Posts

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Microsoft dot what?

imageToday I looked real hard into the possibility of using Visual Basic dot Net for the new Dillon Supply intranet, primarily because we utilize MS SQL so heavily. I was thinking it would be nice to just create and maintain a new MS SQL database on an existing server. Then I quickly saw how much Microsoft really sucks at conforming to web development standards.

I’m not too bad with MS SQL Enterprise Manager so how weird could it be? Could the Visual Studio interface get any more cumbersome? For someone like me coming from a background of Perl and PHP edited mostly in Dreamweaver – it’s no less than a freakin’ nightmare. I felt quite stupid – It looks like KDeveloper (or vice-versa)??? I couldn’t even figure out how to connect the stupid Visual Studio project to an IIS server without using “Frontpage Server Extensions”. ugh! choke! gasp… your killin’ me here.

Not for me. I will load MySQL for Windows and head down the path of simplicity and conformity. Now I know why these dot net guys come interviewing with their guns loaded for Visual Studio. You really have to be a “Microsoft Guy” to get into VS.

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My “Taxpayer Advocate”

imageA few weeks ago the IRS assigned a “Taxpayer Advocate” to my case opened to investigate why I haven’t received the copies of my 1999-2000 returns I paid $78.00 for over two months ago. I was told to provide copies of the processed checks and the “original form 4506 sent at the time of the request”…. Uh, exactly how do you send the “original” form they claim they can’t find.

Anyway, much to my surprise I was able to easily find the checks in my August bank statement – go TD Waterhouse – So today I called to tell my “Advocate” that I had the stuff he requested. That’s when he told me “there’s been a change in policy recently and we don’t need proof of the payment to provide full copies of the returns to you. They’re free now.”

Well, do I get my money back? Hell no. Organized crime.

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Thunderbird and Exchange

imageAfter work I have to pick Connor up from my sister-in-laws church. Amy’s had a headache for two days, so tonight I’m on full blown daddy duty. That’s no problem because my little guy is way cool enough to keep me entertained all night. Besides, I need to stay away from all computers for a while.

Tech sector: Suse loaded okay on the old Inspiron 2500 but I couldn’t find the display files to save my life. Apparently Suse doesn’t have them pre-installed for xFree86 and I can’t find the monitor model to use anywhere. I might work on it later or try another flavor of Linux (like Mandrake) but only when time allows.

Instead I settled for configuring IMAP on the Dillon Exchange server and put Thunderbird on an Inspiron 2600 running XP Pro. It’s a pretty cool old laptop running nothing but open source apps. Everyone was screaming that I’d lose my Exchange functionality without a MAPI client. What functionality? The personal folders and calendar I don’t use? Any time I can relieve myself of a stale ol’ MS Office app I’m gonna do it.

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Summer’s gone for good.

imageI can feel it in the air…literally. It’s gettin’ cold, we’ve had our last trip to the beach and the State Fair starts this weekend. Amy already got our tickets at a good discount otherwise I probably wouldn’t be going. It’s $9.00 a person to get in this year. And the state has the power to label someone a criminal?

In the technology sector: Today I put Suse Linux 9.1 on an old Dell Latitude 2500. We’ll see how that finishes up tomorrow. Hopefully I can find the video and network drivers easy enough. There’s no real point to the project, just something to do with a spare PC. I think Mike’s going to take it home from work when it’s done. To my knowledge he has zero experience with any OS outside of AS400 and Windoze.

I’ve got some major stuff coming up at work including the deployment of an SMS 2003 server and the design of an SQL cluster environment. I’m also looking into SQL transaction replication but I’ve heard real time replication is not advised for MS SQL. I can see that. Microsoft products couldn’t suck up more resources if they made vacuum cleaners.

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My Mercury Mail Server

With the addition of Mercury Mail I am now completely hosting this domain from home. I’m denying all non-local smtp relays so forget about bouncin’ off me. I’m also going to be watching the logs for a while to make sure everything’s legit. In fact I’m not posting my domain address as a contact link.

The general public can reach me at the spam trap:citizen782@email.com

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I’m not a geek after all.

For all of those who’ve made this assertion simply because I work on computers all day – you’ve been scientifically refuted. I took the Thudfactor Geek Quiz.

Here’s the results table:

You are 12% geek
OK, so maybe you ain’t a geek. You do, at least, show a bit of interest in the world around you. Either that, or you have enough of a sense of humor to pick some of the sillier answers on the test. Regardless, you’re probably a pretty nifty, well-rounded person who gets along fine with people and can chat with just about anyone without fear of looking stupid or foolish or overly concerned with minutiae. God, I hate you.

Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com

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Connor’s 1st

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Connor had his 1st birthday last month and since I’m not importing any of the contents of my old blog’s right away I felt like he needed to be included in one of the first posts. What else can I say, him and his mother are my life.

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It’s catching

It seems abcnews.com had the same idea (but probably long ago) to change the entire look of their site too. For me that’s going to take more getting used to than the new look of my own site.

Everything’s in need of an overhaul at some point – just to keep it fresh. In fact I got the idea of relocating my entire site and redoing the entire blog based on the fact that I was not at all happy with the old site. It was way too boring. The movement and adaptation of all the local web services was an afterthought. I’m much happier with the new look now that my template is pretty much done. And the speed seems to be much better as my site used to spend a lot of time waiting in line for the SQL server at totalchoicehosting.com. They received my cancellation notice today.

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Apache, MySQL, WordPress

All of these applications and database are now running on my machine at home, serving this site to the web. No more web hosting ever again for me thanks to no-ip.com – dynamic DNS all the way from now on. Sorry Time Warner.

The WordPress template I’m using needs a lot of work but I’m just happy I got a new router, firewall, and this site up in under one day. Never again will I need to FTP files. My total cost for running this site is $45 a year including the domain registration.

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