Archives

Archives / 2004 / February
  • From The 'Wouldn't It Be Great' Files

    Woudln't it be great if Orkut and Plaxo teamed up, so my Orkut friends automagically showed up in my Outlook contacts? That would be frickin swell. Would save me a buttload of time updating my Outlook contacts from my Orkut profile.

  • Optional Parameters in SQL Stored Procedures

    Want to create a stored procedure that searches for specific, but optional, values? I had to do it today for a web project I'm working on (I hate not being able to talk about projects I'm working on) and Terry Denham, the SQL Guru without a blog, came to my rescue yet again. Because the WHERE clause has secluded OR statements buttressed by a "trueism" (Terry's term) of 1 = 1 (does anyone know of a case where one DOESN'T equal one?), the statement will always execute, even if you don't pass anything in. Pretty cool, huh? Thanks Terry! Saved my butt again.

  • PatchDayReview Massive Update

    Over the past few months, I let PatchDayReview.com get way too far behind. It took me nearly 7 hours to update, but the site is now current with all known security updates through this Tuesday. One change of note is that I am no longer allowing comments on bulletins themselves. If you want to comment on a specific patch, there is a link to that bulletin's forum on the PatchDayReview Forums. If you'd like to discuss patches, please do it there. At any rate, sorry to kill your aggregators, but most of you subscribe to Scoble, so you're used to it by now.

  • You Gotta Rip It Off Like A Band-Aid

    Mike Kolitz says that MS should take the 16-bit subsystems out of Longhorn. I agree completely. Chris Anderson had a different opinion at PDC about this, but I still don't agree with his position. Microsoft needs to not enable the crap of yesterday in the OS of tomorrow. Break stuff if you have to. Put VPC in Longhorn and disable it by default. I can understand leaving the 32-bit native stuff in there, but the 16-bit stuff too? Come on. Move forward, and don't look back.

  • Broadband Through Sewers

    I'm surprised this idea hasn't caught on sooner. Sewers are a natural place to run infrastructure. Sure, installing the cables would be kinda shitty (pun intended), but isn't that why a cabling installer's natural tendancy is to run cables through ventilation shafts? Infrastructure costs would plummet, and our streets wouldn't have to be dug up so much.

  • Site Broken Again...

    Out of common courtesy to everyone else, will people PLEASE check how their post renders on the home page directly after posting? Someone thought put a scrollable area in their title. Now. I'm a big fan of those, believe me, but the whole rest of the site is unreadable now.

  • .Text Tip: Non-Mapped Folders

    One of the things that I've wanted for a long time with .Text is the ability to have folders that are not mapped to the .Text blogging engine. Well, I had a great idea while I was in the shower this morning (all great ideas come while bathing, at least in my experience), and it proved to work famously. Create your directory, create a new web.config file, and add the following information only:

  • Hosted Microsoft Exchange

    I'm looking at moving to a Hosted Exchange solution for managing Interscape's collaboration needs... I'd love to hear some experiences with some good Exchange 2003 hosting providers. I'll move forward with my research based in part on your recommendations. If any of you have a few minutes, I'd like to hear your thoughts. Thanks!

  • Man Takes Title of World's Geekiest Dad

    Shane Bauer pointed me to this article. This is very very sad. Parents have no frickin clue sometimes. I mean, how messed up is this kid gonna be? I'd have my name changed as soon as I could. I sure hope his job brings in enough that he can afford his kid's therapy. He'll need LOTS of it.