Archive for category Rants
Request for Comment – Not a normal RFC :)
Posted by Brian Seekford in Rants on February 2, 2011
I normally only use this blog to help seal in my mind issues I have worked on. Hence, the brevity of most posts. I just write the basic knowledge needed to complete the specific task, but without a lot of wordy fanfare a lot of bloggers like to put in. 8 pages how-to’s seem odd for a blog, but hey, they are plentiful out there.
Anyway, my question to those of you who are happening upon my small piece of the Internet: Do you want video how-to’s, specific information or answers? If so, comment to let me know.
Otherwise, I will continue with my random tip or blurb of knowledge.
Thanks JambiHacker
Posted by Brian Seekford in Rants on September 16, 2010
I guess I was somehow important enough to be hacked by the Jambi Hacker Link. Some yahoo’s out of Indonesia. WordPress security must be a piece of crap.
Time for server lock down. Good times.
-Brian
Best Buy cancels every StarCraft II Pre-Order
Posted by Brian Seekford in Rants on July 7, 2010
Best Buy in their infinite stupidity decided to cancel every order for StarCraft II. Why? Well, if you are expecting a good reason, it’s not coming.
They found that their was a glitch on their site and some people were able to order the game for $5.99 instead of $59.99. I ordered it as the proper price, and so did a lot of other people.
How did Best Buy decided to handle the issue? Cancel just the errant orders you say? Of course not. Some retard made the decision to cancel them all. Every order. Over 9,000+ orders maybe even a lot more.
It’s a big company, so the decision maker is probably going to keep his job despite causing the company to lose half a million in revenue on top of the customer frustration, call center costs, and general ill will.
Good Job Best Buy! Way to go, brilliant management.
Excuse the rant, they just really pi$$ed me off.
Sorry for the server crash. Guess GoDaddy’s virtual servers are no match for SlashDot
Posted by Brian Seekford in Rants on April 21, 2010
I put up my fix for the McAfee bug and got slashdotted. Ouch, awesome to have the exposure but my web server crashed. I just had it rebooted, so it’s happy now!
I guess my virtual server, which I expected to be decent, was no match for the traffic spike.
Well, thanks for listening. I hope the fix is helping you guys out, it definitely threw thousands into a spiral of WTF. I still can’t McAfee would screw up this bad.
Regards,
Brian
regsvr32.exe registering your ActiveX (ocx) gives you error 0×80040200..yuck.
Posted by Brian Seekford in IT Knowledge, Rants on January 6, 2010
I design and work with a lot of c++ code and write a number of ActiveX controls. I set my machine up so I can double click the OCX and it is associated with regsvr32.exe, so it gets registered. Nice and easy, right? I have been doing it for years. Double click, whammo. It’s registered.
Now let’s come to the present. Happy go lucky , easy as pie, double click my way to registered controls, is gone. BAH! I upgraded to Windows 7, I knew this OS had to have a gotcha!
So I get regsvr32.exe blowing up and giving me error 0×80040200. That’s real helpful, doesn’t Microsoft speak any ENGLISH. So I go and look up that ridiculous error code, and lo and behold…wait for it….wait…….User Access Control. UAC said, go away child, you can’t play here.
The long and short of it, I typed cmd.exe into the run box on the start menu, right clicked cmd.exe when it appeared and did a runas for Administrator. I then did the old school command line register of the ocx. Sad.
When I get froggy enough, I will write a batch file that will have the always run as admin attributes on it so at least UAC can prompt me to elevate.
So in short, regsvr32 on Windows 7 with UAC. You must find a way to make regsvr32.exe run elevated as an Administrator for it to work.
DataBinding: ‘Telerik.Web.UI.GridInsertionObject’ does not contain a property with the name ‘UserName’.
Posted by Brian Seekford in .NET Development, C#, entity framework, Rants on December 12, 2009
I use the Telerik controls for a lot of my web work. They save a lot of time but every once in a while they really irritate the hell out of me. A few hours down the rabbit hole and I find that when binding to an EntityDataSource on a RadGrid when trying to insert an item on an empty list. i.e. no records yet, you get the title error.
So, what is the work around? A dummy row on an empty insert. Awesome huh. Well, at least it works.
protected void dgAuthorizedUsers_ItemCommand(object source, Telerik.Web.UI.GridCommandEventArgs e)
{
if (e.CommandName == Telerik.Web.UI.RadGrid.InitInsertCommandName )
{
e.Canceled = true;
var newVals = new System.Collections.Specialized.ListDictionary();
newVals["UserName"] = string.Empty;
e.Item.OwnerTableView.InsertItem(newVals);
}
}
Make sure to add all the different fields you use. So much for declarative programming eh?
Visual C++, Precompiled Headers and Windows 7
Posted by Brian Seekford in Bugs, Rants on December 5, 2009
I upgraded to Windows 7 and I really am enjoying the new interface….but….. I went to compile my ActiveX toolset projects that are all written in C++ and I started getting precompiled header errors.
So I rebuilt and rebuilt and still got the error:
Error 1 fatal error C1859: ‘.\Release/HTTP Wizard.pch’ unexpected precompiled header error, simply rerunning the compiler might fix this problem d:\SSI\C++\v3\HTTP Wizard v3\HTTPAccess.cpp 5 HTTP Wizard
So I rebuilt and rebuilt. No avail. I turned off Precompiled headers and then everything worked fine. What a pain.
It turned out the reason is due to the virtual tables being rebased by Windows 7 for security which totally screws up the precompiled header logic, which requires the headers to be in the same memory locations.
Apparently the development team at Microsoft knows about the issue and will eventually fix it. So, lets hope that service pack comes out soon.
I guess I am lucky my build machine is really beefy, but for active development having the precompiled header is nice.
So, go have a Margarita and the compiler errors won’t bother you as much…..
Visual Studio 2008 toolbox loads slowly on large projects…
Posted by Brian Seekford in .NET Development, Bugs, C#, Rants on November 30, 2009
I am working on a very large project that has 70+ assemblies and dozens of different user controls. Every time I open up the Forms designer to work on a Form, it takes a ridiculously long time to do so. I just assumed this was my machine being underweight for the project.
So fast forward to today. I happen to have reset my workspace so my toolbox wasn’t set to auto-hide. As I opened up my Form to work on it, I notice the Toolbox start flickering and loading all the controls in the project. Hmmm….Looks like we found why the Form load is so slow. Why on earth it takes up to minutes to read all the controls in the application is mind boggling, but now I know it does it sets me on the path to fix it.
After researching the settings in Visual Studio, I find this little hidden gem.
Tools->Options->Windows Forms Designer->General->AutoToolboxPopulate
Set this bad boy to False and you get rid of the annoying lag. You will not get the controls to appear automatically in your toolbox now though, so be aware of that. You will need to add them manually. Oh, the horror. The horror……. Ha.
Enjoy the savings of time and hair pulling.
Windows 7 is officially bad ass…………
Posted by Brian Seekford in General Thoughts, IT Knowledge, Rants on November 23, 2009
I got a virus on my Windows Vista machine that caused it to run slower than all holy hell. I decided, well, now must be the time to upgrade my OS. No one ever wants to go through the new OS nightmare of having to reinstall every program they use. Especially not a guy in the IT field that uses a whole lot more than just Office.
So, I went full out and put on Windows 7 64-bit. Oh yeah. I finally get all 4 gigs of my ram. I expected the OS to be pretty much Vista with a new name.
Luckily, its not. I have only had it installed for about a day now but I see all sorts of little changes that make my experience SOOOO much better.
The themes are really cool. The desktop background rotates a nice image every hour or so. I definitely like the variety, but thats not my big happy change.
The UAC is a lot more friendly than it used to be. I like the prompts as it make me feel a bit in control, but in Vista I disabled UAC altogether because nothing worked when it was on. Windows 7, not a problem. I run Visual Studio 2008 and don’t have any of the Vista issues I had.
The biggest thing I found I like so far is the taskbar. I am not only able to “pin” my programs to it, which is a great timesaver, but I can pin my documents to the program as well. I open and close the same 4 documents all the time. Now, its easy to pop into the word icon and go right to my document. Great time saver.
The other major timesaver I use is the ability to see all the windows for a process when I click on the taskbar icon. It is so much easier to figure out what IE window I want to go to or explorer folder when I can see the image of it at a glance.
Windows 7 gets my vote as a great new OS for productivity. Vista is a smelly pile of crap once you get used to the new Windows.
Crazy day of travel..
Posted by Brian Seekford in General Thoughts, Personal, Rants on November 5, 2009
I hopped on my ridiculously early flight to Colorado Spring this morning and was happy to get an exit row seat. About 5 minutes before departure from the Tampa airport(TIA) two security guards board the plane. Routine check, right?
Nope. They begin talking with a passenger in the back of the plane and then escort him off.
Freaky, right? So we are all left with the though of wtf? Why was this guy escorted off the plane.
We take off and land at Houston then I board this plane called the Continental Express for Colorado Springs. What a tiny piece of crap. My head hit the ceiling and the seats were so small I had to disengage my arm rest to fit my legs. Anyway, I arrive safe and sound at the Colorado Springs airport.
I checked in at the Broadmoor hotel. This is an amazing hotel by the way. Fast forward to the me having drinks at the bar at midnight. I talk with a few people and find out that General Petraeus is staying here. I thought that was pretty interesting.
But wait…..Whats more interesting?
I met a lady who was sitting by the fire outside who said she was a famous author that was going on Opera and the Jay Leno show. She was smashed out of her mind and said she was marrying the gentleman with her because he had saved her from a racoon. Can’t make this up folks. She had met him that night and decided they must be married.
Suffice it to say, plastered plastered plastered. So, I will be watching Leno to see if she really is as much a crackpot as I think or if I get proven wrong.
Its 3am in my time zone, so good night.