MDX Studio is worth a look If your using Multidimensional Expressions(MDX) in your SQL database.

Just for some background here is links to MSDN's MDX Reference.

Multidimensional Expressions (MDX) Reference

Key Concepts in MDX (MDX)

BlownMortgage offered up a depressing story about life during the peak of the mortgage boom, presented by TheTruthAboutMortgage.com

It turned out the borrower was actually employed as a loan processor, undoubtedly making less than $240,000 a year (sure some may have been making that during the boom, but that was not the case here).

In any event, you would think the loan would be dead, considering the borrower lied about their income and employment on a legal document.

Well, not the case in the mortgage industry. Instead of the file being declined, it was uplined to the VP of Underwiting who massaged the loan, probing and searching for some way to make sense of a lie. After all, the loan was worth $1.5 million, so clearly the company had no intention of throwing it away. And if it could be cleaned up a bit and sold to the investor, no one would be the wiser.

After some research, it came to the VP’s attention that the borrower was a licensed real estate agent, and just like that the 1003 was miraculously changed to state that the applicant was a loan processor and a real estate agent, earning the originally stated $20,000 a month.

It would seem money was growing on trees.

Max row size in SQL 2000 8060 bytes.
Max row size in SQL 2005 more then 8060 bytes if the table contains Var* or XML columns.  This is due to SQL 2005 Row-Overflow, this will affect performance of the database. ( the Varchar... will be moved to a separate page and a 24-byte pointer will be inserted into the original page.)

SQL database page size is 8KB or 8,000 bytes.
SQL data types    2000, 2005, 2008

char (N) = 1 * N bytes
varchar (N) = 1 * N + 2 bytes
nvarchar (N) = 2 * N + 2 bytes
DateTime = 8 bytes
Float = 8 bytes
ntext/text is being replaced with nvarchar(MAX)/varchar(MAX).  MAX = 2^31 - 1 bytes.
ntext/text is stored in separate page

Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 Storage Engine

Inside Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005: The Storage Engine

Maximum Capacity Specifications for SQL Server 2005

SQL 2005 Fragmentation Information

Doug Stewart has posted an extensive list of CRL 2.0 bug (hot)fixes.  Its worth a look if your Dot Net 2.0 app is having issues.  Thanks for putting together such a comprehensive list Doug. 

I have seen this issue on a QA server The managed heap becomes corrupted when you run a program that is built by using the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 good to see its not my code and that there is a fix for it.

Some of the Hot fix support articles do leave a little something to be desired though I would like to see Microsoft spend the time to detail the cause for each issue so I can better evaluate my need for a given fix.

The BBC announced The Apollo Image Archive today but did not provide a link so here is the Arizona State University and  NASA's Johnson Space Center's scanning of Apollo mission photos that have never been released to the public before. 

Here are a few other nice Galleries I have found over time.

Apollo Image Gallery

NASA Gallery

Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive

Well I am officially on DasBlog 2.0 I didn't make the transition the way I wanted but, such is life.  I find it very nice that Scott Hanselman programmed the new compression the same way I did for my 2.0 release.  Thankfully this means I can continue to read all my log files from before my upgrade!  Now that I am upgraded I'll have to look into getting a new theme.

I leave work and Godaddy fubars my websites.  What a fun week.  I would appear updating to the new dasBlog corrected some issues and reuploading the entire websites corrected the other issue.  I Basically started over with Godaddy today.  I tried CrystalTech but can't host the subdomains and other sites how I would like, I will miss them.  I am not sure why I couldn't explain that if my blog engine worked fine Saturday and Sunday then it should still work fine on Monday!  And if it does not work I should see asp.net errors not server was reset...  I don't think a basic page like microfisch.com should take 30 seconds to load.  This makes nonsense to me.  I don't like the level of support I received from Godaddy so I will be looking for a new host.  If you have suggestions please let me know.

Did you miss me?? 

I have found and like DAEMON Tools 4.09 http://www.daemon-tools.cc
be careful it tries to install some "spy ware" software for their forums.

also we found Magic ISO to have a 64 bit version for vista. http://www.magiciso.com/tutorials/miso-magicdisc-overview.htm

I am now running windows vista 64.  Which has been surprisingly simple how ever I have run into a few issues.  Windows Explorer went insane and ignored the open in same window setting (note open in new process option was set to false.) resulting in a new window pre directory.  I find life impossible in that situation.  After numerous attempts to correct this via registry edits, I failed.  Having given up I installed xpore2 as a replacement. ( great program I always wanted to filter my directory to only one file type) I now find after a reboot Windows Explorer works correctly and recycles the the window when displaying a new directory.

I have also found that you cannot just install sql management studio 64bit.  you need to run(as admin) dvd drive:\Tools\Setup\SqlRun_Tools.msi otherwise you go through all the motions but nothing gets installed.