Before the iPhone
Recently, I've been complaining about ATT's service and iPHone pricing models. Thus my wife and I have been rethinking keeping the phones active because the lowest price plan is still a little rich for our blood. When I talk to people about my plight I'm often surprised to learn that other people without iPhones are often paying MORE than me. Wow!
I started revaluating the phone itself and tried to think back to when I bought the phone. This recent post sums up my original decision quite well. Of the reasons he lists there are a couple I like best.
3. Carriers dictated phone designs, features, apps, prices, marketing, advertising and branding
7. Affordable, unlimited data plans as standard were unheard of
11. Without Visual Voice Mail, messages couldn’t be managed non-linearly
18. Phones didn’t come with huge 3.5″ touch screens
19. Pervasive multitouch, gesture-based UI was science fiction
These are the prime reasons why I purchased an iPhone in the first place. Apple started moving the technology and mobile scene in the right direction. For that they certainly deserve their due credit. Hell, the iPhone was almost worth it just for the visual voicemail. Why the hell do I have to listen to an entire message before I can escape and delete? *shudder*
Bye Bye ATT
In our common theme of AT&T bashing here on WassupJose because of their consistently bad performance and customer support, Apple may be giving them the ax on their exclusive access to the iPhone.
Recently my wife and I have been considering canceling our phone accounts with ATT because we can't catch a break on any pricing with the iPhone. We use less than 100 minutes a month yet pay for 600+. Yet at the same time we only have a measely 200 text messages and when my wife txt's me I get dinged for the IM against my total test message count. So every txt to my spouse is double the price. Bummer.
I'll be looking forward to jumping ship as soon as possible. ATT has already garnered so much ill will with me that a competitive plan wouldn't be enough to keep me around. I can't wait!
Enable 32bit on Windows Server x64
Ran into a problem with 32bit applications the other day on my Windows Server 2008 x64. At first I thought it was an Oracle ODAC problem. I was receiving a "Could not load file or assembly 'Oracle.DataAccess ... or one of its dependencies. An attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format." I figured that since my application was building in "Any CPU" mode that the server was running my program with x64 capabilities, but that the ODAC was specifically compiled with x86. At first I decided what I need was an x64 driver to bring the application up to x64 compalitbility. I went so far as to harrass some colleagues with metalink accounts to help me obtain the 11G x64 ODP drivers since they're not available at this time on Oracle's site. Though Oracle makes their website seems like they have some drivers just behind the metalink wall. I assure you that they do not. When you login to metalink site you find the following entry regarding the x64 driver.
Goal
Where to find the 11g 64-bit ODAC?Solution
Oracle did not provide a separate ODAC 11g install. You will have to
install the Oracle Data
Provider for .NET, Oracle Database Extensions for .NET, Oracle Provider
for OLE DB, and Oracle
Services for Microsoft Transaction Server from the Oracle Database
installation. Which is
available for download from otn at :
http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/database/index.html.Development is planning on providing an 11.2 ODAC installation, when
11.2 is released.
After giving up on finding the x64 drivers, I found some more information suggesting to explicitly compile my application in x86 format so each calling assembly would be compiled in the correct format allowing for each to communicate properly. That should have been no problem, except that the Website Application doesn't allow you to choose the platform to build because it gets compiled at run time. Therefore I had to change the Web Application to a Web Project in Visual Studio. Unfortunately, copying and pasting doesn't work as the Web Project needs to have the deisgner code behind associated with the aspx and aspx.vb. This means I had to create a new page for each page and copy paste the source into each new file. Doing so allowed the designer to properly create the designer code behind that I needed.
After burning several hours converting my entire web site over to a compatible format, I gave it a shot on the server, but alas still no go. Instead IIS still complained about incorrect format except this time it was for my first reference in my application. This made me think the problem has something to do with IIS. Sure enough here's the magic solution.
ENABLE 32 BIT APPLICATIONS = TRUE
That's it. I could have saved myself some time if I would have had some sort of server admin around.
Visual Studio Unit Testing: Creating a Private Accessor
Tried desperately to have Visual Studio to create a private accessor for me today, but every time the Test was created I received this message:
Creation of the private accessor for 'Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.TypesAndSymbols.Assembly' failed
I ran into a bunch of people talking about bugs in VS, but then I tried on another project and it worked just fine. I figured out that I had discluded the accessor file and Test References folder from my Test project. Therefore VS wasn't able to overwrite the file on the file system since it wasn't included in the project. Once I included the folder and Project.Accessor everything worked perfect.
Get more time out of your day!
A cool article describes how to sleep only 2 hours a day. Think of all the things you could do! My only contention with this plan is that you have to stop what your doing immediately every few hours to take a nap. there's gotta be some sort of overhead to that process. If I had a more flexible schedule, I'd be willing to give it a try.
Anti-IF Campaign
I have two rules when it comes to software development. The first rule I learned in high school and was learned to me by my CS professor. "If you're copying and pasting, you're doing it wrong" You wouldn't believe the massive effect this has had on my learning of creating decent software. The second rule is quite a bit newer to me and is a direct result of meeting K-man 
and WassupJose. Don't write IF or CASE statements. This is meant to avoid coupling of logic between different types and perhaps should be written more acurately as "don't write IF Type = X". Well, I just happened to run into this website promoting the same concept. Nice!
Tesla gets some money
Looks like Tesla may be the future of the automobile industry. I'm certainly glad to see them get a cut. Still 50k is too much for me for the EV. I hope that our richer brothers are able to purchase them. I can't wait for the cheap one! I just hope my Neon '00 can hold out till then.
Censorship, Content, Money and Bing!
I just finished up reading "The Myth of Good Content" wherein the authors stipulates that having a website full of carefully placed words will not necessarily make your site more visible to end users. The author points out that the whole search engine business has become a game and the game is being played. That makes for tough luck for us little guys trying to swath our own cut of the digital field. However, WassupJose isn't actually a money making venture. We're not selling products out of the corner of our garage, but there is the idea that we're giving back to the community and maybe trying to create a forum of our own. We're interested in creating some place of the interweb where our voices are important and that's enough to keep us writing (mostly!).
Let’s fix everything by…
Recently in California, Governor Schwarzenegger has been trying to fix the state budget. Unfortunately, the way he originally decided to do that was to make sweeping cuts over the swath of state workers the state depends on. Bummer. Everyone was mad about the situation, but people generally accepted it. Then the governor decided to make more cuts and people got in a tizzy. So the head of the labor unions started putting pressure on the contracts and canceled all contracts that had yet to be unfulfilled. Now when the state is able to reissue contracts, they will have to go through the entire process over again duplicating plenty of person hours.
Recently in Germany, they've decided to handle the problem with child pornography by putting a system in place that will censor and filter what Germans are allowed to see on the internet. How can they not see the slippery slope here?
These politicians need to learn that these large issues cannot and should not be solved with blanketing solutions. They will need to get down to a lower level and start weeding out the bad pieces. Don't make the system worse by adding more layers of bullshit. Just because the kid in the back of the classroom decides to punch you in the face, doesn't mean that the whole class should stay after school. Let's get to fixing these problem in a real and meaningful way. In the case of the CA budget, there are certainly state workers that aren't worth a dime and simply milk the system. Certainly their are contractors who provide the same worthless none sense and then charge double to pretend to fix their mistakes. However, there is a whole class of hard working state workers and contractors that are being penalized for other people's mistakes and miscalculations. In the case of Germany, go stop the people that are creating and supplying child pornography. Don't start controlling the world's greatest asset.
Stop viewing the world from the ivory tower and get down here and help!