Upgrading Microsoft C# SMO from 160.2004021.0 to 161.47008.0 "cannot convert from 'system.data.sqlclient.sqlconnection' to 'Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Common.IRenewableToken'"

 ERROR:

"cannot convert from 'system.data.sqlclient.sqlconnection' to 'Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Common.IRenewableToken'"

Convert all System.Data.SqlClient to Microsoft.Data.SqlClient

RCA

Updated Microsoft.SqlServer.SqlManagement from 160.2004021.0 to 161.47008.0

Buggish / Paradox: Windows 10 shutdown failed

This morning while shutting down my work laptop, windows failed to shutdown and gave the following error message:

:(

Your PC ran into a problem and needs to restart. We're just collecting some error info, and then we'll restart for you.

XX%

For more information about this issue and possible fixes, visit http://windows.com/stopcode

If you call a support person, give them this info: Stop Code: SYSTEM SERVICE EXCEPTION

The most amusing aspect of this experience was that the resolution to the failed shutdown was to reboot which went without any problems. So, basically windows can't safely shutdown only?

I know the system probably just killed the process to restart, but still a little amusing.

 

 

 

 

97% of quitters employed by 3% who don't (misunderstood)

There is meme that pops up every so often that goes, "97% of the people who quit too soon are employed by the 3% who never gave up." This statement does not provide any new information.

Logic Problem

A lot of people read the quote as the 97% of the people vs 3% of the people, but really the quote states 97% of quitters and 3% of never gave up. Technically speaking, there is no mention how large the population is of quitters versus those who never gave up.

What can be extrapolated from the quote (assuming you trust the numbers) is that a very low percentage of those who did not quit are employed by a large percentage of those who did quit. Which in itself is quite reflective, because that would also mean that 3% of those who quit also became bosses, and that 97% of those who did not quit became someone elses. 

So technically, the statement is not a logic issue or problem. The issue/problem lies on the people either jumping to conclusions or misreading the statement.

Math Proof

Assuming life is binomial in that all people are either quitters (A) or non-quitters (B), and also that all people are either employees (C) or employers (D).

97% of A = C, therefore 3% of A = D

3% of B = D, therefore 97% of B = C

In conclusion, this statement works for anything that can be broken into two groups which provides no new analysis whether the numbers are correct or not.

Buggish:Google+ Error when Click On New Icon in Blogger Admin Page

I have been busy with other things lately and haven't posted for a while. I just noticed that there is a new icon in the top right corner of the blogger admin page. It is a plus-sign inside a comic speech-box.

I'm not exactly sure what it does, but I get an error message: Error Loading.

Google+ Error

Update 11/10/2014: This error has been fixed. It is the Google+ share. I just happened to check, not exactly sure when the fix was implemented.

Buggish: User Profile Service service failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded. (Microsoft Vista)

I was called to assist a family friend's mother who ran into an error with her laptop. Here the problem would have been a little more useful if they had told me what the problem was before I arrived there. The problem is that the user received an error the the profile cannot be loaded once they enter their password.

This made it rather difficult to troubleshoot because I cannot log in to figure what information is missing. Unfortunately, this was also the only user created on this machine. So to get into the machine, I had to reboot the system into safe mode. For Vista, this is F8 during the OS load screen.

Once in the OS, I looked up the error which I came across reference-1. I picked the registry fix:
1. F8 in Windows load screen
2. Safe Mode
3. Open to registry location: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\
4. Look for profile that matches the login in question and there should also be a bak version of the key
5. Rename the main key to another name (I added .bad)
6. Rename the backup key without the extension (remove .bak)
7. Reboot, and this fixed my problem

I then created a backup of the registry file (saved in a folder in the documents folder) so that it could be easier for the user to fix this problem in the future:

1. F8 in Windows load screen

2. Safe Mode with Networking

3. Open My Documents

4. Open old computer backup

5. Double click FixUserProfile.reg (although .reg may not show but should be the only file in the folder)

6. Reboot, and this should fix the problem

Worst case if you dont have a problem to work with, below is the keys needed within the registry profile (modified some values to remove identification):

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\S-1-5-21-XXXXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXXX-XXXX]

"ProfileImagePath"=hex(2):00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\

  00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00

"Flags"=dword:00000000

"State"=dword:00000000

"Sid"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\

  00,00,00,00,00

"ProfileLoadTimeLow"=dword:00000000

"ProfileLoadTimeHigh"=dword:00000000

"RefCount"=dword:00000002

"RunLogonScriptSync"=dword:00000000

Reference

1 - http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_vista-security/user-profile-service-service-failed-the-logon-user/4ed66b21-c23e-42f1-98b2-706dcf931fae

Coding: Error running Eclipse with 32-bit Java

I get this error because I had Java 32-bit running and a 64-bit version was needed.

Java was started but returned exit code=13

C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre7\bin\javaw.exe

-Xms40m

-Xmx512m

-XX:MaxPermSize=256m

-jar C:\Program Files\Eclipse-SDK-4.2-win32-x86_64\eclipse\\plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.30v20120522-1813.jar

-os win32

-ws win32

-arch x86_64

-showsplash C:\Program Files\Eclipse-SDK-4.2-win32-x86_64\eclipse\\plugins\org.eclipse.platform_4.2.0.v201206081400\splash.bmp

-launcher C:\Program Files\Eclipse-SDK-4.2-win32-x86_64\eclipse\eclipse.exe

-name Eclipse

--launcher.library C:\Program Files\Eclipse-SDK-4.2-win32-x86_64\eclipse\\plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.win32.win32.x86_64_1.1.200.v201205221813\eclipse_1503.dll

-startup C:\Program Files\Eclipse-SDK-4.2-win32-x86_64\eclipse\\plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.30v20120522-1813.jar

--launcher.overrideVmargs

-exitdata 1e30_5c

-vm C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre7\bin\javaw.exe

-vmargs

-Xms40m

-Xmx512m

-XX:MaxPermSize=256m

-jar C:\Program Files\Eclipse-SDK-4.2-win32-x86_64\eclipse\\plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.30v20120522-1813.jar

I had Eclipse and Java installed a long while back, and was pretty sure that Eclipse was working before distracted by other projects. Coming back to it to work with Google Apps, I received the above error. After some trial-and-error, I finally found a post that it may have to do with the Java version. I had to download the 64-bit version. I am not sure why I thought Eclipse had worked before. Whatever I had thought, the 64-bit version of Java fixed this above error.

Work Life: SharePoint 2010, Why Do You Hate Me So?! Unable to display this Web Part

I received this error:

Unable to display this Web Part. To troubleshoot the problem, open this Web page in a Microsoft SharePoint Foundation-compatible HTML editor such as Microsoft SharePoint Designer. If the problem persists, contact your Web server administrator.

The page always seem to know when I need it most. We use SharePoint to present in our meetings to discuss open items. I get this problem maybe once every month or two. I work on it frequently throughout the day so the frequency is not because that is the only few times I open it.

I think our SharePoint is on a server farm, because we also have a page that displays which SP server we are on. Usually, someone on my team will be on a different server and the page is working fine. We have not figured out what causes this problem nor how to switch to a different server. We think closing and reopening the browser will at least switch us to another server but this usually does not work.

The problem is only on one of our views. The other views appear to be fine, although they are usually empty or have few records (i.e. 1-5). The all views page also works. The list itself comes up without any problems. Usually if I wait a couple hours, the problem will fix itself. It is quite a hassle to get in touch with our SP administrator so I have never contacted them and usually just wait for it to fix itself.

While searching the error on-line, there appears that there could be a couple sources of the problem. At the frequency that we get the problem, my guess is that there was some updates done on the servers. Assuming the rest of the company follows the same as our infrastructure team, we update each server on separate days. There were solutions to actual changes made, but we have not made any changes (at least to our knowledge). Unfortunately, I do not have a solution nor explanation to this problem.

Off topic, I also looked up what the correlation id meant (site provided below). This appears to be an id associated with my session so is not useful to a web search. It is useful for searching the logs for an admin. Unfortunately, I do not have admin rights.

Reference

http://zimmergren.net/technical/sp-2010-find-error-messages-with-a-correlation-id-token-in-sharepoint-2010

Work Life: SharePoint 2010 - Creating Workflow Error

The list of workflow actions on the server references an assembly that does not exist. Some actions will not be available. The assembly strong name is Microsoft.Office.Workflow.Actions, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c. Contact your server administrator for more information.

For me, I had to restart my SharePoint Designer which fixed the problem. My guess is because I opened it yesterday and left it open overnight. My VPN disconnected as usual when my machine goes to sleep-mode.

Here's another site that looked promising, but appears to require access to the server:
http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/68769/sharepoint-2010-sharepoint-designer-notification-the-list-of-workflow-actions

Review: SharePoint 2010 - Designer Email Editor, Calculated Column - Left, Substring, Right

Summary

Cannot be done in the Email Editor, but there is a crappy workaround  with Calculated Field.

Backdrop

I did not have a say in the design of our group's SharePoint site. It was not designed using a normal form. I have found my way into the designer to play around with some of the functionality because I need a way to get a substring of a field. The 'developer' working on this does not seem to understand what a substring or text manipulation is. Since I am not familiar with SP, I am playing around to see if I could "point" him the right direction after I figure it out.

Details

There does not appear to be any text manipulation in the email editor. Alternate solution is to create a calculated column. 

I need to provide the last item in a comma delimited field. I found this was impossible if there were more than two items unless there were more parameters to FIND or a FINDLAST function. FIND will return the first comma while I need the position of the last comma. Without a loop, there is no way to navigate to the last comma. 

Fortunately since I am entering the data, I decided to enter the late item at the start of the field. Thus switching to the LEFT function and FIND the first comma. While writing the function code for this, I ran into a few unexpected errors.

The primary problem is that FIND returns an ERROR if a comma is not found. I was expecting a 0 or a -1 or a false. To get around this, I had to use ISNUMBER which then returned either a 0 or a false (documentation says Yes which I seem would be No for false).

At least this does not cause problems if there is an ERROR, the display will just be #ERROR#.

Reference

http://3sharp.com/blog/building-dynamic-strings-in-sharepoint-designer-workflows/
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb862071(v=office.14).aspx

Buggish: Google Drive gadget broken on my Google Sites

Google Drive encountered an error. If reloading the page doesn't help, please report the error. To learn more about Google Drive, please visit our help center. We're sorry for the inconvenience. Thanks for your help! - The Google Drive Team

This is embedded in my sites page which was working the last time I was on which was a while ago. I have continued to add date to the spreadsheet in Google Drive. Today, I decided to go onto the sites page to see if the list was updated. Instead of the sheet, I saw the error above.

I attempted to modify the gadget. At first, clicking on the link to the spreadsheet did not work. I clicked Change button to reapply the correct sheet. Now, click on the link brings up the spreadsheet. After saving all the changes, I continue to get the error above. Clicking on the Open Sheet link at the bottom of the gadget brings up the proper spreadsheet.

I'll check back again at at a later time to see if this error is fixed. This is the first time that I saw the error.

Updated:
After further investigation, I found this error occurs with the new Google Spreadsheets. I tested with an older Google Spreadsheet which still works.

Work Life: C# Web Service Errors

No spaces in name of XElement

Error Message:

System.Xml.XmlException: The ' ' character, hexadecimal value 0x20, cannot be included in a name.

This is because I had used:

XElement root = new XElement("List Of Members", e1, e2, e3);

... which should have been:

XElement root = new XElement("ListOfMembers", e1, e2, e3);

Parameterless Constructor

Error Message:

cannot be serialized because it does not have a parameterless constructor

This was because I was trying to return a variable of type XDocument which does not have a parameterless constructor. I then tried return specific classes, but still received this error because my classes did not have parameterless constructor.

Basically what the compiler is looking for is the follow:

public Class1
{
  Class1()
  { }
}

The constructor can also be private or internal if you do not want to have a public parameterless constructor.

Review: TD Bank - Remote Deposit

Error Message: "Exceeded Deposit Limit - You have exceeded the mobile deposit limit."
Options

• Deposit a Smaller Check
• Find a TD Bank or ATM
• Contact Us
• Main Menu

The cheapest option is to mail to the following address (check the link below for current address):

TD Bank, N.A.

ME2-001-033

P.O. Box Number 1190

Lewiston, Maine 04243

Another option suggested was to wire the check from another bank. I am not familiar with this process. I would imagine you would need an account with that bank.

Experience

I received a check while being out of town for a while. I figured I could deposit check from my phone not realizing there was a limit to the amount I can deposit through the mobile app. Then I realized that there are no branches in my area.

So I used the Contact Us option which dialed the number 888-751-9000. I waited about 6-8 minutes (the machine said it was around 4-6 minutes) on hold. Soon I was speaking with Roberta who was able to assist me immediately and provide the address quickly. I have a lot of experience waiting on call a long period of time and working with people who has too look up information for everything, but not with Roberta. She enunciated very well; I had no trouble understanding her. I did not chat at all but she seemed pleasant. The overall experience was very good.

The only unfortunate thing was having to mail the check which is not a problem as time is not a huge factor, but that I am always wary about mailing anything. Although greatly exaggerated, I feel like half the snail mail seem to get lost (except for spam mail). It is kind of a hassle to get 1 envelope and 1 stamp when out-of-town.

Although I had no problem with TD Bank service, I think this could have easily be resolved if they just had an option that gives me the address to mail the check to when the app realizes that I am depositing more than the daily limit. 

1/8/2014 - They deposited the check after the end of the year. I am little upset about that but not a huge deal... at least it worked. 17 total days, 12 business days, cross country mail.

Locations

Error Message: "There doesn't seem to be a TD Bank near where you are looking. Please try entering the info again."

One last thing was finding a branch very far from their region. I think it would still have been nice to return the closest branch even though it would have been several states away. The reason is I thought maybe I entered in the location incorrectly or maybe I had to look farther.

Reference

http://m.tdbank.com/faq/FAQAnswer.aspx?InterfaceID=16&QuestionID=2952

http://tdbank.intelliresponse.com/index.jsp?requestType=NormalRequest&source=6&id=1410&question=What+is+the+Bank+by+Mail+address

Complaint: Turbotax Error - Unable to Download

ERROR: "Unable to download getTaxReturnPdf from myturbotax.intuit.com. Unable to open this Internet site. The requested site is either unavailable or cannot be found. Please try again later."

This error occurs when I try to download previous year returns through Internet Explorer 8. I got around this using FireFox 17.0.8. I have not tried this on later versions of IE because that requires me to try this again from the other room (maybe I'll get to it later or perhaps if someone requests it).

Complaint: Google Chrome Crashed - Videos on Infinite Loop

Browser: Google Chrome

Version: 28.0.1500.95 m

Error Message: Aw, Snap! Something went wrong while displaying this webpage. To continue, reload or go to another page. Reload. If you're seeing this frequently, try these suggestions.

I notice that I get these if I leave something running particularly with flash or silverlight for a long time (8+ hours). My guess would be something with memory leaks. Some examples are with Pandora or YouTube playlists with a loop.

The issue is minor in that I just refresh the page and on rare occasions restarting the browser. I feel that FireFox does a better job on this where I've ran the same sites for multiple days without any problems. I cannot quite remember Internet Explorer since it has been a while but I think it used to just slow down my system to the point where I couldn't do anything else without close the browser.

Review: Internet Explorer 10 (ie10) - My First Impressions

I have been testing bing a few times to see how things are on that front. The interface looks nice, but it was really slow on Internet Explorer 9 (ie9). By very slow, I mean that I have to wait 1-2 seconds. During this time, I cannot even click in the search box and type in my search while the rest of the page is loading the nice images.

I've been ignoring the message about upgrading to ie10, but I caved today to test if there is a difference. The first thing I noticed is the download page has a non-enhanced version. I am surprised that there is no explanations to what that option is. After reading a couple articles (ghacks), I stuck with the non-enhanced version.

Once installed, Bing did come up much faster. Time will tell if this slows down. I am also a little untrusting in why it is faster in ie10 than ie9 because it makes me wonder what else is windows doing in the background that I really do not want it to do.

I tried to search, and I get an error on the very first search. If I go back and try again, the search works as normal. Below is the error that I got:

Bing services aren't available right now: We're working to restore all services as soon as possible. We know you want to get back to searching. Please check back soon. (Ref A: DCCFEF37C40C4E0B9A21AE8EE668A44D Ref B: 48D526FF966620D8DA93A2AD8235794B)

Besides the minor error, I do not see any real difference than what I see with google for my use. It defaults images to the top. It does not have ads (which is a plus as an interface), has other popular searches and related searches. But, the search results appear very cluttered. I'm surprised even thought my screen is 24" that bing only uses half the screen. I do not like the constant reminder to connect to Facebook. Why is there no option to close it?