Chris McKenzie's Blog

I just got my new Dell Axim 30 PDA today.  I've already installed MS Money for Pocket PC on it, and synchronized my calender and tasks and such.  So far so good.  My goal with this thing is to replace my wallet. Here's what I'm looking for in a PDA case:

• Compact: must be able to fit in my pocket.
• Leather: as it will be riding in my pocket, it must be comfortable
• Must have an internal see-through sleeve for my Driver's License
• Must have at least 4 Credit card slots, and room for a small amount of cash and/or business cards.
• Must be able to hold the Dell Axim 30 securely.

I've found cases on the net that are close to this, but no cigar.  Anybody have any suggestions?

Edgar Sanchez argues against using E&C to make changes to your code on the grounds that it "tries to save you from thinking and understanding." 

I would guess that 95% of the errors I run into while running the debugger are simple syntax errors, or minor logic errors.  I understand them the moment I run into them--they don't require much thought. How many of us have forgotten to initialize a variable, or mis-keyed the SQL Syntax, or the connection string?  How often have you forgotten to check for a 0-valued denomiator before dividing? E&C will allow me to make the minor corrections as necessary, leaving me free to focus my attention on more serious problems and issues. In other words, it saves me time.

The lack of E&C in VB .NET was the first thing I noticed and lamented when I migrated two years ago. Welcome back E&C, you're presence has been missed.

I recently ran into an issue where a former developer that worked with me had disabled a bunch of foreign keys and forgotten to re-enable them.  I should say that I don't generally approve of disabling foreign keys at all, although there may be some context I haven't thought of that would justify it.  I did some digging to find a complete list of foreign keys that were disabled, and came up with this:

DECLARE @Result TABLE
(
    ndx int IDENTITY NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
    TableName varchar(50),
    ForeignKeyName varchar(100),
    Disabled bit
)

INSERT INTO @Result (TableName, ForeignKeyName, Disabled)
SELECT
    obj.name,
    FK.name,
    ObjectProperty(object_id(FK.name), 'CnstIsDisabled') Disabled
FROM sysobjects FK
INNER JOIN sysforeignkeys FKS ON FK.id = FKS.constid
INNER JOIN sysobjects obj ON obj.id = FKS.fKeyID
WHERE ObjectProperty(object_id(FK.name), 'CnstIsDisabled') =1

SELECT *
FROM @RESULT
GO

I then added a field to my temp table and built some SQL to correct any unkeyed data, and to drop and recreate the keys.

This may be me revealing my ignorance, but if they can create mp3 players with 20gb of storage for $199, why can't they make a PDA with 20gb of storage for $500?  Is there a technological reason this hasn't been done?

I have 3 gmail invites.  Comment here that you are interested, and I'll send one to you.  First come first served.

UPDATE: make that 2.

UPDATE: just one left!

UPDATE: GONE!!!!!

Wow those went fast.