How to fix Internet explorer 6

I am fed up of the ad and spywares in my IE and now the IE crashes too.

http://www.theeldergeek.com/repair_ie6.htm

This is a very good link which fixes this issue.

Mac address spoofing

Posting after few days. I was interested to find a tool which would spoof my mac address.

As there was a burning need to do it :)

Found this awesome tool which would do the trick for me.

http://www.gorlani.com/publicprj/macmakeup/macmakeup.asp

With this tool i can enter my own OID and spoof the mac address on any pc i want to.

Wondering how i can write this in my own code :)

The Value of Project Management

There are some companies that have built reputations for being able to consistently manage projects effectively. However, the vast majority of organizations have a more spotty reputation.

Does your organization have any of the following characteristics?

• Projects completed late, overbudget, or not meeting the functionality requirements of your client
• Weak standard processes and techniques used inconsistently by project managers
• Project management is reactive, and not seen as providing value
• The time required to manage projects proactively is not built into the workplan, since it is considered 'overhead'
• Projects are 'successful' in spite of a lack of planning and project management, though heavy stress and overtime work throughout the life cycle.

Good project management discipline is the way to overcome these shortcomings. Having good project management skills does not mean you have no problems. It does not mean that risks go away. It does not mean that there are no surprises. The value of good project management is that you have standard processes in place to deal with all contingencies.

Project management processes and techniques are used to coordinate resources to achieve predictable results. Project management is an art and a science. Project management is a science in that it relies on proven and repeatable processes and techniques to achieve project success. It is an art because it has a lot to do with managing and relating to people, and requires intuitive skills to apply in situations that are totally unique for each project. A good project management methodology provides the framework, processes, guidelines and techniques to manage the people and the workload. A good methodology increases the odds of being successful, and therefore provides value to the organization, project and the project manager.

The value proposition for project management goes something like this. It takes time and effort to proactively manage a project. This cost is more than made up for over the life of the project by:

• Resolving problems more quickly
• Not working in areas that are outside of the scope of the project
• Resolving future risk before the problems occur
• Communicating and managing expectations with clients, team members and stakeholders more effectively
• Building a higher quality product the first time.

People who complain that project management is a lot of 'overhead' forget the point. Your project is going to face issues. Do you want to proactively resolve them or figure them out as you go? Your project will face potential risks. Do you want to try to resolve them before they happen, or wait until the problems arise? Are you going to communicate proactively or deal with conflict and uncertainty caused by lack of project information? Are you going to manage scope or deal with cost and deadline overruns caused by doing more work than your budget covers? Are you going to build quality into your process, or fix problems later when they will be more costly to resolve?

The characteristics of the project are not going to change whether you use a formal project management process or not. What changes is how the events are dealt with when the project is in progress. Are they dealt with haphazardly and reactively, or proactively with a smoothly running process?

After reading this section so far, you might wonder why everyone does not utilize good project management techniques. Or you might think about yourself - why aren't you using them? There are probably a couple reasons.

• Good project management requires an upfront investment of time and effort.Many people consider themselves to be 'doers'. They might not be as comfortable with their planning skills. Many times there is a tendency to discuss a problem, and then go out and fix it. This works when you have a five-hour change request. It doesn't work on a 5,000 hour project. Resist the urge to jump right in. The project will complete sooner if you properly plan it first and then have the discipline to manage the project effectively.
• Your organization is not committed.It's hard to be a good project manager in an organization that doesn't value project management skills. For instance, if you take the time to create a Project Definition document, and your client asks why you were wasting your time doing it, then you probably are not going to be very excited about the planning process on your next project. To be effective, the entire organization must support a common project management process.
• You don't know how to.You may find that the lack of project management processes is not a matter of will, but a matter of skill. Sometimes people are asked to manage projects without the training or the experience necessary. In those cases, they struggle without the right tools or training to manage projects effectively.
• Senior managers thinks that project management is a tool.When you discuss project management with some managers, they initially think you are trying to implement a tool that allows you to be a better project manager. Actually, if it were a tool, you might have more luck convincing them of the value. Even though some aspects of project management, like the creation and management of the workplan, may utilize a tool, that is not where the value of project management is. When you start talking about processes, best practices and templates, some managers immediately start to think about overhead, delay and fluff. Like some project managers, they fail to immediately connect on the value that a methodology brings with it.
• You may have been burned (or buried) in the past.A common criticism of methodology is that it is cumbersome, paper intensive and takes too much focus away from the work at hand. Sometimes this criticism is a feature of the first bullet point above. Other times, it is a legitimate concern, caused by not scaling the methodology to the size of your project. For instance, if you were required to develop a fifteen page Project Definition document even if your project is only 250 hours, you may have been turned off. However, this is not usually a methodology problem as much as it is a misapplication of the methodology.
• There is a fear of control from team members.Many people like to be able to do their jobs creatively and with a minimum of supervision. They fear that formal project management techniques will result in tight controls that will take the creativity and fun out of the work. To a certain extent they are right. However, common processes and procedures eliminate some of the creativity in areas where you probably don't want it in the first place.
• There is a fear of the loss of control from management.If you really want to effectively implement a project management discipline at your company, you must give a level of control and authority to the project manager. Some organizations, and middle managers especially, do not want to lose that control. They may want project managers to coordinate the projects, but the manager wants to make all the decisions and exercise all the control. Formal project management will not be possible in organizations where this fear is prevalent.

Some of these fears are natural and logical, while others are emotional and irrational. Although these may be reasons to be hesitant about using formal project management, they must be overcome. The bottom line on project management is this - if the result of project management was that projects would complete slower, cost more and have poor quality, it would not make sense to use it. In fact, the opposite is true - using sound project management techniques and processes will give you a higher likelihood that your project will be completed on time, within budget and to an acceptable level of quality.

That being said, when you use a project management process, be smart. Don't build the project management processes for a ten million dollar project if your project is only ten thousand dollars. Consider all aspects of how to manage a project, and build the right processes for your specific project.

Gang of Four Design Patterns

Gang of Four is a group of 4 people who found all possible design pattern combinations for any programming language they are,

Creational patterns

• Abstract factory
• Builder
• Factory methods
• Prototype
• Singleton

Structural patterns

• Adapter
• Bridge
• Composite
• Decorator
• Facade
• Flyweight
• Proxy

Behavioural patterns

• command
• interpretor
• iterator
• mediator
• memento
• observer
• state
• strategy
• template
• visitor

I will try to post samples of each pattern and let us see how it goes.

Rules to better code

This is an excellent site which explains what developers should look for while coding

http://www.ssw.com.au/ssw/Standards/Rules/RulestoBetterCode.aspx

Also the site has very good details about how to handle consultants, how to handle scope how to meet client last minuet requiremetns.

This is a very good site, each paragraph in the site looks like what I learnt the hard way by suffering.

Great job by SSW.

Sql server sa password hack

It was an awesome day today, atlast i found a way to hack a sql server and find the SA password.

Well it was an official need that my sys admin forgot the sa password and we had to find it, instead of changing it.

Created a custom dts package stored it in meta data services repository and queried the col11120 column under msdb.dbo.dbRTSmbprops table to see the password of the sa login.

Custom installers

http://www.codeproject.com/dotnet/CustomizingInstallers.asp

Custom dot net installers

Prashant Danda - Technical Database on the Web

The following code demonstrates how to resize an IFrame in this way. Create a new .htm document, and paste the following HTML code. In the SRC attribute for the IFrame, you must supply an HTML page from the same domain that the IFrame loads.

NOTE: This technique may not work correctly if there are absolutely positioned elements that are residing within the IFrame.








This example uses try and catch to check for domain consistency, which are only available with Internet Explorer 5 and later. This error checking is included for illustration purposes and is not absolutely necessary; it only allows the script to fail gracefully.

Microsoft provides programming examples for illustration only, without warranty either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose. This article assumes that you are familiar with the programming language being demonstrated and the tools used to create and debug procedures. Microsoft support professionals can help explain the functionality of a particular procedure, but they will not modify these examples to provide added functionality or construct procedures to meet your specific needs. If you have limited programming experience, you may want to contact a Microsoft Certified Partner or the Microsoft fee-based consulting line at (800) 936-5200. For more information about Microsoft Certified Partners, please visit the following Microsoft Web site:
http://www.microsoft.com/partner/referral/ (http://www.microsoft.com/partner/referral/)
For more information about the support options that are available and about how to contact Microsoft, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;EN-US;CNTACTMS (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;en-us;cntactms)

Project Kickoff Meeting

Project Kickoff Meeting
The purpose of the kickoff meeting is to formally notify all stakeholders that the project has begun, and make sure everyone has an understanding of their roles and responsibilities. The kickoff meeting is a time to get all the team members, clients and stakeholders together and formally set the stage for the start of the project. Like all formal meetings, there should be an agenda. There are a number of specific things you want to cover at this meeting.
Introduce the people at the meeting.
Recap the information in the Project Definition, including:
o The purpose of the project
o Scope
o Major deliverables
o Risks
o Assumptions
o Estimated effort and budget
o Deadline
Discuss the important roles and responsibilities of the project team, clients and stakeholders. Many, if not all of the people who will work on the project should be in attendance. If there is confusion about the role of each person or organization, it should be discussed now.
Go over the general approach and timeline of the project. This gives people a sense for how the project will unfold. In particular, you will want to ensure that people understand what they need to be doing in the short-term to support the project.
Discuss and answer any outstanding questions. The purpose of the discussion is not to rehash the purpose of the project, but allows people to voice specific questions or concerns they have as the project begins.
Confirm that the project is now underway. If it was not before, it should be starting immediately.
Other items to consider in the kickoff meeting include:
Attendees. In general, the project team, client and stakeholders should be in attendance. If this results in too many people for comfort, you can consider having only the major players attend. You can then meet with others in subsequent mini-kickoff meetings or you can send the relevant meeting information to the people who could not be there.
Length. Although most kickoff meetings can be conducted in an hour or two, others might require a day of two. The longer kickoff meetings are especially important if the project is very complex or controversial. In some cases, a long kickoff meeting may be useful as a way to gather initial requirements, although that would not be the primary purpose.
Preparation. It is said you never have a second chance to make a good first impression. This is true with the kickoff meeting. You are using the meeting to help set expectations for the project. If the meeting is unorganized, chaotic or a waste of time, the participants will probably carry those perceptions into the project as well. The project manager needs to make sure that they have prepared well for this meeting and that it goes smoothly. The project manager should also talk to the sponsor ahead of time and make sure you are both in agreement with how the meeting will go.

Turning Around a Dysfunctional Project Team

Many teams have some personality conflicts among team members. However, on some teams the personal animosity is so great that the team has a hard time functioning together. Let's assume that these people problems result in the project manager being replace and you are the one taking over. If you are a project manager that takes over a dysfunctional project team, there are a number of areas that require your attention.

The first thing you want to do is assess the current state of the project. Your response to the project team problems will depend on where you are at with the schedule. For instance, if you have 30 days of work remaining, you will have less ability to make an impact on the team dynamics. In this case, the best course of action may be to try to motivate the team for the final push and watch the schedule closely. On the other hand, if your project has many months to go, then you need to see what can be done to repair the damage on the team as well as replan the schedule to deliver on a new realistic timeframe. Any plan is going to include the following items.
Communicate well. If the project manager is a poor communicator, it can result in a miserable project experience for everyone. Teams with poor morale tend to have poor communication channels. Don’t let rumors and uncertainty fester. Make sure you share as much information as you can about the project status and anything else that may impact the project team.
Praise and compliment. When people on your team do a good job, make sure they know it. People don’t expect money or gifts when they do a good job – just a pat on the back and a ‘well done’ by their manager. Give it to them – both informally and formally.
Set clear expectations. People need to understand what is expected of them so that they know the challenges they need to meet. Make sure you give clear instructions when you hand out work so that people understand what they are expected to do..
Dont over commit your team. As you try to improve morale, you also need to be careful not to over commit the team. Determine the work remaining to finish the project and remove anything that is extraneous or can be done after implementation.
Manage scope. Make sure you manage scope tightly and try to defer all changes until after the original project is completed. This is not an arbitrary scope freeze. The project manager should communicate the perception that the tram needs to complete the original work as soon as possible. If possible, scope changes should be deferred until after initial implementation.
Win some small battles. Poor morale can cause your team to miss deadlines, which causes more pressure and degrades morale even further. The opposite is true as well. If the team can start hitting some interim deadlines (and you communicate this fact and praise them), the team morale should improve, which may make it easier to hit your next deadline.
These are some ideas for turning the project around. First, make sure you understand where you are in the schedule so you know how much time you have to make significant changes. Also, make sure you try to identify as many team problems as you can, as well as the root causes, if possible. Then, put together an action plan based on how much work and time is remaining on the project. If there is not a lot of time remaining, focus on the schedule. If a lot of time is remaining, focus on repairing the project team, as well as completing the schedule.