Archives

Archives / 2003 / June
  • Scripting News Offline

    Roy talks about Dave Winer taking ScriptingNews.com down. While I agree with Roy that it is kinda sad, I think it is a good thing. With Dave's health the way it is, maybe he needs so time to re-evaluate his situation. Like me, he's really good at rubbing people the wrong way. He's been really successful at this RSS stuff, but because of that I don't think he's had a whole lot of time to enjoy it. Maybe some good will come of it. It takes a lot to walk away, and it takes a big man to know when is the right time to do so.

  • The smooth one attacks

    What kind of kiss are you?

    surprise
    You have a surprise kiss! Your partner is always
    pleasantly pleased to have you jump outta no
    where to dote them with a fun peck on the cheek
    or more passionate embrace. super markets and
    work places are your favorite places to attack
    your loved one with all your love =p

    What kind of kiss are you?
    brought to you by Quizilla

  • Nothing more to say...

    Halley Suitt talks about the motivations for blogging. I agree 100%. This is why I will be breaking out my blogging efforts onto other spaces, powered of course by ScottW's powerful weblogging software. My corporate weblog is already online, although not officially launched yet. My personal blog will be up soon, and I'll aggregate all three together into a page very similar to the Weblogs @ ASP.NET home page. Will anyone care? Probably not. Does that bother me? Umm.. no. Is my story more interesting than these guys? Hell no. But I'm gonna do it anyways. You should to the same. I've seen your code.... got the guts to show us your soul?

  • BlogPulse

    I checked out BlogPulse today, courtesy of ScottW, and to my surprise, I found out that one of my links shows up for Person #26 - Dave Winer. Specifically this post when I not so subtly called him a "self important pretentious asshole". I'm sure a few of you could probably say that about me too. I was also linked 2x on the same day ScottW was notable. Anyways, I thought that was pretty cool. I love blogging.

  • Windows Mobile 2003 Disappointment

    HP will not have a ROM update with the new OS for my PPC until October. :-( Man I hate waiting for new stuff. At least they'll have an upgrade for my device.... before it didn't even show the 3800 series being available.

  • Exxxxcelent!

    Ok, I kinda threw this test cause everyone says I'm like him, and I knew what answers would get me here, , but here it is anyways:

  • In other news

    A child who shot his parents pled guilty and faces 20 years in prison. His defense was going to be, get this, that he thought he was in the alternate reality of "The Matrix". Sounds like a load of crap to me. Like a jury would have believed that. Now, I'm not going to advocate anyone killing their parents by any means, although who hasn't wanted to at one time or another? But if you're gonna do it, come up with something kind of plausible like,  "my Dad was trying to rape me" or, "they made me sleep in the mud with the dog" or "they made me live in a closet under the stairs". You're already in deep doodoo, you're gonna go and make it worse by claiming you're too stupid to tell the difference between a movie and real life? Gimme a break. Funny, I don't remember Neo shooting his dad in the movie....

  • Like a proud parent

    I listened as a long-time PHP/MySQL programmer finally recanted and jumped on the .NET bandwagon. BOUT FRICKIN TIME lol. I've been round and round with this guy for over a year now, and he's always been all "PHP doesn't suck ya jerk". Well tonight he came online just to tell me that, while PHP still doesn't suck, .NET is and will always be better. Then he went back to bed. I was so proud I could cry. :)

  • Been out the last few days

    Ugh. I'm in the middle of a move, and my internet connection is off. I feel naked. I'm going thru withdrawl.... can't get my daily dose of Scoble....

  • GotDotNet Workspaces

    From Andy Oakley (one really cool guy) GDN Workspaces Preview site is live! I CANNOT wait for VS.NET IDE Integration. I tried it today but it didn't work. I think they have it tied to www.gotdotnet.com, which obviously won't work until the site is live. OMG I'm so excited... GREAT JOB GUYS!

  • Reasons for coding

    Matt Reynolds says the language debate is over. Really?!!? I didn't know we started that nonsense back up again.

    I've been blogging a lot about "meaning of life" type stuff as it relates to coding (which IMO is sometimes more interesting than seeing someone's code). In the likeness of one of my heroes, Joe Scarborough, here's Rob's Real Deal:

    King Solomon said "Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is not satisfied with his income." If you are coding a particular language just because you get paid more, maybe VBers aren't the ones making the"*BIG MISTAKE*". Why do I code? Because I genuinely love to solve problems, and it excites me to write code that works in new an imaginative ways. Success lies not in wealth, power, possessions, or achievement. It is a journey not a destination. You're focus should be using whatever language makes you the most productive, helps you grow in your potential as a programmer and as a person, and helps you benefit others. When those three things come, everything else will follow.
    I'm not tryin to be preachy, and if I am I apologize. Just passing along some wisdom that was recently passed to me and did me a lot of good.

  • SURVEY: Documentation

    OK Guys, I'm working on the final draft of the docs for GenX.NET 3.0, and I'm curious. I've been adding XML comments to my sealed and private classes and functions, in an effort to keep my code spit-polished and consistent. Now, NDOC lets you specify whether or not private entities are included in the comment files. My question then is twofold:
    A) Do you think that having MSDN style docs for your public object model and your complete object model is a good idea

    AND

    B) Would you find a separate set of complete object model docs helpful if you purchased the source code for a component?

    Please give me your thoughts.

  • OT: How do you define success?

    Today has been a fabulous day. Too fabulous for words. I can't wait to blog about it on my peronal site today, after i get it set up.

  • I cannot even begin to properly convey my disgust

    Ok, I know I'm a control developer, so I may be a little biased here. I also know that I can be a bit harsh, and I've been really working on toning down my criticism and being more positive. After screwing around with .netSHIP for about 10 hours now, I can officially say that it is the most atrocious piece of code ever written. And I've seen some whoppers in my day, too. I was nto impressed at all with the IBuySPy Store Admin architecture, but this one takes the cake. I would start picking apart it's problems, but I don't know where to begin.

    Alright, I guess I'll start with the Object Model. Or should I say, lack thereof. Granted, my object models are not amazing pieces of work (although I am extremely happy with GenX.NET 3.0), but OH MY GOSH. Ummm.... ever heard of NDOC? I'm going to assume not since the samples have no documentation whatsoever. I think they must think that my name is Swammi the Mind Reader, because the SURE don't use intellisense to make things any easier. Now, I'm trying to "divine" how to get the data out of the component. so in the end, my employer spent $300 on this component, $125 for the product itself, and $175 for the time to implement.

    Aren't solutions supposed to SOLVE problems?

  • Versioning Redux

    Frans says:

    That's all fine what MS thinks I should do but what I think MS should do is make their IDE able to work with older CLR's so people can choose a new IDE while writing a control for 1.0 or 1.1. MS didn't even bother creating a config file for a library so a library can be made runnable on 1.0 with redirects.
    I would have responded in my comments, but I wanted everyone to know this:

    The guy I talked to at MS said that redirect policies in the web.config file apply to all subsequently loaded assemblies, including components. This means that your component should run if the user add binding redirects in the web.config. You can also use publisher policy files and register the same binding redirects in teh GAC, but that is much more of a pain.

  • Can today get any better?

    WOO HOO! Man I love getting stuff done. I'm more productive than I've been in months. Oh yeah, and I'm moving to a condo on Monday... ON A GOLF COURSE!!! Nothing like hitting the back 9 to start your day...

  • My condolences...

    to Kirk. I know what it's like to have to lose a friend. My favorite dog was ravaged by Lymphoma and had to be put to sleep. Thhe tumors had pretty much taken over her back, and nearly closed off the passage to her stomach. We didn't find out about it until it was too late.

  • YAY!!!

    Thanks to the FABULOUS help of Daniel Bright, I am now blogging from w.Bloggar. THANK GOD. I was getting really tired of losing killer posts due to an accidental tap of the Backspace key. How annoying. IT HAS SPELL CHECK TOO!! Oh man, this makes me so much happier than I was earlier. Wanna use w.Bloggar too? See Dan's settings here.

  • *puzzled*

    Why did attempting to open one of the .NET Posters cause Acrobat to need a file from the Frontpage 2003 CD, Acrobat to force the client to stay open while viewing a PDF in the browser, and then crash IE when it closed?

  • WinZip 9.0

    A new version of WinZip is out. Now I know, the first thing you're gonna say is "Windows XP has compressed files support". Ever tried deleting files out of an archive? How about deleting non-empty folders? Had a field day with that the other night. Nope I think I'll stick to WinZip.

  • Anything out there better than .netSHIP?

    You know, I really dislike this component. I dislike everything about it. For one thing, the owner has been extremely rude to customers on the ASP.NET Forums. I dislike the support. I dislike the fact that they don't have a free trial. I dislike the fact that they don't have an enterprise license, and the component takes almost 9 hours of work out of my paycheck to purchase. I dislike that the data comes back as a collection and not a DataSet. Most of all, I dislike it because I am relegated to using it because I can't find any other component that supports as many shippers. Have you guys seen anything better, or am I going to have to either force myself to live with my discontentment or write my own?

  • Just a note, not a war.

    Scoble says that VB.NET is not dead, and it's actually picking up some steam inside MS. *whew*. To anyone that said that my career was dead if I didn't switch to C#: "I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries." Hey Scott, name that movie.

  • FINALLY

    Well, it only took two months, but a project actually got finished over here at my job. The interns at DeVry did a great job putting it all together. Check out what they did at www.quickiebusinesscards.com. Wish them luck, cause it's their graduation project, and they're giving the presentation tonight.

  • Corporate Error Reporting & TaskVision

    Having just completed the 128MB memory dump to Microsoft about everything I was doing when Shaun b0rked up my computer, I discovered the new CER tool is in the works. I use it to help manage problems with my hosting servers. Really nice tool. Hopefully it will be done faster than the bug fixes for TaskVision. I've been wanting to install the tool for weeks, but I guess it had a kind of funny problem.

  • #$%^&*(#$%

    Well, one of my co-workers accomplished what I couldn't do in 7 months of testing Windows .NET Server (now Windows Server 2003). I've been a beta tester since Beta 2, and I've never gotten a BSOD. Until today. His monitor went dead (it was attached to a Mac, go figure), so he wanted to borrow the 2nd flat panel display that's attached to my laptop. I went to disable the 2nd desktop in the Display Settings right as he pulled the VGA cable, and WHAMO! BSOD. I haven't even seen one of those in XP yet. I mean, XP has crased before, but this was the good ole, blue screen. Shaun is now my hero.

  • w.Bloggar issues

    I saw that Don Browning and Travis Higley are trying to get w.Bloggar to work on the Weblogs @ ASP.NET. Had a discussion with ScottW about this the other day, and he said that "w" will not submit to Windows Server 2003-hosted sites (which is what www.asp.net runs on). Not exactly sure why at the moment. Scott said he was working on a WinForms app of some kind to handle client-side blogging.... don't know where he's at with it tho.

  • WTF???

    <sarcasm> Ok, who screwed up the WebLogs? ;-) Well, it was either Me, Marcie, or Paschal. Thought this was kind of amusing. It's not at any one person's expense. I just think it's funny to see aseemingly blank post from me hogging up the page. Hey, can I make it do this more often? </sarcasm>



  • Another great night of coding

    Well, I'm finally finished with GenX.NET 3.0. At least, the code is finished. I have tons of documentation to write, and then one more White Chocolate Mocha Frappuccino-powered code review tomorrow afternoon. For those of you who don't know what this is, I print every single line of code out on paper, and seclude myself in public (the seclusion is from the computer not from people) and edit the code line by line. I pretend that I've never seen it before, and check the documentation for consistency and correctness. I also pour over every line and make sure my naming conventions are all predictable, I've properly disposed of all of my objects, and that everything is cordoned off into #Regions effectively. IMHO, this is a MUST for any coding project. Not only does this usually fuel some last minute refactoring (like my Sunday afternoon session did) but I can't begin to tell you how many "compiled but still might cause a problem" bugs I've caught.

  • PowerUpdate: System Unhosed

    It occurrs to me that I may have been a tad harsh in my assessment of the VSNET2003 VB Commenter PowerToy. I also might have been hypocritical, having blasted Frans for taking such a negative stance against VS.NET 2003 a couple weeks ago. An e-mail I got from someone at MS has prompted me to elaborate on my earlier post, and offer some constructive criticism instead of just being a cold heartless bastard.

  • And suddenly, everything clicks

    It's 2:37AM MST. I'm sitting here, continuing my quest to refactor GenX.NET. Just when I thought my code couldn't get any cleaner,  it got cleaner. Not only did I remove my dependence on specific ADO.NET Providers, which eliminated nearly 1000 lines of redundant code. Not only did I move my output system to an "Output Provider" architecture. Not only was I already TOTALLY STOKED about this code...

  • *a light switch flips*... off

    Now that I've reduced my codebase for GenX.NET 3.0, I just figured out how to reduce the size of the output file by 50%-90% in some cases. Here's the part where I'm at a loss...

  • WOO HOO!

    I LOVE MICROSOFT. This is not news. Here's why, tho.