1. Made a backup of my wordpress contents, by using the export feature under tools, from the admin control panel
2. Downloaded and extracted wordpress 3.0 from here
3. Only change l made to my exisiting wp-config.php file, was to replace the key section with code from here.
4. Deleted the entire contents of my wp-admin and wp-includes folders
5. Left intact all contents of my wp-content
6. Copied/uploaded all files from root folder of extracted wordpress 3 folder, to my site
7. Uploaded wp-admin and wp-includes folder from extracted wordpress 3 folder to my site
8. Logged into my sites admin console and an upgrade of the database was requested, l agreed to this and that was all.

IRON BABY from Patrick Boivin on Vimeo.

Passed this exam on 5/25. It rained heavily all day.

Books for this exam arent really out yet, even from Microsoft. Theres a new book that came out l’ll immediately recommend to anyone – its very concise, real-world practise sections and scenarios – SQL Server 2008 Administration: Real-World Skills for MCITP Certification and Beyond (Exams 70-432 and 70-450) by Tom Carpenter. I googled last week for any book and came up with this one, and l immediately bought this from amazon.com. This arrived the weekend before my scheduled exam, and l read the entire book that weekend, did all the practical excercises, highlighted all the core points etc. for my review sheet.  Heres a link to Tom Carptenter’s blog. Other material l used was the CBTNuggets Video Course. This is very very good. I also used for the 2nd time -  practise exam software from Kaplan. Had installed for my review daily on my bus commute their Selftest software. This comes with practise tests, review notes etc.

Obviously l cant go into what the questions asked were, but my advice is – make sure you cover all new features provided with SQL Server 2008, and most admin stuff like database performance optimization, high availability etc. Download trial SQL Server 2008 [developer version] from Microsoft’s website and have at least 2 instances installed for your personal practise. If you attend any Microsoft launch event. they usually give away a licensed copy of SQL Server Standard edition. You dont need to install SQL Server 2008 R2, but it doesnt hurt to get familiar with that version.

Good luck!

Needed to get the wireless card working, this is what l did.

My first partition already has Windows 7 installed. Both operating systems co-exist perfectly. Make sure you install Windows 7 first. I usually reserve about 45Gb from any laptop harddrive for my linux installations, this gives about 1.5Gb for the swap partiton and the rest dedicated to linux.

The card is a Realtek RT8191SE / 8102E – got this from Windows 7 command prompt by simply typing ipconfig/all

Download and extract the linux drivers from Realtek taiwan website here

Commands:

Change into the extracted files subdirectory then -
82  su -
83  ls
84  cd /home/steve/Downloads
85  ls -al
86  cp rtl8192se_linux_2.6.0015.0127.2010 /usr/src/rtl8192se_linux_2.6.0015.0127.2010 -r
87  cd /usr/src/
88  ls -al
89  cd rtl8192se_linux_2.6.0015.0127.2010
90  ls
91  cp -rf firmware/RTL8192SE /lib/firmware
92  make
93  ls
94  cp HAL/rtl8192/r8192se_pci.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/net/
95  depmod -a
96  reboot

Each of the movies below, l can relate to something in the flick and sometimes l hum the soundtracks daily or recall words/phrases used in the movies. Most of the movies below l either own and/or own also the soundtrack album. If l could wave a wand, l’ll wish these all were available in HD – high definition – but then again, they wouldn’t be classics in HD would they?

1. The Champ – 1976
2. Hotel Rwanda 2004
3. Amistad 1997
4. Crash 2004
5. Million Dollar Baby 2004
6. Rocky IV – 1985
7. AI – Artificial Intelligence – 2001
8. Tears of the Son – 2003
9. Miracle at St. Anna
10. John Q
11. Anthwone Fisher
12. Seven Pounds – 2008
13. Jason’s Lyric
14. White Man’s Burden – 1995

Sometimes you can make out a person by what movies/TV shows they watch!

One thing l noticed  – l cant find a service for SSIS – Sql server integrated services – under the usual list of SQL services using SCCM – SQL server configuration manager. Seems Microsoft must have integrated or condensed this somehow in the SQL engine. While installing the upgrade [select tools from the SQL server installation center, then select upgrade fro sql server 2000/2005/2008] l did see SSIS as a checked list of SQL server component options.

SSIS is a core component used for ETL – extraction, transformation & Load.

Will provide an update on this as l find out more.

Lots of cool CG effects by ILM – Industrial Light & Magic, Double Negative etc.
Interesting to see how advertising is taking an interesting direction into movies, tv shows etc. Watching Ironman, you will see real references to Oracle – including a brief view of Larry Ellison – Oracles Dynamic CEO. I received an Oracle magazine for 5/2010 with an Iron man 2 poster in it. Click here for the Oracle Iron man 2 website. And there cant be a cool movie without a cool car – just like the Audi R8 Spyder V10. Click here for the site on this car. 2 Rolls-Royce Phantom which cost about $450,000 were “actually” crashed for the movie.
This is similar to the insert of Stan Lee in Fantastic Four – Rise of the Silversurfer. He gets turned away by the wedding event bouncer.

Watching 24 [Jack Bauer] weekly as l do, you will also see besides the commercials, Sprint cellphones, wifi modems, cisco computer networking gear etc.

Setup steps involved in code and pictures:

1) Create a SQL login account to use for this.

USE [master]
GO
CREATE LOGIN [dwlogin] WITH PASSWORD=N’xxxxxx’,
DEFAULT_DATABASE=[master],
CHECK_EXPIRATION=OFF, CHECK_POLICY=OFF
GO

2)

• right click on data collection under your database instance/management group
• select configure management data warehouse
• next
• create a management data warehouse
• click on new
• enter a name for the data collection database, accept defauly options
• next
• select dwlogin, nt authority\system, nt service\sqlserveragent and assign role mdw_admin
• next
• finish

right click on data collection, configure management data warehouse, setup data collection

click next, then click finish

You will notice under sql agent -> jobs – that some Data collection related jobs eg collectionset_3_upload have been created for you.

You can access reports by going to:

Datacollection -> reports -> management data warehouse ->

• server activity history
• disk usage summary
• query statistics history

SQL Server 2008 R2 adds a new option for bringing Microsoft Server virtualization concepts to database servers – its called Utility information. Click here for a demo video explaining this.

Management -> Data collection -> Start data collection set  – gives the below error. I’ll update this blog on resolving this.

TITLE: Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Collector
——————————

Unable to start collection set Utility Information.

For help, click: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?ProdName=Microsoft+SQL+Server&ProdVer=10.50.1447.4+((KJ_RTM).100213-0103+)&LinkId=20476

——————————
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

An exception occurred while executing a Transact-SQL statement or batch. (Microsoft.SqlServer.ConnectionInfo)

——————————

Caught error#: 14693, Level: 16, State: 1, in Procedure: sp_syscollector_start_collection_set, Line: 108, with Message: A collection set cannot start without a schedule. Specify a schedule for the collection set. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 14684)

For help, click: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?ProdName=Microsoft+SQL+Server&ProdVer=10.50.1352&EvtSrc=MSSQLServer&EvtID=14684&LinkId=20476

——————————
BUTTONS:

OK
——————————

[steve@pegasus Documents]$ su -
Password:
[root@pegasus ~]# uname
Linux
[root@pegasus ~]# uname -a
Linux pegasus 2.6.31.9-174.fc12.x86_64 #1 SMP Mon Dec 21 05:33:33 UTC 2009 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[root@pegasus ~]# yum clean all
Loaded plugins: presto, refresh-packagekit
Cleaning up Everything
0 delta-package files removed, by presto
[root@pegasus ~]# uname -r
2.6.31.9-174.fc12.x86_64
[root@pegasus ~]# rpm -q kernel
kernel-2.6.31.5-127.fc12.x86_64
kernel-2.6.31.6-166.fc12.x86_64
kernel-2.6.31.9-174.fc12.x86_64
[root@pegasus ~]# clear

[root@pegasus ~]# uname -r
2.6.31.9-174.fc12.x86_64
[root@pegasus ~]# rpm -q kernel
kernel-2.6.31.5-127.fc12.x86_64
kernel-2.6.31.6-166.fc12.x86_64
kernel-2.6.31.9-174.fc12.x86_64
[root@pegasus ~]# yum remove kernel-2.6.31.5-127.fc12.x86_64
Loaded plugins: presto, refresh-packagekit
Setting up Remove Process
Resolving Dependencies
–> Running transaction check
—> Package kernel.x86_64 0:2.6.31.5-127.fc12 set to be erased
–> Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

================================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
================================================================================
Removing:
kernel x86_64 2.6.31.5-127.fc12 installed 98 M

Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Remove 1 Package(s)
Reinstall 0 Package(s)
Downgrade 0 Package(s)

Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
Running rpm_check_debug
Running Transaction Test
Finished Transaction Test
Transaction Test Succeeded
Running Transaction
Erasing : kernel-2.6.31.5-127.fc12.x86_64 1/1

Removed:
kernel.x86_64 0:2.6.31.5-127.fc12

Complete!
[root@pegasus ~]# rpm -q kernel
kernel-2.6.31.6-166.fc12.x86_64
kernel-2.6.31.9-174.fc12.x86_64
[root@pegasus ~]# yum remove kernel-2.6.31.9-174.fc12.x86_64
Loaded plugins: presto, refresh-packagekit
Setting up Remove Process
Resolving Dependencies
–> Running transaction check
—> Package kernel.x86_64 0:2.6.31.9-174.fc12 set to be erased
–> Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

================================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
================================================================================
Removing:
kernel x86_64 2.6.31.9-174.fc12 installed 98 M

Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Remove 1 Package(s)
Reinstall 0 Package(s)
Downgrade 0 Package(s)

Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
Running rpm_check_debug
Running Transaction Test
Finished Transaction Test
Transaction Test Succeeded
Running Transaction
Erasing : kernel-2.6.31.9-174.fc12.x86_64 1/1

Removed:
kernel.x86_64 0:2.6.31.9-174.fc12

Complete!
[root@pegasus ~]# rpm -q kernel
kernel-2.6.31.6-166.fc12.x86_64
[root@pegasus ~]#

Check out this New year celebrations video.

Here are a couple of quotes to start the year…

“Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us all be thankful.”

“Meditate. Live purely. Be quiet. Do your work with mastery. Like the moon, come out from behind the clouds! Shine.”

And finally as Mark Twain said:

“New Year’s Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.”