Bordering on convenience (or: Tescos takes over Border store)…

Yes – astonishing as it may seem – news broke today that Tescos would be taking over the Borders store in Bournemouth Square.
Shocked pensioners were seen to be dancing in the street as they heard that they too would be eligible to buy cheap alcohol from right in the centre of Bournemouth, despite initial protestations from the chap who owns the mini-convenience store round the corner on Richmond Hill.
When interviewed Barry Garlow of “Extract This” (the well known boy band of the 90’s) demanded, “This is just the sort of inner city rejuvenation project old pop bands like ourselves love, it’s a win-win situation all round”.

The Bournemouth IMAX– on it’s way?

Who can forget the all pervasive sounds of disgruntlement that seeped into your car as you drove past Bournemouth Pier – back in the years that followed the erection of the IMAX cinema. What an erection it was.
For some reason or another the planning office had agreed to give planning permission for what appeared to be an enormous metal box next door to the pier. After construction it was clear that it deprived everyone approaching the sea front of half of the view of the Solent.

MS Reporting Services Error

I’ve had an issue, a couple of times now, with Reporting Services when emailing attachments (this can occur with automatic distribution of Team Foundation Server system reports). It is a known issue with RS. The fix requires administrative access to Active Directory – which I rarely have as a contract developer.
Here’s the MS help on it:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;842423
…and here’s the log file entry they refer to (from problem logs I have seen in the past):
ReportingServicesService!library!d!06/04/2009-09:02:32:: e ERROR: Throwing Microsoft.ReportingServices.Diagnostics.Utilities.ServerConfigurationErrorException: The report server has encountered a configuration error. See the report server log files for more information., AuthzInitializeContextFromSid: Win32 error: 5; possible reason - service account doesn't have rights to check domain user SIDs.;
Info: Microsoft.ReportingServices.Diagnostics.Utilities.ServerConfigurationErrorException: The report server has encountered a configuration error. See the report server log files for more information.
The problem is related to having emails with reports attached (embedded). I would recommend using the primary resolution as it requires the least amount of work and retains the current configuration on that box/machine (excerpt from MS online docs):

Method 1

1. Add the Windows account to the Pre-Windows 2000 Compatibility Access group by using the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in.
2. Add the Windows account to the Windows Authorization Access group by using the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in.
3. Restart the computer that is running Reporting Services.
Note

• The Windows account in step 1 and in step 2 is the account that you use to run Reporting Services.
  
• After you add the account to these groups, it is guaranteed that Reporting Services can access the TGGAU attribute.
  
• This method does not require you to modify permissions on any user or group.

In my experience, the user that is running the service ‘SQL Server Reporting Services (MSSQLSERVER)’ on the problem box/machine is, by default,  ‘NT Authority\NetworkService’.
Due to the fact that in both environments I was not ‘authorised’ to modify the AD setup (as I was a contract developer) I have had to ask the external IT department to create a new user to run the service under and follow the above procedure for that new user account. This has solved the issue on both occasions.