February 25, 2005

Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications

Filed under: Useful Tech Tips — Jeffito @ 2:16 pm

I was sent a link about this the other day and I have to say it seems pretty exciting. Although the web is an exciting place to develop new applications, developers have been doing relatively the same for a couple years - most user actions in the browser trigger an HTTP request back to a web server. The server does some processing — retrieving data talking to various systems and then returns an HTML page to the client. This doesn’t always work or make for a very clean user experience.

Ajax really isn’t a new technology, it is several technologies combining together to make a more powerful user experience. I could go on and on about his, but it would make more sense from the founder of Adaptive Path

I guess I could type it all out but I’m really too tired. I had to be back in Halifax by Monday due to some work issues, but this weekend is the end of winter break for university students in Canada. So, if I don’t fly by Thursday night, I have to let some airline employee have his/her way with me….. or pay $400 bucks for a one way ticket. I decided to fly the midnight flight…. lands at 1:30 AM. Needless to say I am having coffee administered intravenously today.

February 23, 2005

Too many remote connections… is there any such thing?

Filed under: Useful Tech Tips — Jeffito @ 1:10 pm

Well normally I would say there can never be enough but in this case yes there are tooo many connections. This morning I was logging into one of the servers I support and I got this message.

“The terminal server has exceeded the maximum number of allowed connections”

I have gotten this before and I’ve always meant to document what I did to solve the issue… so here it is…..

I know I can set an inactivity timeout on these servers… But I sometimes forget to. So what I have found is this neat DOS based utility to log onto the box and disconnect the connections.

Download this:

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/psexec.shtml

I usually put the .exe file on my d drive root (d:\psexec.exe)

Open a dos window go to where you saved the .exe and type this”

psexec \\x.x.x.x -u user -p password cmd

You will then have a remote command prompt.

-run: qwinsta and you will see the active TS connections.
-To kill one use: logoff [id# of session to quit] /v
e.g. logoff 2 /v

Those two above steps thanks to: http://dev.remotenetworktechnology.com/cmd/tscmd.htm

You will then get a message stating “Logging off session ID #)

You should be able to login via TS again.

I hope this info helps a few people out. God knows it has helped me several times.

February 18, 2005

What am I? (Insert obvious joke here)

Filed under: Personal Insights — Jeffito @ 11:33 am

My life/work situation has evolved so I work for a place in Halifax, but I actually live in Toronto (with frequent trips to Halifax for meetings). I’m a web developer so it really isn’t much of an issue. The one issue that has arisen is my own personal identity.

What am I now? Am I Torontonian or am I a Haligonian? I recently heard a term for someone who splits their time between New York and London, they are a a Nylon.

I thought this was rather clever so I have been spending way to much time coming up with a term for me. I was thinking Halitonian, but then a friend told me I had better be careful or I’ll get halitosis. The one bright side was they thought Halitonian is better than “Tofax”; which sounds like medicine for athlete’s foot.