October 2008 Entries

Initial Server 2008 Pains – Infamous UAC

Remember to do one of two things if using Server 2008 for the first time: 1) Turn UAC off in Control Panel | User Accounts | Turn User Account Control on or off 2) Make sure you right-click every application’s icon every time! and choose “Run as Administrator”, every time unless you want to really give yourself a headache Same goes for Vista of course but in Server 2008, you do not want to ignore UAC and view it just as a pest. You want to use properly or get rid of it entirely.

posted @ Friday, October 31, 2008 9:22 PM | Feedback (0)

Getting Your AT&T 2Wire 2701-b (or other2Wires) to Talk to SlingBox

I’ve seen a lot of threads out there on 2Wire and Slingbox internet connection pains and I agree it’s a royal pain in the ass. Connecting my Slingbox to my old Linksys router that I had just gotten rid of was a piece of cake. This post is not code related but this experience was such a pain, I decided to hopefully help others by posting my experience here and really tell you how to set this up with full details which I did not find out on the net or at Slingbox.com.

posted @ Sunday, October 26, 2008 2:39 AM | Feedback (4)

Silverlight, WPF, and more ASP.NET 3.5 Coming My Way

Well, I just started a new position as a C# Engineer at a great new .com. The people seem great here. And the cool thing is I will be not only doing what I love (more standard ASP.NET and Web design for a public website), I’m also going to be venturing into some WPF and Silverlight as well which is pretty exciting stuff. The application due to company disclosures I cannot say but Silverlight is perfect for the application I’ll be working on in a few months. I am a strong advocate for Silverl

posted @ Friday, October 24, 2008 9:56 PM | Feedback (0)

Visual Studio/Intellisense Doesn’t Recognize Registered Web Controls or Language Syntax

Intermittently at times, Visual Studio for some odd reason, refuses to recognize web controls or C# syntax during a build/compile that you know is fine and I do not know why…it bugs the hell out of me. You’ve included all the right usings, assembly or project references, and the syntax you know worked before, but for some reason it just decides to piss you off when you try to compile by stating it is not familiar with the syntax or control. There are a slew of things one can try in order to so

posted @ Monday, October 20, 2008 7:46 PM | Feedback (1)

ITunes to IPhone Google Contacts Sync Usability Problems

I have to say, I love my IPhone. But I have to say I hate ITunes in general as half the time, it prohibits me in terms of usability, and causes more pain than it does good. There are many reasons why ITunes lacks usability and but I will not go into all that now. I’m focusing today on the Gmail contact sync in ITunes for IPhone. The main issues I have with IPhone Sync & Google contacts are the following:

posted @ Saturday, October 18, 2008 3:14 PM | Feedback (4)

Wirtz & Tallon of the Chicago Blackhawks Idiots?

Today, the coach Denis Savard of the Blackhawks was just out of nowhere fired. Pretty much everyone I’ve talked to thinks it’s very weird. Now if you’re not into hockey than you would not care. But let it be known that Denis Savard (the coach) is a respected Hall of Fame hockey player. Denis did very well last season and today, everyone is wondering wtf when they see that he was fired. Read here:

posted @ Thursday, October 16, 2008 4:01 PM | Feedback (0)

I can’t use Mozilla on Some Microsoft Sites?

I can’t believe Microsoft would not let me browse some sites like today, such as when I was checking out the Microsoft Partner Site using Mozilla. I got this very strange error today while trying to look at the Microsoft Gold Partner site just for kicks to see what was on there lately:

posted @ Tuesday, October 14, 2008 1:32 AM | Feedback (0)

Microsoft Gold Partner Program as a General Selling Point is a Complete Joke

I don’t know how many shops I’ve seen, interviewed with, or even worked at that wave the “We’re a Microsoft Gold Partner” geek flag waved around as if without knowing the place, we automatically are supposed to assume the shop is a credible development shop. Most of these are waved by non-technical managers that know nothing about quality code. This means nothing to me in terms of credibility & quality, and it’s clearly just a marketing term that only benefits Microsoft and somehow makes emplo

posted @ Tuesday, October 14, 2008 1:11 AM | Feedback (6)

Converting a Generic List of Custom Objects & Property to a Formatted String List

Today I had the need to take a list of names from a returned list of Custom Objects, and convert one of its properties it to a string that included some HTML. This is nothing fancy, and pretty standard/simple but I thought I’d post about it anyway. Since I did not need a custom ToString() method here to convert all properties of my object, I just created a simple method to iterate through the list of objects and add one of the properties to the StringBuilder object then return my string with H

posted @ Monday, October 13, 2008 12:15 AM | Feedback (2)

N-Layered != N-Tiered: Know the Difference!

I hear a LOT of developers refer to what are essentially N-Layers as “N-Tiers”. This kind of bugs me a little when I see or hear it from developers. First of all, they are not even close the same thing, and it’s important as a developer to get this straight so that you are using the terminology properly. The difference is simple but very important when you’re talking about your applications. They should not be loose terms and intermingled as about probably 90% of the developers out there

posted @ Saturday, October 11, 2008 12:04 AM | Feedback (15)

Microsoft Failures & Successes

I will give no explanation, because I think they speak for themselves, but here are some failures & Successes from Microsoft. Failures (not wasting my time on these, they just don’t let me easily and openly code good ORM, Patterns, etc. period) * Typed DataSets * SharePoint 2003 & 2007

posted @ Tuesday, October 07, 2008 5:41 PM | Feedback (3)

Code Zest Top Coffee Goodies

We all know that for most of us who like coffee, it plays a huge part in a developer’s life. For me, it started with the fact that when working for Vitria Technology back in the day, we had a commercial espresso machine in our cafeteria. This is where I learned what espresso is, and what good coffee really is. From then on, I have become a coffee enthusiast and want to have fun and pass coffee information along in this blog when I have some good things to share. There is a difference between

posted @ Sunday, October 05, 2008 12:00 AM | Feedback (9)

Red Flag #1: Source Code Continually Does Not Compile in Source Control

I’m going to post a series of what I call “Red Flags” in development shops. Things that in some development shops happen frequently & also encompass one or more of the following below: 1) Destruct an overall development shop’s efficiency 2) Produce a team environment with unnecessary stress 3) Happen due to lack of standards/process and expectations

posted @ Saturday, October 04, 2008 3:20 PM | Feedback (0)

When an Interviewer Does Not Give You Enough Time/Opportunities to Ask YOUR Questions

Interviews tend to develop into their own animal. It’s not the fault of the company or manager setting up the interview, but just the mere fact that interviews by nature are typically a very discoverable experience for both sides. Therefore an interview anticipated to be x number of people and x hours could completely change for both sides and neither really has much control over it because both sides really need to get the information that they need to make that decision. With that said, m

posted @ Wednesday, October 01, 2008 8:07 PM | Feedback (0)