Jeff and .NET

Come on, Steve... don't be a target

I'm a big Microsoft fanboy, and I really admire Gates and Ballmer. However, Steve says some things from time to time that make him a target. He said today: "The most common format of music on an iPod is stolen."

If you're a presidential candidate, you can make stuff like this up and people will just take your word for it. Techies, generally speaking, aren't that stupid, so to make an unsubstantiated claim like that and hating on the company that makes the most beloved device of our time is asking to be a target.

My wife and I have iPods, and we actually own everything on them (including hundreds of iTunes songs). The rest of the thousands of files were ripped from CD's we own. We may not be typical, but the point is that suggesting every kid with a WMA player has more legit music than an iPod user is stupid.

SQL ORDER BY weirdness

I'm sure some SQL guru will laugh and kick Dummies books in my face, but what's the problem here? I decided to do a stored procedure to page results of forum topics using a cursor. (Before anyone tells me that's a bad idea, read this to see why using the cursor appears to be the best performing option.) Originally, I was getting topic records in a date range, using this SQL:

SELECT * FROM Topics
WHERE (ForumID = @ForumdID) AND ((LastPostTime > @TimeSpan) OR (Pinned = 1))
ORDER BY Pinned DESC, LastPostTime DESC

To populate the cursor, prior to the paging and such, my sproc uses this:

SELECT TopicID FROM Topics
WHERE ForumID = @ForumID
ORDER BY Pinned DESC, LastPostTime DESC

For some likely obvious reason I'm missing, it doesn't do the ordering for the Pinned column, which is a bit. Pinned topics should come first.

Tell me what I'm missing, and you get a free copy of the forums! ;)

Messeges to me via asp.net may have been spam filtered

If you've sent me a message via weblogs.asp.net, I may not have received it. I just learned that the asp.net is on the black list being distributed by IPSwitch for IMail server. I cut it out of my list. No one at IPSwitch seems to be interested in removing it, even though it's obviously a legit site. I'm not sure actual humans work there. Funny how they have no problem making sure I get e-mail from them for a service contract renewal.

The scary reality of being a published author

Last night, someone pointed out that my book is already listed on Amazon. I'm a little freaked out by this, in part because it's not even done yet. We've got one more round of editorial review.

I'm not sure exactly why I'm freaked out. I started my professional life working in radio as on-air talent. It's a very visible job where people think you're famous (because they don't know how little you actually make). That never bothered me, and I wasn't worried about being judged or whatever. This is so different from that, perhaps because programming books are not something read by stupid people, or top 40 listeners. ;)

I have a lot of anxiety because if the book sucks, the feedback indicating this is very visible in terms of bad reviews online and a lack of royalty checks down the road. Yes, despite the occassional pissing match I get into online, I'm ridiculously insecure. I think my strength is teaching, not necessarily all encompasing knowledge. The reviewers say I know my stuff, but for some reason that's not comforting.

On the upside, it's nice to know that I'm in the home stretch now. Writing a book is a lot harder than I thought it would be. I don't think I could have done it while working a regular day job. It's not that it's exactly time consuming, but it's very difficult to stay focused on it. Regardless, a month from now, it'll be out of my hands and all I can do is hope for the best when it hits the stores in the spring.