Dugie’s Pensieve

I’d like to take a moment to thank everyone for dropping by my blog, and wish everyone a very Happy New Year for 2007!

Special thanks to those who left me comments of some kind [you know who you are] and made my smile this year  :)

Aaron , Alessandro, Alex, Alpesh, Andres, Andrew, Anthony, Arlindo, Bob, Bozford, Brendon, Bronwyn, Chris, Chris, Chuck, Clive, Daniel, David, Davo, Dean, Eric, Frank, G, George, GH, Graham, Greg, Giulian, Grant, Hans, James, Jeff, Jesper, Jimmy, John, Jonno, Justin, Karl, Ken, Kieran, Kyle, Lindley, Looee, Lorenzo, Mark, Matt, Michael, Mike, Mitch, Mr Mackie, Muffy?, Omega Dave, Parky, Paul, PeteL, Peter, Rheal, Rob, Rodney, Ronny, RoudyBob, Ryan, Scott, Shane, Thomas, Tom, Tristan, Volker and William.

Once again, Happy New Year and looking forward to seeing you in 2007!

I keep a running score of the scotches I’ve enjoyed.  Well actually it’s more of guide than a score.  Some bottles were greatly enjoyed in the company of friends, so have a slightly higher score. 

As I finish off a scotch, I give it a ‘weighting’ - did I enjoy it (as a whole experience) more or less than something else  - it’s a personal thing.

So as this year ends, and another [is about to] begins, here is the score so far [from left to right]:

I’d have to say Glenmorangie is my personal favourite, but there is always a special place for Penderyn.  But as I mentioned, it’s a personal thing — if you disagree, I’m happy to discuss it over a quiet drink :)

I’m at home on holidays, and making a huge dent in that ‘one-day-to-do’ list. 

…This brings me to my collection of vendor polo shirts.  I’ve had to be ruthless and cull them back.  They are starting to breed in my wardrobe!  Of all 37 shirts, there are three polos that I’m truly sorry to see go:  MSDN; ‘original’ xbox polo; and Visual Studio.net.  I know they are a bit ‘old skool’ but they’ve had their time:

And now on to my collection of scotch bottles!

Well I sat and passed my VMware VCP exam this morning.  My score was 81 (you needed 70 to pass).

Just letting everyone know I did have a good reason for the lack of blogging — and I hadn’t fallen off the blogosphere. :)

The title says it all.  We had a *lot* of people show up for the combined BIG and SBS Usergroup.  We had so many people that the 40x pizzas we had ordered were completely polished off within 15 minutes of unpacking them.  …and that’s a lot of pizza.

The interest in our Vista Media Centre was overwhelming — I’ve never seen the Microsoft Theatre so packed!!  Here’s a (rushed) photo before we kicked off, members are still coming into the room behind me:

Stephen did a brilliant job presenting, the evening was fantastic — I’ll blog the full details tomorrow.  It’s very late, and I’m off to get my much needed beauty sleep.  See you all tomorrow.

UPDATE: The photo has been updated for Frank :)

Since it’s Christmas next weekend, here is list of things I keep in my “Camping Set” for camping, picnics, and BBQs in the park with family and friends:

You can find the full list here, but it has everything (really really) from “scotch glasses to steak knives”.  Everything fits nicely into a plastic tub — which you can wash everything up in if you get stuck.  I admit it may be overkill for BBQ’s, but for camping trips it’s saved the day many times.

…and no, the 21″ CRT montor does not come camping :)

KB 928839 was released this week, and lets you generate a memory dump (inside a VM) by holding down the CTRL and pressing SCROLL LOCK twice.  It builds on KB 254649 and has details to prevent a crashdump on the host.  (I hadn’t thought about that until it was mentioned?!)

All the details are in KB 928839 How to use the keyboard to generate a memory dump file on a Virtual Server 2005 guest computer and a snippet is below.

Interesting enough you have to remove the Virtual Machine Additions, but as you can see it works just fine under Virtual PC 2007.

Looks like  KB 897614 Windows Server System software not supported within a Microsoft Virtual Server environment was updated this week.

It appears the reference to  “Network Load Balancing within a Virtual Server image” has been removed.

KB 897614 as of December 14 is now version 5.0 — it was last updated on November 30.

I’ve just come across an awesome little tool called VMDK2VHD.  VMDK2VHD converts VMware virtual hard disks (VMDK) into Microsoft VHDs.  The download contains 3 files total 112K - you just run the VMDK2VHD.EXE    …nice!

Anyway I’ve run through a conversion and it worked a treat.  I used the ‘Dugie-thumb-in-the-air‘ guide below:

• ‘Scrub’ the VMware Image using the first half of that very fine guide from Chris Wolf  over at SearchServerVirtualization.com
• Use VMDK2VHD to convert the VMDK virtual disk to to a VHD
• Create a new VMC with roughly the same hardware (IDE drives, etc, etc) in Virtual PC 2007
• Attach your newly created and converted VHD
• Power up you new VMC, login and wait (a few minutes) for *all* the new hardware to be detected
• I clicked cancel to the new hardware driver wizard
• I also clicked no to the reboot - hey livin on the edge here
• Install the Virtual Machine additions (v13.724)
• Reboot
• Let the hardware wizard run
• Tada!

The VMDK was 1,986 Mb and it converted to a 2,001 Mb VHD in about 15 minutes on my aging T41p laptop.
Overall with VM reboots, coffee, etc, etc the whole conversion took about 40 minutes (I really should have done a screen cast of the whole process!?)

Everything is working nicely, I have a couple of errors in the VM eventlog - but humming along smoothly.  A quick screen shot of VMDK2VHD is below:

Kudos to Paul and everyone over at vmTooklit.com.  You guys guys have come through with a ripper (and much needed) tool for the VM community!! 

Time to start the VirtualMachine lovin’

Ooooh déjà vu.  Here’s my post from this time last year:

Well yesterday marks the “12 days to Christmas”, so for a bit of fun, here is the 12 days of Christmas:

#include <stdio.h>
main(t,_,a)char *a;{return!0<t?t<3?main(-79,-13,a+main(-87,1-_,
main(-86,0,a+1)+a)):1,t<_?main(t+1,_,a):3,main(-94,-27+t,a)&&t==2?_<13?
main(2,_+1,”%s %d %d\n”):9:16:t<0?t<-72?main(_,t,
“@n’+,#’/*{}w+/w#cdnr/+,{}r/*de}+,/*{*+,/w{%+,/w#q#n+,/#{l,+,/n{n+,/+#n+,/#\
;#q#n+,/+k#;*+,/’r :’d*’3,}{w+K w’K:’+}e#’;dq#’l \
q#’+d’K#!/+k#;q#’r}eKK#}w’r}eKK{nl]’/#;#q#n’){)#}w’){){nl]’/+#n’;d}rw’ i;# \
){nl]!/n{n#’; r{#w’r nc{nl]’/#{l,+’K {rw’ iK{;[{nl]‘/w#q#n’wk nw’ \
iwk{KK{nl]!/w{%’l##w#’ i; :{nl]’/*{q#’ld;r’}{nlwb!/*de}’c \
;;{nl’-{}rw]’/+,}##’*}#nc,’,#nw]’/+kd’+e}+;#’rdq#w! nr’/ ‘) }+}{rl#’{n’ ‘)# \
}’+}##(!!/”)
:t<-50?_==*a?putchar(31[ a]):main(-65,_,a+1):main((*a==’/')+t,_,a+1)
  :0<t?main(2,2,”%s”):*a==’/'||main(0,main(-61,*a,
“!ek;dci @bK’(q) -[ w]*%n+r3 #l,{}:\nuwloca-O;m .vpbks,fxntdCeghiry”),a+1);}

No it’s not blogger code, it actually a C program, that generates the lyrics for the song