I got a ton of referral spam yesterday, then left the house at about 2pm. When I came home our power was out and I didn't boot up my computer until this morning.

Outlook has been downloading email for over an hour! It's all referral spam on my blog. Thousands upon thousands. I have never seen anything like it.

Quite insane.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I have an ancient FoxPro DOS app that churns out reports in a way that can't be done too easily (not worth a rewrite) in Windows. It used to print these on an HP LaserJet II (back in the days when we listened to music on those big flat round discs with a needle) and has been printed on a LaserJet 4Si for about 12 years or so. I just got a sweet little LaserJet 1320t and expected all of this printing (which is done in PCL) to continue to work. But it didn't - at least not without some sweat and tears - and I had a few lessons to learn.

1) The new printers are very special and create their own ports on Windows for printing. I finally realized that to print from DOS at all, whether a print command from the DOS prompt or from within FoxPro, I needed to change that to LPT1. (And have to remember to switch back for all of my other printing.)

2) Somehow my application was communicating enough to the printer by saying "legal paper, please" that the printer would find the right bin, even if I moved the legal tray to the upper bin or the lower bin. With the new printer, I needed to explicitly send the PCL code for legal paper and lower bin (esc&l3A  and esc&l4H)

3) My reports were printing out based on 117 lines per page (legal) . I could no longer get that to work (two hours was enough time spent on that problem, wouldn't you say?). So I had to accept sticking with 102 lines and 8 lines per inch. I literally print this report using line and column #s for positioning, so this is a big deal for me. Of the 400 reports that get printed (one per entity), not too many of them needed that full length, so I will just have to keep an eye out for those and make sure the two page functionality I have built into this program works properly.

Hopefully this will help some other dinosaur who is moving partially to the modern ages (funny that I have one foot in the dark ages and the other dipping into the bleeding edge with the rest of my work). As long as Raymond Chen and team continue to allow me to use this reporting tool on Windows XP and beyond, I have no incentive to try to duplicate the process in windows.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

How I plan to solve my specialized ClickOnce needs that are not available in the nice little ClickOnce settings wizard....(read more...)

[A DevLife post]

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Earlier this month, Matt Cassell interviewed me (with great questions) for his podcast show, www.AcademicdotNET.com that is aimed at highschool programmers.

Matt is himself in high school, but at 15, has still been programming a lot longer than many of us!

My interview was #4. The first was Ted Neward, and he is about to push up #5, with Regional Director Barry Gervin.

It was a lot of fun to do the interview (and he even taught me how to use skype). What impressed me was that he had very specific questions so that he could be sure that the discussion was at the proper level for his target audience. I think that anyone at any age who is new to programming and new to .NET will find these podcasts very helpful.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Red Pill

Blue Badge

Green Card (?)

Ja! Ja!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Just noticed this on Jason Olson's blog. Not being tightly associated with INETA, any more it's been difficult to keep up with the frequent board and committee changes that have occurred since the [nearly] total board changeover in June. I'm not quite sure what a "Website Marketing" committee does (I know there was a Marketing committee and an Infrastructure (aka website) committee ... perhaps they have merged), but I know that whatever Chris and Jason are working on, they bring great energy to the table!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I know I know. I have told many people that you can run vs2003 and vs2005 side by side. But I have this honker application to port and I don't want to do it on the same machine where I need to be able to get at it (in vs2003) in emergencies. Plus I wanted everything super clean. The solution has many many assemblies and references a lot of 3rd party tools. Plus I had to move everything from WSE 2.0 to WSE 3.0. Too much for side by side if you ask me. Some of those 3rd party tools will be getting upgraded, like Janusys (finally moving to 2.0) and others.

So for the time being, I have taken my beautiful dual monitor setup and dedicated one screen to my other computer (until I find a solution as sweet as my VGA KVM cables that will work on DVI and isn't a $200 switchbox). I'm still feeling the dual monitor vibe though. I'm coding on one screen and emailing, etc. on the other.

I could do this as VPC, but I had a whole computer just sitting there...begging for new bits!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

It's their 47th b-day.

http://www.sugarbush.com/summarystats.aspx

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

In WSE2.0, the recommended way to do authorization, was to attach a principal with role information to a SecurityToken in a custom UsernameToken manager (which you would be using to authenticate against anything but A.D.). Then in your web method, you can just get at that principal by returning the Context.Security.Tokens from the RequestContext. But that is now obsolete. In fact if you use it, you will get a warning that SoapContext.Security is obsolete and to write a custom filter instead.

However the samples and the documentation in WSE 3.0 still show the old method. So, I'm not a Michele or Benjamin or William or Clemens or Christian. And most people using this stuff aren't (cause those guys have all moved on to INdigo, but I have a live app that needs ws security...). Now what?

I guess I am going to learn how to use filters today. (so much for my fantasy of cutting out for 2 hours after lunch to go skiing because we got about 4 inches of new snow last night. whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa)

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I'm in the middle of porting over a vs2003 app to vs2005. Every little step further is exciting. Not that I don't expect it to work, but with a number of built in challenges, it is especially rewarding  to see things working!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Is there something wrong with my code? With the component? Or with the docs? Or were the docs just written for normal scenarios? Had I done something so very unusual that it wasn't covered in the documentation? (I don't think I did anything unsual, by the way.) [read more ...]

[A DevLife post]

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Boy I sure wish I could have been to your party!

I also wish I was going to Namibia for the holidays, but heck, I didn't even feel likek driving 5 hours to my mother-in-laws, much less another 40+ hour trip to So. Africa this week!

i got this message from a friend at CEDO and thought I would share:

There is an addtional 1,200 parking spots downtown for the holidays during nights and weekends.

If you want a map of the other 14 parking lots and garages and a list of the 300+ retailers downtown go to our web site www.cedoburlington.org

Here are the locations and times free parking downtown is available:

LAKEVIEW/FILENE'S NEWLY EXPANDED PARKING GARAGE: Located West of Filene's 2 new decks with 278 more parking spaces. NEWLY CONSTRUCTED SPACES NOW OPEN, 2 HOURS FREE IN ALL CITY OWNED GARAGES!

STATE OF VERMONT PARKING LOTS at:

-50 Cherry Street (across from Filenes)50 parking spaces

-59 Pearl Street (Dept. of Labor) 39 parking spaces

Parking is FREE at these lots ONLY on weeknights, 6 p.m. to 10p.m.; Weekends 9:00 am till 10pm from November 23 through January 8, 2006.

CHITTENDEN BANK PARKING LOTS at:

-150 Bank Street (across from Henry's Diner)26 parking spaces

-2 Burlington Square (Bank Headquarters) 24 parking spaces

Parking is FREE at these lots ONLY on weeknights, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.; Weekends 9:00 am till 10pm from November 23 through January 8, 2006.

PEASE WEST PARKING LOT at foot of College Street on the West side of Lake Street; at the end of the Free College Street shuttle (80 parking spaces)

Parking is FREE at these lots ONLY on weeknights, 6 pm to 10 p.m.; Weekends 9:00 a.m. till 10 p.m. from November 23 through January 8, 2006.

MAIN STREET LANDING PARKING LOT (160 Parking Spaces) at the foot of College Street next to Union Station at the end of the Free College Street Shuttle.

Parking is FREE at this lot only on Weeknights, 6 p.m. to 10p.m. and weekends 9:00am to 10pm from November 23 through January 8, 2006.

PERKINS PIER PARKING LOT (180 parking spaces).

Parking is FREE at this lot ONLY on Weeknights, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.; Weekends, 9:00 am - 10pm. November 23 through January 8, 2006

ELMWOOD AVE PARKING LOT, just north of the U.S. Post office in downtown Burlington (88 parking spaces)

Parking is FREE at this lot ONLY on Weeknights, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.; Weekends, 9:00 a.m. - 10 p.m. from November 23 through January 8, 2006.

HOWARD CENTER FOR HUMAN SERVICES, 102 S. Winooski Avenue, (50 parking spaces)

Public parking begins Friday, November 25, 2005 from 6 p.m.-10 p.m. through Monday, January 2, 2006.

FRIDAY NIGHTS ONLY 5:00 pm to 11 p.m. AND Weekends 9:00 a.m. to 11 pm

*TD BANKNORTH (100 parking spaces) on the corner of Main Street and St. Paul Street

The lot will be open for public parking through DECEMBER 31, 2005 at the following times:

Week nights: 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm

Weekends 9:00am to 10:00pm

NO PARKING ON THE FOLLOWING NIGHTS, - to accommodate Flynn Theatre patrons - on November 26, 27 and 30; December 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 16 and 17th.

 

SURFACE PARKING LOT ON MAIN STREET across from TD Banknorth, DO NOT PARK ON EAST SIDE OF PARKING LOT ALONG BUILDING. Located mid-block between St. Paul and Pine Street. (30 parking spaces)

Weeknights, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.;

Weekends, 9:00 a.m. - 10 p.m. from November 23- December 31, 2005.

SURFACE PARKING LOT ON CORNER OF MAIN AND PINE STREET Across from the Ski Rack. (15 parking spaces)

Parking is FREE at this lot ONLY on Weeknights, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.; SUNDAYS ONLY, 9:00 a.m. - 10 p.m.. November 23 through January 8, 2006

SURFACE PARKING LOT MID-BLOCK ON PINE STREET BETWEEN MAIN ST. AND COLLEGE ST. across from North Star Sports (32 parking spaces)

Parking is FREE at this lot ONLY on Weeknights, 6

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I don't have the patience that Sam Gentile does (or the knowledge to get around wierd problems) so if you are downloading the newest hottest tastiest bits (such as the latest build of Vista, which I did download last night), check his blog for problems and solutions!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Here is the picture (from CNN.com this morning) of people in NYC walking to work due to the subway strike. It is about 25 degrees (at 8:30 am) so colder when the photo was taken.

Of course they are cold - don't these people know about hats?

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

It would be really handy if the compiler could tell when you have written code to access UI components in one of the external thread processes of the BackgroundWorker component, such as DoWork. (Yes, the debugger tells you when you messed up... just not the compiler.)

Luckily at least some of these are caught in runtime.

I will have to write myself a little reminder comment in these methods NO UI ACCESS HERE, DUMM-DUMM! I think that I will get over this very quickly though., as I get more and more used to working with asynch processes.

You, too, can write asynch processes (almost) easily in VS2005 now with the BackgroundWorker component. But you still have to know what you are doing and pay attention. You don't need to know threading inside and out - but have an awareness of it.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Things I have done in my own office to reduce some time waste and also a huge time savings payoff for a client thanks to a little $40 utility....[read more ...]

[A DevLife post]

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I have an old HP Laserjet 4si that I bought a looooooong time ago. I think the retail price was $5000 and I paid about $3500. I can only remember that it was when I was living with a certain guy and we broke up when I was 33. So it is at least 11 years old! It has really been a die-hard and has MORE than earned it's keep, even with having to lug this 125 lb beast through three household moves.

It actually still performs like a trooper but it's no longer 100% dependable. I get paper jams that drive me batty when I have to print out lengthy reports - whether it's the 100 and 200 page reports I have to print for a client  about 10 times a month or even just a 10 page document. I had the printer serviced last winter and started using better quality paper in it. The jams are back again though and yesterday, under duress, I had to send out a 100 page report with pale streaks through it (which the client was able fade out when they made their photocopies). Apparently this is either the (not very old) fuser or something suddenly wrong with the print cartridge causing the streakes. Solvable, but dumping more money into it.

So I gave in and bought its' replacement today. A 38 pound, $400 (after rebate) faster (22ppm vs 16 ppm max) LaserJet 1320t. It also does duplex printing (which I occasionally would love to have). I never needed the network capabilities so I don't have to pay for that now. And the paper trays hold 250 pages instead of 500. No problem there for me.

It's a hard thing to do. I always have better things to spend my money on, but I realized that at this point, it will cost me a good $100+/year to keep it going in addition to the aggravation of those occasional paper jams which are very costly in their own way.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Rich rented a great movie that we watched last night: Girl from Paris. 30 yr old parisian "how to use the internet" trainer picks up from Paris, learns to farm and buys an old farm out in the boonies - complete with old farmer. Very sweet. A little farm-life gore. Made me tear up/cry I think 4 times. LOL.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Sam says "software is nothing like construction."

My husband, the carpenter, has this poster from Milwaukee tool that definitely agrees. (And boy does he love to tease me about that!)

Okay, it's not really related to Sam's point about the old software/architecture analogy, but it was the first thing that happened to pop into my mind.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org