Monthly Archives: March 2004

chasing away a cold

Purely Personal

I don’t get sick often – working at home, no kids, minimal exposure to other people’s kids, etc. But wouldntcha know it – just days before I have to travel across the country, I’m getting a runny nose and sore throat. Looks like a good reason to drive into town today – to get all the stuff I need to kill this thing and beef up my immunity for being in an airport and a plane. (Do I sound like Rory?). I’m even avoiding coffee (caffeine wipes out your vitamin C) which means already having drunk almost 2 pots (small – but I gotta go pee soon) of green tea. I [think I] know exactly where this came from. Some small kid stood next to me and coughed and coughed the other day at Mad River when I was changing out of my ski boots. I looked over at his mother to see if she had ANY clue and was going to call her kid back over to cough on her instead. I tried not to glare, though. I love love love kids, but have actually been accused of literally being allergic to them as I used to get a runny nose within 5 minutes of entering the 1st grade classroom where I went to help the kids with their reading skills. (was that a run-on sentence?) “Mrs. Flynn,” they would ask (I had to be Mrs. somebody, so figuring I’m married to Mr. Flynn, I chose Mrs. Flynn), “are you allergic to us?”

(Why do I want to sign this post “Halley”? I guess it’s a little more intimate than I’m used to…)

can’t hide that javascript

Tools

About 1 1/2 years ago, I wrote an ASP.NET Timesheet application for a client of mine. One of the things that I had a murderous time doing was making  start and end time text boxes that validated against each (on the client side) other checking for all kinds of things and including even a checkbox to indicate “overnight”. This was my first time doing any serious javascript so you can imagine how much effort it took. I encapsulated the code into a .js file and call it from three separate pages. Knowing that nobody can ever hide .js, I  added this comment at the top of the file this evening (just for fun):

//EndTimeValidator
//written by Julia Lerman www.thedatafarm.com
//this was my first time doing javascript, not bad, eh?
//if you are, ahem, “borrowing” this code, you might be better off
//spending $50 and buying a MUCH better solution by www.peterblum.com which
//I wish I had known about before I killed myself writing this

Of course that $50 is for this and many many other wonderful asp.net controls. I don’t always “roll my own”, but I was determined and also I learned a TON.

“exec sp_executesql” = NOT a Stored Procedure

dotNET

This has bitten me in the rear twice in the last few days while working on some webmethods. I was erroring out on a sql ExecuteNonQuery with the only message being that there was an error on line 1 of my command. Looking in my SQLProfiler I see my query as

exec sp_executesql N’MySprocName’, N’@myparam char(20)’, @myparam = ‘3/30/2004 1:48:22 PM’

“exec sp_executesql” is used for commands that are text, NOT stored procedures. The problem here is that I forgot to set my sqlcommand type to StoredProcedure and it was being sent to SQL Server as a query string and therefore failing.

This is a good indicator of the problem so that you don’t have to go around and around trying to figure out what is wrong with your stored procedure (as I did – once but not twice!)

Be a Judge at a local Imagine Cup!!!

Ineta

I was just looking at the list of many schools that could still use volunteer judges that is on the INETA Website. The best way to see is on this page http://inetaacademic.com/imaginecup/matrixmatches.aspx

  • About 15 in California
  • Boulder, CO
  • Storrs, CT
  • Dayton Beach, FL
  • Athens and Kennesaw, GA
  • 2 in Honolulu (sorry you have to get yourself there)
  • in Indiana at Purdue and Bloomington
  • In Boston – M.I.T, Boston Univ, UMASS Boston (Dorchester) and Amherst
  • Townson U in Maryland
  • 4 in Michigan
  • Rolla and St. Louis, Missouri
  • Greensboro , NC
  • 4 in New Jersey
  • New Mexico
  • Columbia University in NYC, Baruch, and Stonybrook and Binghamton, NY
  • 3 in Ohio (Oxford, Bowling Green and Cincinnati)
  • Pittsburgh, PA
  • Columbia, South Carolina
  • Middle State Univ in Tennessee
  • Texas A&M and Univ. of North Texas Dallas
  • Salt Lake City, Utah
  • Old Dominion and James Madison Universities in Virginia
  • Seattle (that shouldn’t be TOO hard!)
  • Wisconsin: Marquette, Univ. of Wisc at Madison
  • Univ of Wyoming in Laramie

MDC Blues

Tablet

I had an opportunity to go to MDC as a speaker (Tablet) and struggled with a decision because it was quickly followed by my upcoming trip to Seattle for the MVP Summit and a likely trip to TechEd. Three trips out west in such a short period would have just been too too much for me, so I unhappily said “no” to the wonderful offer. Now after reading so many posts about MDC, though I don’t regret my decision, I do feel like I really missed out on a great event. Oh well.