Sometimes Dilbert hits too close to home

OUCH!

CrossLoop Rocks

I have been using CrossLoop for remote support. I help friends, family and co-workers with computer, software, configuration, and software development tasks. CrossLoop is a great solution for helping friends and family, especially those that aren't IT oriented. So far CrossLoop has really been a great tool, very reliable, and easy for those that aren't that technical.

I suggest that if you help others remotely or you are seeking help from others, give CrossLoop a try.

Let me know if I can help you with remote support.

Here is a link to my CrossLoop profile.

Transfer ASP.NET Membership/Role info to production server

Have you ever needed to transfer ASP.NET Membership and/or Role information to a production server? I had just deployed 2 applications to a production server (including the required aspnet_* schema objects to the back end SQL Server 2005 databases). But how am I going to get into my custom-built web-based ASP.NET Membership, Role , etc. management screens? These management screens are secure and there is no user account nor is there an "administration" role available in the empty membership and role tables.

A generous guy named Sloan Holliday offered his help through microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.aspnet and provided me a T-SQL generator that generates the T-SQL code to insert your existing ASP.NET Membership and Role information into an empty database. Pretty helpful. Thanks to Sloan for making this available.

MCAD - Microsoft Certified Application Developer

Good news! As of October 23, 2007 I am now a Microsoft Certified Application Developer. I took and passed the 70-320 exam through Prometric at a New Horizons testing center.

BoundField DataFormatString attribute not being applied

This has bitten me more than once I'm afraid. Figured I'd post this and link to Raj Kaimal's post...

BoundField.DataFormatString Property via MSDN

When the HtmlEncode property is true, the value of the field is HTML encoded to its string representation before the formatting string is applied. For some objects, such as dates, you might want to control how the object is displayed with a formatting string. In those cases, you must set the HtmlEncode property to false.

This is new to VS.NET 2005...

Hope this post helps me remember to set the HtmlEncode attribute to false next time ;-)

Upgraded from Subversion 1.4.4 to 1.4.5

Not a hitch. Amazing.

Here were my steps:

1. Download and extract the latest binary with bindings that matches your Apache version: (svn-win32-1.4.5.zip) for me.
2. Stop the Apache Windows Service.
3. Stop the Subversion Windows Service (svnserve).
4. Copy the contents of each sub folder from the extracted zip file (svn-win32-1.4.5.zip) over the location of the corresponding sub folder of your SVN installation location.
5. ** See UPDATE below for a step I originally missed
   
6. Restart the svnserve Windows Service.
7. Restart the Apache Windows Service.
8. Test.
9. If you use TSVN, upgrade it too.
   

Viola!

**
[UPDATED: 2007-09-28]

Be sure to copy the following from your Subversion bin folder (C:\Program Files\Subversion\bin) to the Apache modules folder (C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\modules):

libdb44.dll
mod_dav_svn.so
mod_authz_svn.so

If you don't, and you view your respositories via a browser using Apache, you'll see the wrong version in the footer.

[SideNote]
I couldn't remember what the Apache Windows Service was named. Here is some handy command line goodness:

C:\>sc query type= service | grep -i apache
SERVICE_NAME: Apache2
DISPLAY_NAME: Apache2

Subversion Rocks!

I have been using Subversion for about 4 months and it has been proven to be very useful in my daily development workflow. I can't imagine developing without source code control again. I have been using Subversion (SVN) locally in combination with TortoiseSVN (TSVN) for my development projects and recently implemented it within my employer's environment. We still have not forced the other developers to use SVN but hopefully that will come in time. My company is not in the software business, we are a manufacturing company and that is probably why there never was a SCC/SCM environment in place before. We do produce a ton of software for internal use and for use by external third parties (customers and suppliers). We have a ton of custom code, databases, scripts, etc. that should all be stored in source code repositories. Again, hopefully soon, as in ASAP.

I had only used Visual Source Safe in the past and was never a fan. I know it can get the job done but we always had performance issues when using it over the wire (VPN). I will say that SourceOffsite from SourceGear was a great solution to the network performance issue.

I have implemented SVN and TSVN on Windows XP locally and SVN in my employer's Windows environment on Windows Server 2003. I have implemented hook scripts for pre and post commit events using BATCH and Perl scripts. On a related note, I am working a quick prototype of hook scripts written in C#. I also implemented an automated backup system using some Perl scripts that I obtained from the Pragmatic Version Control using Subversion as a starting point.

I connect to my company via a VPN connection and the network performance of Subversion is awesome.

I use the CLI (command line interface: svn.exe) mostly but find that TSVN comes in handy too.

I wanted to link to a few resources that I found helpful along the way:

1. Of course "The Book" (Version Control with Subversion)
2. The Subverision Site: http://subversion.tigris.org/
3. Subversion Mail Lists and archives
   
4. Pragmatic Version Control using Subversion
5. Practical Subversion
6. Subversion Version Control: Using the Subversion Version Control System in Development Projects (Nagel)
7. I found a few blog entries by Ariejan de Vroom on topics like resolving conflicts, patches, etc. He offers a great SVN cheat sheet. Looking forward to more of his posts on SVN.
   
8. You can also ask questions on IRC at irc://irc.freenode.net/%23svn
9. Google Group: Subversion SVN
10. Article on The Code Project by Ralph Willgoss: "Setting up an ASP.NET website development environment using Visual Studio .NET, Subversion, and Windows XP"
11. Article on The Code Project; by Chris McGlothen: "Subversion & TortoiseSVN: Installed and started on Windows 2003 server and local machines"

Need to increase the size of a VPC VHD?

I needed to increase the size of a 16 GB Virtual PC VHD last night. I wasn't sure if it was possible, but it is and it is pretty easy.

I first used the VhdResize utility from vmToolkit to expand the total size of the VHD from 16 GB to 80 GB.

Then I followed the instructions at Xtralogic to "Extending File System Partition: Using Microsoft DiskPart to extend NTFS partition".

The built in diskpart command line tool was easy to use and very effective.

Hope this helps someone else to be able to expand a VHD if necessary.

Tip: Turning off the virtual machine beep

This is a sanity tip from Megan Davis of "The Soul of a Virtual Machine". You can disable the BEEP on Virtual PC VHD with her tip.

Learning BizTalk Server 2006

I am a software developer. That is what I do. That is what I know. I have been attempting to learn enterprise development on the BizTalk Server 2006 platform for ~3 months now. It is an amazing platform with many underlying technologies. I have been extremely impressed with all of the pieces that make up BizTalk and simply amazed at what all of these pieces bring to the table. That said, it hasn't been an easy journey, and I am nowhere even close to being useful as a BTS developer. I seem to get stuck on each little task that I try to accomplish. With my receding/thinning hair, there isn't much more to pull out.

Maybe this is one of the reasons why I have found this learning curve so steep. Its an article by Mark Burch on "The BizTalk development paradigm"

I have been reading the books:

BizTalk 2006 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach
by Mark Beckner, Ben Goeltz, Brandon Gross, and Brennan O'Reilly (Paperback - Sep 13, 2006)

Pro BizTalk 2006 (Pro)
by George Dunphy and Ahmed Metwally (Paperback - Oct 23, 2006)

Foundations of BizTalk Server 2006 (Foundations)
by Daniel Woolston (Paperback - Jan 8, 2007)

Taken the class:

Course 2933: Developing Business Process and Integration Solutions Using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006
Five days; Instructor-Led

I've worked through the BizTalk Server 2006 Tutorials.

I'm working through the BizTalk Server Code Samples.

With all of this work, I still am struggling to get real world solutions (even prototypes) going at the moment.

That being said, I am still extremely excited to have the opportunity (and the challenge) of working on these integration projects for my company using BTS2006.

Guess we'll see where I end up.

SQL Server (TSQL) Coding Standards

I was looking for some TSQL coding standards today while working on a BizTalk project and ran across a nice list of coding standards on naming conventions at SSW.

Naming Conventions

• SQL Server Object Naming Conventions


• SQL Server Index Naming Conventions


• SQL Server Relationship Naming Conventions


• SQL Server Stored Procedure Naming Conventions


• SQL Server Stored Procedure Formatting Standards


• .NET Object Naming Conventions


• .NET Project Naming

I fish...

A husband and wife go to a counselor after 15 years of marriage counselor asks them what the problem is and the wife goes into a tirade listing every problem they have ever had in the 15 years they've been married. She goes on and on and on.

Finally, the counselor gets up, walks around the desk, embraces thewife and kisses her passionately. The woman shuts up and sits quietly in a daze. The counselor turns to the husband and says, "This is what your wife needs at least three times a week. Can you do this?"

The husband thinks for a moment and replies, "Well, I can drop her off here on Mondays and Wednesdays, but on Fridays, I fish."

What's new in System.Xml 2.0? by Aaron Skonnard

There is a great article on Service Station by Aaron Skonnard titled "What's new in System.Xml 2.0?". It is another well written article by Aaron with clear/simple examples. I dig his articles.

The surfing has picked up a bit

Bob, Karl, Erick and I have been getting some nice rides just before and after low tide. It was flat as lake when we all first arrived. Things are looking up. WaveWatch reported 4ft swells yesterday from buoy readings and we all had great surfing. Although it has flattened out a bit for the next couple of days, it looks big for Sunday/Monday.

Fished for Stripers off the beach

I tried to fish for stripers tonight just before dinner. No luck yet but a few guys were catching fish just down the beach using spinning gear with mackerel and clams as bait. The shorebreak was pretty high so I was fighting that and wasn't getting out very far. I'll try again in the rocks.

Great trip on the Bighorn

Dave and I picked up Peter at DIA on Friday at about 5:30 PM and drove straight up the Bighorn about 550 miles. We crashed in a bunk cabin at Cottonwood Camp for a few hours and floated A-B (13 miles) on Saturday.



Saturday
What a great day. Dave and Peter were hot. I caught my fair share too but lost all my big fish. Not sure what the problem was but I'm going to blame it on old tippet material and not my knots. ;-)

Rick and some of his buddies showed up later on Saturday and fished at 3-mile. We actually didn't get to 3-mile until 3:00 PM and passed those guys and didn't know it was them.

There was an incident on the water that I won't go into and my TnT 6wt was toast. There were some tears.

Last Chance proved successful and made a fine way to end the day. The fishing was great and a good time was had by all.

Hot flies: Black midges, Gray Rays, Pheasant Tails, Pink Soft Hackle Sow Bugs, Two-tone San Juan Worms



Sunday
Jonesy jumped in our boat. Peter was fishing in his "banana boat". Rick, Dan, and Joe were in a rental boat. Rick could do no wrong. Everyone caught fish and had a great time. Jonesy caught some nice fish and experienced the magic of the Bighorn on his first trip. Pretty cool. Red and Black midges were really hot on Sunday. Gray Rays and Pheasant Tails and "Pinky Tuscaderos " (pink soft hackle sow bugs) also worked well.

Peter, Rick, Dan, Joe, and Jonesy headed to Cooke City to fish the Soda Butte and the Lamar.



Monday
Dave and I floated A-B alone. We had a great day and caught fish in the riffles. Shallow riffles.

Hot flies: Black midges, Gray Rays, Pheasant Tails, Pink Soft Hackle Sow Bugs



Tuesday
Dave and I floated A-3 (3 miles). We started early and had a great day and caught plenty. We fished until about 1:45 PM and loaded up the boat and gear and headed back to Colorado. The drive was smooth and uneventful fortunately.

Great day on the Blue

Diamond Dave and I had a great day on the Blue. We fished at a not-so-secret spot near the Frisco/Dillon areas.

It was crowded and the weather looked iffy.

I waited for a spot and soon a guy crossed from where he was fishing and I moved in (politely). I had caught fish near by a few years earlier on Caddis imitations so I went that direction. I tied on a bead head Prince on top and a bead head Bread Crust as a dropper. Not sure why I chose these particular flies. I should have seined the river like I always do but I guess I figured it was a good bet.

I started catching fish one after the other. Almost every cast was followed by a tug and a feisty little brown. It was ridiculous. Some of the guys kept making cracks and asking what I was using. I told them the truth and even offered one guy the exact flies. He refused and I kept catching fish. It was great.

Dave made his way down to me and I asked him how he was doing. He was also successful on completely different flies for different bugs. He was using a Bionic Midge and a black Copper John. He waded across and caught fish after fish.

The weather looked ominous and all the other guys took off. They were smart. There was lightening in the distance. We kept catching fish so it was hard to make the call to leave.

Dave kept abusing the sucker fish. He called them Mother-in-Law fish. They have a face only a momma could love.

It did slow down a bit during some windy gusts. It rained a tad, but we stuck it out like dummies and caught more fish. What a day.

Woo Hoo! I passed my 70-315 exam

Today I passed my 70-315 exam: Developing and Implementing Web Applications with Microsoft Visual C# .NET and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET.

2/3 of the way to my MCAD.

(the Woo Hoo reference pertains to the song Woo Hoo from the 5.6.7.8's. It is the song used in the Vonage commercials.)

WinMerge & ASP.NET Filter for WinMerge

I've been using WinMerge for a few months now and really like it. It is available on SourceForge.

The latest stable build as of this writing is WinMerge 2.4.6.

I have been using WinMerge to compare ASP.NET projects on my local workstation with my company's server located in a different state over a VPN. It performs very well considering the network topology.

It is a timesaver and I wanted to thank the folks that built it, maintain it, and support it.

I searched the NET for an ASP.NET filter for WinMerge and found one on Jon Galloway's blog: JonGalloway.ToString(). This filter got me close but I decided to approach it from the other direction by creating and exclusive filter.

Here is my filter:

============== Begin file =================

## This is a directory/file filter for WinMerge
## This filter lets through only files ASP.NET developers care about
## Based in part on a filter found on JonGalloway's blog: JonGalloway.ToString()
## http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2004/10/05/237984.aspx

name: ASP.NET Devel

## This is an exclusive filter
## (it lets through only matching files)
def: exclude

## Filters for filenames begin with f:
## Filters for directories begin with d:

f: \.xml$
f: \.xlst$
f: \.dtd$
f: \.html$
f: \.htm$
f: \.css$
f: \.gif$
f: \.bmp$
f: \.jpg$
f: \.png$
f: \.js$
f: \.dll$
f: \.aspx$
f: \.asmx$
f: \.ascx$
f: \.vb$
f: \.resx$
f: \.cs$
f: \.js$
f: \.vbproj$
f: \.csproj$
f: \.sln$
f: \.webinfo$
f: \.config$

d: \\*$ ## Subdirectories

============== End file =================

One drawback with the current filter implementation in WinMerge is that an exclusive filter excludes only files and directories that match the patterns listed in the filter but it doesn't exclude a "negative pattern". It sounds like this might be addressed in the future. Here is a link to a forum posting on this filtering issue. kimmov started a thread in the developer forum regarding this issue. Despite this minor shortcoming, I think it is a great tool to have in your arsenal.

Security Training Modules: Regex, SQL Injection, etc.

Keith Brown has put together some great labs available on Channel 9 that include 5-10 minute demos (videos) with lab exercises. They are short and sweet. Check them out.