What if I told you there was an industry that sold 10 cents worth of product for $50 at retail stores? And that consumers were usually forced to buy it every few months at those inflated prices?

And they intentiionally made each version of their product incompatible with previous versions to make life more difficult for both consumers and competitors? And they came out with new versions of their product almost every month?

And that they developed technology so that their product would stop working when a competitor's product was used with it?

Some of you may have already guessed what industry I am talking about. Others may think I am dealing with something only Tony Soprano and the mafia could dream up -- a racket to ensure you make tons of money and everyone else gets screwed, especially the consumer.

Well, the industry is computer printers. The scam is that they sell the printer to you for $89 or so. And that printer comes with very little ink - the minimum required by law. Then they got you to the tune of $100 every few months as you replace your ink cartridges ($40 for black, and $20 each for three color modules). But what's so special about their ink? A cartridge of ink costs only a few cents. Even with all the fancy packaging, it's only $1 or so. Why do they jack up the price to $20-$40 per cartridge?

And what about this anti-competitive technology? Inkjet cartridges these days have little computer chips, and the printers have little chip readers. The cartridge keeps track of ink levels, and is hard-coded to go down, never up. The printer will stop working when it thinks the ink is too low - even if there is still ink left in the container. And try using a no-name or third-party ink cartridge, and your printer will not work at all.

The other thing that kills me is that there are, like, 100 different models of inkjet printers by each company. And each printer takes a different size and model of ink cartridge. That is why the computer stores contain aisles and aisles of inkjet cartridges. There is NO GOOD REASON why each printer requires a different model cartridge besides to make life more difficult for competitors and by extension consumers. If Epson makes 100 different inkjet models, then anyone who wants to make a cheaper ink cartridge needs to make 100 as well, which raises costs.

It's a big scam. Governments should step in. If the Department of Justice wants to stop anti-competitive behavior, this is a PRIME EXAMPLE. Do you think companies can get by with having two or three model printers, and keep selling them for a year or two? Do you think companies can get together and settle on a standard inkjet cartridge size? Yes. Of course they could. But then, they would be forced to compete, and that would be bad for business.

Tonight I didn't break any laws, but was made to feel like I did. I refilled my own inkjet cartridge. After a few minutes trying to get it to work, it did. I don't feel so bad though - these companies have been ripping me off for years.

This series of blog entries is running 2 or 3 longer than I had expected at the start. I'm sorry if this saga is getting old from the reader's perspective. How do you think I feel, trying to install this thing 10 times at least?

Finally, I have some good news to report.

I reinstalled the database and application servers from scratch. Reinstalled Windows Server 2003, and did everything in the proper order. I made sure the TFSIdentity user had admin permissions on the database, and did a few tests to ensure the permissions were properly set. And I hit the install button again...

And it failed. Again.

So, I deleted the databases that were created. I noticed it was the C:\VSTS folder that was not created this time, so I tried something different when installing the second time. I hit the install button...

And it succeeded. Yay!

What did I do differently between the two attempts? Well, during the install it asks you for four things:

• database server name
• TFS domain user name
• TFS domain
• TFS domain user password

During my first attempt, I used “vsts.x4.ca” as my domain name. Because that is the domain I created on the application server. The second attempt, I only used “vsts” as the domain name. And voila!

I really wish the install program would be smart enough to tell me “vsts.x4.ca” is not in the proper format. That would have saved me a TON of time. Heck, if they just had an example there (or in the documentation) that showed what a valid domain looked like, I would have known what to use and some of this mess would have been avoided.

Lessons learned:

* Follow the directions from the start. Once you've discovered you've skipped a step (by not installing all the options at the database tier, or by having disjointed domain server names), realize that you might have to start over. Try the install first, but be prepared to start over.

* This domain name requirement is a pain in the neck. If you understand Active Directory and domains, no problems for you I guess. But if you're like me and don't, be prepared to learn some new things.

* The install instructions may not be enough. Find someone who has installed it already and written about it on their blog. Blogs make good adjuncts to the official documentation.

Whew! You should see the relief on my face today.

That's it. I'm starting over.

I could not convince the application server install to finish completely. Add to this the fact that I was now getting an error when trying to shutdown the database server, and an error when starting the application server. Time to start over.

This time, I am following the install instructions to the letter right from the start. That was my big mistake last time. I was forced to install certain things out of order. It possible that since I installed SQL Server 2005 before installing IIS, something just wasn't right.

So, I've now reinstalled the database server. Windows Server 2003, IIS, all critical Windows Updates, and SQL Server 2005. Easy as punch.

I am in the process of reinstalling the application server. I'll get the domain controller thing right from the start this time, so that might go a lot smoother.

Installing VSTS has not been easy. But at least progress is being made.

My first big hurdle was getting past the problem where the instructions said to configure ADAM using one set of port numbers, while my computer refused to do so. I solved that in my last VSTS post, by accepting my computers defaults and ignoring the instructions.

My second big hurdle came during the install of the application server (Team Foundation). If you'll recall, I am installing the application tier in a Virtual PC 2004 instance. I tried installing VSTF directly from the DVD. I tried it a couple of times, but each time it failed reading one of the files from the DVD. I tried accessing that file directly from Windows Explorer inside Virtual PC, and no luck.

My first suspect was the DVD (media) itself. I tried that DVD in a different computer and it worked. So it appears the DVD is fine.

So of course I then suspected the external DVD player I was using. So I downloaded and installed the latest firmware upgrades from the manufacturer and retried the install. No luck.

Now I realize that you can “Capture an ISO” and use it as a drive image. So I tried buring this DVD to ISO. No luck - Virtual PC did not recognize it as a valid ISO.

Finally, I just XCOPY'ed the files into a shared folder. That worked.

It turns out, from this Ask Burton blog entry, that Virtual PC does not support DVD's over 2GB. What? Well, several hours of my life lost for nothing.

That problem solved, I am now facing my third major hurdle. This time, I am really getting frustrated. The install goes all the way to the end, apparently creates a bunch of databases, and then dies with a mysterious 26201 and 26204 errors. Ask Burton again has some hints.

My problem is that the database tier almost completely installs. So I know we have connectivity, the database is running, app server has rights to the database, etc. Ugh. I am painstakingly cleaning the DB server up after each attempt.

I think I might finally worked past the SQL DB issues, but I am not sure. The last time I ran the install, it completed everything and then did a rollback on its own. I'll give it one last try tonight.

In February of this year, I noted that the U.S. federal government debt reached $7 trillion for the first time.

As of October 5, eight months later, the official debt stands at $7.414 trillion. You know, I'm tempted to write the whole number out, because when you start rounding off at the billion dollar mark, that's still a lot of money. $7,414,024,541,823.04 for those keeping score.

That exceeds, by the way, the legal limit on debt. $7.384 trillion is the current ceiling as defined by law, and it takes an act of congress and the President's signature to increase that. So someone is breaking the law.

Still, in 8 months the U.S. government burned through more than $400 billion. News reports say the Defense Department is borrowing money from an emergency fund it keeps ($25 billion) to pay its bills until congress sends it more money. So the real debt is closer to $7.5 trillion...

From Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel:

No Congress or Presidential Administration ever likes to approve increasing the debt ceiling, because it puts the spotlight on their profligate spending and lack of fiscal control. They certainly don't like doing one in an election year. God forbid they are forced to approve one in the weeks or days before an actual election--especially this election.

From CBS MarketWatch:

Technically, on its current spending course, the government is expected to run out of money in "early October." But the administration can employ emergency accounting mechanisms to avoid hitting the $7.38 trillion mandatory limit until "mid-November," the Treasury estimates.

It's funny that noone minds talking about the need to increase the debt ceiling, and even some of the accounting tricks they will use to avoid hitting it until after the election, but noone wants to actually increase the ceiling now. It's as if their spending problem will magically go away after the election. Actually, it's more likely that the spending will still occur at the same pace, just that it will no longer be  a problem.

Evan Williams, founder of Pyra Labs which was acquired by Google last year, has announced he is leaving to start something new. Pyra Labs created Blogger, which was a major factor in the success of blogging. I started blogging at Blogger, and still maintain a few blogs there.

I've been following Evan's EvHead blog for months. Thankfully, he thinks he will continue blogging, so he will be gone from Google but not gone-gone.

Good luck Evan. If you ever want to start a business, give me a call. I'll go in with you 50-50.

OK, I had to backtrack a little on installing Team System.

* I reinstalled SQL Server 2005 to include all components, including Reporting Services. I'm not sure how this matters, but the instructions say to include all components.

* I removed DNS Server, DHCP Server and Active Directory Server as roles from the application server. This is because ADAM was refusing to install on the indicated ports. I may have to turn the database server into an Active Directory Server.

Note: After reading Darren J's blog again, I see that I should let ADAM use the other port settings instead of worrying about the exact numbers.

* So, I reinstalled a primary Active Directory domain and DNS.

* I added the database server to the domain.

* I finished installing ADAM. No issues.

* I installed .NET Framework 2.0 Beta.

Lesson for today: read the install instructions.

Well, as soon I a stuck the Team System DVD into the drive, the install instructions came up. They are excellent - well written and helpful. I just wish I saw them earlier today.

So it turns out I missed several important steps.

* Both the application and database server needs to have the Application Server role configured. The application server needs ASP.NET while the database server does not. Neither server uses Frontpage Extensions.

* I had to download all the Windows Updates. There were a lot (22).

* I had to download and install SharePoint Services 2.0. Then had to download and install the Windows Update for that.

* I had to download and install ADAM (Active Directory Application Mode). I'm currently stuck, as the install instructions appear to require ADAM running on a specific port number, but my server says that port (SSL) is already in use.

Anyways, it's way past my bed time. I'll have to tackle the rest of this tomorrow.