Video attempt

I just have to try and post some multi meda content. I don't have that much, so I stiched together pictures of myself early in the morning (I take them to try and motivate myself to start caring how I look: the painful way).

It was quite fun, I had "Windows Movie Maker" on my machine, which took five minutes to learn how to use.

BTW: will I see you at SQL PASS 2009?

Handling history failures in data warehousing

Moved:

http://information-management-enabled.blogspot.com/2009/09/handling-history-failures-in-data.html

SQL Server 2008 R2 CTP / Windows 7 x32 – Initial experience

Moved:
http://information-management-enabled.blogspot.com/2009/08/sql-server-2008-r2-ctp-windows-7-x32.html

Star Wars - turning design ideas into reality

Nice presentation i found on linkedin...
The Force Behind Star Wars: Turning Design ideas into reality
...the force is stong in this one!

Deal signed with the seven-year old

 

I have signed the deal for home rules with the kid. These rules dictates how we want shall have it at home.

Rules 1, 3 and 5 are Natalies (my girls) most important points; 2 and 4 are mine.

This should be easy, but if it is not, we will change the rules, they are written on a small white board! I put the white board on our entrance.

When we don't need the rules any more she can learn to use the white board (I am a consultant).

Here are the rules:

1. "Være snille med hverandre" (Natalie)
   Be nice to each other (approximate translation)
   
   
2. "Alltid hyggelig å være hjemme" (Gorm)
   Allways nice to be home (approximate translation)
   
   
3. "Lave stemmer når man diskuterer" (Natalie)
   Quiet voices when one argues (approximate translation)
   
   
4. "Ha god nok tid" (Gorm)
   Have sufficient time (approximate translation)
   
   
5. "Ikke være stressa" (Natalie)
   Don't be stressed (approximate translation)
   

I hope we can follow the strategy up with sufficient execution. Tell me what you think.

The shortest useful program I have written: %1

This is the shortest program I have written, it is two bytes:

<ExecuteCommand.cmd>%1</ExecuteCommand.cmd>

The task of this program is to execute the parameter as a program, I use this inside Visual Studio on the "Open With"-menu to call cmd-scripts inside the GUI.

The only program that comes close to this is a 5-byte boot program I wrote for 8086 assembly about twenty years ago.

You don’t know what you don’t know; the other Socratic problem; joke

http://img.thedailywtf.com/images/200904/errord/server_does_not_know_why.gif

Certification ”holiday”

Wow! Three certification attempts taken without any preparation (except drinking the night before taking the certs) and three past!

I am now certified dba and certified professional bi-person for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (there are about 100 of the former and about 250 of the latter according to http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/certified.mspx)

I must be born under a lucky star!

Sorry about the bragging, but I'm too happy to care!

Happy Easter,
Gorm

Get gigs of disk space with a single command in Windows Server 2008R2 (and many others)

Moved:
http://information-management-enabled.blogspot.com/2009/03/get-gigs-of-disk-space-with-single.html

16 habits of highly creative people

I liked this one.

http://tickledbylife.com/index.php/16-habits-of-highly-creative-people

Happy Holidays
Gorm

Plato’s cave

http://platosallegory.com/ this was a good one, youtube has many versions of it. We use the cave allegory as a metaphor for Information Management.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2afuTvUzBQ is better for those interested in the actual text.

Game development with the seven year old

First stage is done, 33 sketches are finished and photographed (all done by Natalie, 7).

Good times!

I have little time left to blog right now, much work. Just had to get a few things off my mind…

• My daughter, seven years old, has agreed to make a video game with me (flash or silverlight, I think).
  
• The project I'm currently on at work is going into testing. The customer will finally have return.
  
• I have now worked for a year as a regular worker in a leading IM consulting shop, and beginning to be comfortable. I have learned that there are some very smart people out there.
  
• I'm a "SQL Heroes Community Finalist" https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/Survey/Survey.aspx?SurveyID=7231 with some routines I made for fun.
  
• I passed a SQL Server 2008 beta exam.
  

… that's just a few of the things going on, I feel good

Have a nice day, Gorm!

Virtumondo/Virtumundo – virus hunt, continued

I couldn't remove this virus. I might if I had the system CD, so that I could start up without starting the logon process (virus uses winlogon notifiers). Here is, however, some information in case people want to pursue this:

Functionality is in a dll named "__c00*.dat", where the star is a number in hexadecimal format and

MD5=6717D534A44C9913FFFE9985EE7E933F:

• It "calls home" to "nx1.zappoworld.com", which is based in the Netherlands.
  
• Error output from the file can be found in "c:\xcrashdump.dat"
  
• Files it hooks on are:
  
  • iexplore.exe
    
  • explorer.exe
    
  • services.exe
    
  • winlogon.exe
    
  • firefox.exe
    
  • opera.exe
    
• Functionality includes
  
  • HttpSendRequestA (call home)
    
  • CreateWindowExA (show information)
    
  • SetWindowsHookExA (log stuff, I suspect key logging)
    
  • UrlDownloadFileA (download more stuff to update it self, maybe)
    
  • CreateMutex (I guess so that only one instance runs)
    
  • WriteProcessMemory (don't know, looks evil)
    
  • GetProcAddress (load what ever functionality from dlls, I couldn't find LoadLibrary, however)
    
  • CreateRemoteThread (looks bad)
    
  • Process Management and file management
    
  • Registry functions
    
  • String handling, both from shell api and native, both ANSI and UNICODE
    
  • SetSecurityDescriptorDacl
    

MD5=69FEB378121DB99F80E15D597EC60124

• Lingvo9Netpatch from 2003
  
• LocalAlloc and VirtualAlloc (memory allocation functions without their freeing counterparts) #"¤#""¤ memory leaks?
  
• OpenFile
  
• C-runtime functions
  
• Looks sloppy written
  
• Not detected by any virus scanners I've tried!
  

 

Analysis done with FileAlyzer.

So, I'm off to support so they can wipe my machine. ¤#"%"#"!%"#¤@work.

Zappoworld.com…
Flashget.com catch url…

BTW, I found a nice hosts file at: http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm, http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.txt

Virtumondo – virus hunt

Removing virtumondo.

The other day I got an unsuspected pop up window using Internet Explorer. Strange, I thought, this kind of problems must be extinct years ago, I surely did something wrong…?

The problem was pervasive.

I use a virus killer and a firewall , and I don't install software I'm not supposed to, except maybe Opera and Java.

I tried spyware killers of Google and Microsoft. It worked. One day later, the problem reappeared… and in addition they reported (and did not fix) a virus named "Virtumondo"!

The net is full of fixes and people telling stories of hours of work without result. Except the obvious, two "low hanging fruits" emerged:

1. Blocking Virtumondo.com and all popping up sites in %windir%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

2. Removing write-access to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Notify"

I then restarted into safe mode with command prompt, ran anti virus, and removed all (three) reg keys under "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Notify" starting with "__".

That's it, I don't feel certain I removed the malware, but this is all I have time for, if the thing reappears I guess I'll ask for a new machine or full reinstall.

 

Tomorrow will be better.

Hyper-V on the laptop (Compaq nc6320)

I want to run Hyper-visor and other software (SQL Server 2008) on my laptop. I consider running Team Foundation Server, Windows XP, SQL Server versions, old Visual Studio versions, Visio, BizTalk and others inside Hyper-V images on my laptop. At the same time I want the laptop to function as normally (internet explorer, media player, office, etc).

Hyper-V runs on 64-bit Windows Server 2008. The machine needs to support hardware-assisted virtualization and data execution prevention, and these must be enabled in BIOS.

1. Download driver packages for Vista x64 and save on flash-drive
   
2. Install Windows Server 2008
   
3. Rename computer
   
4. start control userpasswords2 and enable automatic logon
   
5. Install drivers and enable wireless service (not automatic on server)
   
   1. Install Intel Graphics sp37719
      
   2. Install "Integrated module with Bluetooth wireless technology for Vista" SP34275 don't care if it says "no bluetooth device"
      
   3. Replace wireless driver: \Intel Wireless sp38052a\v64
      
   4. Add feature "Wireless..."
      
6. Connect to internet
   
7. Start updates
   get updates for more programs
   automatic
   important updates, only
   
8. View available updates
   Add optional: Hyper-V
   
9. Install Hyper-V
   
10. Add role Hyper-V
    

The machine is now a Hypervisor. Next steps are to get Windows Server 2008 to act more like a client OS.

1. Install other drivers
   
   1. SoundMAX SP36683
      
2. Install Feature "Desktop Experience" (Media Player, etc)
   
3. Create shortcut "net start vmms" for starting Hyper-V and "net stop vmms" for stopping Hyper-V
   
4. Set startup for service "Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management" to manual
   
5. stop vmms
   
6. Install Virtual PC 2007 (in case I want wireless network from a vm)
   
7. Enter product key and Activate windows
   

Since I have a working version of Windows, this is the time to activate, next step would ideally be to install office. I don't have office handy (am on vacation), so I install the viewers for Word, PowerPoint and Excel

1. Word viewer
   
2. PowerPoint Viewer
   
3. Excel viewer
   

I am now ready to install Visual Studio and the servers, first out is SQL Server 2008 rc.

1. Set up IIS (with all the iis6 stuff)
   
2. Set up Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 x64 with Service Pack 1 to run "stand-alone"
   
3. (optionally) set up Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Application Templates – 20070221
   
4. Create user ServiceAccount to run all the sql server services
   
5. Install SQL (complete) with RS in SharePoint integrated mode
   
6. Open firewall (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=94001)
   open tcp 1433 (engine), 2383 (ssas), 80 (sp), 135 (ssis), 443 (https), 4022 (service broker)
   udp 1434 (ssas)
   and "notify me when new program blocked"
   

Now get all updates.

Next step is to install Visual Studio, which should be straight-forward.

OK, I'm off to the beach,
Gorm

CMD: redirect error output

Moved:
http://information-management-enabled.blogspot.com/2008/07/cmd-redirect-error-output.html

ETL top-down 1 – Architecting abstraction layering

Post moved to http://information-management-enabled.blogspot.com/2008/07/etl-top-down-1-architecting-abstraction.html

Quotes from “The BI Consultant” / “Chief Sitting Bull”

I stumbled over "Quotes from Chief Sitting Bull" on wikimedia and found myself identifying me with him, only
I am "Consultant surviving in customer (person) land",
Not "Indian surviving in white man's land".
It has a bit of recession-talk in it, <recession> embossed </recession>, I had to mark it, since I, knock on wood, have not seen any signs of recession.

 

Quotes from The BI Consultant

I am here by the will of the Great Ability, and by his will I am Consultant.

I know Great Ability is looking down upon me from above, and will hear what I say...

The earth has received the embrace of the sun and we shall see the results of that love.

He put in your heart certain wishes and plans; in my heart, he put other different desires.

In my early days, I was eager to learn and to do things, and therefore I learned quickly.

Each man is good in the sight of the Great Ability.

It is not necessary for eagles to be crows.

<recession>Now that we are poor, we are free. No Customer controls our footsteps. If we must die, we die defending our right. </recession>

<recession> What Customer can say I never stole his land or a penny of his money? Yet they say that I am a thief. </recession>

<recession> What Customer, however lonely, was ever captive or insulted by me? Yet they say I am a bad Consultant.

<recession> What Customer has ever seen me drunk? Who has ever come to me hungry and left me unfed? Who has seen me beat my wives or abuse my children? What law have I broken?

Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red? Because I am Consultant? Because I was born where my father lived? Because I would die for my people and my country?

God made me a Consultant.

I want to tell you that if the Great Ability had chosen anyone to be the Consultant of this country, it is myself.

<recession> When I was a boy, the Consultant owned the world. The sun rose and set on their land; they sent ten thousand men to battle. Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them? </recession>

<recession> You think I am a fool, but you are a greater fool than I am. </recession>

If the Great Ability had desired me to be a Customer, he would have made me so in the first place.

<recession> I was very sorry when I found out that your intentions were good and not what I supposed they were. </recession>

<recession> If a man loses anything and goes back and looks carefully for it, he will find it. </recession>

Changes:
Chief Sitting Bull -> The BI Consultant
Chief -> Consultant
Spirit -> Ability
white man -> Customer
white woman -> Customer
Indian -> Consultant
Sioux -> Consultant

Google Treasure Hunt 2008 – 3, 4

No time (I guess they all say that). Besides, I have a job already. Good luck to everybody.