Thanks to INETA, which has become the latest sponsor of Party with Palermo.

I recently had the popular problem of Windows 7 battery manager malfunctioning and not charging my battery when plugged in.  The battery was fine, the power supply was fine, and the motherboard was fine (I have enough laptops with the same specs in the Clear Measure office, and I was able to swap out parts to isolate the problem).

I also searched for this problem online, and many folks are having this problem with all makes of laptop computers.  I found the steps that solved my problem here on the TechNet forums.

There are multiple solutions proposed, and here are the steps that fixed it for me:

1. Disconnect AC
2. Shutdown
3. Remove battery
4. Connect AC
5. Startup
6. Under the Batteries category, right-click all of the Microsoft ACPI Compliant Control Method Battery listings, and select Uninstall (it’s ok if you only have 1).
7. Shutdown
8. Disconnect AC
9. Insert battery
10. Connect AC
11. Startup

Please comment if this fixes your problem so that others can solve their problem sooner.  I was surprised at how many people were having this problem with Windows 7.

Jimmy Bogard is again teaching the MVC Boot Camp from Headspring. 

http://www.headspringsystems.com/services/agile-training/mvc-training/

The class runs 3 days from May 26-28.  Give us a call at 512-459-2260 to inquire about an available discount.

Headspring is putting on another free workshop at the Austin Microsoft office.  This one will be led by Senior Consultant, Eric Anderson.  Here are the details:

Headspring Presents:

Version Control and Build Systems for Growing Teams a workshop by Eric Anderson on:

Does your team run into frequent conflicts with source control? Has your build system become a broken window with little hope of repair? Do you struggle to deploy minor changes and bug fixes while keeping the system stable? If so, perhaps this session is for you. Come learn how Headspring tackles these problems with source control strategies and continuous integration systems. This session will start at an introductory level and move on to more advanced tips and tricks for generally making your development life easier with version control and continuous integration.

Topics to be covered include:

• Branching strategies in Subversion
• Branching strategies in DVCS with Mercurial
• Continuous Integration with Hudson
• Continuous Integration with CruiseControl.Net

Tuesday, May 18, 2010
2:00 PM to 4:00 PM

Microsoft hosts Headspring at:
Microsoft Technology Center
9606 N Mo Pac Expy
Austin, TX 78759
(map)

Since January of 2008, Headspring has offered small, very advanced boot camp trainings.  These have been 3 days long and very fast-paced.  Everyone who has come through these training classes has proclaimed that they are the best organized courses they have ever taken.  Our approach to any of the boot camps is to team the practices that we employ while creating software for our clients.

We have an ASP.NET MVC Boot Camp coming up on 5/26 as well as an Agile Boot Camp on 5/19.

First and foremost, Headspring does deliverable-based project work.  We don’t do staff-augmentation, and we don’t sell our curriculum to training companies (mostly because we are always improving it).  These classes teach what we have learned regarding technologies and development practices via software projects with client.  Regarding ASP.NET MVC, four of our employees are authors on a book by Manning Publications on the topic.

If you would like to know more about our worldview of software and consulting, you can read our whitepapers, which are available via our website at http://headspring.com

• Custom Application Development
• The Agile Difference

Lastly, I ask, what would you like to see from Headspring to help you be better at your job?  I’m mostly asking programmers and people who manage programmers here.  We try to be an open book regarding our methods, so sharing is important.  There are many technologies and methods in which we are experts.  What offerings would you take part in?  Specifically, what offerings would you or your company be willing to invest in (with dollars)?  Let me know, and I’ll see what I can do to make them available.