Aug 31, 2010

I’ll never bathe again

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Before you homeopaths get any ideas, we need to have a talk. I think it is time you stopped consuming water in your diet. After all: people shit in toilets, everybody shits, water is absorbing the memory of shit, so your smug grin is quite literally shit-eating, right?

Many of those great links courtesy the illustrious Raymond Chen. More awesomeness in the comments there.

Aug 30, 2010

My doppelgänger didn't fare too well

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Apparently I died in the World Trade Center bombing.

Which is odd because I seem to recall having to leave morning class early to go with the other kids into the school auditorium and watch the news unfold on this TV, wheeled out onto the stage on one of those A/V carts, that was far too small for an entire audience of kids and faculty to make out much of anything.

Bonus: I was also an ADR dude for Star Trek III, even though I hadn’t been born quite yet. (ST3 premiered in June; it would be six more months before I was done bakin’ in my momma’s oven.)

I had to Google to find a link, but I've known about my name in the Star Trek credits since I was very young and watched it with family. (The WTC thing was new to me, though.)

Feet first into the water

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My first real day “on the job” as an intern (still in school) went something like this (names redacted to protect the guilty):

BOSS: We’ve got an older system that another intern from four years ago did. We need to update it to support new policy standard X. Have you ever done anything with web before?
ME: Sure! [Played around with personal websites since twelve years of age but nothing too complicated.]
BOSS: Okay, great. This one is in ASP with VBScript. Here’s what you need to do. … Can you handle that?
ME: Sure! [Other than knowing it existed and maybe having seen it once (from a safe distance, of course), has never touched ASP or VB or anything similar.]

Aug 27, 2010

Tired of typing in your user name every time to log into Windows?

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  1. Run gpedit.msc
  2. Navigate to: Computer Configuration > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Local Policies > Security Options
  3. Disable “Interactive logon: Do not display last user name”

Local Group Policy Editor Screenshot

Needless disclaimer: Might not want to do this on a shared/public computer.

Aug 26, 2010

Beer Periodic Table

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Periodic Table of Beer Styles

For the past three years or so, I've developed quite a taste for beer. In fact, I've become a snob about it.

  • I am loathe to drink American Lagers.
  • I refuse to drink anything with the word “Light” in the title.
  • I gravitate mainly towards darker styles.

Oktoberfest is soon.

Aug 23, 2010

Cleaning up pre-compiled web deployables

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Have your .NET Web Application projects been breaking the scale when it comes time to deploy? Chances are, you might be including a lot of unnecessary files. Unlike our own guts, it's pretty easy for .NET projects to lose that beer belly. Plus, it's really simple to add the step.

Aug 19, 2010

Same-sex marriage vs. equal rights under the law

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I really hate polls and such that try to gauge approval for same-sex marriages. If surveyed, I'd have a hard time answering and it would depend greatly on the specific language of the question.

Aug 16, 2010

Save user settings on exit

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Do you use a Settings file with your Windows Forms application to store user settings like preferences? Would you like it to save those settings to disk after the program closes? Just add the following line to your Main method:

Application.ApplicationExit += new EventHandler(Application_SaveSettingsOnExit);

And implement a method like the following:

static void Application_SaveSettingsOnExit(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    Thread t1 = new Thread(new ThreadStart(Properties.User.Default.Save));
    t1.Name = "OnExit";
    t1.IsBackground = false;
    t1.Start();
}

The key is setting IsBackground to false. By doing this, we're saying that the thread we're kicking off is a foreground thread. This will prevent the process from exiting until that thread exits (i.e. finishes). If you don't do that, the call by Windows to exit the process will kill background threads instead of waiting on them.

Obviously, you can customize this to suit your needs. Saving manually (the OK/Apply button in your Options dialog, perhaps?) or more often automatically might be good practice, too. This is just a really simple example.

Aug 13, 2010

Tumultuous Beginnings

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Trying out the Mail-to-Blogger feature here.

I'm not really sure where to start with this (the blog), so I'll probably just jump right in. Even so, there's going to probably be a lot of rapid changes in the early life of this as I wrestle with layout, design, and static pages/content (like an about me page, etc.)...

But that's okay, I think. Better to get it over with now while nobody is reading, eh?

I have a lot to learn about widgets and custom templates...

Aug 12, 2010