be wary of the results of sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats

my coworker (@developingjim) and his team was troubleshooting a client database production down issue this past weekend and discovered something that neither he nor i were aware of - the sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats function only scans index parent-level pages (leaf-level +1). the results of this versus running the function in DETAILED mode (which scans all pages and returns all statistics) can be drastically different. The image below shows two queries and the results for each:

The first query lead the team to believe that index fragmentation was not an issue; the second revealed that this was far from the truth and the crisis was resolved after the massive fragmentation was addressed

windbg - issues loading sos for .net framework v4

from stack overflow:
"The CLR runtime dll was renamed to clr.dll with .NET 4. So in order to load the correct version of SOS you need to adjust your .loadby command. I.e.

.loadby sos clr"

sql server best practices: disk configuration

• store the data and the log on different physical drives
• use the appropriate RAID level depending on the importance of performance and redundancy
• performance only - RAID 0
• redundancy only - RAID 1
• performance and redundancy - RAID 5 or RAID 10
• place files on subsystem connected to different controllers
• mirror the transaction log
• mirror the master and model system databases
• stripe the tempdb database
• store the user database files on a different physical drive from the master , model and tempdb system databases
• monitor the default filegroup or allow for automatic growth
• RAID, SAN and NAS appear as driver letters
• use direct-connected hard drivers or SAN instead of NAS or network file shares
• use NTFS

humana fest 2012 review: the veri**on play

writer: lisa kron
director: nicholas martin
summary: jenni made a minor mistake three months ago on the payment of her cell phone bill and cannot get it resolved no matter how many times she speaks with customer service and is assured that it is taken care of. she eventually reaches the breaking point and joins a support group for others dealing with similar life-altering experiences with evil, incompetent customer service departments
grade: B
comments: basically a one hour and twenty minute bashing of the pathetic quality of modern customer service.  verizon wireless is the main focus of the insults and rants but shots are also fired at other companies and industries (anthem blue cross/blue shield, greyhound, credit agencies, mortgage brokers, etc.). the actors that played jenni and her sister did a very good job but i would not say the same about the rest of the crew. if you take it for what it is - a comedy dealing with modern day frustrations that mixes intelligent and funny dialog with over-the-top, intentionally dumb humor - you will probably enjoy it

humana fest 2012 review: the hour of feeling

writer: mona mansour
director: mark wing-davey
summary: a young palestinian man (adham) who recently received his doctorate in english romantic poetry meets some bumpkin broad (abir), quickly marries her and then the couple moves to london where a prestigious university has asked him to give a lecture.  the lecture is a success but abir speaks no english and doesn't fit in well in the company of academia so their marriage struggles almost immediately.  war breaks out in the middle east and adham must choose whether to stay and pursue his career or return home with his wife
grade: a-
comments: i thought the play was engaging, very well written and did a good job of mixing in comedy with the drama.  i was very impressed with how the way the writer tied events from the beginning of the play and discussions of poetry between adham and his colleagues with the final scene

humana festival of new america plays 2012 reviews

i saw six plays this year: the hour of feeling, death tax, michael von siebenburg melts through the floorboards, oh, gastronomy!, the veri**on play and how we got on.  overall i would consider this collection of plays the second best i've seen in the four years that i've attended the festival.  i was also happy to see such a wide variety topics in the plays as opposed to the last two years where the overriding theme was male homosexuality and each year it seemed like the directors and/or writers competed to see who could edgier starting with the abundance of live dude dick i saw two years ago and escalating to full-fledged cock-in-ass last year.  rather than reviewing every play in a single post, im going to write about each individually since i don't know how long it will take me to get through them all and i want to publish my thoughts on the ones that really stick out in my mind while the memory is fresh

how to fix screen shrinking problem on jailbroken iphone

there seems to be a bug in the absinthe jailbreak for iphone os 5.0.1. occasionally when you open an app it will shrink into the upper-left corner of the screen. i know of no permanent fix for this, but since it doesn't seem to happen very often, i figured out a way to temporarily fix this when it occurs:

1. download sbsettings from cydia if you haven't already (note: if you can't get cydia to appear in a normal window, try rebooting until it does). reboot/respring if necessary
2. swipe from left-to-right or right-to-left across the top of the screen to get the sbsettings menu to drop-down.
3. click the power button
4. click 'safe mode'
5. when you reboot in safe mode, open an app. it will either immediately open in a normal sized screen or appear shrunken again and then restore to normal size.
6. click 'exit safe mode' at the top of the screen
7. click to restart to return to normal mode and the problem should be fixed

you're welcome, alyssa

untethered jailbreak for iPhone 4s

the wait is finally over - the chronic dev team released absinthe for Linux, Mac and Windows operating systems. For Windows 7 users the process is very simple - download the application from the absinthe link, log in as the local administrator account (required - absinthe won't run if you are logged in as any other account, even if they belong to the local administrators group), plug in your phone and run the application. make sure to disable the passcode lock on the phone if one is set and it is highly recommended to back up the device before you jailbreak it. i have 15 GB of data on my phone and the whole process took ~5 mins