Up From The Ashes

Doors & Manners

Jeff Ballard — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 07:00:00 GMT

When I'm opening a door, how far behind me does someone have to be before I am not obligated to hold the door open for them? Two, four, ten, twelve steps? Honestly, this sort of thing causes me a lot of anxiety. Because inevitably, due to my bad judgement, I'll hold the door when someone is too far away and they will then feel compelled to run to get to the door as they don't want to be seen as taking advantage of my kindness. And I didn't want that, I just wanted to be nice and hold the door open for them. When people do run, I usually say "no hurry." And I mean it. Of course, the flip side is that I don't hold the door and they now think I'm that guy who has no common courtesy. And it makes me sad to even think I could be "that guy".

I'm hosed either way. Maybe I should just start slamming doors in people's faces. Of course, that would bring lawsuits. I don't want those, either.

'Unable to Cast COM Object' Error With SQL Server 2008

Jeff Ballard — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 07:00:00 GMT

I have encountered an error that was driving me nuts:

Unable to cast COM object of type 'System.__ComObject' to interface type 'Microsoft.VisualStudio.OLE.Interop.IServiceProvider'. This operation failed because the QueryInterface call on the COM component for the interface with IID '{6D5140C1-7436-11CE-8034-00AA006009FA}' failed due to the following error: No such interface supported (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80004002 (E_NOINTERFACE)). (Microsoft.VisualStudio.OLE.Interop)

Googling and Binging revealed I'm not the only one to have this issue. I even tried the fixes here:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sqltools/thread/6d0f23e5-14fd-4a32-b37d-33458c339b14

with no luck. This is the second machine (same machine actually, just reinstalled Windows 7 RTM) and had the same error occur. I got lucky this time, though, in that I noticed it started happening immediately after I installed Source Gear Vault version 3.1.5. Figuring that Vault was the most recent installed item, I tried uninstalling it and voila, the problem was gone.

I know that's not a solution for most people - I'm lucky in that I only need Vault for a little bit as we're moving to another source control provider. I also suspect it's not an issue for most folks as 3.1.5 is a really old version of Vault. But at least I finally know what was causing the error.

Date Without Time When Serializing

Jeff Ballard — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 07:00:00 GMT

I'm serializing a class in .NET and have a DateTime field. It's getting serialized as:

2009-11-01T00:00:00

When what I really want is something without the time like this:

2009-11-01

Brad Abrams has a great post that has how to do this (plus a lot more). Simply add this attribute to the property:

[XmlElementAttribute(DataType="date")]

This is probably basic to some, but was helpful to me.

Why Women Think Men Are Pigs

Jeff Ballard — Sun, 31 May 2009 07:00:00 GMT

The Melbourne (Florida) International Airport is not exactly the prime example of a bustling, thriving airport. Of all the times I've been there, I've never seen more than one or two people in the airport bar. And when I say "the" airport bar, I mean the one and only that there is. Last Tuesday, however, there were about 10 people in the bar. I found a spot at the bar and sat down. About two bar stools to my right, there were two guys sitting and discussing politics. One was older and wearing a wedding ring, the younger, who also appeared a bit drunk, wasn't wearing a ring.

"What would you like?", the Marisa Tomei-sounding bartender asked as she came over.

"Amber Bock."

"Draft or bottle?"

"Draft," I replied, thinking that a draft beer is always the better option.

"It may take a few minutes to pour", she said. "It doesn't get used very often, so it'll be foamy."

Willing to wait, I told her no problem. I watched as she tapped the beer and she wasn't kidding - there was foam in at least half the glass. She filled it, waited a second and then poured most of the foam out. As she was refilling what she'd poured out, she looked over at me and said "Just want to make sure you get your money's worth."

After saying thanks and while thinking to myself "that's cool", the younger of the two guys sitting down from me said to the bartender "I hope that applies to everything." I see a curious look cross the bartender's face as she tried to figure out what that comment meant. I know that I wasn't quite sure what he meant, but all I could think was "Does he think she's a hooker?"

I'm sitting there and enjoying my beer while waiting for the inbound flight to arrive. My total was an odd total, like $4.07. I only had a five dollar bill, and not wanting to leave less than a $1.00 tip, I reached into my laptop bag and pulled out a quarter, basically giving the bartender $1.18 as a tip. Almost 30%; hopefully the odd amount doesn't make me a bad tipper. Perhaps it was odd, because the bartender started talking about foreigners and the uncertainty they have about tipping - but I digress.

Out the window that looks between a jet bridge and a wall, I see my Delta Connection flight finishing its rollout and turning off the runway. I say to the two guys "Plane's arrived." I sit there enjoying what's left of my beer and thinking it's about time to head down to the gate. As I drink the last bit of my beer and start to gather my things to head to the gate, young drunk guy blurts out to the bartender "If I miss my flight, can I stay at your place?"

Ahhh...now it all make sense. He's been drinking and he's lonely. The bartender is apparently the nearest female, so she's the unfortunate victim. I have to wonder, does this work for him very often? Is it the theory that nine out of ten times you get slapped, but the tenth time makes it all worth it? I saw the look on his friend/coworkers face when the comment was made - he was pretty embarrassed and probably wanted to apologize on behalf of his buddy.

I'm sure it's not his first time making an awkward come-on to a bartender, and I'm sure it's not the first time that's happened to the bartender, either. Nor will it probably be the last for either of them.

While I know I made the awkward come-on attempt in my single days, I also know it was rare. Most of the time discretion and common sense won, regardless of how lonely I felt. But I have also been to the point where you're so lonely that anything seems reasonable, even when it's really not. And I feel bad about those times where my judgment lacked and some woman was unnecessarily creeped out. My apologies to the women who I bothered with a look that lasted too long or a comment that just wasn't right. And on behalf of the rest of us men, I apologize for guys like drunk young guy in the Melbourne International Aiport. You deserve better and we're not all pigs, I promise.

No Internet Access with Linksys WRT54G v2.2

Jeff Ballard — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 16:04:28 GMT

Just a note - I personally did NOT find the solution to this problem, I'm simply reposting details about my problem and the solution I found on the linksys forums. I figure the more the info gets out there, the better. Plus, I seem to be good at getting results of searches to my site for my technical problems I've solved or found answers to.

The details:

First, we have Cox cable as our ISP. We normally have had great access with no problems. We have a Linksys cable modem and the Linksys WRT54G v2.2 wireless router. The problem started after a firmware upgrade. After the initial upgrade, things worked great for roughly a month and then we would completely lose all access to the web - both wired and wireless. Unplugging and replugging it in would work; I had to do a hard reset, reset security, etc. Things would then work for another month or so, and I'd have to reset everything again. Despite lots of calls to Cox support, there was no information or other suggested solution.

We bought a new wireless router that I kept in the box while I gave it one more shot. I started some serious googling and digging into the Linksys forums. I found I wasn't the only one with this problem. After doing some reading, I found this thread that suggested downgrading the firmware. In particular, I used the link in the post by user "almuslet" that had a link to the proper version for me to download. Thanks, almuslet!

I returned the new router (unopened) and we've been running the older firmware for several months now without so much as having to even unplug/replug the router. Linksys screwed up their firmware somehow and moving to a "new" version was *not* a good thing. Maybe Linksys just wants to force people to buy a new router. No thanks - until all our laptops get N wireless cards, what's the point?

Thoughts On Urinals

Jeff Ballard — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:31:34 GMT

I always feel bad when I use the half-height, little kids urinal in the bathroom and some little kid comes in. When I look over my shoulder at him he is invariably fidgeting nervously, holding his crotch, crossing his legs and, of course, giving me the look of death that says something like "Look, tall dude, there's a perfectly good normal height urinal right next to you. Why aren't you using that one - you're tall enough, I'm not!" (We'll ignore the fact that the short one had been the only one available when I went into the bathroom.)

While he sits there fidgeting, trying to avoid peeing in his pants, I am furiously trying to hurry and finish so I don't have it on my conscience that some kid peed in his pants because I was using the short urinal. Because along with the guilt that not only has some poor kid now pissed himself, I feel bad because his parents have to deal with it, too. And I just don't need that much guilt.

Fortunately, I let all that go pretty quickly - I hold on just long enough to blog about it.

P.S. - One of the best bathroom/urinal designs I've seen is when they put the half-height ones right next to a big one, so a father-son combo can go right next to each other. This is much better than the design where all the short ones are at the end. What father really wants his five year old three urinals away where it's harder to keep an eye on them?

Overused Phrases

Jeff Ballard — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 21:16:23 GMT

I get so tired of the phrases in pop culture. Some of the really annoying ones are below. And yes, while I've probably used them all at least hundreds of times I've finally realized how annoying it is when others use them, so I'm going to do my best to stop. Now, that's not a New Year's resolution - it just so happens to fall around this time of year.

"Oh no you didn't"
"Here it comes...wait for it..." - I think I've seen this one written more than spoken.
"I'm not gonna lie"
"I'm just sayin'..." (usually said after you've just really offended someone)

There's probably a dozen more, but nothing comes to mind. Perhaps someone can comment on my lame blog and add to the list!

Dell Inspiron 1720 Brightness on Battery

Jeff Ballard — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 20:57:40 GMT

I have a Dell Inspiron 1720 and wasn't happy with the brightness, even after pressing Fn up arrow - it would only get so bright. Despite trying everything within Windows to make it brighter, it occurred to me there might be a setting in the BIOS and there is.

On startup, press F2 to enter the BIOS setup and expand the "Video" option. There should be two options beneath that - "Brightness" and "Brightness (AC)". Select "Brightness" and change the value to 8 instead of 3. It's brighter on AC b/c the "Brightness (AC)" default is 8 whereas on battery, the default is 3. The value set in the BIOS is the maximum, so you can't set the brightness beyond whatever is set in the BIOS.

After booting into Windows (or your favorite OS), you can then adjust the brightness as bright as you like.

Microsoft Integrating JQuery with VS

Jeff Ballard — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 22:13:42 GMT

Someone in the blogosphere (can't remember who) had recently said they would like to see Microsoft start working with open source projects, include it in their products and yet leave it unchanged and open source, all the while contributing back to the original project. Well, they're going to include JQuery in Visual Studio going forward as well as other products. It will have IntelliSense support, too! This is great news from Microsoft and hopefully the beginning of much more support for open source projects. The announcement by Scott Guthrie is at http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/09/28/jquery-and-microsoft.aspx Here's another announcement by a member of the jQuery team: http://jquery.com/blog/2008/09/28/jquery-microsoft-nokia/

Review of "Hole in the Sun" by Night Ranger

Jeff Ballard — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:59:23 GMT

The teenager in me was ecstatic to find out that Night Ranger's new album "Hole in the Sun" was finally available in the U.S. It's been available in Japan for a while, but not here. While I've loved the band since their first album "Dawn Patrol", buying the import was impractical. I did buy one import ("Neverland", I think) years ago, but I was single then and spare cash was easier to come by then.

I typically won't buy an album without a recommendation or unheard but Night Ranger has consistently put out great music (IMHO) over the years so the band has earned that right from me. Before I bought it I browsed through a few reviews on iTunes - although I bought it through Musicane (another post for another day) - even though I knew I'd buy it anyway. I wasn't sure what to think - the reviews I read were mixed. Some seemed to say "they've changed/updated their sound"; others said they were clinging to the past by putting new versions of "Sister Christian" and "Don't Tell Me You Love Me". Ironically, some said both. Hey, dumbasses, you can't have it both ways: either they update their sound or they live in the past. Now, skippy, if you don't like the updated sound, that's fine. But you can't have it both ways...

Now that I've rambled for a bit, here's the review. I LOVE this album. It's definitely heavier than most of their previous albums. It doesn't have the pop appeal that "Midnight Madness" did back in the day (1983), but still has lots of catchy hooks. Some of the stand out tracks:

Tell Your Vision
Drama Queen
You're Gonna Hear it From Me
Whatever Happened
Rockstar (probably my favorite)
Hole in the Sun
White Knuckle
Wrap It Up

This is most of the heavier, more upbeat tracks on the album. The slower/mellower songs just don't grab me the way the others do. Part of it may be the fact I generally like my music more upbeat. One thing that is more noticeable on the slower songs is that the vocals aren't as strong as in the past - probably just aging (heck, Jack & Kelly are about 55). That said, they still sound good - better than most of the newer stuff out there today, although one could say that's just me being ornery and contrary about anything new.

Overall, I'd give this album an 8/10. It totally rocks, still has that Night Ranger feel, but doesn't feel like the old stuff re-hashed. What else could you ask for?