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November 29, 2005

Waxing Artsy with VB.NET

I recently made my true feelings about VB.NET pretty clear. But I thought it would be kind of fun to 'wax' artsy with my feelings for VB.NET

First some poetry:

VB.NET how do I love thee,
let me count the ways:
1)

(I couldn't think of any more ways... that was pretty much it - let me know if you come up with any more.)

Now for some art (I think this art is very soothing to my inner C# personna.)  I've entitled this work "(verboten) pinky pleasure". Enjoy.

If something = anotherThing Then
	MessageBox.Show("This is VB, as it really should be");
End If
Me.DoSomethingElse();

Feel free to submit your  own artistic expressions in the comments.

Posted on November 29, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

I've sooo got issues

So, I snaked a killer little toy the other day (it finally arrived last night) which is a 3 port USB hub with an onboard card reader that reads all major card formats. That added 4 drives to my machine.
That was in addition to the 2 External USB Drives that I already have (that add 7 drives, or partitions), and the External DVD RW I recently acquired for backup purposes.
The end result:

Issues2

I kind of feel like Smaug the Dragon - surrounded by piles and piles of hoarded treasure. If all these drives weren't' digital... I'd gather them up in my arms and hug them...

(I have noticed, however, that my Send To context menu takes a while to enumerate places to send things now <g>... )

I really was born to be a Geek... (and luckily I've got a handful of friends - some that don't even really like computers - otherwise I'd be a Nerd).

Posted on November 29, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

November 27, 2005

I'll be silent no longer...

These people are as vile as Hitler.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1892696,00.html

And I'm not  sure which is worse, the vile people that do these terrible things, or the people like me who allow society to tolerate such an unbearable evil.

Shouldn't this quote cause people to think? (Speaking of babies that were 'born alive' after their abortion at 21 weeks failed)

“If a baby is born alive following a failed abortion and then dies (because of lack of care), you could potentially be charged with murder,” said Shantala Vadeyar, a consultant obstetrician at South Manchester University Hospitals NHS Trust, who led the study.

But it's somehow magically NOT murder if they get the baby on the first try?

Posted on November 27, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

November 21, 2005

Hulk on Google (or Google versus Google)

Google Analytics good. Very good.

Google Web Accelerator bad. VERY bad.

Hulk make point: Hulk put teensy-weensie javascript snippet on hulk's site to track hits with  graphs full of goodness from google analytics. Visitors to Hulk's site now execute javascript to update Hulk's stats - make Hulk feel like he has power, and friends. All good.

Only, Google Web Accelerator now caches pages of Hulk ranting about this, that, and other things. People come to see Hulk - go to GOOGLE instead. No Hulk Page, no Javascript. No stats. No more power or friends for Hulk. Hulk mad.

Hulk knows Hulk not that smart. But Hulk sees problem with Google fighting Google.  How Google smart, and not see this?

Hulk wonder if Google do something evil: like serve cached page, and update google stats in process - thereby making google stats = good, and not-so-google analytics = cruddy.

Google either not smart, or evil (i.e. proprietry, monopolistic, evil). Google Web Accelerator definitely = evil.

Posted on November 21, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

November 17, 2005

MS and Online Products/Services

For all to hear: I'm totally calling BS.

We all know that Bill and MS are starting to lean towards delivering more services and products online.

I've got a fat pipe. The web, streaming music subscriptions, etc all work fine. Even up here in the sticks where I live...

BUT: I fire up Books Online 2005 - which is still defaulted to initially aquiring content from an 'online' source. It chugs. It hangs. It tells me that grabbing networked content may cause it to be unresponsive - I might want to change my configuration options.  I try - but the app is completely locked up.

Um. And you guys are thinking about taking over the world with online applications/services? This is just COPY people... simple markup/content. Nothing tricksy like an application. And it won't work.

Same with Visual Studio 2005. I'm sure I'm not the only person to have turned off the start page, so I don't have to wait while it loads when I start up VS 2005.  SURE it does it all asynchronously - and the VS 2005 team has done a good job of making it work. But I really don't care to wait around for what's new/spiffy/whatever.

The web is great folks (heck, it pays the bills around here in large measure). But it's NOT the answer to all of the world's problems. I wish this stupid fascination with Web 2.0 and all the idiocy/hype surrounding it would come back to reality. Let's make good/cool/spiffy applications that are user friendly - but let's LAY OFF THE KOOL AID.

(In case you wondered how I actually felt about it... )

Posted on November 17, 2005 | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

November 15, 2005

And Speaking of Articles...

Steve Jones of SQL Server Central fame contacted me  last week to know whether I'd be interested in translating one of my blog posts from RepeatableRead into a  full-blown article.  (Zoo's frequently have signs that say "Don't feed the bears" - this blog should have a sign: "Don't encourage the mikeey".) Of course I'd be interested...

And... in the Database Daily Upate - one of the FEW newsletters I still consider worth my time, there were links two two of my posts:
- Building Clustered SQL Servers on VMWare 5.0 (which I figured out working on a sweet project with 3 Leaf)
- Nibbling Deletes - Intro (which is one of my pet 'ideas')

Posted on November 15, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Serializing Generics

FYI, my latest article is up on Coding4Fun.

It's part two in what has NOW become a 4 part series investigating the BackPack API.

In this installment I examine the XML serialization of Generics.

Posted on November 15, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

XDrive: That's Baaaaaad Chicken!!!

In an episode of Seinfeld, a Kenny Roger's Roaster went in across the street from Cramer's apt and the flashing neon sign kept him up all night. At one point, in a bid to drive away business (under the hopes that it would cause 'Kenny' to go out of business (and therefore turn off the neon sign)) Cramer stood in his apartment window with a huge banner and screamed at people going in to the eaterie that "that's some baaaaaaad chicken!!!"

I sadly have to report that I feel the need to do the same with XDrive - not to drive away business and dim the lights over there - but because the chicken is truly bad.

I reviewed XDrive on WorkHappy.net a while back. I still think it is one of the coolest ideas to come along in a long time - an offsite backup 'drive' that you map locally on your box and can interact with as if it were a network share. Pricing is good, features are spiffy in terms of allowing you to share access to your drive. Everything LOOKS good.

Only the service has been flakey. I've had a hard time getting it to work from day one. Occassionaly I'd need to run in and clear my entire IE cache, just to get the desktop service to work. Longer uploads (i.e. REAL backups that I cared about) frequently would just crap out.

Then over the last 7 days, I've been completely unable to log in. I've contacted customer support who tell me that they're aware of the issue - and they're working on it.

Um. I'm a nice enough guy. And I realize that problems DO happen. I'm even forgiving enough... when I'm presented with facts. But repeatedly telling me for the past 7 days that there's a problem... and they're working on it doesn't inspire confidence. To be sure, I HAVE been able to log on a few times - here and there. But the connections don't last - and worse: I've lost data in the process. I used to have 1 GB of backups on XDrive. Not any more.

Honestly, a backup service that doesn't keep my data: unacceptable. A 'use anywhere' drive that can't be used even from home... no thanks.

I REALLY wish their service would work - I still think it's such a killer idea.  Maybe some day they'll get it together, and it will work as advertised. When they do - it will be very cool. Until then, it's some seriously bad chicken.

(Though they've been fairly easy to deal with in terms of refunding the remainder of my yearly subscription - so that's cool on their part.)

UPDATE:  Looks like other people have experienced the same problems - I found this link while researching a suitable replacement for XDrive (I tried "Xdrive problems" in google, against "IBackup problems" .. and found this link).  (Check the comments - others have apparently found out what an XDrive 'upgrade' feels like too...
That's simply the worst customer service I've seen since well... Dell, or the Phone company, etc.

Posted on November 15, 2005 | | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

November 09, 2005

Geek Speak: Processor Architectures

So... I'm downloading the .NET 2.0 Redistributable runtime from MS.com for a demo, and it hits me:

If I weren't a geek, there's no way that I would know that the x64 version is for fast computers and x86 is for slower computers.

Geeks completely get that... but how would a non-geek ever get that x86 < x64?

Posted on November 09, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

November 05, 2005

Whatever happened to the Phrase: "Taxation without Representation"?

I got this link off of Alex's blog - and I'm seeeeeething.

Short story: A guy lives in Tennessee and works in NY (appears that he is there in person 1/4 of the time, and telecommutes 3/4 of the time). NY state is charging him income tax. The Supreme court refused to hear an appeal from this guy who's protesting having to pay these taxes.

I'm dumbfounded.

Someone answer this question: How does the guy in Tennessee, who is being charged taxes in NY, help determine how those tax dollars are spent? There is NO way he can influence the way those funds are dispensed, because he's not allowed to take part in any elections in NY. He is therefore TAXED and has no REPRESENTATION.

Put it another way: I don't give a crap if the guy lives in NJ, and commutes into NY every day. He shouldn't have to pay taxes to NY. Period. And don't give me that dumb line of "well, he IS using the roads and stuff in NY." Woop-de doo! Are you trying to tell me that NYers don't EVER drive into NJ?

Hell, think of all the cheap-skate tourists driving on your states' roads RIGHT-THIS-SECOND!!!!111. QUICK, let's figure out a way to tax them. Oh wait, they wouldn't be sufficiently represented to determine how those levied taxes should be spent. Fix the potholes? Paint new lines? Put in more bathrooms/rest-stops? Gee, they wouldn't be able to help determine how the money was spent. Pretty sure that exempts them from taxation.

Posted on November 05, 2005 | | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

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