Did you know you can get a Blackberry for $.01 at Amazon.com? Just head on over to the Blackberry page at Amazon and you’ll find several Blackberry models for just a penny. These deals even include free shipping!  Sprint, T-Mobile, AT&T, and Nextel all have models for sale at Amazon.

There is a catch, though.  In order to get these deals you need to purchase a new service plan.  If you were going to do this anyhow, and are able to afford the monthly data fees, why not get a Blackberry?

As for myself, I recently got the MOTOKRZR from Verizon with an extension of my service plan with them.  Maybe next time.

Yesterday, around 7:00 PM Eastern Time, the last known instance of Windows ME was put to rest. At least that’s how it felt to me. You see my parents (two very bright people I’ll have you know) have been running Windows ME for the past seven years, to my horror. Saturday night they finally purchased a new computer and Sunday night I had everything set up for them.

I had begged my parents for years to upgrade to Windows XP, but they never got around to it. In that timespan, they went through three computer monitors, and “the computer is running so slow” phone calls to their loving son. My reply was always, “you need to upgrade”. When Vista launched, I knew they were going to need new hardware as there was no way their old Dell would be able to run Vista. In the end, the computer did my convincing for me, and I didn’t have the heart or free time to resuscitate it one last time.

The Windows ME machine didn’t go down without a fight, however. I hooked up their cable modem up to the new laptop and of course Windows Vista didn’t have any drivers to handle the device. “No problem”, I thought to myself. “I’ll just hop on the Internet and download the driver.” Then I remembered the only internet connection I had was on the ME machine, the same one that took five minutes to download a simple web page. Add to this a toddler who was giving my wife quite a workout, and the situation was stressful to say the least. We decided to hit the pool while the driver downloaded. I cursed at myself for not bringing my laptop.

Sufficiently waterlogged after an hour in the pool, we returned inside and my download was complete. I plugged the USB drive into the ME machine, rebooted (the only way it would recognize the drive) , and copied the driver to the device. Next I installed the driver on the new laptop and it recognized the modem. R.I.P. Windows ME.

Maybe my parents weren’t the last ones to be running Windows ME, but it sure felt like it. It sure feels nice now that they have bought their new computer. Windows Vista isn’t the greatest, but it sure will be easier for me to manage.

I’m not sure what my parents will do with the old computer. If it was mine I’d probably reformat the hard drive and install Linux. At some point we’ll have to get their data off the old machine onto the new one. That’s a project for another day. In the meantime, my Mom and Dad are very grateful to be able to connect to the Internet on their new computer, without have to wait a lifetime. I told them that was one favor I did for them compared to a thousand they have done for me.

Anyone else know of a Windows ME machine still out there in the wild?

I learned a cool little trick the other day, something that will help me immensely with testing my SQL Server 2005 security setup. The trick I learned is the Execute As clause in T-SQL.

I have a database that I want certain users to be able to work with, but not others. In the past I would set up security as I thought it should be set up and then ask a user to test it out. This is a pain in the butt, to put it nicely. First of all, people are busy and don’t always want to be bothered to test things for a DBA. Second of all, people don’t like to know they can’t do things. With Execute As, I no longer have to bug any users. I can “Execute As” that user.

For example, let’s suppose I don’t want UserA to be able to Select from the ExecutiveSalary table in the Employee database. If I’m a member of the sysadmin role (which I am) I can simply say:

Execute as user=’UserA’

Select *

From Executive Salary

SQL Server will try to do the Select statement using UserA’s permissions rather than my own, and UserA never has to know. This is just one of those easy tricks that are sometimes easy to miss, but that really make an administrator’s life easier.

When I first purchased my laptop and started running Vista, I was a big fan of the new GUI interface, especially Window Aero. As I began installing my applications, however, I began to notice some problems with the interface. I wrote this post originally on my writing blog, but I thought I’d post it on this site as it fits better here (with a few edits):

As I mentioned in my hard-drive recovery with Linux post, my P.C. died a few months ago. In it’s place I bought a laptop,which came pre-installed with Windows Vista Home Premium. I’m not one to be an early adopter for anything made by Microsoft, but I also didn’t want to get stuck with an operating system Microsoft was going to abandon in a few years (I’m talking about XP - I hope they don’t abandon Vista). Vista has performed well for me so far, except for a few gotchas (don’t get me started on hardware compatibility, though).

First of all, though, I like the new look and feel of Windows. Sometimes, it’s just nice to have a change. Also, if you have the proper graphics card and such (I do), you can run a version of Vista that includes Windows Aero which has such features as translucent windows and Window Flip 3D. See the pictures below.

Not too bad for Windows, right? Unfortunately, there is a problem. Some applications disable Windows Aero. For example, if you use applications such as QuickTime or iTunes, Windows automatically disables Windows Aero, which means no more translucent windows and no more Flip 3D. I haven’t found a list anywhere that describes which programs are incompatible with Aero, so it’s kinda hit and miss when you install something new.

If your version of Aero seems to have stopped working, use MSConfig to see what you have running at startup (type MSConfig at the Run Command). If you are having trouble finding the Run Command in Windows Vista, simply press the Windows key and “R” key together. It seems they hid the Run command by default in Vista.

Anyhow, I just thought I’d post this for all of you Windows users who wondered why their desktops weren’t as pretty as they used to be. You are probably just running something that doesn’t play nicely with Vista yet.

********************UPDATE****************************

After downloading the newest version of iTunes, I seem to have less of a problem with Aero. I’m still having problems with my Vista Sidebar, as it seems to be disabled on startup 50% of the time, due to software conflicts. As I’ve said before, though, I really don’t use it much anyhow.

I thought I’d share a little information with you today about something I came across when upgrading to SQL Server 2005, so you can avoid some of the frustrations I had to deal with.

In our SQL Server 2000 environment we had a few DTS packages which import data every night from text files via the scheduler. These packages were a pain in the butt to set up, because they were importing data from text files that weren’t delimited. This meant defining all those columns as fixed width using that horrible interface. Anyhow, when upgrading to SQL Server 2005 the last thing I wanted to do was re-create these DTS packages.

Luckily SQL Server 2005 has a conversion utility to convert these DTS packages to SSIS packages. This worked well and I had my packages in SQL Server 2005. I created a job to run my SSIS packages and that worked fine too. The problems arose when I tried to schedule these jobs. No matter what I did, the scheduled job always failed (even though I could right click on the job name, click Start Job at Step.. and the job would run successfully).

Each time I would get an error that said, “Failed to decrypt protected XML node “PackagePassword” with error 0×8009000B”. I had no real password protections on this package, so I really wasn’t sure what this error meant. Oh, I forgot to mention one thing: when we upgraded to SQL Server 2005 we also started on a new server, one that was 64-bit. It turns out this is an important detail.

Anyhow, that was the problem. The solution is a simple one, once you know it. When setting up your job, rather than defining the Type as “SQL Server Integration Services Package” as below,

instead choose “Operating system (CmdExec)”.

In the Command Window enter the following string:
“C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\90\DTS\Binn\dtexec.exe” /SQL “namehere” /SERVER ServerNameHere /MAXCONCURRENT ” -1 ” /CHECKPOINTING OFF /REPORTING E

Make sure to replace namehere with the name of your SSIS Package and ServerNameHere with the name of your server. Schedule this and it should run, using the old DTS execution engine.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am a subscriber to Popular Science Magazine. One of my favorite parts of the magazine, and the section I turn to first, is the How 2.0 Section. How 2.0 is basically a section of the magazine filled with D.I.Y. projects. They usually have an insane but cool project, a medium difficulty project, and one I could do and afford.

I’ve come to find that they have the How 2.0 Section on the web, which is nice because you can click on the links in the articles to buy parts, etc., something that obviously isn’t possible in the print version.

Anyhow, I’m lacking any ideas to write about today, I thought I’d share the link. I hope you find something there you like.

The current issue of Popular Science contained an article about a 3D printer, a device that is able to “print” 3-dimensional objects from blueprint files, such as CAD files. This isn’t a new idea. However, the device talked about in the article, The Desktop Factory 3D printer, only costs $5,000 and according to the article the company hopes to eventually sell the device for under $1,000. I honestly never thought such a device would be available to the general public in my lifetime, but I guess I was wrong. For only $400 more than the cost of an iPhone you can theoretically print and object you can imagine? Sign me up.

According to the company, they are saving the amount of money it costs to produce the device by using a halogen lamp for a light source rather than lasers. There is a pretty informative video on their site called Turning Ideas Into 3-D Products, which from what I gather originally aired on CNN. Toys, gaming avatars, and replacement parts for devices at home are some of the objects they think people would want to “print”.

There are a few potential problems that I can forsee with the device. First of all, I wonder how much it costs for replacement printer cartridges. Maybe they won’t be too expensive. I don’t know. Secondly, this thing produces plastic objects. If it really catches on, that means there will be more plastic out there in the world. I don’t know if that’s a good thing. Maybe you will be able to recycle you mistakes.

Anyhow, this seems like an amazing piece of technology that may be available to us everyday folks not too long from now. Who would’ve thought that even 10 years ago?

Microsoft released two updates for Windows Vista on August 8th. These updates are currently available from Microsoft’s download site only (not Windows Update).

The first update “improves the compatibility and reliability of Windows Vista” and can be downloaded here: KB938194.

The second update “performance and reliability of Windows Vista” and can be downloaded here: KB938979.

I guess once you install these updated Vista will be twice as reliable

Apparently there were unauthorized versions of these floating around last week before they were yanked by Microsoft.

I’m running Windows Vista on my home computer, but I’m going to wait a bit before I install these updates. I prefer not to be a pioneer when it comes to software, Windows in particular.

Anyone out there install the updates yet? Notice any performance or reliability improvements?

A few months ago, I wandered into my computer room in search of something (I can’t remember what it was since I was not getting much sleep at the time due to my newborn daughter) and I heard the dreaded clicking noise emanating from my trusty P.C. which though a little long in the tooth, had lasted my since college (6 years, wow!) with only a RAM upgrade and a new hard drive. The previous time I had hard drive problems I was able to buy a new drive, use the old one as a secondary drive (slave), and still get at my data. This was my initial hope. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out.

As I was having these problems, I wrote about it on my other blog. That’s where Mike suggested I try booting Linux directly from a CD. Desperate to try anything, I started researching my options and came across Knoppix Linux.

My experience with Knoppix was a pretty good one. There really isn’t much to using it. First of all, you need to download the ISO Image file from one of the mirror sites. This is, of course, assuming you have access to a high speed Internet connection somewhere (at work, or in a public place somewhere?). Once the .iso file is downloaded, burn the image to a CD with your favorite burning software (the Knoppix Downloading FAQ has some information on how to do this, if you don’t know how).

Now that you have your disk, the next step is to put the disk in the computer with the messed up hard drive and turn it on. Enter your computer’s bios settings (varies from computer to computer) and set the computer to boot from the CD drive. Exit setup and you computer should start booting Knoppix.

The computer may take some time to boot from CD. Mine did (note my CD-ROM was over 6 years old). I doubt it would ever load as fast as it could from the hard drive. This isn’t a big deal, but is something to consider if you are in a hurry or not a patient person.

The moment of truth comes once Knoppix is loaded. Hopefully it was able to detect your hard drive and your hard drive wasn’t too damaged. Unfortunately, mine physically wasn’t able to run long enough for Knoppix to detect it. The disk would spin, the clicking would start, and then the disk would fail. If Knoppix is able to detect your drive I suggest you get your data off of it as fast as possible. You never know how much time you have left on the defective drive. Hopefully you have a nice sized USB drive handy you can copy data to.

My damaged drive sits on my desk in my computer room, waiting for the time when I have enough money to have someone professionally retrieve the data (probably never). I even tried the freezer method which did nothing but make the drive cold.

I am interested in success stories with Knoppix, so if you have been able to recover data using this method please let me know in the comments.

I just wanted to follow up my post last Friday about the plug-in Prius. It turns out there are some more options. Earth2Tech had a post today with more information on how to give your Prius a plug.

According to the article, the company Hymotion has a solution that costs around $10,000 and Energy CS has a solution that costs around $15,000. These are still expensive, but better than the $35,000 than the other option (though that one does give you better gas mileage.

I don’t have a hybrid and even if I did, I don’t have the money to pay for one of these conversions. However, knowing that these types of technologies are out there does give me some comfort that people are working on solutions that will hopefully help us get our balls back from the big oil companies. After all, I’d rather spend my money on gadgets rather than gasoline.