Shut-Up and Smile

The other day I was working with a virtual machine image running Windows Vista and I wanted to see if NewSID would work. Well it didn't. In asking around, I got a tip from an old friend, Michael Kaplan—try running elevated.

So, I did. I re-ran it as the 'real' Administrator and guess what, it worked. It seems I was bitten by something that will bite many of us as Vista adoption grows: User Account Control (UAC). The problem was even though I was running as a local Administrator (a member of the local Administrators group), I wasn't the über-Admin. When an application runs that needs certain administrative privileges you should get a UAC dialog. NewSID however doesn't provide a manifest telling Vista it needs higher privileges so it just ran and failed.

If you have trouble with a program on Vista, a quick way to see if it's a UAC problem is to right-click on the item and choose the Run Elevated option from the context menu.

End of line.

Over the last few days I've been working on a whitepaper about building VSTO 2005 SE add-ins and how to factor the design. Today while eating lunch, I pushed away from the sweets and selected a fresh banana (or nana as my three year old would say).

That got me thinking? Too often people start off on a quest to make dramatic changes to their life each new year only to fail by the end of January. I think we all can learn from the Agile Community and just learn to be persistent and constantly strive for a better implementation off ourselves.

That's my only goal for 2007—to constantly refactor myself to be better in everything I do.

End of line.

Get it here.

See my earlier post for what's new for Virtual PC 2007 in general.

Ben Armstrong has a list of what's new for this release. A key item is a fix for users running laptops that have a key repeat problem.

Make sure you read the updated Release Notes (a separate download). One issue I that was having with an earlier build was drag & drop from a guest to a Vista host would fail.

From the Release Notes:

Drag and drop after upgrading Virtual Machine Additions on a Windows Vista guest

On a Windows Vista guest, when you upgrade from any of the earlier versions (including 13.709 and 13.715) of Virtual Machine Additions to the current version of Virtual Machine Additions, drag and drop between the host and guest does not work. To resolve this issue, uninstall any earlier version of Virtual Machine Additions installed. Then install the version of Virtual Machine Additions provided with this release.

I've not had a chance to test it out, but I'll follow up once I've given it a go. For now, I'm running the x64 edition of Virtual PC 2007 on my Vista Ultimate box only and keeping VPC 2004 SP1 on my main boxes. After all, it is still a beta.

The version number of this release is 6.0.142 and the additions is 13.802 (13.724 being the Beta additions).

End of line.

As I prepare to shutdown on this New Year's Day, I started thinking, “Where did 2006 go?”

Looking at my United Mileage Plus statement I see that I flew 100,232 miles. Well, that answers part of my question. Six VSLive shows (SFO, YYZ, MCO, LAS, BOS, and DFW) and two Microsoft shows (Tech Ed US in Boston and Tech Ed EMEA in Barcelona, Spain) and I was on my way. I also had a few trips to the mothership, some VSTS training, and a two weddings to attend and more.

But it wasn’t all travel. I was able to spend almost three months at home without getting on a plane. As part of that time home, my wife, son, and I welcomed our new daughter to the world in September. One of the things I did quite a bit of in 2006 was writing. I’ll post some links later this week. For now, it’s time to get some rest. Having a baby in the house as well as a 3 year old seems to be a recipe for colds. I think I’ve been sick more this December (and now this January--I was in bed by 10pm on New Year's Eve) than I have in an entire year. Oh well, at least I’m home.

Happy New Year to all and I hope your 2007 is better than your 2006.

End of line.