Category: Geeky/Programming

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Geeky/Programming

.NET and Oracle – Match Made in Hell (Data provider internal error(-3000) [System.String])

At my new gig, I am working on a project that is ASP.NET with an Oracle Database backend. Today I ran into an error.

Data provider internal error(-3000) [System.String]

What does this error mean? Heck if I know, its a generic error basically telling you that something is wrong with your connection to the database more than likely.

After troubleshooting code, the CSLA framework, more code, stored procs, queries, more code and testing everything I could think of, I decided it had to be something with the Oracle driver on my machine. I remembered back in the day when I worked for SCWH using Oracle 8 and having a hell of a time getting it to work if the driver was even a .1 release off, or if you were using the wrong driver.

Reinstalled the 10g client and Oracle Data Provider for .NET stuff and it worked. What a waste of time. Just another reason why I hate Oracle, and SQL Server is the way to go. No stupid dot releases of drivers that cause headaches. Granted MSFT used to have MDAC which was a major pain, but with .NET it just connects, and works.

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Geeky/Programming Product Reviews

MobileMe's Mail – Glaring Omission

So we have MobileMe setup. I still use GAFYD for my main email, but I had Emily use MobileMe with my old iPhone. Today a glaring omission was pointed out. No rich text, formatting, coloring, smileys, font changing, italics, bold, underline, etc to be found.

mobile_me_compose

There are options to send, draft, spelling, and add contact. Also in the Mail preferences, there is a “Composing” tab, but no settings for formatting at all. For some people, this is the show stopper feature they want. You would expect any first rate email client to have these things. Of course, some people don’t want these settings, but if they are there, then you can turn them off, but if they aren’t there, you can do anything, and you go back to Hotmail so you can send smileys and 24 pt wingding font in red 🙂

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Blogging Geeky/Programming

WordPress Export

WordPress Export. There is a menu item in WP that lest you export out to an XML file, they call it “eXtended RSS or WXR”. The options is under Manage->Export.

Well you should use this to keep a half way decent back up of your blog, but if you want to transfer to another blog service or anything then you want this file. I have been toying around with moving my blog, to TypePad, or MT, or WordPress hosted, just to see what happens, and really, none of them are better than self hosted WordPress.

What I did find, is that the export wasn’t working for me. Was getting cut off at like 1.4, 1.5 MB and tons of my posts were missing from the export. I read in the forums and such on WordPress support but nothing really gave a good answer. So I did what you usually have to do when WordPress chokes on some export or import, play with the memory and execution settings in php.ini

What I found was the max execution time was 30 seconds for a script, which was about how long it was taking to export my file. So I upped it to 120 seconds

max_execution_time = 120;

And ran the export again, and lo and behold, my entire blog archive was now in the import file. Yessssss.

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Geeky/Programming

Microsoft Word Is NOT A Place To Share Images/Screenshots!

Now, every once in a while, being a computer user, you will have to or be asked to take a screenshot. Either a full screenshot of your computer desktop or maybe just the app you are using. Then you will want to share it, by emailing it.

It seems the norm for some people is to take a nice screenshot, open up Microsoft Word, and paste it in there, then email it off. On the receiving end, you open up word and you can barely see the image, and have to zoom in close like 200% to see anything, and it isn’t formatted well, etc. Take a look at the two screenshots below. One getting it word, one without. BIG difference. And even bigger if your Word opens in "reading mode" when opening from email.

with_word without_word

So, information workers of the world, how do you magically create good screenshots and not use word as the medium to transfer them? Well the easiest (and built in) way is to use Microsoft Paint.

Well, do your prtscrn or alt+prtscrn and get your image on your clipboard, then do a start->run->mspaint and fire up good old Microsoft Paint. Do a quick ctrl+v, and then save it as a jpeg (not a bmp – too big!) close it and email the image! Yipee!!

There are many other options as well. Using the built in snipping tool in vista, or getting a 3rd party screen grab tool, go for it, just please don’t email me a word doc with an image embedded in it!!

Reasons? 1) I might not have word, 2) it is embedded as a crazy OLE object and tough to pull out if I want to edit, 3) it is tough to read

Just email images please, the jpeg kind, it is more than enough to get a good screenshot across the wire.

Categories
Blogging Geeky/Programming

Obligatory Post From iPhone

Post from wordpress app on iPhone. It’s open source I think. I should raise pocketblogger from the dead and merge it with this or something. This could be cool for reporting news real time, but for now here is good old Winston

photo

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Geeky/Programming

The Apple Fandom.. Continues

Woah, well it has been a while since I talked about my “Media Center” experience I am trying go for, but I will get into that later.

First, yes, I have the iPhone 3G. I was off Friday for other stuff and decided to “camp out” since I had the time, hoping I would get out early. I went to AT&T on the East Side at 4:30 AM with a chair and my laptop and waited until 8:00. I was 6th in line. It was a good time, Einstein Bagels opened at 5:30 so we had coffee and bagels, and just had fun talking with fellow iPhone geeks. I already had the 2.0 Firmware beta loaded because I am in the dev program, and I was running iTunes 7.7 Confidential Beta as well.

Anyways, getting the iPhone, they let the first 9 in, and out of the 9, 2 people got activated and went home. Mine wasn’t working so they just let me go, and since they upgraded my SIM, I left with 2 bricked iPhones. Ugh. Once home I connected it and let it sit and it finally went through. Cool! I like the GPS and the 3G, Exchange Sync, MobileMe sync, the apps, it is all good. Battery life could be better, and there are always ways to improve, but my biggest gripe with the iPhone (no SDK, etc) is now gone. I find myself using my computer less and less, since I can do most “personal computing” stuff on the iPhone (read feeds, facebook, etc)

In between getting my Mac Book Pro, and the new iPhone, I picked up two other things on my Apple wishlist. First, the Time Capsule. 1 TB and AirPort Express N – this thing is sweet. The best part is my MBP is backed up every hour on the hour to the Time Capsule. I feel way more “secure”

The other item is AppleTV. I used to be a HUGE fan of Netflix and would watch 10-12 movies a month. But once you get through all the ones you want to watch, it gets stale. Also, not being able to get all of them in Blu-Ray, it is kind of a downer. I still have Netflix, but I reduced my plan down to like 1 at a time, I might re-look at Netflix now that Xbox has native streaming, and also the plugins for using MCE as an extender, but for now I am good there. The PS3 announcing downloadable movies TONIGHT!!! and with the Xbox 360 streaming, and Netflix discs and streaming, PLUS the AppleTV, I am pretty much set.

What does AppleTV bring? Well first, the HD movies , downloaded direct, and other movies, which is nice. TV shows, Music, Photos and YouTube. I have found myself watching YouTube on the couch now for like an hour straight, crazy. I really like being able to get Flickr pix or MobileMe pix as a slideshow, and also syncing with my MBP iTunes, and even better, the iPhone 2.0 firmware has the iTunes Remote which rocks, and controls iTunes on your laptop or Apple TV.

My guess is I will be cutting back my Charter lineup (I wish I could just get the HD channels, that is all I watch anyways!)

So, finally , some iPhone apps that rock.

Midomi – I use this to tag songs and buy on iTunes

GuitarToolkit – must have for any guitarist

iTunes Remote – I already talked about this, it rocks

Tuner, VisuaRadio, AOL Radio, Pandora, Last.FM – all your music needs, taken care of (check out Tuner… they have a Beatles Radio station – lovely!!!)

Loopt, Whrrl, iFob – pretty cool LBS based social networking

Others? Pownce (ok), Twitterifc (I am not impressed)

Facebook, Myspace – meh iphone.facebook.com is better than the Facebook app!

MonkeyBall – hard, but fun

I am sure there will be more, but right now I am surrounded by Apple, never would have thought (although I am writing this post on Vista on my Dell Laptop, which I fixed the Hard Drive on :))

Categories
Geeky/Programming Ramblings

A Good Memory Is A Great Thing To Have

Well, I haven’t posted in a while. Still busy as ever. Was up north for the 4th and my 10 Year reunion. Pics are on Flickr.

Anyways, this post is about a “Good Memory”, or even better, the ability to memorize things. Memorization.

So what does memorization have to do with anything? Well, as far as computer stuff goes, programming, development, database stuff, networking, sysadmin, all aspects, even just regular old users using their computers. Memory (not RAM), but remembering how to do things is going to make you better. Not just better, but substantially better.

Remembering things will probably make you a very good developer. How? You won’t have to keep looking things up. It should start out with you remembering the syntax of the language you are using. Then comes remembering how to setup and tweak your tools (IDE), then comes remembering different concepts (loops, OOP patterns, etc). Next comes remember old code you wrote to solve some problem, and going back to it and using it again. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

As any good developer should, you should be able to remember how to use the OS and tools you are using. If you can’t even do that, you probably shouldn’t be developing software. A simple example, like setting up a printer in Windows XP, or pinging Google, or using CTRL+C and CTRL+V – these simple concepts are going to make you a better computer user, not just a developer. There is no excuse for not knowing these simple things!

Now, if you can remember tons of little things like that, and then start adding in Framework libs, and IDE tricks and how the network works, or every other nugget of info you should be remembering. You might not remember every blog or site bookmark full content, but you should remember that you bookmarked it and why. Just little things.

Another area where memorization is key is with music. Playing music. Singing music. Take playing guitar or piano for instance. You can read off the music time and time again, but you are using part of your brain on that, not focusing on actually playing. Once you memorize the music, you can play it better, and focus on actually playing, not where you are on the music page.

Same thing with looking up things in help or guides for development. If you keep having to look up DATEDIFF in SQL books online, you are just wasting time. Learn how it works, learn the params and what they are, and memorize it.

I think the only time you should be using the help is to search for something that you haven’t memorized. Like, “I wonder if there is a C# function to do XYZ”. Then, you search help, even better Google, or ask someone who you think might know. But you shouldn’t have to Google or ask someone “Hey, do you know I set up a FOR loop?” – That you should know, and have memorized (plus a ton of other things!!)

The more you memorize, the better you will become, because you can focus on the problems to solve, not learning the tools and concepts you should already know. Oh, and you can play some wicked guitar as well 🙂

Categories
Business Intelligence Geeky/Programming Ramblings

Excel 2003 vs Excel 2007

It is the year 2008, we are half way through. Excel 2003 is 5 years old. Stop using it please.

Why? Excel 2003 has the old “limits” – 65,000 rows, 256 columns, memory limits etc. Excel 2007 on the other hand, 1 million row limit, etc etc. That coupled with the way pivot tables work in Excel 2003 compared to 2007, and the SQL Server Analysis Services features with 2007, it is a no brainer to go to 2007.

Companies will say – “But we can’t move all our users to 2007, we can’t afford it” – well, think about just moving your power users. The users that have huge spreadsheet extracts, etc. It is worth it. They can save files in 2003 format if they need to share a smaller file or something, and the 2003 users can install a 2007 viewer.

Other options for huge spreadsheets and extracts are… Access – which your users need training on, or need to be able to adapt to, or another options is SSAS and Cubes, which you need executive buy in, and the infrastructure, and the training to get your users up to speed, and by that time you will want Excel 2007 to connect to the cubes, so…

just start using Excel 2007 – 2009 will be here soon!

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Geeky/Programming Life

Dell Dies, And In Its Place..

A MacBook Pro. Yes, and it is awesome.

So the story, my Dell laptop was humming along fine, but then recently I heard some clicking, and was like WTF? Asked Emily “Did this fall on the ground or something”… “No… but I dropped a glass on it”… Oh man, and you know, one month after the warranty expires, as usual.

So this weekend I went to the Apple store and spec’d out a sweet MacBook Pro. 4 GB ram, High Res, everything. Picked up .Mac cheaper since I was getting a machine (soon to be MobileMe).

Right now I am running Vista in a virtual machine, giving it 2 GB, and it flys. This is probably the sweetest machine I have ever used 🙂 I am using VMWare Fusion instead of Parallels like by MacBook, figured Fransen said it was good, so I would try it. I like it.

I really like the light up keyboard. What else? Like they say, everything just works. Take for example my Verizon EVDO card. In XP or Vista, you have to install the connection manager, hope it works, hope all the drivers install, and then hope it launches. You run into admin issues, and just a ton of other stuff. In the MacBook? I plugged in the card, 2 seconds later, connected. No install, nothing. Just worked. God send.

So I think I am an Apple Guy now. iPhone, MacBook, MacBook Pro. Mighty Mouse (wired and bluetooth) and a bluetooth Keyboard. And on the 11th, I will get the 3G iPhone. When I think about it, all I need Windows for is Visual Studio 2005, 2008 and SQL Server stuff. Everything else I can do on the Mac, and with Virtualization, it is almost seamless. I like it.

What’s next? AirPort Extreme, AppleTV, Time Capsule…

I don’t think I will go back, unless something totally changes with the machines and the OS…

Categories
Geeky/Programming Life Ramblings Random

More Boring Tech..Atari, Brats, iPhones, Rock Band (fake and real!)

Well, new job is going OK. Not much to report really, as you can see from the lack of posting. No new tech or anything interesting leads to… well, boring posts like this. Basically I am knee deep in an older ERP system, and doing report mods and small .NET applications to automate some things, but nothing really exciting. A couple of weeks ago though I went through some online MSFT trainings for .NET 3.5 and SQL 2008 (free clinics on microsoftlearning.com) and that was some good info, now only if I could use it. 🙂

In other news, I picked up an SNES and TWO Atario 2600’s for like 55 bucks, with like 30 games, which is pretty cool. Went to “Bratfest 2008” and helped set the new world record for brat’s consumed.

Picked up Rock Band, so have been hitting that a little bit, but even better news is that I have been playing keyboards more now, and if everything goes right, will be playing with a local band here in Madison in a little while. I am learning the songs now and have some down and ready to go already.. fun stuff.

The iPhone 2.0 Firmware is going ok. Kind of slow at times. I am kind of mad, I lost all my pix of BratFest and other things from Memorial Day weekend, when the new Beta6 firmware came out, I updated, but dummy me forgot to download my pics to my computer first. I tried the Paraben Device Seizure tool that has been used to forensically get data off refurbed iPhones, but it didn’t work, didn’t find anything. oh well, I won’t forget to get the pics from now on 🙂

There is a lot of hoop jumping to get the new firmware loading. Creating certs, importing their certs, creating appid, provisioning profiles, blah blah blah. I do really like the exchange push email, and with my fetch Google Apps email, its like everything right there. That coupled with Google Reader and the Facebook iPhone site, I don’t even need a laptop to browse around anymore…

Also waiting for this Democratic Primary to be over, so things can move on to the General Election. This year needs to be different, if the last 8 years are any indication of what could be, things just need to change.

Last year on this day, my first day in PDX. Time flies.