Test Layout

I wasn't thinking happy thoughts about Dell yesterday when my laptop hard drive died. However, after about 15 minutes on the phone with tech support, a new hard drive was on the way and arrived just about 24 hours after I called. Pretty good turn around. I've taken the opportunity to upgrade the laptop to 64-bit ultimate since I need to do a reinstall anyway. No sense having a laptop with 4GB of RAM on a 32-bit OS. A 32-bit OS only sees a little over 3GB.

As part of the new budget in Canada, it has been announced that computers purchased between Jan 27, 2009 and Feb 1, 2011 can be depreciated at 100% CCA. This means that computers are effectively treated as an expense and you can write them off in a single year instead of depreciating them over time. This would apply to both workstations and servers. Nice to see. From a business perspective, it means that your taxes more closely match your cashflow. Or, if you finance, you get the tax writeoff before you are even done paying for them.

I recently purchases some wireless headphones with a microphone. My intent was to use them for creating elearing courses. I thought the wireless option was cool. After shelling out about $130, I got them home and found that the microphone had way too much static for producing elearning. It might have been Ok for playing games, but not something that needs to be polished. I was very happy that I picked them up at a major retailer and just returned them the next day. I might have been able to return them to an online discounter, but would have been out shipping at the very least.

When attempting to manage public folders on an Exchange 2003 server using System Manager, I received an error. The token supplied to the function is invalid. ID no: 80090308 Exchange System Manager The problem is SSL being required on the Exadmin folder in the Default Web Site used for Exchange management. This is only a problem when a third party SSL cert is installed because the internal name does not match the external DNS name used on the cert. In addition to disabling SSL for the Exadmin folder, I also had to use ADSI edit to remove the secure port in the Exadmin object in Active Directory. Now life is all good. Detailed steps are at the bottom of the page here: http://hellomate.typepad.com/exchange/2004/04/public_folder_e.html

So, today we found a huge error by omission in the 5061 MOSS course I was teaching. An activity has you active audiences for an announcement list and then assign audiences directly to items. For the first time I actually had a student test the functionality instead of just assuming it works like the book says. Turns out, it doesn't. Most Web parts are not capable of reading and filtering items based on audiences. The Content Query web part does. So, you need to use a Content Query web part to filter the items in the annoucement list based on audience. Not as pretty, but functional. Personally, I'd stick with using audiences at the Web Part level rather than item level. There are no special requirements for that to function.

I just got an e-mail with a link for free Hyper-V e-learning. This one requires you to follow a specific link and enter a promo code: Prepare for Exam 70-652 for Free (US$159.99 value) This collection of five 2-hour courses helps you develop the skills necessary for implementing and managing Hyper-V in an IT environment, as well as creating and managing virtual machines and hosts in a virtual environment. Use promo code 9350-Y2W6-3676 to receive your discount. Please note: you must use the link above to take advantage of this offer. There is also an exam discount: Get Certified Through Exam 70-652 with a 25% Discount Once you’ve taken the preparation course, you can take the certification exam at a reduced price. This exam will test your skills in installing, configuring, and optimizing Hyper-V; and in deploying, managing, and monitoring virtual machines using System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. Use the promo code USHYPERV at checkout to receive your discount.

Yes, that is correct free stuff from Microsoft. It's not exactly the full in class experience with e-learning but, but it does give you some structure for learning new products. The free courses change on a pretty regular basis, but as of today there are courses on: MS SQL 2008 (lots of components and features) Hyper-V (the new virtualization hypervisor in Windows 2008) System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (manages VMs running on Virtual Server, Hyper-V and VMWare ESX) Application Virtualization Windows 2008 Terminal Services (some very cool enhancements) Windows SharePoint Services 3 Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 View all of the free courses available here: http://learning.microsoft.com/Manager/Catalog.aspx?view=free