*Words of Wisdom From The Elder

DISCLAIMER

Doing this is not supported by AT&T and other wireless carriers.  Consult with your carrier before following these instructions. 

Tethering iPhone 3G

Folks, it is here, and it is a reality!  I am writing this blog article from Windows 7 tethered to my notebook via an iPhone 3g.  The best part of all is you don’t have to jail break the phone to do it.  For the record I am using an AT&T locked, non-hacked, standard iPhone.  Nothing has been done to this phone in anyway whatsoever.  Here is what you need to get this setup and working. 

Latest Updates

Be sure you have iTunes version 8.2 installed and then get the latest version of the iPhone OS, version 3.0. 

Install MobileConfigs

After the phone is updated to the latest firmware and version of iTunes go to http://help.benm.at from your iPhone. 

Follow the on screen settings to find your country, provider and so on.  Once the MobileConfig is download go into “Settings->General->Network” on your iPhone and enable tethering. 

Windows 7

Now connect the phone to your computer and a new driver will install.  You can find it in the control panel under Network called “Apple Mobile Device Ethernet”. 

That’s it, you should be online and tethered now.  I bet you expected a really long-winded process?  Nope, it is too simple.

For years I’ve had two monitors on my computers.  Working at home every day in and day out has reminded me that two just isn’t enough.  I find myself constantly flipping between windows and applications, especially since all the development I do is virtualized.  At work we recently upgraded the majority of our developers with new Core i7 machines with two 22inch LCDs.  Since I already had my own machine I asked if I could just get two of the new LCDs.  A few days later two new Dell 22inch LCDs showed up at my house. 

Planning for their arrival I found out we use Humanscale M7 monitor stands at work.  M7’s aren’t cheap retailing for about $500.00.  That was out of my price range to get all four LCDs setup.  After hours of digging around I finally found a quad LCD monitor arm I was comfortable purchasing and it was only $88.00!  Here’s what I settled on:

The product is sold by Tyke Supply on Amazon and is manufactured by http://diwei.com/.  There really wasn’t much to go on to decide if this product was going to hold up and be sturdy enough but I pulled the trigger.

When the product arrived the first thing I noticed was how heavy it was.  As soon as I unpacked it I realized I had a winner.  The arms of the unit are extremely well built, very heavy aluminum.  It even came with an alum wrench to tighten things down. 

One word of caution is make sure you have someone to help you setup the unit.  This is not a one man job as it takes one person to hold the screens while the other person tightens them down on the pole. 

I was extremely surprised how sturdy the unit is once installed.  It doesn’t move once tightened down at all.  As long as you have a hang over on your desk you can install this unit.  As you can see below, it slid right onto my over hang. 

Windows 7 allowed me to easily configure the screens how I wanted them.

And of course, you have to see all of this screen real estate from the front or this blog post wouldn’t be complete.

The two LCDs on top were my previous Dell 19inch LCDs I purchased from the Dell refurb store several years ago and the bottom two are the new Dell 22inch LCDs work sent me.  If you are curious as to what is where on all of the screens here is what is running where right now (subject to change):

• Top Left – TweetDeck
• Top Right – Windows 7 gadgets, live messenger, pandora, email
• Bottom Left – VMWare Windows Server 2008 virtual machine (work)
• Bottom Right – Browser, Explorer, FeedDemon, Live Writer

I’ve only had this configuration for a couple of days and with so many screens and windows open I can honestly say that the new features of split screens, Aero Peek and others in Windows 7 make it incredibly easy to get around.

I may have to cancel all future speaking engagements because I seriously don’t want to leave my desk now.  🙂

 
http://deepfriedbytes.com/podcast/episode-33-getting-the-scoop-about-olso-and-m-with-shawn-wildermuth/

In this episode we sat down with Shawn Wildermuth to discuss Olso, M, MGrammar and Quandrant, the new DSL tools for .Net developers.  We covered a lot of questions around the technology and in true Deep Fried form broke down a fairly complex topic for our listeners. 

I just had to restart my VM and went ahead and applied Server 2008 SP2 to it.  When it rebooted I got this error:

\

VMware Workstation unrecoverable error: (vcpu-1)
NOT_IMPLEMENTED d:/build/ob/bora-156735/bora/lib/disklib/sparse.c:6283
A log file is available in “D:\Virtual Machines\QLDevTools\vmware.log”.  A core file is available in “D:\Virtual Machines\QLDevTools\vmware-vmx-7004.dmp”.  Please request support and include the contents of the log file and core file. 
To collect data to submit to VMware support, select Help > About and click “Collect Support Data”. You can also run the “vm-support” script in the Workstation folder directly.
We will respond on the basis of your support entitlement.

If you are running Server 2008 in a VM and thinking about upgrading to SP2, you may want to wait.  If  find a fix I’ll let you know.

Here’s the problem.  When hosting WCF services using the NetMsmqBinding in IIS7/WAS (Windows Activation Service) the application times out after 20 minutes.  While this isn’t the problem and is the default behavior in IIS it leads to the problem.  When the application is timed out, if a new message arrives in the queue, the WCF service remains idle.  In other words messages will just pile up in the queue (not good!). 

After contacting support about this issue I finally got back some information on how to address this issue so I’m posting it in case someone else runs into this issue.  Here is what you should do if you run into this problem.

1. Ensure that the queue is named as virtual directory/serviceName.svc.  So if your application is at http://localhost/myTest/myTest.svc, the queue name should be myTest/myTest.svc.  We also should ensure that the WCF endpoint address reflects this queue name
2. Both the IIS worker process (App Pool) and the Net.Msmq Listener service should use the same account, this account must also have Peek and Receive rights on the queue (but it’s better to just give it full control).  You can verify the account used by your web service by checking the account used by w3wp.exe in task manager
3. Ensure that the Net.Msmq listener is running using an unrestricted token, the following command should work “sc sidtype netmsmqactivator unrestricted”
4. Add a DWORD called “AllowNonauthenticatedRpc” to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSMQ\Parameters\security, and set it to 1

Hope this helps someone, and if I find any other information, I’ll keep this updated.