried a lot of benefits + administrative burdens. In the short timeframe there was no way i could get that organised.

So i registered two domains first, www.perthsqlserver.com and www.perthsqlserver.org, and set about getting it up and working. When i found the “Domains” tab in the Applied Innovations’ control panel (Helm i believe) i saw that it was set to perthsqlserver.org.au, as we had originally planned. So, delete and….oops…

Here came the biggest oops – I had inadvertedly deleted everything – domain, site and database. Christ!!!! Well, what can you do but to contact the service desk at Applied Innovations to figure out what I could possibly do to get things back. Now, generally you pay anywhere from $80 to $200 to have a backup restored which I was prepared to pay, just so i could get the system back up and running again.

First i noticed that there was an “online” chat – well, normally they’re closed for us in Australia, since it’s out of hours for most other countries, but i gave it a good try anyways.

First surprise was the message “Welcome to Applied Innovations’ LiveChat service. How may I help you today?”…woah, it was open for business.

The gentleman on the other line "- Scott Brown – listened to my newbie’ish (ok, total foolish mistake) and said simply – i’ll just have a look for you. Remember the domain, ip etc of the server..i had to admit i didn’t. Nevermind, he’d dig around a bit.

After a few minutes he came back and said “have a backup here from 5am this morning, will that do?”. I was literally gobsmacked..that fast, and then a backup that wasn’t a week old?

Naturally i told him that would do just fine – 10 minutes later my site, database etc had been restored for me..voila! as easy as that.

So, how’s that for a piece of service? Big thanks goes to Scott Brown, Applied Innovations, for helping a poor smuck like me out. When it comes to services on the internet today, a lot of companies fall through when it comes to delivering this support to their customers – and remember, i’m a freebie here – not a paid business class service holder which i’d pay big money for. No, this service came as a freebie in support of the community.

10 minutes guys…and i had a backup restored from earlier that day (literally 3-4 hours old). Even more surprised was i when Scott simply thanked off and asked me if there was anything else he could help me with.

We’re now up and running – the Perth SQL Server User Group has found a new home, thanks to Kentico and Applied Innovations. I’m still in the process of configuring everything, but for all sense and purposed we’ll be moving along fast and get everything fixed for us.

After having had a good thorough play around with the CMS system, I have to admit that it’s very intuitive and lends itself very easily to building and configuring a web site.

It works very much in the sense that you set up web part zones and apply web parts to them – very easy to manage and it’s extremely feature rich, with polls, calenders/events, sponsors, membership areas, articles etc available straight out of the box.

I’ll be doing a full review in the near future and will also attempt to do some development work with it – seems that plugging modules into the system is not only extremely easy, but also supporting the ASP.Net framework exceedingly well.

Kentico has also just launched a free edition – something a lot of CMS systems doesn’t have - http://www.kentico.com/Company/News/Kentico-CMS-Free-Edition.aspx

New feed being burnt – changed from feedburner

I’m moving my RSS into another feedburner (rather than the former FeedBurner.com) so please, re-subscribe to my RSS:

http://feedproxy.google.com/brianmadsen

Reason for the change is pretty simple – FeedBurner was bought by Google and since then most of the services i used to have available to me has been closed or doesn’t work any longer (such as keeping count of my subscribers, frequently see it saying 0 these days).

In essence it’s the same “system” that’s being used – but i’m suspecting that there’s some bias :)

Neat source of tricks for ReSharper users

thanks goes to Mitch Wheat for pointing me in the right direction - i'm a huge ReSharper fan and are always looking for ways to utilise the add-in better.

Here's Mitch's post - http://mitch-wheat.blogspot.com/2008/09/31-days-of-resharper.html - thanks for that Mitch.

Here's the direct link to Joe White's blog and the brilliant list of articles on how to get more out of ReSharper: http://blog.excastle.com/2007/01/31/blog-event-the-31-days-of-resharper/

I particularly like Joe's article on Generating code with ALT+Ins: http://blog.excastle.com/2007/02/22/resharper-day-22-generating-code-with-altins/

Lets see some more goodness Joe..well done and nicely explained!

DELL XPS M1710 Laptop saga continues…

Finally got a Dell technician out today (Saturday) after being fopped off all day yesterday with promises and white lies.

The technician arrived within the scheduled period as promised and started having a look at the laptop to diagnose what the problem was. Removing the keyboard to have access to the heat sink on the graphics card was the first step – he booted it up and after a few minutes it was basically too hot even to touch.

He then checked the fans as he couldn’t understand why it was running that hot. My cpu fan wasn’t running at all – great, how much damage has my cpu been taken and how much of its lifespan has been cut off because it’s been running too hot?

At first he was surprised that the package of parts didn’t contain a graphics card seeing as that would apparently have been obvious choice to replace considering where i reported the heat were coming from. Top right hand side of the keyboard. Yeps, directly below there sits the graphics card. Both fans are at the very edge of the case.

Naturally replacing the graphics card would have been more expensive for Dell so i can see where the cost saving exercise comes into play. Fair call.

The technician then started to pull the entire laptop apart as he had to replace the motherboard – the cpu fan controller sits on the motherboard and that wasn’t working at all.

At the moment i’m extremely frustrated with Dell – cannot possibly be that a laptop, less than 1 year old and at this level, is falling apart. I mean, the XPS M1710 was the top of their line and the price tag was accordingly high.

Dell’s new flagship, the M1730 would have been a serious contender to replacing this one, but at the moment i’m so disappointed with Dell that I’m starting to doubt i’ll ever recommend them again.

Luckily i’m still covered by warranty and i’m going to be damn sure that I get every single faulty part replaced…

So, onto new and shinier things – what options are available out there today that could possibly match the “supposed” performance of the XPS range?

Dell services going down hill...

Well, wasting rent here - Dell seems to be good at making promises, but can't seem to get their act together for the follow-up.

Edit: I called this morning at 8am to confirm that the technician was going to show up and was told that my parts would be arriving at 9am, ready for the technician to pick them up, where i'd then be getting a phone call from him/her to arrange a time..

Was told 2hrs ago, after i still haven't heard from the technician who was meant to fix my laptop today, that i'd be getting a call from their office as the support staff couldn't help me out.

2hrs later I decided to give them a call back and what happens - well, apparently, unbeknownst to anybody there, they ended getting more support calls today than expected and therefore couldn't return my call as promised.

Point 1: am now pissed off with Dell for not being able to keep me informed when they know i'm sitting here at home, waiting for their technician to give me a call to schedule the parts being replaced.

Point 2: the support team had no clue what i was talking about re: giving me a call back as there was nothing in their logs to indicate they had to contact me.

So, am now severely annoyed with them - get fopped off with a "We'll have a technician call you within 1hr" reply, which I stupidly decided to trust.

I'm meant to have Next Business Day Support 24/7 - arguably the fact that i've spoken to support could be deemed as having given me support within the required timeframe.

I bought this premium (Dell XPS M1710) laptop so things like this wouldn't happen..shouldn't happen and what do i get..substandard service.

So the saga continues - what was originally a VERY impressive start seems to have driveled down into a useless service.

Next point is that i now have to wait, till no later than 8pm, to get confirmation of when the technician will be coming. That's a full day of waste. Complete and utter waste.

The guy i spoke to "assured" me that i would definitely get this fixed tomorrow..i confirmed on three occasions if he was 100% absolutely certain of that and he said "yes". I then put this into perspective to him..

1) he can't give me a time - or even part of the day (morning/afternoon) - of when the technician will be coming tomorrow.

2) he doesn't know how many technicians they'll have on board tomorrow here in Perth, but know some will be working saturdays to get this influx of service issues fixed.

How was he able to absolutely, 100%, guarantee that a technician would be coming around? Logically at this point he couldn't. So, i'm now (after raising absolute hell) noted as a "priority" call so it'll be attended to.

Am definitely not impressed...But i have the 100%, guaranteed assurances of the supervisor no less, that this will be dealt with. I guess time will tell.

Dell support #1 so far

Damn - i have to say this..and say it loud too..DAMN!!

Called Dell support (finally got through, yay) and after some extensive tests the operator advised me that a technician would be dispatched to replace some parts in the laptop (wonder what will be replaced) for Friday.

Not quite next business day support, but beats the hell out of the support i've gotten from Austin Computers. So mock Dell all you like guys, a technician superhero is inbound to fix my laptop!! w00t w00t!

Now i just need to cross my fingers that the correct parts gets replaced and the issue is dealt with/fixed!

Kudos to Dell for owning up to their support/warranty!

My laptop is luckily still under warranty..phew

today i checked with Dell regarding warranty for my laptop which had some issues yesterday and i'm still covered for yet another 175 days on XPS premium support and next day parts and service from Dell.

So, now i've sent a support request and hopefully they'll get back to me asap so i can get it resolved.

But, fearing that the M1710 is no longer in production i'm curious as to how it's going to be fixed. Hopefully they'll still have parts for it but what exactly are they going to swap out when the entire system overheats??

It's now a waiting game i guess...but next day parts day support should be a good help. I guess i'll now see how great Dells support is (hope it's better than Austin Computer's warranty policies).

Wish me luck!!

DELL XPS M1710 gaming laptop overheating...

Last night i decided to play a few games of COD4 - which i do for an hour here and there, and suddenly i had a drop in FPS and a few seconds later the whole laptop just closed down.

At first my mind went OMG!!!!! a powerspike or something just as malicious has come through and fried my laptop.

then i settled a bit and had a closer look at the laptop - it was hot, even for the XPS, it was very hot yet it booted almost straight away (2-3 minutes later) and i saw an error message on the screen - it had overheated and closed down as a result.

first i felt a  great deal of relief as this laptop isn't cheap - but then i became rather annoyed. This is meant to be a gaming laptop and should be equipped well enough to play games.

Now i'm going to chase down support from Dell - first to find out if i'm covered under warranty still and secondly to complain (yes, i do that from time to time, but i love this laptop and i'm rather furious that it should overheat).

Normally overheating is expected when you tamper with the system (or environmental issues, such as very hot areas or if you block the exhaust vents) - such as overclocking your hardware - but this is a stock DELL XPS M1710, with absolutely nada tampering. It should be equipped with enough heatsinks and fans to handle playing a game if the system specifications are up to par with what the game requires - and the XPS M1710 certainly does that.

And here i was, actually considering upgrading to a M1730 in the near future...fat chance at the moment!

So, i am grumpy as hell and am going to raise absolutely hell with DELL Support in the coming days!!

Arc™ Mouse

I had a quick look at the details of the new Microsoft Arc Mouse as i was contemplating changing it for my other neat mouse. When it comes to saving space, this is still the winner.

it looks very snazzy - hell even sexy - but I just don't want to give up the space saver that i currently have with my mogo.

Here's some details: Arc™ Mouse

Not quite sure i want to have to bother with the USB plug for the receiver. Honestly, almost all laptops can do bluetooth and/or wifi and they the mouse should be capable of connecting to either of those instead of taking up a full USB port (ok, not all laptops have 6 USB ports as my XPS does).

Anyways, my daugther wants to buy me a new one because - and i quote "daddys mouse looks real old". (that's my G9 btw she's talking about).

I'm probably going to wait with that one for the time being.

3 weeks at Fujitsu Australia

I was trawling through my latest posts, in the hope to discover if the "date and time" issue I found the other day had occurred on other entries. And i noticed I'd mentioned I was leaving Change Corporation - but i didn't mention where I'd gone.

Anyways, i joined up with Fujitsu Australia and have been with them for 3 weeks now.

A few differences from other places I've worked in the past:

1) It's a VERY large organisation - 160.000 employees worldwide and you can feel it.

that being said, the office in Perth has a very flat structure and people are more interested in getting the job done than the fancy nameplate.

2) I have my very own career adviser (LM) who I've met with a few times already to discuss my career.

At Fujitsu you "own" your career. If you just want a 9-5 job with a great environment, then that's just fine. If you have more fire up the butt then that's fine too. You decide where you want things to go.

3) The projects are large...and i mean LARGE - which is excellent. The current project I'm on has a very public profile yet there's hardly any stress or pressure. It'll also get me exposed to my ultimate goal (hush hush) and where i want my career to head.

So what is my role - in a fancy way then I'm a senior application specialist..in normal terms..I'm a consultant, which happens to specialise in a range of platforms or products - naturally in my case it's Microsoft products/platforms - and this meaning .Net and MOSS + supporting technologies. I'm attached to the professional services team, which is a supporting team for the web services group (this is where Michael Minutillo works).

Another part of my role - and this was by my own choice, not something in my job description - I'll be heading up the .Net stream of the Microsoft Community of Interest within Fujitsu in Western Australia. This is a "new" part of Fujitsu and it's taken very seriously by the corporates/suits. Basically it's a user group within Fujitsu itself. There's a guy over east with my role as well (not sure who he is yet) and there's three other streams alongside mine.

So why have a "user group" within a company - well, it's not a bad idea in itself as it'll further the interest some of us geeks happens to have. And another aspect is that we're 3300 people in Fujitsu AusNZ with nearly 400 here in Perth alone and a LOT of us are geeks.

Besides the "normal" geeky things - such as organising presentations, articles and furthering the knowledge sharing between our teams I'll also be organising the "social events" for the boys n' girls.

It took me a lot of thinking/contemplating etc before i decided to join Fujitsu and there was a lot of questions i raised within myself before i made the decision. I had a few other options available to me, one which i very nearly took but after some soul searching realised that i wasn't quite at the level I wanted to be at if I should join this company. It was a hard decision to make and the self evaluation I went through was rough - basically I didn't quite feel i was up to par - yet.

At the moment I feel I'll be able to grow at Fujitsu.

Looking for .Net component - Excel like behavior

I'm currently working on a large, long term project and have identified the need for a third party component.

It currently appears as if we need to implement an "Excel" like behavior into a web page and instead of spending the hours building such a control, i figured the smarter approach would be to locate one already built.

Requirements for the control is:

• Databinding
• Trial Version (30 days min.)
• Design capabilities (look at feel)
• Cell-context events (eg. ability to raise events when a cell is filled out)
• Basic mathematical functions (or the ability to do late binding)
• Work in SharePoint 2007 (edit)

Anybody know off or can recommend a good one?

Edit: Been trawling the web for possible solutions and here's one that's caught my eye so far.

Vendor: GemBox Software
Site: www.gemboxsoftware.com
Product: GemBox.Spreadsheet - www.gemboxsoftware.com/GBSpreadsheet.htm

GemBox.Spreadsheet is a .NET component which provides easy and high performance way to write, read or convert native Microsoft Excel files (XLS files in BIFF format, CSV files in text format or XLSX files in Open XML format) without the need for Microsoft Excel on either the developer or client machines. Fully generic HTML export is also supported. GemBox.Spreadsheet Free comes free of charge while GemBox.Spreadsheet Professional is a commercial version (licensed per developer).

And another one:

Vendor: FarPoint
Site: www.fpoint.com
Product: FarPoint Spreadsheet for ASP.Net 4 - www.fpoint.com/netproducts/spreadweb/spread.aspx

Use our ASP.NET spreadsheet component to add full-featured spreadsheet capabilities or highly advanced grid functionality to your ASP.NET applications. Our award-winning Spread for ASP.NET frees you from spending tedious hours coding features that are missing in other grids. In Spread for ASP.NET many of those features are only a property setting or line of code away. Take the product tours, read the whitepapers, or download your evaluation today.

Compiled against both the 2.0 and 3.5 Frameworks, Spread for ASP.NET is a complete ASP.NET spreadsheet component that supports bound or unbound modes (no dataset needed), AJAX, native Microsoft Excel import/export, in-cell editing, multiple edits on multiple rows without server round trips, client-side column/row resizing, multiple sheets, searching, filtering, multiple cell types, validations, cell spans, multiple headers, sorting, complete customization at the cell level, over 300 built-in calculation functions, hierarchical display and much more.

Now, as i said, i haven't used either one before so if anybody's been playing around with these and can provide some feedback, then that'd be appreciated.

Opps..found another one which i'm surprised i didn't think of earlier:

Vendor: Infragistics
Site: www.infragistics.com
Product: NetAdvantage for ASP.Net (Infragistics.Excel) - www.infragistics.com/dotnet/netadvantage/aspnet/infragisticsexcel.aspx#Overview

Maximize the value your users get out of the information in your ASP.NET application by making it portable with Microsoft® Excel® and many other popular spreadsheet applications. Now you can build your data-driven solutions on top of the Infragistics.Excel code library for C# and VB.NET developers, with the interoperability you need to both read and write .XLS files. Your users will appreciate the new found freedom of taking data with them to work with in the best environment for the task, such as running "What If?" scenarios in Excel and then importing those calculations back into your application. Leveraging this collaboration can produce remarkable returns because we take care of the file interoperability, and relieve you of having to replicate expensive spreadsheet capabilities on your own.

Again, feedback would be great!

Is there a bug in Community Server when editing a post?

Uhmm, just posted an entry this morning where i was looking for an ASP.Net component with Excel like behavior..edited it twice and for some reason the date/time stamp keeps being "pulled" back.

eg. i created the post and it got an original date/time stamp. Edited and x hours was subtracted...Edited it again and more hours was subtracted and it now ended up being published on the 10th of September, rather than today?

I'm editing it from within the inbuilt editor..

very strange behavior and i'm not sure why it's behaving like this..strange..

has anybody else had that problem?

Note: i went back and found the publication settings and changed the publication date to today again and we're all happy again. still, why the default date/time stamp is being change to anything other than "now" is puzzling.