OCDProgrammer.com

Well this post is somewhat an archive for me in case it returns, but it may help somebody else.

Occasionally when I click external shortcuts on my system I will get the following Windows error:

"Windows cannot find 'www.example.com'. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again."

Turns out this error is due to a Firefox 2.x bug.  Now I am not sure if it happens on 3.x (which I am running, but it is certainly something you can face on 2.x).

The fix involves a registry hack, but if you have any technical knowledge you can do it pretty easily.

View the fix.

Just before I went on vacation I had an interesting issue at work.

I was trying to multiple an int by a decimal.  Nothing big, but I kept getting this error:

Operator '*' cannot be applied to operands of type 'decimal'

I was floored, what do you mean I can't multiply a decimal in .NET?  What in the world are you talking about?

So after a brief search I found the fix.

Basically I had to add an M to the decimal.  So instead of:

4 * .95

I needed:

4 * .95M

Honestly still don't understand WHY Microsoft would think this is required, but they do. 

Hope this helps you as it helped me.

HT: Asp.net

So the news out of Wall Street is that they are disappointed about Microsoft's financial numbers.

You read the article and they try to blame it on new pc sales.

I've got news for them, its all because of Vista... dummy.  I am a huge M$ supporter.  They have treated me very well in life.  The M$ technologies have made my professional life very good.  I love XP.  I even loved my Vista Business edition, but the bottom line is that Vista is a HUGE failure.  A failure similar to Windows ME and XP pre-SP1. 

I'm hesitant to buy a new PC with Vista on it.  I'd NEVER upgrade a PC to Vista.    I'd be more likely install Windows Server 2008 or 2003 before I'd even think about installing Vista.

Hopefully the next version of Windows is done right, M$ generally needs periods like this to get their game on.  And what I get from the community of Microsoft Developers is a huge turn around in how they do business in regards to developer tools, and the better the developers tools the better the operating system and applications that run on it.

We are on the verge of two more browsers being released, IE8 and FF 3.  I've tested FF3 (as it was very easy to install without screwing up my current configurations), and have read up on IE8.  Both are aiming to be standards complient, FF 3 currently passes the Acid test, and IE 8 is reported to pass it.

Now here is the issue, IE 8 is not standard by default, you have to add a meta tag to your website saying it is compliant.  The thought is that they didn't want the web broken by the new browser.  

So here is my call to all developers... break the stinking web.  When you develop a site, make it 100% compliant to the standards and let the users stuck on old software deal with it.  We need to stop having to create hacks to work with the various versions of web browsers.

When I started out many years ago working in ASP I used GoLive; which my coworkers and I had two bits of fun with:
1. Had this saying: Be like Jesus, save often.
2. Called it GoDead due to its many crashes.

But GoLive was not standard compliant at all.  Now that I do my development in Visual Studio I make sure that all my sites are standard compliant.  So they should render perfectly in the new browsers.

But for those of you who develop websites, I repeat my plea: BREAK THE WEB. 

Went to my first ever .NET Users Group here in Cincinnati.  I've been monitoring this group from a distance for sometime, just haven't taken the time to attend a meeting (even when I worked 10 minutes from their location) previously.  However, a co-worker of mine wanted to attend and with her being a bit of a n00b I told her I'd accompany her to the meeting.

Going into it I knew an old friend of mine was going to be there from his blog, but was pleasantly surprised to see another friend as well.  The three of us used to go to church together, I've since moved on from that church, but they still attend.  It was good to touch base with some old friends.

The topic of discussion was on source safe solutions.  Kind of dry in the fact that while source safe is critical in an IT environment, its hard to cover a whole 90 minutes on the topic.  The panel did a great job though.

I think I may try to make this a regular thing... time will tell.

You should at least give it a try.

Late January I read this article. 

My first job had a heavy Mac involvement so I am very familiar with the Apple system.  Have used 7.x all the way up to 10.x, I've seen the insides of some of their old systems... to the insides of some of their new notebooks.  But the article above is exactly why I don't care for Apple.  It is basically a giant hardware dongle... its a piece of software you can't (though with some hacking you can...) use with hardware other then what they provide.  Then try to fix a hardware problem... man those boxes are sealed TIGHT.  

I like my PC, I like that if a hard drive dies I can easily open up any of my three notebooks or two desktops and replace them.  I like that I am not forced to risk breaking my computer tearing it open or send it to a place (with all my important information on it) to have hardware failures fixed.  Plus I am out of my box for the time it takes to turn around.

XP is a great OS... Vista isn't as bad as people want to make it.  I remember when XP came out and people trashed it... people don't like change, Vista is change.  And once SP2 comes out it will be just as good and stable as XP... but I guess by then we'll have yet another operating system :-D

But one day I do see me buying a Mac... the fact that it is so tightly integrated with itself means that the user experience is great for things such as creating movies.  So I'd buy one, but it wouldn't be my primary machine... just my multimedia machine. 

The big news is that Microosft has offered to buy Yahoo!  But Google isn't happy.... says it would be unfair if they combined.  Here is the problem with this, in this arena Microsoft isn't the big bad bully... Google is.  Microsoft and Yahoo just don't compete with Google in search.

My personal take is that the merger is a big yawn.  I rarely use Yahoo.  I use Live search when I remember to, kind of a dog food thing... M$ has provided me a generous life style with their products, so hard to be against it.  But what makes Google hard to compete with is its integration... I keep waiting for a LiveSearch tool bar for my firefox browswer and I'd certainly install it over my Google toolbar, but its just a habit of mine to goto that area of my browser to make a search.

So now that I have my system setup and configure, I wanted to back it up so the next time I can just restore an image to my hard drive instead of having to reinstall everything.

Done a bit of searching and found this LifeHacker posting.  Upon going to DriveImage XML's website I saw a reference to working with BartPE's product (did I mention free?).  BartPE is a bootable version of Windows XP (assuming you have install files for a version of Windows XP to create the CD with).  Drive Image XML is a lot like Norton Ghost in that it allows you to back your hard drive up to an image and then restore that image at a later date.  Adding the two products together gives me a CD that I can pop into my cd drive and then restore the image saved on my external hard drive to my notebook hard drive.  So in the future restoring my old status should take just a few hours, and that includes everything being installed and activated.  

These two products aren't for the novice, but if you find yourself wanting to restore your PC every so often, this is the product for you.

As I've said on this blog before, Microsoft has really started to take aim at Google and make some real progress in doing so.  Out of habit I am still doing the majority of my searches via Google (can't wait for a real Live Search toolbar for FireFox), but when Google is giving me poor results I jump over to Live and get some pretty good results.

Then their map offering is just better.  I took some directions from Google Maps from my employer to a local hospital... and needless to say they weren't close.  And that isn't the first time that has happened.  You'd think I'd learn. 

I also like the user interface to Live Mail better than I like the interface to gMail, but until Live Mail fixes some fundamental flaws in its infrastructure, I won't be switching.

About the only thing I use from the Google family that Microsoft doesn't have an answer for is FeedBurner.  And they have done nothing but blow me away in their response to some issues I've been having with their service.

But for this post I am using "Windows Live Writer".  Basically lets me open up a Windows application, write my post (with very good add-ins and support for some advanced HTML) then it will communicate with my blog and write a post. 

It allows me to save drafts and such as well.  Which is nice because it will stop me from having a post hidden from view while I'm working on it.  I can just work on it local to my PC. 

Learned over on LifeHacker that you can now fix Google Maps.  It has always had where I live wrong, located down the street from me.  But now you can move the pin point marker 200 meters and it will show immediatly.  So I corrected my house:

Before:

After:


Or you can use what has quickly become just a better offering, Microsoft's Live Maps.  And while my house is still located 'down the street' my house is actually on the map!  The image quality is a ton better on Live Maps and they have this "Bird's eye" view that appears to have been taken by a plane passing over.