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Creating Insert Statements for SQL Server July 2, 2009

Posted by quarksoft in SQL Server, T-SQL.
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Ran across an interesting approach to generating insert statements for SQL Server 2005 (and other variants).  If uses a less well known function called master.dbo.fn_varbintohexstr. The approach that was taken was to use the fn_varbintohexstr function to encode the data so you did not need to use cursors or any fancy parsing to handle unicode and quotes in the generated insert statements.  I thought it was a bit clever.

Note: you might need to register at SQLServerCentral.com to gain access to the site to read the above linked article.

Clearing Email History Lists in Outlook June 30, 2009

Posted by quarksoft in Outlook, Software, Utility, Windows.
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One of the great features of Outlook (but also sometimes annoying) is that it remembers all the email addresses of the people that you send email to or receive email from.  This makes it really easy for composing emails except for when you get an email address that is spelled incorrectly in that list.  That can be extremely frustrating.

Turns out that it is super simple to remove that email address.  Just compose and email and start typing the address.  When you see it appear, just use the arrows to select the one that is incorrect and press the Delete key.  It will be gone forever.  Quick and easy.

If you want to clear the entire email history, you can do the following:

  • Exit Outlook
  • Run Windows Explorer
  • Navigate to the C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook folder (substitute username with your username)
  • Find the file with the NK2 extension and rename or delete it.

Remote Desktop with Multiple Monitors / Screens June 22, 2009

Posted by quarksoft in Utility, Windows.
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A few weeks ago a client of ours asked if there was a way to get a Remote Desktop session to go full screen across the two monitors that they had connected to their computer.  There didn’t seem to be an obvious method to do this.  Upon some further research we discovered that there was a command line option for the Remote Desktop application called /span which allows a single session to span multiple monitors.

If you have two (or more) monitors that are the same height, you could issue the following command:

mstsc /span

When the Remote Desktop application starts up it will ask you what Computer you want to connect to.  Just enter the name or IP address of the computer and you will be connected in full screen mode across your two (or more) monitors.

Some notes from the Microsoft Help about what the /span option does and its limitations:

Matches the remote desktop width and height with the local virtual desktop, spanning across multiple monitors if necessary. To span across monitors, the monitors must all have the same height and be aligned side by side.

In order to save the /span option into the .rdp file you will need to manually edit it:

  • Open Windows Explorer, and browse to the folder containing the .rdp file you want to edit.
  • Right-click the file > Open With > Choose Program > Notepad (or any other text editing program you have installed on your computer)
  • Once the file is open in Notepad go to the bottom of the file and add the following command: span monitors:i:1
  • Save the file.

Now your rdp file will automatically span monitors when executed.

ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit Samples March 19, 2009

Posted by quarksoft in .net, Programming, asp.net.
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Most of you probably have already experimented with the Control Toolkit, but just in case you never ran across it, take a look at these Toolkit samples

If you have any questions about them, drop me a comment here.

Calculating Age in T-SQL March 13, 2009

Posted by quarksoft in T-SQL.
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Here’s a decent article on calculating the age of a person (or anything else) written by Lynn Pettis.  Discusses some pitfalls with leap years.