Did you know, you can request MS Hotfixes by browsing to a webpage?
Wow! Amazing, isn’t it?!

Submit an online request to obtain a Microsoft hotfix
Just by visiting that site, available at KB935195 you can get your request fulfilled!

This service is currently only available in English, and will ultimately deliver you to this website. But in all, excellent! Now a way to get hotfixes without going through the hassle of making a phone call, sitting in a queue, etc.

Definitely, let me know if this has helped you, like it has helped me!

Christopher Kusek

Well, hello, hello.

I have a whole series of entries queued up, but a lot has happened in the month of July.
I’ve started my new Job at Network Appliance (NetApp). And this entire week, I’ve been away on training, with next week as well.

With that being the case, it has kept me a bit from actually sitting down and writing some of these wonderful blog entries!
I definitely have a good one to whip up about our good friends at Crossloop.
However, that sadly (as critical as it is) will have to wait, until things have settled down a bit here.

So, in other news…
Off to work!

Christopher Kusek signing off in the land of North Carolina!

Okay, so I’m not really going on Safari, unless a trip to the local bookstore to look at all of the O’reilly books is ahead of me.

But here is how I came to find out about the Safari Library, and how it has changed my life! (for the better!)

One day some many months ago, I was looking for a certain book! They did not have it available at my local Borders or B&N, so I went the route of Amazon.
Amazon said “We’ll have it to you in 2 days!” I even went with the super-fast delivery.
Alright, sounds good, I ordered it on a Friday. It said I’d have it on Monday.

Comes Tuesday, and my order is suddenly on “BackOrder” for 30 days… WTF? What is this, Baltimization in action by Amazon?

So I canceled my order, and began searching for alternatives.

Enter Safari Library! I went with the initial ‘trial subscription’ to try it out, and bam! I was reading a few dozen books in a few minutes, which for me, is quite good times. Within the same day, I subscribed and have happily been a subscriber since.

The O’Reilly Safari Library totally rocks, and isn’t limited exclusively to O’Reilly press books. Includes MS Press Books, and a whole slew of other publishers, including a lot of the “Distilled” lines. Some books are even released to Safari before they’re released to Print, which itself does rock.
But it doesn’t end there. The bookmarking is nice, the ability to enter comments nice, the ability to download chapters is also a nice gesture, and the wide diversity of books is also good.

Great points:

But beyond these great points, there are still a whole slew of other features which I absolutely love to take advantage of, like the ability to have “Favorites” and whatnot.

Never the less, I’ve found it to be greatly useful and they’ve got my vote, as I pay out of pocket month after month. :)

Tell me about your Safari or similar publisher agreements!

Christopher Kusek

I’ve updated to a new version of WordPress, and strangely, since then.. I’ve had Odd characters appear in more than half my posts, as well as a syntax problem with forward quote vs regular single quotes. So if you notice any of those items for now, I’ll be working on it as time permits.

Hopefully intend to have all of the syntax problems completed by the week end.
*Update – Should be all resolved now, except for the Single Quote problem*

You get a phone call “Help! I have some odd situation, and no matter how I describe it to you, you do not understand what I am telling you”

Oh my! what ever can we do. Well, we can use Livemeeting… hmm, they don’t have that installed. Hey, go install VNC and open a bunch of ports in the firewall, k? okay, that won’t do it. How about WebEx? err.. I don’t have a WebEx Account.

I wish we had some kind of option which was point to point with an easy to install and deploy option! oh my! what ever shall we do!

… In walks Crossloop!

In seconds, you’ll be sharing your screen (or they’ll be sharing it) so you can fix their problem, or see their problem. Hooray!

Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Crossloop other than having used it to quickly help people fix problems, see problems and get results!

Check it out! – www.crossloop.com

I’ve been meaning to blog about this for quite some time… so take advantage of it today! you won’t regret it! :)

Christopher Kusek (Christopher.Kusek@PKGuild.com)