Mike Hanley's Blog

Mikelar is a Boy

The Hanley name will live on. Tylar and I just learned we are going to have a baby Boy. The due date is December 6th. Now we have to pick a name.

Waiting In Line For New 3G iPhone

Waiting in line with Kevin at the Apple store in Corte Madera.

Start Mac OS X 10.5 in Verbose Mode

You can start a Mac running OS X 10.5 in Verbose mode by pressing the following at boot up:
Command-V

Here are some additional commands you can run in a Terminal to permanently enable this feature.

Enable Verbose boot mode:
sudo nvram boot-args="-v"

Disabling Verbose boot mode:
sudo nvram boot-args=

Current NVRAM firmware settings:
nvram -p

Cisco Network Topology Icons and Visio Stencils

I came across several cool Visio shapes for Cisco's Network Topology icons used in their product documentation.

Network Topology Icons
http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac50/ac47/2.html

Visio Stencils
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/prod_visio_icon_list.html

How-To Enable Stack Item Highlighting in Mac OS X 10.5

When apple introduced OS X 10.5 they added a really cool Stack Item concept to the Dock. I found a cool trick to enable highlighting when moving over items in a Stack Item:

To enable this feature:

1. Launch the Terminal and type the following command:
defaults write com.apple.dock mouse-over-hilte-stack -boolean yes

2. Restart the Dock:
killall Dock

To disable the highlighting:
defaults write com.apple.dock mouse-over-hilte-stack -boolean no

TechEd 2008 and Hard Rock Memorabilia

I just finished attending Microsoft's TechEd 2008 conference in Orlando, FL. It was a great conference and I had a lot of fun attending. I helped Scott Stanfield, the CEO of Vertigo, with 2 presentations: "Silverlight 2 Deep Zoom Deep Dive" and "Video.Show and Slide.Show".

There were several great announcements as well:

• Silverlight 2 Beta 2
• Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2
• Velocity CTP1

To top off the event, the Vertigo team also ported the Hard Rock Memorabilia 2.0 application to Silverlight 2 Beta 2 (there is a case study too):

Windows Sysinternals Live

Traditionally Microsoft provides access to the Sysinternals Tools via TechNet. They also provide a direct link to download a zip of all of the tools: http://download.sysinternals.com/Files/SysinternalsSuite.zip.

Microsoft is experimenting with a new distribution method for the Sysinternals Utilities at http://live.sysinternals.com:

How-To Merge Multiple DVD .VOB Files

I recently came across a need to combine 2 DVD .VOB files to a single .VOB file. It turns out that on Windows, it was really easy to do:

copy /b VTS_01_1.VOB + VTS_01_2.VOB Combined.vob

SQL Server 2005 Disk Configuration

I often make recommendations to IT and Software Development teams as to the best disk configuration for Microsoft SQL Server 2005. There is so much information available on this topic; I wanted to condense what I have learned into a simple, visual view of my recommendation for the logical disks for SQL Server 2005:

Microsoft SQL Server 2005
	Disk 0		RAID 1 (mirror)
	40 GB		(C:\)
	15K RPM		Use: OS
	Disk 1		RAID 1 (mirror)
	40 GB		(E:\)
	15K RPM		Use: SQL Server exe
	Disk 2		RAID 10 (mirror, stripe)
	5 TB		(D:\)
	15K RPM		Use: Data
	Disk 3		RAID 1 (mirror)
	100 GB		(L:\)
	15K RPM		Use: DB Tx Logs
	Disk 4		RAID 10 (mirror, stripe)
	100 GB		(T:\)
	15K RPM		Use: Temp DB

      

They key lessons I have learned for optimal performance:

1. Separate the Operating System, SQL Server exe, Database Data, Database Transaction Logs, and Temp database onto different physical I/O controllers and disk subsystems.

2. Use RAID 1 (mirror) for the disk drives being used for the: Operating System, SQL Server exe, and Database Transaction Logs.

3. Use RAID 10 (mirror, than stripe) for the disk drives being used for the: Database Data and Temp database.

Also, the fastest the drives (or spindles as they commonly referred to when discussing disk subsystems), the better.

Vista UAC Screen Flicker

UAC is a great feature of Windows Vista, but often leaves the user with a poor end user experience. This is often because the screen flickers when switching out of Aero and into the Vista Basic theme (for security reasons).

To help keep the majority of UAC's security features, but greatly improve the user experience, you can disable this flickering:

1. Click Start and then Run.

2. Enter secpol.msc.

2. You should see the Local Security Policy MMC:

3. Open Security Settings --> Local Policies --> Security Options

4. Scroll to the bottom of the policy list and double-click "User Account Control: Switch to the secure desktop when prompting for elevation"

5. Disable the policy and click OK.

You now won't see a mode change (flicker) when the UAC prompt is displayed.