Category: Uncategorized

I didn’t think that multitasking was a big deal for my iPhone when I got it. I’d had it on the Google G1, but didn’t realize that it was a big deal. After all, I really only “see” one thing on the phone at a time. And having come off Windows Mobile 6.0 before that, I was leery of draining resources that are very limited on a phone.

However as I’ve used it more and more, often going from the camera to upload a photo, to Twitter, and the Kindle app to read, I have become frustrated by the time it takes to start up apps, especially for reading. I’ve been interrupted by text messages, and while I can ignore them and continue reading or tweeting or something, if I respond, the app closes.

Grrr.

That was one reason I didn’t but an iPad right away. It would have made a great work tool for me, especially for travel, but the lack of multi-tasking, even limited multitasking like on Android, would be necessary since I often want more than mail running in the background.

My iPhone is jailbroken and unlocked. After all, how else could I have a little “T-Mobile” text note in the upper left.

I had heard about Backgrounder, an application for jailbroken phones that allows them to multitask, but had been wary of applying it. I had an issue once before and had to re-jailbreak my phone and I’ve been nervous about making too many changes. However the battery is dying and I’ll need to replace it or the phone, soon. I am tempted by OS4, so I’m willing to take a chance here. The worst thing that happens is I go back to my G1 temporarily while I decide on something else.

I downloaded Backgrounder the other day and turned it on. It’s a separate app that you configure on the phone, with various options such as the defaults for how a background app runs, but it hooks into the phone OS so it’s always available.

I used the defaults, which means that when you run an application, if you want it to run in the background, you hold the Home button down while the app is running and you’ll get a message that background running is enabled. Something like this:

I was wary of using it on Twitter, since there are API limits and I hit them at times. If I’m on the road, I might, but instead, I used it on the Kindle and Barnes and Noble apps, since I have a book I’m reading on each one of them.

It. is. cool.

When I do something else, I can come back to either book instantly. The downside for the Kindle app is that it doesn’t sync by default, so I need to mark a sync spot if I move to another device.

However it’s very, very calming to not have to wait for the Kindle app to initialize and then sync every time I want to read. And it means I’m more likely to switch between my reading apps more often, and finally get back to War and Peace.

This truly is something that needs to come to the iPhone OS, and I’m looking forward to the announcement by Apple this weekend.

I’m leaving today for SQL Saturday #22 in Pensacola, FL. I’ll be there tonight and tomorrow, leaving Sun morning for New Orleans and a few days at TechEd. This is a long trip, taking me away from home for 5+ days, which isn’t something I like to do too often.

This is the second year I’ve been to this event, enjoying last year with my daughter in tow. I’m all alone this year, and likely this is my last trip to Pensacola for a couple years unless the family wants to come next year.

If you’re going to be at the event, please stop and say hi tomorrow. I’ll do an early morning, Basic SQL Server session. Please feel free to attend, even if you’re an expert, and let me know if I’m explaining SQL Server basics well to people. I’m also doing my Modern Resume presentation again, with some tips on helping you stand out from the crowd.

At TechEd I’ll be hanging out with an expo pass on Monday and Tuesday, so again, please feel free to stop by and say hi. I’ll likely be near the vendor booths and the Ask the Experts areas all day.

The T-SQL Tuesday party #7 is coming next Tuesday, June 8th. Since it’s TechEd week, and I’ll be there along with lots of you, so now’s the time to schedule a post and get it ready.

The rules have changed, so be sure to read them, and be sure you use this image in your post.

SQL Chicken is hosting this month’s topic, and it’s your favorite new feature in SQL Server 2008 R2 or SQL Server 2008. Code and samples are welcome.

Get your posts ready, and be sure you schedule them between 00:00:00 GMT on Tuesday the 8h of June and 00:00:00 GMT.

I found a cool series of scripts from Jeremiah Peschka on getting disk space from SQL Server. They’re useful queries, and I think for the most part I like getting the information from sys.sysaltfiles for information on my databases.

However, I thought the comment for this query was misnamed:

— how full is each drive?
SELECT drive_letter ,
       SUM(size_in_mb) AS size_in_mb
FROM   #db_files AS df
GROUP BY drive_letter
ORDER BY drive_letter ;

Sys.sysaltfiles doesn’t have the drive size. In fact. it’s hard to get the drive size in T-SQL.

Finding the drive size is complex. I’ve seen lots of people using sp_OA procedures, or the CLR, or even xp_cmdshell. Powershell makes it easy, but not everyone has that installed (yet).

I’m amazed that xp_fixeddrives doesn’t give this. I know it’s undocumented, but why doesn’t it grab mount points and total size? Why isn’t it documented? That’s a topic for another day, but I’d have thought that at some point we could get more information about the OS from SQL Server easily.

For now, I’d use the xp_fixeddrives to get the local disk drive name and then the TotalSize property from the FileSystemObject using sp_OA procedures as outlined in the first link above.