XSLT Testing

For those that work in a SharePoint environment, and like to tweak how things look, or those that are forced to tweak the UI, you will know it’s a nightmare when someone needs a search result or an RSS feed result to look a specific way if you don’t have something to help you visualize the output of the XSLT. In Visual Studio 2005 and then in 2008 on a Vista and XP machine, it worked great. But then I upgraded to an x64 machine, and everything became a nightmare. Why should a ‘better’ system, give me more problems?

Developer Virtualization

I have always been a big proponent of virtualization. I have used it for a long time now. When I taught tactical networking and deployments at the Marine Corps University we used VMWare Workstation to virtualize server environments and build networks. Global Knowledge followed the same process. That was at a time when x64 was still far out on the horizon, and every application and piece of hardware coming out was just starting to develop x64 systems.

SharePoint Workflow Actions: Clean anchor from String

I am not sure about most people, but part of my job that I enjoy, is creating a solution so that I don’t have to do menial tasks over and over again. One of those tasks was for a workflow in SharePoint to clean out the anchor from the “email from” string on received emails in a discussion board list. The value can then be used in other places, and in other workflows to send emails. This is for a SharePoint designer reusable action.

SQL: Script to attach and detach Databases for mass moves

I don’t know about most of you, but this is something that I have had to do on multiple occasions, moving databases to a new SAN/drive/etc.  And the environments that I normally have to support have WAY too many databases to sit and detach, move, then reattach by hand.  A lot of scripts out there aren’t very intuitive, and some other blogs I have read can be rather misleading. 

Upgrading a Windows 2003 Cluster to Windows 2008 Part 2

Update 5/25/2010:  This is kind of important to know, after going through this nightmare hoping to make life easier for others, it has been determined through documentation and conversation with Microsoft, that upgrading a SQL cluster is not supported, and won’t work.  Since I am not Microsoft, I am working on a workable solution for this issue, so stand by for that.

Upgrading a Windows 2003 Cluster to Windows 2008 Part 1

Update 5/25/2010:  This is kind of important to know, after going through this nightmare hoping to make life easier for others, it has been determined through documentation and conversation with Microsoft, that upgrading a SQL cluster is not supported, and won’t work.  Since I am not Microsoft, I am working on a workable solution for this issue, so stand by for that.

Hyper-V Management in Windows 7

This is something that messed me up testing on Windows 7.  The Hyper-V Management tools for Vista do not load on Windows 7, but tools have been published.  Go to

Introduction…

I figured I should post a quick introduction so that anyone who happens to come across this blog will know a little able who I am, and what the purpose here is. Hopefully this post will disappear and the content will eventually speak for itself.

I have worked in IT for about 15 years or more now. I have done every job from development to department and project management. I always find a solution to a problem, but it isn’t always supported. Who cares, what does supported mean anyway?

I will be posting solutions to issues I run into, random technology related rants, source code to applications I write or solutions I come up with, and sometimes I might share a link to someone who has a better solution than mine.

And now, on to some content…

-Michael