Ahha....news...
Ahha....news...
I started off my career supporting MS all the way......basically am still in the same team. But apparently, and again....most of the big service companies(eg.insurance, healthcare,etc) turn in a sad face when they are told that their data will be hosted on SQL Server 2000. For some reason, they still think that only DB2 or Oracle are qualified enough to even think of hosting so much data. Honestly, I am not biased, I don't know too much of Oracle....and know nothing in DB2....but know a decent length in SQL server 2k.
And just when I started to read up on SQL server 2005, and try to convince my boss to implement it as soon as it releases, the management decides that all data from now on will be hosted on Oracle (hosted in a linux environment). damn...i hate linux soo much from a developer's perspective.
Ah well...stole a PL/SQL book from my collegue, got to start reading up on it now.
Ever wondered how www.yahoo.com looked like back in 1996.....
or maybe how hotmail looked when it first came?
Check this out : http://web.archive.org/collections/web.html
 It's a new interesting feature of the Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 called 'Favicon'. Associate an icon with your homepage now. If somebody adds your page to his favorites, IE will access the file favicon.ico in the root folder of your domain and a small icon appears in his favorites list. The same icon is used, if you drag and drop the URL to your desktop. Example: You have a Geocities Page. Then you'll need a Windows Icon File, just name it favicon.ico and place it in your Homepage directory. Then add a line like
<LINK REL="SHORTCUT ICON" href="/Area51/Home/6512/favicon.ico">
in the <head> ... </head> section of your Homepage. It's very important to include the whole directory relative to the root of the webserver. If you don't use the LINK REL method, IE will automatically use the file: http://www.yourdomain.com/favicon.ico - Read the MS documentation here. Some people reported me, there are a few bugs in the IE 5, in some cases the icons dissapear from their favourites list (see next question). More infos on Favicons on favicon.com or favicon.de. |
(via http://www.iconarchive.com/html/faq.html )
Did not check this to work yet...but am certain to put it up on my site.
1. Create a <applicationName>.bat file
2. In the edit mode, enter the direct path to the executable.
(eg) C:\Program Files\nAnt\bin\nAnt.exe
3. Save and close the file and store it under the C:\Windows folder.
4. Open the command prompt window, and type in the batch file name to access the program.
Seriously...i will never regret loosing to a machine.
http://turbulence.org/spotlight/thinking/chess.html
“Reserve urs first...use it later...“ the new mantra when a new service is offered for free...
I got my first email account sometime in 1997. Well....at that time, internet was a luxury....and we simply could not afford browsing...and most of my fellow neighbours being my dad's collegues, things were no different for them either. Just as expected, when I tried to get my name in my email id, it was not available. Saddened, I went for the first suggestion the system gave me...sashi_k33. Now, that was hotmail in 1997. Soon after I got my hotmail id, luckily, things started to get cheaper, and I could afford having an account with my local ISP. Then came the famous yahoo....and same problem. Could not get my name. I then decided to have my yahoo id ....similar to my hotmail id.....and in a way easy to remember. All said and done, I was happily using my 2mb and 4mb with too much to spare (in the good old less-spam-ful days). As time passed, my knowledge started to increase .....and so did my web presence. I then managed to get a few other email accounts with my name....from hotmail and yahoo....( yeah...this time i used my full name...nothing to beat that)...and was glad... next msn started coming out with xxx@msn.com....and I jumped in and got my full name @ msn.com just so that i dont loose that and regret later. Then came gmail...same thing. Just when I thought that my battle with email clients was done.....then came website addresses.....domain names.....same shit...different place. I could not get my name....was not interested...but whatever I thought was cool and wanted it as a domain name...was taken. Well...fine...its taken....is there a web-site with that name....NO....same blank page 3 years back....and the same now.
Well..well..fine....then came blogs...."the latest revolution"......same shit. Off late....I start to hear news that states.... " MSN spaces fills up 1.5 million accounts in less than 1.5 months..."....ya...i was responsible for one of those 1.5 million accounts....i got the one with my name. And yeah..i have a dotnetjunkies acct, 2 blogger accts and now...a msn spaces acct. Wonder how many more are like me.... Alteast I am making an honest attempt to make use of all I have.....different purposes for each blog though....and keep updating them as much as I can....nevermind me...what abt u?
Ok...that title was a bit misleading....however....I am not alone when I say that I have had trouble integrating my web-applications successfully with E.Lib 1.0 and deploying them on a win 2003 server. Each time, they just give me errors of the weirdest nature. Most of my googling led to making some registry settings and using the “Install Services“ feature.
While there is no “switch” or “config” element that i cud change to enable or disable the performance counters....there certainly is an alternate way....just dont have them at all in ur EntLib. That would mean... No more instrumentation options..... No more perfomance logging....etc.In a way, I think it speeds up your application....
Cutting to the chase.....we need to recompile the whole Enterprise library with these options disabled. So..herez what I managed to do...went through the source code of the libraries....and found a few parameters set up in the build config that when changed could dothe trick just fine.
1. Open Start->programs->MS Patterns and Practices -> Ent Lib -> App Blocks -> Ent Lib.Sln.
2. Take your own sweet time to minimize all the folder(s) in ur solution window.
3. Rt Clk on the “Common” project and go to “Properties”
4. In the “Configuration Properties” go to the “Build” option.
5. In the Conditional Build section of the property grid, remove everything except “DEBUG;TRACE”
6. Close everything and recompile.
Remember...on compilation nothing will go to your common bin folder. I just plainly used the “Copy Assemblies to bin directory” option in my Start->programs->MS Patterns and Practices -> Ent Lib part of my menu.
Now...just to be sure....de-reference your existing references to the entlib and add references again.....and woala.....you are done.
I tried installing the recompiled version on windows 2003 server and ran my web apps from there...(using mostly the data access block and the config block) and so far it works like a charm.
Not the first time to be noticing this......but whenever I install Yahoo Messenger on any computer.....it brings out this wizard screen and all of us geeks use the "custom" installation hoping that we can install only the stuff we need...typically the messenger only and ignore all the other stuff (yahoo internet mail, explorer bar, etc) and click on "Next"....and if the wizard took our input properly, then we would have seen only the messenger installed and nothing else....and technically....we live happily ever after.
But NO....yahoo does not do that....though I UN-CHECK the checkboxes against everything else except messenger, they still get installed....so much so...that it is not even covert....it does it right infront of ur eyes. The progress bar boldly says that it is installing the explorer bar, internet mail, etc...... too much honesty.
Giving it a benefit of the doubt, I go ahead and check the "Add/Remove Programs section "... just to be sure......and ya....they are there too.... Everytime I have to uninstall the explorer bar and the yahoo mail from my system....does anyone @ yahoo messenger team even know that their "step-by-step wizard" has not been properly programmed?
Anyone else experiencing the same problem?
Seriosuly people....Design Patterns is something that needs to be lived through....or something that is close enough to be lived through. I read the GoF book , design patterns in C# and was still kinda lost with relating them to real-life situations...and the hope to use them at work kinda started to fade....until I bumped into "Head first design patterns" ... and all I have to say is "WOOOW", the concepts are pretty clear and the examples they use to relate the concepts are real-life...which made is even easier to relate to other similar situtations. And whats more important is being able to explain it to someone else who has no idea abt patterns.
I guess that the root of all this WOOW is the way the book is presented......lots of images....text style...more like doodling over a concept.....which is lacking in the other books on patterns.
I highly recommend this book to everyone who wants to get along with patterns and use them in real-life.
For some reason I thought my gmail page looked funny...and as it turns out the gmail invites section had changed. .... funny as it is....they gave out 50 invites per person. I guess this should be visible in every gmail user's inbox by now. One thing that puzzles me....why not take gmail off the beta version and give out the release version.
Every other time I start making my fingertips dance over my chin and look towards the ceiling wondering...how much is too much?
Well...obviously in the context of software developement. School projects...atleast there were time constraints...so...it was basically to write the least possible amount of code to meet the requirements and then ... thats it...
Then came a project that I did to automate book-keeiping stuff at one of the departments at the university....and there was my coursework pressure to keep up with and then the amount of time I was allowed to spend on the on-campus job....so...yet again...meet the requirements and keep your employer happy....thats it.
Now... I am given a responsibility to write requirements for an exisiting system. Ok...rephrasing it....there is an "awesome" system in COBOL which managed to stand the turbulence of time for a looooong time...and now the company from whom they bought all the room-filling equipment does not support the OS or COBOL anymore.....niiiice.
So...I step in....I am to analyze the system, understand how it works and talk to a bunch of users of the system...and come up with a better system to be implemented using .NET. Not hard....well...atleast technically.
So, I break my head reading COBOL code....interact with whoever sane person I could find, and understand the system. All set and done, I start writing out what I expect the new system to provide (basically overcome the difficulties of the old system plus more) as features.
As I start documenting features, use cases and requirements, one thing starts leading to another...towards the end of the day, I have a bunch of whiteboards filled up with requirements. Every new feature seemed to impress atleast one person...but ... for the least, I am unable to decide when to draw the line.
An immediate concern would be time, $$$ and resources. I am not yet told the whole thing yet. As of right now, my assignment is to understand the system and gather up features and requirements.....
Its like....walking with a carrot over a donkey's head.......as long as there is a carrot...the donkey keeps moving...and god knows how far the donkey has travelled eventually....
First there was a citibank email scam .... asking users for their passwords...and now there is an ebay email scam. By the looks of it, this scammer looks kinda funny. Either he/she is working with ebay or just playing around...i am still unable to figure out. I got a bunch of mails from “The ebay team“ asking me to update my info...because “someone apparently tried to log in with my account too many times“....and again....I never registered this mail acct with ebay.
First, i get mail from ebay to an account that i never gave to ebay....well..lets say our guy used a standard email broadcast technique...
Secondly....instead of taking me to a login (or similar looking) page, i am directed to a “Register” page.
Well...did not go beyond that...but....come on....is that the best they've got...asking you to register???
A few months back, I developed a test app at office using ChartFX and VB.NET....a standard windows application....Everything was working just fine....and I wanted to demo it to my boss. Boss comes over...and I try and run the program....once....worked fine...and then made some change in the code and then tried to run it again...and well....worked again.....then i closed the solution....and opened it again after maybe 2 mins....and tadaaa......”VS.NET ate my controls from the desinger view:”...literally.....right infront of my eyes..... I saw the designer flash by and show the controls and the next moment...they were gone.... A lot of googling did not seem to help either.....and I ended up reformatting my system.
Now...all this happened right infront of my boss.....and what more would I require to prove Murphy's law “Things go wrong at the worst possible time”. all this happens after toiling hard enough all day and hoping that my boss wont find any bugs....
Whatz even more weird...all the related code for the controls in the code-behind is gone too....and the solution still compiles still fine....and on an attempt to run it...it just shows a blank screen. Its like......magic....(grrrrrr).
And now....while browsing through some blogs, I bump into a related article....on VS.NET designer issues
Had this on my list of things to check out for a reeeaaalllllly long time...and last nite on the flight to MN from Chicago, I saw this on the in-flight TV's relay of some tech-tv episode. Seems kinda a nice way to google out stuff. And unlike others (except Firefox), who tie you to a certain search engine, this allows you to use a bunch of search engines...(something like Firefox). I just downloaded it...and it is AWEsome so far. I am yet to figure out the parameters by which it categorizes stuff. So....I grokked my name.....and as expected.......a major search result in google was dotnetjunkies....and it grouped all of them under one category. I am still researching into it.
Well....since the product does a lot of visual rendering, it kinda tends to get slow once in a while....but is certainly visually appealing....and allows one to search information quicker from a result-set. Though I am not too sure if the slowing down is generic to my machine...coz this machine wont even load IE quick enuf.
You can download grokker here.
Windows Update Client gives problems if you shut down the machine whilst it is downloading the updates. So, I change the settings for the updater to download and notify me of the updates and not to install them. The issue here being that for some reason, the update client keeps trying to download something that has already been downloaded. Remember that this happens when you shut down the system when the updater is downloading something in the background. Like that was not enough, it hogs the system resources so much that even a regular copy operations takes ages. Obvious course of action was to kill the update client process...but NO...it wont allow me to kill the process either. Access Denied...even for admin.
Turns out my roomie also encountered this same issue a while ago...and he ended up formatting his system. That time I blamed it on his system being slow....but it was not to be the same case for me.
Well...Norton Ghost to the rescue. Made an intial back up of my system..when I first installed it....and it came to about 20G...ya ya...it is almost all the software a developer would ever need...well..most of it atleast. Using my breaks from TV to backup my MyDocuments and my favorites, (which literally took 5-6hrs on a machine with 1.5G RAM)... I tried for the first time ever to load my backup image from Norton Ghost 9.0....and wolla....15 mins....my machine was back up and running. Well...turned off the automatic updates this time....and everything seems to be working like a charm again.
Moral of the story:
Allowing Windows to automatically manage updates.....3-4hrs of torture.
Trying to back up while the update client is running in the background.....5hrs.
Using Norton Ghost to restore your system in 15mins....PRICELESS.
I worked on the Updater Block before ... and by the looks of the symptoms, it sure looks like a polished implementation of the UAB. Looking forward to it being implemented properly with ClickOnce.
Got this from one of my daily doses of humor.....
Operator: Thank you for calling Pizza Delivery. May I have your National ID number?
Customer: Hi, I'd like to place an order.
Operator: I must have your NIDN first, sir.
Customer: My National ID Number, yeah, hold on, eh, it's 6102049998-45-54610.
Operator: Thank you Mr. Sheehan. I see you live at 1742 Meadowland Drive, and the phone number is 494-2366. Your office number over at Lincoln Insurance is 745-2302 and your cell number is 266-2566. Email address is sheehan@home.net. Which number are you calling from, sir?
Customer: Huh? I'm at home. Where'd you get all this information?
Operator: We're wired into the HSS, sir.
Customer: The HSS, what is that?
Operator: We're wired into the Homeland Security System, sir. This will add only 15 seconds to your ordering time.
Customer: (sighs) Oh well, I'd like to order a couple of your All-Meat Special pizzas.
Operator: I don't think that's a good idea, sir.
Customer: Whaddya mean?
Operator: Sir, your medical records and commode sensors indicate that you've got very high blood pressure and extremely high cholesterol. Your National Health Care provider won't allow such an unhealthy choice.
Customer: What?!?! What do you recommend, then?
Operator: You might try our low-fat Soybean Pizza. I'm sure you'll! like it.
Customer: What makes you think I'd like something like that?
Operator: Well, you checked out 'Gourmet Soybean Recipes' from your local library last week, sir. That's why I made the suggestion.
Customer: All right, all right. Give me two family-sized ones then.
Operator: That should be plenty for you, your wife and your four kids. Your 2 dogs can finish the crusts, sir. Your total is $49.99.
Customer: Lemme give you my credit card number.
Operator: I'm sorry sir, but I'm afraid you'll have to pay in cash. Your credit card balance is over its limit.
Customer: I'll run over to the ATM and get some cash before your driver gets here.
Operator: That won't work either, sir. Your checking account is overdrawn also.
Customer: Never mind! Just send the pizzas. I'll have the cash ready. How long will it take?
Operator: We're running a little behind, sir. It'll be about 45 minutes, sir. If you're in a hurry you might want to pick'em up while you're out getting the cash, but then, carrying pizzas on a motorcycle can be a little awkward.
Customer: Wait! How do you know I ride a scooter?
Operator: It says here you're in arrears on your car payments, so your car was reposessed. But your Harley's paid for and you just filled the tank yesterday.
Customer: Well, I'll be a #%#^^&$%^$@#
Operator: I'd advise watching your language, sir. You've already got a July 4, 2003 conviction for swearing at a cop and another one I see here in September for contempt at your hearing for swearing at a judge Oh yes, I see here that you recently got out from a 90 day stay in the State Correctional Facility. Is this your first pizza since your return to society?
Customer: (speechless)
Operator: Will there be anything else, sir?
Customer: Yes, I have a coupon for a free 2 liter of Coke.
Operator: I'm sorry sir, but our ad's exclusionary clause prevents us from offering free soda to diabetics. The New Constitution prohibits this.
Thank you for calling Pizza Delivery.
Damn it...
