Peter Bromberg's UnBlog

If you are getting into the RC1 Release of ASP.NET MVC – you might want to check this post by Phil Haack – which apparently corrects a couple of problems and provides a corrected download. I have to keep synced with this now because we’re starting a major new project with a client that is already using MVC – and so I need to be able to jump in with both feet. Here is the link to the direct download to the revised installer . And here is a link to Haack’s post about the “refresh”. Phil says that the way to fully ensure you have the refresh is to right click on the downloaded file, select the Digital Signatures tab, and make sure the Time Stamp says Wednesday, January 28 and not Friday, January 23. Kindly note that the link to the “release documentation” with the new installer now links to a real Word document with all the details for your reading pleasure. Well! Let’s get going and hope there aren’t any more “hiccups”!

The list of “compatible” antivirus programs for Windows 7 is short – Norton, Kaspersky, Avira, and AVG. I tried Kaspersky 8 Beta first, but after a couple of weeks I’ve determined that it’s just too bulky and “obtrusive” and has some issues that I’m not happy about.  Recently I uninstalled this (thankfully, the uninstall was very clean and left no traces) and tried AVG Free. AVG free boasts some 80 million users, is MUCH more lightweight, and at this point this is the one I recommend for Windows 7. For a “free” version – this thing has way more features than you’d expect. Since my Avast! license recently expired on my main development machine that runs Windows Vista x64, I installed AVG Free on that too. It found and eliminated nearly half a dozen known threats that Avast! never was able to find.  The only option that is disabled that I could find on AVG Free was the rootkit scan. F-Secure has a free FSBL.EXE scanner to take care of that, so the “free” antivirus option i...

Windows 7 Beta build 7000 has a “Send Feedback” link at top right of every window title bar. That’s fine, I’m happy to send feedback, but the problem is I’ve found I have been accidentally clicking these links and it’s gotten to be a real annoyance. Here’s how to remove the little buggers:   1. Run regedit. 2. Navigate to the key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop . 3. Check to see if you already have a key (in the right pane) “FeedbackToolEnabled”. If so, set its value to 0. 3. If you do not have this key, then  right-click on the right pane and select New -> DWORD (32-bit) value . Name the new value FeedbackToolEnabled and set it's value to 0 . 4. Restart your machine. All of the "Send Feedback"  links will now be gone from the Windows 7 title bars.

“I'm thirty years old, but I read at the thirty-four-year-old level.”   - Dana Carvey Recently I participated in a Twittervation (“Twitter conversation”?) that started with a respected friend, who is a very well-known MVP, book author, and article writer, complaining that Entity Framework was a “pain in the ass”. That was “out of the blue”, it wasn’t in response to somebody else’s tweet. Of course, I felt compelled to respond and tweeted, “NHibernate. Also PITA, but without all the MS data-centric baggage. (Just my 2 cents)”. Almost simultaneously, another MVP friend of mine who has a follower relationship with the first Tweeter and me said, “why not use NHibernate?”. Subsequent Tweets revolved around “Don't get me wrong, not saying you shouldn't use it or that you're wrong for doing so. Just asking if you've seen NH”, and my ending with “I did a lot of research, man. It was painful. NHibernate won. End of story.” Why did I say this? I have no beef with ...

We have a new Administration.  We have a number of States who can’t seem to balance their budgets.  Here’s the deal: I balance my checkbook. I have no choice: if the money isn’t there, I don’t have the luxury of some sort of fiscal “chicanery”. The money is either there, or it isn’t. Most state legislatures’ budgets specify the same:  “If the revenue isn’t there, we cannot spend it”. But, they seem to think that they are exempt from the checkbook algorithm for some reason. States are running up deficits, and now they want Uncle Sam to bail them out (along with all the other “bailout” suitors) They are not to be allowed! You don’t go to the Federal Government to allocate taxpayer revenue to “fix your problem”. What you do is to have a plan that enables your state to assess its revenues and adjust the budget to become deficit-neutral . Just like you and I  do every month with our checking accounts. What am I talking here, Greek? Lets get our financial hou...

“You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”    - Jack London After doing quite a bit of reading to check up on various potential issues regarding the installation of the Windows 7 public Beta (build 7000),  and after having run it for a bit inside a VM,I decided it would be OK to do an upgrade over my notebook’s Windows Vista Ultimate installation. I use this machine often, but it is not my primary development box, so if things went south, it wouldn’t hurt me too much. The upgrade process was interrupted the first and second times by “incompatible software”. The first was Windows Powershell – which is installed by SQL Server 2008. There is no obvious way to uninstall this, so what I did was to rename the powershell folder under the Windows\System32 folder, and then search for the registry entries and set the installed key from “1” to “0”. That took care of the first offender. The next interruption came when Windows 7 told me Raxco Perf...