Page Brooks "Mr. Silverlight" has just kicked it up a notch...

Imagine the Silverlight developer community in a friendly competition to created to see who can write the best Silverlight control.

That's what has begun at GoSilverlight.org, brain child of Page.

From the site:

Welcome to the Silverlight Control Builder Contest! With this contest, we hope to incite the development of many open and free Silverlight Controls that all developers can use in their applications...

... and win some pretty cool prizes...

Prizes? Oh yeah... Here they are:

1st Place:

• 1-Year MSDN Premium Subscription (Not for Resale)
• Your choice of one book from the entire O'Reilly catalog

2nd Place

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition
• Your choice of one book from the entire O'Reilly catalog

3rd Place

• Essential Silverlight 2 Up-to-Date from O'Reilly
• Your choice of one book from the entire O'Reilly catalog

To read the specific rules and submit your entries visit http://gosilverlight.org/

Download Attempt 1

Download Attempt 2

Hehe... I will keep hitting Ctrl + F5

BTW: Thanks to Jayson, it has been confirmed Mozilla is having some issues...

Today at 10:00 AM Pacific time, Mozilla will release Firefox 3.0!

We want to set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. With the backing of our community and your help we know we can make it. What else can you do?

-- Quoted from SpreadFirefox.com

I have been using Firefox 3.0 (RC and Beta) for a while and really like what I see. The speed and stability have been impressive.
(It really snaps when loading Jayson Rowe's blog!)

Hasbro's new Star Wars Millennium Falcon!!!

It's bigger and better than the one I had when younger... Probably going to be a lot more expensive too!!!

• Light-up headlights and loads of electronic vehicle and weapon sounds – engine boost, cruise mode, fly-by, firing cannons, and more
• Opening, light-up cockpit can fit up to 4 figures.  Vehicle includes Han Solo and Chewbacca and can hold up to 18 figures
• Remove outer panels to access the ship’s interior, then head for the medical bay to treat wounded Rebels
• Secret smuggling compartments to hide from stormtroopers
• Boarding ramp with auto-opening action, deployment sounds and landing lights
• Pivoting gunner station to target Imperial fighters
• Light-up hyperdrive lights and authentic movie phrases and sounds from favorite characters: Han, Luke, Obi-Wan, C-3PO, Chewbacca and R2-D2
• Rotating laser turret fires 2 missiles and makes weapon sounds; ship also features a 3-missile launcher with blasting sounds, and a cannon that launches a “laser” missile
• Missile-firing mini-fighter fits inside an opening docking bay that makes electronic boarding and flight sounds
• Pivoting training probe makes lightsaber and movement sounds – learn the power of the Force
• Illuminated dejarik table with holographic creatures – let the Wookiee win
• Being Released on July 26th (not on Amazon.com... yet...)

Gotta get me Jake & Sam one of those!

(HT: Gizmodo.com)

My good friend Chris Craft started a 30 days of mobile development series last weekend. If you are into mobile development or would like to learn more about it... Check it out. He explains the app, explains the technology, provides screen shots, and provides code in C#. For you VB.NET people... visit Lou Vega's blog for the VB.NET code.

From Chris' site:

Over the years, I have given many presentations on developing Windows Mobile applications. One thing that I have heard time and time again is that people have a hard time writing their first mobile application. I think sometimes people have a hard time taking those first steps. It is easy to think that it will take too much time, and that it will be too hard. But that is simply not the case.

But instead of telling people, I'm going to show them how easy it really is. The key here is simple: "Taking baby steps is better than taking no steps at all!"

I plan on writing 30 mobile applications in the next 30 days. I will publish both the executable and the source code for each application.

My goal is for each of these applications to be useful, interesting, and straight-forward. Someone considering writing their first Windows Mobile application should be able to look at these applications and "get it".

One of the great things about his series...

He is looking for more ideas for his applications.

I encourage you to go to his site and leave him a comment... you never know, he may choose yours to write as part of his 30 day challenge.

I know a lot of you have already seen this and already know about Twitter... If that is you, please hang in there... there are a lot of subscribers and others that read my blog that do not have a clue what it is...

So, what is this twitter thing???

So, if this looks cool to you, go on over to Twitter.com and signup.

Then you can follow me.

If you are reading this and you created or have a twitter account, please leave a comment on this post so I will know about ya and be able to follow you!

Not Twitter!

Here I am @ 3:40 in the morning and can't even tell the world that I am awake!!! What's up with that... People sleeping need to know these things!!! Come on Twitter...

Something is technically wrong.
Thanks for noticing—we're going to fix it up and have things back to normal soon.

I love the error message... Been seeing it more and more...

My kids have been on spring break all week. Being out of school with time on her hands... my daughter, Emilee, made a Spring Break Gift for me. (kind of like a birthday or Christmas gift)

So, knowing that my daughter loves to draw and create things... I could hardly wait to see what she had done for her loving and caring dad.

I open it. She quickly tells me it is a game. It's called "pin the tail game".
(I used to call it pin the tail on the donkey)

I was all cool with that until what came out of her mouth next....

"Dad... that face is a picture of you."

Not sure what to think...

Anyone for a game of pin the tail on a Reeder?

In honor of my good friend Page Brooks...

(thanks to Dark Roasted Blend for to picture)

The other day, we noticed that when our CREATE DATABASE scripts were running... the databases were not created where we expected. Due to our setup, we want the databases and log files to use the SQL Server default locations.

We ran the following T-SQL to verify the default locations:

USE master
GO

DECLARE @SmoDefaultFile nvarchar(512)
EXEC master.dbo.xp_instance_regread N'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE', N'Software\Microsoft\MSSQLServer\MSSQLServer', N'DefaultData', @SmoDefaultFile OUTPUT

DECLARE @SmoDefaultLog nvarchar(512)
EXEC master.dbo.xp_instance_regread N'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE', N'Software\Microsoft\MSSQLServer\MSSQLServer', N'DefaultLog', @SmoDefaultLog OUTPUT

SELECT ISNULL(@SmoDefaultFile,N'') AS [DefaultFile], ISNULL(@SmoDefaultLog,N'') AS [DefaultLog]

Results...

DefaultFile	DefaultLog
--------------------------------	--------------------------------
D:\SQLDbs\Data	D:\SQLDbs\Logs
(1 row(s) affected)

Looks correct... why is it putting the database and log files in:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data

Just to be sure... we verified this setting on the Server Properties screen in SQL Management Studio...

Looks correct...

What we found through testing... In order for the default locations to work as expected... SQL Server must be restarted. I feel (not proven) that SQL Server loads these values from the registry at startup, and does not update when the change happens on Server Properties.

We moved the event to April 29th for this month... Please help us by registering for the event.

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008
Chris Reeder, Chris Craft, and Page Brooks
Topic: SQL Server 2008, Windows Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008 (Respectively)

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008, is the next meeting of the Pee Dee Area .NET User Group.

Chris Reeder, Chris Craft, and Page Brooks will be presenting on the latest exciting new products from Microsoft.  First, Chris Reeder will give us a run down on a few cool features in SQL Server 2008.  Next, Chris Craft will take us on a tour of some excellent new features in Internet Information Services 7 (IIS7).  Page Brooks will finish off the presentation with a few cool tips and tricks in Visual Studio 2008.

Please click the link below to register.  We use this information to determine how much food to buy!

Here is the tentative schedule:
6:00 PM - 6:20 PM Socializing / Free Dinner
6:20 PM - 6:30 PM Introduction, Sponsor Time, and News.
6:30 PM - 8:00 PM Presentations

I started using my Twitter account again... and then it happened...

I broke it!

I am not sure Twitter.com is ready for me!!!

When it gets back up an running...

Please feel free to follow me on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/clreeder

I almost made this post into one long April Fool's joke about me becoming a Microsoft MVP...

but.....

• I could not think of anything I am even close to being competent enough to receive an MVP nomination... much less an actual MVP...
• With a site like StupidProgrammer.com, who would believe me about being an MVP...
• Does Microsoft have a MVP for great blogs... hum... that wouldn't even get me a nomination...
• So, instead...

How about I send a shout out to Chris Craft for receiving his MVP in Device Application Development! That is not an April Fool's joke!

Way to go Chris! You truly do show a deep commitment to the .NET community and have a GREAT willingness to help me others!

Today we noticed our transaction log backups had started failing for our user databases.

From previous experience, I had a hunch that someone had created a new database that was in SIMPLE recovery model. Just an FYI... That will cause the log backup to fail.

Hum... This server has hundreds of databases... Now which is the culprit.

Here is a query you can use to find the recovery model of all you databases.

SELECT 
    'DbName' = name
    , 'RecoveryModel' = DATABASEPROPERTYEX(name, 'Recovery')
FROM   master.dbo.sysdatabases
ORDER BY name

Now... To find which one is SIMPLE?

SELECT 
    'DbName' = name
    , 'RecoveryModel' = DATABASEPROPERTYEX(name, 'Recovery')
FROM   master.dbo.sysdatabases
WHERE DATABASEPROPERTYEX(name, 'Recovery') = 'SIMPLE'
ORDER BY name

Sure enough... There was a database in SIMPLE recovery model.

Hope that helps someone...

I have been reading this blog for some time (one of the best on SQL Server).  Ya need to check out yesterday's post (a list of Microsoft Whitepapers on SQL 2008).

If you want to learn more about Microsoft SQL Server and SQL coding... I HIGHLY encourage you to check out the SQL Server Code,Tips and Tricks, Performance Tuning blog.

I love the quote from the site... (being a big Yoda fan & SQL Server fan & Geek)

I sense many useless updates in you... Useless updates lead to fragmentation... Fragmentation leads to downtime... Downtime leads to suffering... Fragmentation is the path to the darkside...

DBCC INDEXDEFRAG and DBCC DBREINDEX are the force... May the force be with you"

And how their email address is protected... genius...

"run the code below in Query Analyzer/Management Studio to get my email"

SELECT CONVERT(VARCHAR(31),0x73716C736572766572636F646540676D61696C2E636F6D)