I'm sure most of you have seen the (original) movie Predator, released back in 1987.

First, Jesse Ventura became the governor of Minnesota in 1999. Next came Arnold Schwarzenegger who became governor of California in 2003. Also in 2003 Sonny Landham ran for governor of Kentucky. He is now running for the US Senate.

I got an opportunity to attend the LA C# User Group tonight, and listen to Mike Vincent speak on this subject. I'm familiar with the concepts and capabilities of dynamic languages, but looked forward to getting my questions answered.

The behaviors of a dynamic language include several cool behaviors:

• Extend the program by adding new code
• Extend objects and definitions
• Modify the type system

The downside:

• No compiler safety net
• IDE maturity such as Intellisence
• TDD becomes very important

The Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) adds a set of services on top of the CLR to support dynamic languages. It will be distributed with Silverlight, IronPython, and IronRuby. Here's a cool graphic Scott Hanselman posted last year that explains the roadmap past, present, and future:

Other notes:

• The Silverlight CLR 2.0 won't support CodeDOM, so the need for a dynamic language really becomes evident.
• Django is a high-level framework for Python comparable to Ruby on Rails, and at PyCon 2008 (March 2008) Microsoft demonstrated Django's use on Iron Python
• John Lam demonstrated Ruby on Rails running on IronRuby at RailsConf (May 2008)

On a side note, one of the attendees told me about the Google App Engine, allowing you to run your application on Google's infrastructure.

You can download Mike's presentation here.

Tonight is the maiden voyage of the Idaho SQL Server User Group and what a way to send it off - with Kalen talking about SQL Server 2005.

Counting heads in the room, it looks like we have about 33 people, including Kalen and Cindy Gross (Microsoft). That's a nice sized group for an evening gathering of a user group in Boise.

After enlightening us with her background, and deep history working with SQL Server, Kalen jumped right into the nuts and bolts of SQL Server 2005: The Costs of Concurrency.

In typical FireStarter event style, this event will be delivering a first class experience to all attendees and make them experts on developing on SharePoint technologies before the end of the event. There should be great speakers from the Microsoft roster presenting some awesome topics that will help you build and customize web sites with SharePoint and Web 2.0 technologies.

Logistics

Where: Microsoft Conference Center (Building 33) – Kodiak Room

When: June 11th 2008 - Wednesday

Free stuff: Breakfast and lunch provided, lots of swag

Attending

Click here to register to attend In-person 

Click here to attend via Live Meeting! (the in-person event will have a better experience)

If you have any questions, please contact Mithun.

Elegant Code is hosting an Open Spaces session.  An Open Spaces session is a discussion where the attendees generate the topics. There will be no presentation, no lecture, no PowerPoint slides, etc.  The main point of this is a discussion were all the attendees can grow and learn from each other. The topics for discussion will be created by the group. The discussion will be facilitated, but just to keep the conversation going, not to drive it in any direction.

The first one will be held on June 3rd, at the Casa Mexico Restaurant in the Hyde Park section of Boise.  They offer beer and wine in addition to the great "South of the Border" food.

If you would like to attend, please RSVP at scott.schimanski@gmail.com.

Location

Casa Mexico Restaurant  1605 N. 13th St. (Hyde Park), Boise, Idaho (Downstairs in the brick building)

When

Tuesday evening, June 3rd, 6:30-8:30.

Can someone please help them? While traveling through PHX today, on my way to Houston, I logged on to their "Sky Harbor Public WLAN" and actually got connected. They must have upgraded their gear, because a year ago it was not so friendly. Also, all of the US Airways clubs have ditched their private wireless networks and gone with using the general Sky Harbor Public WLAN network, which means even more travelers will see this embarrassing error:

Maybe I can convince my friends in the Phoenix web-dev community to give them a call at (602) 273-3300 and help them out!

The newly formed Boise SQL Server User Group kicks off its first meeting with Kalen Delaney on June 25, 2008.

I'm happy to see a Microsoft SQL Server user group in Boise. It will fit nicely with the other development and SharePoint groups in town.

For more information, contact Cindy Gross of Microsoft.

This is a very popular question on various forums, but none of them exactly answered the problem for my situation, so I wanted to share my approach.

Scenario

• Windows Server 2003 (local)
• Windows Server 2008 (remote)
• HP4345MFP installed on my (local) home network at IP Address 192.168.1.115 port 9100

• I'm sitting at the (local) 2003 server and when I remote desktop (RDP) into my (remote) 2008 server I want to print locally to my HP. Seems like a common use case, but I couldn't get it work for the life of me, until today.

Fix Attempt 1 - Enable local devices (didn't help)

Checked the box on the Remote Desktop Connection options to enable local printer devices.

Fix Attempt 2 - Try fix mentioned in article 302361 (didn't help)

The article mentioned a registry hack, which I tried even though it said that (local) Windows Server 2003 machines were exempt from needing the fix.

Fix Attempt 3 - Install the HP4345 driver on the (remote) Windows Server 2008 (didn't help)

This step made sense to me, because the applications local to the remote server would need to have a local driver to print against. I installed the HP LaserJet 4345 mfp PCL 5 driver, but it didn't help. I left the driver on there.

Fix Attempt 4 - Rename the printer to the exact same name as on the local machine (didn't help)

I found a couple of threads that mentioned this, so I did it. I named the (remote) Windows Server 2008 printer HP the same name as the (local) Windows Server 2003 printer: HP4345MFP.

Local HP4345MFP Properties	Remote HP4345MFP Properties

Fix Attempt 5 - Change the port of the Remote HP4345 printer (Success!)

My last resort was going to be to configure the server to connect back through the Internet to my home network, opening up port 9100 to the world. While researching this, I came across a possible solution. Thinking that the remote desktop session would provide some hooks into my local machine's ports, I opened the Properties window of the remote printer (as Administrator) and started going down the list of interesting ports beginning with TSXXX. Some of these were titled Inactive TS Port and some had "Gemini" in the description. Gemini is the name of my local computer, so I knew I was close. I started checking boxes and doing trial prints, until the LaserJet came to life. For me, TS003 was the winner!

I had to show off my three amigos here. In 2007, as in 2006, I logged enough Global Impact activities to achieve the gold status award. Along with it came the bronze and silver awards as well. This time, they are mounted to more easily sit on a shelf ... or so that the RDs don't try to use them in a car wash or something.

... and I'm already hard at work in 2008 working to link companies and the community with Microsoft.

Congrats to some of my fellow RDs who also achieved the gold award: Tomislav Bronzin (Croatia), Damir Tomicic (Germany), Jonathan Goodyear (US), Tedeusz Golonka (Poland), Vinod Unny (India), and 40 others.

Learn more about the Microsoft Regional Director (RD) program here.

You'd think this would be simple wouldn't you? Well, I liken it to trying to get out of a Casino - the doors are not clearly marked, for obvious reasons.

Here's my scenario

I have a domain (or two) registered at GoDaddy, because I purchased the domains from somebody and/or had a knee-jerk reaction to their cheap rates and/or wanted to use their heightened protection and affiliated Domains By Proxy service. In any event, I'd rather move them to my preferred registrar: DirectNIC. I've been with them for years and their services are exactly what I need and their UI is (ahem) easy to understand.

First, I started by reading this guy's blog post, but it only gets me so far. I've updated the instructions to include steps for handling Domains By Proxy and the transfer to DirectNIC.

Part 1 - Unlock/un-protect the domains

1. Login to GoDaddy using your customer # / login name and password.

2. Click on the Domains > My Domains link on the menu.

3. Check the box next to the domain(s) you want to transfer and click the Locking link on the menu bar.

4. Select Unlock and click OK.

5. Click OK again to confirm.

6. Click the domain link of the domain you want to transfer.

7. Verify Domain Ownership Protection is off.

If Domain Ownership Protection is ON (i.e. you have the platinum registration), then you need to call GoDaddy and get manual instructions, involving an email exchange. Quite painful, but very protective.

8. Click the Authorization Code Send by Email link and then click OK to send the email

9. Monitor the email account associated with the domain registration and retrieve the 16 character authorization code.

Part 2 - If you have registered privately using Domains By Proxy

1. Login to DomainsByProxy using your customer # / login name and password (which may not be the same as your GoDaddy ones).

2. Click the My Domains link.

3. Locate the domain(s) you want to transfer and check the boxes to "Cancel Your Private Registration" and click Continue.

4. Confirm by selecting Yes and clicking Submit.

If you are stopped because of a "One or more selected domains have domain protection on." message, then see step 1-7 above.

5. Repeat for the other domains you want to transfer.

Part 3 - Initiating the Transfer to DirectNIC

1. Login to DirectNIC using your username and password.

2. Click the Domain Transfers link on the left.

3. Enter the domain(s) you want to transfer and click OK.

4. Confirm the contact information and click Continue Purchase.

5. Specify how many years to register and click Continue Purchase.

6. Enter billing information and click Purchase.

7. Transfer request email(s) is/are sent to the administrative contacts for the domain(s) being transferred.

Part 4 - Approving and Finalizing the Transfer

1. Monitor the email account of the GoDaddy domain administrative contact.

2. In the email sent from DirectNIC, click the link at the bottom to approve the transfer.

3. On the DirectNIC page, select Approve and enter the Authorization Info received in 1-9 above and a contact phone number.

4. Say goodbye to Daddy.

We all know the sedentary lifestyle of your classic IT person can lead to ... shall we say ... bloat. I regularly joke that the only thing bigger than your typical (Unix) system administrator is his beard. I jest.

Anyway, we do what we can to avoid the bloat, including running (literally) some form of carbon-based defrag on a regular basis, to compact that extra space.

... and it may be working across the industry.

Here's my evidence.

When registering for a Microsoft developer event in 2005, notice the shirt sizes go to 6XL ...

But, for this year's Tech-Ed Developer conference, only 4XL ...

I'm going to assume that Microsoft has leveraged the cool data-mining features in SQL Server to determine that 5XL and 6XL sizes are vanishing.

It's generally known that if you want to run any tests, code analysis, or database project build/deployment that you need to install one or more Team Edition of VSTS on your build server. What's not so well known are the licensing ramifications around these scenarios.

Fortunately Jeff Beehler, Team System Chief of Staff, has posted on this subject.

To summarize:

If the users creating the builds are licensed users of the edition in question (or Team Suite), that license extends to Team Foundation Build and you don't need to purchase an additional license. One way to think about it is: the people that are using the Team editions need to be properly licensed which in turn ensures the that the build machines are covered as well. Users who merely queue (execute) and review the automated builds are only required to have a Team Foundation Server CAL.

Back home now, and I have a moment to get the photos downloaded from my camera and uploaded to my blog. Next time I'll take my SD card reader with me.

As you can see, registration was quite busy. I heard that there were 4000 people there, but didn't count them myself. The long lines delayed the keynote by about an hour:

Douglas McDowell and I snuck into the press area. Well, he was officially press (SQL Server Magazine), but I wasn't - still I took more notes than most of the other pressies there.

The main screen was huge, and 3D. We estimated about 80' wide and 20' tall. When no slides were on the screen, there was a spinning 3D Earth enclosed in curley brackets. Hey, what about VB?

After the keynote, there was a short walk to the LA convention center, where the breakout sessions, chalk-talks, exhibitor area, etc. Fortunately, we had these interpretive dancers along the way to keep us from getting lost.

The line to lunch was too long, so we ducked inside to check out the exhibitor area.

I was there (where it says "You Are Here")

Attendees attending one of Doug Seven's chalk talks on Team System.

Doug was all about the writing quality code and the 3 C's in his talk (Code Coverage, Code Analysis, and the new Code Metrics)

After I turned in my evaluation form, I picked up the attendee bag, which had  lots of goodies, including a hard-bound, coffee-table style book called "Heroes Happen Here" which contains IT heroes from all around the world, photographed by Carolyn Jones. And yes, I got my book signed!