Monthly Archives: January 2011

Skip the line at the rental car desk and use the self-service kiosk

Posted on January 28, 2011 by jrothmanshore

We recently took a trip out to California for a family event, which meant a cross-country flight with a six month-old-baby and an almost three-year-old.  After surviving the flight with only one melt down, we made it off the plane, … Continue reading →

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Kick off a Cygwin script from a windows bat file with a different working directory

Posted on January 26, 2011 by jrothmanshore

I recently created a script that would pull the Tomcat log files from a group of web servers and then run my 95th percentile awk script to generate a summary of response times for the 100 most popular pages.  I … Continue reading →

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Performance: Hyper-threading actually does boost server capacity

Posted on January 24, 2011 by jrothmanshore

We recently noticed some odd behavior with one of our servers during a deployment.  Several machines were removed from the traffic pool to receive updates, and during this time, the other machines were shouldering the extra load.  We have significant … Continue reading →

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Silly trick to avoid accidentally sending an email before it’s ready

Posted on January 20, 2011 by jrothmanshore

One of the plot lines in last night’s Modern Family revolved around the repercussions of an email that was sent before it was finished.  This reminded me a trick I use to avoid the problem, so I thought I would … Continue reading →

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Performance: Query the sqlserver plan cache to find queries that use a particular index

Posted on January 18, 2011 by jrothmanshore

Part of keeping a SQL Server database running smoothly is to keep indexes well tuned. As database schemas or usage change, indexes that were once important may fall out of use. Eliminating unnecessary indexes helps speed up inserts/updates/deletes, and it … Continue reading →

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Shortcut: Getting your money’s worth from shampoo and styling cream containers

Posted on January 16, 2011 by jrothmanshore

Now, you might think I’m just cheap, but it drives me crazy that you can never get all of the product out of a container if it is a thick cream like shampoo or styling gel.  You can turn the … Continue reading →

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Why I’m sticking with AT&T when Verizon releases the iPhone

Posted on January 10, 2011 by jrothmanshore

With Verizon expected to announce an official launch of the iPhone tomorrow, analysts are prediction that 9-12 million Verizon iPhones will be sold in 2011.  The actual number of AT&T escapees is expected to be limited, however, by AT&T’s high … Continue reading →

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Nighttime adventures with an old-fashioned iPod

Posted on January 6, 2011 by jrothmanshore

Sleep has been in short supply in our house this week.  A combination of colds, a teething six month old, and prolonged bedtime dramas from our daughter Ayelet, who is going through a “terrible two” stage, has left everyone exhausted. … Continue reading →

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