Prepare for Repairs

Quite unfortunately, I needed to send my laptop (6730b) for servicing. This made me think about my both personal and business data. I needed something that would keep data private even in case of direct disk access.

Obvious choice would be BitLocker Drive Encryption. But this comes with great disadvantage. It is not possible to boot up laptop in order to check functioning of Windows.

Another choice would be NTFS encryption. It is applicable on files and folders and encryption key is connected to user. As long as you don’t give your password (or backup key), your data is safe.

Most of personal data I had were documents and pictures but I decided to encrypt everything under user account: documents, pictures, videos, settings… It proved to be easier to encrypt everything in Users folder that to hand pick each item.

Most of business data was already encrypted with one exception - SQL Server. In order to ensure compatibility with every edition, I didn’t use SQL Server’s own encryption (available only in Enterprise edition). NTFS encryption works without problems once you stop SQL service. Once encryption is done, you can restart it again.

During encryption (it took quite a while) Windows 7 reminded me to backup my encryption key. Procedure was quite easy (next, next, next…) and fast. In case of something happening to user account, that is only way of restoring access to data.

After whole encryption process was done, I shut my computer down and packed it in original box and sent it to manufacturer. Hopefully, I will get it back soon enough.

Adding References in Visual Studio 2010

One of things that I noticed during work in new Visual Studio 2010 is speed of Add Reference dialog. This dialog now appears immediately while in old Visual Studio (2008, 2005…) this would take ages. I was quite stunned until I compared those two. There were two improvements that made this possible.

Loading of .NET and and COM references is done in separate thread. This means that while loading is in progress everything stays responsive.

Another improvement is that dialog opens with Projects tab as default one. Quite often this is exactly what you need - to add project reference. And even if you wish to add .NET reference, by the time your (non-threaded) hand switches to .NET tab, everything is already filled there (since loading is done asynchronously).

Worst case scenario is using COM objects and that will take awful amount of time for loading all references. But nobody uses those anyhow… :)

IntelliTrace May Not Be Your Friend

Visual Studio 2010 has one great feature. I works like this (I simplified a little): you turn on debugging, wait for program to crash, load debugging log and you can walk through state of each variable in program, go back and forward in time - almost like working on live machine.

Microsoft used to call this Historical debugger, but now (with beta 2) same feature can be found under IntelliTrace branding.

Of course, this is only available in most expensive version of Visual Studio - Ultimate. Buyers of all other version can just drool. I know I will.

One Man's Bug, Another's Feature

My laptop gives me two possibilities of controlling sound. I can play it on laptop speakers and I can play it on headphones (with laptop speakers going mute as soon as I plug it in). I think that these are standard modes available on any laptop.

However, there was sound in my headphones even when I pressed mute button. I considered this a great feature! In normal muting scenario, laptop speakers would play as soon as I unplug headphones. In this scenario, I could have speakers muted and headphones working. I do lot of work during night and this feature ensured that, even if I unplug headphones by accident, no sound will be heard.

What I considered feature, someone considered a bug. I noticed new driver on Windows Update for my audio card and as soon as I installed it, my favorite feature was gone. Someone decided that this inconsistent behavior needs to be fixed.

Headphones are now also muted when mute button is pressed. I can use headphones in “standard” way of auto-muting laptop speakers when headphones are inserted, but that also means that, in case of unplugging, I have laptop speakers playing at full volume.

I could roll back to previous version of driver and this would work for a while. However, I will need to reinstall laptop sooner or later and at that point in time I will get newest drivers over Windows Update. And that will be sad day for me.

Ice Is Not Liquid

I have read post on TSA blog that left me puzzled.

It lead me to conclusion that bringing ice through airport is allowed: “Ice is a solid. Therefore, ice is permitted through the checkpoint…”. Yes, this is from same organization that forbids you to take bottle of water through gate.

While I think that whole fluid restriction policy is stupid, this brings it to totally new level.

P.S. Additionally, they say that empty bottles can go through. Of course (from my own experience), you cannot bring 1 liter bottle with gulp of water through (since it is not empty). Probably reason is that this gulp makes whole bottle volatile…