Category / General

by Aaron

Quilt Inspired by Microsoft Windows 8

My loving wife made me a quilt with her new sewing machine.

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For her first project with her new Brother DreamWeaver™ VQ3000, she wanted to start with something small. After a very short discussion, she and I agreed that the Windows 8 Start Screen/Modern UI interface would be a great starter project. Not only would it be fun to work on, it could be colorful, use a variety of stitching options, and use the ability to use a few different fonts to add some text.

Once I told her I would hang it in my office at work (which I have), she got started. (She knows me well enough that there would be a reasonable chance it could end up in a pile somewhere in my den or office).

IMG_0114She did not track how long it took to make, as it was her first project with the new sewing machine, but more than once she would drop by my den on a lazy Sunday afternoon with praise for her new sewing machine. Thankfully, she was able to use nearly all scraps for the quilt itself as it didn’t require larger fabric pieces. We did go to a famous fabric store once to buy some light blue thread.

She’d never owned a sewing machine that auto-threads the needle. I’m sure for many, that’s not news, but I was very impressed. I did a LOT of experimenting with colors and stitching patterns a few weekends and got extremely good at loading the thread so it could be auto-threaded onto the needle. I did it enough that she declared that I was much faster at it than her!

IMG_0127My wife is extremely organized, so she made many notes and sketches along the way so that the effort would be a “cut once, sew once” affair. (she’s has CS BS and MS, and Software Architect by day, so it’s maybe in her blood Smile).

She graphed out the whole thing mainly because there were so many pieces. While I didn’t mind if colors moved around after I had selected a location, she did. Smile Further, our cat has a tendency to shuffle fabric piles a bit.

In any case, a several weeks later working on weekend afternoons and a few evenings, she completed the quilt.

I asked about making a Surface sized quilt and grinning, she answered, “maybe.”

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IMG_0139For complete documentation and instructions, download this PDF.

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by Aaron

Windows 8 IIS Express with Windows Authentication Prompts for Credentials

If you’re seeing a credentials prompt every time you launch a local IIS or IIS Express web application that requires Windows Authentication, you’ll likely grow as tired of typing in your password as I was. To add to the annoyance, the Remember my credentials checkbox doesn’t work (nothing is saved).

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The setup:

  • Windows 8
  • Visual Studio 2012, .NET 4.5,
  • ASP.NET MVC web application
  • Non domain-joined computer (it’s on my home network)
  • Using a Microsoft account (FKA Live ID) as the local account
  • Using IIS Express/IIS
  • Windows Authentication Enabled
  • Anonymous Logon Disabled
<system.webServer>
    <security>
        <authentication>
            <windowsAuthentication enabled="true" />
            <anonymousAuthentication enabled="false" />
        </authentication>
    </security>
</system.webServer>

While there are a few proposed solutions, this is the only one that worked for me so far.

  1. Start Internet Explorer
  2. Click the settings Menu
  3. Select Internet options
  4. Click the Security tab
  5. Select Local intranet
  6. Click Sites
  7. Click Advanced
  8. Add http://localhost to the Local intranet zone
  9. Close.
  10. Verify it’s now working.

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Done.

Alternatives welcomed. :)

by Aaron

[PSA] Discovery channel Velocity available on Dish Network

Public Service Announcement:

If you’re looking for Discovery’s Velocity on Dish Network – they do have it. It’s available only by subscribing to Blockbuster.

Blockbuster includes one DVD/Blu-ray at a time plus the following additional channels for $10 additional a month (and an extra $5 for 2 discs at a time).

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(We looked around for quite a while to find this. There are many many pages that contain out of date information as they were written while it was transitioning from different programming, and also in a trial, so I hope others find this useful).

If you’re mildly into cars, it looks like a fun channel.

by Aaron

Nest Update #11: Resetting Ranges

Quick update about a new bug/issue/feature in the Nest thermostat that I’ve encountered.

Here’s the before image:

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I’ve used the new Nest 2.0 software to set ranges for the various floors as you can see above. I captured that image on the 30th of May.

Here’s the image from this morning (4th of June):

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The first floor is set to Off as I neglected to take a screen shot before I adjusted the setting (and I’d turned the Basement back On earlier, so ignore that).

However, the First Floor had the same range as the Second Floor in the shot above (68-75F) before I switched it to Off. Yes, automatically, two of the active Nests had reset their range from my choice back to the defaults. That’s an expensive choice during the hot muggy summers of Wisconsin (or any time of the year). This is the second time this has actually happened.

It also happened while were were on vacation recently (but I hadn’t had visual evidence). The house went from a range of 62-84F to 68-75F. While I’m sure our house cat appreciated it, our electrical bill will not (as it was extremely hot while we were away).

And if you’re planning on trolling/flaming this post, don’t bother. I won’t publish it.

by Aaron

Backup Reminder for Windows Home Server 2011

This is just a reminder to anyone who uses Windows Home Server’s Backup functionality to verify Backups are working.

I love the “turn it on and forget about it” feature of WHS backup. Computers automatically wake, backup, and sleep. Nice.

However, I noticed last week that at some point WHS2011 had an issue more than a month ago where it no longer was backing up ANY of the Windows PCs in our house (2 laptops, 2 desktops).

No actionable errors had occurred in March that I could find, so I can’t pinpoint a reason. I needed to go to every Windows PC in our house and re-enable backups. Thankfully, it didn’t need to start over from scratch (it picked up where it left off).

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Needless to say, having your computer backups silently fail is a bit worrisome. As many WHS2011 users likely don’t routinely go to the WHS dashboard – you might want to occasionally and check that every thing is OK.

I don’t use the LAUNCHPAD much as it tends to be the “software who cried wolf” too often. But, even if I had, I couldn’t see any indication in the Dashboard that I would have been alerted to this issue (since alerts are all saved until resolved or ignored).

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(The two warnings shown in the screenshot are for: “Important updates should be installed.” and “Free space is low.” AKA, A drive has only 62GB free (10%)).

If you do use the LAUNCHPAD, you can verify the last backup by clicking the “Backup” button. You should see something like this in the dialog that is opened:

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