Skip to main content

Popular posts from this blog

TFS Reports Out of Date

You may have noticed it takes a while for Team Foundation Server (TFS) reports to reflect changes you've made to work items or builds. Let me guess...about an hour, right? Out of the box, TFS is set to refresh the data warehouse from its transactional store every 60 minutes. How do I change the frequency of the data warehouse refresh? Browse to the TFS Controller Web Service on your TFS application tier server within IE at: http://localhost:8080/Warehouse/v1.0/warehousecontroller.asmx Select the ChangeSetting option Enter RunIntervalSeconds for the settingId and the desired number of seconds for newValue (300 for 5 minutes...5*60) Select Invoke How do I force a data warehouse refresh? Two methods here: either via the above web service or using SQL Server Management Studio. Via the web service: Browse to the TFS Controller Web Service within IE at: http://localhost:8080/Warehouse/v1.0/warehousecontroller.asmx Select the Run option Click Invo...
6 comments
Read more

Certified or Certifiable?

As a senior technology professional, I interview a lot of candidates. I also maintain solid relationships with other folks in the community. Frequently, the topic of certifications arises: A good investment? Valuable? A clear measurement of skill? Consensus appears to draw the line related to one's seniority. If you're (for example) just out of school and looking for an instant creditability boost, by all means pursue a certification. Likely, this credential will assist you in overcoming the "junior" tag and likely land you more interviews and client roles. (Note: I'm going to use the terms senior and junior here...no offense to either. Can't think of a better one word description. I was a junior once too.) In stark contrast, the value of certifications drops off the table around the 2-3 year mark. Some in my circles even perceive certifications as a negative for the senior professional. They think, "If this guy is so solid, why is he wasting valuable...
5 comments
Read more

Windows 10 Creator's Update and Office Conflicts

Recently, Microsoft pushed the " Creators Update " out to Windows 10. It was available in April but it seems to have been force-pushed in the past 2 days. On my mother-in-law's computer, Creator's caused Excel to render a "Bad Image" message when attempting to start declaring "MSVCP140.dll is either not designed to run on Windows or it contains an error". I attempted the SFC and DISM repairs as advised on Tom's site to no avail. When I attempted an Office repair, Office disappeared completely. At this point, I definitely started to panic. Fortunately, I noticed a pending reboot due to an install/update. Allowing Windows to install that update and rebooting twice brought Excel and Office back to life. I did have to re-register the software but all is well now. If you encounter this issue, stop what you're doing and install/restart Windows. Anecdotally, I've since hear of many folks encountering similar issues.
1 comment
Read more