Archives
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Why I got out of the hardware biz
So I decided to upgrade my RAM today. Little did I know it was going to be an ALL DAY EVENT.
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MSBlaster.B Released by 18 Year Old
You know, this really pisses me off. It gives young adults like me a really bad name. The guy is an idiot, and now he could face 10 years in prison for being an idiot. I would say “serves him right”, but look at the damage he helped inflict. He helped cost Microsoft millions of dollars. He forced MS to ask hundreds of employees to give up their free time to help out customers with the fix. This cost MS not only in having to employ extra staff, but also in lost development time. He helped cause thousands of people significant headaches.
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Phil Weber Is Awesome. Also Titled: I get what I want in Yukon
In this post, I talked about what I want to see in Yukon.
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READ THE DIRECTIONS
As I add this killer stick of RAM, and my computer turns on but won't POST. I'm like, WTF??!?. So I dig through my closet for the manual on my motherboard.
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I love Outlook 2003
Wanna know why? Because the new Junk Mail Filtering system is amazing. Honestly, it catches about 99% of the junk mail I get. I don't mind if it misses a few, but so far, it has not sent good mail to the junk folder EVEN ONCE. It great. I'm to the point where I'm almost comfortable with it just deleting the junk mail automatically. We'll see how it's track record goes after it goes RTM.
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I learned a really neat trick this week
shutdown /r /f /m \\computername
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Weblogger Dinner Anyone?
Hey, I'm gonna be in Anaheim / Los Angeles this weekend. Anyone want to get together for some kind of weblogger event? Maybe a beach party. That would be awesome. Drop me a line atrobert@interscapeusa.com. I'll be in the area Saturday afternoon to Monday evening. It would be really cool to meet some of you guys. -
Dialog Base Class
I just spent the last 20 minutes cleaning up Jesse Ezell's Dialog code. It's pretty cool. The only problem was, the way he posted it on his blog, it was extremely difficult to cut and paste into VS.NET. Well, and I'm not a C# guy, so it was hard to understand until I could see it properly indented and so forth. Fortunately for you, I turned it into a class file that I'm going to post on my personal site tomorrow. Oh yeah, and I ported it to VB too, so all you VB guys can understand how it works as well.
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IExpress.exe
Typing IEXPRESS.EXE in the command box launches IExpress 2.0 wizard to let you create an installation package.
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Here's an Idea..
Hey Yukon / Whidbey Teams:
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Did you know...
I was talking to a developer friend of mine yesterday. This guy works as a programmer at a console games development company. They do work for the Xbox and PS2. Did you know that the Xbox runs on .NET? Supposedly the Xbox SDK requires you to have Visual Studio .NET 2002 and develop in Managed C++. I had no idea. I wonder how tough it would be for developers to write their own games for the Xbox. The only problem is, the code has to be digitally signed. Unfortunately for us, Verisign only accepts an arm or a leg for payments.
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Trillian Goodness
Trillian 2.0 has a spell checker that works just like Office's. It even autocorrects (which can be a pain once in a while). No more typing “teh” or any of the other dyslexic crap that my figers do. WOO HOO!!!
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Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM)
Ever wanted to write AD-enabled apps and test them on Windows XP?
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Funny stuff
Hilarious. I'm reading “Writing Secure Code, Second Edition” right now, and I love it. I can't believe I've been developing for this long and didn't know this stuff. For sure, we'll be doing a security code review on GenX.NET 3.1, when we add suppoer for binary outputs. Right now it's all just string stuff. Great book that everyone should read.
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SQL Server Autoupdates
Randy Holloway talks about SQL Server updating. Recently, I had the pleasure of talking to one of the Program Managers for SQL Server “Yukon” at Microsoft (unfortunately I don't remember his name). Since I had his ear for a few minutes, I queried him (pun intended) on all sorts of information regarding the next release. (I can talk about this next part since it's related to public knowledge anyways). I asked him some questions about having the CLR inside the database, and was pleased overall with his responses. A few questions later, I asked him about patching and updates, and he said basically what this article said. This naturally led me to my next question:
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My PDC BOF Topic
I took the plunge today and decided to propose a BOF topic for PDC. In case you didn't know, BOF stands for Birds Of a Feather, and according to INETA, is “an hour-long interactive discussion on a topic proposed in advance by a PDC 2003 attendee.” Since I'm going to be there, I'd love to lead a discussion others of you out there. So I've proposed the following topic:
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Microsoft Solution Framework Study Guides
I've decided to take the plunge and get my MCSD, It's an expensive process, but I'm hoping that maybe I can gain something from it, and help others in the process. To that end, I've put together a series of very simple study guides on my personal website to help you guys out. I will be more than likely expanding this area in the near future, and probably making it look prettier. For right now I just wanted to get them out of my Pocket PC.
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My blogs are back up!
Ugh, what a day man. Actually, the past 2 days have been pretty messed up. I still can't figure out how the hell my SQL server shut down and rebooted to Linux. It's not a virus, because it's only attached to my web server box, and directly to the monitoring station. The closest thing I can think of is: when the box was set up, they did a quick format instead of a normal one, and the last OS on the disk was Linux. So when the hard drive failed, the system automatically rebooted, and went to the first partition available on the boot sector. That sounds real farfetched, but it's the best guess I can offer.
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Almost forgot...
I can confirm Robert Hurlburt's statement that Generics will be fully supported in VB.NET (meaning that you can create and consume them). It's actually a change that was made at the CLR level, and all .NET languages will be able to support it. Some languages will not semantically be able to support it, but the feature is baked into the Framework. This is not a secret, it just hasn't been talked about for some reason.
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Wanted to take a second
And thank a bunch of people for an absolutely wonderful time last week. It was wonderful to finally get a vacation, and what better place to relax than in beautiful Seattle. It was so much better than Phoenix... I may have to move there someday. First off, thanks to the indefatigable Robert Scoble, for letting me crash at his place. It was definitely a pleasure spending a week with a legend. Second, I'd like to thank Dare Obsanjo, Joshua Allen, Jim Blizzard (man I want his job), Thanks to Mike Sax and Sam Gentile for some very lively conversations at the weblogger dinner. Oh yeah, and Robert Wlodarczyk is a hell of a guy. Had a lot of fun talking to him after security kicked us out of the mall.
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DCOM Vulnerability Scanning Tool for Administrators
In case you didn't know about it, this slick little tool lets you scan networks for the vulnerability.
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Arizona .NET User's Group
Tomorrow night, Phoenix hosts the one, the only, ROB HOWARD. That's right, the Valley of the Sun (affectionately known as Hell, or currently The City Without Gas) is hosting the main man of the Microsoft Web.NET team. So walk, ride your bike, take the bus, carpool, or get in that gas-guzzling monstrosity of an SUV (who cares if gas is $2.50 a gallon here!) and get your butt down to SRP tonight at 5:15pm. You're in for a real treat. If you're there, be sure to find me and say “Hi!”. I'll be the guy in the blue “Microsoft.NET” hat and an white ASP.NET t-shirt. Be sure to check out www.azdnug.com for more information. There are only 40 seats left open, so be sure to get there early.
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Updating Tool for Sysadmins
I wanted to take a second and point out a tool that I install on every network that I build, so that I can centralize my patch management. It's called Microsoft Software Update Services, and it runs on Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003. It allows me to synch up local patch copies with MS' public server, and lets me redirect all machines on my network to pull Automatic Updates from my local updates server, instead of MS' public server. This way they can only automatically install updates that I have tested and approved.
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Ports for MSBlaster and variants
MSBlaster runs over port 135. If you are running Windows 2000, find out how to activate TCP/IP filtering.
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Where is YOUR finger pointing?
Following Sam Gentile's rant last week about career responsibility, and G. Andrew's curious and (sorry) misunderstood comment about filtering, I'm going to make a bold statement that will probably piss a lot of people off:
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Swept under the "Second Wave"
I'm back in Phoenix now, and I'll be posting the rest of my blog entries from the week later this afternoon. At this point, I'm trying to get some stuff done that I missed yesterday, due to an internet attack that you may not have heard about yet.
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Done for the night
As you gathered, I finally got Scoble's wireless working, but not before purchasing a new Linksys Wireless-B router. I should be a reseller for Linksys or something... I sell enough of their stuff for them. I'm about finished for the day, but I should have some really juicy information that I am allowed to post tomorrow regarding the next version of VB.NET. Should be juicy.
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Hecklers
[originally written at 5:45pm]
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Control developers unite!
[originally written at 3:05pm]
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Waiting for the start of the meeting...
[originally written 9:15am]
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A thing of beauty
[originally written at 7:45am]
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Another young guy developing software :)
I “met” Shane Bauer today. Chatted for a bit over IM. He's 19, and a really nice guy. Moderator of the ASP.NET Forums too. Working on some slick software too. It will be interesting to see how it progresses. Welcome to the fold, Shane!
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The week ahead
This upcoming week is shaping up to be one the most memorable in my young life. I'm taking a trip to geek mecca: Microsoft HQ. I get to meet Scott Guthrie, Rob Howard, Don Box, et al. And if that weren't enough, Robert Scoble was kind enough to let me stay at his place. I tell you what, that guy is truly awesome. He didn't even give it a second thought.
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Basic .NET: Framework Compatibility Issues
My fifth article for Builder.com is now online. This is the first of a three-part series on .NET Compatibility. These articles stemmed from my “No-Brainer Compatibility” rant, and will hopefully provide a crystal clear explanation as to how to tackle these issues in an intelligent manner. Coming up in two weeks is part two: Developing Components: Assembly Identification. You won't want to miss it.
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Calendar Server Control
Yesterday I posted about needing a ASP.NET Calendar Server Control. Well, I found the greatest control ever written. Seriously. You can check it out here. I don't really think I need to say anything else. I can thing of like a half-million uses for this thing.
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Killer Server Control Idea
Has anyone created an ASP.NET Calendar server control? Not just a datepicker... I mean like an appointment viewer like Outlook. That would be SOOOO money...
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Workspaces Tips and Tricks
Jason Alexander posted about a source control bindings issue. Good news. You don't have to rebuild the project. I'm going to give you a walkthrough on how to rebind, and I'll give you a few other nifty tips as well.
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See you at PDC!
A little Weblog flair for PDC 2003 Attendees. Feel free to repurpose on your Weblog if you are coming to the PDC.
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Note about the new Trillian
Since Trillian Pro 2.0 now supports separate buddylists per each sign-on, anyone from the .NET realm that I am in IM contact with should only use robert@interscapeusa.com (the one that says (Robert McLaws, Interscape Technologies) in your buddy list. The one that says (Robert McLaws, Personal) should be used for friends and family, and you can remove it from your list without my Trillian prompting you to re-add it. Sorry for the inconvenience, but this should make it much easier to start separating home life from work life :)
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I LOVE TRILLIAN!!!!
Trillian Pro 2.0 Beta 1 has support for RSS!!!! WOO HOO!!! Who needs an aggregator now?
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New Aggregated Page
Most of you probably use aggregators to read the Weblogs @ ASP.NET, but I still go to the homepage to get my news. Well, ScottW has posted a fabulous update, with some serious CSS upgrades. Nice job Scott!
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Battle of the Blog
News.com has a feature on RSS v. Atom. Quoted: [”However, just looking around, I observe that there are many people and organizations who seem unable to maintain a good working relationship with Dave.” - Tim Bray]
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MSDN Mag
MSDN Magazine has an RSS feed. Subscribed!
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*very confused*
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Camera Phone Stops Crime
MSNBC.com has a report of a kid that used a camera-phone to catch pictures of a would-be assailant. These pictures led to his arrest.