Here is a nice Pre-Weekend surprise:
After an [Unwanted!] Windows update which restarted my computer the night before , I turned on one of my Windows 2008 machines and Windows froze at the start up progress bar. Basically , it shows the progress bar which is a good sign (Control has been handed over to the OS) , but immediately after that the screen goes black and Desktop never appears. I noticed that one of my hard disks goes grinding for 3 seconds , silent for 2 seconds and so on and so forth- I mean the same annoying sound pattern kept happening forever! Sounds like something is corrupted in my File System.
With my Google hat on, I found out that I am not alone in this , but most of the reported issues were related to the corrupted drivers. For what it’s worth , I never installed any new driver! Attempted “last known good configuration” , but no luck. Both safe mode options available in Windows 2008 also froze at crcdisk.sys command. I am like , WTF! I was just hoping that it was not the system drive that kept failing on me.
Finally opend up the case and took out the two non-system drives and rebooted. It booted up!… tried each drive with a new reboot , until I found the faulty drive. I took out that corrupted drive and put it into an SATA enclusure and hooked it up to the same box. Starange enough the OS reconginized it , but I couldn’t access the drive. Formatted it and put it back into the case and everything got back to the normal life before the crisis!
<Confession>Man, things like what happend to me on Friday scares the shit out of me. When do I want to learn the Backup lesson?!</Confession>
I was reading Mike Walsh‘s new book Teach Yourself SharePoint 2007 in 24 hrs over this weekend. A fantastic book for beginners and intermediate users who quickly want to get some brief understanding of the some intresting SharePoint topics.Well, I read/scan read every SharePoint book that comes to the market and I don’t care about the audience. It’s amazing how every single book has something new to offer. Don’t let them slip under your radar , no matter how good you think you are!
Although Mike doesn’t get too deep into the discussions (and that’s because of the nature of the book as everything must be wrapped up in 24 sections), I guess he has covered a good chunk of information and lots of leads on intresting topics not covered anywhere else.No fluff , simple wordings, lots of screenshots and real world content are all among the most obvious positive characteristics of his book. I must say Good job to my fellow MVP! I am very impressed by your book.
Chapters in Mike’s book that really caught my eyes:
Hour 13 and Hour 14 where he talks about WSS 3.0 Search and leveraging Search Server 2008 Express.
Hour 17 and Hour 18 where he presents OneNote 2007 and Access 2007 Integration with SharePoint.
In short, You can use Access 2007 to report against SharePoint lists. Bascially any SharePoint list can be stored as an Access 2007 *table*, so ineasted of connecting to the lists.asmx Web service (for example in your Reporting Services data source) , you bascially get Access 2007 reporting facilities to report against that list (some restrcitions apply). Needless to say that joins are working nicely too! . Finally reverse operation is also doable: You can add an access table to a SharePoint site as a list.
I just arrived in IRAN and I am gonna stay here for couple days. Boy , it feels so good to be here! I am enjoying every minute of my trip and my family is certainly spoiling me to death like a little kido:) Believe it or not , I put on couple of kilos right away , because of all this delicious, sexy Persian dishes!
Besides visiting my family and spending quality time with them , I have a very important mission this time around. I am looking into spinning up another development team with 100% focus on SharePoint products and technology here in IRAN . I will be working with this group on couple of current remote projects with good salary and lots of fun!
I already interviewed three people and quite frankly I am thrilled with their level of expertise in SharePoint. I still have couple spots left , so if you think you are a qualified SharePoint developer , you know the object model ins and outs and you have worked on enterprise-scaled projects , please drop me a line at [myfirstname] AT devhorizon dot com and I will immediately setup a telephonic interview with you. Please remember to attach your resume as well. Please bear in mind that this is not an opportunity for those who want to learn SharePoint. I have a urgent need for expereinced and classic SharePoint developers – hardcore ones in particlar!
BTW, I have been away from IRAN for couple years, so if you know a good place to have some fun these days , let me know. I am a pretty approachable guy , so I don’t mind hanging out with you , Persian SharePoint geeks!
Mike Fitzmaurice promised to blog more often and I got him on the tape so I can bug him once in a while IF he does not keep his promise 😉
I just saw that fellow MVP , John Holiday is planning to deliver some ECM training courses. All I can say is that , no matter how expert you are , walking away from John’s presentations and classes , it is almost impossible that you are not amazed with John’s intelligence and expertise. It’s scary how smart this guy is! seriously!
