I wrote this script sample for someone who was interested in managing their failover with Sync Live Volume, but wanted to get a high-level view of mappings including LUN information and WWNs ahead of time so they could compare that information across arrays and prevent conflicts as they worked out their disaster recovery plan. Dell Storage Manager obviously has this information, but having it in a format in one place is convenient, and putting it in CSV format adds some flexibility.

It’s amazing the amount of stuff on a hard drive that can be overlooked, until you run out of space. The Disk Cleanup tool that is built into Windows can help keep your machine extra tidy, but can also be a powerful tool when you’re in a space crunch. Think of the Disk Cleanup tool’s basic functionality as a “squeegee”. But it has a mode that deals with system level files and more important stuff; think of that as the “power washer”. In “power washer” mode, I was able to free up almost an additional 29GB of disk space. A lot of this was due in part to the recent upgrade to Windows 10 that was performed on this machine. And there’s more to be saved too. More on that later. I’ll walk you through the basics of how to use the Disk Cleanup tool. It’s pretty powerful, so if…

I was looking for a way to compare the total years between two dates in decimal format. My brain immediately goes to the process of how I would do that calculation if I am were writing it in a programming language, but Excel VBA and Excel formulas are a different beast. In Excel, do you use DATEDIF, “sum’ing” with TODAY() or NOW(), or something else? Excel has lots of little functions that do simple date operations (and lots of other stuff too). In my searches, I came across something called YEARFRAC. It’s very simple to use, and takes three parameters: a start date, end date, and an optional setting for controlling the number of calendar days you’re working with for the locale and calendar you’re using (I used Option 1). Quite simply, you supply those three parameters and Excel will return a number in the form of a decimal that…

I decided to do some hardware upgrades this weekend, and as prices on SSD continue to drop, I found a pretty good deal at my local MicroCenter. The Crucial M4 256GB SSD normally retails for $239, but you save $50 instantly, and an additional $20 on a rebate, so you can take it home for $169 all said and done. I installed it into my Dell desktop this afternoon, and thought at the same time I would start with a fresh build from the OS on up. I timed some of these operations just to have an idea of the performance increase you can see when switching from spinning disk to SSD. Of course, this isn’t a full comparison, since I don’t have existing data on these operations, but nonetheless, we all know how long we sit and wait for a new install of Windows or Office. I’m pretty impressed…

I was having a little fun with my new phone, the Samsung Epic 4G and discovered that there is a panoramic mode built into the camera.  I experimented a little and think for a 5MP camera on a phone, that I actually got some pretty good results.  What do you think? Ellie took her first ride on the Giant Slide this year.  The picture above was from Saturday, September 4, which happened to be a record setting day with over 234,000 people visiting the Minnesota State Fair.  You can tell by the amount of people that it was indeed packed.  KISS was the Grandstand act that night.  Need I say more? This panoramic was from Friday, September 3.  The weather was cloudy with chilly temperatures in the upper 50’s.  In addition to the chilly weather, winds were out of the north at about 20 MPH which made it barely tolerable. …