I thought that webhost4life had poor service.  That was only because I had yet to experience Server Intellect's.  I am more than a little surprised that the likes of Eric Smith and Duncan Mackenzie would have such positive things to say about them.  Here's a peek at my experience:

1. Call Friday evening to create a help desk ticket.
2. Wait for the promised phone call to my urgent issue.
3. Get an email Monday morning telling me to do it myself, though their control panel doesn't do everything I need done.
4. Argue for several days via email until the fateful day that my patience is exceeded and I write this:

Your service is pathetic.  Why has this problem, now several days old, still not been fixed?  What incentive are you offering us to continue hosting our sites with SI?  I expect an apology from your manager and financial remuneration for a week of wasted time.  I also expect this issue to be fixed in the next 24 hours.  You aren't the only hosting company in town and you are far, far from the best.  I am furious that you have wasted a week of my time.

An anomaly?  Not a chance.

1. Last night I emailed about an urgent issue.
2. Tonight I called.
3. Tonight I called again.
4. Tonight I am still waiting for someone from the "24 Hour Technical Support" to support me.  I'm not holding my breath.

My advice for anyone looking for service is to use OrcsWeb.  OrcsWeb took my calls on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day and called me back to notify me that the issue had been fixed.  They even stayed on the phone to until I was satisfied that all was well and sent a follow-up email wishing me luck on testing and offering additional help if needed.  That's service.

Whenever I setup a new XP Pro box, I always forget to change this setting. I also quite often forget how to change this setting. This is a reminder - to change the max connections that IIS on XP Pro can accept do the following:

If you have a default install of IIS, then execute the following from the command line:

cscript c:\inetpub\adminscripts\adsutil.vbs set w3svc/MaxConnections 40

Running iisreset afterward will restart IIS with the new setting.

A bug was opened against the pricing model for Visual Studio 2005 on the Product Feedback Center.  Here's the link if you'd like to vote on its merits.

I'm less than pleased with the announced pricing plans for MSDN subscriptions that Microsoft announced this week.  For about five years, I've been an MSDN Universal Subscriber.  I used to describe it as "everything that Microsoft does that could benefit a developer...basically everything but Money and the games."  Now, things have become different.

The Universal subscription level goes away (as does Enterprise).  In their place is MSDN Premium.  However, Premium itself does not include a Visual Studio license.  (Well, it kind of does...)  You must select Team Edition for Architects with MSDN Premium, Team Edition for Developers with MSDN Premium, Team Edition for Testers with MSDN Premium, or Team Suite (includes the three previously named editions) for MSDN Premium.  Visual Studio Team Foundation Server is not included with any of those packages.

Why am I not pleased with this?

First, it caught me off guard.  All the hoopla about Team System the last two months wooed me to believe that I'd have all that VSTS goodness in the same subscription I've known and loved for years.  Little did I know that the subscription price was doubling (for the first year) and that it would provide less value (percentage-wise) than it did before.

Second, I don't like Microsoft's snow job.  They claim it simplifies licensing and lowers pricing.  So, two levels go away (Universal and Enterprise) and four new ones appear.  On the surface there is one price level (MSDN Premium) but in reality there are four different Visual Studio editions offered with Premium.  The old top tier price?  About 2700 MSRP.  The new top tier price?  About 11000 or 5500.  Where is that cost savings again?  Where is the simpler licensing?

Third,  I wear three hats - architect, developer, and tester.  Not only do I not want to pay 11,000 with my hats, but I also don't want three different versions of Visual Studio installed.  Presumably Team Suite will allow you to install the enhancements for the three roles on one VS installation, but I'm not too sure about that (and the product info pages aren't clear on that either).

Fourth, I want Microsoft to show its developers the respect they deserve.  Development tools should be a loss leader...which MSDN Universal has been for years, I'm sure.  We use the tools, which we get for a low cost, so that we can drive the need for Windows, Office System, and Windows Server System.  Why has .NET been adopted so quickly?  Because developers sold it to the masses.  Microsoft surely didn't do it.

Don't kill the goose that's laying your golden eggs, Mr. Microsoft.

My information comes from the following pages:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/howtobuy/vs2005/compare/

http://msdn.microsoft.com/howtobuy/vs2005/chart/

http://msdn.microsoft.com/howtobuy/vs2005/transition/

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2005/mar05/03-21DevToolsPricing.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/mar05/03-21vs2005pr.asp

I've had the good fortune begin working with SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005.  I didn't rush right out and write stored procs in C#, but I have jumped into generics and anonymous delegates.  I'm using the February 2005 CTP and am impressed.

I haven't done a whole lot with new Yukon features, but I have been using the management tools / VS integration for a few weeks.  The first and most glaring issue is the lack of database diagrams in SQL Server Management Studio.  It seems that these will return before RTM, which is a very good thing.  I am very surprised that they were ever cut.  I can understand adding them to the VS integration piece, but I cannot understand removing them from SMS.  There are a hefty number of people that will use SMS and never touch VS...those folks deserve diagrams too.

Visual Studio is much quicker and stable than I expected.  So far the C# compiler has crashed three times on me and the VB compiler has crashed 15 or so time.  Despite that, however, the IDE didn't falter.  The standard send a crash report dialog came up, told me which compiler died, etc., but the IDE kept on chugging.  Kudos on the resilience.

One of my favorite new features is the code definition window...even for native framework types.  For those unfamiliar with it (View | Code Definition Window), it shows the prototypes (or full code if you've got the source) of the types, functions, etc. that you are currently mousing over.  It works like dynamic help does, but instead of showing help topics is shows code.  I've got that window full screen on my second monitor.  It's far easier to glance at that than it is to "Go to definition" then jump back.  It's also easier than firing up Reflector then alt+tabbing back to VS.

A close second to code definition is the added debugging support.  Debugger visualizers have gotten their fare share of press and with good reason.  They are quite nice.  What impresses me more is that enhanced immediate window features and the overall more helpful exceptions (including the exception window popup).  It's now far easier to see exactly where a problem occurred, what the current state of affairs is, and how that state was created...the needed info for problem solving.

I don't want to give the impression that this build is polished, because it isn't.  There is odd behavior now and then that is hard to repro (things just refusing to compile, coding executing and failing but then not failing a little later (same bits)), etc.).  The keyboard shortcuts are a little rough around the edges (right click, g (Generate stub OR Go to definition comes to mind)).  Refactoring / code snippets require an extra [enter] keystroke now and then.  All in all, though, I expect that RTM in a few months will address these issues.

Today marks one year and one day since I began blogging.  It's been an interesting experience.  I've fancied myself as a writer for quite some time, but knew that I'd never do much writing professionally.  After about 12 months of writing imagistic poetry in high school, I lost the knack (if I ever had it) of writing anything that a decent sized audience would find interesting.

12 months ago I was working on working for a software company a fair distance from here.  I was also in school working on finishing my degree.  The insane amount of snow that had fallen around Christmas and New Year's was finally melting allowing me to see the 25 saplings that I'd planted a few months earlier.

Today I'm working for a transportation services company headquartered in my own town.  I'm still schooling and hoping I don't burn out between now and a little after this time next year when I should be finished.  The sapling were uprooted (along with everything else in my yard) to lay the sod that now greets me each day as I return from work.  I'm reading Steven Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and am planning to read Kenneth Pollack's The Persian Puzzle in the near future.

12 months from now, I'll likely still be working for Flying J and will likely still be in school (though nearing graduation).  My sod will probably be leveled out and have had a spring and summer of mowing.  I just might be an agile developer and write test harnesses before implementing design specs.  I'd like to get into TDD or XP, 2005 just might be the year.

I've finally been able to get back to web dev lately.  I started using XSLT in fall 2000 and every few months I find a project where it's a good fit.  I'm thinking of doing up a starter guide to XSLT.  I found that a lot of developers don't seem to know too much about it.  I'm hopeful that in doing the guide, I'll learn it better myself.

http://www.theserverside.net/cartoons/Top10_NET_Thankful/Top10_NET_Thankful.swf

[from David Hill]

I've come across some good links lately.  I'm posting them, so I can find them when I need them (and when I'm not on this laptop).

http://blogs.msdn.com/bclteam/archive/2004/11/19/267089.aspx (Arrays, ArrayLists, STL, and “Whidbey's” generics.

http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/sriram/archive/2004/11/18/32707.aspx#FeedBack (Keep technology simple and it'll achieve wider adoption)

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=832017 (ports for various Windows applications / services)

I just saw The Incredibles.  It's a good flick.  It seems that Pixar wrote their own rendering software - Pixar Renderman - to produce it.  I noticed they gave props to Intel CPUs, but I didn't notice an OS.  At a Steve Jobs company, I'd guess X-Serve but that wouldn't run on Intel CPUs.  My next guess is Linux.  Perhaps I'll buy the DVD when it's out, so I can read all the movie credits.

Enough about politics...I've watched a few of the ASP.NET webcasts on http://www.aspnetwebcasts.com/ .  Yesterday, I received my copy of VB.NET and my book of choice.  Here's the deal - watch 3 webcasts (live or recorded), and get a free copy of VB.NET and one of a couple books on ASP.NET.  The offer runs through 30 Nov 2004.

So, intraVnews lost my state.  Losing state was the same reason that I dropped SharpReader several months ago.  To be honest, I've got other gripes against intraVnews.  It often can't seem to read feeds.  After a few tries on a feed, it permanently ignores it (you have to explicitly re-enable the feed by reseting feed history or something similar).  It doesn't tell you when it's ignoring feeds.  It doesn't have an easy to find and explicit means to update a feed right this second!

So, I've switched.  I've been a faithful reader (other than when intraVnews was ignoring the feed) of Dare's for about a year now.  I've read all about the great RSS Bandit and have decided to give it a second chance.  (I tried it a while back and was less than happy about it for some reason.)  Here's to hoping it maintains my state!

Over the past few days, I've seen the outlook.exe process eating up 300 MB + RAM.  A few times, I'd get dialogs complaining of OOM exceptions.  I've got 1 GB RAM on this box, why the heck does Outlook need more?!

I've got Microsoft Outlook 2003 SP 1, intraVnews 1.0.1468.32636, and Lookout 1.2.0.1924 installed.  I know intraVnews is written in a .NET language.  Perhaps Lookout is too.  As it turns out, I installed Whidbey beta 1 this week.  My Outlook addins now bind to it rather than 1.1, which they were compiled against.  I'm guessing a combination of Whidbey being a beta product and differences between 1.1 and 2.0 caused my problem.  After uninstalling Whidbey, all was well again.  OK, mostly well, intraVnews lost all the state info for my feeds, but that's another story.

I found a great page on IANA's site last night for TCP and UDP port reservations.  I'm writing this, so I don't have to Google for it the next time I need to lookup ports.

http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers

I'm sure this has been available for quite a while, but it's new to me.  MSNBC supports RSS.  This page explains what RSS is, what feed readers are, and also a list of MSNBC.com's feeds.  Cool stuff.

Yipee!  From Eric, from Soma.  Yet another item to make Whidbey worth the wait.

Virtual Server 2005 Standard and Enterprise is now on MSDN Subscriber Downloads (think it's for Universal subs only).

To speed up your VPC sessions running Windows XP SP2 (among other things), get VPC 2004 SP1 here.

Last week I bought a new CD player.  The player it replaced had served me well for 10 years, literally.  I was a senior in high school when I bought it.  I even had to fight with UPS to get it a day early (very long story that I don't fully remember).  Anyway, my new player is a Panasonic SC-PM29.  My requirements were few - MP3 playback, WMA playback, CD swapping while a disk is playing.  My old player wouldn't do any of these.

I have 1448 WMAs (ripped from about 100 CDs) and 1621 MP3s (audio books, all but a few purchased at ldsaudio.com).  When I commenced burning CDs for play in my new player, Windows said, “hey, how 'bout HighMAT?”  Since my player does HighMAT (I discovered this after purchase...a nifty bonus), I burned Gospel Doctrine in HighMAT.

All is well, right?  WRONG!  I couldn't HighMAT'ify several of my other MP3s, because apparently it requires 44 kHz or greater sampling rate and my files were 22 kHz (does voice really require that much more?).  I tried converting to a higher sample rate but with a low bit rate.  Nope.  It seems I need a way-too-high-for-my-audio-needs sample rate and bit rate to be HighMAT compatible.  (For instance, my 14 MB files are now over 100 MB.) All I want is the playlist support.  Is this HighMAT being obnoxious or is there a good reason for this?

Yesterday, I received an IM from someone not on my contact list.  I might have considered responding with a “who are you”, but since the sender wasn't on my contact list, I couldn't send or receive messages for that person.  Oh, but wait, I just received one?!  If you're confused, you and I are in the same boat.

My context is this:

• Windows XP Pro, Service Pack 2
• MSN Messenger Version: 6.2.0137
• Only people on my Allow list can see my status and send me messages
• The sender was not on My Block List but is also not on My Allow List.

Ideas?

Note to self: Virtual PC 2004 running Windows XP Pro Service Pack 2 and IntelliPoint 5.2 don't mix.  Very sad, my IntelliMouse Explorer 4.0 was so desirous to spread its legs (wag its tail?).

In no particular order

• Access to the only search engine I use
• Their results return very quickly
• Their results are pretty accurate
• Filters like site: are very easy to use
• Page caching...you can get your results even if the site itself no longer has the page
• Memory of my last 20 searches
• Drag and drop searching - just drop a word or phrase into the search box...you don't even have to hit enter or click Go
• Display of a page's Google PageRank
• One click to see who links to this page (Info Button | Backward links)
• Toggle-able highlighter for all search terms

There are others, but these are the biggest for me.

Back in '99, I settled on the position of my toolbars in IE.  I've changed a little since then, but only slightly.  Whenever I first use IE, I do these things -

1. Right click, Customize...
2. Text Options: No text labels
3. Icon options: Small icons
4. Remove all separators
5. Leave only forward, back, stop, refresh, home, and history.
6. Close
7. Unlock toolbars (of running on Windows XP)
8. Move the icon bar next to the menu bar (overlapping it)
9. Move the address bar next to the icon bar (overlapping it)
10. Remove the GO button
11. Lock the toolbars

Once the toolbars are locked, the toolbars learn that they weren't really overlapped and they make room for each other.  It usually takes a time or two to get just enough (but not too much) overlap.  My goal - maximize screen real estate and let the address bar have enough space to display the URL.

The additions I've made to this configuration are for Fiddler (goes next to History) and for the Google toolbar.  Google toolbar is not an option.  I only do Fiddler, if I'm going to be doing web dev on the box.  The Google toolbar goes just below the Menu | Icons | Address bar.  It is so important to me, that I'm OK with giving it its own row.  That's probably the largest compliment I could give to the programmers who wrote it.

My issue with Mozilla and Firefox, as stupid as it sounds, is that I can't get exactly what I've had with IE for the last five years with either of them.  I can get pretty close, but not an exact match.  Part of this is that the Google toolbar isn't made for Gecko based browsers.  (I'm less than satisfied with the search bar that is included with them...my Google bar on IE is worth the real estate, the search bar on Moz and FF isn't.)  The other part is that Moz's/FF's Menu | Icons | Address bar is too big.  Just too big.  IE's is nice and compact.  This coupled with not having the many functionalities of the Google toolbar (I use it more than any other IE feature except forward and back), is a large handicap.  I'd rather have this than 10,000 tabs and mouse gestures (just an Opera thing?).

I was reading something last week (I think it was on a class newsgroup) how Windows was incapable of hardcore and secure computing.  Such things as online banking and financial processing were far beyond its reach.  Hmm.

I was quite delighted to catch a link to this from Scott Hanselman today.  The article is a case study of Corillian - a company that writes Windows based financial software.  Also of note is the use of SQL Server and the .NET Framework.  Just perhaps, my classmate (assuming that post came from class) was a tad mistaken.

From the article..

Currently, more than 19 million end users—or about 25 percent of U.S. online banking customers—use Corillian technology when they use their institution's online services for transactions such as checking balances, paying bills, and transferring funds between accounts.

These include brand-name institutions such as JP Morgan Chase & Co., BankOne, SunTrust, and Commerce Bank, as well as large credit unions such as the State Employees' Credit Union and the Boeing Employees Credit Union.

Thought I'd take a peak at the site of those who claim the moral high ground on web standards compliancy.  Yep, I'm talking about the Mozilla group.  Kudos to them for validating on HTML 4.01 Strict.  For shame for invalid CSS.  I trust this was just a typo of sorts, for I'm sure they'd never condone bucking a standard.  ;-)

It's also interesting to note that spreadfirefox.com's home page has problems.  It is invalid XHTML 1.0 Strict.  The XML document is invalid, so I'll have to wait to validate the CSS.

On a more positive note, these validations were performed via a few mouse clicks on a Firefox toolbar.  Visit here for more info.

Robert has a great entry on security pitfalls in ASP.NET applications.

Will has some additional security thoughts on web applications.

Steve Muench (via odetocode.com) has the low down on Virtual PC 2004 Service Pack 1 and the performance enhancements it'll have for Windows XP Service Pack 2.

K. Scott Allen on sorting with IComparer.

Last but not least, a recent brand loyalty study shows Microsoft with good marks.  Who'da thunk?

Windows XP Service Pack 2 has given Internet Explorer the ability to block installed ActiveX controls.  You can access this functionality by opening IE, and selecting Manage Add-ons... from the Tools menu.  In the last few weeks, I've enabled and disabled Flash several times.  A few sites that I visit actually need it, while most of them only use it to annoy me (ads that make noise, ads that expand and contract, etc.).  Unless the site needs flash (like the games on the zone), I disable Flash.

The problem is that I'm quite tired of going to the menu, selecting Shockwave Flash Object, selecting disable/enable, clicking OK on the message box, then clicking OK to close the Manage Add-ons form.  I Google'd for a bit and found out where the block list lives in the registry.  (Thanks MVPs.)  It lives in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Ext\Settings.  There is a key for each blocked control.  Rather than using IE's dialog, I now click one of two .reg files to either enable or disable Flash.  I'll probably write a little app to do this, so that I can avoid the message box that comes up when importing into the registry.

To create the enableFlash file, copy the following into a file called enableFlash.reg:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Ext\Settings\{D27CDB6E-AE6D-11CF-96B8-444553540000}]
"Flags"=dword:00000001
"Version"="*"

To create the disableFlash file, copy the following into a file called disableFlash.reg:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Ext\Settings\{D27CDB6E-AE6D-11CF-96B8-444553540000}]
"Flags"=dword:00000000
"Version"="*"

To import them into the registry, simply double click on them.

Obligatory Registry Disclaimer:  Editing the registry can harm your computer.  Do so at your own risk.

Norton Internet Security 2004 has a great many components - Anti-Virus, Ad blocking, firewall, anti-spam, etc.  Why does the custom installer not give the user the option of only installing the components he wants?

Second question - why is it that when LiveUpdate fails to update a component, about the only fix available is to uninstall NIS and reinstall it?  (If that doesn't work, I suppose it means you wasted a fair amount of money.)

If I could ever manage to convince NIS to install and get fully updated, I'd see how much I like to compared to McAfee.  For the time being, it seems I'm out of luck.

Ever wonder why IE remembers all the invalid URLs you type in?  Me too.  I typed in http://www.lpark.com/blog (which gives the equivalent of a 404) yesterday, and for some annoying reason, IE remembers it.  What's up with that?

I just renewed my complimentary eWeek subscription.  I can't say that I'm extremely impressed with them.  One of their author's bugs me so much that I punch his picture whenever it makes the front cover (don't remember his name offhand).  That said, I decided that there was some value in it (especially at no cost to me), so I thought I'd renew.  I was pleasantly surprised with their use of DHTML on the renewal page - http://renew.eweek.com/ ...when you mouse to the text box for customer ID, an image appears showing you where to find it on the mailing label of the magazine.  This is far more elegant than having a static image or a “click here to to find out where this number is” link.

n4cer of ActiveWin fame has alerted me to a work around for the “buy, Buy, BUY!” of Windows Media Player 10.

My basic problem is this - I like album art, but I don't like the constant links to buy music that I already legally own.

The workaround -

1. From the Now Playing screen, right click on the album in the lower right hand corner and uncheck “Show Media Information”.  The album cover and buy music link should disappear.
2. Download the Energy Bliss visualization here.
3. Install it.
4. On the Now Playing screen, right click and select “Windows Media Player 10”, then Energy Bliss.
5. Notice that the album art is back (with some dancing blue squares) and that there are no buy links to bug you.

I've been using the RTW of Windows Media Player 10 for a few days now.  Generally speaking, I'm happy with it.  The “I'll keep appearing when you mouse near me“ menu bar bug (or was that a feature?) is now dead.  You can now open an AV file from the Internet and still resume what you were listening to before (big kudos on this!).  Here are a few gripes..

At last count, I had 1460 wma files and 1621 mp3 files.  The files were ripped from CDs I legally own or were legally downloaded (mostly audio books in mp3).  So, all my stuff is legal, yet WMP10 prompts me at every available opportunity to buy the CD of the currently playing song.  Is there any reason I should buy something I already own?  Does WMP10 think that I have illegal songs?  I'm all for helping people to be legal and I'm all for letting people know they can buy music directly via WMP10, but I'm not for the implication (or waste of screen real estate) that my stuff is not legit.

I don't really like the embedded IE in WMP.  OK, I don't know for sure that it's IE, but I'm pretty dang sure.  IE or not, I'm annoyed that I have to use WMP's menus to navigate stuff.  No forward/back via my mouse (IntelliMouse Explorer 4.0).  No alt+right arrow/alt+left arrow.  No right clicking.  Grr.  You know it's a browser.  I know it's a browser.  Let's stop playing games and let me use it as a browser.

I wonder why Play Count is still not in the standard set of displayed columns.  I care far more about it than I do about genre or whether it is DRM'ed.  What I'd like is a “make all views look like this one” so I can set the columns I want to see in the order I want to see them.

I like the new color schemes, but I think they need a bit of polishing.  First, altering colors still requires too much menu navigation (View | Enhancements | Color Chooser).  What happened to that paint brush icon in the lower right corner that WMP9 had?  Second, the colors are a bit too, well, I'm not a graphic design guy, so I don't know what to call it.  I know, though, that white text on a shiny gold-ish background is really hard to read though.  I know that the mini player looks a bit too much like over zealous use of lens flairs.  Third, why is there no option for the player's color to match that of the currently selected Windows XP visual style?  Fourth, in mini player mode, why does the volume control background color not reflect the color of the rest of the player?  My color is currently gold-ish (I'm trying to match the Olive visual style), but the volume control is light blue.

I really don't like the popup “This is what's playing“ that happens when you mouse near the player in mini mode.  I'd like to disable that.  I don't need to know what's playing (I can hear it), and I don't need to see a mini visualization window.

All in all, I prefer it to WMP9 (and all other players I've used).  Still, there are some issues that I hope are resolved in the next release.

Take a look at this HTML document.

<html>
 <head>
  <script type="text/javascript">
   function process(isIE)
   {
    var element = null;
    if(isIE)
    {
     element = document.getElementById("txtStuff");
    }
    else
    {
     element = document.bob.txtStuff;
    }
    alert(element.value);
   }
  </script>
 </head>
 <body>
  <form name="bob" onsubmit="process()">
   <input type="text" name="txtStuff">
   <input type="button" value="Submit IE" onclick="process(true)">
   <input type="button" value="Submit Firefox" onclick="process(false)">
  </form>
 </body>
</html>

Why is it that if an <input> is in a form, Firefox (0.9.2 / Win) can't use getElementById to find it?  Either method works just fine in IE.

Operating System: Windows XP Service Pack 2 (RTM)

Default browser: Mozilla Fire fox 0.9.2.

Application in use: MSN Messenger 6.2.0137

Problem: When I click a hyperlink in a messenger conversation, the link opens in IE not in Firefox.

Problem with attitude: I'd think that after the whole hoo-haa Microsoft had to deal with over bundling IE in Windows, that it would reign in its applications and make them obey the settings in Set Program Access and Defaults.  MSN Messenger, Outlook 2003 SP 1, and Outlook Express 6 Service Pack 2 all quite often ignore my default browser setting.  I'm not amused, Microsoft.

Joe Beda's explanation of some issues surrounding porting Avalon to Windows XP.

1.1 SP1

1.1 SP1 (Windows Server 2003)

1.0 SP3

Thanks, Eric.

All dasBlog versions are affected.  See Clemens for details and the patch.

I just recently listened to this webcast on the Microsoft Application Updater Block.  The samples were very helpful, since they solved a problem I was just beginning to have last week.  I needed the update to occur synchronously on startup not asynchronously as the app was running.  I'm happy to report that I snagged a bit of the sample code today and now updating is working perfectly.  If anyone else is having the same issue, check out the GAPP.Samples.UpdaterApplicationBlock.Plugins project in the samples.

When I get some time, I've got some blog stories to tell.  For the time being, I thought I'd at least post an entry per month...a bit less than the “at least an entry per day” target I had when I started my blog.

Two of my friends were married and I neglected to give them shout outs.  Congrats to Jeremy and Lauren.  Also, congrats to John and Emma.

One of my classmates posted a link to a nifty tool - http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html  Among other things, it catalogs all the software on your machine.  For all my Microsoft software, it not only listed the Product IDs but even the installation keys.  Pretty slick.  I didn't know that the installation key was retrievable.

Should a competent C# programmer know what boxing is?  or is it just some arcane academic tidbit that only IL reading dorks know?

Any C#ers (or any .NETers for that matter) out there have an opinion on this?

I've been playing (no pun intended) with the Windows Media Player 10 beta for a while now.  I just had a happy moment that needs sharing.  One of my biggest beefs with WMP in the past is that you can't have two instances of it going at the same time.  This becomes a problem when you're in the midst of listening to some audio book (one track is more than an hour long), and you click on a link to hear a 30 second music clip...suddenly you've lost your place in the book.  Ugh.

WMP 10 now has a “Previous” feature to solve this.  At any time, you can click Previous (if you're in standard mode (non skin, non task bar tool bar mode), it's the same as the back button you'd hit for going back one track in a playlist) to return to your previous track.  It'll begin playing as if you had just hit Pause then Play.

One other really annoying bug from WMP 7 - 9 is the “hide my form title bar, unless you mouse over me, in which case I'll reappear even though you told me you didn't want to see me” bug.  In WMP 10, when you tell the title bar (which includes the form border) to disappear, it does.  Period.  You can get it back if you want it, but it won't come back until you tell it to.  Thanks WMP 10, for finally obeying the user.

Generally, it has more fit and finish than previous versions.  Kudos to the Windows Media team for the enhancements and for releasing a pretty stable beta.  I think this is the only beta of a WMP version (other than perhaps the refreshes of 9) that has been stable.

I've heard for some time that one's greatest strengths can also be his greatest weaknesses.  That has never had much meaning to me.  I suppose this is in part due to my evaluation of the word strength.  My first thought is invariably physical strength, though I realize this isn't the only area in which one might be strong.  When was the last time that I looked at a person, who was physically strong, and thought, “hmm, what a weakling!”?  Never.

One of my greatest strengths, arguably, is that I'm a smart guy.  Another strength is passion.  If I go to the trouble of committing myself to a thing, I'm more than likely passionate about it.  The passion and the knowledge, however, have gotten me into trouble more than once.

Twice today, I jumped into a conversation to add commentary on Visio and on Virtual PC.  Now, it so happens that I've read about and have used both of these products, so I wasn't speaking from a position of ignorance.  However, in hindsight, I think it would have been a better idea to say nothing at all.  Was it really necessary to correct my manager and our network admin?  Probably not.  Was I right?  Well, I think so.  In fact, after doing a bit more research, I'm more sure that I was right than I was when I jumped into the conversations.

Chomp, chomp, says my strength (or was that my pride?) as it takes bite after bite out of my common sense.  It is true that I do a good deal to stay current on all sorts of Microsoft related technology issues.  It is true that I'm skeptical of the stuff that I read, listen to, or watch in my pursuit of staying current on Microsoft related technology issues.  As such, I credit myself with being pretty knowledgeable and accurate about a good deal of stuff.  Want to know when IE 5 had its second public beta?  I believe it was late '98 / early '99.  How 'bout beta one of Visual Studio .NET 2002?  Fall '00.  What does Anders Heijlsberg think of virtual methods?  C#'s methods are non virtual by default for a reason...

Of course, this know-it-all behavior isn't always a bad thing.  I think that more than once it has landed me a job.  (Perhaps this is because if I don't know what I'm talking about, I try not to talk.)  However, I'm quite annoyed with myself that I have to have things just so.  This makes me a great software tester, and arguably a good software designer, but it can make communicating with me a not always pleasant experience.  Perhaps the next strength I acquire will be the ability to keep silent.

Thanks to Sam (see comment on previous post), I now know a far simpler means of clearing IE's AutoComplete information (that which I referred to as its type ahead info).

To clear out AutoComplete:

1. Open IE
2. Select Tools | Internet Options | Content
3. Click the AutoComplete button.
4. From here you can alter your AutoComplete settings or clear existing history for web addresses, forms, and usernames//passwords on forms.

Yep, I'm still alive.  The FlyingJ experience has gone well.  Last week they invited me to upgrade from contract to employee status.  I'm in the processing stage now, so soon I'll be a normal employee again.  Wow, it's been a while.

I've got some unrelated items to post about, so here they are in no particular order -

If you are doing WinForms development and need borders on your custom controls, you might consider inheriting from System.Windows.Forms.Form rather than from UserControl.  You'll have to remember to set TopLevelControl to false and to set ControlBox to false, but otherwise, things will be very similar to deriving from UserControl (with the exception of a much richer set of properties and events).  Oh, one other thing, remember to explicitly set Visible to true, when you add your new control to the Controls collection of a form or control.

Two weeks ago, I dreamed that Robert Scoble stopped blogging.  He declared that he just didn't see the point of it any more and had better things to do with his time.  I guess my mind didn't see that as too strange considering some of the other things that have happened lately - Microsoft and AOL settled and stopped throwing mud, Microsoft and Sun settled and stopped throwing mud, W3C and many others came to Microsoft's aide in their fight against Eolas.  I don't know what in the tech world would surprise me at this point.  Perhaps Ellison could publicly call Bill a nice guy?  Hmm, some things are just too far fetched.

I picked up two new (but old) CDs - 10,000 Maniacs Unplugged and The Cranberries Unplugged (a compilation of several live/unplugged events).  With the 10,000 Maniacs purchase, my music collection is now fully legal.  I've had one dubbed tape, which I received about 10 years ago, that was holding me back.  Horrah!

I finally watched, for the first time, the movie AI.  Not sure what I think of it.  It was interesting and certainly far better than Anti-Trust, another movie from a similar time frame.

Last but not least, after fighting with the beta team on a previous Microsoft beta that same team invited me back...oddly enough, it seems the structure of the beta has changed somewhat and is now in line with what I suggested.  I doubt it was me that made the difference, but I'm glad to know that Microsoft learns even from folks who fight with them.

I'm writing this from Windows Longhorn build 4074.  I finally downloaded and installed it.  So far it's worked out much better for me than the PDC build did last fall.  It definitely needs a lot of work, but it looks good considering it's pre beta.

One less than happy thing is that FreeTextBox (the default input method for dasBlog) doesn't seem to like me typing in it.  Not sure if it's a Longhorn issue or a Longhorn via Virtual PC issue.  Either way, it's very annoying.

While I'm being annoyed at things, here's something else.  I'm annoyed at DVD players that require remote controls to work.  I've got buttons on my player, shouldn't I be able to use them to navigate a menu if I lose my remote?  I think so.  Toshiba didn't.  I was talking to my brother about this issue last night.  Tonight, ugh, I lost my remote.  Fortunately, it only took me about 10 minutes to find it, but...I'd still prefer to not need the remote to play a disk.

I'm also hot and bothered by my sunburn.  One advantage of living in the desert is that I can get a sunburn in about 15 minutes.  Yesterday, the sun had me for several hours, so my arms, face, and neck are quite red.

I've just upgraded to dasBlog 1.6.  The most noticeable change is the new monthly archive on the right menu.  Keep up the good work, Omar et al.