Can't Find Chrome 64-bit Version Download?

It's not that you're not looking good enough. Just move to the United States and all will be solved...

~30 minutes earlier
So I wanted to get the 64-bit stable version of Chrome and as several websites point out, you'll have to get it yourself explicitly because it won't update to the 64-bit version. Well that's fine, I just go the the website I was pointed to: https://www.google.be/chrome/browser/
Unable to see the specific link to the 64-bit version I just hit the Download button and hope I get the chance to choose between 32- and 64-bit later. Well, that's not going to happen.

 After searching for a few minutes (yes, in Chrome...) I keep coming back to the same page and not seeing anything about a 64-bit version of chrome.
Then I scroll down the site and see a little language-selection drop-down (or actually a drop-up).

When I set this to English - United States a download link magically appears beneath the Download button... After checking, all the English languages seem to work, the other are not working.

Thanks for that Google.

Suggested reading for August 14, 2014

After some months of being busy with my son / other things / holiday / writers block / other excuses.. I thought I'd start my blog with some useful links.

I came across some nice articles and blog posts in the last weeks I wanted to share:

• 52 Types of Blog Posts brought to my attention by Brent Ozar's (B|T) blog post on Speakers: Here's How to Improve Your Session
• How to ask questions politely and correctly by Paul Randal (B|T)
• Announcing SQL Server Radio by Matan Yungman (B|T)
• The 24 Hours of Pass Summit Preview edition is scheduled for September 9th 12:00 UTC
• TSQL2sDay #57 (SQL Family and Community) was hosted by Jeffrey Verheul (B|T)
• Spent an hour reading this interview with Edward Snowden on Wired

Hopefully you can get something useful out of here!

@NickyvV

Book Review: Reporting with Microsoft SQL Server 2012

I have just finished reading this book (Reporting with Microsoft SQL Server 2012) and wanted to let you know my opinion.

I believe the book is a very good starting point for beginners in SSRS or Power View. I also got some gotcha's out of it, so there may be interesting points for more experienced users.

Overall I feel the content described is correct (some minor typos aside), thorough and easy to read, but it is on a pretty basic level. So if you have (almost) never worked with Reporting Services I believe it is worthwhile reading the chapters on SSRS, but if you're already a(n) (more) experienced user, I don't believe this will add very much to your knowledge.

While chapter 2 also covers new features in SQL 2012 (like data alerts) and could therefore be of use for experienced users, chapter 3 will not cover many new things in my opinion.

Because Power View is a much younger product than SSRS, this book might also be a good starting point. It covers the differences between SharePoint and Excel as a starting point for a Power View report very well. It also let's you create a basic report and publish this to SharePoint.

All in all a good and easy read on the subject.

Dashboarding for Power Pivot and Excel

Last week I heard the exciting news that Kasper de Jonge's ( B | T ) book Dashboarding for Power Pivot and Excel will be available shortly. I understand the e-book is also only available when the paperback is on Amazon, so we'll have to wait for that too.

What you cán do is you can already pre-order your copy here of course.

Cannot delete Evernote shortcut from desktop

I have had this annoying issue for a while now and decided to fix it.
After installing Evernote (and Toggl also), I wasn't able to delete the shortcut from my desktop.
I found some hints in the right direction on the Evernote support site, but they didn't quite solve the issue.

Apparently it resides in the User\Public folder, but I couldn't Del or Shift+Del it there either. However, when I right click and choose Delete (as Admin) I was finally able to delete the shortcut.



Hope this helps..

70-461

You could say: -391. Because that's what 70 minus 461 is.. :)

But I actually meant to say 70-461: Querying Microsoft SQL Server 2012, that's the exam I finally did last friday and succeeded with a score of 981!

Now up to 70-462 for my MCSA.

Power Pivot: unable to convert a value to the data type requested

I just ran into an (for me strange) issue when I was updating a Power Pivot workbook.
I had 2 columns in a table, let's say "One" and "Two", where One has integer values and Two string values. In my model I created a calculated column Three to concatenate these values. Because One and Two are actually redundant and never used on its own, I decided to delete those columns and save some space (the tables contained just over 2.2 million records).
So I started with updating my source view to concatenate the values in T-SQL, but when I refreshed the table in Power Pivot I got the error:
"Unable to convert a value to the data type requested in table x for column Three"

This error occured because I renamed the column in the view One and I already had that column present in my PP earlier (although I deleted it before opening the Table Properties). So my column One was previous INT, but would now be VARCHAR, however PP keeps this setting in mind although the column was deleted.

I found an answer on StackOverflow:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6981688/powerpivot-sql-query-fails-unable-to-convert-a-value-to-the-data-type-requeste

My solution was to recreate the column One in my PP and leave it empty (this would get the data type INT), and then add the new column One from the source in the Table Properties. This gives a warning that the column is already present in your workbook, but solves it by renaming the new column to "One 1" when refreshing the changes. After that you can delete the old column One and rename "One 1" to One and you're done!

So in short:

1. Recreate the column (One) you deleted
2. Then add the newly added column from your source with the same name
3. PP renames the new column to "One 1"
4. Delete the old column (One) again and rename "One 1" to One, or the desired name