Ever realize that you are sooo deep into a project and you don't have time for a seriously eloquent solution? Ever, then, come to the conclusion that you need to "just get it done" (otherwise known as the "JGID" methodology), and write up some hacky solution that works, but you *know* in your heart is some of the ugliest code in the history of mankind? You write code that you *know* is so bad that you put in a comment acknowledging the hack and de facto apologizing for it in the hopes on code review...

• Share This Post:
• 
• 
• 
•   Short Url: http://wblo.gs/WIT

OK, I am NOT trying to bait an argument here...I like both VB.Net and C#. I really do. I am totally comfortable in either of them. However, I am working on a project the needs me to work in C# and use Word Interop. I am stunned to find this is actually much harder in C# than VB.net. Ironically, C# is usually a much less verbose (more concise?) language, but not in this case. If I want to open a word doc in VB.Net, it's a simple as: Pretty easy. C#? Not so easy.... That's a lot of code to open a doc!...

• Share This Post:
• 
• 
• 
•   Short Url: http://wblo.gs/WHN

I am working on a tool to extract requirements from docs produced by our Business Analysts. It will then take the extracted requirements and put them in Quality Center as requirements. I thought this would be fairly straightforward, as the Requirements are handled in the same way that other objects types are. The objects are created via factory objects implementing IBaseFactory. Calling the AddItem method returns an instance of the object, either a new one or one pre-existing. The AddItem method...

• Share This Post:
• 
• 
• 
•   Short Url: http://wblo.gs/WG2

Our SCM guy wants to run some of our QTP scripts with MSBuild during the deployment process. That sounds great to me, but he then says the run has to return a DOS error code to indicate the status. He uses this error code to send e-mails to QA, Dev, etc. Well, this is a problem: QTP can easily be run from a command-line, but it doesn't return a DOS error code. Several tools exist out there to run QTP tests also, but have the same issue. You can even write VBScript or batch files, but no error codes....

• Share This Post:
• 
• 
• 
•   Short Url: http://wblo.gs/WFb

The final episodes of the Avatar were shown in a two-hour block on Nick tonight. Let me tell you; if you are an Avatar fan, you won't be disappointed. This was simply one of the best series in TV history, and the ending perfectly capped it off. Sheri and I have been watching it since pretty much the beginning, and we've watched the series flow. There are times when we are watching the series and one of us would say "Hey, remember when....". We've loved the show, and thought the series end episodes...

• Share This Post:
• 
• 
• 
•   Short Url: http://wblo.gs/WEO

The title is a quote from one of my bestest buddies about a very cool game. I've been waiting for her to post on it, but she's not done so yet. It's pretty clever game that lets you select the music for it, and dynamically builds the game based on it. Pretty slick, especially if you've a good graphics card. :-)

• Share This Post:
• 
• 
• 
•   Short Url: http://wblo.gs/WDv

***NO SPOILERS!!!!! *** The Dark Knight was simply everything I hoped it would be. The end, just like Batman Begins, brought tears to me eyes. It was just quintessential Batman with everything you'd expect. Christopher Nolan really, really "gets" the Batman. The beginning "catch us up" portion is a little tough to grasp (seems like it to my detail-oriented mind anyway) since it was kind of run through quickly. Once the initial players are setup and set in motion, though, the story moves quickly....

• Share This Post:
• 
• 
• 
•   Short Url: http://wblo.gs/WDu

I purchased our tickets for the midnight showing of The Dark Knight at our local theatre. I can hardly wait to see. I've read articles that suggest that 700 shows have sold out as of Tuesday. The hype around the movie is extreme, but I had all the hype I needed watching Batman Begins. When Gordon met on the rooftop at the end with Batman, then handed him the joker card...I felt chills. I knew the next one was going to be amazing. The classic meeting of Gordon and Bats to discuss the joker was the...

• Share This Post:
• 
• 
• 
•   Short Url: http://wblo.gs/WDW

Some of you who now me are most likely thinking Sheri and I are pregnant. Not yet, although we are still not not trying. No, the new addition is my new laptop. It is a Dell XPS-M1730. My old machine is getting a little old, and is to the point I can no longer maintain spending money on it. It's been a great machine, and was worth all the money I paid. Thank you, Blackbaud computer subsidy! However, it was just time. My kids have graduated from school, and we wanted to get them both laptops. Being...

• Share This Post:
• 
• 
• 
•   Short Url: http://wblo.gs/WCb

Recently, I was running Quality Center on a machine that was acting a little strange. I decided to wipe the QC install and force a download of new DLLs. Interestingly, TrendMicro (virus library updated 07/09/2005) reported that MercResourceLoader.dll contained the PAK_Generic.001 virus. Immediately, I ran a full scan of my machine and turned up nothing. I wiped the QC folder again to force yet another D/L, and got the same real-time scanning message. Re-ran full system scan; nothing found. Not sure...

• Share This Post:
• 
• 
• 
•   Short Url: http://wblo.gs/WBK

I rely heavily on descriptive programming (DP) in my scripting. QTP's object recognition (OR) can be a little quirky sometimes, and I find that using DP minimizes those quirks....usually. I upgraded one of our test machines from 9.2 to 9.5 recently, and promptly discovered a problem: You can no longer use the Windows handle to reliably refer to Browsers (possibly all objects). I have a function that opens browsers for me and logs the hwnd of the browser so that when I need to clean up after an error...

• Share This Post:
• 
• 
• 
•   Short Url: http://wblo.gs/W8a

I recently upgraded one of my lab machines to 9.5 to check out the new Delphi plug-in for QTP. I created a test in 9.5, and tried to open it in 9.2 later. I got the following: I've already run the patch to enable 9.2 to read 9.5 files (available on Hp site), so that's not likely the problem. I like my checkpoints to be in code rather than rely on QTP to manage them. If this test was crucial and you'd upgraded, you'd be in for some painful re-work to get it going. It's also why I prefer to use descriptive...

• Share This Post:
• 
• 
• 
•   Short Url: http://wblo.gs/W8Y