Archive for April, 2008

emc clariion ax150 setup

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008

This is a bad boy. It will pump 1TB of data through a 2GB fiber channel 10 times faster then a similar RAID array. For $7,500, it better do it. (more…)

caviar se16 raid setup

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

I always used a RAID1 array to store my data into a PC. Recently, I had 2 disks failing on me, not one. They were Seagate Barracuda 400GB SATA drives. Previously, I had a lot of problems with Seagate but I sticked with them because of the 5 years warranty. So that made me switch back to my old friends, Western Digital. Still, I had my share of troubles, even with those cool drives. (more…)

crack the code and win $4000.00

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

I’ve got an email today from Christian Beauclair (Microsoft Canada), thanking me for my participation at the Heroes Happen {Here} event, in Montreal. The event was held on the same date my birth date is… no laptop gift from Microsoft this time. Still, I managed to get a Windows Vista Ultimate license and (most important) a copy of Visual Studio 2008 Standard edition.

Even without the software giveaway, it was worth attending due to many interesting developer features and improvements present into the new software. Microsoft was also trying to show the world that developers are just simple human beings, with their normal life, kids and family. That was a nice touch, since it is true.

In the email, Christian also sent an invitation to solve four puzzles, part of the Crack The Code contest. I was a little disappointed, Microsoft made it really easy. It took me less then 1 minute to solve all puzzles. That means a huge number of users will participate in the $4,000.00 FutureShop draw. See the puzzle details, below.
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sphinx product for vbulletin finalized

Saturday, April 5th, 2008

I finally finished the Sphinx Search integration, into vBulletin 3.7 forum software.

After 1,500 lines of code and a lot of server testing, I can say that the product can be labeled as “industrial grade”. This product is pretty technical, it requires server administration knowledge, as well patience to read the help information for each new option implemented into vBulletin control panel. (more…)

vista sp1 dvd checksums

Saturday, April 5th, 2008

There are many fake versions of the new Vista SP1 OEM images. Also, there has been a lot of discussion about the famous 1840 and 2040 ending ISO’s. Those numbers represent the time the RTM was built. OEM manufacturers received the ISO file with 1840 time stamp on it.

The original ISO files are available only to Microsoft MSDN subscribers. However, if you own a valid license, you will be able to do a clean install and use your current license key to activate the new slipstreamed versions. Their proper checksums are listed below.
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