General

ASP.NET Pro Magazine Reader's Choice Awards

David Totzke — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 01:59:15 GMT

It's that time of year again. Every year ASP.NET Pro Magazine runs its Reader's Choice Awards to find out what the community at large feels are the best tools and components available. There are categories for such things as the Best:

Add-In
Charting Component
Component Set
Grid
Navigation Suite
Online Editor
Printing/Reporting Components
Scheduling Components
and more...

The final choice is for Best Overall Component of the Year. Voting is now open and only takes a minute or two to complete. Head on over and make your voice heard.

Dave
Just because I can...

Windows Live Writer

David Totzke — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 05:27:14 GMT

Ok, now that's cool.

I've been meaning to try out Windows Live Writer for making blog posts because one of the things that stops me from posting very much is that it's a bit of a pain. The editors that are embedded in blog software such as Subtext, a fork of the popular .Text software, are surprisingly good but can only take you so far. Things like inserting a picture can be a real pain and I always find myself switching to the source view to tweak things here and there.

I fired up the program after installing it and a wizard started up. I picked the option for an existing blog, gave it the URL of my blog, my username, and my password and then it did everything else all by itself! You mileage may vary depending on whether or not you blogging platform supports the APIs for which Live Writer is looking. (or Live Writer supports your blogging platform of choice - I'm not certain as to which way around this works)

Like I said, that's frickin' cool.

I think that the most attractive feature for me is the ability to save a draft of the post and come back to it later. I know that with Subtext I can save a post as unpublished and come back to it but that still requires me to be online. For me, the experience of a rich desktop program is just far superior to a similar experience that is web-based.

Raise your hand if you do this:

Write your post
Copy the text (if I can, I copy the actual HTML Source, just in case)
Paste it into Notepad or other suitable program
Submit your post

And why do we do this? Because we've all been burned when something goes wrong with the post and hitting the back button returns us to a blank form. Here in Live Writer I simply hit the Save Draft button and I have a nice safe local copy.

Often times when composing a post you want to be sure that it's going to render properly and Subtext doesn't have the facility to preview a post. (at least not that I can find) You can save it unpublished so that the public can't see it but that means that neither can you. All that remains is to publish your post unfinished and then have a look at it and then Shower, Rinse, Repeat. Annoying. You favourite (OMG it knows I'm Canadian!) Blog aggregator will likely detect these multiple edits and do something weird as well. This is where I discover the View menu.

In addition to the HTML Code view there is also a Web Layout view and a Web Preview. Web Preview shows me my post as it would appear on the actual site! That is super cool.

The final feature that is immediately noticeable is the [Set categories] area at the bottom of the UI just above the status bar. Clicking here shows me a list of the blog categories that it has pulled down from my blog. They're my categories. Let's see, there's "Ravings of a Lunatic". Definitely need to check that one.

Now, all of this assumes that when I finally get around to hitting the Publish button that the post actually makes it unscathed onto my blog. Given how smooth the experience has been thus far, confidence is high.

Time to Point Your Toes; We're Going In Deep.

Dave
Just because I can...

[UPDATE: Holy Crap It Worked!!]

There Will Be Code

David Totzke — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 03:42:07 GMT

Inspired via the Monkey. His Kung Fu is strong.

Ladies and Gentlemen if I say I am a SOFTWARE ARCHITECT you will agree with me. And I wish to speak to you today about DEVELOPING SOFTWARE. There are those who will say they can craft you an application, and that may VERY WELL be TRUE. But can they get you to ZERO BUG BOUNCE? Can they craft a decent USER INTERFACE. Can they craft a decent CONFIGURATION MANAGER? Will they rely on a creaky THREE-TIER ARCHITECTURE or have they mastered FIVE? It is these QUESTIONS you must consider.

I have applications running in the FORTUNE 500, you see. I have had meetings with executives both HIGH and LOW. You could go with someone from DEVRY, or someone who's developed an E-COMMERCE SITE, yes, for his UNCLE's fix-it business. But only I can have the FUNCTIONAL SPECIFICATION and the ARCHITECTURAL ROADMAP for your application by APRIL. I can do it, I can have it, and I can make it exciting, with an interactive help system and animated icons. YOU can GO WITH SOMEONE ELSE, that is your right. BUT you CANNOT say that you were not PRESENTED with the option to skip all that; to just DEVELOP WITH ME.

I await your decision. I will sit here and calmly wax my mustache. Please don't mind my son, D.W. He will be stepping out momentarily to procure a REDBULL.

NOW, what is for LUNCH?

Yes. There will be code. And there will be blood.

Dave
Just because I can...

Cross of Valour - Constable Chris Garret

David Totzke — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 14:52:37 GMT

Chris Garret was murdered in the line of duty in 2004. He was nominated for the Cross of Valour but denied it because the trial of his killer held up the application until the 2-yr time limit lapsed.

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=125262

That such a callous and automatous application of the rules is even possible leaves me dumbstruck.

There is an online petition to correct this:

http://www.petitiononline.com/05142004/petition.html

Please take a moment to sign.

Dave
Just because I can...

In Memorium - Beloved TingTing - 2002 to 2007

David Totzke — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 19:36:33 GMT

Monday morning at approximately 5:00 AM our beloved cat TingTing was snatched away by a coyote right in our own back yard and literally at the feet of my wife.

TingTing was an indoor cat but was not declawed and was in the habit of having a morning romp in the back yard. She never strayed away from the property into the open field behind our home.

We have a door to the back yard from our Master Bedroom and shortly after being let out there was a considerable commotion at our bedroom window. It was TingTing.

My wife opened the door to let her in and to her astonishment there was a coyote standing right there. Desparate for safety, TingTing jumped down from the window ledge and before she could make it into our home the coyote struck quickly and snatched her away. The unmitigated audacity of the creature is astounding. One would have thought that it would turn tail and run at the site of a human.

This is when I awoke from a very deep sleep to the disturbing sounds of the unfolding event and just in time to see my wife dash out the door.

I lept out of bed and went to the door as I yelled "What's happening?!?"

"There's a dog after TingTing" exclaimed my horrified wife and with that I was off.

I flew out the door and tore across the back yard with a shout and a clap like thunder hoping to startle the coyote into ceasing its molestation of our dear one. From the time I left the doorway until I was twenty or thirty feet into the field I heard only a single, terrible cry from her.

Then silence.

It was at this point I realized I was naked.

I ran back into the house and threw on some clothes and shoes, grabbed a flashlight and ran back out into the night hoping against hope that the coyote had released TingTing and she had simply gone to ground and was keeping silent to avoid detection. As time passed and the sun started to rise, what I already knew in my mind sank into my heart.

She was gone.

My wife was inconsolable with grief. To be so close and have your beloved pet snatched away left her shattered.

In addition to seeing TingTing taken away, there was also the dawning possibility that our other cat, Mimi, was taken as well. They had gone out together in the morning and usually returned together. He was like her big brother and almost certainly had witnessed the attack.

Big Mimi is far more worldly than TingTing and has been roaming the local area for 6 years and, at 17 pounds of solid cat and with a full set of claws, can take care of himself. The coyotes have been out there all along so there's no reason to assume that they had now captured him.

It's just that his belly usually brings him home like clockwork and as the hours pass doubt continued to cast its shadow over us. My wife and I took turns roaming the neighbourhood, calling his name in the hope that he would emerge from hiding.

Finally, at just around nine PM, he popped up at the window. He was clearly shaken and still very alert but otherwise completely unharmed. We scooped him up and whisked him into the house. Enveloped in my wife's arms he begins to settle but still snapped his gaze around at the sligthtest sound.

Once released from my wife's embrace he seemed torn between his food dish and something else. Hunger seemed to win out if only for a moment. After a few mouthfuls it became clear what else he was concerned about.

He is trying to find TingTing.

Normally she is right there to greet him upon his return and sample the scents from Beyond the Yard that still clung to him. He wandered through the house, pausing here and there at places where she could normally be found. He would stop at her little pile of toys near the fireplace, look at them and then look to us as if to ask "Have you seen her?"

TingTing had a habit of playfully ambushing Mimi at various points and it was heart-wrenching to see him pause at these locations; seemingly daring her to appear and pounce.

After a few laps of our home he settled sullenly on the back of the couch stairing out the window into the night.

Two days have now passed and Mimi will still not venture far and only goes anywhere if one of us is beside him. If we return to the house, he follows.

I still hold out some small hope that by some miracle TingTing made good her escape and has simply been lying low somewhere too frightened to return and will miraculously appear at the window. That hope however, fades with each passing hour. I fear that we must accept this harsh reality:

She was good.

And the good die young.

Dave
Just because I can...

SSIS Lookup Transformation Case Sensitivity

David Totzke — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 15:34:00 GMT

Hey there,

In one of my data loads I have NULLs creeping into a foreign key column. I am looking up a domain name and getting an integer Id number back. The column is populated during the load by a Lookup Transformation in SSIS. A previous step in the process populates the lookup table with any values that don’t exist so it should be impossible for the subsequent lookups to fail.

These null values had only recently appeared and coincided with some data back-filling we were doing.

First issue:
I had the Lookup set to ignore failed lookups and simply return null. This prevented me from seeing the error. Because the lookup table gets pre-populated, a failed lookup should have been impossible. I changed this to redirect the row upon failed lookup and put the failed rows into a separate table for examination. Our database is set to use case insensitive collation. Running a T-SQL query joining the failed rows to the lookup table in management studio confirms that all of the records have a match. Arrrgh.

Second issue: Further examination of the data showed that the only difference in the joined columns was case. i.e. www.SomeDomain.com and www.somedomain.com . There is no setting on the Lookup Transformation to ignore case.

Root cause:
Many of the failing rows were happening when looking up values that had been in the database for months. They had worked in the past. Somebody was touching the data.

The domain name value being used to do the lookup is used at the source for display to the end user. Somebody was making them pretty by adding a little Pascal casing to them. (another example reinforcing the importance of the separation of data from its presentation and formatting. This explains why what once worked, now doesn’t.

The SSIS Lookup Transformation uses full caching by default. It pre-loads all of the lookup table data into memory at the start of the process. In full cache mode, the lookup relies on the LocaleId for string comparison rules. It picks up the locale of its parent container or from the package if not contained within something such as a foreach container. This brings case and accent sensitivity into play.

What had me fooled is that when configuring the lookup you JOIN the columns in the editor the same way you would visually join columns in a query builder. In fact, the documentation lists the Lookup under “Split and Join Transformations” and states that it “performs lookups by joining data in input columns with columns in a reference dataset”. One would think that since the source of its data is SQL Server, it would pick up the collation setting of the database. You’d think that; and you’d be wrong.

Of course, had I RTFM, I would have learned that the “lookups performed by the Lookup transformation are case sensitive” and been happier for the experience.

Resolution:

There are a few solutions to this problem depending on the size of your data loads and lookup tables.

Set the Lookup Transformation caching option to Partial or None.
Setting the cache mode to partial or none causes comparisons to be done by SQL Server.
Full cache with pre-formatted data.
Update the lookup column using the T-SQL LOWER() or UPPER() functions so that subsequent lookups done by the Lookup Transformation will succeed.
Full caching and T-SQL queries instead of tables as your data sources.
Use the LOWER() or UPPER() functions on the columns to be compared. This is likely the best of both worlds. Gives you the performance of full caching as well as simplifies your data flow by removing the extra steps needed for option 2.

Dave
Just because I can...

The Things You See In The Old Db

David Totzke — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 00:34:00 GMT

Please don't do this:

JOIN Files
ON Events.IconFile = 'fileid=' + convert(varchar,Files.FileID)

It hurts my eyes.

Seriously.

Don't.

Dave
Just because I can...

Farewell Steve Irwin - Crocs Rule!

David Totzke — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 00:02:00 GMT

Crikey! That's no way to cark it.

In these days of vacuous, aeroplane blonde bimbos cavorting on screen for the benefit of the slack-jawed television viewer; in times when one trick pony Howie Mandell gets ANOTHER 15 minutes; at a point in history when the troll that is Tom Cruise IS SLEEPING WITH KATIE HOLMES!!!

Sorry. It just makes me mad as a cut snake.

Say what you will but Steve Irwin was a rare soul. He was a joyous Larrikin who was fit as a Mallee bull although some suspected there were Kangaroos loose in the top paddock.

Fame never went to his head. If anything, it renewed and strengthened his committement to wildlife.

I have a nagging suspicion that Steve's time was cut short; cut short 15 minutes at a time by the likes of the cast of Survivor and Big Brother All Stars. ( there's an oxy-moron for you )

From beyond the black stump to the back o'Bourke you brought the fascinating world of the reptile into our homes and we lived - if only vicariously - the way life was meant to be lived. Full on and flat out like a lizard drinking.

Onya mate.

Dave
Just because I can...( Translation available here )

You'll Never Guess

David Totzke — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 19:49:00 GMT

Ed Bott over on ZDNet was installing a new OS. Being an experienced techno-wonk he used the following steps to ensure a smooth installation:

I made sure I had a CD containing the latest released version, placed that CD in the drive, and restarted. The system detected the CD, launched the boot files, and allowed me to create a new partition to install the OS files.
I answered a few questions and then let the installation proceed automatically. After everything completed (well under an hour), I created a new user account and password and logged on.
The very first thing I saw was a pop-up balloon warning me that there were updates available. When I clicked that icon, the screen dimmed and a password dialog box appeared. I couldn’t continue or perform any other task until I entered the administrator password.
Even though I had installed the very latest version, I saw that there were 98 separate updates available, designed to “correct errors, eliminate security vulnerabilities and provide new features.” It took approximately a half-hour to download and install everything over my high-speed connection.
After the updates completed, I was warned that I had to restart the computer before all of the updates would be effective. So I did.
When I reached the desktop, I noticed that the system clock was off. I tried to adjust it and was greeted once again with the dimmed-out login screen where I was prompted to enter the administrator password.
I noticed that the display resolution was set to 1024x768, but when I tried to change it to my monitor’s actual resolution of 1280x1024, I discovered that the settings dialog box didn’t offer that option and there was no obvious way to tweak it.

So how many of you are screaming “F***ing Microsoft”, “F***ing Vista!!” I thought as much.

Click here for the full article and the shocking truth!

Dave
Just because I can...

You Will Give Me Your Username And Password

David Totzke — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 19:39:00 GMT

And these are not the droids you're looking for...

Is it just me or is this really bad?

Warning: main(http://ezpolls.superstats.com/pollresults.html?u=**********&p=*******): failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! XCÙ in /hsphere/local/home/************/********************com/resources/PrevPolls.php4 on line 109

The asterisks are where I've removed identifying information but suffice to say that this was on a commercial website that is using the ezpolls stuff. And no, it's not credit card info at risk here. Or so it would seem but who can say?

Suffice it to say that the error message gave me the username and the password that was being used!!

u=the_actual_username&p=the_actual_password

You know, you dream that one day you will see this. Now, if only I knew what to do with the information to become rich. Knowing me, I'll just alert the folks as to what happened.

I'm such a goodie-two-shoes.

Dave
Just because I can...