12Dec 2012 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

The Surface Meta-App

Surface
Just a quick little blog post about one more app you're going to want to track down for your Surface. Great Windows Apps. Why do you need this? Well, how to put this, the Store, looks nice. But it doesn't work terribly well. Trying to see the top rated apps, or looking for new apps, you can get different results at different times and I find it quite frustrating. But, Great Windows Apps is running some sort of queries or something against the Store and displaying the information in a much more meaningful, and quite accurate, representation of the apps. It's just good.
Read More
06Dec 2012 by Grant Fritchey 9 Comments

Microsoft Surface: Top Apps… So Far

Surface
After living with the Surface for a month and trying hard to make it work as a tool for production, not just consumption, I feel like I've got a handle on this thing. There are several that are built in that I'm using all the time like Word, Mail, Internet Explorer, OneNote, Music and Video. But there are a few others that you need to know about if you're looking to get more functionality out of your Surface. One note, I tried to find links to the Windows Store for all the apps, but I can't seem to do that, or at least I couldn't find how to do it. Here's the list: Tweetro: This is the single best Twitter app that I've tried so far. It functions as I…
Read More
05Dec 2012 by Grant Fritchey 11 Comments

Experimenting with Social Media

Professional Development
After multiple talks with Jason Strate (blog|twitter) and Denny Cherry (blog|twitter) about how they are working on automating more of their blogging and social media interactions, I'm going down that road... a little ways. The first thing that I'm trying out is Pocket. It's a way to capture web sites that you want to read later. You don't want to have to try to manage book marks in your browser. They all suck (and Google Chrome on the Mac sucks even worse) in this task. So this app lets you quickly mark a site and tag it for reading later. Further, you have an account that you can access from multiple devices. I'm already trying out two different readers that will work with Pocket on the Surface and I already…
Read More
03Dec 2012 by Grant Fritchey 6 Comments

HDInsight, Finally

Azure, HDInsight
See this: That's right. The install worked. All I had to do was get a completely clean server set up. No domain controller. Now to get my learn on. Microsoft has a web site with a number of introductory samples. I'll start there and work through them. The very first example gets me set up with some data that it builds by running a Powershell script, importdata.ps1. But I'm not going to just blindly follow along. I want to see what the heck is happening so I can start understanding this stuff. By the way, thank you Microsoft for making the samples in PowerShell and not forcing me to relearn Python or something else. That would have been frustrating. The script is really simple. It has two scenarios you can…
Read More
30Nov 2012 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

Sharing the Love

SQL Server, T-SQL
Just a few blog posts that you ought to go and read. First up, Tom LaRock maintains a listing of SQL bloggers split up into various cleverly named groups to show you where to go to get good information. This really is an excellent collection of bloggers. It's the people I go to when I need information. Some of them are better resources than the Books Online when they post something. Personally, I've made the list for the last several years, but Tom has decided that I'm worth of elevation, so I've gone from the Model database to the Master database. Thanks Tom. One blog that's not on Tom's list is Tom's blog. You should be reading that regularly too. And congratulations to Tom again on making MCM. Next, one…
Read More
29Nov 2012 by Grant Fritchey 4 Comments

HDInsight: Trying again

Misc
And I thought this would be so easy. Latest attempt. I just did an uninstall of HDInsight. Then I found all the Hadoop folders on the drive and removed them. I validated that there were no services left running or anything else that might interfere with a fresh install. Then, I rebooted the server (have you tried turning it off and on again?). After all that, I tried rerunning the HDInsight Community Preview. This time I ran it as an administrator on the system, even though I already am logged in as one. Paranoia at every step is my new approach since there have been no errors until I try to turn the silly thing on. And the install went perfectly. I can see two folders, Hadoop and HadoopFeaturePackSetup. Last…
Read More
28Nov 2012 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

HDInsight: First Pass

Azure
I installed HDInsight with no errors. The install is so brain-dead, I couldn't see how there could be errors. But, I decided to fire up the service to start playing with it. That's when I hit the errors. First up, I was getting logon errors for the Hadoop service itself. I tried resolving them manually, but was digging a hole. So, I uninstalled, and reinstalled, figuring I had missed an error message somewhere along the line. After this install, I didn't get logon errors. Instead I got internal errors. Some more investigation and it appears that the service was marked for deletion. The uninstall worked, but somehow wasn't complete. Yay! So, I did another uninstall after rebooting the server. Install #4 coming up.  And we're back to logon errors. Specifically:…
Read More
26Nov 2012 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Treat Yourself to Knowledge

Misc
There's a one day sale going on at Apress today, 11/26/12. All their eBooks are $15. This means you can start learning about query performance tuning, or get started as a DBA, or explore a whole range of topics by different authors presenting some of the best in the business knowledge. Yes, these are all Apress books that I've written on different topics. This is your chance to pick them up at a pretty steep discount. I know I'm heading over there to buy Jason Strate and Ted Krueger's book on indexing. Check mine out. Check Jason & Ted's out. Just find yourself something and treat yourself to some knowledge. Today's a great day to do it.
Read More
21Nov 2012 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Final 2012 Learning Opportunity

Misc
There's still a little time left in the year. I know some businesses have allocated training budgets and if they don't spend the money, they lose it from their budget. So a few of you might still be looking for opportunities to get your learn on. I've got one more big one before the end of the year. You can try heading down to Florida for the Live 360 conference. I'll be there along with several friends (love my #sqlfamily). I'm presenting two sessions, one on setting up an environment for performance testing using the new distributed playback capabilities from SQL Server 2012 and one on introducing the accidental DBA to backups. You can still register here to attend these sessions and all the other great ones being presented. Last…
Read More
19Nov 2012 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Living with the Surface, Maybe

Surface
No major updates at the moment. I still haven't played with remoting through PowerShell. I'm just living with it. Had an interesting problem start today. You can swipe from the sides to get different behaviors. Swipe in from the top or bottom and you get menu choices in the app you're in. Swipe in from the right and you get the Charms. Swipe in from the left... well, you're supposed to get the list of recent apps or the ability to set an app in another window or even switch to the previous application, all depending on how you swipe. Except, mine stopped. Hurrah. I did a bunch of poking around to figure out why this happened, hoping I'm not looking at a hardware issue (oh please, not that). When…
Read More