ODBC on 64bit Windows
Been trying to deploy my app to the Staging area this week and I ran into more problems I wanted to share. My Crystal Reports objects weren't able to connect programmatically to the ODBC. I'm still trying to figure out what the issue is, but I ran into this bit of secret knowledge that I wanted to share from DevArticles.
In a 64 bit windows server operating system, there are TWO odbc managers. When you pull up the usual menu for the odbc / dsn system, it is for the 64 bit odbc manager, and 32 bit applications (vb 6.0) will not work using these dsn's.
This is where the 32 bit odbc manager is:
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\odbcad32.exe
Now that's useful information. Especially since I'm still building 32bit apps.
WCF broken on deployment
I recently tried to deploy a WCF service to IIS7 on server 2008. I had to remember to Add the Feature WCF Activation under .NET 3.0 in Program and Features. Yet after I performed this task I was still getting the error message.
The type 'X', provided as the Service attribute value in the ServiceHost directive could not be found.
Chris Smith's blog reminds me that the .dll file needs to be present in the bin directory. I have TFS building my output directories and didn't copy the bin folder to the output location. I'll have to look into my configuration. oops!
Hot Hybrid
All aboard the bandwagon! Every manufacturer has or is jumping on hybrid technologies. It is about damn time, because we need to look for alternate fuels and get out of the strong arm grasp of big oil.
Anyway, check out the BMW concept shown at the Frankfurt Auto Show. MPG is a modest 62.5 and can reach 62 mph in under 5 seconds. No more concept cars, we want to see the real deal. Hmm, I wonder how that Hybrid Hummer is coming along?
Cross Your Toes
A few days ago, I published a post regarding the model listing. I was going to call it quits for now and focus on the links site. Well, tonight I received an email from a cute model looking to do foot fetish work. WTF!
I checked out her portfolio and think she could help move this forward. Geographically, it might be a challenge but I will see if I can round up a photographer near her home. I have some work to do and will report an update next week. Cross your toes.
OZ’s Most Wanted
Okay mofos, I am out $90 and figured I would put it out there for others. We had dinner at one of our favorite places, but come time to pay the bill only Gman paid for his part. I had to cover Ninja's and Scooter's part of the bill. How did that happen?
I should note that Ninja did offer to pay his $60 tab with a $20 gift card, nice try but I sure the restaurant does not accept gift cards as payment. Scooter commented that he would pay me today. Scooter, where are you? I should add a counter to see who pays first!
What’s Up
What's up with traffic? The past couple months, it has been stop-and-go each morning. The traffic creeps along at 10-20 mph pass downtown and through the 50 split. It reminds me of the crappy traffic on South 101.
It has gotten worse now that students have returned to school. The only break commuters get is on furlough Fridays when State workers are not rushing into downtown. I hope this is not going to be the norm, because it sucks!
Useless Comment for the Day
Public Function ProcessPenalty() As Boolean
'**********************************
'* Purpose: Initializes the process penalty and calls the functions to do it
'* Class name: cAutoPenaltyExtension
'* Parameters
'* Input: None
'* Output: None
'* Author: REMOVED
'* Created: 01/10/01
'*
'* Modification History:
'* Author: REMOVED
'* Date: 03/01/2001
'* Modification Details:
'**********************************
What does this comment even tell me? I already know that the method will ProcessPenalty, so how does adding to the comments "Processes penalty" improve the situation? Similarly of course it calls the functions "that do it". ugh. The rest is just a waste of code space mucking it up with terribly useless comments
No More Paychecks
Hmm, I just read that Walmart has eliminated paper paychecks. Supposedly, it will save the company money and 250k pounds of paper. Employees have only 2 choices: direct deposit or a pre-paid debit card.
Read the short article and comments. One item, which was not discussed in the comments, was that Walmart and other companies are going to make money using this method. Let me break it down for wassupjose readers.
Got Burned Today
I'm about an hour and a half into my work day and still haven't successfully loaded Visual Studio. Yesterday, I was trying to clear all my breakpoints via hot keys (CTRL + ALT + F9). Somehow while executing that command I fat fingered on of the keys that had to do with macros. Suddenly, my machine is processing unintended commands and error messages are firing all over the place. At that point it was the end of the day, so I just worked past the errors and continued debugging so I could finish out the day.
This morning I came in and Visual Studio wouldn't load. The error message was "Cannot load the recording macro project '' for the following reason: 'Visual Studio 2008Projects\VSMacros80\MyMacros\MyMacros.vsmacros' is and invalid or inaccessible macro project file Would you like to recreate it?" No matter what option I choose the IDE just sits there processing...something. There's no feedback so I have no idea what its trying to do. After diverting my attention for about 15 minutes to http://news.ycombinator.com, I came back to the same situation. At the point, I started doing some Google research which quickly reached a dead end. The limited number of suggestions point to a Visual Studio reinstall.
Alright! So now we're back in business right? No, this hasn't helped the issue at all.
When you answer the message, Visual Studio processes at 90% CPU. I had to run off on some personal business and I knew I was going to be gone a while so I decided to leave Visual Studio plugging away on this issue to see if VS would finish the process. After two hours, it still did not correct itself. So I continued on with my original observation. The path to the MyMacros seemed incorrect. I searched for the entry in my registry and found it at HKEY_USERS\...\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\vsmacros\RecordingProject7\Path. I changed the path to the absolute path where it was located then did similarly for the keys above titled "OtherProjects7". Once I fixed the path Visual Studio was loaded and I was back in business.
Burnt Out
I am feeling burnt out! The weekend did nothing for me, mostly because I had to work two of the three days. On Monday, I sat around watching videos and reading but I did not rest much. BTW, I do buy books to read and not just look at the pictures. * Hint, hint *
Anyway, I felt the burnt out coming on before the holiday and now I think its almost here. I am on three projects, its back-to-school, and there is no end in sight. I am going to fill out the PTO request and take 5 days off next month! Hopefully, I can shake this crap.