Well I passed the 70-228 exam which means I am one test away from my MCDBA.  The best part of it is that I am done with the SQL tests so now I get to focus on what I prefer more, which is development.  To study I used the Microsoft Press book: MCSA/MCSE/MCDBA Self Paced Training Kit: Microsoft SQL Server 2000 System Administration.  I selected this book simply because it appeared to be the best of the poor quality of books out there.  It was a rather boring read, and the hands on training involved running a bunch of prewritten scripts that were sometimes not explained very well.  I passed though, which is what matters.

   What ...

Well I realize that I have fallen extremely far behind and have not finished my tutorial on putting together y DVR setup.  Hopefully I will get to it someday, but now that the steps are no longer fresh in my head it may not happen until I need to build a new box.  If you do have any questions feel free to post a comment and I’ll help you out the best I can.

What I will post about are the steps I need to take to update my box for the new DST settings.  (I hope the energy savings from the change makes up for the pain in that it has been, and the old electronic equipment I have that will now always be off.)

First off check to see what your system is currently set to:

& ...

    Well, the guy who has taught me everything I know about .NET, Bigyan, has taken off for a month to go back to Nepal to get married, leaving me with some very big shoes to fill while he is gone.  While he is gone I have adopted a new philosophy that I am trying to follow, WWBD, What Would Bigyan Do?
    While working on some bug fixes for a web application that we currently have in pilot testing for a client, I found myself working hard trying to prevent a post back, which I knew is exactly what Bigyan would do to increase the quality of the user experience.  I needed to create a custom validator in ASP.NET and could have easily just made it a server side validation, but this would require a post bac ...

     Well, I've been slacking on getting the next blog post out on the steps I used to build my DVR.  I will hopefully get time to post the next steps soon, but for now I just wanted to post an updated on my hardware setup.  Like I had posted earlier, I been wanting to increase the memory in the computer.  It started out with 512MB which was working fine, but I am sure the system would suffer if I was recording two shows and watching a recording.  I went ahead and added 1GB more of memory, giving me a total of 1.5GB.  I didn't do any specific benchmark testing, but the picture did seem to look a little better.  I really wanted this memory boost for when I add an HD tuner card to the system, which I hope to do in the next couple months.
     The other thing I added was another fan to the system.  I have been experience system lo ...

    Well, for sometime now I have been working on building a DVR from a computer.  After several months I am finally at a point where I consider the project done, and I have decided to post a how-to so that others can build one of their own and hopefully bypass a few of the pitfalls that I hit and benefit from my time Googling.
    I chose to build my DVR using MythTV, a Linux DVR platform, and specifically I used the KnoppMyth version.  Why didn't I use Windows Media Center?&a ...

Well, a couple of days ago I passed the Microsoft 70-229 exam, Designing and Implementing Databases with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition.  The book I used to study for this exam was by Microsoft Press, Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Database Design and Implementation.  I wasn't very impressed with this book as it left a bit to be desired.  It seemed to only make reference to some important items on the test, and it would introduce new items in script examples with no explanation.  Plus, I found the sample questions in the book not very reflective of the style of questions on the test.  I realize that it is difficult to cover the entire topic of SQL dat ...

    If you do anything with computers then you probably get this all the time.  It seems like once people get a computer, even though they come to depend on it, they exert very little effort to maintain it, leaving it open to viruses and spyware.  I always get asked to take a look at these computers and a significant part of the time this requires the use of the original Windows CD which the owner never seems to be able to find.  After being stuck at a computer this past Monday with no way to get it booted and a corrupt dll that needed to be replaced, I decided that I should start putting together a "tool kit" that I could have ready to be more prepared for these free service calls. 
    The first item I have added to my toolkit is BartPE.  Run, BartPE, point it at a set of Window ...

I've begun to notice that several people are unaware of a very important feature of terminal services that can come in handy.  When a server is setup for remote administration mode Microsoft allows two remote administration sessions.  There are at least two issues with this  The first one is that there are only two, so if you have three different administrators trying to remotely log into the same server then the third administrator who tries is going to receive a message informing them that they cannot log in.  The other issue is that some applications output their messages to the console, so if you are logged in remotely you may not be able to view a critical message.
    So what's the solution to this?  Well what few people seem to be aware of is that you can remotely connect to the console session.  This allows you to view any error messages that may get outputted directly to ...

    Well, I recently passed the Microsoft 70-290 exam, Managing and Maintaining a Windows Server 2003 Environment and the primary book I used for studying was a book published by Que titled MCSA/MCSE Training Guide: Managing and Maintaining a Windows Server 2003 Environment.  The book was an easy read, but I don't feel it was enough alone to pass the test even though I did manage to do so on the first try.  I do consider the book a good introduction for someone who is not very familiar with Windows server environments.  It goes over all the basics of the features of 2003, but I don't feel the details were covered enough to allow someone to successfully pass the test.  My suggestion would be to go over plenty of practice tests and have hands on experience with Server 2003 ...

  Originally the mail server for cltralt313373.com was running on a FreeBSD box using the qmailrocks setup.  IMHO, this is the best mail setup you can have and it’s all free except for your hardware.  This setup has built in spam and virus filters, webmail access, web administration features, and an excellent mailing list setup.  So what's the only drawback to it?  Well you have to setup and administer it yourself.  Not a problem for day to day activities, but when it comes to upgrades and troubleshooting errors it can get a little hairy.  The support mailing list it full of very helpful people, but trying to get things fixed when you really need to get them fixed fast can be complicated unless you know all the in's and out's of the multiple software packages that are involved in the install.