And claims another one of us. Clemens Vasters is joining Microsoft. I have known this for a long time but he has finally made it public. Clemens you are a sellout but have fun! It was even front page news!

I hate unions. They have outlived their usefulness. All the transit workers have to do is listen to their international union that's urged them to go back to work, listen to the judge who ordered them back to work, and look at their families and their own economic interests. If they are not back to work tomorrow they should be fired.

On this day of thanks, especially right after Veterans Day, please take a minute between your turkey and football to give thanks to all the men and women in our armed services stationed overseas this holiday-as well as the families of the fallen soldiers.

 

While you are at it, take some time to remember the Tsunami victims, Katrina and Rita as well our friends in Pakistan.

Tomorrow is the 12th annual Technology Enterprise Forum here in Manhattan.

I was a judge this year in the outsourcing category. It was fun to judge the submissions, you can submit yourself for a best practice award next year here.

Have you ever been to a Microsoft conference and listened to them carefully? They make up words.

 

 Now those who know me know that I also make up words all the time-my staff at Zagat use to keep a list on a whiteboard, and then hold contests to see who can figure out what my new words mean. The problem is that since I attend so many Microsoft conferences as a speaker, I start to pick up Microsoftese. What is even worse is that I now use these “words” in every day life. When I am in the hardware store and ask about the “functionality” of the new vacuum cleaner I want to buy. Or when I am buying a new electronic toothbrush I ask if one model is more performant than the other?

 

Functionality is a word now, even if Microsoft made it up. I decided to start using performant in my new SQL Server book. I got this comment from the editor:

 

[LF] Steve: I don't think "performant" is a word.

 

And the tech editor replied:

 

[JFC] "performant" is one of those classic 'words' that Microsofties use in presentations; techies understand it, but it's not really a word.  Please revise, and avoid its use in the future.

 

I decided to use it anyway. I then emailed Bill and Andrew on the topic hoping they would think it is funny, but got this reply from Andrew:

 

----

From: Andrew Brust

Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 1:44 PM
To: Zack, William; Stephen Forte; Wzack (E-mail)
Subject: RE: some humor from book hell

 

I agree with her on that one.  It’s not a word, and it should be revised.  If you don’t take it out, the copy editors will.

-----

 

I decided to challenge Andrew on this one. I looked it up. It is in Webster's New Millennium™ Dictionary of English.

So I guess it is a word after all….

My brother, Richard Campbell, and Carl will be in town tomorrow night, come on and check it out:

NET Rocks NYC!

.Net Rocks NYC! at our very own user group. Be part of the fun. Click
here to register.
https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032280187&Culture=e\
n-US

Friday, October 14, 2005 6:00 PM - Friday, October 14, 2005 9:00 PM (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada) Language: English-American Microsoft Corporation 1290 Avenue of the Americas 6th Floor New York, New York 10104 United States

General Event Information
Products: .NET.

Recommended Audience: Developer.

That's right, America! Carl Franklin, Richard Campbell, Geoff the sound guy, and a makeshift podcasting crew are hitting the highway in an RV on a coast-to-coast road trip from Boston to San Francisco October 12th to November 7th, 2005!

They'll be hosting evening events and producing DNR shows in 18 cities: Boston, Hartford, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC, Raleigh, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Nashville, Memphis, Dallas, Houston, Austin, Phoenix, San Diego, and Los Angeles; and ending at the launch of Visual Studio .NET 2005 in San Francisco!! 

In each city, a sneak peek at new and exciting things coming in Visual Basic 2005 and Mobility Development in Visual Studio 2005, and lots of giveaways including DNR swag, sponsor software, and even mobile devices!! AND post-event DNR interviews with local developers who are doing cool things with .NET 1.1 and the beta of 2.0!

There will be parties along the way! Of course, they'll be blogging and podcasting photos and video (for the next DNR Movie), and a new .NET Rocks! show online every day during the road trip! Ok, maybe not EVERY day, but they're producing a show in every city!

I have a wonderful VPS of Yukon and Whidbey with all of my conference demos. I my first TSQL session and it went well but the VPC was slow. Then I had my next session “Ranking and Windowing” functions, 15 minutes later in another room. I suspended my PC and went on. VPC was dead in the water.

I had to do a song and a dance. A delegate named Harold lent me his computer so I can demo code. I decided to reboot my machine while I was working on Harold's PC. Once back, life was good.

So lesson learned, do not suspend your computer with a VPC. However another speaker, Walt Ritscher, let me know that there is a hotfix for this craziness. Installed and life is good. 

 

 

When I installed the latest beta of SQL Server 2005 and ran the Merge Replication wizards to create a Publication, I got a strange new error not present in previous betas. The error said that the “XP Agents are not enabled and you must run sp_configure to enable them.”

I figured that MS did the right thing and turned this feature off by default. I ran the new SQL Server Surface Area Configuration Tool and could not find anything for enabling XP Agent stored procedures, etc. I did find a lot of good stuff disabled by default that will make SQL Server more secure. This is good since by default out of the box an installation of SQL Server will leave some of the advanced, yet powerful tools disabled to deny a hacker the ability to guarantee that it will be turned on.

So in my case, MS turned it (XP Agents) off but do not give a way in the tool to enable it. After some trial and error and help from help I got this to make it all work and my publication agent ran smoothly:

You can't just run sp_configure, you first have to turn on advanced options so SQL Server knows it exits:

use master
go
sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1;
GO
RECONFIGURE;
GO
sp_configure 'Agent XPs', 1;
go
RECONFIGURE
GO

It is good that this stuff is turned off by default, it will just mean a little more time for us developers to setup and deploy. Worth the tradeoff.