Yeah, I know… I’m nothing like the Old Spice guy, but I still think that is a great commercial. No, the title has nothing to do with the content of this post, and I’m not really looking to make it fit, it just happens to be what popped into my head when I started writing this.
So I totally thought I would have some time to blog between the end of April and now, and actually, I probably had a few minutes here and there, and the thoughts have crossed my mind many times. I just seem to be in the middle of something else when it does. I’ve been busy working for Summit 7 Systems doing SharePoint upgrades, migrations, analysis, you name it…. I’ve also been working on a mission trip. I’m leaving in the morning at 1AM for a trip to Mandeville, Jamaica for a week. Don’t think this is a vacation, while it will be fun, it will also be lots of hard work, in very primitive conditions. I’m not even going to have the luxury of hot water for the entire trip!
Since this week is a short one with a holiday (Happy 4th of July everyone, hope you had a wonderful day!) and with me leaving, I was given a very small project to build some virtual machines that we can use for demos. This is not such a bad thing, I have built a couple of VMs in the past, both of 2007 and 2010 for me to play with and to use when I am doing presentations.
I’m slaving away working on these virtual machines, when I am realizing I’m going to have to do some almost dev-type stuff! WHAT??? I’m an admin and I’m installing Visual Studio 2010???? Seriously? Ok… well, so I think to myself, I’m just installing the software for others to be able to use, right? It’s still kind of an administrative thing, right? I’m talking myself into this and realizing I just have to bite the bullet and do it. Well let me just tell you, only those devs know the tricks to doing this. About 45 minutes into the installation, I’ve had to reboot, cause it said it needed to, and I’m looking at the list of stuff that it is doing and its not even half way through it!!! I’m thinking, “Oh my… what the heck is taking so long!?!?!” So I mention to my wonderful friend and (yes, I know but I still call her friend) DEV, Becky Isserman, that it is taking forever. Her response, (and this is an exact quote) “Did you uncheck a ton of stuff?” Why no, thank you, I had no idea I had to customize the installation of a dev tool. I thought it had everything you had to have to be able to develop in SharePoint 2010. Well, apparently you are supposed to uncheck some of the stuff, like C++, Visual Basic, SQL Server Express, F#, J# and possibly more to make it install a little less slowly.
So I told my friend, yes, still calling a dev a friend! Thanks for letting me know that now and that there should be a manual or simple guide somewhere to let people know how to install it specifically for SharePoint users. Well, since that doesn’t exist, I’m posting this quick blog in the hopes that some other admin who gets stuck installing Visual Studio 2010 for some devs will know next time (which means this will be me, I’m sure) what to do to make it not take so long!
Oh, and it’s been over an hour now and still not halfway through yet! Happy SharePointing!