When running the install for VSeWSSv11.exe, do you get:

<lame>

"This product can only be installed if Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 has been installed first."

</lame>

Seriously? So this means I can use Windows XP or Vista to develop WSS stuff? Boo. The download page does say it requires Windows Server 2003 or 2008. Boo, I say.

Merge this .reg

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0]
"SharePoint"="Installed"

and try again. Yay! Of course to really work on SharePoint stuff you'll also need various dlls like Microsoft.SharePoint.dll.

gacutil -i Microsoft.SharePoint.dll
gacutil -i Microsoft.SharePoint.Security.dll

Ah... much better. But it is still pretty weak. I prefer to use plain projects and use a custom build action to cab it up.

Was having sudden trouble with this router. It was rebooting constantly.

I couldn't even connect on the wired interface. Even with everything else turned off, the wan disconnected, and power cycled.

So, I held the reset while plugging in to get it to restore to factory settings, went through and set everything back and it just started doing the same reboot-a-thon again. Fail!

Upgraded firmware to 1.05, no help.

Googled. Turned off gaming mode, PnP. Still no go.

But, once I turned off IPsec, it started working.

I have no idea why this would work.

I used to own a Linksys WRT54G (v2) but it bit the dust after not a long time of faithful service. I decided to try D-Link. I wouldn't say it was a mistake, given the available options, but I think my next router will be a WRT54GL or Asus WL500G router; something that has third party firmware available for it. Proper routing is complicated enough now to warrant a more transparent platform to work against.

Sony Vaio VGN-A190 Disassembly / reassembly advice with pictures

I just installed and am almost using TrueCrypt 5.1 on my laptop. Highly recommended. I have it on my work laptop as well. I say almost, because it stopped at 95.229% into encrypting with a data error (CRC). It will not proceed past this so I'm only mostly encrypted. Needless to say, I'm a bit worried about this, but I plan on trying out SpinRite. I'll report on that in the future.

[Update: Worked well enough to fix that problem but I'm not totally satisfied with it.]

Just uninstalled Windows Live Photo Gallery. Patches, failed patches, reliance on SQL Server compact edition and hanging wlxquicktimecontrolhost.exe and limited usefulness meant it just wasn't even good enough to ignore. Ouch.

I noticed this problem while downloading sessions from the mix08 site (visitmix.com) in iPod format so I can play them on my iPhone.

One of the sessions I watched was on the history of the ribbon (UX09). I've blasted the ribbon in the past, and I still don't like it, but after watching that session and considering the problem they were trying to solve, I have to admit that I'm pretty impressed with the level of thought that went into it.

My wife and boy are out of town for a couple of weeks so I thought I'd give the bus a try. Why now? So I can have a vehicle that I leave at home and another that I leave at work. I really have to have a vehicle available at work in case I need to get to a client site, although I could probably get away with a nano car like the Smart.

Phoenix has a pretty nice public transportation site (http://valleymetro.org) which includes a trip planner. Unfortunately, the way the schedules work out, I have a fair chance of missing my connection and if I do, it will be a half an hour before the next bus. Actually, Monday it was 45 minutes! Grrr.

What would make the bus workable would be:

• a spare car I could leave at work
• enough busses to where I don't have to time my trip - one every fifteen minutes would do.
• all stops lit and covered for shade and rain
• if I organized my stuff so I could work on either my work laptop or my personal one for anything so I wouldn't have to lug either one around but I could still reach across to get stuff off of either one

What would make the bus cool would be:

• an easier payment system, like a card that is connected to a credit card - the new all day card is nice, but having to pay $2.50 in cash is kinda clumsy. At minimum, $5 cash should get you an all day and another all day card that can be spent later.
• a way to associate a preferred route into your card which will automatically signal for stop - probably difficult to make this foolproof, but having it there mainly to prevent you from forgetting and overshooting your destination.
• a way to text you ahead of time if there are problems with your route.
• walk tunnels or bridges at connectioning points
• real time bus location

I can't believe a type cool on the same line as bus. Al Gore should give me a ride for that.

Got a new iPhone yesterday.

Tried several times to download the new iPhone SDK -- can't get it.

Running IE8 - I love what they did to the zoom feature, but other than that it pretty much barfs on every web page anywhere.

For the third time my iPhone bricked. I figured enough is enough and I went to get a new unit. Fortunately, I live in a city with an Apple Store so I thought this would be easy. No, not so much. You need to make an appointment with the genius bar to get support apparently. I asked what my other options were. None. Really, so if I lived, say, 400 miles away from an Apple store, that means I have to drive all that way to swap it out? Really?

apple.com/support wasn't any help. I found the online support repair thingy but it was apparenltly only for replacing your sync cable, dock, headphones and TTY adapter.

What made me really nervous this time was that my phone just happened to brick while running 1.1.3, but now there's 1.1.4. I mentioned in a past post that you cannot travel without your laptop when you are an iPhone user. Well, you also must have access to a high-speed Internet connection as well. I could not get the restore operation to work until I was connected and downloading a 162MB file. How well is this restore operation going to work on a backup from 1.1.3? Well, it seems okay so far. We'll see.

I mentioned before that it bricked twice under very specific conditions. This time it bricked while I was sending a text message at low battery (20%). My theory is that when the battery is low, flash writes are failing.

For the second time in a month, my iPhone went to "Repair Needed" mode.

I'm running 1.1.3 with no jailbreak or any other shenanigans.

For others that read this, the solution is to reset and restore.

Run iTunes, plug in, press and hold both the sleep/wake and home buttons for 10 seconds, then let go of just the sleep/wake button and continue holding the home button for 10 more seconds, then when iPhone shows up in iTunes, restore the iPhone which takes it to the factory state, then select restore from your last backup, wait a long time for all your junk to sync back and you should be good to go.

This is not good -- while it is hosed, the iPhone can only make emergency calls -- so, basically, I cannot travel without my laptop now. Good thing I sync to a laptop!

I think the commonality is that both times the error occurred as I was plugging in my iPhone into a non-Apple charger while I was using it.

I blogged about replacing the hinge on my laptop. Now I get to do it again for my wife's identical laptop. Stay tuned, by next week you should see a very nice blog post about how to do this with pictures. Also, I'm working on my mom's laptop (an old Fujitsu LifeBook C-7631). I'm pretty sure that either the LCD inverter is hosed or it might just be a loose connector. We might just get her a new one.

[Here it is: http://freachable.net/2008/03/24/SonyVaioVGNA190DisassemblyReassemblyAdviceWithPictures.aspx]

I mentioned (http://freachable.net/2007/11/01/CertificationMode.aspx) that I had tried to get MCPD certification. I registered for second shot on the exam (70-551) and realized that I needed to use it before it expired. I crammed for it this weekend.

Result? PASS! 3 hours and a weekend well spent.

Again, the test is an amalgam of three tests and again it appears that the score is the lowest of the three sections.

Again I had the 60+ second stall in the middle of the 70-547 part of the exam. Annoying.