August 2003 - Posts
Today I've cleared the 4th exam on the road to MCSD.NET...
To pass it I've used the official MSPress book. It's a very good book (I think) about Microsoft Solutions Framework, and it's very useful also if you don't have to study for the exam.
To summarize it I've used the
Robert McLaws MSF study guides.
I've read some articles about requisites gathering, UML and use cases (I was already prepared on that field, only a little recap) and I've used the time spent to
prepare the ORM course to recap my knowledge about ORM itself and especially ER diagrams.
Hope it helps!
P.s. If you need a very good introduction to MSF, please find a session about it from
Rafal Lukawiecki in one of the Microsoft events and enjoy one of the best presentation that I've ever attended.
I followed that session two times, one at EMEA Architects Tour 2003 here in Milan and one at Tech Ed 2003, and I've enjoyed both very much.
Sometimes I put the Tech Ed post conference DVD in the PC only to hear that session another time...
Perhaps Microsoft can put that presentation online on the MSF site...
I think that it will increase a lot the adoption of MSF :-)
I was reading an interesting
post of Raymond Chen about time zones and world map.
In one of my previous work experience we had a similar problem.
We built a multiplayer touchscreen enabled game localized in most of the european languages, to be placed in shops, bar, pubs, discoteques, and so on.
We sent more than two hundred copies to Greece to be tested in all the country.
After a week the distributor sent back all the copies because there were some questions in one of the game regarding the not so good relationships that there was in the past between Greece and other states in that area.
Our translator (a very nice greek girl...) didn't told us anything about that fact, and we had to rebuild the software without all the bad questions...
Never trust somebody that gets paid based on the quantity of the things that he/she translate... :-)
I was looking in MSDN subscriber downloads where I found this link:
How to Get Microsoft Office System Programs...
I want my Outlook 2003 NOW!!!
There are different opinions about Products that can auto-update, and the problem is even bigger with server products like SQL Server, and I think that can be a problem also with Exchange, SharePoint, or Biztalk, only to name a few.
Personally I install every patch that windowsupdate or the automatic update shows me, but only after a little look at the readme file or at the KB article.
I think that between a complete autoupdate feature with no user intervention and the old SQL fix where you have to do 8 or more steps by hand there is a great room where everybody can find it's way to manage how patches are delivered and installed.
Why Microsoft delayed so much the WinXP Sp2 for example, I've to download more than 30MB or postSP1 fixes, and guess if I have to do it manually for every PC in my network.
Yes there are products like SUS that are built to simplify this tasks, but as I've already said, there is a lot of room for improvements for these products..
I think that the best way is to go on and simplify all the patch management/deploying/installing stuff, and to let the people find their best way between a full automatic management and an administrator guided one, because on a mission critical server I'll go with the second option, but for a development sever I'll choose the first one.
Today I received my two Post Conference DVDs...
Very nice, especially the 10th Anniversary Party HighLights...
I liked Office 2003 very much at that party :-)
And now I can follow all the sessions that I missed...
For the second time in less than a month, I'm back to work...
Today it's a big install day... I've to install W2K3, Tibco, SQL Server 2000, etc etc... on a test machine... It will take all the day...
Perhaps I can use that time to study for the 70-300 exam that is approaching... :-(
I've seen that there was a discussion about the Blaster worm and how to keep systems updated.
On our network we use SUS as
Robert McLaws already suggested.
I have some wishes for the next version:
- the ability to use it as windowsupdate, without having to wait the scheduled update, so I can update a PC immediatly after installing it
- detailed statistics on which PC was updated
- a better, more configurable, client software. I don't want to be forced to use group policy or the registry to configure a PC
We will see...
Now that IE is dead until Longhorn and that Outlook Express is on the same road (source
www.neowin.net) I want to know what is the next victim... :-)
Movie Maker?
Media Player?
Hyper Terminal :-O?
Half of Windows crashes down to third-party software, says Microsoft - source
bink.nu
I've had very few crashes since I've installed XP, and considering that i betatest everything that i could find it's a great result...
Perhaps most of the crashes are due to wrong usage from the users... :-)
It's only a joke... I was only trying the upload feature of w.bloggar...
Yesterday I tried the new version of NewsGator, but at the end of the day I switched back to SharpReader, simply because the only thing that I really liked was the ability to spell check my posts, so I downloaded w.bloggar along with the #Reader plug-in... Very nice combination...
What I've missed more in NG is that when you have a feed like the www.neowin.net with only the urls, #reader shows the fullpage, while NG shows only the link... It's a matter of taste, but I prefer the first solution...
The second thing is that I read a lot of feeds, and with NG I have a lot of mess in Outlook... Especially when I only want to check the E-mail and I end up reading all the posts...
BTW I think that NG is a great program, perhaps I'm not used to it.
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