My first thought was to go with Database Mail. Well, Database Mail is nice enough, I set it all up nicely following the msdn walkthrough here, the test email fired off fine.. I thought all was good and well until I thought my problem through a bit further. I will have a recordset where each row is associated with someone to email with information in that row. So to use the sp_send_dbmail procedure would involve some kind of cursor/crazy stored procedure that I just wasn’t all that keen on writing. Like I said. Im no SQL guru.

So then one of my collegaues said what about Notification Services. I thought, hey cool, I love the BI tools that come with SQL 2005 (especially reporting services <3) and Notification Services I would love to learn about. So I spent 20 mins googling it and then I find out Notification Services does not ship with SQL 2008. Well that kind of pissed me off a bit because I didnt want to implement some solution that would get scrapped in a few months when we upgrade to SQL 08. Not that my workplace is likely to do that anytime soon.. haha.
Anyway, so then I discovered this awesome, and I mean awesome tutorial that basically explains to do exactly what I wanted. One thing I have learnt though, is that delaying validation on the send mail task will allow you to set the ToLine property using an expression. This is the perfect solution for my problem, and means that for every row in the table/recordset I can send a new email to the required person with information from that row.

Another caveat was that to get exchange to act as a SMTP relay so you can fire off the Send Mail task you need to tweak the default settings a bit. The official word on how to do that is here, basically just add the IP address of your Exchange server to the Relay settings in your exchange system manager.

Now I can spam emails to my co workers when I test this on Monday

The request failed with HTTP status 415: Unsupported Media Type.

I have seen all the advice saying to add <soapServerProtocolFactory type=”Microsoft.Web.Services3.WseProtocolFactory, Microsoft.Web.Services3, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35”/> to web.config… But my configs are all looking good so what gives.

Well it appears it was something funky to do with MTOM – I had MTOM settings off on the client and on on the server. Switching it off appears to have worked

Now onto the next issue. Sigh. Do not install .NET 3.5 if you still need to publish .NET 2 Web Services….epic issues ftl.

I bought the Hauppauge PVR150MCE edition. Why did I not just get the normal edition? I think the name sounded cooler at the time or something. Sigh.

SO anyways, there I was with my copy of Windows XP (just plain old vanilla XP, not MCE) and this darn Vista Remote/Reciever. I plug in the reciever and get a New Device found, which it picks up to be the eHome Infrared Transceiver. Automatic updates doesn’t find anything. So I start googling away, and get more and more depressed and frustrated over the course of about 2 hours. I find a slew of forum posts saying that you should be able to install the Rollup 2 for Windows Media Centre and it will install the correct drivers sweet.

Wrong! Epicly wrong. Times ten. After trying every single combination of random drivers and Updates etc etc the bloody thing was still not working. Why on earth can their not be a simple, Windows XP driver lurking out there???

In the end I ended up editing the INF file for the irblaster drivers by adding the unrecognized device id to the file. Will post up details later. Probably not the best solution but I was able to use HID to program all the remotes functions and mesh it up with GBPVR.

If only I didn’t have a husband that likes watching SKY so much, I could have it all set up by now!! But a certain someone can’t live without un-interrupted TV viewing

well, thats not entirely true, its not like we worked entirely thru the night… we had many breaks to retain some sanity that involved…

• quake 3 LAN
• swiss ball soccer (highly recommended – just make sure not to do indoors over other peoples desks..)
• wrapped one dudes entire desk and everything located on it in newspaper
• a multitude of drinking games…

Ok that sounds like we didnt do much work but I swear we did. I probably got another whole days work in. However this was possibly counteracted a tad by the fact that the next day I was only at 1/2 productivity or so, sleeping on the meeting room floor on 2 couch cushions with NO air conditioning was definitely the low light.

Good times.

And even better, there is still crap loads of work to do. Ahh. Thank goodness its Friday, woot.  I can guarantee I wont be doing that again though. I have missed 4 gym sessions in a row this week

My new home theatre PC!! I have no idea why it has taken me so long to get this up and running. I guess a lack of free PC carcasses!!

The original bits (ex Dell Dimension 8400)…

• 1GB(2×512) NECC Dual Channel DDR2 533MHz SDRAM Memory
• 256MB PCIe(TM) x16 nVidia(R) GeForce(TM) 6800 w/TV-Out and DVI
• Intel Pentium 4 530 (3 GHz)
• Sound Blaster(R) Live!(TM) 24-bit Sound Card 5.1
• One rather ugly but opens nicely Dell Clamshell case

The bits I’m adding:

• 500GB Western Digital HDD SATA2 7200RPM 16MB ($172)
• Hauppauge PVR-150 TV tuner card with IR blaster and media remote ($132)
• 54Mbps Wireless Network Card 802.11g (free with new wireless purchase for parents!)
• Lite-on LH-20A1P 20X ATA Dual DVDRW ($37.23)

And a new addition to our little home network will be my folks old wireless router. Im buying them a Linksys WRT150N Wireless-N Router which has some good reviews and hopefully the wireless wont drop out like it did on the old Belkin one all the time.

So thats $341 all up, pretty sweet deal (thanks ma and pa) for a 500GB dvd recorder/new pc!! Im very stoked about it cant wait to get it up and running on our TV. To compare to local prices, a 160GB DVD recorder with no extra features (ie not upgradable, no PC functions, not networkable etc etc) is $549 at DSE at the moment.

I am very, very tempted to splurge out on this sexy, sexy keyboard…

Its rechargeable and would look so good on our coffee table. I also love the fact it has a touch pad thing on the bottom right which mostly eliminates the need for a wireless mouse… browsing the internet from the comfort of the couch has a huge appeal to me, hehe especially after work. Ahh I’m such a nerd.