March 2005 - Posts

System.Web.Compilation Embarassment

Published Thu, Mar 31 2005 18:19 | William

I was googling around trying to find out more about System.Web.Compilation and I came across this link http://www.cityofno.com/portal.aspx?portal=7&tabid=2 . It's really sad b/c when you click on it, all you get is an exception message. It's cached...

Filed under: Me

C# and VB.NET playing nice in the ASP.NET 2.0 Playground

Published Wed, Mar 30 2005 20:11 | William

I've been finding so much cool sh1t in the newest build of Whidbey that it's hard to keep up. It's really amazing how, when you actually have to build something professionally, you come across so much more than you ever would just tinkering through it...

Filed under: .NET General, Visual Studio .NET 2005, Coding Techniques

Does anyone know of any 'Decorator' pattern implementations in the .NET Framework?

Published Wed, Mar 30 2005 14:11 | William

I've been reading through the Head First Design Pattern book by O'Rielly ( Here's the link ) and for the most part, I'm getting it. I've read through the GOF book but haven't found that reading through patterns books is something I'm grasping really quickly...

Filed under: Coding Techniques

Destroying Web Sites you don't like

Published Wed, Mar 30 2005 8:30 | William

Hat Tip to Mary Sauer for this cool use of Flash

Filed under: Humor

I really can't believe this

Published Tue, Mar 29 2005 22:25 | William

I got these stupid RCA Wireless Headphones a while ago that I could never get to work. Anyway, I wanted to give it another try to see if they would work better with a better output source. So I tried listening to the Phil Hendrie show with them tonight...

Filed under: Me

System.Web.Compilation

Published Tue, Mar 29 2005 22:10 | William

I'm probably late to the show on this feature too, but I just stumbled across the System.Web.Compilation library. The ClientBuildManager has like the simplest API I think I've come across - could this be any easier? private void button1_Click( object...

Filed under: Visual Studio .NET 2005

Typed DataSet Enhancements in ADO.NET 2.0

Published Tue, Mar 29 2005 17:24 | William

One other really nice thing about the 2.0 Framework is the enhancements with DataSets. Going to the designer, you can actually drag out a DataTable object and then add columns to it. I know this seems like a total “Duhh” feature, but previously...

Filed under: Data Access, Visual Studio .NET 2005

Being a Gangsta isn't as easy as it looks.

Published Tue, Mar 29 2005 17:06 | William

The only thing that really bugs me about the whole “Thug” scene is when they hold their guns to the side and do the dramatic pulling the gun back thing in rap videos. Also, I don't think saying “Booooyahhhh” after you shoot at...

Filed under: Humor

Assertion Giddyness

Published Tue, Mar 29 2005 15:53 | William

I know I already talked about this and I babble about assertions all the time, but I keep having my Assertions fail exactl where they should in my ASP.NET 2.0 app, and it is just too cool! That I know of, there's nothing that even comes close to Assertions...

Filed under: Visual Studio .NET 2005, Coding Techniques

The Utter Coolness of Sql Mobile

Published Tue, Mar 29 2005 15:44 | William

I've been writing for a while about this Proof of Concept I've been doing at work and today, I just finished a major milestone. The only thing left to do now is Ink Enable the thing and actually, that's the easy part. I can't really divulge the code I...

Filed under: Compact Framework, .NET General, Visual Studio .NET 2005, Coding Techniques

Yukon Induced Insomnia

Published Tue, Mar 29 2005 1:49 | William

Since I bought my http://www.selectcomfort.com - it's hard to really describe the friggin difference. I really can't describe it. About 4 weeks ago I was telling one of my co-workers that I was really lucky we have such flexible schedules b/c if I actually...

Filed under: Data Access, Visual Studio .NET 2005

I'll be speaking at Greenville Sql Innovators Group - April 4

Published Mon, Mar 28 2005 13:52 | William

I'll be presenting on Sql Notifications at next week's Sql Innovator's Group meeting if anyone's interested: Next Meeting Tuesday, April 5th at ECPI 4cm ******************************************************* If you are planning on attending please reply...

Filed under: News, Data Access, Me

Assertion Coolness in ASP.NET 2.0

Published Mon, Mar 28 2005 12:11 | William

As I mentioned in a few other posts, I'm currently working on this app that's going to run w/ SQL Mobile on a Tablet PC as well as a Web equivalent. The big challenge of the Proof of Concept is that the same code will run on a Tablet PC/Web App/Desktop...

Filed under: .NET General, Visual Studio .NET 2005

Getting things done?

Published Sat, Mar 26 2005 18:18 | William

The other day, one of my friends at work had brought up “Getting things done” and i went and http://www.davidco.com/products.php . I guess a lot of people at Microsoft swear by it and it's supposed to be a great program. My time management...

Filed under: Me

T-SQL: coalesce/isnull/(A is null) or (B) [From Anatoly Lubarsky]

Published Sat, Mar 26 2005 17:47 | William

Maybe it didn't matter "How you'd do this" because Anatoly shows there's not a lot of difference

Filed under: Data Access

Cool new blog

Published Sat, Mar 26 2005 17:37 | William

These days I've barely been able to keep up with my existing favorite blogs - but I came across Anatoly Lubarsky's blog and am definitely digging it . I mean, just to begin with I have a really lame name like “Bill” that I have to use my initials...

Filed under: News

How would you do this - Solution

Published Sat, Mar 26 2005 13:59 | William

In the past, I've come up with some pretty nutty ways of handling this, most of which involved some version of COALESCING things - or, back in the day, Dynamic Sql. However my homie/co-worker Jason Burton showed me the light on this one: CREATE PROCEDURE...

Filed under: Data Access

More on what a-holes RealtyWorld is

Published Sat, Mar 26 2005 13:11 | William

So here's a copy of the actual letter they are threatening people with. I actually heard an interesting take on the issue. Say RealtyWorld is going to threaten SomeMVP because the RealtyWorld Symbol bares a small resemblance to the globe SomeMvp got via...

Filed under: News, Me, Mindless Babbling

Puzzle - How would you do this?

Published Fri, Mar 25 2005 18:50 | William

Assume a really common scenario. You have a customer table with a bunch of fields in it corresponding to customer attributes. At a minimum, you have a CustomerId, FirstName, LastName and DateOfBirth. You have a form that has a control corresponding to...

Filed under: Data Access

RealtyWorld and Whorish IP Claims

Published Fri, Mar 25 2005 17:50 | William

I came across a real outrage earlier today. Someone was contacted by Realty World because they used this image from Microsoft Publisher 97 in a mailing . So they got the typical Cease and Desist BS. The funny part is that the two globes really don't look...

Filed under: Mindless Babbling