I logged on last night and noticed there were some updates to download and apply. Grabbed said updates and was invited to reboot – I guess that’s the point when I should’ve looked closer at what was updated because that was the last time it booted for 24 hours.

I know it wasn’t a new kernel because 2.6.31-20-generic is still what’s in the GRUB list. Since it is the only kernel in the list I think I can safely assume I didn’t get a new one. But once I selected that kernel and tried to boot I got”:

Kernel panic – not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(8,1)

Doh.

I spent some time late last night searching for ways to fix this. Kissed quite a few frogs but ultimately didn’t find anything useful. Or the stuff I found had such heinous looking solutions that I figured I’d rather just reload.

I should probably mention, for those following along at home, that this was all on a dual-boot system where the Ubuntu part was installed via wubi.

I didn’t really want to start over so tonight I went spelunking a bit deeper into the Ubuntu forums and eventually found an easy fix on Page 8 of “wubi – kernel panic – not syncing VFS…”.  (I didn’t have to do step B of that solution, BTW). Booted to Windows, grabbed the linked wubildr file, dropped it into place and rebooted to Ubuntu.

Bam, problem fixed. All with just one file.

Now to figure out where to look to see what last night’s updates actually were.

Related posts:

1. Wubi in 32 bit Mode
2. Linux Can Still Frustrate
3. Ubuntu: Install Inside Windows

Speaking of “Faster Release”, by Microsoft’s numbers this thing is already performs much better at the JavaScript benchmark tests. And hey, check out where IE8 is on that chart… Dead last. You have to appreciate the earnestness involved with Microsoft’s showing how fast IE9 is by comparing it to the current IE8 (aka chucking IE8 under the rear axle of the bus!).

You don’t want to use this test drive release as your full time browser, but if you’re curious about it it’ll run side-by-side with IE8 or any other brower. Right now it doesn’t even have an address bar or back button let alone tabs and pretty chrome and such. Don’t worry though; You can just go to the Page Menu and choose “Open” or hit Ctrl-O to specify an address.

By default it will open on the Test Drive site and from there you can check out all the speed demos. Did I mention IE9 will use your graphics card? IE9 does some interesting hardware-assisted stuff including starting background threads on multi-core PCs to compile JavaScript (more on performance here). The demo’s are pretty cool – try them with IE9 and your current browser of choice and see if you notice any differences. I did.

Microsoft says they’ll update the preview every 8 weeks or so until the beta starts. That gives web designers and developers a fighting chance of checking things out well before this hits the consumer desktops.

I didn’t love IE7. I’ve been close to liking IE8 but it just always feels so slow when compared to Chrome. I’m looking forward to seeing more of IE9 though.

Related posts:

1. Internet Explorer 8 beta2
2. Not Quite Ready for Internet Explorer 8?
3. Internet Explorer 7 released

Direct Launch: Blur the distinction between running native and virtual applications by launching an application installed in a virtual machine directly from the start menu or taskbar of the host system.

That seems rather cool – and a lot like one of the new Microsoft desktop virtualization technologies whose acronym I totally can’t think of right now…

Thing is, I’m not sure I’ve figure out properly how to use it or not. You can’t just drag the shortcut from the VM to the host machine’s desktop as the shortcut disappears along the way. Closest I’ve found is to start the VM, switch it to “unity mode”, tjem start the app and then Pin it to the start bar. I can confirm that the ability to pin an “unitied” app is new to this version, so maybe that’s the trick? The pinned app will stay there even after the VM is shut down so I guess I’m on the right track.

Clicking that pinned app repeats the process: It starts the Virtual Machine, flips it into unity mode and then runs the app itself. Not real quickly on my test machine, but that’s likely more a factor of my test machine than Vmware.

I’m doing some studying for a SQL Server cert (70-433) and have a VM build with a 180 day trials of Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2008 R2. I have the SQL Server Management Studio pinned from that VM and find it works as a great way to get the VM up and going when I’m ready to do some more study exercises.

Related posts:

1. Quick Look at VMware Player 2.50
2. VMware Fusion 2 Beta
3. VMware Server 2.0 beta – First Look

The first email was to alert me about the pilot launch of the new Usage Meter. Current Comcast data limits are at 250 GB/month — which to me is a lot — and this meter is something folks can use to keep an eye how much data they’re moving. As you can see from the image to the right, I don’t really use that much data… Considering how many random apps and “light Linux” ISOs I download, this actually surprises me a bit.
[click the picture to see a bigger version]

Two days later I received another email from Comcast. This one is encouraging me to enjoy my digital TV subscription – online! Free access to tons of shows and movies via the Fancast site.

I guess they noticed my usage was low too.

Related posts:

1. Comcast’s Arena Rock
2. The 250 GB Challenge and How to Measure
3. Speaking of Speeds

The install would go fine, but once completed the boot times on this machine would go through the roof. It would take over 5 minutes just to get to the login prompt! I initially assumed it was a network issue. In fact, my first guess was a DHCP request timing out. But that wasn’t it.

So I uninstalled Player and got back to work. But whenever I had a free moment I’d try another install and then muck around with network adapters and binding/unbinding the VMware bridge thingy.

But still no luck.

Tonight I made one last run at it. As always, the install went fine and the subsequent reboot took forever. But this time I looked a little closer at the event logs and one event caught my eye:

I checked the services control panel and that particular service was up and running so I guess it eventually started… On a whim, I changed that VMware Authorization service to a startup type of “Automatic (Delayed Start)” and rebooted. This is a relatively new startup type (since Vista?) that runs the service at a lower priority and has it wait until after startup and the initial “busy time.”

Problem solved. No more Event 7022 and no more slow boots. Now this laptop starts up just as fast as ever and VMware Player works like a champ.

Related posts:

1. Couple VMware Player Resources
2. VMware Player 3.0 and Network Configuration
3. VMware Player is more than a Player

Now you can get driving directions and choose “Bicycling” to get bike specific directions. That’s nice and all, but here’s the part that I like even better. Looking for more trails around Cherry Creek State Park? First, find the park at Google Maps, then click on “More…” and check the “Bicycling” box. All those green lines are the trails.

• Dark green indicates a dedicated bike-only trail;
• Light green indicates a dedicated bike lane along a road;
• Dashed green indicates roads that are designated as preferred for bicycling, but without dedicated lanes

This is going to be a great resource for finding and planning rides. I’m pretty stoked. Will it replace my paper map of the Denver area trails (sold via the Denver Bicycle Touring Club)? Nah, but it will definitely be the first place I start now.

Oh, and check out the Satellite view – the trails really “pop” in that view:

Related posts:

1. Maps.Amung.us
2. Gmaps Pedometer
3. Windows Mobile GPS Apps?

It turns out that SQL Server Management Studio has a nifty little option to speed up many, if not most, database tasks. Just find the Template Explorer under the View menu:
(note: my understanding is this is the same for 2005 and 2008 versions. The pictures below are from 2005)

This opens a new panel on the right side of SSMS (by default). Tons of tasks are listed. For instance, suppose you want to create a new table. Drill down to it and then double-click.

That leads to the template opened in a new SQL editor window.

But look at all those angle brackets. We’re not done quite yet. In the past I would start editing all those to replace my own values manually. Today Chris Randall showed me a better way while on a bit of a “side trip” during a test prep session.

Under the Query menu, select “Specify Values for Template Parameters…”

Now you get this slick little dialog. Set your values, click OK and you have a script ready to go.

Great tip, huh?

Check out the template list sometime, it is huge! I’m sure it is documented somewhere… but I couldn’t find a full list of all the stuff it holds.

Related posts:

1. SQL Server in the Cloud
2. Learned a bit about SQL Server Full Text Search
3. Tiny Wi-Fi rant, New Meebo feature and SQL Server observation