Right now you can get a free USB 2.0 2GB Flash Drive when you buy CA Internet Security Suite 2007, which includes Anti-Virus, Personal Firewall, Anti-Spyware, Anti-Spam, and more.

It comes with three licenses, and it is Vista compatible. The Flash Drive is tiny, and can be snapped into a credit card size carry case if desired. Also the flash drive is ReadyBoost capable.

It is a free after rebate deal, $59.99 before rebate at CircuitCity.com, or you can buy it off eBay for around $20-$25 after shipping.

What do you get when you combine Star Wars and the Family Guy?

Family Guy: Blue Harvest - Sunday, September 23 9/8c

Family Guy Star Wars Special Preview

Need more? How about what do you get when you combine Star Wars and the Simpsons?

Simpsons Star Wars Parody

I own quite a few of the APC UPS backup power products. And usually after two or three years, the UPS no longer work under load when the power goes out.

I tried buying replacements on eBay, but I wasn't happy with the quality of the third party products. They just didn't last as long. And I tired ordering replacements from APC, but I wasn't happy with the price. Seemed better to wait for a sale or deal to come around and just by a new UPS altogether.

Well not sure what changed but now you can find APC UPS replacement batteries on Buy.com for a fair price, IMHO.

Most desktop APC UPS solutions use the APC Replacement Battery Cartridge #2. Last I had checked, the price was $29.99 with free shipping. The price is only $19.99, if you qualify for $10 off for being a new Google checkout customer. You can search for other models too.

A nice bonus included in the price is that you get a box, and a prepaid return label so you can send your near-dead battery back to the recycling plant. So you can help protect the environment, while helping to protect your PC's.

If you are like me and have your machine set up to dual boot between multiple OS's then you are probably familiar with the following screen:

I installed Windows XP Professional, followed by Vista Ultimate 32-bit Edition. So I have the following choices:

Earlier Version of Windows

Microsoft Windows Vista

In Windows XP, if you had a dual boot set up you can rename boot items simply by modifying your boot.ini file. You'd see something like the following. And it was a simple matter to rename "Windows XP Professional" or "Windows 2000 Professional" as you saw fit.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

In Vista, the boot.ini has been deprecated and is no longer used. So how does one rename the vaguely named "Earlier Version of Windows"?

Just recently, I was exploring the PAE, or Physical Address Extension, feature in Vista and something caught my eye.

The command I used to enable my PAE was: BCDEdit /set PAE forceenable

The command I used to make sure the setting changed was: BCDEdit /enum

Windows Legacy OS Loader
------------------------
identifier              {ntldr}
device                  partition=D:
path                    \ntldr
description             Earlier Version of Windows

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {current}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description             Microsoft Windows Vista
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {bootloadersettings}
osdevice                partition=C:
systemroot              \Windows
resumeobject            {24f09df2-46fc-11dc-bcba-e9d5c4ed2e43}
nx                      OptIn
pae                     Default

Opportunity was knocking, and I wasn't going to miss the chance to take advantage of it.

A little deductive reasoning and I had the following command: BCDEdit /set {ntldr} description "Microsoft Windows XP"

And then I received a "The operation completed successfully." message for my effort. And after a quick reboot, all is well.

A while back I bought a new desktop. One of the things I decided to do was go with 4GB's of RAM.

It was a no brainer. Newegg.com has a great deal on RAM. You can get 2 sticks of 1GB RAM, the good stuff, here for $88.99, or $53.99 after rebate. At that price I figured it made sense to go ahead and purchase 4GB's worth.

So I installed XP Professional 32-bit, and then I installed Vista 32-bit on my new machine so could dual boot as needed.

Hmm, not quite 4GB I was hoping for. Maybe I have a bad chip? We test all chips in all slots, everything looks good. BIOS and boot screen both report 4096 MB of RAM.

Windows Vista or Windows Server 2003 may report less memory than you expect
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929580/en-us

This problem occurs because the address space is limited to 4 GB in a 32-bit hardware environment. Memory may be relocated to make room for addresses that the basic input/output system (BIOS) reserves for hardware. However, because of this limitation, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista cannot access memory that is relocated above the 4 GB boundary.

Here are a few more sources of information if you'd like to learn more:

Coding Horror: Dude, Where's My 4 Gigabytes of RAM [You can really learn something here.]

AddressOf.com:  Windows Vista supports 4GB of memory. Sure it does...

Chris Pirillo: 32-Bit Windows and 4GB of RAM

RunQA.com: Windows Vista 4GB RAM shows up as 3.2GB why?

It doesn't look like I have a chance, but maybe I can squeeze out a few more megabytes than 3007 if I can change some related settings.

I little research, and I learned how to enable PAE, or Physical Address Extension, on Vista here.

Alright, now BIOS says I have 3007 MB of RAM, so I've made the situation even worse.

I try setting my BIOS, called Memory Remap Feature, to move PCI memory addresses above the 4GB space, and see if that helps.

Hmm, well I have 4 GB of RAM in my BIOS now, but Vista says I only have 2047 MB of RAM so that's not what I want.

I even disabled PAE and left the Memory Remap Feature enabled just to in case, and still only gave me 2047 MB of RAM in Vista.

Before Memory (RAM): 3007 MB

After Memory (RAM): 3007 MB

That only leaves one thing to do if you want 4GB, or more RAM in Vista, or really much more than 3GB. Install Vista 64-bit Edition.

Much better, much better. (Ha, Just so you know Windows Live Writer will not install on Vista 64-Bit Edition.)

I was reading Casey Chestnut's Blog post, "Silverlight isnt everywhere", and once again I agree with Casey.

It wasn't too long ago that Casey and I were both hoping Microsoft would take advantage of the Compact Framework and move it onto the XBox 360. In this case, Microsoft recognized the same possibilities as us, and the XNA platform was created.

Microsoft Silverlight is a web-based subset of WPF. During development it was named WPF/E, which stood for "Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere".

It reminds me of the joke, "Friendly fire isn't." And now we have, "Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere" isn't.

Casey's right: It would be a brilliant move on Microsoft's part to port Silverlight to every platform they can including Windows Mobile, XBox 360, and MCE.

• Windows Mobile has a tough fight on its hands with the iPhone. And it does look like Silverlight will be coming to Windows Mobile in some format or another.

Silverlight for Windows Mobile YouTube video

• XBox 360 has a tough fight on its hands with the Wii. The XBox 360 does not even have a Web browse r. What gives? Wii can play Flash games. Now imagine if the XBox 360 could play Silverlight games!

Now Microsoft will use Silverlight to advertise the XBox 360 on Microsoft.com, and that is great and all, but it is so short sighted. We can do better. We are so close.

Heck, I even think Silverlight is a great opportunity for Microsoft to bring back the AutoPC platform.

I've been with Bank of America for at least a decade, quite possibly a dozen years now. Well, I've been with the same bank that whole time, just now it's name is Bank of America, previously know as NationsBank. And while sometimes I think I'm getting the shorter end of the stick, overall I've been very happy with my choice.

But lately I've been having second thoughts...

Recently, Bank of America updated that ATM in the area where I live. They can now scan deposits, whether they be checks or cash.

Here are some more details: Bank of America to Improve ATM Deposits.

To be honest, at first I was really excited as I always found it to be a chore to have to fill out a deposit slip and everything else. This new method would be more efficient, cheaper, quicker, and less error prone. Sign me up!

There's only one problem. It doesn't work. It never works for any of the checks I have. And on all the ATM's I've tried if the machine can't OCR the check's information then it doesn't give me the opportunity to tell the ATM the amounts. I basically get to try a few times, and then the machine rejects the transaction.

Please, Bank of America, pretty please, let's be friends, and let me give you my money. Oh well, hopefully soon they work out the kinks and this will be the awesome system it is capable of being.

So do you have a computer? Then you probably have your own Niagara Falls of computer cables pouring off at least one edge of your computer desk.

Is there anything we can do to solve this problem?

Most of us have seen those fancy Velcro ties that companies like APC make. They generally sell in packs of six, with an average cost of one or two dollars per Velcro tie.

The best deal I have seen so far is for a 50 pack of 8" Velcro Reusable Ties for 5$. You can find them in either black or gray. Sometimes I can find them in the stores but most times I have to order then online here.

They aren't as nice as the high end APC manufactured ones, but they are usually more than strong enough.

I think you'll find that you and your army of fifty of your new friends have a much better chance of surviving the battle against the probably fifty evil cable overlords that take over your computer desk.

A while back, I came across 20 Tips to Improve ASP.net Application Performance.

It's a great list of tips and tricks you can take advantage of increase ASP.net performance.

One little gem I discovered in the list is the App_Offline.htm file.

It's a cool feature of ASP.NET 2.0 that allows you to quickly and easily take a site down for maintenance while sending users a friendly message. Just drop a file called app_offline.htm in the root of your site.

NOTE: There is one caveat that you should be aware of if you App_Offline.htm is less than 512 bytes, and Internet Explorer's "Show Friendly Http Errors" is enabled those users will see the generic status code message. See Scott Guthrie's post here to learn more about this, and a quick and easy workaround here.

Have you ever needed to view a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document on a machine that didn't have Office installed?

If so then you probably have used either the Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2003, the Microsoft Office Excel Viewer 2003, or the Microsoft Office PowerPoint Viewer 2003. These work great, and are handy enough to make it on to many people's USB thumb drives.

But what about Word 2007, Excel 2007, and PowerPoint 2007 documents? There isn't a Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2007, a Microsoft Office Excel Viewer 2007, or a Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer 2007. What should one do?

According to this knowledge base article, you only need to install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack, to be able to view Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 files.

I took advantage of the long Labor Day holiday weekend to format my Tablet PC. On one hand I was lucky, because through various conferences, and Microsoft promotions, and so on, I have all the licenses I need for my machines. On the other hand I wasn't lucky, because I couldn't find my case for my copy of Microsoft Office 2007 that I had gotten at a Microsoft Launch event. Why didn't I add the key to my master list. I don't know. I guess the case was just too shinny for all that.

I've found myself in this situation before, and in the past, I've always turned to Magic Jelly Bean Keyfinder.

Magic Jelly Bean Keyfinder

It works on Windows 95, 98, ME, NT4, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Windows Vista, Office 97, Office XP, and Office 2003.

Basically it works on everything BUT Microsoft Office 2007.

There is plenty of software that will find your software key for a fee, but that's no fun. After a lot of searching and hunting I did find the following:

ProduKey v1.07 - Recover lost product keys for Windows/MS-Office/SQL Server

Download Here

[The screen above comes from the NirSoft company's Web site. Take a closer look, and notice the proof they give that the product must actually work. ]

Files & Disc Images for Self-installation

If you prefer to install the software yourself, you can download separate disc images for the following products:

• Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Express Editions
• Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Standard Edition
• Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Professional Edition
• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Beta 2 Team Suite
• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Beta 2 Team Foundation Server
• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Beta 2 Test Load Agent
• MSDN Library for Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2

Virtual PC Images with Pre-installed Software

If you prefer the convenience of evaluating prerelease software in a virtual machine environment, you can download VPC images for the following products that include pre-installed instances of the prerelease software indicated, including any required prerequisite software. You will need Virtual PC or Virtual Server to run this image. Depending on your hardware, the download files make take between 30-60 minutes to decompress these self-extracting files.

• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Beta 2 Team Suite VPC
• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Beta 2 Team Suite & Team Foundation Server VPC
• These downloads are differencing disks. To use them, you must also download Visual Studio Code Name Orcas Base Image contains the OS and is a one-time download for all the Virtual PC images that lay on top of it.

Zoom, Zoom

Microsoft Secure Content Downloader

Microsoft Secure Content Downloader (MSCD), based on the Avalanche peer-to-peer (P2P) research project from Microsoft Research Cambridge’s Incubation team, will be trialed beginning July 27th for distribution of Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2008, augmenting the traditional, Web-based distribution channel. This trial is scheduled to end on November 30th.

If you got to have it, and you got to have it NOW, then MSCD is the way to go. It cuts the time down into hours, instead of days. But I didn't see where they had the Virtual PC images available, and those were what I was really after.

So two days after I do a post on How to Add Search to Google Reader, what happens? Google adds Search to Google Reader! Ha, you're welcome. Anything else I can do for you while I'm at it?

Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Topic: Visual Studio .NET Tips and Tricks - Part II

Tuesday, September 11, 2007, is our next meeting of  Pee Dee Area .NET User's Group.

Chris Craft, from ACS Technologies, will be presenting Visual Studio .NET Tips and Tricks - Part II.

Material from Part I will be recovered for any of those who may have missed it, and new tips and tricks will be presented.

Visual Studio .NET is filled with thousands of features and capabilities that make our lives as developers more efficient. The number of features that Visual Studio .NET contains is immense. The Visual Studio .NET Tips and Tricks presentation is a compilation of my favorite, and most popular, tips and tricks for this great IDE. Developers who are unaware of these timesaving features miss out on opportunities to increase their programming productivity and effectiveness. This Visual Studio .NET Tips and Tricks presentation is meant to explain how to use Visual Studio .NET more effectively.

See you there!

Here is the tentative schedule:
6:00 PM - 6:20 PM Socializing / Dinner
6:20 PM - 6:30 PM Introduction, Sponsor Time, and News.
6:30 PM - 7:45 PM Presentation
7:45 PM - 8:00 PM Drawing and Wrap Up
Please subscribe to the PDANUG Upcoming Events and News Feed here.

Sure it's a snap to create Line and Shape controls of your own. But ever since I left Visual Basic 6.0, for the greener pastures of .NET I missed having the Line and Shape controls out of the box.

Back by popular demand, we have the Line and Shape controls included in the Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 Power Packs 2.0.

Please remember, these can be used in C# applications as well.

The new and improved shape controls now come with a full set of events, and a decent feature set of their own including most basic features users will need.

You can download them from here.

Will this be the end of the 1 pixel tall panel being used as a horizontal line ruler?  I don't know, only time will tell.

Good News : Free Games . Bad News : Ad Supported. They just show up in menus and load screens, not during actual game play, so I think it will be okay.

More Bad News : You will have to get an account to FilePlanet.com, but it can be the free one. Just create an account don't choose a membership.

Far Cry Full Game [Free Game - Ad Supported] Details

Step into the role of John Carver as he escapes a brutal kidnapping and finds himself on a tropical island full of mercenaries. Rely on firepower, strategy, and stealth as you assault each open-ended area on your own terms!

This free game is supported by in-game advertising.

Download Here

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time Full Game [Free Game - Ad Supported] Details

The Prince returns in this stunning action adventure game with a unique time-manipulation mechanic and intense combat.

This free game is supported by in-game advertising.

Download Here

Rayman Raving Rabbids [Free Game - Ad Supported] Details

Rayman Raving Rabbids marks the return of the iconic video-game hero, Rayman, in his funniest and zaniest adventure ever. When the world of Rayman is threatened by a devastating invasion of crazed, out-of-control bunnies Rayman must rise up against his furry foes to foil their wicked plans.

This free game is supported by in-game advertising.

Download Here

I've been using Google Reader for a long time now, in no small part due to the large doses of peer pressure applied by Chris Reeder and Page Brooks. I'd like to tell you how long I've been using Google Reader, but that is exactly the problem: Google Reader doesn't have a built in search feature. Huh? Oh, the humanity!

"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

But not so much when it comes to your subscribed feeds in Google Reeder. In the place of a search feature, Google Reader provides you with the ability to tag it, maybe with a little star if you like, after that you're on your own.

Before converting to Google Reader, I was a loyal fan of RSS Bandit, which I adored. It has a few places where the usability is a little rough, search is one. Also, it takes a while synchronize remote storage of feed data. But for the most part other than that it was a dream. But I wanted perfect, and couldn't settle for good enough, especially after my feed data file got corrupted and I lost all of my saved feed history.

First thing I tried was reverting back to the previous version of Google Reader:

Almost fooled me at first until I noticed where it said, "Search for new content". No, don't search for new content, I have what I want already I just need to find it again, please.

There does appear to be a way to accomplish this in Firefox at least.

I found the original instruction guide through LifeHacker.com here.

First, you will need to export you feed list in to an OPML file. You can do that here: http://www.google.com/reader/subscriptions/export.

Now you will need to create a Google Custom Search Engine, that will be wired up to search any feed in your OPML file next.

You can create a generic dummy search engine to start off with and just point it to your blog at first.

Then you will need to open your custom search engine's control panel.

From there it is a straight forward matter of uploading your OPML file. At this point you have a search engine helper if you will that can search your feed list.

Now we just need to wire it back up to Google Reeder in Firefox using Greasemonkey using this user script.

To do this you'll need to access your custom search engine and search for something like the word test. Take the URL that produce and remove the &q=test section and replace into the user script.

The instructions are provided in the user script itself. But here's a more step by step set of instructions just in case:

Google Operating System: Script for Google Reader Search

Sometimes, I've found it advantageous to run Vista with User Account Control off. I'm not sure if it is the right choice, actually for most users, in most situations it's a big mistake, kind of like driving without your headlights on.

For better or worse here's how to do it.

Enter "User Accounts" in the Vista search / launch prompt.

Now choose "User Accounts" at the top of the Vista launch menu.

You can also get there by opening the Control Panel and searching for "User Accounts".

Now you'll need to find the Turn User Account Control on or off option.

Simply enable or disable the checkbox to match your preference and your are set.

By the way, you can enable and disable the User Account Control from a command prompt if you so desire:

Disable User Account Control

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /k %windir%\System32\reg.exe ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v EnableLUA /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

Enable User Account Control

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /k %windir%\System32\reg.exe ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v EnableLUA /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

Now you have done it. You've gone and upset the Windows Security Center.

Here's how to appease it, and grant yourself a reprieve.

You could disable ALL Security Center notifications, but I think that is a bad idea, by following this guide.

Or you could modify your registry and just disable the User Account Control warning message, by following these instructions.

Today I was greeted by the following dialog box:

I immediately thought, "Hmm, that's strange. Why is my C:\ drive not trusted all of a sudden? It's works fine for all my other existing projects. What's special about this new one?"

I had the answer, but I didn't realize it at the time. After reading Scott Hanselman's Sharpen the Saw for Developers article, I had wanted to check out the source code for DotNetKicks. So I had downloaded the source code, and extracted it to my C:\Projects\ folder.

I started to search for more information about this "The project location is not trusted" error message I was getting, and I found out the following:

First, I found this on MSDN

The Project Location is Not Trusted Dialog Box

This dialog box appears if you attempt to open or create a client project on a Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path. By default, a UNC path is not a trusted location for a project. Your project might not run correctly when you attempt to debug or run from this location.

 That is definitely the dialog box I was getting. Now I was concerned. One thing I am sure of, is that if my computer thinks my C:\ driver is an untrusted UNC path, I was going to be in a world of hurt, if I didn't find and fix the fundamental issue.

This information also concerned me because I was using a Virtual PC to try and open this project with. And I started to wondering if this was somehow playing a part in the issue.

Next, I found the same issue on Dave's Tech Shop

Dave didn't have the answer to my problem, but he did discuss how to give FullTrust permission to a UNC path.

Finally, I discovered Stephen Cawood's Geek Literature blog, and his article .Net project location is not trusted.

Stephen explains that there is a new security feature that applies to downloaded zip files. What I learned completely surprised me, since I've downloaded countless projects before and had never seen nor heard of this before.

Here's what I had to do to unblock the project I had extracted from a zip I had downloaded off the Internet.

 

Right-click the Zip file, choose Properties, click Unblock, click Apply and then unzip.