select hostname,nt_username from sys.sysprocesses

For added excitement, if you do use Management Studio, you can display the result as text or a grid to take into Excel and filter it.

I think I’d struggle to do just Sonic 3 in 45 minutes, let alone Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Mind you, I’d struggle to contain my lunch if I was forced to play as Tails…

Firstly, my stats. I’m not doing as well as last year. My Enormous Geek Cycling Spreadsheet of Awesome Numbers tracks my miles and cross-checks it against how I was doing at this time last year, and the sums say that at the moment, I’m 51 miles down.

Thankfully, that’s redeemable and with good weather I can catch up in a week or two. The main problem was that last year the weather in January and most of February was pretty good – cold, windy, and a bit wet – but not bad. This year, we’ve had weeks of snow and weeks of gales. Last April was rubbish though, and this April (so far) has been mostly great, so that’s where I can make amends. I’m also not been cycling my best times (well, except see later…), but that’s also partly down to weather.

Hethersett 30/60

Taking part in the Hethersett ride marked my first proper sportive. Sure, I did the Ride for Life last year, but that wasn’t really the same – it was a charity event and mainly aimed at casual riders, although I’d probably class myself as more than a casual rider these days. This was a bit more serious with proper actual cyclists. I did wonder how I’d keep up.

The forecast for the day was mixed. It was warm, but very windy – blowing north. The event had already been postponed from three weeks prior partly due to similar wind conditions, compounded by recent snow, sub-zero temperatures, and ice. Thankfully it was just the wind this time around.

But hoooo – what wind. The first half of the 30 mile route (or rather, the first 13.5 miles until the rest stop) were almost entirely going south. As in, the opposite to north. 40mph wind in my face, pretty much all the way. A few short sections ran east or west, which gave a little respite but had their own problems with side winds that almost toppled me twice (and did topple some people, it seems).

7 or 8 miles in we hit a slight uphill incline too, so wind and hill combined to make progress incredibly slow. Thankfully, I, along with a few other riders, combined to form an ad-hoc peloton which made things do-able, if still really difficult. I even took the lead a couple of times and we worked together as a team. It was a fantastic experience. Sadly, near the end it broke up due to a few members needing to stop (one had a puncture too) and we got too strung apart. Still, it felt great to be a part of it.

After the rest stop, things went great. The remaining 17 miles were almost all downhill with the wind, so I completely stormed it home. In fact, I did those 17 miles 8 minutes faster than the previous 13.5. I flew past countless other riders, and ate up the miles. I was rewarded with a pile of new personal bests, including stripping more than two minutes off my best 10 miles time, and improving both my 20km and one hour bests.

I also had a minor gloat as I passed the Mulbarton Women’s Velo team twice (once before the rest stop, once after). Childish, yes, but gave me a boost at the time. Actually, overall, I passed far more people than overtook me, so I think I did pretty well really.

That wind though – my legs have not forgiven it.

Sigh.

Much of this concern stems from rumours (most of which have been rubbished), but where there is smoke, there is fire. Rumours come from ideas, and even if they’re not implemented now, or fully – someone, somewhere, thought they’d be a a good idea.

Online only
I don’t want my console online at all times to play. I can’t rely on my internet connection to allow that, even if I wanted to.

No second hand games
I buy about 30% of my games second hand. None of them have required any of this “online pass” nonsense, so when I pay £10 for a game, I get the game (and all of the game) for £10. I bought it for £10 because I thought it was worth £10, and if I need a £10 “unlock code” because I bought it second hand I won’t buy it. I never trade games in, or borrow games from other people, so it wouldn’t bother me for that reason, but when I buy a game – I want the game for the price I pay for it.

Microtransactions
There are two reasons I don’t play many iOS games: 1) touch screen controls are rubbish on almost anything approaching a “normal” video game, and 2) you can’t just play games any more – you have to pay to play, or have to wait (minutes, hours, days even) or grind tediously to progress. If this comes to console gaming, I’m out.

Download only games
I’m not adverse to downloading my games (legally, I mean). 42.5% of my spending on games last year was on downloadable games. Every single one of which was under 2GB, and the majority were under 500MB. My internet connection will not cope with bigger games, and although my connection will improve in the future (apparently), the size of games will also increase. Some titles are already 35GB+ – and that ain’t gonna happen, no matter how cheap they are. I had a taste of this when Sony had their “intrusion” and I got two free game downloads. That took me a fortnight to download.

Endless updates
It’s a minor thing, in the overall package, but updates are becoming ever more commonplace. Gone are the days you just put your game in and played, and it was rare a bug was found that prevented you from playing it properly. Now, not only are there updates for the games, but updates for the consoles too. Sure, they add features, but especially in the case of the 360, they add a load of stuff I neither want, nor would ever use. The dashboard is now atrocious, which leads me to…

It’s not all about the games
Remember when games consoles were primarily for playing games on? Microsoft don’t. They’ve moved the Xbox 360 into “entertainment system” territory (oh the irony – Nintendo Entertainment System, anyone?) and don’t even have games as the main focus on the dashboard any more. They’re all tucked away. Yes, I play videos on my PS3, but that’s a side effect, not the main event. With the PS4 cramming Facebook into every orifice and the new Xbox almost certainly moving further away from gaming than the 360 already has, it’s losing focus. And, as a result, my interest.

Flail
Kinect? No. Move? No. We’ve already done that with the Wii. We know what worked well, and what didn’t. We don’t need any more of it, and we certainly don’t need them shoe-horned into games.

Where have the games gone?
So many studios closing. So many sequels being churned out – and even those series I enjoy (Assassin’s Creed, for example) are becoming worn and rely upon wrong-footed changes to appear fresh. Pirates in Assassin’s Creed IV? Sigh. Indie games and small studios funded by the likes of Kickstarter seem to be where my gaming is going, but how long will that last before they’re bought up or go bust?

At the moment, only Nintendo seem to understand what a games console is, but how long for? They’ve already got streaming video and TV on the Wii U, along with a web browser. Miiverse is a great example of how to do something new with a console but still be all about the games – but if the Wii U fails where then? Or worse, what if it succeeds because it changes to be more like its competitors? What’s left for me then? The next Playstation and the next Xbox. Or PC gaming, which I’ve never really liked.

As a gamer, it’s the first time I’ve been concerned about the future of gaming.

I had a few odd issues to begin with:

1. For some reason it thought I had Windows Update running. I didn’t.
2. Then it got through the “readiness checks” but failed because “beremote” (Symantec Backup Exec was running – I killed it and tried again.
3. Then it got through the checks again but failed because it couldn’t find Active Directory on our Domain Controller. Even though it had done previously. Um. Reboot.
4. Finally, the update started, but got to installing the “Hub Transport Role” and failed.

The error message said “MSExchangeServiceHost cannot be started due to the following error: Cannot start service MSExchangeServiceHost on computer “.”". Strange.

Looking at the services, I found that all of the services for Exchange (like IMAP3, Transport and – yes – Service Host) were set to disabled. I know not why. So I set them all to manual (which was tedious, as there were 16-odd to do), and tried the install of SP3 again.

Checks – OK. Install – started. Hub Transport – failed. Same message.

I looked at the services again, and they were all disabled. Again. What.

I set about changing them all to manual again, and once more started the install. The most annoying thing about this whole process was that the checks take a good 15 minutes, and the install – up to the point of failing – takes another 30-40 minutes, so it was taking ages each time. Anyway, as the install progressed this time, I kept an eye on the services, refreshing them. And lo – they change by themselves to disabled. Alas, I wasn’t quick enough to keep up with the changes and the update failed yet again.

Thankfully, I’m not the first to have this problem. A Google search led me to here, where the solution was revealed in the comments: Powershell.

I rarely use Powershell. I don’t know much about it, and I don’t like to poke around in it just in case. However, an anonymous poster on that link came up with this simple command:

Get-Service MSEx* | Set-Service -Startuptype manual

Bang that into Powershell, and all the Exchange services get set to (you guessed it) manual. Sadly, that doesn’t prevent the SP3 installer changing them back to disabled as it feels like it, but it does mean you can change them all back, instantly. And, with judicious use of the Up arrow and Return key, you can send the command over and over and over for the entire 45 or more minutes that SP3 takes to install. Like I did. Tedious. Painful on the fingers. Job Done.

People with more Powershell savviness could probably put this in a loop and spare themselves the RSI.

Finally, and something Mr Anonymous didn’t mention, was that those services needed to be returned to “automatic” before rebooting the server, for hopefully obvious reasons. Since I was in Powershell I guessed at how to do this (and I’m sure you’ve guessed it too…):

Get-Service MSEx* | Set-Service -Startuptype automatic

Interestingly, what I didn’t notice about Clint’s blog post at first, was that he got the same issue with Exchange 2010 SP1, not SP3, and one of the other commenters found it in SP2 as well. Nice to see Microsoft fix these things.

In all, I spent £834.48. Last year, it was £888.22, so I’ve spent 6% less on games and game related paraphernalia this year. Woo! 6%!

Here’s the hardware/software split:

Which is almost exactly the same as the previous year (34.8/65.2). That means software accounted for £525, less than 2011′s £579, which in turn was lower than in 2010. I expect this year the hardware wedge to be much smaller, as there’s no hardware out in 2013 that I’m interested in (no, not even an Xbox 720/PS4, should they materialise).

How did the spending break down by platform?

The 360 takes up more or less the same slice as in 2011, where it had 26.5%, and the PS3 dropped to 5.9 from 12%. The Wii has dropped to almost nil from 22.4%, but the Wii U does account for some of that change. The 3DS grew from 32.6 to 40.2%. Overall, the pie is very similar in terms of money share.

Note, however, that this chart doesn’t take account of hardware – whereas last year’s did. Really shouldn’t have included hardware in it last year. Hmm. If you take hardware into account, then the Wii U takes up almost half the pie.

Finally, the spend by medium:

Downloads this last year mainly came in the form of the 3DS eShop and 360 XBLA. Some Wii U, PC/Mac and PS3 PSN stuff is included too, though. Interestingly, but expected, the share of downloads has increased. In 2010 it was 25%, in 2011 it was 34.9%, and this year it is 42.5%. A long time ago, I predicted this would be the case, and (slowly) things are moving that way. In fact, if I had a faster internet connection, no doubt that figure would be even higher – some games I don’t download simply because it would take weeks.

In 2012, I bought about 80 games. Down from 130+ in 2011, and lower than 90 from 2010. However, I also completed fewer (39 compared to 68). Damn Skyrim taking up my entire life.

My original plan was to cycle 900 miles in the year, to cover my expected game expenditure at a rate of one pound for every mile cycled. Hence the name “Pound-a-Mile”. I hit this early, and extended the target to 1000 miles, and then again to 1250. As of the 31st December, I’d managed a total of 1258.16 miles – just over that target. Phew!

On the spending side of things, despite buying a Wii U last year, I still didn’t come close to wiping out my “credits” – with £423.68 left in the bikebank. I’m pleased with that!

In fact, it could have been even further. It wasn’t lack of drive that stopped me cycling a good few hundred more miles, but a number of things. Firstly, I had a bout of labyrinthitis around Easter time, which took me out for the best part of a month. Cycling when dizzy would not be a clever plan. Later in the year I got a chest infection, which dragged on and on and on (and I got some excellent hallucinations from the tablets for it) for over a month, meaning I couldn’t cycle as I simply couldn’t breathe.

There were two months of almost solid rain, which hampered going out a bit. Not so much the rain itself (I’d cycle in drizzle), but more the state of the roads for days after so much rain – they were literally flooded, with mud. I stupidly went out on my road bike too soon after a few days rain, and slipped in the mud. My first crash, and my leg was shredded like the road had been sandpaper. I had to go back to my old Apollo Highway for a few months until everywhere dried off. Months later, I still have scars and keep picking bits of grit out of my calf.

Importantly though, I’m still really enjoying cycling. A bit less so when I have to use my old bike, but riding round the countryside on a sunny day is one of my favourite things these days. I’ve improved massively, feel fitter, and am really pleased with my progress.

I don’t think the cycling has curbed my spending (a post on that soon) as I’ve spent only slightly less than the previous year, but in the end it wasn’t about the money – it was just about the miles. Because of that, I’m not going to be doing the Pound-a-Mile in 2013. I’ll still track my spending, and I’ll still have a target number of miles (I’m going to say 1250 again at the moment – this may change), but with no big purchases planned for the year, unlike the Wii U in 2012, I don’t think there’s really any point. It was a fun experiment, and for the first month or so at least, it pushed me to cycle more, but after that my expenditure figure was little more than a number way behind my milage.

Happy Christmas!

However, when I first ran it, it came up with an error – saying that my OS X partition was damaged and telling me to run a disk repair.

I did that, and it came up clean. But still Camptune failed, in the same way.

Then I had a thought – I wonder if it’s related to that thing I did once to hide the Bootcamp partition from the desktop? This thing, in fact. I mean, yeah, that’s actually the Windows partition, but it was worth a try.

I fired up vifs, commented out the UUID line, and saved the file. If you don’t know how to use vi (which vifs is, essentially), then just use the cursor keys to put the cursor on the left of the line you want to comment out, press “I” (to Insert), type a #, press Escape, type :wq and press Return. After rebooting, Bootcamp reappeared on my desktop. Urgh.

Mind you, that fixed it! Camptune worked a charm and I now have an extra 100GB in the Windows partition. I hid the Bootcamp partition again by vifs’ing and removing the #. Awesome.

Everything went quiet. Nothing happened for weeks. After all, the release date wasn’t until November the 30th. I preordered Mario from Tesco and waited.

Then, on Tuesday the 27th, there was a flurry of activity. Some people were getting dispatch notes from Amazon and Tesco. Some people received their consoles from Amazon. Many got “dispatching soon” messages from various retailers. Zavvi said nothing.

I emailed them and tweeted them and sent a message through their order query system. No reply. Nobody else got replies either. I wasn’t too concerned. It was only Tuesday.

On Wednesday, more people took delivery of their Wii U consoles. More still got dispatch notes. Us Zavvi folk – nothing. OK, so with next day delivery, still no panic. Except we weren’t even getting confirmation we were going to get a Wii U, let alone when it was being dispatched. More emails/tweets/messages. I even tried calling: No answer.

At 3:30pm my order status changed to Awaiting Dispatch. I got a tweet saying it was due to be dispatched, and would be with my on or before Friday. Hoorah!

Then at 4:40pm I got a message from their order query tickets. To paraphrase: “Dear sir, you ordered a Wii U and we’ve not got any so we’ve cancelled your order. Have a nice day!”. RAGE. I quickly tried to order from Tesco (no stock) and Shopto (wouldn’t deliver to my work address) so I resigned myself to having to browse the local supermarkets on Friday. Bah.

Later that evening, I have fiftybillion tweets and messages telling me to ignore all previous tweets and messages and the One True Message was that yes – I was to get a Wii U, no – it hasn’t been cancelled, and yes – it’ll be with me by Friday. Probably. Rage subsided. I was happy that things were being dealt with and, better still, a few minutes later the delivery company DPD emailed me to say my order from Zavvi had been dispatched. YES.

The following morning (Thursday) presented me with a new problem. DPD’s tracking said the Wii U was in Warrington. Still in Zavvi’s depot, in fact. They’d not picked it up. DPD responded quickly to my tweet and said Zavvi hadn’t actually given them the whole shipment, so many people (everyone, it seemed from Twitter) were not going to have their Wii U delivered today. Worse, was that DPD didn’t have it, and Zavvi said they didn’t have it either. So why did I have the bowl, Bart? Why did I have the bowl?

No response from Zavvi all day again. And here lies the main problem with Zavvi: no communication.

I stewed all day. Would I get a Wii U from Zavvi? Where was it? What if they find it after I’d bought another? Then who was phone? Nothing. It was nowhere. Dispair. ARGH.

Thursday. 5pm. DPD’s tracking springs into life: A parcel arrived in their Birmingham sorting office. The game was back on! There was still a chance to have it on Friday! I told them to fly like unicorns. Then went to bed.

Friday. 2am. DPD’s tracking said my Wii U was just 20 miles from me! 6am. Out for delivery between 11:32 and 12:32!

Friday. Noon. WII U IS HERE!

Lessons for Zavvi to learn: I know they were busy. It was a console launch and it’s the start of the big Christmas shopping season. I realise they’re not going to respond immediately to every message and query. I know they’re going to be hard to contact by phone. I understand this. However – given the sheer number of queries and complaints they were receiving about the Wii U, why didn’t they just email all customers and say “We’re busy but we’re working hard to get you your Wii U by launch day. Please bear with us.”? Why not tweet the same thing? And put it on their site?

Everything was fine in the end (for me – I know some didn’t get theirs until Monday), but a quick message to say it would all be OK would have smoothed everything out right away.

Thankfully, there’s a way to remove it.

As an administrator, open up ADSI Edit (which should be installed on the Exchange server, if not anywhere else), and navigate to the user who should own the mailbox. Right-click that user, and in the attributes list find “msExchDelegateListLink”. Edit this value, removing anyone who should no longer have access to the mailbox.

Once deleted, OK the editor and properties windows. The user (with the “ghost” mailbox) can now close and reopen Outlook. After a few minutes, if not immediately, the extra mailbox will magically vanish.

Answers on a postcard (or in the comments).

What did I think of the games? Well, a quick run through:

New Super Mario Bros U (Wii U)
Awesome. Going to be excellent playing this with my daughter on the screen. Sure, it’s mostly more of the same as NSMB and NSMB Wii, but that’s fine by me.

Nintendo Land (Wii U)
Zelda is a bit weak, but Luigi and Animal Crossing are excellent. The Donkey Kong game looks fun too, but I didn’t get a chance to play.

Nintendo Panorama (Wii U)
Not a game. Interesting for exactly four seconds.

Professor Layton 5 (3DS)
More Layton. Seems good, but the 3D models are not the best. Not really a game a demo can really, well, demontrate.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate (3DS)
AWESOME. It has maps you have to fill in and everything!

Rayman Legends (Wii U)
Ace. Looks like a swisher version of Origins.

Tomb Raider (360)
Erm. Not Tomb Raider. Looks great, Lara orgasms every 6 seconds though, and I’m not sure I like it.

Dishonoured (360)
No preconceptions as I knew nothing about it. Plays and feels a lot like Bioshock. It was excellent, and the biggest surprise of the show for me. Want.

Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation (PSV)
Awesome. Which is the exact opposite of what I wanted. Please make a PS3 version so I don’t have to buy a
Vita. I really don’t want a Vita.

Super Playstation Smash Bros (PS3)
Like Super Smash Bros only with no characters. No, I mean it *is* SSB with no characters. Even has the same fonts, controls, and sound effects.

Super Mario Playstation Kart (PS3)
It’s Mario Kart with a LBP skin. It wasn’t that great.

Borderlands 2 (360)
NEED. It looks like XIII and plays well. Looks like a massive OCD fest too. Never played the original, although I want to before this.

Doom 3 BFG Edition In 3D (360)
Utterly rubbish. Rubbish graphics, rubbish gameplay, rubbish 3D. Rubbish.

Chompy Chomp Chomp (360)
Far too silly and fun. Like Pac Man and the Luigi game on Nintendo Land but different.

A Bastard (PC)
Not playable. Silly idea, but pointless. It’s Faceball 3000 for two players but your controls change to random other letters each time you move, making for Keyboard Twister.

Carmageddon (iPad)
AWESOME!!! I got a Cunning Stunt bonus. ACEBEST. It’s barely better than the original, graphics-wise, but lots of fun. And no zombies!

I also played some Street Fighter II (and won), as well as some other retro and indie games.

Well, a lot of things have happened. Most importantly, I bought a new bike. Oh yes. Even though my Apollo Highway hybrid was still under a year old, I was fed up with the shocking build quality and after a snapped chain, snapped axle, bent wheel, twisted cogs, and it never, ever, changing gears smoothly enough regardless of how much they were adjusted, cleaned, and sent back to Halfords, I’d had enough. At first I thought it was me, that I wasn’t “riding it right”, or not looking after it, but no – I just don’t think it was up to it.

Also, the main reason I bought a hybrid was because I didn’t know if I’d like road or off-road cycling. A hybrid does both, so it was the perfect choice, but I found I rarely used it off-road, and when I did it was pretty good dirt track rather than anything approaching an MTB route. I decided I needed something closer to a road bike.

I saw a Giant Rapid 3 cheap (it was a 2011 model, so in a clearance) and after much umming and ahhing, went for it. And I’m so glad I did, as it’s a billion times better than the Highway. Narrow tyres (25mm vs the 35mm of the Highway) and a much lighter aluminium frame, with carbon forks, both make it so much faster. It’s still not a full road bike, but it only really lacks the drop bars – something I’m not too sure about yet.

On my first ride out on it, being wary not to push it due to the tyres being so much thinner than I’d been used to, I managed to take almost two minutes off my previous best time for the same 5.4 mile route, and rode at almost 2mph faster. My average speed for my Highway rides was around 12.5mph, but now I’m usually riding at 15.5mph. Sure, it’s still not proper fast, but it is much faster.

I’m also finding hills far, far easier (although there’s still one that eludes me – it is my nemesis and one day it will be defeated), probably due to both better gearing and a bike a third of the weight of my old one. And I’ve got better and fitter, of course. You should see my massive thighs now.

All this is interesting (or not), but how well have I actually been doing? Very well, thanks.

A couple of weeks after getting the Rapid, I went out for a 37 mile ride with some friends. We stopped off a few times, but I was amazed how easy it was. Since then, my usual rides have increased in length, with longer rides being more frequent. At the start of September I managed to do just over 100 miles in a single week, when previously it had taken three weeks or so to hit that.

I’ve been getting faster too. Last year, my fastest 10 miles was 52:16. Last weekend I did 10 miles in 34:45. Sure, new bike but it’s still a 5 minute improvement over my first 10 miles on the Rapid! My fastest 1 mile is now 2:53 – a full minute faster than last year’s best, and my best hour is now 16.6 miles – 5.5 miles better than 2011. Frankly, I’m amazed at myself.

Finally, the scores. How far have I gone this year?

You may recall that I estimated I’d need £900 for game spends this year. I wanted enough miles to “buy” a Wii U and some games when it came out. At the time, there wasn’t a launch date, although near the end of the year was highly likely, or a price, which I suspected about £200. Since then, a release date of November 30th and a price of around (it depends on the model and retailer) £250 have been confirmed. With the games I want (there’ll be another post on that after the Eurogamer Expo), £400 isn’t going to be far from the total. At the time of writing, I’ve already spent £368 (I’ve never gone into the red, by the way). That means, by November 30th, I’ll need to have cycled at least 768 miles.

Today I hit 1000 miles. Already. Awesome.

Here’s the code:

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