I know its been forever since I’ve written anything, but that’s life in the fast lane I guess. But I recently ran into something that I wanted to share. I’ve been working with a client trying to get some issues resolved with one of their applications and at one point they asked me to gather a snapshot of all the locks and activities going on with the server at the time the application failed. Now SQL 2005 does have this great Activity Monitor, however it doesn’t include any ability to export the report. In the activity monitor you can also take a look at the last SQL statement that a particular SPID ran if there is one. So I wanted to find a way to export all that data into an Excel Document to get a nice snapshot of the processes that are running and the locks, wait times, statements, etc that would help me figure out what is going on with this server. So after a couple days worth of digging and trying to dust of my T-SQL skills I think I’ve managed to do exactly that. I wanted to share this with everyone because it’s not a client specific query and if you find your self in need actually grabbing this information to analyze later I think this might help.

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If you are at least a part-time student in the United States at a college or university than you need to checkout the Ultimate Steal from Microsoft. Right now Microsoft is offering a full version of Office 2007 Ultimate for $59.95 and an Upgrade Version of Windows Vista Ultimate for only $64.95.

Eligible students are allowed to purchase up to one license from each of the four sections below:

• Microsoft® Office Ultimate 2007 (USD$59.95): Perpetual license, which includes the following applications:
• Access® 2007
  Accounting Express 2008
  Excel® 2007
  InfoPath® 2007
  Groove® 2007
  OneNote® 2007
  Outlook® 2007 with Business Contact Manager
  PowerPoint® 2007
  Publisher 2007
  Word 2007
• Microsoft Office Visio Professional 2007 (USD$55.95): Perpetual license, which includes the following application:
• Visio® Professional 2007
• Microsoft Office Language Pack 2007 (USD$9.95): Perpetual license for a single language pack, which includes the following application:
• Office Language Pack 2007 (available languages)
• Windows Vista® Ultimate Upgrade (USD$64.95): Perpetual license, which includes the following application:
• Windows Vista® Ultimate Upgrade

You can find more information and the full terms and conditions about this promotion at the Ultimate Steal web site here .

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I was recently interviewed by Microsoft for a couple of projects. If you would like to hear what they had to say about me. Head over to Born to Learn a new blog for Microsoft Learning for all your certifications needs. In the meantime here is a snippet, enjoy.

It’s widely-known that Microsoft Certified Trainers are some of Microsoft’s most active evangelists. They showcase our products to their students and speak on behalf of MS at events such as TechEd and user group meetings. Over the past few years, a number of MCTs have taken their support of MS beyond the classroom and onto the internet.

AskTheMCT.com is Stephen Charles Rea’s entry into the MCT blogosphere and has tallied more than 25,000 hits since it started on January 1, 2008. Steve, or as he’s know to his friend, the Rev or .rev, is an MCT at the New Horizons in Greensboro, NC where he specializes in the ITPro curriculum. A former stand-up comedian and radio disc jockey, Rea now delivers most of his jokes in the classroom, with a few sneaking into the interview he did with Microsoft in July.

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Have you been using Microsoft Office 2007? Have you had  a hard time trying to find all those options you knew in Office 2003? Do you wish you had access to some sort of interactive help program to show you where the most popular Microsoft Office related tasks are in the new Ribbon? Well if you answered yes to all of those questions then look no further then the amazing Office 2007 Interactive Command reference Guide! That’s right friends you to can find what you’re looking for with these five (5) reference guides and matching ribbon mapping Excel Workbooks today! Act now supplies are not running out and this is not a limited time offer, but if you don’t act now you will be another day without the knowledge to complete your tasks with ease.

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You may have noticed if you took those beta exams all the way back in December of last year that they still showed up as a “Tested” status in your Prometric Candidate History. Well start checking your stats because the scores are now finally being released. 71-625 is still a TS exam, however if you passes 71-626 you will notice it is not. Microsoft has stated that they are looking into what type of certificate you might get for passing the final exam when its released, so for now be happy if you passed, but it may be a few months before you find out what type of certification you earned.

for those that don’t remember thee beta exams, they were both based on Windows Vista and were aimed in a way at Big box stores like Best Buy for system sellers installers who use media Center products to integrate the modern home. This is the longest period of time I can remember waiting on beta results….And you may need ot wait longer, not all results are in as Prometric is still grading the exams now that Microsoft is done looking them over.

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So you want to get Microsoft Certified or maybe you just want to update your existing  certifications but somehow it all seems a bit bewildering with the new tracks. A couple years ago Microsoft began transitioning their certification tracks, as you may well have noticed by now tracks like the MCSA, MCSE, MCDBA and others are no longer offered for the newer technologies and you may be wondering as to the reasons Microsoft would make this change. And while I can’t personally speak for Microsoft or Microsoft Learning I can speak as to why I believe they’ve done this and hopefully alleviate some of your concerns and questions as to the flow of the New Generation of Certification. We’ll start by talking about the old certifications and work our way forward to the newer generation certifications like the MCTS, MCITP and MCPD.

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If you have a BlackBerry with a GPS chip and want to use Garmin’s GPS service you can now get a lifetime subscription for $99 (US) instead of paying $9.95 per month. It is a shame this is only for Blackberry users but it stems from a lawsuit Supreme Court of the United States Case 497, 2132 AD. Happy navigation.

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