Genesis Day 01 Alfine Review 2012

This is the sort of do-it-all bike that any retro commuter/cyclocrosser dreams of as the ultimate single bike solution; low maintenance gears, clean steel lines, on/off road friendly, affordable ?. Having owned one I can say that only its good looks apply.

Gears

They constantly need adjusting; there is a barrel adjuster to do this however you do not want to be tuning your gears up every few rides. I think cable & chain stretch caused it initially, but even after 3 months it was still requiring a tune up all the time because of dodgy gear changes (which simply involves lining up 2 markers in the window of the hub). The range of gears was perfect though, allowing me to commute the steepest north wales hills with a rucksack full of IT junk.

Weight and handling

Not far off the weight of a moped, and it shows when riding it. Once you get it up to speed its ok, but something was not right, I couldn't put my finger on it, but it felt a bit like there was a flywheel attached to the back of the bike. I didn't even bother attempt Moel Famau on it.

Sizing

I had a 54cm. It was perfectly sized for my 32" leg, 5ft10" frame. The pic shows it setup at my seat height.

Mudguards

Standard SKS bluemel trekking 45mm fitted fine, albeit with some bending of 2 arms to get around the disk brake. Tip: don't cut the stays down until they are fitted and bolted up, prevents cutting them too short if you start bending the stays around brakes.

Automating SQL Instance Installations

Introduction

In the company I work for we build hundreds of new SQL instances each year, I was asked to develop a fully automated way to install SQL, with the aim to speed up the build process and standardize all SQL builds for all SQL install features (RDBMS, SSAS, SSIS, SSRS. Clustered and Standalone), I googled it and found nothing on this subject, it appears nobody has done this before, or at least not documented yet anyway. This Blog will highlight the process in as much detail as I get time to document; its a very big process but once implemented requires only a very small amount of human interaction. Here we go..........

Prerequisites

An SCCM management server that is currently managing your server environment, access to create collections, adverts, task sequences.
Powershell skills.
Active Directory read access.
SQL installation skills, with a knowledge of the config.ini for silent installs.

Quick view of the end-to-end process