I look at my blog referrals daily. Today, I got all excited because my google search referrals went way above normal.

I finally caught on to what had happened…

Someone was messing with me. I know who you are!!! 

None the less… It was funny…

Here are just a few of the google referrals: (My favorite first)

is chris reeder really yoda? (www.google.com)
chris reeder’s jedi legacy in programming (www.google.com)
Craft is actively Stupid (www.google.com)
page is a stupid programmer (www.google.com)
chris reeder should not delete files accidentally from his camera (www.google.com)
why does chris reeder deletes files accidentally from his camera (www.google.com)

Yeah.. wonder who did this…

chris reeder is promising page an awesome car (www.google.com)

If you are like me, people are constantly calling you and saying stuff like this…

“My computer is running very slow”
“I keep getting pop-ups anytime I browse the internet”
“Please help me, my computer is acting up”

Most of the time, this is due to one of two things… Virus or Spyware

When I ask the question…

“Do you have a virus software package installed?”

The answer is usually…

“I don’t know. Does that cost money?” 

Well, I found several pieces of free software that help me in this constant battle.

Advanced WindowsCare 2 - anti-spyware, privacy protection, performance tune-ups, and system clean.

AVG Anti-Virus – Highlights include automatic update functionality. (great for those users who never update anything)

Ok, maybe not the smartest… but for sure one of those Genius moments… Seriously…

Microsoft will not allow ActiveSync to be installed for Vista!!!

It will be replaced by Windows Mobile Device Centre (WMDC)

Happy Birthday Susanne Reeder!!! I Love You!!!

From time to time, my boss asks me why it will take so long to do what sounds like a simple task…

I found a great posting on codinghorror.com (love his logo) about how a developer’s day is spent. This is especially good for the type of job I am in, with existing legacy application to support, maintain, and modify (That I did not write to begin with).

It may sound like a simple change to a sales person or even to the client; BUT, a good developer asks…. “what will I break if I make the change? What else will be affected? What will this database change break in older version of the applications the clients are still running?”

It is stated on the site that 3x more time is spent understanding code than actually writing it.

Years ago, I debated a friend on the slowness of using Guids in compairison with integers for speed. I always thought of them as a long char value and thought it would be way slower than an using integers.

Phil Denoncourt on his blog did some testing on the comparison between then two. It is a very interesting read, appears to be no speed difference in searching on the two. Maybe one day, I can do some insert speed testing when used as the clustered index of a table. Guids are random char/ string values so I would think they would be way slower on inserting when used as the clustered index. Integers as an identity, would always be sequential so I would think faster…

When handling data for distributed systems, Guids are a must, so this is encouraging information to hear.

Anyone done any testing on this???

I am working on an application for a client using SQL 2005 Merge Replication to 60+ Pocket PC devices. I started setting up replication by creating a Virtual Machine from our base image called Windows2003Base. I then installed SQL 2005 and changed the machine name.

Then I try and create a new Publication and get this message:

“SQL Server replication requires the actual server name to make a connection to the server.
Connections through a server alias, IP address, or any other alternate name are not supported.
Specify the actual server name, ‘oldSQLServerName’, (Replication.Utilities)”

If you run this query, it shows the previous server name.
–Shows incorrect/ old SQL Server name.
SELECT @@SERVERNAME

Then you can execute these two queries (replace your SQL server names), stop and start SQL, and it will resolve this issue.

–Make sure you use Master Database
USE master
GO> >

–Drop old server name
EXEC sp_dropserver ‘OldServerName’
GO>

–Add correct/ current server name
EXEC sp_addserver ‘CorrectServerName’, ‘local’
GO>

Ok… Brace yourself…

I have been getting Error 80072745 when signing into Live Messenger all morning.

Here is the crazy thing I had to do to fix this…

Quote from Raphael

Dear all if you have not heard simply add these addresses to the following file that should be opened with notepad and MSN will work.

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts – (When you open the ETC folder open the HOSTS file using notepad).

insert the following addresses:
65.54.239.80 messenger.hotmail.com
65.54.239.80 dp.msnmessenger.skadns.net

(INSERT THEM DIRECTLY UNDER THE OTHER 2 ADDRESSES AND ALIGN THEM WITH TAB.)

Easy done … good luck.