I know … I keep bringing this up. It’s been a long road and there were still a couple of things that I found that I needed to really, truly, fully replace Vista/Windows 7 client with Windows Server 2008 R2 for my desktop OS … on both my traditional “desktop” machine and my laptop. I think, finally, I’ve got all of them worked out.

Power Management/Sleep/Hibernate Mode: I absolutely love sleep mode. I see no need to keep my machine running at 100% power all of the time. And I’m impatient so I don’t like to wait for a full reboot if I don’t have to. I don’t do hibernate too much but that’s also nice to have. As I’m sure you are aware, Windows Server has no problem with the whole power management stuff … until you enable the Hyper-V role (which is one of the biggest reasons that I want to run Server 2008). Once you enable Hyper-V, you lose all power management capabilities. In Windows Server 2008, there was nothing you could do about this. When folks raised this as an issue, Microsoft’s response was … tough. Hyper-V is supposed to be on a server and a server never sleeps. It doesn’t matter if you have VM’s running or not either. A lot of folks came up with workarounds/hacks that “enabled” this, with various degrees of success. Well, apparently there was enough of a hubbub for the Microsoft folks to do something about it. You’ll need to create a new boot entry with BCDEdit and set hypervisorlaunchtype to off. Full details and step-by-step instructions are on Virtual PC Guy’s WebLog. You will have to reboot to re-enable Hyper-V (and the hypervisor) but that’s OK for me … I don’t always run VM’s and I’ll accept the reboot for that. It’s not my ideal scenario, but it works.

Zune: This sucked. I couldn’t get the Zune software to install for anything. Improper version or some such nonsense. Which meant that I couldn’t access my Zune pass and couldn’t sync with my Zune unless I dual booted. Apparently, the Zune folks don’t think that Windows Server is an appropriate platform for Zune. Fortunately, I found a post on David Zazzo’s blog that takes you through doing this step-by-step. One note: I right-clicked on packages\Zune-x64.msi and clicked on “Troubleshoot Compatability” … which applied the settings “Skip Version Check”. Just running ZuneSetup.exe … even in compatibility mode … didn’t work.

Here’s the info on the next .NET Dojo. Did you think it’d be gone? Well, I hope not and I’m working with Zain to transition the program over to him. That said, I will be doing my very first Dojo! The topic is Windows Azure (duh!) and it promises to be a good time for all. 

Event Overview

Windows Azure is the cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting, and service management environment for the Azure Services Platform. Windows Azure provides you on-demand compute & storage to host, scale, and manage Web applications and services on the Internet in Microsoft data centers.

In this Dojo, we'll dig into how to work with Windows Azure to build applications that run in the cloud ... using the skills you have and the tools that you are familiar with. We'll introduce the key concepts in lecture and then immediately apply those concepts in hands on labs. At the end of the Dojo, you'll be able to create applications to leverage this platform and its functionality, including tables, blobs, queues and, of course, web sites.

Attendees will be expected to bring their own laptops with the prerequisites (below) to participate in the hands-on labs.

Prerequisites:

· Windows Vista SP1 or Windows Server 2008 SP1

· IIS 7.0 (with ASP.NET, WCF HTTP Activation and optionally CGI)

· Visual Studio 2008 Professional  (Trial OK)

· Visual Studio 2008 SP1

· Sql Server Express (2005 or 2008)

· Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio March 2009 CTP

· KB967631: Update for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Debugger

Dates, Locations and Registration:

Houston: June 19, 2009 1PM-5PM @ the Houston Microsoft Office

Austin: June 26, 2009 1PM-5PM @ the Austin Microsoft Office

Hope to see you there!!

Yes, there is “Life After Microsoft”. As I said, I’ve been taking something of a break but I’m getting back into the swing of things. Not that it was really much of a “vacation” … I just couldn’t stay off the computer or dev stuff, but it was light and nothing serious.

So what’s next? Well, after some discussion, I’ll be working with EPS Software on several different projects and initiatives. I’ll also be working with my old friend Dana on building out KinetikHosts  and a startup web site that I won’t detail here. The biggest part, however, will be working with Markus and the EPS family and I’m very excited about that. I’ve known the folks there for quite some time and it’s a great environment – challenging, but relaxed and fun.

So … there you have it!

Since I did the last post on this, I’ve also (now) installed Server 2008 R2 on my personal desktop … as my laptop had to be turned in. In doing this and getting it set up to be a day-to-day desktop OS (as opposed to a demo machine OS), I ran across a couple of other things that I thought were worth noting.

IE ESC: That’s Enhanced Security Configuration … the ultra-secure-because-it’s-only-HTML mode of Internet Explorer that is enabled by default on Windows Server. Again, something that makes a TON of sense but it doesn’t work very well when you are using it as a desktop. I had thought (silly me) that it’d be easy … go into the Server Manager and turn it off. Well, there were complications. Here’s the deal: I run with a different account than the built-in Administrator account. It’s also the account that ties my machine to my Windows Home Server (which is way cool, btw). When I created the account, I did not initially add it to the Administrators group. So, when I turned IE ESC off for Admins, it didn’t turn off for that account … because it wasn’t an admin. Easy enough … I turned off IE ESC for all users. Nope. Didn’t work. Added my account to the Administrators group. And it still didn’t work … I was still running IE in the Enhanced Security mode. Even after rebooting. I went to “User Accounts” in Control Panel (it’s just like on the desktop version) and couldn’t add that account as an Administrator account there either. So … I wound up deleting the account and recreating the account using the "User Accounts” applet in Control Panel, creating it as an administrator account. Then it worked. Just fine. I don’t know why this happened. I cannot explain it at all. But there it is.

Windows 7 Themes: I did turn on the themes and eye candy as mentioned previously. But the Win7 themes aren’t included and I couldn’t find a way to install them. Easy enough … copy them from a Windows 7 installation. They will be under %WINDIR%\Resources\Themes. You’ll also want to copy the pictures (%WINDIR%\Web\Wallpaper) and the cursors (%WINDIR%\Cursors). They will then appear in your personalization window.

Windows Search: This one is important for finding stuff in Outlook and on your drives in a reasonable amount of time. It is not installed by default in Windows Server … and Outlook will tell you all about it and the necessity of installing it if you want to do any searching. You cannot find it in Features. There’s a download for Windows Search 4.0 for Vista … that doesn’t work either (refuses to install). Where is it? It is under Roles …File Services … Windows Search. Perfectly logical right?

So there it is. I’ll post any more tidbits as I happen across them. So far, though, all is well and happy. 

As I’m sure you know, Microsoft has been reorganizing, eliminating positions and reducing headcount … layoffs.

Well, after 9 years, I’m one of the folks hit by that.

I’m not going to sit here and tell you that’s it’s great, wonderful, etc. etc. It’s not. It’s hard and it sucks. But it could be a lot worse … Microsoft’s severance package is extremely generous and it will certainly give me the opportunity to take a little vacation time while I determine where I want to go from here. Beyond that, I will have assistance for outplacement as well. So, even in the leaving, I find myself lucky to work for a company as great as Microsoft. And, at the end of it all, I know that I will land on my feet and that the experiences that I’ve had at Microsoft will certainly be a part of that. I have had worse things happen to me … I have been through far worse things than this … and I have always come out better for it.

It has been a good 9 years. I’ve seen a lot of change at Microsoft and a lot of priorities realigned. I’ve seen the company grow in new directions and in new ways that none of us would have imagined in 2000. It’s always been interesting and challenging, to say the least. It’s been a fun ride and I don’t regret a moment of it. I, too, have grown a lot during this time.

Now  … the question of tomorrow. I cannot tell you anything right now. What I can say is that I will be taking a week or two off (the longest *unplugged* vacation that I’ve had, I think, since high school) and figuring out where I want to go from here. But I can tell you this … I have been very involved in the community here in South Central, in Second Life, and in the open source world. That will not stop. I will continue to be active in those communities. It is something that I believe in.

But … for right now, for a time … I’m gonna take some time off. I’m gonna go hit my XBox and blow stuff up. Aliens and bad guys of all stripes … you have been warned.