Disabling animation in Expression Blend

I have some Silverlight animations that kick off right when the control loads. Expression Blend runs these animations in the designer. Do not want. :( I found this solution. Yuk! ... but it works. Thanks.

Debugging a Silverlight App on a Mac

Here's some good information.

Windows Explorer opens a new window every time I click on a folder

I made the terrible mistake of installing Windows updates this morning.  Got to work and found that ever single time I open a folder in explorer, it launches a new explorer window.  Hunted around and didn't find a satisfactory solution.  Tried to post my fix on stackoverflow, but the issue was closed.  My solution:

1. From command prompt, regedit.
2. Go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\explore\command
3. Change (Default) from: %SystemRoot%\Explorer.exe /seperate, /e,/idlist,%I,%L
4. To: %SystemRoot%\Explorer.exe /e,/idlist,%I,%L

Sigh ... Windows ... bless its heart.

Short Paths

Digging into Jellyfish today. A step in their documentation says, "Please do not place these files into path that includes spaces. for example, "visual studio 2008". We are fixing this problem, but not yet fixed." I happen to use the default C:\Users\FirstName LastName\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects and similar paths. I am not terribly keen on putting development projects in weird places that I will forget later. So a little poking around showed me how to make simple, short paths for all this stuff. You can jimmy with these scripts to suite your taste, but I ended up happiest with a new drive letter, B, under which I could easily get to my Visual Studio projects (B:\vs\Projects), SQL Server projects (B:\sql\Projects), documents (B:\doc), etc..

1. To get started, create a new folder to which you will map your new drive.
1. (optional) Create a folder called link under C:\Users\FirstName LastName\.
2. If you like, you can just use C:\Users\FirstName LastName\Documents, but I prefered to use a seperate folder so that it doesn't appear to clutter my real Documents folder with the new shortcuts (vs, sql, etc.)
2. Open a command prompt with Administrator privileges and map your folder to a drive:
1. subst B: "C:\Users\FirstName LastName\link"
2. You will also want to open another command prompt without Administrator privileges and do this one same command there.
3. Now create your links
1. DeepZoom: mklink B:\dz /d "C:\Users\FirstName LastName\Documents\Expression\Deep Zoom Composer Projects"
2. SQL Server: mklink B:\sql /d "C:\Users\FirstName LastName\Documents\SQL Server Management Studio"
3. Visual Studio: mklink B:\vs /d "C:\Users\FirstName LastName\Documents\Visual Studio 2008"
4. Documents: mklink B:\doc /d "C:\Users\FirstName LastName\Documents"
   

Now, from command prompts, Explorer or wherev, you can use that B drive and its sub-folders as if they were "real" paths.

If you want to delete all this stuff:

1. Open a command prompt (with or without Administrator privileges) and remove each of the links
1. DeepZoom: rd B:\dz
2. SQL Server: rd B:\sql
   
3. Visual Studio: rd B:\vs
4. Documents: rd B:\doc
2. Open a command prompt with Administrator privileges and remove your mapped drive:
1. subst /D B:
2. You will also want to open another command prompt without Administrator privileges and do this one same command there.
3. Delete the link folder, if you created it.

SQL Server lockout

If you find yourself spending almost all of your time in SQL Server Management Studio working with the same database, it is kind of handy to set your login's default database from master to that particular database.  That way, when you fire up SSMS, the query window is ready to get to work, and you run less of a risk of adding yet another eronious table to master.  99% of the time this is pretty good.

However, if you do something like ... oh, say ... bring that database offline to dump connections so you can do a restore, and then you try to do .. oh, maybe ... anything else in SSMS, you might find that you are pretty much hosed.

Here's a quick fix:

- fire up SSMS, but don't log in yet
- click 'options>>' on the login screen
- change your default database to master
- proceed with the login
- run the following script, changing your login name:  alter login [domain\user] with default_database = master
- bring the offline database back online
- proceed wreaking havoc on your server

I'm not saying this has ever happened to me.  I'm just passing along hypothetical help to all my anonymouse friends on the interwebs.

Is there protection in this virus?

So ... I have McAfee products installed on my PC laptop. They are supposed to protect me from undesirable processes that hog system resources, and protect me from things like annoying pop ups. McAfee software does this by hogging system resources,


and annoying me with pop ups.

different blogs?

While researching some features of GoDaddy.com hosting, I found the following blog software that might be useful for future use.

BlogEngine.NET
- GoDaddy reference
- free, open source .net
- Features
- multi-author support


LifeType
- cool demo
- Features
- easy deployment, "plug n' play"
- easy YouTube