My Insights

If you are seeing $Resources: on your page, then it means that Sharepoint can’t replace the $Resources macro with an appropriate string.

The first thing to check is if your feature.xml file contains a reference to a resource file such as this-

    DefaultResourceFile=”core”

The other thing to check would be to make sure that the particular resource that you are replacing actually exists within the resource file. For example, if you’re looking for $Resource:2000, make sure that your resource file contains a replacement string for it.

Microsoft decided to make a bunch of $Resource strings obsolete when they upgraded from Beta2 to Beta2TR so you might see a bunch of these when you upgrade your system.

Some web-facing sites may need to implement a blog as part of the hierarchy. There are a few things to keep in mind when trying to get an anonymous blog to work under a publishing site.

1. Make sure that in Central Administration > Application management, you have enabled anonymous acces on your web app
2. Make sure that you have enabled anonymous access in your site settings for the publishing root site
3. Disable the ViewFormPagesLockDown feature on your MOSS 2007 server*
   *It is CRITICAL to disable the ViewFormPagesLockDown feature BEFORE creating the blog site.
   
4. For your POSTS list, first disjoin the permissions from the root site and then edit the anonymous access settings to let anonymous users view blog posts
5. If you want comments by unauthenticated users, disjoin the permissions from the rooth site and then enable view and add permissions for anonymous access users
6. Repeat the permissions process for any other relevant lists that you want

For the past 4 weeks I have been deep into WSS v3 beta 2. For those (most) unfamiliar with those letters, it means the next generation of Microsoft Sharepoint. I still can’t imagine the largesse of this new platform that Microsoft calls Office 12. However, dealing with WSS has given me some idea of how big this thing really is. Without going into too much detail, I’d just like to say that although I am waist deep in beta hell, it is a satisfying experience altogether (except for the large number of bug reports I’ve written). Hopefully, I will have a working website to show you guys later this week so that you can see what I have been working on for the past 4 weeks.

I recently accepted a job that requires me to be in Washington D.C. by 5:30am.

That means that I must leave by 4:30am and if I hope to do some mild exercising in the morning and cook some breakfast, I must be up by 3:00am.

Now those of you who know me, I need my 9 hours of sleep. So that means, I must go to bed by 6:00pm.

I made it fine on my first day today. I hope I can keep up the commitment for long. So wish me luck and do not disturb after 6:00pm … just kidding.

Like most people, I have a separate folder in my email for Internship/Job opportunities. Here is the filter that I use to automatically filter relevant messages from the inbox into that folder. Some of you MD engineering students might relate to some of these senders spamming our mail boxes.

Any message that matches any of the following words:

Subject: [ENGR-FYI]
Sender: CMPS SCORE
Sender: Veronica Perrigan
Sender: Heidi Sauber
Sender: Deborah A. Vidmar
Subject: Internship
Subject: Job
Subject: Career
Subject: resume
Subject: associate
Subject: manager

We arrived in MD this morning around 8am. After much debate, we decided to leave South Carolina last night at 11:30 pm. We drove through the entire night. It was definitely a good idea because we would’ve hit lots of traffic coming home today. In either case, I relieved my brother from driving between 2-5 in the morning while he took a power nap. It is really easy to doze off behind the wheel at night when everybody else in the car is sleeping. So as a prevention mechanism, I decided to play some upbeat songs. That worked … for 2 songs. Then, I decided to sing along with the songs and I probably sang ‘Breathless’ at least 4 times. That didn’t last long either. Then I decided to take my mind off the fact that I might fall asleep and decided to concentrate on something else that would keep me engaged.

Surprisingly, the only thing I could concentrate on and that kept me engrossed for more than an hour was thinking about Sears. My thoughts revolved around Black Friday - the most important day in retail. I thought about everything from planning the merchandise to training my team to be the most efficient during that day. I know that to many this might be a sad admission and I am glad I am phasing out this chapter of my life. However, it led me back to a question - ‘What am I really happy doing?’ Some of you are out in the working world and get up every Monday to go to work. Are you really psyched by the prospect of going to your monotonous job everyday?

Whatever I end up doing in life, I know that working at Sears was one of the best things I could have done with my life. It taught me a lot about life and I will cherish my experiencese for the rest of my life. I think all of us should ask ourselves what it is that we are happy doing. It gives us a destination to aim for in life and makes it easier for us to choose the path we will take there.

A much needed update. I think the people who used to pester me to update have also given up. However, here is an update to bring everybody up to speed -
I resigned my position at Sears about 3 weeks ago and have been taking some much needed rest after that. I also was amazed by how much studying I had to catch up on. I ended up dropping one of my classes during the process also. However, after I found myself with all of this free time, I amazingly didn’t spend it all on studying. In any case, I’ve been going out much more and it’s great to experience the college life without having to go to work. So, expect more updates and more pictures (from all the places I go out to) and expect to see me more.