A Smooth Sea Never Made a Skillful Sailor

to insert a period '.' in a sentence without going to the special characters page, double tap the space bar and it will insert it and advance one space. That's if in keyboard settings you didn't change a setting to insert a period. This was a new one for me since I don't go to keyboard settings too often.

This script allows you to quickly get a day of week from a provided date in the past. Quickly get the DOB date to test it :). (get-date "1/1/2008").DayOfWeek p.s. works just as well for future dates: PS C:\Powershell> (get-date "01/20/2009").DayOfWeek Tuesday Quick, what is the significance of this date? Taken from "Manning Windows Powershell in Action"

hit CTRL-Q when you want to view all your open tabs for a thumbnail preview of all tabs.

I just stumbled upon an IDE for Powershell that is surprisingly free and actually pretty well made. It is called PowerGUI. I used it for only a few minutes so far but as far as I can tell, I'll be using this more often. I previously tried out Idera's product but budgets are tight and we need a free solution. What makes PowerGUI so good: 1. Intelisense or auto-completion 2. Can run in debug mode. 3. Can execute right inside the IDE w/out launching PowerShell prompt. 4. Free 5. An active community with other cmdlets. 6. Allows for snap-ins for other Microsoft Tools. 7. Allows to run Powershell tasks w/out Powershell knowledge. 8. Export results to a lot of different formats. 9. Review the built-in scripts. Will let you know if I find more stuff.

Backtrack is a security-oriented live distribution that you can find out more at Link . With security in mind, it has features to search for easily cracked passwords, port scan, intrusion detection, etc. I haven't had a chance to play with it enough yet but I intend to break it apart. It has features that will be useful for my work as MSSQL DBA as well. Now that I wasted enough of your time I will describe the steps. 1. Download the USB Live iso from the download section of the website above. 2. Install isoBuster on your Windows machine. 3. Open the USB iso in isoBuster. 4. plug in a USB key with at least 1GB of space. You will lose all data on your key so use one you don't need. Save/backup all data :). 5. Format the USB with FAT32. Use disk management from Administrative tools in Windows. 6. in isoBuster, maximize the bottom Slax folder of the image. 7. Right click the boot folder and extract to the USB key. 8. Right click the BT3 folder and extract to the USB key. 9. In Wind

hak5 Tekzilla Systm Commandn Cranky geeks Epic-fu In no particular order. I watch these on my iPhone :-D

so I sold out and got me 3g with 16gb. Best mobile experience I've ever had! I'm blogging from it :). It has keyboard lag and battery dies quick. I upgraded to new firmware and I began to get random reboots, it froze once, apps stopped working so I had to reinstall them. I do not get the gps problem everyone is talking about. I had to re-edit this post on a computer because I couldn't change misspelled words on iPhone. The phone reboots once in a while as well, it's very surprising for an Apple product, but then again, I was never an Apple user so I can't say their stuff is super. With all that it's still a wonderful device.

I can't wait for SQL 2K8. There are many wonderful features available with this release, some of which are backup compression, backup encryption and more flexible configuration options like tempdb location etc. Microsoft Betanews Builder.au

I recently stumbled upon an article by Tara Kizer that lists her commonly used db tasks. I think this article is pure gold and would like to share it with you. I already implemented a few of these jobs on my production servers and I am beginning to see positive results. Tara is suggesting to put maintenance jobs into a database dedicated just for that, maintenance and then schedule these stored procedures as jobs. Read Link Enjoy!

I finally figured out what is happening to my reports. One maintenance task is being reported a number of times when maintenance task runs. If you specify "all user dbs" instead of "these dbs" and selecting each user db separately, report will be e-mailed multiple times, depending on how many user dbs you have. I've opened a case with Microsoft previously on this matter but could never explain it right to them. This made my day!

all I can say is wow:

WOW! there's something sexy and wrong about this:

this is not techie but I love Transporter franchise and here's the trailer to the new one: Enjoy!

Just watch the video... here's the official site

This little app is a must for Windows users that have multiple tabs open on their desktop. It is pretty much the same thing you get with Compiz on Linux and Expose on Mac. There are a bunch of settings but I didn't even bother. I got what I need from it. Highly recommend. Get it here . UPDATE: I have a mainframe console running on my machine at work that's called TSO (Time-Share Option), so the keys to navigate are F10 and F11 for left and right. This brings me to an interesting point, you may have to reassign keys for DExpose2 to use other shortcuts. Btw, in default DExpose2 install: F10 initiates Expose, F9 brings you back to the way the window was before and F11 shows desktop. Thanks.

This blog is about Linux but by day I'm doing the "dark force" type of things :). I'm a Microsoft SQL DBA, go figure, anyway. I had a problem with an old backup file being locked by a process and wouldn't get deleted either by VB script job or Enterprise manager utilities. I needed to identify what process was holding the file. I fired up Process Monitor, a little utility that identifies pretty much more info than I'd ever need. Lo' and behold, there was my file being locked by Tivolli tape backup process. I highly recommend sysinternals suite that you may download from SysInternals . The suite is huge and I haven't used many other utilities, so if you do get to use others, please leave a comment on what were you trying to do and how well it worked out for you. Thanks.

Reader got a few changes recently like an updated toolbar at the bottom, I'm used to the old look but it's fine. Also another very good feature is to share with notebook. Notebook is surprisingly an overlooked tool and it helps me a lot. Now instead of sharing with blogger I can share with my notebook and come back later to my notes. Thumbs Up!

Ok this is a rant post. I don't understand how a company like Verizon doesn't care about their clients. My phone and data plan add up to $80 after my corporate discount. To other carries, I would be considered a valuable customer. Not so with Verizon. I've tried to upgrade to another phone so many times.. well every time my Q gets unstable. Verizon customer support reply is to do a hard reset. It isn't a big deal to most people but to me it is. To fix my phone, means I have to lose all my settings. It takes a few good hours to restore them and as a consumer, I don't believe I should be doing this at all, let alone every three months. I called the customer support and requested to upgrade to a new phone. They are offering me Blackberry World Edition for $349 after a rebate. Now, are you kidding me? You want me to sign another two-year contract for another sub-par device? I no longer wish to stay with Verizon and the minute my contract runs out, which is next month :)

I love Last.FM and as far as I know there is no dedicated client for Linux coming from Last.FM. Fortunately Amarok, a media player client coming with KDE does Last.FM. This puts Amarok by far above any media client available for Linux. KDE is coming for Windows folks as well and they too can enjoy Amarok and Last.FM if they choose to instead of the client provided by Last.FM. Enjoy and have a nice Sunday...

this feature is pretty cool, I changed my picture on my global buddy list for all my IM accounts (Google Talk, AOL, Yahoo, MSN, Facebook, ICQ). Turns out it changes the photo everywhere. Now in my GMail I got the new picture from the Digsby buddy list. I love Digsby!!!

last week they surveyed the users what other IM clients to add and today they have Facebook IM out! I get impressed with Digsby every day. By far the best client and support!

I went to see "Where in the world is Osama Bin Laden?" on Friday night. This film was just what I expected and then some. It felt like I was watching Borat. However, this was a serious film making you ask serious questions. It is unbelievable how much Saudis hate America and how little they know about us. Regardless, I highly recommend to watch this film, you will have a great time because it's funny and serious at the same time. Five stars on my end!!!

Another Friday, another update. Downloading as I write this.. Will see what happens.

The day I was waiting for is finally here. After a six-month wait, ver. 8.04 is out. Go on and cop it at the official Ubuntu site . I did a fresh install on my pc with ATI card. After years of pain with the ATI drivers, I'm happy to announce that Compiz 3D effects now work out of the box. I installed the OS in 20 minutes, OS booted, found my proprietary ATI drivers, installed, rebooted and my desktop cube now works w/out any extra tweaking. Love the new version.... Go get ittttt!

ok, there's a new update to Agile Messenger but so far I haven't seen any changes except for the welcome screen graphic looking more pleasant, I guess its a bug fix, if I do find something new, I'll holler.

Update: I posted this on MIXX since DIGG was taken care of by someone already, except that that user didn't really write a good preview for it so it got buried. This report is generating some buzz though. I emailed this report to Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu fame and little did I know, HE ANSWERED!!!! Whoever answered me on that side of the e-mail pipe liked the report and was wondering if it was official and whether he could quote from it. It definitely is official and I forwarded him the e-mail with this report, he said he will pass it down internally. That made my day, it's amazing that a man of his statute, that's if it was him, answers e-mails from regular people like me. That's what I call a real genuine pioneer! Thank you Mark and all of the Ubuntu Staff. Read

I got a new update notification for my Agile Mobile Messenger today when I started it up on my Motorola Q. I decided to upgrade and so far I've seen a few pleasant changes. Fonts have been changed and it's much better to look at my buddy list. Also, chats look much better with the new fonts and Sender/Receiver are in bold Red and Blue, very nice change from previous. I looked through the preferences and I don't see any functionality changes but aesthetics are nice. Perhaps it was a bug fix as well but I have no confirmation on that unless I keep using the messenger. If I find out more, I'll update the post. Update: Today I got another update, probably a bug fix after yesterday. Another noticeable feature is that now a new IM notification is not three continuous vibrations but one long vibration. Also, smiley face graphics are completely different than standard graphics and pretty cool.

Hey all, my new favorite multi-protocol IM client is soon to become a multi-platform client. It is still in beta and they're already rolling out a client for the other two platforms. It is a great news to me because I literally fell in love with Digsby on Windows and every time I find myself using Kopete or Pidgin on Linux I yearn for Digsby. It is just so great at what it does. Hope the Linux client is not crippled and offers just as many features as Windows. Sign up for notification here . p.s. Ars did a nice and simple review of Digsby here . Talk to you soon.

hello all, the moment I was waiting for is finally here. There's a new free Multi-platform IM client on the horizon and its called Octro . I heard it first today on Boy Genious Report and instantly downloaded it. Surprisingly, it is not screwing up my phone as bad as Fring did. The IM alert is same as Agile Messenger, GUI is similar but I think it has more options and it's still free while in beta. BGR reports that it will remain free. I didn't try a voice call yet but chatting works as it should. It has some functions unique to the installation that I didn't see on other apps. I really like color coding your messages and people you're chatting with and group chat functions. Agile is great but it is no longer free. One function that Octro has that Agile still didn't get right was opening web links. That finally works. Also, rendering long IM messages never worked well on Agile. This thing works well. So far I am fairly impressed and will probably ditch Agile on

It's been a long time... I'd like to bring to your attention an IM client that took me by surprise. Digsby is something more than just an IM client, its a powerhouse. Supports all of the popular protocols and updates to social networks (Facebook and MySpace). The GUI and features are so well designed, notifications are great and flexibility is there. I've tried AIM, MSN, Pidgin, Kopete, Trillian but none come close to Digsby, so far only a Windows client available but there will be a Linux and OSX versions available too. Currently in private beta, after downloading the client enter code "lifehacker" to use Digsby . Enjoy.