eForce - the elite force

For SharePoint Server fans:

Kirk Koenigsbauer, general manager, Office Business Platform, will host a presentation on SharePoint Server on June 17, 2008 at 9:00 am Pacific Time.

View the Live Meeting

After many months of living without a PC @ home, I finally bought my brand new machine.RIP to my 6 years old P4.

This time, the total damage for this new PC is 1 K! :(

Specifications:

• Intel E4600 Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz
• MSI P35 Neo2-FR-LGA775 - got a very nice heat sink
• 2 X 2 GB Kingston DDR2-800 RAM
• Seagate SATA2 500GB (32M cache) Harddisk
• LG SATA 20X DVD-RW
• P/CO AX3850 512MB PCI-E (RADEON)
• CoolMaster Centurion 3 Casing
• OCZ 500W Stealth X Stream Casing

From the configuration, you can tell that I am not looking for a powerhouse machine. Instead I am trying to assemble a value-for-money playground.  

For a start, I installed the evaluation copy of Windows 2008 Server Standard Edition. (Thanks to the complimenary DVD given during the recent Heros event).

Overall, my 1K machine managed to perform well. Except the following:

1. Unable to use the latest version of MSN live - So I ended up installing Version 8.1
2. Confusing naming conventions.
   Start-> Server Manager will open Computer Manager. In the control panel -> admistrative tools, you will find both Computer Manager and Server Manager!
   Time to improve good naming convention.
   

What I like (thumbs up):

1. Security - very well lock-down configuration. Took me a while to find out how to enable media player.
2. Performance - pretty fast boot up. A bare Windows 2008 Server requires around 500MB of ram to run. Cool!! That means more resources are reserved for the real services needed (IIS, Domain controller)

I understand that I should not be using Windows 2008 Server as a desktop OS. If you have any comment or suggestion on how I can improve my experience with Windows 2008 Server, feel free to enlighten me.

Kit Kai has issued a "stern" warning for not blogging for so long. (Joking)

I think i own Kit Kai an apology for NOT being active, as he is the one who kindly help to create an account for me here. :)

Some updates on me. Life have change quite a bit for me. I have joined an educational institution one year back. So now, I stopped exploring SharePoint. Instead, I am teaching more on .Net Programming and Database (MS SQL).

Recently, I also spend more time and $$ on travel. Some of the places I visited

• India - Biz Trip
• Europe - Switzerland and Italy
• Hokkaido - with my Parents
  
• KL - Weekend escape
• Bangkok - Shopping Trip 

Tech·Ed SEA 2008 will be held from 11-14 August @ KL Convention Centre.

For more info, do visit http://www.microsoft.com/malaysia/techedsea2008/default.mspx

To register immediately. http://www.crystalevents.info/techedsea2008/menu.aspx

See how Microsoft is helping Apply to market.

http://news.com.com/1606-2_3-6198265.html

Wikipedia really rocks. We can now find plenty of localised content. Wonder who creates and maintains them.

AMK Hub
NUS
NCS
Ngee Ann Poly
even our PM

Read this article from Business Times - (80% of S'pore firms not yet ready for Vista: poll).

Some interesting trend to note:

• Most are satisfied with their current operating system.
  A recent survey by IDC shows that Vista has yet to entice Singapore businesses to go for an immediate upgrade of the OS on their computer networks.
• Only 5 % of the IT professionals interviewed in Singapore have plans for Vista migration. For those who have no plans for Vista, close to half of the respondents said their current Windows OS version satisfies all their needs. (wonder what is their current Windows OS? could it be windows NT? windows 3.11?)
• Another interesting thing to note from the survey is that server virtualisation was the top priority for 16% of the Singaporean respondents.
  

Source: Biz IT, published July 5, 2007

This is my third visit to bangkok, and I thought it will be the last chance for me to use the old international airport at Don Muang. But based on today's new, Thailand may be going to reopen this airport for domestic flight due to all the problems with the brand new Suvarnabhumi Airport.

Anyway, here is the famous Singapore Airport Tower. ( not meant to compare to the  Suvarnabhumi Airport)

Some interesting makan along Bangkok streets. Some of them I dun evene know that it is, I just snap because I find them interesting.

That is how our bird nest is being processed.

Finally I managed to find time to write for my own blog again after a long long break.

Biz is good, hence I was super busy with several projects mainly implemenating system based on WSS V3.0 and ASP.Net 2.0.

Hope that I will start writing more frequently. So stay tune.

 stsadm -o enumtemplates > templatelist.txt & for /F "tokens=1" %i in (templatelist.txt) do stsadm -o deletetemplate -title %i & del templatelist.txt

Found this from a cool blog entry by Rob Nowik
http://rnowik.com/blogarchive/1149116400/

 Cool and it work on MOSS 2007 :)

 Thanks Nowik.

Microsoft said it plans to sponsor an open-source project to create software that will convert Office documents to OpenDocument, a rival format gaining ground, particularly among governments.

The software giant launched the Open XML Translator project on SourceForge.net, a popular site for hosting code-sharing projects. The software will be available under the BSD open-source license.

The software, developed by a France-based Microsoft partner, will allow people to use Microsoft Office to open and save documents in the OpenDocument, or ODF, format.

Strange, wonder what is Microsoft's rationale for supporting ODF format ??

Source: http://news.com.com/Microsoft+bends+on+OpenDocument/2100-7344-6090912.html?part=dht&tag=nl.e703

Microsoft officials acknowledged on June 29 that the company will not meet the October 2006 business-availability target to which it committed in March of this year. At that time, Microsoft officials said to expect retail availability of Office 2007 to be some time in January 2007, so as to coincide with the Windows Vista launch.
Company officials declined to provide further details. They also would not say whether the retail launch of Office 2007 is still on for January.

Source: http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,2180,1983839,00.asp
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1983846,00.asp

This is only my third day installing Office 2007 of my notebook. Has been playing with it thr virtual machines. I have just upgraded my Office 2003 -> Office 2007 B2. So, here I go sharing my experience.

Below are some of my comments:

• Running well on my notebook, so far very stable.
• Performance was pretty slow, as compared to Office 2003.
• Love the new "preview" feature before applying any style. But it is slow ... probably need to upgrade my graphics card.
• Taking time to get use to the new UI (ribbon concept)... Many times, I am so use to finding my tool / feature via the menu. Now with the ribbon thingy, it reduces my productivity :(

Despite all my little complaints, I will continue to use O12 for my day-to-day work.

For those who are using WSS Version 2, you will know one of the lacking features is the backup and restore capability. The recommended way is to perform a backup via the command line (i.e. stsadm.exe)

In the new version (WSS Version 2, B2), a proper UI will be provided for us to perform backup and restore functions.

Here is a screenshot, when the backup job is on the run.....

Some notes:

• Remember to give networkservice service account permission to the directory where the backup file is going to be store. Else you will get the "Access to the path - c:\backup\spbrtoc.xml is denied" error.
• One missing feature is still the scheduled backup. The backup and restore UI is good for adminstrator's ad-hoc backup and restore operations. If you will want to perform a scheduled backup, it will be back to the command line world.
  e.g. stsadm.exe -o backup -directory c:\backup -backupmethod full (or differential)
  and the stsadm.exe can now be found @ C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN

I continued to my jogging routine, and this time I visited my friend who was at Sembawang Park catching crabs.

 Long wait... the test of ultimate test of patience...... Finally!!! Look what they got!!! and it looks big!!

 Here's the catch!! Dentist at work.. More victims of the "dentist" but what a harvest, and it's time for a feast ....

Kids also managed to catch some crabs.  

Here is the interesting part..... please look at the WATER where the fishes and crabs came from.... .... 

How apetitizing.... <period>