rebelpeon.com

2004 VW Jetta Brake Pads

Two days ago, Yow-Yow and I were running some errands, and we noticed an awful grinding sound coming from the front passenger side whenever I would use the brakes. Thankfully, since it is a manual, I didn’t need to use the brakes a whole lot. Once we got a chance to look at it, we noticed that the front pad was completely gone! The only thing I can think of is that the pad shattered during the night or something, because it was there one day and gone the next (and it was completely gone).

Since I’m on vacation, I ran by pepboys and homedepot to get new brake pads (ceramic to keep the dust down), and a bunch of metric sockets. I can’t believe that I work so much on my car, but don’t have any metric sockets. Needless to say, that issue was fixed.

Anyways, if you find yourself in a similar situation of replacing the front axle break pads on a 2004 VW Jetta TDI (or any with the FS III caliper), the guide pins (bolts on the caliper) are 7mm hex. Of course, this resulted in another run to homedepot. I had an Alan wrench with 6mm and 8mm (and an ASE one too), but of course no 7mm.

Amazing how well it works with the correct tools. Oh, and the stupid Bentley doesn’t tell you the right size or type either. The picture alludes to a hex, but no where does it say.

Still, only took an hour to do both sets of front pads once I had the right tools. Hopefully this helps someone else (or me when I have to do it again).

As an aside, I love how the wear indicator is only on 1 pad out of the 4 on the front axle. Needless to say, the indicator didn’t go on for me, since it was on the wrong side of the rotor and the wrong side of the car. Go, go german engineering!

MSDN Downloader Link

I hate when I go to MSDN and am downloading a large ISO only for something to happen and the download manager closes. I don’t have a shortcut on my desktop to it, so it is a pain to find.

In case this happens to you, here is the link load it back up.

“C:WindowsDownloaded Program FilesTransferMgr.exe”

SQL Dashboard 2005 for SQL 2008

Install the Dashboard by running the msi, which will attempt to install to a default location of Program FilesMicrosoft SQL Server90ToolsPerformanceDashboard. Save the files to the Program FilesMicrosoft SQL Server100ToolsPerformanceDashboard directory instead
Replace performance_dashboard_main.rdl in the PerformanceDashboard folder with the updated version attached below
Open Management Studio and connect to the server and run the SETUP.SQL script (once for each SQL instance you want to monitor) located below and in attachment
From Object Explorer select the server, right mouse click and choose Reports – Custom Reports and browse to find the PERFORMANCE_DASHBOARD_MAIN.RDL file. This report is the only report intended to be directly loaded from SSMS; all other reports are accessed as a drill through off of the main report

2008 Dashboard Zip

IIS Log Analysis

Some good things to use when trying to do analysis on IIS logs:

TXTCollector – This will make all your individual IIS log files into one large file.
Log Parser – Write SQL queries against your IIS Log files
Visual Log Parser – No command line (but sometimes a pain in the ass to install)!
Log Parser Lizard – Visual Log Parser doesn’t want to install anymore, so a new tool it is!
Log Parser Studio – Free from MS!

Some common Log Parser queries:

select cs-uri-stem as url,
cs-uri-query, cs-method,
 count(cs-uri-stem) as pagecount,
 sum(time-taken) as total-processing-time,
 avg(time-taken) as average,
 Max(time-taken) as Maximum
from <logfile>
group by cs-uri-stem,
 cs-uri-query,
 cs-method
order by average desc

select cs-uri-stem as url,
 cs-method,
 count(cs-uri-stem) as pagecount,
 sum(time-taken) as total-processing-time,
 avg(time-taken) as average
from <logfile>
where cs-uri-stem like '%.aspx'
group by cs-uri-stem,
 cs-method
order by pagecount desc

select top 500 cs-uri-stem as url,
 cs-uri-query,
 count(cs-uri-stem) as pagecount,
 sum(time-taken) as total-processing-time,
 avg(time-taken) as average
from <logfile>
where cs-uri-stem like '%.aspx'
group by cs-uri-stem,
 cs-uri-query
order by pagecount desc

select cs-uri-stem as url,
 cs-method,
 count(cs-uri-stem) as pagecount,
 sum(time-taken) as total-processing-time,
 avg(time-taken) as average,
 avg(sc-bytes),
 max(sc-bytes)
from <logfile>
where cs-uri-stem like '%.aspx'
group by cs-uri-stem,
 cs-method
order by pagecount desc

UpdateI’m just adding more queries I frequently use, and fixing the formatting.

select quantize(time-taken,5000) as 5seconds,
 count(cs-uri-stem) as hits,
 cs-uri-stem as url
from <logfile>
group by url, quantize(time-taken,5000)
order by quantize(time-taken,5000)

select
 quantize(time,3600) as dayHour,
 count(cs-uri-stem) as hits,
 avg(time-taken) as averageTime,
 cs-uri-stem as url
from <logfile>
where url like '%.svc'
group by url,
 dayHour
order by dayHour

select
TO_LOCALTIME(QUANTIZE(TO_TIMESTAMP(date, time), 3600)) AS dayHour,
count(cs-uri-stem) as hits
from <logfile>
where cs-uri-stem like '%/page.aspx'
group by dayHour
order by dayHour Asc

Installed Items

Again, this post is purely for me to remember and it is in no particular order:

Optional Items (depending on machine):

Quickly Test DB Connection String

I’m throwing this up here because I consistently forget the file type extension to do this. If you want to test a DB Connection String, create a new document and rename it something with the .udl extension. Double click on it and fill in the relevant information.

Oh, and as an aside, the theme should look a bit different/better here shortly. This WP install is pretty screwed up right now, so I will be reinstalling it at some point.

Kindle 3 Reboots

Every since getting my Kindle 3 for Christmas I have mysterious lockups, restarts, etc. It has been driving me bonkers, especially since it kept losing my page in the book. It seemed to be reverting to a previous state all the time, and I couldn’t figure out why.

So I emailed Amazon support. Their response was that I should be hitting the “Home” button every time I wanted to stop reading. Talk about an awful answer, so I emailed them again and said that was an unacceptable answer and that it needed to be fixed.

I received a similar response back.

Then the day after sending those emails my Kindle was completely locked. I couldn’t get it out of sleep (no green light when you slide the power button). I tried to hold down the power button, but apparently not long enough. I called Amazon and they basically had me hold it down longer. At least I was able to use it then.

I also noticed that it happened more in the cold. For example, when it just sat around my house I never had a problem, but whenever I went into work with it (barring it to the colder outside) it would always lose my spot and restart.

Well, it turns out that they symptoms were correct, but my correlation to why it was happening was not. Turns out it wasn’t because it was cold out, it was because it was getting jostled around more when I was carrying it than when it sat at home. I am not the only one that is having this issue. It is all because of the Kindle Cover – Without A Light.

One of the new things they’ve done is created a cover that draws power from your kindle (lighted cover). It is pretty slick because the hinge is metal, which plugs into the Kindle, makes contact with a electrical pad, and powers the light. However, the cover without a light also has a metallic binding, but there is no where for the charge to go and so it just shorts out causing the Kindle to do all sorts of strange things.

It looks as though Amazon is now aware of the issue as all Amazon branded non-light covers are now not being sold. However, any other non-light cover that has the Amazon binding seems to be having the same issue (the Kate Spade and Timbuktu covers too). It should be an easy fix for them, just make the binding some sort of ABS plastic, but talk about a huge oversight. I mean, common sense.

Back to my story, I’ve since put packaging tape (thinest tape I could find) over the bottom hook of my binding, and today I haven’t had a restart. I’ll probably update this story in a few weeks one way or the other.

Update:

After using the cover with the fix for 3 weeks, I can attest that the tape fixed the issue. No more reboots means lots of carefree reading!

Update #2:

Over two months later, and still no reboots. Consider it fixed!

Dreamhost Increase PHP Upload Size

Needed to upload some videos into my SlideShow Pro Director install. However, my PHP upload size was set to 20MB and the videos were both 23MB. After some Googling, I found a painless way to fix it.

Ensure your domain is running FastCGI for PHP5
Download DreamHost Custom PHP.ini from DeamHost Scripts and Tips
Put the dh-phpini.php file at the root of your website
Access http://<website>/dh-phpini.php
Click to install and it will create the necessary files and folder
Edit the php.ini in the newly created /cgi-bin/ folder in the following two places: post_max_size, and upload_max_filesize
SSH into your website and run the following command for it to take affect (kills FastCGI): killall -9 php5.cgi

All this good info was found at BlueSunray, so thanks for that!

Kindle for WP7

And it is out. Go and grab it!

AppsFuze Description

Kindle Book Lending

Well, it finally arrived. Similar to the Nook, you can now lend Kindle books to others. There are some caveats though.

Not all books are lendable, it depends on the publisher. Looking around, very few actually are.
The lend is for 14 days, and the user has 7 days to accept the lend.
You cannot read the book while it is on load. If you haven’t connected to the network with your kindle, you can still read it (we tested it).
You can return the book prior to the 14 days.
It can only be initiated from a US customer.

Check out all information in Amazon’s help section.