Crystal Reports 2008 Upgrade to SP1 error - Fixed!

For work I use Crystal Reports, a lot. Recently, I was able to get a new laptop, and of course, reformatted and put Windows 7 on it (which I LOVE, but that's for another blog entry). In doing so, I also upgraded from Crystal Reports XI to Crystal Reports 2008. Of course, by this time, SAP has released a number of service packs, and I had to get SP0, SP1, and SP2. So I'm humming along, installing everything, when I see the following message: "The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable. Click OK to try again, or enter an alternate path to a folder containing the installation package 'CrystalReports.msi' in the box below."

Wait. What? You gave me a pre-packaged install file that is supposed to unpack everything I need. Only it didn't. And I don't have the CrystalReports.msi installed anywhere. Ugg. Now what?

I couldn't find it to download, I couldn't find it on my computer, I couldn't find it in the install package.

What I ended up having to do is reinstall Crystal. Completely. But, when I got to the screen asking if I wanted the typical or custom install, I didn't click next. Instead, I went to the temp directory it unpacked to (as you can see above - it's C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\Temp\) and sure enough, there's a RarSFX1 folder there, which gets deleted upon install. I copied that folder to my desktop and proceeded through the install.

Then, when I got back to that error message, I simply pointed it to my desktop, which had the RarSFX1 folder (with the CrystalReports.msi inside) and it took it and let me install the rest of the way.

What a mess. SAP really needs to fix this issue, but even though I'm not the only one with the issue, they've not posted any fixes or instructions. Needless to say, this RarSFX1 folder is getting zipped and saved on my hard drive (as well as backed up offsite) in case I need it in the future.

PSP Hacking

My brother gave me a PSP 2000 with some damaged goods a while back. Namely, the bars that hold the UMD disc door in place and help it close were severely bent and had popped off. Sidebar - I guess letting a 4-year-old "play" the PSP isn't such a good idea :). Anyway, I was able to get it back together with some mad needle-nose plier skills, but it still was somewhat finnicky to get the disc door closed. So, I decided to devote my time to hacking the PSP so I wouldn't need to use the discs anymore.

In a nutshell, what I needed to do was hack my PSP, overriding the "stock" Sony firmware with custom firmware. What that firmware would do is unlock the full potential of the PSP unit, things like allowing me to play my UMD Iso's straight from the memory stick, the ability to install cool apps (more on that later), and so on. There are a lot of really easy to follow tutorials out there, so I won't bore you with lists of them. The important thing to note is that you can't hack your PSP 3000 just yet, only Fats (the 1000 series) and Slims (2000's). There are also a number of ways to tell which on you have.

I purchased a Pandora's battery (a tool necessary for the hack) and went to work. All in all, the process was fairly simple. Once I was done, I was then able to install the following:
- Emulators: NES, SNES, GBA, GBC, N64 emulators to play all the games I owned as a kid
- ISO compressor: to compress the backups I made of my PSP games, so more would fit on my 4GB memory stick
- Custom themes: to make your PSP look "cool"

All in all, it was worth it just to play my games from memory stick instead of UMD, but the emulator is just cherries on top. Since installing it, I've beat Metroid, Zelda, Startropics (ok, I got to the end guy, but haven't beat him yet), and am currently working on Mike Tyson's Punch Out. Ahh, the memories.

Fix BootMgr is Missing Error Message

BootMgr is Missing

So you've got a new Vista/Server 2008 (Server 2008 was the culprit in my case, but I've read of it happening on Vista as well...) install on your desktop, and you reinstall to finish some updates. As you're booting, you hear a beep, and see: "BOOTMGR is missing. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart." Crap. What now? The Windows repair disc doesn't fix it, and you're not sure what to do.

As best I can tell, Serv08 just got confused between my IDE and SATA drive, and even though it installed Server 2008 to my SATA drive, it dumped the boot files on the IDE drive. Why? I'm not sure.....but it did. Thus, the error.

Using the Repair Disc, I loaded into the Command Prompt, figuring that I'd need to copy files over. The problem is, what files should I move?

First, I needed to find out where everything was:

• c: to switch to the C drive.
• dir /a to view all the files. The "/a" switch is to show the hidden ones (the files you are looking for, listed below, are hidden).
• d: to switch to the D drive.
• dir /a to view all the files there.

What you're trying to find is your BOOT folder and the BOOTMGR, since this is what's missing. Then you also need to find the WINDOWS folder, since the BOOT and BOOTMGR need to be on that drive.

Once you know that, you need to copy them....

• c: to switch to the C drive, or wherever you determined the boot files to be.
• xcopy /h bootmgr d: to copy the BOOTMGR file to the D drive, or whichever drive you need to copy them too. The "/h" switch ensures that you'll include hidden files, which is important.
  
• robocopy c:\boot d:\boot /mir to copy the entire BOOT folder from the C drive to the D drive. The "/mir" grabs the entire directory and its' sub-folders and files, keeping the same file structure.
  

Sure enough, once I moved those files over, everything booted up fine. Thank heavens.

Remotely Logoff Terminal Users

One of the things I use this blog for is to augment my bad memory. Specifically, when I find a solution or fix a problem, I like to document it so I can easily find it later. Today I've got two. If nothing else, I'm sure I'll be using these again down the road.


Remotely Log Off Users

I frequently use Remote Desktop, especially when I'm at home and need to access my desktop at work. Nothing stinks more than logging in, only to see this:

This happens because Windows by default only allows two simultaneous terminal services connections to the same machine. Usually one is my console user, but at various times other people remote into my machine to grab things, and don’t explicitly log out of machines when they disconnect from remote desktop which causes their sessions to remain active.

First, how can we query to find out what users have a session on a remote machine? Windows provides the qwinsta.exe command which we can use to query for the sessions that are running The format is as follows (from a command screen, of course, so go to Start | Run | cmd - and you must be an administrator on the target machine - for instance I'm an admin on the 10.1.2.230 box):

qwinsta /server:

So, in my case it's qwinsta (or quser works as well) /server:10.1.2.230

It shows the user and the session ID, and quser shows the idle time as well (which is handy for determining who to boot).

Now that we know what users are on a machine, the next step is exercising those Administrator functions, and kicking them off. The command is logoff.exe.

logoff  /server:

So for mine, it was logoff 1 /server:10.1.2.230. That kicked Nate off my box, and allowed me to remote in.

WARNING BEFORE YOU DO THIS:
If you log someone off, whatever they had open or whatever they were doing is lost. Be prepared for angry people, unless you're really sure they're idle or done...

Windows 7 Release Candidate pt 2

Upon further use.......I still like Windows 7. The RC seems to be a little "heavier" than the beta, so it's not quite as "snappy" as I initially experienced with the beta, and this is on a faster machine then the beta was on, but I'm still a happy customer.

I haven't had any driver issues, and haven't had any other issues to speak of really, other than the typical change management issues one experiences when using a new OS. You know, the typical "Crap I know where that link was located on [insert other OS/software here]....now where is it?!" moment that one has when using an updated piece of software.

Anyway, I've had a few people ask how to get their hands on a copy, so without further hesitation, here's the information on downloads and other stuff:

Get the RC here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx

Main points of info
1) How long is the key good for?
June 1, 2010

2) What happens then?
You will need to upgrade to a newer version of Windows 7 before then (generally the releases go Release Candidate (one or more) -> Final version).

3) Can I upgrade from the beta release to the RC, or from RC to Final?
Yes, with the workaround discussed here, but let's be honest, I wouldn't recommend it. By 2010, you'll be needing a fresh reinstall anyway.

4) Where can I get an antivirus program that works on Windows 7?
Check out this page

5) Will my Vista drivers work on Windows 7?
Yes.

Windows 7 RC

I did it. I put Windows 7's RC on my main computer (my Dell Vostro laptop). I'm not sure why I did. I had to reformat anyway, to get a lot of the extra crap I'd had to install for the last 2 semesters of school, but I took a gamble.

And I'm loving it.

Sure, W7 isn't complete yet, and I'm sure I'll encounter bugs, but I haven't yet. For those that don't know, the RC (Release Candidate) is a version of a program that is nearly ready for release but may still have a few bugs; essentially the status between beta version and release version.

I blogged about the beta, and was happy with it, but it wasn't my main machine. This is. And now I'm using it every day, I'm finding some things that are frustrating, but nothing huge. And there are some really useful features, such as built-in ISO burning. Yeah I know, who burns an ISO nowadays? I've had to a few times, and it's nice. I just wish it had built-in ISO mounting as well (which it doesn't) and that Daemon would release a W7-supported version. But I digress.

For those that are on the fence, I say try it. I've enjoyed it.

Cool Free Software Part 3

Ever wanted to be in control of what album art is applied to your music? Don't trust what iTunes decides to place as the art? Don't use iTunes?

Wait no more!

I use Winamp at work for my media, mostly because I don't want to install iTunes, and since my work machine is ALWAYS on, I can install Winamp Remote and stream that music from anywhere, anytime. Problem with that is that I'm missing a lot of album art and Winamp just doesn't have the ability to find album art (that I could find...).

Enter Media Art Aggregator. It's a cool little program. From the description on the site: "A digital media art aggregator. Finds cover art for music, tv shows, movies or any other type of media. Searches different sources including Google Images, Yahoo Images, Live Images, Deviant Art, Amazon.com and Walmart. Additional sources can be customized by defining the url to get the source from and a regular expression to determine the image url or by defining new classes that inherit from a base class."

So, it finds album art for you. Cool thing is that you get to choose your album art. So, it brings up choices.


You can see for this Our Lady Peace album, I have 2 choices, which look pretty similar but have different sizes (one is 500x500 and the other is only 446x500). Of course, I pick the 500x500 one. You can also see the options for image database to search.


Here you can see more options. The current album art was only 200x200, whereas MAA allowed me to see a bunch of better looking covers.

Pros: It's easy. You can set it to search on double click, where it will just simply copy the highlighted text on the left and search by it. That works for people like me, who try to label their folders as Artist - Album Name, but wouldn't work as well for people who don't label their folders that way.

It works for various media types, not just CD's. That's nice.

It's free. You can't beat that.

Cons: It has a hard time finding some lesser-known bands. It also is subject (in some cases) to user-inputted pictures, which really sucks. For instance, the album art for my Classic Queen album looks like junk, and I couldn't find a better one (you can see the black on the bottom and right).

There are also some covers that show people actually holding the album and taking a picture. Of course, since you have so many search engines the chances of that are less, but still...

It also hasn't been updated in some time (since 2008), and that may not change, but that isn't going to be an issue unless the sites change their formatting and it breaks the search.

Overall it's a nice, lightweight alternative to iTunes, and one that gives you a large amount of control.

The Office Quote of the Day

This is actually the quote from the weekend, but I've been busy at work.

"There are thirteen people working in this office. So thirteen times a year, Michael gets a cake, and balloons, and some sort of joke gift, and makes a toast. And there are two types of toasts: one is a joke about how old you are... and the other is something inappropriate, or horrible. Or both."

-Jim

Cool free software part 2

Today's piece of software is one that is pretty neat. Essentially, Synergy gives you the ability to control multiple computers from one keyboard and mouse, over your network (the computers must support TCP/IP). You install Synergy on both machines (the client and the server), then simply configure them. Configuration is easy and is done on the server. You simply say "Laptop" is 0 to 100% to the left of "Desktop" and "Desktop" is 0 to 100% to the right of "Laptop". Once that's done, you fire it up on both machines and start it, and it will connect, and viola! You can share the mouse and keyboard.

Additionally, Synergy gives you the option to auto-start the process upon user login or upon computer boot, making it easy to reconnect.

It's a light-weight client (you can see the process usage in the screenshot below), and it supports multiple platforms (from their website):

• Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me (the Windows 95 family)
• Microsoft Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP (the Windows NT family)
• Mac OS X 10.2 or higher
• Unix
  • X Windows version 11 revision 4 or up
  • XTEST extension
    (use "xdpyinfo | grep XTEST" to check for XTEST)
    

Ultimately, there are a ton of options out there for this type of thing. Multiplicity (not a free program) by the Stardock guys, Input Director (a free program) are two examples. There are others, and to each their own I guess, but Synergy is light, free and easy to setup.

It has downsides. The updates and changes are slow to come. It also suffers when doing processing-intensive things (in my case it's when backing up SQL databases or doing really heavy SQL queries, etc) where it will literally break the connection. Also, I've found that if I try to unlock the "server" if I've hit Ctrl-Alt-Del with the mouse on the "client" machine, the keyboard is unresponsive past the initial Ctrl-Alt-Del. But, even with those "issues", I've yet to find a program as good as Synergy.

Cool free software part 1

I'm cheap, I'll admit it. I don't like paying for things when there are free alternatives available. Because of that, I've grown fond of open-source type projects, and like playing with them.

One I recently stumbled across was f.lux. The idea behind this piece of software is that the closer you get to bedtime, the more that the light from LCD's can affect sleep patterns. I'd read about this before, and although I have no idea if it's truly legit science or not (there are some links on their site), but decided to give it a go. f.lux is designed to adjust the color temperature of your LCD/Screen based on the time of day. So you download the program, install and run it, and input your zip, and it will automatically adjust the screen. Since I'm writing this at 10PM, it's a much lower temperature (3400K) then it is during noon (6500K). It took a day or two to adjust to the orangish (is that a word?) tint, but it's cool, and since I'm on my laptop usually before bed, if it helps, it would be even cooler.

Word Clouds

Word Clouds are kind of cool. So, I found a site that will create one for you, based on a number of things. Here's one based on this blog.

Ever lost important files?

I'm sure you've had this happen - you're in the middle of a paper. You're working hard and things are going good. You step away from your computer for some grub and a night away, and by the time you come back - POOF! - your computer it blue screened (I know, I know, Mac users probably don't have this....but until someone buys me a Mac, I'm sticking with the cheap Windows that meets my needs) and you're stuck with the last auto-save that Office did (if it can recover it).

This is why you need to BACK STUFF UP. I personally use SyncToy to back my laptop up to my server. But I've come to the realization lately that it's not enough. What happens if my stuff gets stolen? What if I want to go back to an older revision and I've overwritten it? The solution? Off-site backup.

There are a number of ways to do this, and an even greater number of online places to do this: Amazon's S3, Microsoft's SkyDrive, Carbonite, and Mozy. I'm using Mozy. This is for a number of reasons:

1. Price. It's FREE for 2GB of online storage. Yes, free. No strings attached. Obviously, 2GB isn't enough to store a music collection, or a full set of home videos, etc, but it's PLENTY for me to save all my school work and other important documents. If you really need the extra space, they offer unlimited backup for $4.95/month.
2. Location. I'm a Utahn, born and bred. If I can support a homegrown company versus Amazon or MS, I will.
3. I know employees. The company is solid.
   
4. Encryption. It's safe and secure.
5. Block-level incremental backups. This is cool. This method only backs up the blocks within the file that changed, rather than copying the whole file.

Convinced?
Go to Mozy.com to sign up for an account and download their software. It's free. You can thank me later.

Are you a university student? Want Server 2003/2008 for free?

Two posts in one day? What?

Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition
This is available from Microsoft's Dreamspark website. Windows Server 2003 is specifically designed for a server environment, but can easily be configured to use as a workstation. Once configured as a workstation, it is basically Windows XP, but a more secure code revision. Windows XP drivers nearly always work perfectly on Server 2003, with very very few exceptions. Users also report gaming performance is equal to Windows XP, and better than Vista.

Windows Server 2008
Available through Dreamspark (see above), instructions here to configure it to workstation so it looks more like Vista except without the bloat.

Thanks to various people on SlickDeals.net (the best deals site, IMO) for the info. I've gotten a key from Dreamspark for 2008, and will grab one for 2003 here soon.

Carlos Boozer

It's not often that I stray from my geek and Office musings, but I came across something that I think is hilarious and I wanted to share.

Few things in my life are more important than Utah Jazz basketball and BYU athletics. So, it's only natural that these loves of my life (or frustrations, in the case of BYU sports this year, but that's a whole separate post) come into my blog.

The MOST frustrating player on the Jazz by far is Carlos Boozer. His "matador" defense (or lack thereof) is unreal. Whether it's just laziness, inability, stupidity, or something else is the big million dollar question. Added to this lack of 'D' is his, as of late, inability to do much on the offensive end makes this the $12M question.

This flowchart (stolen from this guy) explains what must go through his head some nights.

I'm just not sure it's worth paying a guy $12M for his yelling ability ("And One!"), and lets be honest, you pay me even $1M and I'm going to work my tail off to get better, not work my tail off to sit on the bench.

VBA is....interesting

VBA is powerful. I'm in an intro to VBA class at BYU this semester which has been pretty awesome. There's a bit of stuff you can do in VBA to make Excel and other apps pretty smooth. The IDE sucks though. Pretty bad.

Maybe I'm spoiled, having learned C# in VS2008. Maybe I'm just a sucker for a pretty face, and VS definitely has that. Eiter way, using the built-in IDE and looking at the standard forms, the only thing I can think is "This would look SO much better in C#." Problem is that my final has to be done in VBA. I considered importing a C# project as an activex control and sneaking around it that way, but decided that would probably earn me a great grade for creativity, and a bad grade for everything else.

I mean, who wants a form that looks this bland?

Oh well. This is a screenshot from my final project, a tax client tracking tool for my dad. It can invoice, create/email reports, email reminders, etc.

The Office Quote of the Day

It seems I unintentionally took a break from blogging. I'll be back soon, I promise. I'm working on a VBA app right now for my dad (it won't be pretty, but it should be functional), and finishing up MyLibrary (both are projects for school).

While I do that, one of my most favorite quotes from the Office came up on my calendar:
"I am taking responsibility. It is up to me to get rid of the curse that hit Meredith with my car. I'm not superstitious. But I am a little stitious."

-Michael

"MyLibrary" in C#

Last semester I sat working at my desk and I looked at my bookshelf and realized that I had no idea which books I owned and which ones I didn't. I also had been wanting to learn a new programming language, and decided to write a program to keep track of my books (and later, DVD's). Since I get Visual Studio 2008 for free from school, I picked C# as the language, and MyLibrary was born.

This semester I was able to completely overhaul the broken, not well written program for a new class at BYU, the "unclass", where the topic is picked by the student. Mine is C#, obviously.

MyLibrary is completely light-weight, and at this point fully-functional. It stores the entire library in an XML file anywhere on the users machine. Many other implementations store these types of libraries in SQL, but I wanted it to be a standalone executable that the user doesn't have to install.

It also allows the user the option to automatically search the Amazon website using the UPC/ISBN (through the Amazon Web-services API) based on one row or the entire database.

In addition, the user can scan the barcodes in from a barcode scanner or a Cuecat scanner (we had to use one for my VBA class, and I thought it'd be fun to implement it here) and have the software find the information for them, limiting user-input.

There are still bugs of course, and I don't claim it to be the best written software, but it's been fun to write. I'll post the executable when it's more complete then it is now.

It also has a really basic stats page:

*sidenote - the stats page has a pie chart that the screen print doesn't pick up for some reason. Odd.

Media Center Update

A lot has changed since my last post on my media center. At that time, I had the media center up and running, and then it unexpectedly crashed on me. After much troubleshooting (the worst part about DIY projects) I realized it was most likely (note I never officially figured it out) that the video card I was using was PCI Express 2.0, and my mobo was an older one, that likely didn't support 2.0 on the Express slot.

Although that sucked, I was okay, because I wasn't quite ready to make the transition to HDMI in my living room. So, I yanked the vid card, put the media center in my office, and used my XBox 360 as a media extender to play my recorded shows from the office.

Did it work? Yeah. Was it the best solution? No way. I found the XBox to be somewhat slow and at times unresponsive. In addition, it required another remote (because I didn't want to take the time to program my Remote Commander for a temporary solution).

Anyway, I soon found a great deal at Buy.com for a 3-to-1 HDMI switch (only $12 with free shipping), and then picked up some HDMI cables, and I realized it was time to move the HTPC into the living room. But it was an unsightly thing in its' mid-tower case. Until my brother offered his "old" media case because he'd purchased a bigger and better one. The downside to this was it only accepts half-height cards, meaning my TV tuner wouldn't fit.

After thinking about this, I ended up being okay with getting rid of the card. I'm quickly becoming an HD snob anyway, and unless I wanted to upgrade my HTPC to Vista and run the TV Pack hack to get QAM on my tuner, I wasn't going to get OTA HD on my tuner anyway, and the new case looked great compared to the old one.

So I made the switch - and still couldn't use my HDMI card. Thankfully, I got an older Radeon X300 low-profile card with DVI out, which will work until I either upgrade my mobo or my video card.

Add to that using Handbrake to rip my DVD's, coupled with AnyDvd to strip the encoding, I've now got all my DVD's stored on my HTPC.

I also was looking for a good, easy to use visual piece to navigate the media when my brother recommended XBMC which is pretty, easy to use and develop on, and best of all, is free.

The last thing that I haven't done yet is to install VNC or Synergy to allow me to control the media center from my laptop. Once that's done, it will be fully functional. I'll post a pic of what the computer looks like sometime here soon.

Today's Quote

"I'm petrified of nipple chafing. Once it starts, it is a vicious cycle. You have sensitive nipples...they chafe, so they become more sensitive, so they chafe more. So, I take precautions."

-Andy

Review: Windows 7 Beta pt 2

There was so much cool new stuff in Windows 7, I decided to make a second post. This is more of a "Here's where you can go for more info" kind of post, and I'll update it as I find better links, but a good one is here, at the How To Geek's site.

In addition, here's the information from Microsoft's help site on getting to know Windows 7:

Review: Windows 7 Beta pt 1

As soon as it was announced that Windows 7 beta would be available for a limited time, I knew I had to grab it. I did, and threw it on an older laptop I had. The laptop doesn't meet the requirements (it's only a 1.7 Mhz proc, 768mb of RAM, and a 32MB video card), but I wasn't about to throw it onto a live machine and have it die. It is a beta, after all.

This isn't going to be a review of under the hood features. This is more of a review of the shiny chrome additions, like the new rear-view mirror, or the new stereo.

So, where to begin? The desktop, of course.


Obviously, there are a couple of things that jump out right away. It's based on the look of Vista, but with changes. The icons are bigger, and the taskbar is bigger, which is nice. Also, you can pin icons on the taskbar easily. Another nice thing is that sticky notes are built in. You can see a couple there on my desktop.


The next change I love is the ability to close items straight from their taskbar icons.


You also have the ability to customize your taskbar with simplicity. I know you could customize it before, but not as simply.

And you see that flag? That's the new action center, a way to control which messages Win7 sends you. Don't want to see backup information? Okay, turn it off.


UAC has gone through an overhaul as well (let all users of Vista rejoice!), allowing the user specifically how tight to control their machine:


All I can say about that is that it's about time.


The calculator has been overhauled as well, allowing built-in conversion tools, a programming calculator (with binary, qword, dword, and other tools), and lots of other changes.

And the speed? Even on this 'slow' machine, it's nice and peppy. I can only imagine what it would do on my beefy machine with a dedicated video card, an AMD x2 proc, and 6GB of RAM.

My favorite change though is the auto-fill and auto-split. If you drag a window to the left, it will auto-fill only the left side. Same with the right side. If you drag it to the top it will fill the whole screen. That's awesome, especially for people with large monitors, like myself.

So, my decision? I will be upgrading. I like Windows 7. It took some major work to get a WEP2 driver on this laptop, but it's a beta, so I'll cut it some slack. Other than that, I have 0 complaints.

For a beta, it's stable. It's almost cliche at this point, but Windows 7 is everything Vista should've been, and more.

Review: Garmin Nuvi 750

Early last year, my wife and I decided to join the throngs of the lost, and purchased a GPS unit. I found a great deal online and purchased a Navigon 2100, a little 3.5" unit with a clumsy windshield mount and terrible GPS speed. But, I got a good deal, and when we went to Denver for 2 months for an IT internship, it saved our lives.

The last little while though, I'd been selling some old crap on eBay and decided to take the splurge and purchase a better GPS. I was able to grab a Nuvi 750 from Best Buy's eBay outlet for $100, and was a little unsure of what I would find.

The Good:
Where to start? There's a reason Garmin is one of the industry leaders in GPS technology.

First and foremost, the response time to commands is AMAZING. Granted, coming from the Navigon to the Garmin is like moving from a Geo Metro to a Corvette, of course it's going to be faster, but either way, I'm sufficiently impressed by how quick it performs.

It also finds a satellite extremely efficiently. This was my biggest gripe with the Navigon. There were times we'd be driving for 5-10 minutes before it would get sufficient reception. Driving in the same locations, the Nuvi connects on average within 1-2 minutes, most times less.

Intuition. The designers of the Nuvi software were really smart. Even the little things it does are great. Take a few examples: You start your car, the GPS is plugged in. It recognizes that and will boot the GPS for you. You start driving, but haven't touched the GPS yet, it will automatically switch to the map, showing you where you are. As you drive, it will show the next cross street, even if you aren't having it navigate. When you turn the car off, it will give you 30 seconds, after which it will automatically shut down. All of these little things make it a no-hassle, think for you approach.

Map updates. The moment I got my Nuvi, I registered it with Garmin. Imagine my surprise when I found it qualified for a free upgrade to the 2009 maps. Most places charge an arm and a leg for a map update, but Garmin handed it out. Granted, I'm sure the next ones will charge, but it was a pleasant surprise.

The mount. It's nice, it's simple, it works. Getting the unit on and off the mount is a snap. Can't say the same for the Navigon.

The Bad:
These aren't so much bad things, more just picky things. First, the rerouting capabilites are slower than the Navigon. This isn't such a big deal, but it's interesting.
The amount of data on the screen is lacking. Now I know you're not supposed to watch the screen of the GPS all that much, but on my Navigon I could get worlds of awesome data on the screen all at once while navigating: est arrival time, current speed, miles left (total), altitude, traffic, etc. The Nuvi offers most of this, but it requires going to separate screens, something I just can't do while driving.

Overall:
I like it. A lot. It was well worth the upgrade. It's lighter, faster, bigger (4.3" vs 3.5"), etc etc. I'm a happy Nuvi-er as of 2 weeks ago.

The Office Quote of the Day

"I signed up for Second Life about a year ago. Back then, my life was so great that I literally wanted a second one. In my Second Life, I was also named Dwight. Absolutely everything was the same, except I could fly."

-Dwight

Finding Duplicates in SQL

First off, credit for this goes to Pete Freitag here: http://www.petefreitag.com/item/169.cfm

Anyways, if I haven't mentioned it before, I currently am a jack-of-all-trades at my place of employment (Digital Gateway). It's an ERP software company that mainly focuses on the copier industry. I currently work in support, but additionally handle training duties as well as some implementation and conversion duties. Officially when I graduate I will move full-time into implementation and conversions. I'm the highest you can get in our support department without going to a manager or a development team member. That means I work a lot with MSSQL, because that's the backend our software sits on.

Earlier this week, I had a ticket where the customer needed some custom SQL scripts run, as they had incorrectly labeled over 2,000 items, inserting a ',' instead of a '-' in their item numbers.

Obviously this is easy, right? Simply run a SQL replace statement:

UPDATE Items
SET ItemNumber = replace(ItemNumber,',','-')
WHERE ItemNumber LIKE '%,%'

Problem was that out of the 70,000 items in their database, they already had items that they had entered with hyphens, so running the script wouldn't work, because ItemNumber can't be duplicated. So, after fighting for a while, I ended up doing the following:

--DROP TABLE #ItemNumbers

CREATE TABLE #ItemNumbers(
ItemNumber VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL,
NewItemNumber VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL)

INSERT INTO #ItemNumbers(ItemNumber, NewItemNumber)
SELECT ItemNumber, REPLACE(ItemNumber,',','-')
FROM Items

Cool thing about this is that I now had a new temp table with only the old item number and the new item number, and if the item number didn't have a comma in it, then the ItemNumber and NewItemNumber were the same. So all that was left was finding the duplicates in the NewItemNumber row. That's where Pete came in. Modifying his query, I came up with:

SELECT ItemNumber,
COUNT(NewItemNumber) AS NewItemCount
FROM #ItemNumbers
GROUP BY ItemNumbers
HAVING ( COUNT(NewItemNumbers) > 1 )

and voila! I had it. Now all I needed to do was modify these 10 items and then run my original script.

In the meantime...

I should be embarking on some geeky projects this semester for school, as I'm going to be learning a variety of technologies as well as VBA. I'll keep the blog updated as often as possible.

Until then, my sister got me the Office daily calendar for Christmas, and so I will also update the blog with the funny quotes as they come up.


For yesterday:
"Ever since I was a kid, people have been telling me that I can't do things. You can't be on the team, you can't move on to second grade. Well, now they're telling me that I can't win back clients using old-fashioned business methods. We'll see about that. And FYI, I eventually aced second grade, and I was the biggest kid in class."

-Michael Scott