Firebathero Humiliated

Firebathero is player most known for his rituals after a win. Those rituals usually include dancing, throwing rice, going for a swim or just having fun.

He is both loved by fans and hated by his opponents for this. Usually, this act of his goes unpunished, but sometimes he gets taste of his own medicine.

Bellow is firebathero’s game against Much, a teammate of sAviOr. While this game seems like normal protoss vs terran, it is what happens as game is nearing to end that makes it special. Revenge is sweet.

Here are all parts (1, 2, 3 and 4).

P.S. Yes, I know that this video is quite old, but I am living in past. :)

Is Valencia Race Worth Watching?

Michael Schumacher will not rejoin Formula 1 circus because of neck injury sustained earlier this year.

I am Ferrari fan but I never gotten to like Raikonnen much and with Massa not driving, there is no point in even watching a race.

I think that I will go out on ice-cream…

Virtual Disk API in Windows 7

I already wrote about Windows 7 API for virtual disk support (for beta and release candidate).

Just as reminder, this is .NET implementation of Virtual disk Windows API. That enables you to create and attach (and few other things) virtual disks (.vhd) directly from C#.

This version can be downloaded here here. For shorter and more focused view, you can check open and create examples. Although they were written while Windows 7 was in release candidate, they do remain valid.

• vhdapisamplertm.zip

Checking MX Records

If you ever stumble upon problems with MX records (like I did), nslookup may be your friend.

Basic command is easy:

nslookup -q=MX jmedved.com
Server:  ***
Address:  ***

Non-authoritative answer:
jmedved.com     MX preference = 10, mail exchanger = mail.jmedved.com
jmedved.com     MX preference = 21, mail exchanger = mail2.jmedved.com

jmedved.com     nameserver = ns2.mojsite.com
jmedved.com     nameserver = ns1.mojsite.com
mail2.jmedved.com       internet address = 89.201.164.205
mail.jmedved.com        internet address = 89.201.164.205
ns1.mojsite.com internet address = 89.201.164.100
ns2.mojsite.com internet address = 69.41.243.243

This will print information from your default DNS server, but since DNS information is not propagated immediately, you may wish to check what appropriate server has to say. Just append name of DNS server in charge for given domain (nameserver field) to existing command:

nslookup -q=MX jmedved.com ns1.mojsite.com
Server:  ***
Address:  ***

Non-authoritative answer:
jmedved.com     MX preference = 20, mail exchanger = alt2.aspmx.l.google.com
jmedved.com     MX preference = 30, mail exchanger = aspmx2.googlemail.com
jmedved.com     MX preference = 30, mail exchanger = aspmx3.googlemail.com
jmedved.com     MX preference = 30, mail exchanger = aspmx4.googlemail.com
jmedved.com     MX preference = 30, mail exchanger = aspmx5.googlemail.com
jmedved.com     MX preference = 10, mail exchanger = aspmx.l.google.com
jmedved.com     MX preference = 20, mail exchanger = alt1.aspmx.l.google.com

jmedved.com     nameserver = ns1.mojsite.com
jmedved.com     nameserver = ns2.mojsite.com
aspmx4.googlemail.com   internet address = 209.85.219.1
aspmx5.googlemail.com   internet address = 74.125.45.27
aspmx.l.google.com      internet address = 209.85.220.30
alt1.aspmx.l.google.com internet address = 209.85.216.97
alt2.aspmx.l.google.com internet address = 209.85.199.27
aspmx2.googlemail.com   internet address = 209.85.135.27
aspmx3.googlemail.com   internet address = 209.85.199.27
ns2.mojsite.com internet address = 69.41.243.243
ns1.mojsite.com internet address = 89.201.164.100

That gives you information fresh from the source.

You may wish to check information from all DNS servers for your site. It can happen that only primary DNS is updated with new information while secondary one has old one. This can lead to hard-to-track bugs since everything works properly but occasionally (when secondary DNS is queries) everything goes awry.

Re-enabling Hyper-V

I am in love with my Windows 7 installation, but I do have occasional need to go into dark alleys of system administration. With Hyper-V as a bait, it is really hard to resist.

In order to keep everything simple, I don’t have dedicated partition for it. I just create VHD file and install into it. It behaves like normal installation, but without all hassle with disk repartitioning.

I also found that quickest way to do this is filling VHD directly from install CD. After that, I just copy already existing boot loader entry and change it a little.

After installing Windows Server 2008 R2 in this manner and additional installation of Hyper-V role, everything seemed fine. Creating virtual machine went without a hitch. Only when I tried to start it, I got “The application encountered an error while attempting to change the state of ‘Test’”. Third line held a issues “The virtual machine could not be started because hypervisor is not running.”. Looking into details, there was one possible cause that applied here - incorrect boot configuration.

Underlying problem was that I copied Windows 7 boot loader configuration as base for my Windows Server 2008 R2. Configurations are quite similar except for one crucial detail - there is no hypervisorlaunchtype value name in Windows 7. This is not a big problem once and there is simple command to take care of it:

bcdedit /set "{identifier}" hypervisorlaunchtype "auto"
The operation completed successfully.

Identifier is of course guid of Windows Server 2008 R2 boot loader (you can find it out with bcdedit /v). If you want to change currently running instance, you can omit identifier altogether.

After one reboot, virtual machine starts without problems.