I recently came across a web site, Annoyances.org, which has some useful information and tools on it to help avoid / fix some common problems with Vista and Windows in general. Although much of what I see listed is common-hat for those of us who have been using Windows for a long time, there are some useful tips and utilities to help heal some ailments, one of which I’ve hated for a long time.

When using explorer to navigate a hard drive, Windows seems to inexplicably display a thumbnail view or an MP3-star rating view when you are in a folder that has regular data files in it. Very annoying. Here’s a fix for that: Default Folder Template Patch

The Application Architecture Guide recently posted an updated version and it appears at a glance that it will be a good read for anyone who designs software systems for a living.

This looks like an interesting set of tools, but I haven’t had a chance to use them yet. You can get them here: Extensions for Windows

Here’s a rundown of what they have:

• Seamless Integration with Windows
• Disk Usage Analysis
• Screen Capture
  Screen/Demo Recorder
• Windows Explorer (File Manager) Extended
• FTP Client
• SFTP Client
• Document Converters
• Task Manager Extended
• Keyboard Shortcut Manager
• File Compression
• Image Resizer and Converter
• File Comparer
• PDF Creator
• Virtual Drive with Encryption
• Search & Replace in Files

I’ve had some changes in my network lately; some computers renamed, others removed, etc. I use Forefront Client Security to manage anti-virus and anti-malware for the entire network. The problem is that it tracks non-reporting computers. This is a good feature, but, in this case, I don’t want to know that computers that no longer exist on my network are not reporting.

I did a half-hearted search for how to expunge the data from the Forefront administration reports, but did not find anything of value. The user interface for administration is very minimalistic and does not provide any real administration options other than reporting. I poked around in the SQL Server database that it runs off of and here is how I removed the computers:

1. Connect to SQL Server that holds Forefront database.
2. Open database OnePoint
3. Query the Computers table for the idComputer field of the computer that you wish to remove.
4. Run ComputerDeleteUnusedComputer with the idComputer you found.

-- ReturnStatus values (returned in select clause with computer id)
--  0 - Computer deleted
--  1 - Alerts exist
--  2 - Events exist
--  4 - Perf samples exist
--  8 - ComputerResponsiblity Rows exist
-- 16 - is a consolidator
-- 32 -
-- 64 -
--      values are added together if more than one kind of data
--      exists for the computer

5. If a status other than 0 is returned then you must address the issues shown above and then rerun ComputerDeleteUnusedComputer. For my computers, the only issues I ran across were 1 and 2. For 1, I deleted the Alert and AlertEventSuppression records that corresponded to the idComputer. For 2, it is a bit more involved. There are 61 Event tables in the database named Event_## with the idLoggedOn column being the associate for idComputer. I couldn’t find a good way to delete the associated events for the computers other than cycling through delete statements for the Event_## tables until all of the records for my computers were gone. Luckily for me this happened around Event_20.

Although the OnePoint database is not the worst that I have seen, it is far from winning any awards for database design/architecture. Fortunately though, the means were there to get the job done that I needed to do. I have to think that Microsoft has a user interface to complete these functions, but I could not find one.

If you haven’t been using SkyDrive, now is the time to start. Microsoft just opened up 20 additional gigabytes of storage. Yes, that’s 20 plus the 5 they were already allotting for a total of 25GB of FREE, yes FREE!, online storage. I have been using SkyDrive for a while now for miscellaneous personal files and photos, but with 25GB it has now become a valid player in my data backup strategy. I’m looking forward to utilizing this extra space and the eventual extra services that will be built on top of it.

Ok, I am not usually one to mess with themes or skins for applications. Frankly, most of the time, I have better things to do than spend time tweaking a UI for vanity’s sake. That being said though, I recently applied a theme to my personal GMail account. I’m not sure why I decided to apply it, but I was sucked in, and I must say that I like it and it is because of one simple, eloquent feature that they added.

Essentially a theme in GMail is just a background picture, but they took it a step further and have your background appear differently based upon the current weather in your area. I like it. Here are a couple of pictures of my theme:

For some reason, probably that I don’t post that often, I have managed to just trudge along this whole time using the default Blog Engine.NET editor to generate posts. It’s fine for simple text posts, but once you get to more complex documents or code snippets it can quickly become a nightmare. Sure you have full control over the HTML, but I don’t want to have to ‘code’ my posts.

This is just a test using Windows Live Writer as my agent for adding blog posts. We’ll see how this works. Here’s a code snippet (I think 1 looks better and is more functional):

Plug-in 1:

   1: private void CreateSchedulesDS()

   2: {

   3:     SchedulesDS = new DataSet();

   4:     DataTable table = new DataTable();

   5:     table.TableName = "Schedules";

   6:     table.Columns.Add("Key", typeof(int));

   7:     table.Columns.Add("DueDate", typeof(DateTime));

   8:     table.Columns.Add("ApplyDemographicsFlag", typeof(String));

   9:     table.Columns.Add("IdentifyNonReportersFlag", typeof(String));

  10:     table.Columns.Add("PaymentDueDate", typeof(DateTime));

  11:     table.Columns.Add("Amount", typeof(decimal));

  12:     SchedulesDS.Tables.Add(table);

  13: }

   1:  private void CreateSchedulesDS()

   2:  {

   3:      SchedulesDS = new DataSet();

   4:      DataTable table = new DataTable();

   5:      table.TableName = "Schedules";

   6:      table.Columns.Add("Key", typeof(int));

   7:      table.Columns.Add("DueDate", typeof(DateTime));

   8:      table.Columns.Add("ApplyDemographicsFlag", typeof(String));

   9:      table.Columns.Add("IdentifyNonReportersFlag", typeof(String));

  10:      table.Columns.Add("PaymentDueDate", typeof(DateTime));

  11:      table.Columns.Add("Amount", typeof(decimal));

  12:      SchedulesDS.Tables.Add(table);

  13:  }

 I copied this quick comparison of consulting websites from another blog here. I have used some of this sites in the past, both to obtain work and to distribute work. I copied here for future reference.

I had seen this go up a long time ago and thought it was an interesting concept. I was reading a blog recently that mentioned it again under another context and it reminded me of the service. Amazon's Mechanical Turk is essentially a work-for-hire program for very small units of work, labelled Human Intelligence Tasks or HITS. From the employee side of things it allows for a great deal of flexibility. One can pick up the jobs on the fly that are easy for them do and provide as much variety as one would like to feed their ADD disorder. From an employer side of things, crowd-sourcing mundane tasks that can be split into simple units of work could result in greater throughput. However, my opinion on the matter, having never actually participated in the service, is that the overhead of managing the tasks could outweight any benefit gained via the increased throughput.

 Interesting none-the-less.

I was recently reading a blog called Mini-Microsoft where they were talking about obtaining senior level status at Microsoft. The following is an excerpt that I thought was particularly interesting:

Qualities that a contributor exhibits:

BEGIN ARTICLE QUOTE--------------------------------

·  They can own a room: they aren't warming a seat but rather can take charge of a conversation and represent such a deep level of knowledge that they gain respect for what they say and earn a good reputation. Their focus stays on accountable results and this person can bring resolution and closure together.

·  Expert: They are sought after to be in meetings, for instance, so that good decisions can be made.

·  Results-focused: they are focused on getting great results and don't entwine their ego to particular solutions. They don't get defensive if their ideas are revealed to have flaws but rather delight in being able to move to a better solution.

·  Leadership: pro-active leadership that convinces team members of the future direction and even helps to implement it. This is a big difference between those who can complain about the way things should be and those you can actually bring it about.

·  Solutions, not problems: following up on the above, they aren't complaining about problems on the team but rather implementing and driving solutions.

·  Makes other great: the team benefits and grows from the person's contributions. Answers questions from the team, from support, from customers. Knows what the team delivers backwards and forwards. They are a good mentor.

·  Influence when they can, scare when they must: they have fundamental skills in influencing people, but if they need to flip into junk-yard dog mode, they can. They don't give up and walk away but rather fight when they need to fight, escalating only when needed and with lots of justification.

·  Makes the boss great: if the team and your boss are succeeding because of you, of course you'll be succeeding too.

·  Not doing it for the promotion: if you're out for a promotion, don't do work specifically chose to get the promotion. This is like meeting the Buddha on the road. If you come up with a pretty plan to justify your promotion, you've already lost it. Such plotting is obvious and actually detrimental to your career. If, however, you've determined what it takes to have a successful career in your group at Microsoft and have started what you need to start and stopped what you need to stop, then you're on the right path

END ARTICLE QUOTE-----------------

The qualities above represent what every employer wishes to have in each of its employees. Furthermore, it was every employee should strive for. I am sad to admit that I cannot think of a single person (management or peon), including myself, at my current employer who exemplifies all of these characteristics or at least that exemplifies them well. However, reading this list gives me some perspective and possibly a pivot on which to act to correct myself.

This article also got me thinking about what qualities a true leader should exhibit as it should go hand-in-hand with the above. Entire books have been written on this subject and I’m not going to attempt to replace them here, but here's what I came up with, in no particular order:

1. Focus – A leader needs the ability to stay focused on the important items at hand. Furthermore, they must prioritize and let less pressing items fall back until there is time to address them.

2. Confidence – A leader must have confidence in himself and confidence in his team. If either is lacking then a leader must effect change to build up the necessary confidence.

3. Humility – Despite the need for confidence, the contra-indicator is needed as well. One cannot know everything, and it is important to know when to defer to others who are more knowledgeable or in a better position to answer.

4. Thirst for knowledge – A leader must continually strive to attain knowledge in a variety of areas. This includes duty specific knowledge and social knowledge of team/company/industry.

5. Know when/who/what to delegate  - A leader cannot bear the entire wait by himself. Knowing what your team members are capable of or, more importantly, what they could be capable of if they were given the chance is important.

6. Vision for the future – A leader must know where he is attempting to lead his group to and have a plan for how to get there. Meandering around knocking of tasks as you go, “putting out fires”, is no way to lead. Have a road map, be willing to adjust it, but have it.

7. Ability to clearly and concisely articulate vision – Finally, a leader must be able to transfer his vision to his team, to his customers and back to himself if necessary, effectively with clarity.