MSDN’s LadyBug is live

dotNET

From MSDN maven (ooh – that sounds old, but she’s not!) Sara Williams, this new feature of MSDN just went live:

At the MSDN Product Feedback Center, you can submit bugs and suggestions.  You can search through other people’s submitted bugs and suggestions.  You can vote for your favorites.  You can share workarounds.  And, you can see feedback and details directly from folks on our product teams.   Oh, and you can get notified when the status of an issue you’re interested in changes. 

I am *not quite* a non-admin VB6 Developer

Just Rambling

Now that I have switched to non-admin there is one problem that forced me back to admin last time I tried this. Building VB6 executables. This may be due to the fact that this app has been worked on for years as an admin, but as a non-admin, I do not have access to particular registry keys that need to be modified during the build. (And I once did attempt to deal with that, but really screwed up my whole system!) So I finally figured out a workable solution. I can do all of my development in my non-admin mode. When it is time to build (which is rare these days anyway), I just log out, log in as admin, build, do a few QA checks and then when I ‘m happy, log back out and back in to my non-admin login.  THen do the QA checks again and all is well.

I tried to “run as” admin when starting up VB6 but that wasn’t’ working very well (can’t remember what the problem was…). This solution seems to be okay. Just so long as I am not LIVING in admin mode. Then

Unrequited Love & the Tablet PC …

Tablet

Peter Rysavy loves tablets more than anyone I have ever met. He is sad that people don’t just love them like he does. I think Robert Scoble understands that when Peter is unhappy about this, it is just as (or maybe more) valuable to those who are trying to market the whole concept of ink as when he coos about them. He’s just frustrated. Tablets are more than the next new thing or something cool or a meme to him. He really truly loves  and believes the technology. I think that Carl Franklin should write a blues song for Peter’s as-yet unrequited love.

Debugging WinForms and WebForms with a non-admin Domain Account

Tools

I just spent 4 hours trying to figure this out — so here it is for the next sucker.

I have a new machine on my network and it will be my development machine. I added my domain account on to this machine as a non-admin. (Do you hear cheering?) I used an admin account to install my software, including Visual studio.NET, which very kindly added my admin account to the Debugger Users group. However, I need my account to be a Debugger User. I tried the right click run as method which is a pia and works for WinForms but not WebForms – but I hate hacks.

Using the basic tool in Windows XP, you can assign/change groups but you can only have one group at a time. I replaced “Power Users“ with “Debugger Users“ but could not log back in. I needed them both. I went a little further to use the MMC snap-in for “Local Users and Groups“ but come hell or high water (leon, did I get that right?), I could not get it to recognize my domain. I spent a lot of time googling this and saw many requests for help with this problem but no solutions. Here is a snapshot showing the problem of not accessing my domain when trying to add users

Finally I remembered my own similar situation wtih SQL Server a few months ago. After upgrading my server to Win2003 and IIS6, I needed to add the “NT AUTHORITY/NETWORK SERVICE“ account to my sql server logins. The account was just not available through the UI and I had to add it through TSQL (command line).

So with this idea, I started searching again and quickly came across many features of the NET command line tool (part of DOS) that I never knew about. Here is the TechNet reference to this invaluable tool. Net Services Overview  and Net Services Commands

I used the “NET localgroup” command to add my domain account to the local Debugger Users group and now am back in business!

net localgroup “Debugger Users” MYDOMAIN\julie /add

Here are a few key words for google: add domain account group local user accounts windows xp

Woodpecker love

Purely Personal

I have a pair of woodpeckers that like my suet. Usually I see either the male or the female but rarely both at the same time. THe female flies into my windows once in a while. Just now I watched as the female hung out on one post while the male got some suet and brought it over to her. Awwwwwwww. Very sweet. They are “Hairy Woodpeckers” (I’m sure based on the song which you can listen too from that link) although I did wonder if they may be “Yellow bellied sapsuckers”.

How long will the box stay unopened?

Just Rambling

I received my new desktop computer that will replace my “daily driver” last Thursday. I left Sat. a.m. for DevTeach in Montreal and returned last night. I have a lot of work to catch up on, of course. The box is still unopened. it will take some setting up. It has no 0/S on it. I have to flip my 160 GB drive into it and make it the master drive. I have to install the 2GB of RAM I bought at Crucial. I wonder when I’ll get to it?

Maybe I should have a pool where people can make guesses and the winner will get – ummm… hmm how about the 128 MB RAM that I will be extracting from the new p.c. and hanging on my christmas tree?

Back from DevTeach Montreal – what a blast

Just Rambling

DevTeach was once again (and as expected) a wonderful conference. I had a great time hanging out with everyone and this time also got to see a little more of Montreal since my hubby was there for Saturday and Sunday. Marcie ended up hopping a train from Toronto early Monday morning and “crashing” the conference. With Rich back in Vermont, I was able to offer her the other half of my king-sized bed. She definitely had some fans in Montreal.

I really enjoyed doing my sessions. There was definitely a limited “market share” for Whidbey and Tablet SDK but it made the sessions that much more fun to have a small audience of about 10-15 people where I was able to adjust the talk to meet their needs. My tablet talk was preceded with a BSOD as I pressed the Fn & F5 key to push my screen to the projector. Luckily all was well by the time I was supposed to begin and my RC2 bits held up perfectly fine with VS2003 and even asn ASP.NET application.

So far my evals are great (all three of them …heh). But regardless of those, I know that in both sessions – especially the Tablet session – the attendees were really excited to be able to see some of this stuff live and have someone they could ask questions of.