Archives for 2003

Documentum and .NET

Posted on 12/11/2003 to Developer Stuff

I am wondering if anyone out there has done any development with Documentum's Content Server and .NET?

I know that they've developed a Primary Interop Assembly for building applications using the Documentum Foundation Classes (DFC), but I've yet to give it a try.

This next week, we will be wrapping up an engagement with a member of Documentum's consulting services, and I will finally be able to dig into some code. So I am interested in hearing experiences from anyone who is already using .NET with Documentum.

Jacob And His First Mavericks Game

Posted on 11/17/2003 to Sports

Tonight I took my oldest son, Jacob, to his first Dallas Mavericks game (not counting the one he attended in the womb -- when we lived in Denver and the Mavs came to town to beat the Nuggets). I'd say that overall he enjoyed it. He even made it until halftime before asking when it would be time to go home.

The Mavericks won, by the way, beating the Portland Trailblazers 105-98. Oh, and Jacob got to witness a triple double in his first NBA game. Steve Nash pulled it off with 14 points, 12 assists, and 10 rebounds.

Here's the Jacob-Junk-O-Meter from the game:

1 Jumbo Hotdog
1 Chicken Finger Basket w/Fries
1 Small Sprite
1 Bag of Cotton Candy
1 Bag of Peanuts

All in all, not too bad. He did choose the peanuts over ice cream, a fried twinkie, a cookie, churros, and a pretzel.

A lady sitting behind us was nice enough to take this picture.

Introducing Caleb Lee Daneman

Posted on 11/8/2003 to Family & Friends

Caleb decided it was time to join us in the world at 9:52 PM, Wednesday, November 5th. Though he was born just over three weeks early, he is a healthy 7 lbs. 8.3 oz., and 19.25 inches long.

Both mom and Caleb are doing very well.

Caleb Lee Daneman

Software For Some Of Us Not Attending PDC

Posted on 10/27/2003 to Developer Stuff

I just came across the following on the MSDN Subscriber Downloads site:

Special Access to Longhorn and Whidbey PDC Release Code
Active MSDN Operating Systems, Professional, Enterprise, and Universal subscribers may request a set of software distributed at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2003 (PDC), including the preview versions of the "Longhorn" operating system and SDK, and Visual Studio "Whidbey".
Eligible MSDN Subscribers can request the previews by calling MSDN Customer Service. Certified Partners and Breadth ISV / Empower partners should contact their respective Service Centers for further assistance. Note that the preview package contains DVD media, and a DVD drive is required. Please allow 3-4 weeks for fulfillment.

RSS Feeds For Categories

Posted on 10/16/2003 to Weblog Applications

I am now generating RSS feeds for each category.

MyBlogRoll

Posted on 10/11/2003 to Developer Stuff

Yesterday, I came across a nice looking browser based RSS feed read -- MyBlogRoll.com, by Julien Cheyssial. It is in the early beta stages, but looks very promising.

nGallery

Posted on 10/11/2003 to Developer Stuff

While surfing around today, I came across nGallery. It is a .NET based web app for displaying pictures, organized into one or more photo albums. I've only installed it on my laptop, but based on the looks of it, I will soon be putting it on my server. By the way, it is freeware and open source.

Texas vs. K-State, ESPN College Game Day

Posted on 10/4/2003 to Sports

Just waiting for my ride down to campus. I'm in Austin for Texas' game with Kansas State. It's a big game, no doubt, with both teams in the top 20 and each with one unexpected, non-conference loss -- the loser can kiss their MNC hopes good bye. The game itself isn't until 2:30 PM, but we're heading down early for the ESPN College Game Day show, which is making their second ever appearance in Austin. So anyway, here's my ride, gotta go.

Hook'em!

Texas vs. Tulane

Posted on 9/26/2003 to Sports

Jacob and I will be heading down to Austin this weekend for the Longhorns game versus the Green Wave of Tulane. This will be Jacob's second Texas football game (he went with me to Texas vs. Iowa State last year), and his fourth major sporting event (he also attended two Texas Ranger games over the last two years). As any three-year old boy would be, he is super excited about the trip and the game.

Hook'em!

The Redemption Tour

Posted on 9/18/2003 to Sports

The 1990 Longhorns had the “Shock the Nation Tour,” and while a repeat of that year's regular season would indeed shock most college football fans and “experts” across the nation, I've decided to label the rest of this season as the “Redemption Tour.” The first stop on the tour is this Saturday, in Houston, where Horns will face Rice -- yet another former Southwest Conference foe.

Saturday's game is the first opportunity for the Horns to begin the healing process that is so desperately needed -- for themselves, the coaches, and the fans -- in the wake of the blind-sided tail whipping they took last Saturday in Austin at the hands of the Razorbacks. Hopefully the healing has already begun in the locker room, where just this week the team's Leadership Committee (the fact that there is such a thing, even if it was just created, is good sign) banned all player interviews until after Saturday's game. Of course motive is always a question. Did the players make this move because they were tired of all the questions, or because they truly needed to focus on the task at hand? Only they know for certain.

I do have one concern regarding the locker room:

Receiver Roy Williams said when he watches film from UT's first two games, he sees room for Benson to run.

"We just have to run the ball," Williams said. "The holes are there."
[Chip Brown, Dallas Morning News]

Typically comments like this help to divide the room - not bring a team closer together, and they certainly don't explain the lack of a running game when other backs are in there.

Anyone who watched the game closely saw that there were a number of issues, starting with blocking, tackling, and holding onto the ball. Yet despite the problems, Texas was a defensive stop or two away from pulling out a win. That isn't meant to detract from the Razorback's performance, they played a heck of a game, and took advantage of the opportunities given to them -- rather, it is to make the point that as well as Arkansas played, and as poorly as Texas played, that is all that stood between Texas and a victory.

It is my hope that the Texas coaching staff and players don't see it in such simple terms. To do so would hinder the root of the problems from being addressed, which would ruin the "Redemption Tour."

Texas vs. Arkansas - Rivalry Renewed?

Posted on 9/10/2003 to Sports

Earlier today, I came across a new(?) website for college football fans - FanBlogs.com (while doing a little research for a planned Longhorn fans weblog site). After clicking on the link for Big 12 related posts, this particular post caught my attention, and it got me to thinking (scary, I know)...

Until this past week, I had actually forgotten about Nutt's "Horns down" antics.

As a Longhorn fan and season-ticket holder, what I remember most about the last meeting between these two schools is that it was the third loss in row (lost to A&M after their bonfire accident, and to Nebraska in the Big12 title game -- after beating them the previous three meetings, including earlier that season), bringing a painful end to what had been a very nice season. I also recall being very disappointed in some key Texas players who were suspended the week before the game. They let down the team and the school big time.

As a fan, I think it is great to have the renewal of this rivalry, but from what I've read, an ongoing home-and-home series with Arkansas is unlikely (assuming they don't join the Big12):

When Brown first proposed adding Arkansas to the schedule, he called Royal, who thought Brown had lost his mind. Royal was concerned that giving Arkansas any possible entry into Texas for recruiting purposes was a bad idea.

Sad News From Lance Armstrong & Family

Posted on 9/4/2003 to Sports

Lance Armstrong and his children were at the Texas football game this past Sunday to be recognized for his most recent Tour de France victory, as well as to toss the coin. Absent from this outing was his wife Kristen. At the time, we wondered what the deal was, afterall, when we last heard from the Armstrong family, everything seemed to be coming back together for them. Now I know why it was just Lance and the kids.

It's My Birthday

Posted on 8/30/2003 to In General

Heading down to Austin in the morning for a nice long weekend with my sister, brother-in-law, mom, step-dad, and of course my wife and 3-year old son. Birthday festivities Saturday evening, and then the real reason for the trip happens Sunday evening - Texas Longhorn football. Texas opens the season at 6 PM Sunday against New Mexico State.

Hook'em!

Mavs and Warriors Swap 8 Players

Posted on 8/15/2003 to Sports

Ever since the Mavericks season ended in heartbreaking fashion to the Spurs in the Western Conference Finals, I've been counting the days to the start of next season. Along the way, I've also been counting the major off-season milestones, such as the date when teams can start talking to free agents, as well as the date teams can start signing free agents. To my dismay, the Mavericks didn't land any of their targets, and it looked like they would go into next season with essentially the same squad that finished last season.

How quickly things can change...

It seems that the Mavs and Warriors agreed to an 8 player deal tonight, pending league approval. The main players in the trade are Nick Van Exel from Dallas for the Warriors' Antawn Jamison. Also being sent from Dallas in the deal are Avery Johnson, Popeye Jones, and Evan Eschmeyer, in exchange for Danny Fortson, Chris Mills, and Jiri Welsch.

I had hoped that Dallas would be able to do a deal without losing Van Exel, and so I was a little disappointed when I heard the news. However, I actually like this trade (though I have reservations about Jamison's contract - 6 years and $69 million remaining on his contract), especially if Fortson can return to form after some injury problems over the last couple of years.

Time will tell.

Single-Character Wildcard And ADO.NET

Posted on 8/14/2003 to Developer Stuff

Why isn't there a single-character wildcard for use in ADO.NET's Expression property?

I came across this recently when I needed to filter a DataView (using the RowFilter property of the DataView) so that only records containing Value LIKE '2__' (underscore is single-character wildcard in T-SQL). This way I get 200, 201, 202, 203,..., 299, but not 2000, etc.

After a thorough review of the MS docs and my ADO.NET book from Wrox (which incorrectly states that * is for single character wildcards), I decided to just use the LEN() function available in Expressions and limit my results to LEN(Value) = 3 (based on example above).

Then end result is something like this:

MyDataView.RowFilter = "Element='Topic' AND Value LIKE '" & Chapter & "%' AND LEN(Value) = " & TopicNumberLength

Sure would have been nicer to just have a single-character wildcard.

One Tough Dog

Posted on 8/12/2003 to In General

A dog in St. Louis survived the gas chamber...

Problems With The Power

Posted on 8/8/2003 to Site Information

Hopefully anyone with a website or email hosted on one of my servers was sleeping between the hours of 4 AM and 6:30 AM Central Time this morning. On the off chance that one of you wasn't, and tried accessing something, my apologies. It seems that the power company is having problems. We were completely without power for over two hours, and it has been back on intermittently since.

And for the smart ass, yes, my servers are on UPS. Of course the "U" in "UPS" is true only as long as the batteries last, and I am not a rich enough man to have batteries to last me 2 and a half hours.

Oh, and by the way...when the average high temperature as been above 100 degrees for several days in a row, like it has been here in North Texas, including the last couple which were closer to 110 than 100, and the lows are barely making it into the lower 80's, the servers were the least of my worries -- I wanted the damn AC back on!

RSS.NET

Posted on 7/30/2003 to Developer Stuff

I am so out of touch. I just came across RSS.NET -- An open-source .NET class library for RSS feeds.

Dog Days of Summer, Part 3

Posted on 7/30/2003 to Sports

Just over a month until another season of Texas Longhorn football gets under way. Of course, I will be in Austin to watch Texas take on New Mexico State on August 31st.

Dog Days of Summer, Part 2

Posted on 7/30/2003 to Family & Friends

Jacob turned 3 a week and a half ago. We had a nice party with family and friends. This was the first party for him where he had a say in who was invited (kids from school). It seems like 3 or 4 of them showed up. We had a bounce house, hot dogs, and cake -- a good time all around.

Thanks to everyone for helping celebrate Jacob's birthday, he had a blast!

Dog Days of Summer, Part 1

Posted on 7/30/2003 to Sports

Well, here we are, the end of July...

Lance Armstrong won yet another Tour de France, his fifth in a row. Of course anyone who followed this year's edition knows that it was not really "yet another" race, as it was by far the most exciting, entertaining, and closest race in many years. I am hoping that one day we learn the "other problems" that Armstrong alluded to in various interviews (I've heard it might be back problems). Also, I can't wait for his new book, Every Second Counts, to come out. You can read the first chapter here.

By the way, Lance still has some racing left in him this season. He won the Altstad-Kriterium in Austria yesterday, and according to his website, he will be racing in the German Karlsruhe 2-man Time Trial on August 2nd. His site also mentions that he and Jan Ullrich will square off against each other (as well as other riders) in the 1-day World Cup event, the Championship of Zurich on August 17th.

Finally, don't miss the "Defining Moments of the 2003 Tour" show on OLN this Thursday at 8PM ET/PT. It features an exclusive interview with Lance.

What If...

Posted on 7/24/2003 to Sports

Sunday's stage of the Tour de France is practically a parade...all ceremonial -- at least until they get down to the end, then the sprinters come out. But what if the time gap between Lance Armstrong and Jan Ullrich stays around one minute (or even less) going into the final stage? Would Jan attack? Would USPS set a real high pace on what is normally a very leisurely day, so that any attack would be discouraged?

After Saturday's final Time Trial, I think they will either be neck and neck, or Lance will have added another minute or so to his lead. If he has added another minute to his lead, then I think Sunday's stage is a nice slow ride into Paris, but if they are neck and neck, how exciting would it be to see these two great cyclists go head-to-head, marking each other all the way into Paris? How about USPS and Ullrich's team, Bianchi time-trialing all the way in, and then a sprint shoot-out between Lance and Jan?

Whatever happens, it is bound to be exciting!

Tyler Hamilton Wins Stage 16

Posted on 7/23/2003 to Sports

The amazing Tyler Hamilton became only the 6th American to win a stage in the Tour de France, winning Stage 16 today.

Hamilton, who has been riding with a broken collarbone since crashing at the end of the 1st stage, went out alone, first bridging the gap from the peleton to a small breakaway, and then dropping the breakaway. At the end of the day, Hamilton finished about 2 minutes ahead of the peleton, and has moved up from 7th to 6th in the overall classification.

As good as this year's race has been, imagine what it would be had Hamilton not broken his collarbone in Stage 1 and had Beloki not crashed out in Stage 10...

Armstrong Retains the Yellow Jersey

Posted on 7/14/2003 to Sports

16 H 50 - Armstrong Goes Cross Country
It's like a Nike ad... Lance has cut out a hairpin turn and raced across a field to rejoin the peloton after racing off the road to avoid the fallen Beloki.
[www.letour.com]

This was the newsflash from www.letour.com after the #2 man in the overall standings, Joseba Beloki, fell in the final kilometers of today's stage -- a downhill finish -- as he and Amrstrong were chasing down the leader, Alexandre Vinokourov, who had a 10 second advantage at the time of the crash.

Unfortunately, the crash has ended Beloki's Tour. Fortunately, Armstrong was able to think quickly on his seat and avoid crashing himself. Armstrong now leads today's stage winner, Alexandre Vinokourov, by only 21 seconds.

USPS Wins Team Time Trial

Posted on 7/9/2003 to Sports

Today was a good day for cycling, at least it was if you are a fan of the United States Postal Service Team. The USPS team won today's stage of the Tour de France, which was a team time trial, by 30 seconds over the ONCE team. At the end of the day, USPS team member, Victor Hugo Peña became the first Colombian to wear the Yellow Jersey. The Alps are two days away.

Here are the overall standings for the Tour, after today's race (note: the top 8 spots belong to USPS team members):

 1. Victor Hugo Pena (Colombia)            13 hours, 44 minutes
 2. Lance Armstrong (USA)                       1 second behind
 3. Viatcheslav Ekimov (Russia)                    00:05
 4. George Hincapie (USA)                          00:05
 5. Jose Luis Rubiera (Spain)                      00:23
 6. Roberto Heras (Spain)                          00:27
 7. Pavel Padrnos (Czech Republic)                 00:27
 8. Floyd Landis (USA)                             00:28
 9. Joseba Beloki (Spain)                          00:33
10. Jorg Jaksche (Germany)                         00:38
11. Manuel Beltran (Spain)                         00:39
12. Jan Ullrich (Germany)                          00:39
13. Isidro Nozal (Spain)                           00:44
14. Angel Vicioso (Spain)                          00:51
15. Tobias Steinhauser (Germany)                   00:51
16. Mikel Pradera (Spain)                          00:58
17. Angel Casero (Spain)                           00:58
18. Jose Azevedo (Portugal)                        01:01
19. Marcos Serrano (Spain)                         01:04
20. Vladimir Karpets (Russia)                      01:11

Necho, or Whatever it's Called

Posted on 7/3/2003 to Weblog Applications

I've been almost completely out of the loop on weblogs, RSS, syndication, etc. for the past few weeks, so I am just now starting to digest Necho.

My first pass at having my weblog app generate an Necho file is here.

Harry Potter and Prepping for MCSD

Posted on 6/26/2003 to Developer Stuff

This past weekend I made a bit of a mistake. You see, I was at the grocery store Saturday morning picking up some things for breakfast, when I caught a glimpse of the new Harry Potter book as I was checking out. On impulse, I threw it into the basket. So much for getting any studying in for the next few days.

Fortunately, I finished the book last night and will be getting back to studying any time now. I just wish that I could plow through my exam prep text as quickly as I made it through the Harry Potter book.

The Certification Bug

Posted on 6/16/2003 to Developer Stuff

Well, it looks like I've caught the certification bug. Becoming an MCSD is something that I've been wanting to do for a couple of years or so, but I always was able to find an excuse to put it off. Well, I am putting it off no more!

This afternoon I took the plunge and bought some Transcender exams and ordered a couple of prep books. The web app exam is up first. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

The EasyDNS Saga Conclusion

Posted on 6/16/2003 to Reviews

what I would like to offer as compensation for your inconvennience is a new domain or renewal of a domain with your choice of service level. Please let me know if you find this acceptable and how you would like to proceed.

The above is from an email that I got from EasyDNS this afternoon. It arrived after I emailed them to say so long, and inform them that they had lost a customer.

I guess I will go ahead and stick around a while longer, seen as how I don't have anything expiring for at least 8 months.

Potential DNS Provider & Registrar

Posted on 6/12/2003 to Reviews

RegisterSite.com looks like it has potential. Yearly cost per domain name is the same - $35 for domain registration, and it includes advanced DNS functionality.

Of course, I could just go back to doing DNS myself.

EasyDNS Bad

Posted on 6/12/2003 to Reviews

I use a company called EasyDNS for nearly all of my domains. Primarily for DNS services, but for many, they are also my registrar. In some cases I've registered a new domain with them, in other cases I've transferred existing domains to them. Recently, I had a problem with them.

Last week, I initiated a domain transfer from Register.com to EasyDNS (openSRS). I paid the $15 invoice (which extends my domain registration out another year) at the same time, as I want nothing holding things up. Typically, within a couple of hours, I would get an email from openSRS, asking me to confirm the transfer. Once that is done, I would then get an email from Register.com asking me to confirm (usually within a couple of hours of confirming the openSRS email). After a couple of days it would be done. But not this time.

5 days and several emails later, I had yet to receive the confirmation email from openSRS. Being that EasyDNS is a reseller for them, that is who I emailed for information. Time and time again I was told I should be getting the email later that day. I never got it. Finally, I explicitly asked for them to contact openSRS and make sure the order had made it to them. Same bit of run around, with a "if it hasn't arrived by tomorrow, let us know and we will contact them." That wasn't good enough, seen as how I was asking them to contact them today. So I ask how I can get ahold of openSRS directly. A little while later, I get a reply saying they had contacted openSRS and there had been an issue with the transfer request, so it was resubmitted. What do you know, shortly after that, I get a confirmation email. I confirm. A little later, the confirmation email from Register.com. Oops, they are having problems. I contact their customer service. They responsd, saying to confirm the transfer in the body of an email reply to them. I do. Today I get an email back saying it has been rejected due to my domain now being expired. So now, I must pay Register.com $35 to renew, instead of the $15 to EasyDNS. Had it gone through like it was supposed to, everything would have been complete before the domain expired, and I would not be out the extra $20.

So I email Register.com and EasyDNS, letting both parties know all the details, and letting Register.com know that if I must pay the $35, they will never get another cent from me or anyone else whose decisions in this area I influence. I then let EasyDNS know that should I be forced to pay the $35, and should they not pick up the added cost I am incurring, they will not get any of this business, and that I would begin transferring all of my domains elsewhere -- for DNS service and domain registrar service.

So far I've heard from EasyDNS. They see two solutions:

There are two options at this stage - we can issue a refund for the $15.00usd paid to issue the transfer, or you can contact Register.com and find out how long they will hold onto your renewed domain before they will allow it to be transferred away - the time frame is usually 45 days.

Seems like to me that the $15 should be refunded no matter what at this point, since they aren't going to be able to provide me registrar service in the near future. Looks like they completely missed the part about how they won't be getting this business if they don't do the right thing and cover the difference, since they don't even mention it.

Well, I replied, reiterating what they need to do to keep my business. We'll see what happens, in the meantime, I will begin looking for a new company to provide DNS service, and as domains register via EasyDNS/openSRS come up for renewal, I will be transferring them elsewhere.

Smart Kid

Posted on 6/6/2003 to Family & Friends

I was home yesterday with Jacob (my almost 3 year-old son). He had to stay home because he had a fever when he was picked up from school on Wednesday (ok, it's really glorified daycare), and they have a policy that didn't allow him to come back until he had gone 24 hours without a fever (fyi: he was feeling ok by yesterday morning).

Early afternoon comes around and it is time for his nap. I tell him "you can take a nap in your room, or you can take a nap in the living room, your choice." He responds with "living room, but I can't see the TV with my eyes shut."

*smart ass*

Community Starter Kit Part 2

Posted on 6/3/2003 to Developer Stuff

It was great to meet Ruth Walther, both she and Stephen are relieved now that the new version of the Community Starter Kit is complete and unleashed.
[Eli Robillard's World of Blog.]

Oh man, how did I miss this? I guess this is what happens when you "disconnect" for a week or two. And just when I thought that I was done with the site I used the beta of the CSK on...

Zolon

Posted on 6/2/2003 to Eats and Drinks

I went with a couple of co-workers to check out the latest addition to the downtown Fort Worth restaurant scene today, Zolon an everyday bistro.

The food was outstanding. I had the Western Salad and Three (pizza, see the menu). I also had a taste of Four (again, pizza, see the menu). Everything was delicious. Very fresh, and very tasty. Almost everything is offered in half-orders, and they suggest you go that route -- mixing and matching items to suit your taste.

If you find yourself around Sundance Square in Fort Worth, and are in need of a meal, check out Zolon.

California Here We Come

Posted on 5/23/2003 to In General

We (me, wife, and son) are headed to the bay area tomorrow (or is it today already?), for a long weekend. The purpose is to celebrate my Grandmother's 80th birthday and to attend her side of the family's annual reunion. To my knowledge, I've never been to this thing, but it should be fun. We'll be seeing some folks that I haven't seen in several years to never.

All the family stuff takes place on Saturday, the rest of the trip is to show my son the sites and just relax -- which shouldn't be hard, as we are staying with family in Marin county (Tiburon to be exact).

As might be expected, my son won't stop talking about all that he is going to see...sea lions, cable cars, boats, the ocean, big bridges, etc. He even has it in his mind that we are going to see a shark. Too much time spent watching Animal Planet, I suspect -- though when I was at Stinson Beach back in '99, they had recently had a shark sighting, so you never know. Oh, and he wants some pizza.

We'll spend a fare amount of time in San Francisco, and thought about North Beach Pizza, as it is a place I've tried before, and liked, but I am looking for alternatives. Viable locations include San Francisco, Marin, and all the way up to St. Helena, or over in the East Bay, say Berkley area.

Cool SQL Tool

Posted on 5/17/2003 to Developer Stuff

I just came across SQLBuddy via a post at Harry Pierson's weblog.

At first glance, it seems to be a fairly usable replacement for Query Analyzer. I will try to use it exclusively over the next couple of weeks and see how it goes.

Community Starter Kit

Posted on 5/16/2003 to Developer Stuff

I've finally taken some time to look through one of the ASP.NET Starter Kits, specifically the Community Starter Kit (CSK). I needed to put together a fairly robust, dynamic site in a short amount of time, and thought that this kit might give me some ideas. As it turned out, I decided to just use the Community framework.

A design had already been done for this particular site, so all I needed to do was create a theme out of the design and assign it to the site -- simple enough. Then I plugged in the controls that are included with the CSK, tweaking a few along the way, and of course adding a couple of my own. A few days later, what do you know, I've nearly got a fully funtional, dynamically generated site that is going to be super easy for the site owner to CRUD content.

There are still a couple of bits of fuctionality to modify, but this is way better than having to do all of it from scratch. I'll put up a link to the site once it is complete.

Connectivity Problems

Posted on 5/10/2003 to Site Information

This morning, I noticed that things were taking forever to load -- I blamed it on the low quality wireless link I was using at the time. Several hours later, and now with a much better wireless link, pages were still loading slowly.

Move to the desktop, and a wired connection. No change, still very, very slow.

On to running some speed tests... < 3 kbps down!!! (Upstream speeds seemed normal.)

Call in to tech support. D/FW customers are experiencing extremely slow connections, estimated fix time 5:30 PM.

So that's the story. If you try hitting this site, or any of the others I host, and they seem slow, now you know.

[Listening to: It's Been Awhile - Staind - Break the Cycle (04:26)]

BlogShares

Posted on 5/8/2003 to Weblog Applications

For those of you with weblogs of your own, I am sure you are already well familiar with BlogShares, so I won't spend any time explaining it here. If you aren't familiar with it, click the link and check it out.

What I really want to tell you about is that my weblog is finally trading on BlogShares.

[Listening to: Dead Man Blues - Jelly Roll Morton - The Best Of Ken Burns Jazz (03:15)]

I've Been Discovered!

Posted on 5/6/2003 to Day Job

No, I am not talking about some talent I've been hiding away, or anything like that.

I think it is time to add one of those "I speak for myself and not my company" disclaimer thingies.

Server Migration Complete

Posted on 5/5/2003 to Site Information

Finally, the server migration is complete. That was relatively painless. If you notice anything odd, let me know.

Server Migration, Part 2

Posted on 5/4/2003 to Site Information

Server migration is nearly complete (everything is running on a temporary server at the moment). It looks like there has been an issue with permissions on my RSS feed. I am fixing that now (thanks to Brad for pointing it out).

Migrating to Windows Server 2003

Posted on 5/3/2003 to Technology

I'm preparing to migrate my webserver to Windows Server 2003. Seen as how I am going to do a clean install, I needed an easy way to move all the various websites off of the server and over onto a temporary sever. At first, this seemed like a daunting task, but I remembered bookmarking Tools and Documentation for Upgrading to Windows Server 2003. I wish I could remember where I first saw a link to this, so that I could give proper credit, but it escapes me at the moment. Anyway, included in the tools is the very handy IIS 6.0 Migration Tool. This tool automates many of the steps required in moving web sites from IIS 4, IIS 5, or IIS 6 to a clean installation of IIS 6 running on Windows Server 2003.

So far, so good. The only downside that I have seen so far, is that you must run this tool once for each site that you want to migrate. Naturally, I retrieved a list of the sites to migrate from IIS 5 and have now put together a nice little batch files to take care of all of the sites.

Let's see...mail server has been migrated, so all that's left is the database. Fun.

[Listening to: Daylight - Coldplay - A Rush of Blood to the Head (05:28)]

I'm A Spatial Thinker

Posted on 5/2/2003 to Cool Stuff

You are a Spatial Thinker
Spatial Thinkers: Tend to think in pictures, and can develop good mental models of the physical world. Think well in three dimensions Have a flair for working with objects
Like other spatial thinkers, Leonardo had a talent for designing buildings and machinery. He also invented a new style of map making
Other Spatial Thinkers include Pablo Picasso, Michelangelo, Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Careers which suit Spatial Thinkers include Mechanic, Photographer, Artist, Architect, Engineer, Builder, Set designer

The results of this quiz (link courtesy of Brad Wilson) pretty much validates the results from a series of tests that my parents had me take in 1993, after I dropped out of college.

[Listening to: Somebody - Depeche Mode - 101 (04:36)]

Absolutely Shocking...

Posted on 5/1/2003 to In General

White only prom returns to Georgia

I was firing up my browser a little while ago and came across the above headline on the front page of MSN. I was shocked into clicking. I can't believe that in this country, in this day and age, that there would be a segregated dance at a public school (or any school). The fact that the school isn't actually sponsoring this segregated prom is of little consequence, as school officials are partly to blame for the way it is being done -- they wanted to avoid the problems arising from interracial dating. And what about the parents? And the kids? This is an outrage. I only wish that some of these young racists had been interviewed so that we could gain some insight into their warped minds. The people of Taylor County, Georgia, who are responsible for this, should be ashamed.

[Listening to: We Shall Be Free - Garth Brooks - The Chase (03:49)]

Nice Logo...

Posted on 5/1/2003 to In General

Hey Brad, how long have you had the new logo up? It looks real nice.

Safari Bookshelf

Posted on 5/1/2003 to Technology

In case I haven't mentioned this before, if you work with technology for a living, take a look at O'Reilly's Safari Bookshelf. At a minimum, sign up for a free 30-day trial. If you can swing it, buy a subscription, or get your company to buy one for you. It is well worth it.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Safari, it is an online library of more than 1,400 (currently -- they add more all the time) of the best technology books. The books are from familiar publishers like Addison Wesley, SAMS, QUE, New Riders, Microsoft Press, O'Reilly, and several others. The features include advanced search capabilities, a list of recent searches, recent pages views, notes, and bookmarks. There is a search to locate specific titles (by Author, ISBN, TItle, or Publisher, as well as a tree view for drilling down by category and for browsing the contents of a title itself.

My company bought subscriptions for us over a year ago. I didn't use it for the first couple of months, but it has become an indispensable resource since then. Sure, the content isn't quite as portable as a real book, but you can print out individual pages. Besides, when you are sitting at your desk, it probably doesn't matter if you physically have the book in hand or not -- the most important thing for me is to be able to find what I need quickly. Oh, it's also allowed me to stop lugging so many books back and forth between work and home.

To give you an idea of the quality of titles available, here is what is currently on my Safari Bookshelf:

[Listening to: Tin Pan Alley - Stevie Ray Vaughan - In the Beginning (07:41)]

Dire Days For The Dallas Sport Fan

Posted on 5/1/2003 to Sports

I should have known better than to clear my Wednesday evening schedule to watch these two teams play.

At least the Rangers have been winning lately.

[Listening to: Clocks - Coldplay - A Rush of Blood to the Head (05:08)]

More on Weblog API's

Posted on 4/29/2003 to Weblog Applications

Well, I've nearly implemented all of the functionality needed for me to use w.bloggar with my weblog app. Honestly, implementing these XML-RPC API's is such a pain in my ass. It just seems so backwards compared to building web services in .NET.

Oh well, what's done is done.

XML-RPC

Posted on 4/28/2003 to Weblog Applications

Back in the early days of my weblog app, I came across Charles Cook's excellent XML-RPC.NET library and used it to ping weblogs.com whenever there was a new post.

Now, I think I will delve into it once again -- this time to implement the MetaWeblogAPI and the BloggerAPI.

the World as a Blog

Posted on 4/24/2003 to Weblog Applications

This is so cool. Sit back and watch the world blog its way around the clock. Now you know you simply must get those geotags and that RSS autodiscovery machinery into your blog.
[Sean McGrath, CTO, Propylon]

Indeed, this is one of the coolest things I've seen lately.

What's A Sports Fan(atic) To Do?

Posted on 4/17/2003 to Sports

Oh man. The Lakers won. Portland lost. The Dallas Mavericks went from likely opening the playoffs against the Lakers on Sunday afternoon to definitely opening the playoffs against Portland on Saturday night.

The Dallas Stars could be trying to wrap up their opening round series against the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday night (or worst case - fight off elimination).

It looks like both games start at 7 PM CDT, though I've seen both also listed with 8 PM CDT start times.

What is a Dallas sports fan(atic) to do? Guess I need to get the TV and cable setup so that the second tuner works for PIP -- or maybe just put two TVs next to each other. I suppose I could go to a sports bar.

It could be worse...the Stars could have done like the Red Wings (4 and done), and the Mavs could be like the Mavs of the '90's -- no playoffs.

My HttpModule for Referrers

Posted on 4/15/2003 to Developer Stuff

The HttpModule that I use for tracking referrers broke when I went to v1.1 of the .NET Framework. It was very odd -- all of a sudden I was getting a message about the connection string property not being initialized. This happened most of the time, but not every time. To make matters worse, the db code is the same there as it is in the rest of the weblog app, which doesn't appear to have had this issue.

It seems to be working now. I reworked the code a bit. I'll be keeping an eye on it.

ASP.NET Calendar Control, Revisited

Posted on 4/15/2003 to Developer Stuff

Previously I mentioned the issues I was having with the ASP.NET Calendar Control, specifically styles. Somewhere along the way I read that it was being addressed in v1.1. Now that I am finally running v1.1 on my server, it is time to do some testing on this darned thing.

Since about half of the hits I get from Google involve searches relating to the calendar control, I will report back here as soon as the testing is done.

Visual Studio .NET 2003 Available On MSDN

Posted on 4/10/2003 to Developer Stuff

In case you haven't already heard the news, Visual Studio .NET 2003 is now available for download for MSDN Subscribers. Currently, it looks like there is only the full install available, no ISO images. Of course I am downloading it now, I can wait until later on to get disc images.

I do wonder if it is going to need a key. I didn't see one listed. Maybe it will use the same key as VS .NET v1.0. It would suck to have spent all this time downloading it and then not have a key to install it.

Harvester

Posted on 4/5/2003 to Developer Stuff

lots of people are interested in harvester. cool. :)
[Objective]

Add my name to the list of people that can't wait to try out Chris' Harverster. From his screenshots, it looks like a winner. How about an early preview, Chris?

MSDN Code4fun Article

Posted on 4/1/2003 to Developer Stuff

Build a tool that uses the System.Net namespace of the Microsoft .NET Framework to check a POP3 e-mail account for unread messages. [MSDN: Visual Basic .NET]

This does look like fun!

Windows Server 2003, Part 2

Posted on 3/31/2003 to Developer Stuff

I went ahead and rebuilt my dev server late Saturday night with the final version of Windows Server 2003. Everything went smooth, as expected (this server has been running Windows Server 2003 since beta 1). Now I just need to load some of my web apps on it and start testing.

Now, if VS.NET 2003 would hurry up and RTM...

Windows Server 2003

Posted on 3/29/2003 to Technology

I've been running Windows Server 2003 RC2 on a dev server for some time, and have been eagerly awaiting RTM. After hearing yesterday that Windows 2003 Server had gone gold, I started keeping my eye out on the MSDN Subscriber downloads page for it. About mid-afternoon today, I logged on to see if the final version was there yet, and what do you know, it was!

I've pulled down the Standard Edition and the Web Edition. I'll probably pull down the Enterprise Edition tomorrow.

Thank goodness my MSDN Universal Subscription was just renewed.

Searching The Weblog Part 2

Posted on 3/13/2003 to Weblog Applications

I mentioned earlier that I was going to start on this this past weekend, but better late than never. Anyway, I've begun to play around with implementing search functionality for the weblog. At the moment it is a very basic search that matches everything entered, and only the body of an entry is searched.

You can see it for yourself over at what is becoming the testing ground for this site.

Of course I've got a few things to work out still, but the search functionality should find it's way into production shortly.

Splishin' And A Splashin'

Posted on 3/10/2003 to Cool Stuff

A little humor for all parents out there, but especially for newer parents.

FYI: If you are at work, or in a public place, put headphones on, or at least turn down the volume initially.

Enjoy!

Gruntin' n Dumpin Lil' Dumplin'

Doing The Dual Monitor Thing

Posted on 3/8/2003 to Technology

After reading Brad's post on working with a dual monitor setup, and after hearing good things about it from my friend Zach (no site at the moment), I decided to give it a whirl. Fortunately I had an extra monitor and video card, so I was able to try out the dual monitor setup without laying out any cash.

I don't have the two monitors situated ideally at the moment, but even so, I don't see how I will be able to not utilize this setup going forward. It just makes sense. So now I am going to look for a new monitor, most likely an LCD. Brad likes his new ViewSonic, and I've heard good things about the Samsung models.

For those of you who have made the switch from CRT to LCD, did you move down in viewable area, stay the same, or go up? If you moved down, are you happy with that decision, or do you wish that you'd have gone with a larger LCD? Are you using a dual monitor setup?

Update: U of Texas Database Hack

Posted on 3/7/2003 to Security

This is an update to this post.

The following link provides the range of SSN's that might have been compromised.

https://www.utexas.edu/datatheft/affected.html

Searching The Weblog

Posted on 3/7/2003 to Weblog Applications

Does anyone implement search on their blogs? The .NET weblog systems I have seen don't, neither does Radio. But Sam Ruby's does. I would think that search would be a useful feature. Is it? If not, why not?
[Harry Pierson's DevHawk Weblog]

I think that I will finally stop putting off adding this feature.

University of Texas Database Compromised

Posted on 3/6/2003 to Security

Important information to be aware of if you are a current/former student or current/former employee of the University of Texas.

http://www.utexas.edu/datatheft/

New Look Archives

Posted on 3/5/2003 to Weblog Applications

Previously, I discussed using the ASP.NET Calendar Control as an additional means of navigating my archives.

Since then, there has been a lot of talk about what is the best (or preferred) method for presenting archives and navigating them, and it seems that most people don't care for the calendar method (at least not as the only method).

Personally, I do like the Calendar method for navigating, as long as it isn't the only method. I especially like the ability to select a range of dates using the ASP.NET Calendar Control -- such as everything for a month, week, or day, so you aren't forced to click each individual day to view posts.

Anyway, I've always provided the ability to navigate archives by month using the simple Archives list you see on this page. I even show the number of posts for a given month. Prior to right now, clicking a link in the Archive list would display all the posts, in their entirety for that month. Now, I list only the titles of each post and provide a link to each individual post, as others have done.

I am not sure which presentation method I prefer. When you click an Archive link for a specific month, do you want to have all the posts right there in front of you, or do you prefer just to see their titles, and perhaps even a summary?

My Inner Dragon

Posted on 3/4/2003 to Cool Stuff

A SILVER Dragon Lies Beneath!

I took the Inner Dragon Online Quiz and found out I am a Silver Dragon on the inside. My Inner Dragon is to dragons what the Ranger is to humans. Like all metallic dragons, Silvers rigidly adhere to an internal code of conduct. Each Silver, however, must develop their code individually, a fact which explains their unique dispositions and actions. Silvers are often considered shadows dwelling on the periphery of dragon culture (much like human Rangers), but they can always be counted upon to speak the truth and help their allies. Because no one but a Silver knows what they'll do next, their alignment is "Chaotic Neutral."

Being a Silver isn't all shady head-games, though. I possess considerable intelligence and self-confidence (whether they manifest themselves or not :P ). Magic isn't really my bag, but I'm awfully good at slipping in and out undetected. Which, by the way, is probably due to my slightly-below-average size. My favorable attributes are dependability, durability, problem-solving, mist, and pewter. Like my human counterpart - the Ranger - I'm a superb weapons user and have an especially good command of my icy breath weapon. I know I might be tough to understand at times, but that's just my way.

Cabin Fever

Posted on 2/26/2003 to In General

We've been iced in here for the past two days. All of North Texas has been under a layer of sleet and ice since Monday.

Though I love winter weather, and really miss the quantity and quality of winter weather that we had while living in Colorado, there are a couple of things I had forgotten about that I absolutely don't miss:

Constantly cleaning the dogs feet off when she comes in.
Forgetting that my shoes are covered in ice and tracking it into the house, then walking in a puddle of water a little later with just my socks on.
The extra time it takes to get anywhere.

On the other hand, I love that this sort of weather shuts things down here. I really enjoyed the two days off from work, and the time spent with my son.

Divine No More?

Posted on 2/22/2003 to Technology

Unable to staunch continual financial hemorrhaging, divine is reportedly close to declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy (perhaps even today). As a premier CMS package, we think divine's...
[Trends and Features from CMSWatch]

I'm very glad that I helped steer my employer away from Divine's CMS when we were looking to replace our content repository recently.

Amazing Artwork

Posted on 2/20/2003 to Cool Stuff

Brian Northum pointed me to this site: http://www.hybridmedicalanimation.com.

The site contains some incredible medical animations and illustrations.

FW .NET Users Group

Posted on 2/19/2003 to Developer Stuff

Rob Howard is presenting at tonight's Fort Worth .NET Users Group meeting. Looks like he will be talking about ASP.NET Performance Best Practices.

I've not attended a FWDNUG meeting since I went to the very first one, but I will not miss this one.

Out of curiosity, if you are a .NET developer in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, shoot me a note either via the comment system here, or email. If you belong to either DDNUG or FWDNUG, let me know as well. Also, if you have a personal weblog, or site, please include the url. I am just curious at to whether any local .NET developers are coming across my site.

Stacey's Cafe

Posted on 2/11/2003 to Eats and Drinks

Went to Stacey's Cafe for dinner this evening. Scott Adams is a co-owner. Surprisingly, aside from the menu (you must read the menu, which is available at their website), there was very little to tip you off that Scott Adams is involved in any way.

By the way, the food was really good, I had the filet mignon -- cooked to perfection.

Well, I Made It

Posted on 2/9/2003 to In General

I made it safe and sound to pleasant Pleasanton, California. The flight was quite rough, but the scenery was amazing. I had abosultely gorgeous views of the Grand Canyon. One of these days I will have to visit on the ground.

Pleasanton seems nice enough. I did some driving around after checking in to my hotel. There's a nice little downtown area with a lot of places to eat and shops -- it was very busy when I went through there. The one thing that really caught my attention was the number of shiny new office buildings that are sitting empty.

All right, time to pay attention to Alias.

Going To California

Posted on 2/7/2003 to In General

I will be in the Bay Area all next week (2/9 - 2/15) attending some training for my 9-5 job (training is at Documentum, if you must know). I wish I was going out there for VSLive! this year, but such as life. Anyway, my evenings will be free, and I'd love to hook up with any of you .NET bloggers that live out there or are in town for VSLive.

Tech·Ed

Posted on 2/5/2003 to Technology

It is great that Dallas is one of the cities on Microsoft's Tech·Ed Conference rotation, but I don't know that it is so great when you live only 30 miles away from Dallas.

I usually look forward to attending conferences, not only for the cool stuff I will learn about, and the great people I will meet, but also as a time to simply get away and unwind. I just don't know that that is possible when attending a conference in your home town. I mean, do I hit my company up for a room downtown so that I can be close to all the action? If they agree to that, what will my wife say? And my son? "Daddy's gone on a trip...to Dallas." Gee, that is something we do all the time. And what if my company doesn't agree to that? What if they say "no, you are less than 30 miles away, we can't get you a hotel room." Then what? How likely am I to spend 12+ hours a day around the conference when I am waking up at the crack of dawn to get there and then not getting home until 10 or 11 PM? Where is the chance to unwind in that?

Perhaps I am off base, and I get a little too much pleasure from attending conferences. Maybe I should just be glad that I have a job at a company willing to pay for any of it at all.

What have y'all done when faced with the option of attending a conference in the same city you live in, or in a nearby city?

What I'd really like to do is attend this.

ASP.NET Calendar Control

Posted on 1/31/2003 to Developer Stuff

I've been working on implementing the ASP.NET Calendar Control into the weblog app lately.

Writing the code so that entries showed up where they are supposed to was easy, but I am having a heck of a time getting consistent formating of the calendar itself. For example, using CSSClass for styling the control is hit or miss -- mostly miss, and on my server, the font-size and forecolor properties of TitleStyle don't want to work, at least not if I also want to use NextPrevStyle. However, if I create the exact same calendar in a page running on XP Pro, they work.

Has anyone else experienced similar inconsistencies with this control? It is really starting to annoy me.

Icon War

Posted on 1/27/2003 to Cool Stuff

Not sure how long this has been circulating, but I just saw it for the first time. Very funny.

Can We Get On With Alias Already?

Posted on 1/26/2003 to Sports

I don't suppose that ABC would just go ahead and start showing Alias to the majority of the country that doesn't care about Tampa or Oakland. Now that the suspense is gone, I see no reason to show any more of it, at least not outside of Florida.

Game Over!

Posted on 1/26/2003 to Sports

Ok, not really, but it might as well be. That last Tampa Bay score should just about do it.

27 - 3

Well, now that should really do it - 34 - 3. Who woulda thought that the Raiders would be this bad?

I am mildly pleased that I won't have to look at "Super Bowl Champions" t-shirts all over the place during my trip to the bay area in two weeks.

VSLive

Posted on 1/24/2003 to Developer Stuff

Robert Scoble is planning a .NET Blogger's dinner in San Francisco (Saturday, February 8th) during the VSLive conference. Anybody interested in joining in? We are meeting at the San Francisco Marriott at 6pm.
[StronglyTyped - Richard Caetano's weblog on software development]

I didn't think I would really miss VSLive this year. Afterall, I'd only gone once before (last year, specifically for the VS.NET launch). Then I come across this, and start thinking about all the cool stuff I am going to be missing out on.

As it is, I will be in the bay area during the week that VSLive is going on (arrive early afternoon on the 9th, staying until the 15th), so maybe I can latch on in the evening one night for something that doesn't require an event pass.

Sigh...

Posted on 1/22/2003 to Technology

I'm bored. Redsign? Write some code for the weblog app? Start a new project? Take a nap?

What was that -- Get back to work?

More On Tracking Referrers

Posted on 1/21/2003 to Weblog Applications

What is the best way to implement referrer tracking in a home-grown weblog?
[Harry Pierson's DevHawk Weblog]

My referrer page currently treats each unique URL as just that -- unique. So this - http://objective.mine.nu/archive/2003/1/2.aspx - is different than this - http://objective.mine.nu/. I decided to do this mainly because I was interested in the specific location that was referring someone to my site, not just the referring site. However, if you look at my referrer's page, you'll see that only the domain is displayed, and not the path info (moving your mouse over the links reveals the true referring URL).

This was pretty quick and dirty, well not dirty, but quick. Anyway, I've been thinking of other ways to display the referrer information, and keep coming back to a hierarchical view, where I display the referring domains, and then drill down to view data on the specific referring URL's.

Of course, I am always looking for a better way...

Real Simple

Posted on 1/20/2003 to Eats and Drinks

I saw a magazine the other day while I was walking out of my local Barnes & Noble. I didn't flip through it or even pick it up (I don't even recall having ever seen this magazine before), but one of the stories listed on the cover caught my attention -- a month of dinners.

I've just browsed through the recipes listed, and already I've found several things that I would like to try. The rosemary-garlic chicken looks like a good place to start.

If anyone out there decides to try some of the recipes, please let me know how they turn out.

Another Day, Another Week

Posted on 1/17/2003 to Developer Stuff

I can't believe how time is just flying by these last couple of weeks. It has everything to do with how busy I've been at work.

We are embarking on a rather large data conversion project, where we will be converting around 76,000 pages of content from Interleaf files to XML. At the same time we are moving from BladeRunner to Documentum as our repository, and switching from Epic to XMetal as our XML editor. We also have to build the publishing process for taking the content from XML to whatever else (print, CD, online, etc). Oh, and this all has to be complete by the end of the year so that starting in 2004 our content is updated in XML.

I am confident that we will succeed.

Searching

Posted on 1/14/2003 to Weblog Applications

I need to make the content of my weblog, or any weblog powered by my weblog app searchable.

Sticking Now

Posted on 1/12/2003 to In General

Well, the snow has been falling steadily for the past 4 hours, and it is finally sticking. I took a couple of pictures, not that they are anything special compared to this, or this, but I will post them up here a little later for the curious.

Those Weather Folks Were Right

Posted on 1/12/2003 to In General

Hey, it's snowing here in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. I know this isn't highly unusual, it does snow (more likely is an ice storm) once in a while. Heck, growing up, I probably had as many snow days as the kids in Denver (simply because Dallas doesn't have the equipment to deal with wintry weather, whereas Denver has more than enough). Anyway, having been back in Texas for almost a year and a half now, the thing I've missed most of all is the snow. We weren't in Colorado long enough for the novelty to wear off, though it was close (but only after I had to start shoveling my own sidewalks and driveway).

By the way, it isn't sticking or anything, but it is still nice to look at. Now, if only the temperature would drop another couple of degrees.

And I Thought Monday Was Rough...

Posted on 1/9/2003 to In General

This day just sucked. This week has just sucked, but this day in particular.

My home pc is not yet repaired and I nearly lost the database for the weblog app.

On top of all this, work is so busy that if I had twice the time, I'd still be busting my tail to get things done.

Geez!

Posted on 1/6/2003 to In General

What a day. Is it over yet?

Hard Drive Woes

Posted on 1/6/2003 to Technology

I will use the events of the past 36 hours as a wake up call. I will backup my data regularly, I promise.

I will thank my lucky stars each day that I had been using my laptop for development purposes lately, and that the latest code was there, and not on my now dead desktop HD.

Mind Your Manners

Posted on 1/6/2003 to In General

"You're too nice for a Monday morning", he said, as I held the elevator door open for the two people that were a few steps behind us.

Hmm...

Does the day really matter? Would this guy hold a door for anyone on Tuesday? Wednesday? How about Friday?

Too many times, I've seen doors shut in people's faces (including my own), be it elevator doors or just regular old doors into an office building or store. Whatever happened to manners? When did we all become so rude? Are we so wrapped up in ourselves that we no longer stop to consider those around us?

I held the door because they were close enough for doing so to make sense (I wouldn't have held the door if they were at the other end of the parking garage), and I've had enough doors shut in my face to know that I wouldn't want to do that to someone else.

It's a small thing, really. It takes just a moment or two of time, sometimes less. They feel good, you feel good. If more people would do the little things to help out others, the world would be a much nicer place.

PC Nastiness

Posted on 1/5/2003 to Technology

Plans for dev work on the 'ol weblog app were derailed earlier today. I spent my afternoon and evening (and now, actually) rebuilding my primary machine at home. I think I will go ahead and give Ghost a try once I get everything installed again.

Sigh...

RSS Aggregator

Posted on 1/5/2003 to Weblog Applications

Thanks to Brad Wilson, I just RSS subscribed to a new blog. Bryan Daneman appears to be working on a .NET-powered weblog app and with my Radio license due to expire in a month or two, perhaps it's time to start looking. My favorite feature in Radio is the integrated news aggregator and as soon as Bryan gets this implemented, I may have to start begging him for a copy. [Grumpicus Maximus]

I had forgotten about adding this feature. I will work on it in the morning.

Referrers, Trackback...

Posted on 1/3/2003 to Weblog Applications

Chris wants to know about my trackback implementation so that our sites can talk in a more automagic way.

I am on the cusp of redoing the trackback functionality for the weblog app. Until then, you can click the Trackback link below each post to get the URL that a trackback can be sent to. I have verified that sending a trackback from Movable Type to my trackback page works. If you have no way of sending a trackback through your weblog app, then you can put everything in the querystring, or you can use the test form that the web service page provides. Go here for more information doing this.

More to come...eventually...

Referrer Log

Posted on 1/3/2003 to Weblog Applications

I've finally gotten around to implementing a referrer log for my little weblog app. Like most other things in the weblog app, it is usable for me, but probably still lacking if others were to use it.

I decided to create an HTTPModule to intercept incoming requests and log the referrer information. Currently, it ignores requests made from the site it is implemented in. This will probably change and become an configurable option, I just didn't care to see referrers to my site, from my site -- but others might.

One other "to do" is to create a server control for easily displaying the list of referrers.

.NET Weblog App Update

Posted on 1/2/2003 to Weblog Applications

There is another user of my .NET based weblog application. Welcome to the neighborhood, Ken!

This brings the total number of weblogs powered by my app up to 6 including mine and metaApps.com.

Happy New Year!

Posted on 1/1/2003 to In General

I hope everyone is off to a very happy New Year!

We had a nice New Year's Eve, spent at home watching movies ( Like Mike & XXX).

Just enough time to catch the Cotton Bowl before heading off to my sister's birthday party.

2002 (92 posts) 2004 (32 posts)