Author Archives: Greg

IT Toolbox: TechNet Magazine November 2011

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Greg

The November IT Toolbox column is up on the TechNet Magazine website. In November, I covered these products: MaxiVista: Extend Windows’ desktop onto another physical machine EaseUS Todo Backup: An alternate backup solution for Windows desktops Check it out and … Continue reading →

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IT Toolbox: TechNet Magazine October 2011

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Greg

The October IT Toolbox column is up on the TechNet Magazine website. This month I covered three products: up.time: Up/down service, server and network device monitoring Synergy: Software-based KVM Iperf: Test your network’s performance Check it out and let me … Continue reading →

Posted in Microsoft TechNet | Leave a comment

C# : String Extension to Parse Enums

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Greg

It seems to me that there is too much typing involved in parsing a string as an Enum type. Here’s a quick string extension method to turn it into a simpler one liner: public static T EnumParse<T>(this string input, bool … Continue reading →

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IT Toolbox: TechNet Magazine September 2011

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Greg

The September IT Toolbox column is up on the TechNet Magazine website. This month I covered these two products: Lansweeper: Hardware, software, and device inventory management ipMonitor: Detailed monitoring of your servers, systems, and network devices. Check it out and … Continue reading →

Posted in Microsoft TechNet | Leave a comment

ASP.Net: App_Offline.htm as a Maintenance Page

Posted on September 16, 2011 by Greg

While Googling about, I came upon an oldy-but-goody, that apparently has been available since the release of ASP.Net 2.0: App_Offline.htm. An undocumented feature, you can copy a file called app_offline.htm into the root of your .Net website and the application … Continue reading →

Posted in ASP.Net, IIS, MVC | Leave a comment

SSIS: Use Two OLE DB Destination Adapters to Catch Insertion/Constraint Errors

Posted on September 16, 2011 by Greg

If you are using SQL Server Integration Server (SSIS) packages to insert large volumes of data, you have undoubtedly encountered incorrectly formatted or typed data in your data source including precision errors, conversion errors, and primary key/foreign key constraint errors etc. To … Continue reading →

Posted in MS SQL Server, SSIS | 1 Comment

JavaScript: Extending String to Have startsWith and endWith Functions

Posted on September 9, 2011 by Greg

Here’s two prototype functions you can add to your JavaScript to give you “startsWith” and “endsWith” functions: if (!String.prototype.startsWith) {     String.prototype.startsWith = function (str) {         return this.slice(0, str.length) == str;     }; } … Continue reading →

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ASP.Net MVC: Partially Secured Sites / Switching from HTTPS back to HTTP

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Greg

Most sites out there have some portions that should be only served via HTTPS, while the remainder can be HTTP, such as account pages and content pages respectively.  This is sometimes called a “partially secured site.” Starting with MVC 2, … Continue reading →

Posted in ASP.Net, C#, MVC | 2 Comments

IT Toolbox: TechNet Magazine August 2011

Posted on August 20, 2011 by Greg

The August IT Toolbox column is up on the TechNet Magazine website. This month I covered these two tools: Gladinet Cloud Desktop: Synchronize your cloud-based storage DB Software Laboratory Database Browser: Multi-database server browsing in one interface Check it out … Continue reading →

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IT Toolbox: TechNet Magazine July 2011

Posted on August 20, 2011 by Greg

The July IT Toolbox column is up on the TechNet Magazine website. This month I covered these two tools: Secunia – Corporate Software Inspector: Keep your all machines patched and up to date from a centralized console BleachBit: Clean up … Continue reading →

Posted in Microsoft TechNet | Leave a comment