Archives

Archives / 2004

  • When DateTime.MinValue Attacks

    3 Comments

    The other day I purchased myself a new Dell server for home, and when checking out my order status on their .NET Web App, I noticed this nice piece of information under the section of viewing all previous orders by my customer number.

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  • Google Desktop Search Flaw, Fixed

    No Comments

    You mean, it was conceivable that the information could be captured by another webpage with your hooks into the API to produce the webpages…you don’t say…

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  • My First Bug Stopped by TDD

    1 Comment

    So I’m working on a side job, and I’ve been using the great & wonderful Test Driven .NET, but thats not the point of this post. What the point is, is that for the first time since I’ve started doing TDD (which – I might add, is very short), running my tests proved to me that a bug existed in code as I modified it. Yes, thats right – 3 tests failed, so I spent about an hour digging down in my buisness logic to try and find out why. Alas, I finally did find out why, and it was because of a change I had made.

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  • Beta Day - VS.NET 2005

    No Comments

    Well, my reactions to VS.NET are still the same…still amazes me. I started re-creating some of my custom controls, started with the simple ones first, just so I can get “ahead of the game” on this for whenever it goes prime time (PDC?).

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  • Beta Day: FogBugz 4.0 and VS.NET 2005

    No Comments

    So today I decided it was going to be a beta day, well really, I was just going to work in VS.NET 2005’s Nov. CTP distro that was just launched, more on this later. However, prior to lunch I got an email notifying me that I’ve been accepted into the FogBugz 4.0 beta program. Ohh yeah! Now, I’m going to keep Joel’s “Mouth Wide Shut” policy by not discussing anyting about the 4.0 beta, but I do have to say this – its stable, more powerful, and a bunch of new awesome features have been added.

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  • Nov. CTP Installation Gotchas

    1 Comment

    So I’m at work and trying to install the November CTP from my one laptop to my test laptop. Here’s a few gotcha’s that you need to know when using Nero Image Drive…

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  • Unleash It Data Collection

    No Comments

    Looks like an update I made somewhere along the line broke usage collection for 2.4 via my webservices. So, if you’re like me and wanted to know how much things were getting reported, you’ll probably be missing that data until I figure out whats wrong.

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  • PDC '03 Costs

    1 Comment

    Yes, I said PDC ‘03, not ‘05. My boss stated that I need to get a budget going for ‘05, and since no info is available for ‘05 yet, I need to base it off of ‘03. Does anyone have the costs for PDC ‘03? Like, registration or any additional costs?

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  • Windows Messenger 5.1

    1 Comment

    I have this nasty habit of always wanting to run the latest and greatest of any software. Sometimes this causes problems with my system, however I don’t think upgrading to Windows Messenger 5.1 will hinder my work. Supposedly, there’s enhancements in this version…whatever, I got the newest version.

    Update: I just installed MSN Messenger 7.0 BETA, I wonder when my computer’s going to puke. BTW, this beta is just crazy…so many annoying things in it like “Nudge”

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  • Review: WipeClean v1.0

    1 Comment

    Over the past month, I’ve been beta testing a new product by Avantrix called WipeClean. This product allows you to securely wipe files from your hard drive by writing zeros overall the bits on the drive. Another great feature that it adds, is if you wipe a folder, it’ll wipe that folders contents and subfolders based on a file mask that you provide. So, by easily supplying *.dat when wiping a folder, only files with that mask will get wiped leaving all other masks in-tact.

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  • My Resignation is in Order

    3 Comments

    As of 5 PM yesterday, I’m no longer apart of the Central IL Dot Net User Group based out of Bloomington / Normal, IL. Throughout the past year, I did my hardest to bring in the best & brightest speakers, and I succeeded. I wanted to personally thank those that came and spoke. As far as what I’ll be doing next…well, I’ll probably join the other .NET User Group in town and see if that group is any better (which I’m sure it will be). If that doesn’t pan out, I’ll probably start a third group in town.

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  • Heartland Developers Conference

    2 Comments

    Like several others have mentioned, I’ll be taking off later today heading to Iowa for the Heartland Developers Conference. I, however, won’t be presenting but enjoying those that are. If you’re attending, make sure you look for me. I’ll be the geek carrying the laptop bag, hmm…thats not descriptive enough…I’ll be the geek carrying the laptop bag and wearing a Microsoft .NET T-Shirt, hmm….nope, still not enough…I’ll be the geek carrying the laptop bag, wearing a Microsoft .NET T-Shirt, and …. well heck, here’s a picture of me…that will be easier.

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  • Took the Plunge: Vault 3.0

    2 Comments

    So I decided to bite the bullet this afternoon and purchase 2 gold support licenses from SourceGear to obtain Vault 3.0. The upgrade went really, really smooth (I still have doubts that its properly working, but it looks and acts like v2.0.6 (close)), surprisingly. I always fret major updates to programs I use daily that could corrupt the integrity of my well being, code. I do have to say, it seems to be a loooot faster, and I loooove the new add files dialog.

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  • Unleash It Survey

    No Comments

    I’ve recently sent out a new beta to my beta group requiring them to fill out a survey. However, that group is limited, and I wanted to get a more broad input on Unleash It. So, please, if you use Unleash It, take a few moments to fill out the following survey using the “Contact” link to the left. Also, if you would like to become a user in my beta group, please indicate this as well!

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  • Running a Beta Test

    No Comments

    I found this article (via Larkware News) on how to run a beta test. Very insightful, and I’ll definately take some pointers based on the results. I’ve also been taking part in another beta test for a piece of software that follows some of the same pointers that I was going to implement myself. All-in-all, its a good read if you ever need to do a beta test.

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  • Unleash It 2.3.1 Memory Leak

    No Comments

    This is just an FYI for users of Unleash It 2.3.1: There was a memory leak found in the latest version that only affects users who test their FTP settings.

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  • Updated Utility: Unleash It 2.3.1

    No Comments

    It’s time for a service release that fixes issues with using the Multiple Profile deployment settings. It was brought to my attention that many things were broken with this, and so I took it on to do a service release, one that I don’t normally do, to just get these bugs hammered out so people can continue to use them. Also in this release is an updated version of VisualStyles which will hopefully solve various error messages received when configuring a profile. However, since these are few and far between, please report any problems you’re continuing to have with these. So, here’s the changelog:

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  • Fire in Family

    No Comments

    Well, not my family, but my work family. A co-worker’s house caught on fire yesterday morning severly damaging it. Luckily they were out getting family pictures, and only the dogs were there, who were rescued. You can read more at our local newspaper. My company will be starting to take up a collection here to help out. They’re currently staying at the husband’s parents house, but unfortunately, they have very little of anything left. Please keep them in your thoughts.

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  • BlogJet 1.2 BETA Released

    2 Comments

    Ohh the day has come, hip hip horay! hip hip horay! The folks over at BlogJet have finally released version 1.2 BETA of the ever so popular blogging application, BlogJet. I’ve been waiting for this release for quite some time, and I’m currently using it to post this entry.

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  • Microsoft is using MY Controls

    4 Comments

    I was working with one of our engineers getting our company information completed after we just passed an ISV competency test through Microsoft, and while I was filling out the page, I noticed there's a Calendar control on it. So I clicked it, and hey - it looks like mine. Examining the source of the page reveals that it IS mine. Woah, talk about cool...Microsoft is using MY calendar popup control and MY numeric textbox. That gave me a high for the day, and its only 10AM.

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  • Find in Firefox

    8 Comments

    Everytime I need to find something in a wepage, I hit Ctrl-F. Most applications have a dialog that opens up and allows you to search for the word, phrase etc. However, Firefox took an old feature and made it awesome. See what I mean by opening up Firefox and clicking Ctrl-F ... don't see anything? Well, look towards the bottom of the browser. A new toolbar opens up allowing you type your search phrase. The really awesome part is that as soon as you start typing, it starts finding all instances and brings your browser to the first instance. Cool man cool.

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  • Framework Oddity

    1 Comment

    Can someone explain to me why the choice was taken to have SqlDbType under System.Data instead of System.Data.SqlClient like OleDbType is under System.Data.OleDb, or vice versa? Anyone ever notice this oddity?

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  • Updated Utility: Unleash It 2.3 - Now with Plugins!

    No Comments

    Exactly 1 month from the last release, Unleash It 2.3 is now officially released with the gold stamp of approval. This release has some more major improvements in the application, however the biggest announcement for this release is the introduction of plugin support. Now, you have a way of writing managed code to do custom processes before, during, and after a deployment. With this release, I've also built and supplied the source code for 4 plugins:

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  • Those that Pass On...

    No Comments

    Well, before you start crying, I'm not referring to a family member, though those who knew my grandmothers computer would say that it was. The old Compaq was 8 years old, and in computer years, thats about 80. It lived a fullfilling life for my grandmother, being that it was an old Pentium I with less RAM than what my smallest memory card for my digital camera holds.

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  • Dilbert on Random Number Generation

    1 Comment

    I'm catching up on my Dilbert Desktop calendar and today's is going to be a keeper. Unfortunately, I can't scan it onto my computer (I think it may be copyright violation as well), but the strip is just great:

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  • What does Rory Eat?

    No Comments

    Aside from Rory's occasional run to Starbucks, I wonder what he pounds down that makes his posts so darn funny. If you've not been reading his blog today, he's let a slew crazy ass blog posts about SellsCon 5 (or if you're really picky, Applied XML Developers Conference (I just like the other title better (assuming that Chris doesn't try and con anyone about XML (but who would do that?)))). I especially love the "Space Hamster" picture...

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  • Google Desktop - Just Uninstalled

    2 Comments

    While the Google Desktop application is quite a feat by Google, I just think (like many others) that there are too many security risks and flaws in the current version that just render it useless.

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  • Awesome Code of the Week

    5 Comments

    So, "Awesome Code of the Week"? Yeah, I think you'll agree after this blog post. Let's just say if there was an award for this, I'd take the cake - AND the cake pan.

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  • MaxiVista and Dual Monitor Life

    2 Comments

    So about a month ago, my NVidia graphics card went out on me and I set out to purchase a new graphics card. Since I don't do much computer gaming (Sims 2 being the really only game), I figured I wanted a graphics card that had a TV tuner on it as well as dual-monitor support.

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  • Updated Utility: Unleash It 2.2

    2 Comments

    Unleash It has been updated once again, this time being a huge update. Lots of things have been added, changed, or fixed since 2.1.1.1, all which are contained in the changelog being listed below. However, the most notable change is that now Xceed's FTP Library is now being used instead of a custom library. What does this mean? Well, you should no longer have issues with FTP like some have had before.

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  • Reading those Pesky Visual Studio Project Files

    No Comments

    Way back when I implemented VS.NET project files as a source for Unleash It, a few users submitted bugs that stated they were receiving error messages when loading their VS.NET project file in Unleash It. I looked into it, and noted that their problems related to non-encoded properly characters in the project file.

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  • Function for Creating Passwords

    7 Comments

    One of the things most of us have to do at one point or another, is generate a random password. I once thought this was a daunting task, however found some code at some point or another that gave me great headway into creating a good password generator.

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  • JavaHMO 2.0 Beta 1 - Released!

    No Comments

    I've been waiting for this day to come for quite awhile. The alternative to the TiVo desktop software, JavaHMO, has finally been upgraded in a major way launching with a 2.0 beta release. Some of the new features include:

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  • Heading to Nebraska

    4 Comments

    I'll be heading to Nebraska this afternoon for a few days on a business trip. So, I will probably have limited contact with the outside world. I'll be back on Thursday, so I'll attempt to get caught up at that point.

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  • Unleash It - Beta Testers Wanted

    No Comments

    Well, after a disaster of a release last week, I've fixed the problem of using VS.NET project files as your source and Directory as your destination. I think that it's come to the point where I need a set of good beta testers. Unleash It has grown to the point where this is needed now, as the last 2 releases have shown it.

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  • Updated Utility: Unleash It 2.1.1

    3 Comments

    I've released a new version of Unleash It that fixes multiple problems that people were having. Most notably, exclusion of folders when a VS.NET project was the source was not possible. After re-working the code, this is now possible along with being able to view the files / folders to be deployed dialogs.

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  • Attending HDC '04

    No Comments

    I just signed up to attend HDC '04 located in Des Moines, IA this coming December. Its going to be a long 4-5 hour trip, but I think it'll all work out since I'll be able to network with all you other geeks out there. If you're heading out too, make sure you attend the party Thursday night...maybe we could meet up and chat!

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  • TiVo Beats ReplayTV

    No Comments

    In the most bizarre article, engineers of the Good Housekeeping Institute tested both TiVo and ReplayTV. What did they find? Well, they found both work great, but the engineers (who do this for a living, I might add) had to call ReplayTV twice for technical support.

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  • Updated Skin, Again

    2 Comments

    I took some more time this afternoon and updated my skin some more. Just did some color changes and a bit of attempted layout change. Let me know what you think...is orange my color?

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  • Coining a New Term

    No Comments

    I'm currently sitting in a SQL Server 2005 technical overview webcast, and I just coined a new term.

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  • Get your Bloggers List Back! (on weblogs.asp.net / blogs.msdn.com)

    3 Comments

    I just noticed that the main pages have been updated with links to listings of bloggers. For instance, weblogs.asp.net has 3 links, "Microsoft Bloggers", "Non-Microsoft Bloggers", and "All Bloggers" whereas blogs.msdn.com has a link called "Blog Lists". What these are, are actually the non-truncated listing of blogs on each community site. This (I assume) is to replace the HUUUGE listing of bloggers down the side of the main feed site. It even comes with a nice listing of the descriptions too :)

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  • New Blog Skin

    No Comments

    I decided it was time to apply a new blog skin, as David pointed out, "Lighty" just doesn't render correctly in Firefox. I think it would be cool if more skins would appear for weblogs.asp.net, or we can upload our own, yeah that would be cool.

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  • Firefox 1.0PR, Half the Way There!

    1 Comment

    No, I'm not talking about their browser only being half the way there, I'm talking about their goal of 1 million downloads in 10 days. I can't believe that in only a mere 2 days, over 500,000 estimated downloads have of Firefox 1.0PR have taken place. At this rate, I think they'll reach the 1 million mark by day 5.

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  • Competing in Google's Top Coder Contest

    3 Comments

    So I just finished competing in the qualification round for Google's Top Coder contest, and well, damn there are some quick coders out there. You basically had 1 hour to code solutions for 2 problems, 1 being worth 400 points and the other worth being 1000 points. Points are based on how fast you submit your code, but are later tested against system tests and code reviews in which they can remove points from you.

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  • Firefox 1.0PR Released

    3 Comments

    Firefox 1.0PR has been released, amongst other Mozilla based browser updates. I've personally tried to start using Firefox more, but I seem to always revert back to IE. I however, have spent about 30 min customizing Firefox to my browsing habits, so maybe that will help me in my conversion.

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  • Featured in asp.netPRO Newsletter

    2 Comments

    I ran across this writeup through my site statistics and noticed a very nice article on several ASP.NET control developers, one of which being me. I'm not exactly sure when or where this was released, but based on the URL, I'm guessing it was released September of 2004. I have to say that this was by far a shock for me, and I'm quite pleased. Not that I'm bragging or anything, but I did get most of the rave in the article. Andy's and Peter's were just side notes, it seemed.

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  • New Release: Unleash It 2.1

    6 Comments

    Unleash It 2.1 has reached another milestone with many fixes and few additions. There isn't a ton of functionality change, however you should notice a few differences:

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  • Finding "Unleash" on the Internet

    1 Comment

    So since I announced the rebranding of WebDeploy to Unleash It, I added a keyword search feed for "unleash it" through NewsGator. I've concluded that there are a lot of blogs out there that use "unleash" quite a bit concerning John Kerry and his campaign. And, after last nights presentation by Dick Cheney, he now appears a multitude of times. Now, I don't really care much for politics, but its quite funny to see "unleash" "unleash" "unleash" come out of so many peoples blogs on politics.

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  • Website Transition

    No Comments

    I just moved my site from my current hoster over to WebHost4Life and my DNS changes look like they're starting to propogate. So, if you notice any quirkiness in the next few days, that is why. Also, its quite possible any forum posts that were entered around the switchover time will be *lost* (actually, they won't be brought over).

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  • Context Menu -> Sub Menu Problem

    No Comments

    So I ran into a bit of a speedbump this afternoon while working on Unleash It. I was trying to add menu items to a sub menu of a context menu for the Notify Icon (boy is that a mouthful to say (and also to write)). Well, it seems that there is a bit of a known bug that isn't broadly stated when creating sub-menu items dynamically...and that is that once you've created them, and try to recreate them, they never appear.

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  • Configuration Error - Solved

    1 Comment

    For the last few days, I've been having the problem of "Configuration Error - Access is denied" in one of my web applications that I've been building. Well, today was the breaking point. After restarting my computer roughly 10 times in 45 minutes, I decided to google it. Alas, I found this KB article that explains why its happening and how to solve it.

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  • Get OS Name and Version

    No Comments

    Awhile ago, I had come across an article describing on how to get the current operating system version and name through .NET. While this article was great for Windows XP and prior OSes, it didn't really pan out too much for Windows 2003 Server and Longhorn. So after a bit of digging to determine the version numbers (thanks to Adam for getting me the current Longhorn version #) I was able to successfully map the correct versions/names. Here's my code:

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  • No More Stored Procs!

    No Comments

    This method is way better than using stored procedures, oh yeah. You can change them on the fly, and not even have to acess the database. Now, how to do inserts/updates/deletes...

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  • Bothered by the Olympics?

    1 Comment

    Exactly how bothered are you by the Olympics already? Well, there obviously is some people who just don't want to see anything about the Olympics.

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  • WebDeploy Rebranded!

    4 Comments

    The naming contest that has entertained me for the last week has finally come to an end. Over 50 name suggestions came through the pipeline, some duplicates, some hilarious, and some just great. However, one name stood out amongst the rest that was just perfect. After having some internal discussions with Jeff, Ryan, and Adam, we all pretty much came to the same conclusion, this was the name.

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  • Madden 2005 - Awesome!

    No Comments

    I picked up Madden 2005 for the Xbox this afternoon after work. I must say, the gameplay is superb, and playing on Xbox live against other people in Madden its just plain, well, awesome. It's almost as if I'm playing against one of my friends, but I don't actually see them. Its a bit more challenging playing against a human than the computer, but definately more fun. Make sure that if you have Xbox Live to look me up whenever I'm on few and far between.

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  • Naming Contest - 2.5 days left

    No Comments

    Just as a reminder, the WebDeploy Re-Naming contest has just under 3 days remaining. I've gotten a lot of great submissions, but more is needed. Remember, the contest ends at 11:59 PM CST on August 1315, 2004. The winner will receive a FREE 1 developer license for my custom controls, along with their fame in the "About" dialog.

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  • Reporting Services :: Not Running on Port 80

    2 Comments

    So I found another weird quirck with Reporting Services tonight, that is a must share in case anyone else runs across it. My server setup at home doesn't run IIS on the default port 80, but rather on port 8181. This is for security reasons since its publicly open via my Cable modem service (but behind my firewall/router).

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  • Reporting Services :: Page Breaks

    No Comments

    I've been off at a client site today, which is why I've been a bit quite. Anyway, I've been working with SQL Reporting Services today, and I was wondering how in the world I could create page breaks between 4 different charts. Much to my amazement, if you just drop a "Rectangle" on the page layout, go to its properties, and check "Insert after Rectangle", you'll get a pagebreak. Easy as pie, a pie chart that is!

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  • Updated Utility: WebDeploy 1.2.3

    9 Comments

    My constant barrages of updates for WebDeploy has left me releasing yet another version, 1.2.3. Like its predecessor, it is mainly a bug fix version, in the hopes that I'll have a rock solid tool to base my 2.0 distribution off of. This update was aimed at stability of the product, and as such you'll see that reflected in the changelog following this soon.

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  • I'm Thinking McAfee has...

    4 Comments

    ...crappy online support. Case in point, I updated my and my girlfriends machines to XP SP2, and afterwhich our not so legal McAfee 7 crashes constantly. Okay, okay, yes I know its wrong so I was actually going to go purchase McAfee VirusScan 8. I go to their site, see it and go, hmm, I wonder if McAfee 8 will work with XP SP2...I better check with customer service before plopping 60 bucks down for it.

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  • Firefox 0.9.3 Released

    1 Comment

    For anyone using Firefox, make sure you grab 0.9.3 here. There isn't that much changes, but its always good to have the latest & greatest.

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  • Upgrading Forums

    1 Comment

    Update: I've successfully migrated to Community Server :: Forums 2.0. However, roles were not brought over successfully, so if you were apart of my beta testers, please let me know. I've also just sent out a mass email to everyone that had signed up (great interface for that, I must say), alerting you of the upgrade and beta testers issues.

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  • It's Mini "Me" Time!

    No Comments

    I just found this totally cool feature in BlogJet that I think everyone will be like "woah". BTW, the reference "Me" refers to BlogJet, I don't actually have a mini-me like Dr. Evil running around (although how cool would that be).

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  • Shooting for the stars

    No Comments

    So following up on my constant barrage of non-technical posts, I think this marks #3 for the day. I guess I'm starting to make an impact at Weblogs @ ASP.NET, or I've just been here way too darn long. Anyway, I've finally made it within the top 40 posters (I'm #39 as of post #5 this afternoon). Thats pretty impressive considering the blogroll is pretty lengthy.

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  • Setting a "Scoble" Record

    2 Comments

    I remember many moons ago people started bashing Scoble (or maybe it was himself) for posting too much in 1 day. I remember something along the lines of him being limited (by himself) to about 6 posts a day.

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  • Naming Contest - You can Win!

    1 Comment

    With WebDeploy 1.2.2 rolling around the corner, its time that I take a step back and say that its been one hell of a ride. However, with 1.2.2, and previous versions, its become blatantly obvious that the name "WebDeploy" just doesn't justify the tools' versatility. I've also found out (well, not recently) that Wise actually has a product called WebDeploy. Obviously, I wouldn't want to cause a stir with them and get sued over the name.

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  • ASP.NET Server Controls Presentation

    1 Comment

    Yesterday, I stated that I had to prepare a presentation for my .NET User Group, and after 3.5 hours of quickly throwing together a presentation and demos, I was done. Yay! I luckily only had enough time to leave work (yes late), drive to the Microsoft office, setup my laptop, and then go! Call that close? I would.

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  • Meeting Update for Tonight - Now I'm Speaking

    1 Comment

    Unfortunately our speaker's plane was cancelled early this morning which barred him from making the flight from LA to Bloomington, IL. This unfortunately put me in a situation in which I wish I had more time, preparing a presentation on ASP.NET Server Controls for the Central IL Dot Net User Group meeting this evening.

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  • Movie Reccomendation: The Village

    1 Comment

    I just returned from one of the best movies I've seen this year, "The Village" by M. Night Shyamalan. If you go to movies.com and check out the average score, it got a 1.17 out of 5. I think I need to say that the reviewers didn't actually understand the movie, and the 43% "go and see it on the big screen" general audience (poll) did. It's got several twists that give it the type of movie for anyone who liked "The Game" or "Sixth Sense". Definately a see it now movie...just bring a pair clean underwear.

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  • Updated Utility: WebDeploy

    11 Comments

    I've updated WebDeploy this morning to fix several outstanding bugs that have come up since 1.2. This 1.2.1 version includes nothing new, but fixes the following:

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  • Fun Words to Type

    8 Comments

    You know what word is fun to type? Queue. Mississippi could fall into this category as well. What are fun words you like to type? What are hard ones that you hate?

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  • A little time, a little patience...

    2 Comments

    ...is all it takes to create such a cool looking calendar. One of my happiest customers to date has modified my CalendarPopup javascript to his likings, and as such, has come up with one of the coolest looking Calendar's I've seen...talk about cool.

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  • Updated Utility: WebDeploy

    10 Comments

    WebDeploy has now reached version 1.2 with a major shift in how it handles matching files. Yes, the most important release note about 1.2 is that WebDeploy no longer uses file extensions, but rather relies on using File Masks to match and copy files. This new feature will hopefully be able to extend its functionality to even more users.

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  • BillG's Summer Home

    No Comments

    Saw something extremely cool while taking a tour of Miami today, that was just a "must blog." The picture below, is the backside of BillG's summer home in Miami, FL. I sure wish I could live there...living next to the guy who created Asprin and Viagra, that estate ($49 Million) is wonderful itself.

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  • I'm Older Now

    4 Comments

    Well, one quick note from my vacation...today's my 23rd birthday, and what better way of spending it than sitting on the beach in beautiful blue skies. Yes, I've actually done that this morning, and plan on doing it later. So, off to lunch then back to the beach!

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  • Leaving for Vacation

    No Comments

    For those of you keeping tabs on me...I'll be leaving for a week long vacation to Florida this evening. Yup, thats no programming, no work, no stress...just sitting on the beach getting burnt. So, don't expect me to respond if you have a pressing issue directed towards me. Catch on the flip side

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  • Async Call to WebService

    2 Comments

    So I ran into a bit of a problem this afternoon when calling WebServices asynchronously. It seems that if the process that calls the webservice ends right after you call the web service asynchrously, the process stops the async call and never makes that call.

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  • Find Files with Mask

    1 Comment

    Preface: For my new version of WebDeploy, I wanted to disband the idea of using extensions. Now, don't freak out...I have a good reason why. One of the most pressing requests has been

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  • Check out Before Find & Replace

    3 Comments

    So I had to make a change to a demo at work today, which is checked into VSS. This change basically was to modify the color of an element in CSS (which happens to be on every page, thats about 250 demo HTML pages).

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  • New Utility: TiVo Reader

    3 Comments

    Who want's to read your news on your TiVo? I'll wait while you think for a second...okay, thats enough. So, for those of you who have your hand raised right now, or those that don't read on...

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  • My Own WTF

    5 Comments

    Today I was visiting a client site doing some data mining on a third party product that they own. Ultimately we will be building reports off of their data using SQL Reporting Services. Well, as I was going through the tables, I kept seeing date fields that didn't look like a normal date field. Much to my dismay, this third party company (who uses SQL Server 2000 as a back end database) doesn't believe that the SQL DateTime field is appropriate for storing dates. No, instead they use a long integer data type and store the date as YYYYMMDD.

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  • What is Microsoft .NET?

    1 Comment

    Crazy, isn't it. I thought so too as I was reading an article about how a China based company will be building .NET-based enterprise and e-government packages for the Chinese market. Towards the end of the article, it had a link to an older article about Microsoft's .NET initiative.

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  • Important VPC Note

    No Comments

    Now that Beta 1 of Visual Studio .NET 2005 has been launched, and most developers **know its not that great** of an idea to install betas on their host machine (or main production machine), you should note 1 important thing about using VPC backup images.

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  • Review: MoodLogic

    3 Comments

    This weekend I ran across a utility called MoodLogic in the search for an application that would allow me to easily sort my music library as well as generate music mixes easily. With tag lines like "The Ultimate Music Experience" and "We make Mixes from the best music in the world...Yours" I have to truly agree.

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  • Becoming a Reviewer

    1 Comment

    My good friend Jeff read my latest review on VisualBlogger 2004, and made a comment stating I should do this on a more professional basis. Hmm, not a bad idea. I think I may start doing this, however I promise not all of my reviews will be bad...if I find something I like, I'll make a note of it.

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  • Get Credit Through PayPal

    No Comments

    PayPal announced today that you can now get "Buyer Credit" through them. It's basically a online credit card that goes through them that you can use to pay for items without having any money in your account. Setup and authorization takes about 30 seconds (so they say), and you get 90 days same as cash.

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  • Updated Utility: WebDeploy

    6 Comments

    WebDeploy has now reached a stable 1.1! When I started working on the next wave of things, I figured I'd only have 2 or 3 items, and it would go to 1.0.1, but as I got in and tested it more myself, I actually found a lot more bugs. This version doesn't have any breaking changes, again, but it does enhance the product to a mature level. I'm hoping this version is nearly bug free...but, what about the changelog? Ahh, here it is...

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  • Bug Tracking Provider Block

    3 Comments

    The past few days I decided that my bug tracking component that I created for WebDeploy needed an overhaul. It was built directly to interface with FogBUGZ, and didn't allow for support of any other method. Alas, I thought the provider model could come in extremely handy - and it did.

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  • XP SP2 RC2 Woes: Followup

    No Comments

    So after my computer mysteriously decided it wasn't going to connect to the internet anymore (got me on that one, tried everything short of throwing the computer out the window) I determined my computer was destined to its second rebuild in 1 month. Most commonly I do this every 6 months, but not  having internet can put a damper on that experience. So, even after my initial woes of SP2 not working with my DVD burner, and having it freeze on me, I decided, what the hey - I'll do a fresh install and try it out again.

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  • Standardized Installers

    No Comments

    As I typed the title, I just had a flash back of ACT, SAT, CAT (I think) tests that we all knew and loved back in our early days of schooling. Standardized Testing, oh how great it was, and made it nice for the schools to accurately judge our abilities.

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  • My Take on Not Getting VSTS

    7 Comments

    After reading Early Adopter's post about how VSTS will not even be available via MSDN Universal Subscribers, I thought to myself - why the heck is Microsoft even implementing VSTS. If its not going to be available to most developers out there (unless your a super corp with loads of $$, not my company - we get ours from MSDN Universal) then the darn thing 1) isn't going to be bought by individuals/developers, 2) isn't going to be an available tool that MS will probably market it as, 3) isn't going to be worth the time spending thousands of hours developing it.

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  • XP SP2 RC2 Woes

    6 Comments

    Man, I have absolutely NO LUCK with XP SP2 on my machines. I downloaded and installed it tonight on my home machine (which was recently rebuilt), and WHAMMO! it doesn't boot up anymore, and when it first did I lost my DVD Burner (attached via FireWire). Anyone else having this much trouble? I know I had about the same problems with XP SP2 RC1.

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  • Here's Your Sign...

    3 Comments

    My dad and I went to the Menards yesterday and were looking for many household items including new shower fixtures and new patio furniture. Well, if anyone knows Menards, you know its emmensly huge, and finding things isn't that easy unless you ask. So, as we asked one of the guys working there where patio furniture, I couldn't resist and just say “Here's your sign...”

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  • TiVo Dropping Prices and We're Getting More!

    No Comments

    So after DirectTV sold its shares of TiVo just the other day, TiVo announced that they'll be cutting prices of their DVR. According to this article, the monthly subscription will become $6.95, and TiVo will be giving price breaks to customers who already own a TiVo DVR. They also stated that the $99 Home Media Option will become part of the normal subscription! That rocks!

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  • Whidbey DataSources - Are they Cumbersome?

    1 Comment

    So I've had a bit of time to think about the new DataSources objects that are in ASP.NET 2.0, and I think I've come to the conclusion that ultimately they'll be more cumbersome than helpful. I state this in reference to how a lot of my applications are built, in which each page will have a TON of data access to do, all requiring their own business object to be called.

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  • GMail Invite Inquiries

    15 Comments

    Err - I have GMail, so what. I hardly use it because I don't need 3 dozen email addresses floating around. So, this means I *don't* get to see the "invite someone" link at all.

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  • Favorite Whidbey DataSource

    6 Comments

    What is your favorite Whidbey DataSource. Mine happens to be the ObjectDataSource because most of what I do revolves around writing business logic components that ultimately retrieves and processes the data for me. With the advent of Generics in .NET 2.0, this is seemingly getting easier to do because you can pass back a List<T> instead of just a plain old DataSet. What's yours and why? Do we need more DataSources out of the box?

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  • BlogJet 1.1.0.19 BETA Out

    2 Comments

    For those of you who keep track of and love using BlogJet, I'd like to state that there's a new Beta out, check out the red item! I've already submitted a few bugs, so help Dimitri out and give 19 BETA a try!

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  • New VS.NET CTP Out

    3 Comments

    According to briankel, there's a new "hot" build of VS.NET 2005 CTP available that didn't make the attendee bag drop. Any TechEd attendee can pick a copy up at the Visual Studio booths in the Pavilion area.

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  • Coder to Developer, Take 1

    No Comments

    So I finally received my copy of Coder To Developer by Mike Gunderloy. I started reading it today, and so far I've gotten through the first two chapters, and both of which have hit points that I constantly think about at work starting a new project. I've also walked away with a better understanding of how I should be prepping myself as well as a new project prior to actually writing some code.

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  • TiVo Reader - RSS Aggregator for TiVo

    3 Comments

    Okay, so my boss has gotten my brain churning on a new project, something that isn't work related (wahoo!). As you can see from the title of this post, I'm going to attempt to make a TiVo Reader, aka - a RSS Aggregator for TiVo.

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  • Free Home Media Edition Trial for TiVo

    3 Comments

    After church today I was pokin' around the main menu of my TiVo only to realize that I somehow had the Home Media Edition working for me. This was truly a suprise since I hadn't bought it, but after a bit of searching on the community forums, I found out that they're doing a 30-day free HMO edition trial for all Series 2 DVRs. Very sweet indeedy since I've been plugging my MP3's to my TiVo all night while setting up the new entertainment center. Still gonna be a hard purchase for $99, though.

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  • New Entertainment Center

    No Comments

    So me and my girlfriend spent the better half of the last few days searching for and putting together a new entertainment center for the living room. After about 6-7 hours of driving around to different stores in the Bloomington-Normal, IL area, we had finally found one that we liked from Walmart. However, much to our dismay, when I went to go purchase it late last night, Walmart had only the floor model left and the model had seemed to be discontinued.

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  • Article Released: Drag and Drop ListView

    No Comments

    The past few days I've been working on a Drag and Drop ListView that allows you to reorder list items within itself as well as transfer list items to other ListViews. I took some time tonight to write up an article and post it on Code Project. Luckily my manager allowed me to share this control with the world, and so I'm doing so.

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  • Office Moving

    1 Comment

    I just love it when I have to pick up my office space only to move, again. This is move number 5 in 3.5 years (I think?) for me at work. I guess they like to keep us on the ball, and again, this time its the same reason we've moved each time before.

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  • Outlook Remembers My Selection

    No Comments

    I just found a major plus about Outlook 2003 that I just love! I'm constantly setting flags and then digging into my "for follow up" search folder so I can easily access emails I need frequently. One email that I've been using a ton lately, is an email with several different login's and passwords for an application I'm working on. It turns out that jumping between folders within Outlook is extremely smart. Whenever you return to a folder, it re-selects which email/post you had selected last. Very handy when I don't have to dig through 30 emails to find the one I'm looking for.

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  • Large File Uploading in ASP.NET

    4 Comments

    I posted this to the ASP.NET forums back in November of 2002, and, too much of my dismay, still is an issue and people are still having problems figuring this out. I don't really know how many times I've helped people with this problem, and just recently I had to do the same. So, for my own personal reference (mainly), and to share the information, I decided to re-post it in my blog...

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  • EmptyDataGrid - Bug

    No Comments

    I was working with my EmptyDataGrid control on a project at work today, when I noticed a bug that could affect just about anyone using it. It turns out that if you have Paging turned on, and no data is returned, the EmptyTemplate gets appended to the DataGrid after the Pager item.

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  • New BlogJet - Not Free Anymore

    2 Comments

    Well as I BlogJet kept telling me that it was time to upgrade, I kept checking. Alas, today there is a new version. However, its not Beta anymore, and comes with a 30-day trial and a $19.95 registration fee. I guess I actually have to determine how much I like BlogJet over other free utilities now.

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  • Are we Greedy for Speed?

    3 Comments

    I'm sitting here watching over my download from MSDN for the Longhorn 7.2 SDK, and I constantly find myself suspending and resuming the download. But, why? Well, because I think downloading the 700MB file at 40 KB/sec is just too darn slow, so if I suspend and resume, it'll jump to above 100KB to 200KB for about 1 more minute.

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  • Looping for Dummies

    No Comments

    Ahh, so I just had a revisit of why For loops are not as good as While loops sometimes. Most commonly, I try to avoid using While loops, but after trying to convert this Master Detail example I realized that I needed a While loop instead of a For loop.

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  • Free NFR VB.NET 2003 Standard

    2 Comments

    Just saw this come across SlickDeals.net, but in short - you can get a free copy (not for resale) of Visual Basic .NET 2003 Standard by just viewing and rating 5 movies from VB @ the Movies. This would be very cool, if I didn't already have VS.NET 2003, but I may just check out the movies & get a free copy anyway.

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  • Got GMail?

    97 Comments

    GMAIL REQUESTERS: This is NOT a place for requesting GMail accounts. I IGNORE each one of these pleas for an account, and have ALREADY given away my 3 invites.

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  • TiVo

    8 Comments

    So last night I took the plunge and bought a TiVo, and much to my dismay - $600 later, I have a working TiVo. I guess I should have done my research to find out that you need to purchase their subscription ($12.95 per month, or $299 for the lifetime of the box) along with the actual hardware. Either way, the investment will pay off in the long run. I've already setup several "season passes" to record the shows I watch most of the time.

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  • MCSD Gods are against me

    3 Comments

    Err, well another phone call the Thursday before my week of training confirms that it too, was cancelled. Maybe its a sign saying you should be a developer and only a developer - I really don't know why I want the MCSD other than the fact that it would be good to have. I mean, its not like I'm going to get a pay raise, or have my role changed at work. Maybe I'll just stick it on the back burner for now and ride on my MCAD at work (which btw has gotten me no where, gotta love companies who do that).

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  • Registering for TechEd

    No Comments

    I think Microsoft is trying to get me to go to TechEd. This is the second time I've seen this (BTW - the image is not doctored):

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  • Erik Porter Saves Time

    3 Comments

    Sounds like a nice headline for a newspaper, huh. I thought so too. Anyway, to the point of this post, I was struggling with formatting a Guid to the "registry" way of viewing it, you know - 32 digits separated by hyphens with curly brackets around it.

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  • dBase Column Names

    No Comments

    So for the past 2 days I've banging my head against anything replacable - wall, keyboard, desk - you get the idea...but WHY? Well I was trying to use ODBC to insert rows into a dBase file, and it was giving me an error: "Invalid syntax in Insert Statement". Just for reference, here's an example of my insert:

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  • Job Shadowing is Fun

    No Comments

    I just had a student from a local high school job shadow me for about an hour or so. Overall, I think I left him with a very good impression on what development work is really like - well, in the sense that I spend some of my mornings doing bug fixes. I was able to show him how to diagnose & fix 2 different applications, 1 of which was alerted to me while we were working on the first application. However, I feel like I might have lost him at parts, because he hasn't done much programming himself, and has only really used BASIC (eek!) and HTML (ahhhh). I did ask him if he was lost at any point, and he said that for the most part he understood what I was doing. I guess thats a good thing, since he wants to become a game developer himself.

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  • What are Agg Views

    3 Comments

    So heres an interesting question - I've been using this weblog for quite some time now, and I just realized that I don't really know what "Agg Views" are. Now - before you go off your high horse, I know that they refer to RSS subscriptions in Aggregators (I'm not a moron), but my real question is, how is this stat collected? Is it based on RSS subscriptions to only my feed, or does that include the main feed subscribers as well? Anyone care to enlighten me?

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  • Apprentice - The Final Chapter

    1 Comment

    So Bill won, hmph. I wanted Kwame to win, but oh well. I'm in the middle of commercials, so I'm not sure what job Bill's going to take, but I would take the Golf Course job. I've lived in IL all my life, and it would be awesome to be out on the west coast.

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  • Figured out Scroll Wheel Problem with Mouse

    2 Comments

    I've been fighting this problem for quite some time now...whenever I was using IE or other applications where screens would refresh - and I would use my scroll wheel - the page would refresh, and sometimes go backwards and forwards. It was a very erratic and annoying behavior, but I finally figured out the culprit.

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  • TDD Research Findings

    6 Comments

    As a followup to my previous post on gathering research information, I wanted to share the findings with everyone in case they're put in the same situation I (and another co-worker) was. Thanks to the strong efforts of my co-worker, we were able to produce good measurements of TDD effects.

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  • Whidbey Updates from Scott Louvau

    No Comments

    Scott Louvau just recently posted a summary listing to the Whidbey newsgroups on what his team is working on. Some items were notable enough to get blogged, so here ya go in case you missed them:

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  • NUnitASP and Portals

    14 Comments

    As a followup to my blog post yesterday, my boss decided to throw a new one at me - give an example of how we can use NUnitASP for our projects as another form of TDD during the project life cycle. Well, I hadn't used NUnitASP before, so I jumped right in following their step-by-step tutorial for newbies. Sure, the tutorial wasn't a real-world example, it did give you an idea of how things work and what needs to be done.

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  • TDD Case Studies

    1 Comment

    I'm trying to shift my division at work into using TDD. Everyone seems to be in favor of it, however they're wanting some quantitative measurements via Case Studies or White Papers that will show over time or over a project that TDD decreases bugs and increases developer productivity. Does anyone know of any references that are available online that I can point them to?

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  • Retrieve AS/400 Data

    No Comments

    Wally just pointed out a new data provider for .NET that will allow developers to talk directly with AS/400 servers. I don't know how many times we've had to access data on AS/400 systems in a round-about way. No more will we need to use DTS in SQL Server to transfer data over on a nightly basis!

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  • Creating Classes in VS.NET

    8 Comments

    I'm sitting here at work building an application using TDD (which by itself is another post, and may be coming later), and every time I start a new class for another piece of the puzzle, I'm hating on how I have put the keyword "sealed" class in my declaration. Now, this isn't a major issue, but it can be if you plan on releasing an API for customers to build against. What's my issue? Well, I'm wondering if the "sealed" and "notinheritable" keywords should be applied by default in Whidbey.

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  • Server Uptime

    3 Comments

    I just realized today that my home server (which hosts Vault for me) has been up and running for quite some time. In fact, I believe it has been up and running as long as I've moved into my latest apartment (middle of February). Going under this assumption, I checked it out with a little tool called "uptime" from Microsoft, and I was right...its been up and running for 53 days and counting. Nice! I don't think I've ever had a server (even at work) be up this long without needing a reboot. And yes - it is updated with all the latest security updates.

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  • I hate the Media

    10 Comments

    Preface: This post is in no way trashing or slandering the men and women that serve our country. I have great respect for those men and women serving our country during these frivolous times. It is, however, slandering the media and their recent attempts of providing "the best news around."

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  • Are you Bored?

    15 Comments

    If anyone would ask me that question right now, I would respond with "I'm insanely bored."  But here I am, sitting at work, doing nothing. Not because I choose to do so, but because there's just nothing to do. Normally I have some bit of a programming project I can work on, like WebDeploy or Resizer, but recently I've come across no more items to add into these.  Well, I'm sure Resizer could be beefed up a bit, I just don't feel like it right now.

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  • NUnit TestRunner VS.NET Addin

    1 Comment

    My team at work is starting to look into using the Extreme Programming (XP) model, and as such I've started to do some reading up on it...and determined that its driven highly on TDD. This is something, unfortunately, I've had no experience with.  So - I downloaded NUnit and started working with it, and (like always) I was trying to find the most streamlined way of running my tests.

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  • 100% Managed Code

    3 Comments

    Through my normal routine of reading/responding to Microsoft newsgroups, a question came up about "100% Managed Code" phrases that companies use.  Specifically, the user was asking about a PDF component advertising it as such, and was just wondering if it was possible that they were using the Adobe APIs still.  Well, my response basically stated that since they're advertising it as "100% Managed Code", that it probably doesn't use Interop, and has built on the described api.

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  • How To Get Active Build from Project File

    1 Comment

    Well, I'm sitting here, struggling...struggling to find out how to get the active build configuration from a visual studio project file.  I've been studying the XML file, and there is absolutely no where that denotes what the active build config is.  I've also looked in the project.user file as well as the solution file, still...no luck. Would anyone like to share how you determine the active build configuration?

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  • VS.NET 2005 CTP & ASP.NET - Round 2

    No Comments

    I started digging into ASP.NET 2.0 some more today, playing with the new security controls & data binding. I've very impressed in how both of these work, with the ability to "open" things up by providing your own providers & databinding against custom business objects.

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  • Reporting Bugs in VS.NET 2005 CTP

    4 Comments

    As I'm starting to use VS.NET 2005 CTP more and more, I'm coming across some bugs...duh!  Well, I was hunting around the IDE to see if there was a "Submit a Bug" menu item, or a shortcut to a website...however I could not find anything.

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  • VS.NET 2005 & ASP.NET Projects

    5 Comments

    Well I started to get into using ASP.NET in VS.NET 2005 CTP this morning, and I definately have to say, its much further along than the windows forms.  So far I'm really impressed with it, and I would like to share some of my experiences & impressions:

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  • Scott Guthrie on Data with ASP.NET in VS.NET 2005

    1 Comment

    I just finished watching Scott Guthrie's episode on MSDN TV on "Data with ASP.NET in Visual Studio 2005", and I definately have to say that this is one of the better demonstrations of databinding I've seen for Whidbey.  During the first half of the demo, it was the "quick-n-dirty" way of creating data-bound pages, which in corporate environments, have no play for "reality".  This half went back to my earlier rants (which I can't find :( ) about why some properties are set the way they are...and that is to provide the quickest & dirtiest way of providing a working demo for non-technical users in the least amount of time.

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  • New Utility: Resizer

    1 Comment

    How often do you need to resize & compress images after taking a TON of pictures on your digital camera?  I've come across this issue many times, and resizing & compressing 50+ images at a time is always a pain.  Now, with Resizer (current version 0.2), this pain is illeviated by allowing you to load a directory of images, select which ones to resize, choose a size, then sit back...wait...and view the resized images.  The wizard based approach allows any non-technical user to resize images with ease.

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  • XP SP2 RC1 - Dead, after 3 days

    1 Comment

    Well, it took 3 days to officially kill my computer after installing Windows XP SP2 RC1.  Well, it didn't necessarily kill it, but it would freeze during the bootup.  That was only the peak of things this evening, however earlier this afternoon everything just shut down...no blue screen of death, nothing.

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  • BlogJet 1.0.0.16 BETA Released

    No Comments

    BlogJet 1.0.0.16 Beta Release Notes
    March 25, 2004

    FEATURES
    * Multiple categories support.
    * Quick test of FTP settings.
    * pMachine support.
    * "Delete Draft files after posting" option in settings.
    * New keyboard shortcuts:
       - Ctrl+Tab - switch between Normal/Code view.
       - Ctrl+M - indent
       - Ctrl+Alt+M - outdent
       - Ctrl+Shift+N - numbering
       - Ctrl+Shift+L - bullet style
       - Ctrl+Shift+I - insert image
       - Ctrl+Shift+V - attach voice
       - Alt+D - select text in Title bar
       - F5 - change account


    BUG FIXES
    * BlogJet This! did not work with long selection.
    * Draft files handling errors.
    * Login window when opening draft.
    * Installer issue on "Launch BlogJet".
    * Printing from code editor did not work.
    * Fixed various issues with b2-based blogs.
    * Ctrl+A, Ctrl+K in code editor did not work.
    * Fixed issue with blog URL for Blogware.
    * Code tab wouldn't appear with large fonts.
    * "Access violation at address 005489A4" fixed.
    * Some main window shortcuts worked in Login dialog.
    * Sometimes "t" didn't work in editor - fixed.

    Read more...

  • VS.NET 2005 CTP - First Impressions

    4 Comments

    Well, I just finished installing VS.NET 2005 CTP, and first I have to say - great job on the installation VS.NET Team!  This was the shortest install I've ever seen for VS.NET.  It didn't eve look like the thing was installing, I thought I was still installing Pre-Reqs...but no - its done.  Here were some of my first impressions/insights/notable items:

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  • Downloaded VS.NET 2005 CTP - Now What

    7 Comments

    Okay, so you just finished downloading the massive 2.67 GB .IMG file from MSDN, and go figure, you don't have a DVD burner available.  Time's crunching away until Apprentice starts, you haven't eaten, and all you want to do is get VS.NET 2005 CTP installed on that freshly installed VPC image.

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  • VS.NET 2005 available on MSDN

    5 Comments

    Yeah, thats right...its ready for you to download.  I'm downloading it at work and at home, both are going to take about 4 hours since its a 2.6GB file.  So, if your a MSDN subscriber, hop online and grab it!

    Read more...

  • Plugin Release: NewsGator NNTP Plugin v1.0.1

    No Comments

    Version 1.0.1 of the NewsGator NNTP Plugin to allow posting to newsgroups has been released.  This version fixes a major bug in the extension when receiving posts in NewsGator.  The previous versions would incorrectly associate bad data to the post, which resulted in incorrect threading of posts.  If you're running the NNTP Plugin, this update is a MUST!

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  • Securing Connection Strings

    5 Comments

    On Monday, my team at work got together and a pow-wow about security and how we can be more pro-active in developing applications.  As we went through sessions 2 & 3 from DevDays, we had a lengthly discussion on how we should proceed in securing the connection strings.  As most of you know, the OpenHack, and "best" method for securing connection strings, is by using DPAPI to encrypt it, and then store that encrypted string in a ACL'd registry key.

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  • Dogfooding my NNTP Plugin

    4 Comments

    Yesterday & Today I decided to start being more proactive in newsgroups, and as such I wanted to start dogfooding my NNTP NG Posting Plugin. I definately have to say that reading & responding to newsgroup postings is extremely easy.  Since I really never posted to newsgroups, I never really used it, I just developed it because there was a need in the community for it.  However, after using it several times, I'm definately stoked about it...and I would have to say that dogfooding is always a good idea on whatever application you're using. Maybe I'll find something I like or don't like about it that I can change.  Gotta love it.

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  • Installing XP SP2 RC1

    3 Comments

    Well I thought long and hard all day about installing XP SP2 RC1 on my laptop that I use for work and home.  I think I'm going to take the plunge since I've seen some pretty positive comments about RC1 being pretty stable.  So, lets just hope tomorrow I won't be rebuilding my laptop, and rather be working more securely & testing out SP2.  If I find anything quirky, I'll definately post it.  Wish me luck :)

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  • Snow?

    3 Comments

    EEEK! So I wake up this morning, go to my office, sit down in my chair... then I glance to my left - ITS WHITE OUT!  AHHH! Why does it have to snow in the middle March?  Well, I guess thats okay, because its supposed to be in the 60's by the end of the week.

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  • Thinking Toys

    5 Comments

    A coworker of mine was just complaining how the cleaning crew had thrown away his bent-up paperclip that he played with while thinking this last weekend.  This made me start to wonder what I play with when thinking about a problem while programming.  It turns out that I actually have 2 different items. 

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  • "The http redirect request failed."

    2 Comments

    Ever got this message attempting to open a solution in VS.NET 2003? Well, the full error message is "The web server reported the following error when attempting to open or create the project at the following URL: The http redirect request failed." A co-worker ran across this multiple times on Friday, and got entirely fed up with the problem that he'd have to refresh the entire project from VSS or delete the /bin directory each time. I guess the root cause of this is something with the page named: "get_aspx_ver.aspx". After a call to MS, he came back with a solution:


    protected void Application_BeginRequest(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
      string ver = Request.ServerVariables["URL"].ToString();

      if(ver.IndexOf("get_aspx_ver.aspx") >= 0)
        Response.End
    }


    After the previous code was added to the global.asax file, our solutions started opening without any problem.

    Read more...

  • Encode HTML - Have validateRequest = True

    2 Comments

    A co-worker and I had a situation today in which we wanted a particular TextBox control to allow HTML. The only problem, is that validateRequest must be done across the entire website, or for the particular page. Because of these restrictions, and the fact that the UserControl being built is placed in a dynamic page for a portal, we had to research ways to allow HTML posted entries but still keep validateRequest=True.

    After doing a little bit of research, I came across the idea of replacing the character representation of common HTML elements via Javascript then decoding that information with Server.HtmlDecode.

    The code is as follows:

    <%@ Page language="c#" Codebehind="WebForm1.aspx.cs" AutoEventWireup="false" Inherits="Test.WebForm1"
    validateRequest="true"%>
    <html>
       <body>
          <form runat="server">
             <script language="javascript">
                function encodeMyHtml(toEncode) {
                   return toEncode.replace(/&/gi, '&amp;').replace(/\"/gi, '&quot;').replace(/</gi, '&lt;').replace(/>/gi, '&gt;');

                }
             </script>

             <asp:TextBox Runat="server" ID="tbEncodedText" TextMode="MultiLine" Columns="100" Rows="10" >
             <asp:Button Runat="server" ID="btnSubmit" Text="Submit My HTML" OnClick="btnSubmit_Click"/>
             <hr>
             <asp:Literal Runat="server" ID="outputHTML" />
          </form>
       </body>
    </html>
    Then in my code-behind I have this in my Page_Load function to add the onclick attribute:
    private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
    {
       if(!Page.IsPostBack)
       {
          btnSubmit.Attributes.Add("onclick", "this.form." + tbEncodedText.ClientID + ".value = encodeMyHtml(this.form." + tbEncodedText.ClientID + ".value);");
       }

    }
    Then my button event, I have:
    private void btnSubmit_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
       outputHTML.Text = Server.HtmlDecode(tbEncodedText.Text);
       tbEncodedText.Text = Server.HtmlDecode(tbEncodedText.Text);
    }


    Overall, this provides a nice solution to not having your entire web application or page allow HTML elements.

    Read more...

  • Reading Eventlog Entries

    No Comments

    I was asked by my boss the other week, in my spare time at work, to create a script or windows service that would read all entries in the Application Event Log for that day. He pointed me to a link that used VBScript and some wacky dll named "winmgmnts". This seemed like a pain, and I was like...I know you can write to Event Logs with .NET, why couldn't you read them...sure enough, you can. The following code is used to read all entries for the current day of 3 defined logs. This, obviously, can be expanded further...which is what I intend to do.


    using System;
    using System.Diagnostics;

    public class MyClass
    {
      public static void Main()
      {
        int month = DateTime.Today.Month;
        int day = DateTime.Today.Day;
        int year = DateTime.Today.Year;

        string[] logNames = new string[] {"Application", "Security", "System"};

        foreach(string log in logNames)
        {
          EventLog appLog = new EventLog(log);

          foreach(EventLogEntry entry in appLog.Entries)
          {
            if(entry.TimeGenerated.Month == month && entry.TimeGenerated.Day == day && entry.TimeGenerated.Year == year)
            {
              Console.WriteLine("-----------------------------------------");
              Console.WriteLine(entry.EntryType.ToString());
              Console.WriteLine(entry.Message);
            }
          }
          Console.ReadLine();
        }
      }
    }

    Read more...

  • Tab Key Emulation

    No Comments

    Today, in the project I'm currently working on, I had to figure out a way of emulating the tab key by pressing the Enter key. I had found a very complicated script that required you to know the next id/name of the textbox or control that would need focus next...and since I'm creating 4+ textboxes in a datagrid, plus the ability of dynamic columns (all containing textboxes), this just wasn't going to be an easy task. As I set out, Google pointed me to a very helpful thread post. All you had to do is capture the enter key code and return the tab key code...simple, and works excellent!

    Read more...

  • Links 2004 Players?

    1 Comment

    Well I just purchased Links 2004 for the XBox yesterday, and the game is great.  I know about a month ago, there was a lot of hoopla about .NET community geeks, like myself, were getting together regularly to play a few rounds.  I unfortunately don't remember who you were, but if you want to add me to your friends list to catch me online playing sometime, my username is MHawley

    Read more...

  • .NET Framework 1.1 SP1

    1 Comment

    I had downloaded XP SP2 Beta last night to install on my Virtual PC so I could try out Whidbey.  Well, after I tried running the installer for Vault, I realized I didn't have the 1.1 framework installed, so the installation couldn't continue.  I figured, why go re-download, when I know I have the .NET framework on the SP2 Beta CD.  To my suprise, it installed the 1.1 framework, as well as SP1 for the 1.1 framework.  Does anyone have any info pointing to the changelog for this SP?  I'm intrigued to find out what was fixed.

    Read more...

  • DevDays - Chicago, Wrapup

    2 Comments

    DevDays was definately worth the wait.  I had a wonderful time learning about security in web applications as well as a brief intro into SmartClients. 

    Read more...

  • Off to DevDays

    No Comments

    Well its about 2:30, and I'm packing up my laptop (well not really because I'm using it to write this blog post) to head on out of Bloomington and travel up to Chicago for DevDays tomorrow.  Glad to see that a few of us have gotten in contact about a meetup to eat/drink afterwards tomorrow.  If your heading to DevDays, Chicago - stop on by Rock Bottom Brewery afterwards!  Jeff Key, Adam Kinney, Erik Porter and myself (along with my coworker) will be there having a good time.  I'll probably be able to check my email a few times tonight, so if you wanna meet up, drop me a line and I'll give you my cell phone number.

    Read more...

  • DevDays - Chicago

    No Comments

    I know Jeff and Adam threw out their plea (is it really a plea?) for attendees of the DevDays, Chicago event next Wednesday, but I really haven't heard back from either of them about a possible meetup before/during/after DevDays.  So, if you're going to DevDays, Chicago on March 10th, shoot me an email.  I'd like to meet anyone and everyone there!

    Read more...

  • Central Illinois Dot Net

    No Comments

    Last night hosted our first "real" meeting for the Central Illinois .NET User Group based out of Bloomington, IL.  I say "real", because every meeting prior to last night, were just brief get-to-know-you meetings, and discussions on what we'd like the group to do.

    Read more...

  • Why I Built WebDeploy

    7 Comments

    I've received multiple comments on why I developed WebDeploy rather than just using XCopy or VS.NET's inherint "Copy" tool.  I just wanted to take a brief moment to share why WebDeploy was built:

    Read more...

  • Plugin Release: NewsGator NNTP Plugin v1.0

    No Comments

    Version 1.0 of the NewsGator NNTP Plugin to allow posting to newsgroups has been released. This version includes instant notification of updated versions, as well as refinement of the sending username and email per the RFC spec.  This version solves the 441 error, where you may receive a message saying your email address doesn't conform to internet standards.

    Read more...

  • System.IO Woes

    2 Comments

    I've been working on a Web Deployer windows application the last week or so, and everything was working great until I refactored some code the other night.  In a separate thread, I'm traversing through a directory (and subdirectories) getting the size of all the files needing to be copied.  Just after that, I start traversing through that same directory, attempting to copy the file to a destination. However, after refactoring code into 1 method for all the traversing, I've been unable to copy any of the files, and am getting a "The process cannot access the file ... because it is being used by another process."

    Read more...

  • MSDN Connections

    2 Comments

    As Frank stated, MSDN Connections (Australia) is up and running.  However, when I tried to register, it told me that I must change my country to Australia to get into it.  Well, since I don't live in Australia, I don't want to do that, so I guess for the masses, we'll have to wait until MSDN Connections is available for the US or other countries.

    Read more...

  • Debugging the Debugger?

    No Comments

    Tonight I ran across a small problem with the C# debugger, or rather the Command Window in VS.NET.  While stepping through my application (more to come for this) to determine where a slowness was occuring while reading the registry, I tried several different commands in the Command Window.  When doing so, I think I've found a bug in how it interprets commands.

    Read more...

  • Another VS.NET Irk

    2 Comments

    Heres another little thing that VS.NET does that irks me.  Whenever I'm copying and pasting HTML code in the code editor, VS.NET seems to think that if I don't have a ID or Name attribute, that it should add one.  I wish the IDE could be a bit smarter to think that if I didn't have it before, I wouldn't want one now.  Also...why does the IDE think that I want a Name attribute anyways.  How often do you use that attribute...NONE!  Well, at least for me...I know it has its purposes, but I'm just complaining because the IDE isn't that smart.

    Read more...

  • Good Uses for Empty Array Declarations

    2 Comments

    While working on my companies new intranet, I've decided to pull some of our existing pages that are "Classic" ASP based, into the .NET realm.  In doing so, I need to gain access to our staff information from a SQL Server Database.  Since no stored procedures were ever used, and I don't have the security level to create any, I needed to build some queries that will retrieve the data I wished.

    Read more...

  • Interesting Tidbit

    No Comments

    This afternoon I decided to bring my company's intranet into the .NET world.  The current setup has an XML Document with a XSLT tranformation to build the listing of hidden/visible hiearchy.  I wanted to make the move as easy as I could, so I remembered ASP.NET contained a XML Server Control that allowed you to display XML Data transformed by XSL/XSLT.  Very cool indeed, but this isn't what I'm really stoked about.

    Read more...

  • I love Master Pages

    2 Comments

    The past several days, I've been preparing my company's websites and connecting applications for our upcomming name change. I've never realized how much of a pain it is to change sites layout, colors, etc. until I had to modify a .NET application of ours we released a few months ago.  I had to manually touch, at least, 50 various .ASPX and .ASCX files to get the new look and feel to propogate throughout the entire application. Talk about a pain in the butt.

    Read more...

  • DataGrid's GridLines Property

    1 Comment

    <rant>
    I really wish that the default value for the GridLines property on the DataGrid (and possibly Repeater/DataList) was set to "None" and not "Both".  I mean, I can see the reason for having this if someone wanted to just plop some data on a webpage, and didn't care about formatting or defining their own columns.  But, for about 99% of the time, developers have to build the Columns manually, set styles, etc. etc. until it looks the way we want it.  I've never seen a DG in production that has GridLines, mainly because it just looks plain stupid with custom formatting.

    Read more...

  • ADO.NET Irks Me

    11 Comments

    There is one thing in ADO.NET that just irks me, and well its not by .NET design.  During a lot of our Business Logic methods in our projects at work, we have to call Insert, Update, and Select procedures from SQL Server.  Of course, the proper way of doing this is by wrapping your logic in a transactional support manner... no biggie, we've got this working, and I might add, it works SUPERBLY!  Well, that is, if you remember that each call to the database while in a transaction must use the same connection and transaction.

    Read more...

  • Reporting Services & Charting

    1 Comment

    <rant>
    I'd like to proclaim that I HATE the charting capabilities in SQL Reporting Services.  I spent about an hour trying to figure out how to do a basic scatter graph with a very small set of data.  Well, after trying about 50 gazillion ways, I cannot get the graph to work.  Just to make sure I wasn't crazy, and actually knew the data I had could be graphed...I copied the  data into an Excel spreadsheet.  After that I inserted a chart, and 2 minutes later I had a scatter graph the way I wanted it.

    Read more...

  • First Crack - Reporting Services

    2 Comments

    Well I finally started to take the first crack at Reporting Services at work.  I'm going to be using it to generate some custom reports that they want, however I've only heard things about Reporting Services and how cool it is.  Well, after downloading, spending 1/2 a day setting up a server, and starting to play around with some basic reports..I'd definately have to say its a pretty cool product.  It is going to make reporting so much easier.  If you haven't checked this product out, I would definately say download the trial version, you'll be very happy.  Also, I'd like to mention that the development team did a SUPERB job on the IDE with integrating it into VS.NET.  Very slick and easy to use.  Now, how do I do those hard reports...

    Read more...

  • Custom NSIS Macros

    2 Comments

    I was asked to provide my scripts that allow me to check for the .NET framework using NSIS.  I'll do one step better, I'll post my custom macros (downloadable of course) that will allow you to plug them right into your NSIS scripts and run required tasks.  Below is a brief introduction to each of the macros, this is so you'll know how to use them mainly:

    Read more...

  • Finally found a .NET User group by me!

    No Comments

    My search has finally ended!  I've been looking to either find a Central Illinois .NET User Group, or start one up myself for about a year.  Well, today..by slight chance..the new DevDays portal pointed me to a Central Illinois User Group located no more than 20 miles away from me.  Luckily they're having their 3rd meeting tonight from 6-8:30 PM, so I'm gonna head on out to check it out...free giveaways tonight as well!  So, if you're in the Central Illinois area, and are looking to go, let me know, maybe we could coordinate a meetup tonight.

    Read more...

  • NNTP Plugin Page Setup

    No Comments

    I've setup a page containing information relating to the NNTP Posting Plugin for NewsGator.  This page will give you more detailed information, a change log, and other stuff (not yet defined).  By using this page you can keep up-to-date on the NNTP Plugin.

    Read more...

  • Who Uses Windows 3.11?

    24 Comments

    I've been studying my server logs for usage and just general information this morning, and I have to say that I'm just stunned of the amount of outdated software that is still in use.  As you can tell from the subject, I noticed, in the month of January, that there were 46 visits by people using Windows 3.11.  Why in the world would anyone still be using this, let alone a developer.  What's even more suprising, is that it beat out Linux by 20 visits.

    Read more...

  • In Need of Infamous Papers?

    No Comments

    It seems that Mike Rowe has decided to put 1 copy of the “WIPO book and 25-page letter” he received from Microsoft during their talks and settlement up for sale on eBay.  Mike had to start weeding out the real from fake bids, that exceeded over $200,000 earlier today.  He started by knocking of those who have 0 feedback, then went to pre-approval bidding only to serious bidders.

    Read more...

  • Plugin Release: NewsGator NNTP Plugin v0.5

    No Comments

    Version 0.5 of the NewsGator NNTP Plugin to allow posting to newsgroups has been released.  This version includes proper cross-posting functionality to newsgroups, a major enhancement in server/newsgroup selection, enhancement in error descriptions now containing the server and newsgroup when sending an email to the developer, and lastly, the user will be restricted from posting empty posts to a server.  The first and last update were to start working towards GNKSA's seal of approval.

    Read more...

  • WebFA Down, Permanently

    No Comments

    Tonight I had to make the hard decision to shut my free online family album service down.  I decided that since it has had very little usage over the last few months, that I'm wasting money on hosting fees.  For those who have never been to http://www.webfa.com, this site - dubbed WebFA - was my senior multi-media project I created in Oct-Dec. of 2002.  It was a GREAT learning tool, as .NET 1.0 was in its infancy stages, and a GREAT way to show off my skills to my professor.  The site was fun, to both use and build...however pulling the plug was the right thing. 

    Read more...

  • Plugin Release: NewsGator NNTP Plugin v0.4

    9 Comments

    Version 0.4 of the NewsGator NNTP Plugin to allow posting to newsgroups has been released. This version includes even more tight integration with NewsGator, eliminating the need of ever configuring your authentication credentials in multiple places. An option has also been added to the configuration section, that will allow you to be prompted each time you post to a newsgroup, even if you're responding to a post. I have also added the ability to post to multiple newsgroups, and increased the error handling to be more descriptive and useful. Lastly, I've fixed a bug that displayed the headers as part of the body when viewed in Outlook Express.

    Download Now!

    Read more...

  • Step 1 - Place foot in mouth

    1 Comment

    Well, after my rant on how OE doesn't support the full RFC850 spec, I did some more testing, debugging, whatever you want to call it, and determined that there was a hidden new line character appended to the end of the Message-ID which was causing the headaches. So, I guess OE was doing things right, it was just that darn extra character throwing things off. So, now would be the time to grab my foot and stick it firmly within my mouth!

    Read more...

  • Outlook Express Not following RFC Spec

    1 Comment

    During my development of the NNTP plugin for NewsGator, I've come across a problem when viewing replied messages in Outlook Express. Per the RFC850 spec., if replying to a message in a newsgroup, you should add a new header named "References" that points to the Message-ID of the message being replied to. This header is then used to group messages within groups so its easier to keep track of threads.

    This is all fine and dandy, except for the fact that Outlook Express doesn't recognize the References header, or even want to use it. I realize that this header is optional, but for OE to ignore it completely and chunk the rest of the headers into the body of the message when displaying, is just crazy. Due to my assumptions that OE wasn't implementing the spec entirely, I decided to play around with it some more....and it turns out that when OE replies to messages, it never appends the "References" header. Furthermore, it seems that OE groups messages based on subject only. I've found this to be the case, as I've posted several new messages with the same header, and whatta ya know, they get grouped together.

    So, just to make sure that I wasn't crazy, I set out to find a few USENET readers. Well, all that I tested implemented the sepc properly, and grouped them based on the "References" header, and not on the subject. To me, this is a bug or an oversight by the team building Outlook Express...and I wouldn't mind if it got fixed (as well as many other people out there).

    Read more...

  • Plugin Release: NewsGator NNTP Plugin v0.3

    2 Comments

    Version 0.3 of the NewsGator NNTP Plugin to allow posting to newsgroups has been released. This version includes a tight integration with NewsGator subscriptions, however password prompting is still necessary for server authentication (if required). Due to the integration, the configuration screens for servers and their newsgroups have been removed. This version also tweaked the HTML cleanup to represent messages more accurately.

    This version also includes an extension to NewsGator, that appends required information to the post when processing feeds from newsgroups. This allows for a no prompt reply (unless needing to authenticate) to the newsgroup. A big thanks goes out to Greg for his help on the extension, as I'm not an avid Outlook programmer.

    Plans for the next version include no prompting for passwords to authenticated newsgroups and a 1.0 branding of the plugin.

    Download Now!

    Read more...

  • Its a Scary Day.

    4 Comments

    Why is it a scary day? Well, I just got an email with an attachment. So? Whats your point...well a few things:

    1. The email was from someone I didn't know, no biggie I get these all the time for support.
    2. No subject. Well, this isn't always a problem, since I know some users just don't know that the cursor starts at the subject line 99% of the time.
    3. The email said "test". Huh, now thats a bugger, I guess it worked?
    4. There was an attached file, a zipped one - wow someone sent me pictures?

    Well, if you haven't figured it out yet, I've finally seen something I've been dreading for the longest time, a zipped-up virus attached to an email. Why is this so important, though...it can pass through almost all server based virus scanners scanning emails as they come across. So, as I quickly alerted my employer (which then sent out a company wide email stating roughly the same thing), I wanted to alert the community as well. Be alarmed if you receive an email from someone you don't know that has a zipped attachment...especially if the attachment contains a .pif file.

    UPDATE: CNet is reporting this virus now, be warned! (story)

    Read more...

  • MikeRoweSoft Settled

    3 Comments

    Yup, thats right...its finally over. As the story describes, Mike Rowe settled for a certification course, subscription to MSDN, free trip to Developer Network Research Tech Fest, and an Xbox all for the domain name transfer to MS. MS was also kind enough to pay any expesnes incurred during this ordeal as well as helping him setup his new website - http://www.MikeRoweForums.com. Good to see that Mke won this battle, Rock on!

    Read more...

  • NNTP Plugin Close to New Release

    No Comments

    I've been working very closely with Greg at NewsGator to integrate the NNTP Plugin more closely with NewsGator over the last few days. This morning I was able to put the integration with NewsGator subscriptions and posting, eliminating the need to setup your servers manually. Although this is close to release, I'm waiting on some more help from Greg to help when needing to authenticate to the news server. My gut feeling is that once that code is in place, I will be releasing this as v1.0. So, stay tuned for more updates.

    Read more...

  • .Text Request

    17 Comments

    Something has been bugging me about .Text the last few months.  I finally felt it was time to express my thoughts, or rather a request for v.96.  What if we were able to track which blogs we made a comment on, or enable the same comment notification that a blog owner receives?  I don't know how many countless times I've had to actually try and remember whose blog I posted the comment to, and then, which entry.  It could be easily done (now when I say easy, I mean from an end users viewpoint) to have this, maybe an extra checkbox on the comments to say "Notify me when someone posts a comment".  It would work the same way as the ASP.NET forums.  How 'bout it?

    Read more...

  • Plugin Release: NewsGator NNTP Plugin v0.2

    No Comments

    Version 0.2 of the NewsGator NNTP Plugin to allow posting to newsgroups has been released.  This version includes major UI enhancements and allows for more flexibility.  This version also includes Authentication with your NNTP server, or basic Anonymous access.  New support for setting up multiple news servers and newsgroups included, with the ability to choose your server and newsgroup upon each post.  I also tweaked the HTML cleanup so it doesn't remove any line breaks when posting.  Download and update your version now!

    Read more...

  • NNTP Posting

    2 Comments

    I've been looking the last few days on how to use .NET to post messages to NNTP.  My intentions are to create a NNTP posting plugin for NewsGator.  My research today left me with a good tutorial and code (in C#) on how to communicate with a NNTP server...however, whenever I attempt to post to my NNTP server it errors with a "503 - Command Not Recognized" message.  I'm just wondering if anyone has successfully been able to post items to a NNTP server with .NET, as well as, does anyone have any other good resources?  I realize they're are a few 3rd party NNTP components out there (IP* Works and Active Up) but since this would be a plugin for NewsGator, I couldn't be able to utilize those.  Any help would be appreciated.

    Read more...

  • First Impressions: NewsGator Online Services

    2 Comments

    After my post yesterday, I decided I should give NewsGator Online Services a try.  When I checked out the online demo, I was thuroughly impressed with the different services they offer. I figured that it wasn't going to cost a thing since they had a 14-day free trial, so I signed up right away.  Once in, I noticed some sluggish performance, but I wrote that off as "first day jitters" and the popularity & use. 

    Read more...

  • MS Sueing for MikeRoweSoft.com

    6 Comments

    Microsoft has decided to sue a 17 year old Canadian boy over the domain name MikeRoweSoft.com (story).  The boy's name is actually Mike Rowe, and he registered the domain name to host is personal website.  Back in Nov., he received an email from MS telling him to hand over the domain.  He later received another email stating they'd pay him $10 for it.  He was appalled by this and responded back that he'd sell it for $10,000.  Well, that didn't settle well, and just recently he received a nice large book on why he'd be handing over the domain name or be sued.

    Read more...

  • v1.9 Beta 1 Released

    No Comments

    I finally got around to finishing up bugs & enhancements to my custom controls and released version 1.9 Beta to all of my Beta Testers.  I give a big THANK YOU to all of you who test my controls prior to a full release.  If you're interested in becoming a beta tester, just drop me a line. 

    Read more...

  • NewsGator 2.0 Is Out

    No Comments

    The day has come where I've been waiting for about a month...the release of NewsGator 2.0. As most of you know, this is a MS Outlook plugin that integrates seamlessly with Outlook...and I can say that v2.0 is even better than 1.3. The new "NewsPage" is a lot better and more streamlined...makes reading my feeds a ton easier.

    I haven't checked out a new feature, Online Services, but they've got a 14 day trial, so I make take the plunge and see if its worth the $5 or $6 a month. Here is the changelog from 1.3 and screenshots from 2.0.

    Read more...

  • NSIS is Cool!

    1 Comment

    I've successfully built my 2 installers (one for 1.0 and 1.1 frameworks), and let me tell ya, NSIS is a pretty good install script creator. With NSIS, I was finally able to do what I wanted to do:

    1. Give the user the option to not install to the GAC
    2. Give the user the ability to choose what optional components they want installed.

    All of this done without the headache of creating custom actions & trying to figure out how things work in the limited MSI Setup Packager within VS.NET. I definately suggest this free script creator as it is very, very nice, to all developers out there struggling with VS.NET's MSI Setup Installer.

    The only problem I came across, was how to install stuff to the GAC, but Martin Webrant gave me a good pointer. I also built in support for detecting the .NET framework & its versions. If you're using NSIS, or want to get started and need some pointers for installing .NET assemblies, I'd love to give ya some help and give you some of my functions.

    Read more...

  • New Install Package

    3 Comments

    I've decided to abandon VS.NET's MSI package and venture out and try to use NSIS. After a bit of researching, trying different things, and searching the archives for examples, I've finally got my first install script for my custom controls. I'm starting to like NSIS, and the executable it builds for installation runs, installs, and uninstalls so much faster than the MSI that is produced from the Setup Projects. I'm still learning how to do some stuff, but if you've had some experience with installing .NET assemblies & using NSIS, drop me a line, I should would appreciate some help.

    Read more...

  • Received APC UPS Today

    No Comments

    I decided to spend a little money to ensure that my controls source code is thuroughly safe on my home server. The other week I purchased a APC BR800 and it came in today. I tell ya what, this isn't a huge monster, but it does weigh a substantial amount. I hooked it up at work just to try it out, and with no problems at all, well except for getting the battery back in after you connect it, I had it up and running and connected to my laptop & monitor.

    Without a monitor, it could support my laptop for about 80-90 minutes, but as soon as you hook that monitor up, it drops big time...down to 39 minutes...I never knew a monitor could draw so much energy. Good thing I let my monitors go to sleep after 10-20 min...saving a ton on electricity.

    Anyways, I decided to give it a power outage to see what happens. Well, it started beeping and whala!, it kicked in and supplied power...nice. Now, I just hope things go just as smoothly when I hook it up to my server tonight. So, if you're looking for a good, semi inexpensive UPS system for you home, check out UniStorage as I got this one for $140 shipped, cheapest on the internet.

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  • New CodeLib Released

    5 Comments

    I did my monthly check on CodeLib to find out that my version (5.7) was highly outdated and 6.2 was just released on 1/12. Its a good thing too, because I went from 5.6 to 5.7 and there were a TON of bugs, so I'm happy to see that they were all fixed. Ohh, and user administration is now fully functional.

    What I would like to see for this product, and it may be too much work, would be a Server/Client just like Vault, so I could install a database on my remote server and have web service access without opening up SQL Server across my router. How about it?

    Read more...

  • New Control: EmptyDataGrid

    1 Comment

    With all the talk yesterday about what to do when a DataGrid receives no data, and how v2.0 of ASP.NET should handle this, I decided to sit down and see if I could implement this as a custom server control.

    Well after a few short hours, I've got a working EmptyDataGrid that inherits and extends the current DataGrid. It adds 2 new properties, EmptyDataTemplate and EmptyDataStyle. The behavior for displaying the datagrid is different depending on your data source, however. For example, if you use a DataSet/DataTable, you will see the columns at the top, and the EmptyDataTemplate as a row beneath that. However, if you use a DataReader as the data source, then you will only see the EmptyDataTemplate displayed.

    If you're extremely excited to see this in action, let me know and I can post a sample. However, this control will not be released until I release v1.9 of my control set. Though, if you're in dire need, I can create a custom assembly with only this control, just let me know.  A custom assembly has been put together, however you need to contact me to receive it.  Note that this is not an official release of the control.

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  • POP3 to Exchange Possible?

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    I've been given a task of researching if I can retrieve POP3 email and store it to Exchange.  Now, before you go giving me a ton of links to POP3 to Exchange products, read further.  I've already found a ton of these products, and the way we need this process to work, those products will not work.  I have, however, found a .NET component from DevMail .NET that will allow me to contact a POP3 server, download email, and save the emails as *.eml.

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  • Empty Datagrid Support

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    Paschal points out a good problem when using the Datagrid. I personally would like to see a new Template where the developer could decide if nothing is displayed or a message is displayed.  As I stated in my comments, I don't know how many times we've had to create 2 panels, 1 for showing the data, and 1 for displaying a message saying they'res no data.  How about it Microsoft?  Can this be done?

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  • Decent Task List Program

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    Over the past few weeks, I found it very difficult for me to keep track of all the bugs or enhancements that I wish to put in place for my next release.  So, I set out to find a (free) task list program that would suit my needs.  Well after a small Google search, I came across a Microsoft side project named TaskVision.  This server/client based program was fairly simple to setup and start using.  There are some weird quirks that I don't like, like not being able to remove projects or users as well as not having separate categories within projects.  Another thing that bugged me, was that after the installation of the client, you had to manually modify the App.config file to point to your personal server.  To me, this is a pain, and should have a configuration within the application to allow this.

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  • Left Lane Law Crazy?

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    For those of you who do not live in Illinois, this may be of no concern to you, but I do have a crazy assumption of why our Gov. pushed the “Left Lane Law” through, so please read on.  Those who don't know the law that was put into effect on January 1, 2004, it states that for any four or more lane highway, motor vehicles cannot drive in the left lane unless overtaking another vehicle.

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  • Wanna Sneak Peak?

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    So if you're reading this, you're obviously wanting a sneak peak... well its more of a press release (even though I'm not press) in a way.  Right... the sneak peek...so you're wondering, what does Matt have in store?  Well, how about a new control added to the eWorld.UI Control Set!  WHOA! Another one?  Yes, another one...its called the AccordionPanel, which is a subclass of my popular CollapsablePanel control.

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