Citi sends unrequested credit cards - USATODAY.com

Citi sends unrequested credit cards - USATODAY.com

My wife just got a new credit card in the mail. I was stunned. I asked her if she had requested it and she said no. This is just bad business. Very upsetting that a company could get away with this. How will this affect our credit? Is there an opportunity for identity theft? Maddening. This shouldn't be allowed. The name Citi will now take a position on my "bad" list of companies I will not have anything to do with.

I want to be able to connect to the computers on my network. And I
want to do this even from outside the firewall. SBS 2003 has a great
web interface to launch this at http://yourdomain.com/remote.

But it wasn't working. I was getting the error: "Connectivity to the remote computer could not be established. Ensure that the remote computer is on and connected to the Windows Small Business Server network."

I found the solution here: http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=101&threadID=227304&messageID=2263999

"Remote Connections
I've seen this error too many times when I don't enable remote
coneections on workstations. The connection is being made, otherwise you would not get that error. Check and make that "Allow users to connect remotely to this computer" is enabled. This is found on the Remote tab of my computer. As soon as I tenable it, I can remote login to workstation. This has worked for me every time without fail. "

This worked great and now I can connect to the machines that I want to connect to.

--
----------------------------
David Mineer Jr
Construction Monitor
435-586-1205 x101
----------------------------------------------------------
The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing
something. It's as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas,
but there are few who decide to do something about them now.
Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur
is a doer.

iGoldmine and Log On Local Rights.

After getting iGoldmine configured and allowing access through the firewall, I had a problem with regular users loggin in. I could, as an administrator, but my other users could not.

The first article I saw had me pull up the local Security settings Management console. I can't remember how they had me do that. But, when I clicked on "Allow log on Locally", the option to "Add user or group" is grayed out.

I found another article here. Here are the steps to use the Default Domain Controller Security Settings instead. This gave me the choice to add users or groups.

1. Click Start, point to Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Domain Controller Security Policy.
2. Double-click the Security Settings folder, double-click Local Policies, and then click User Rights Assignment.
3. Under the Policy column, click Allow Log on Locally, and then click Add.

I created a group called iGoldmine and added it to this policy. Now any user I add to that group can use iGoldmine.

ISA 2004 and iGoldmine

A few months ago I moved my sales staff to a new server. This put them on a seperate network with it's own internet connection. I have needed to get iGoldmine up and working but I had not done that. Until today. And it was a pain, which I actually started day before yesterday. The first nightmare was that my machine wouldn't reboot after installing iGoldmine. Turns out they have an incompatibility with one of the microsoft updates.
This is always a problem with goldmine. I am not real pleased with igoldmine but I have no other options owing to the fact that we use goldmine and want remote access. Anyway, the solution was to apply the iGoldmine patch in safe mode. Then I had to remove an icompatible windows patch after that. Pain in the but. This is a patch from back in April, 4 months ago. You would think they would get it fixed.
Anyway, after getting it installed, it worked from inside the firewall, but not outside. Goldmine tech support of course was of no assistance and said they dont' support firewall configurations, which is typical of their support, they are extremely unhelpful even though I am sure they have thousands of customers with the same issues. I didn't find much, other than people asking the same questions, in the forums.
So here is how I finally got iGoldmine working through my ISA 2004 firewall(I know you might think it so much more than a firewall and it may well be, whatever).
I am on Small Business Sever 2003, if that makes any difference to you

1. Open "Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server" Management Console.
2. Click on your server
3. Click on "Firewall Policy"
4. Right click and chooose New/Access Rule (or click "Create a New Access Rule" int he task menu.
5. Name it what you want, I chose "iGoldmine". Click Next
6. Choose "Allow". click next.
7. For "This rule applies to" choose "Selected Protocols"
8. Click Add
9. Now you are at the "Add Protocols" Window.
10. You will notice at the top of the protocol "type" list there is 3 menus. New, Edit Delete. Edit and Delete may be grayed out if you haven't selected a protocol
11. Click New, then Choose Protocol
12. Give it a name, I like to confuse myself so I called it "iGoldmine". Same name, but this is a protocol and not an access rule.
13. Choose New in the "New Protocol Definition Wizard"
14. You want the following: Protocol Type:TCP, Direction:Outbound:Port Range from 491 to 491. Probably the only changes you need to make are to the port range values, the rest are probably defaulted correctly.
15. Click Ok
16. Click new again
17. This was the one that got me. You need an inbound filter for port 80.
18. Protocol Type:TCP, Direction:Inbound, Port Range From 80 to 80. If you don't use port 80 you will need to change this in the iGoldmine cluster manager, but you do have that option
19. Click ok
20. Click Next
21. Choose No on Secondary Connection, Click next.
22. Click Finish
23. No to add them you will need to find them in the "Add protocols" window. Probably the easiest is to choose All protocols and find them in alphabetical order. You ned to choose the ones you just added and click add to add them to the protocols section of the New Access Rule Wizard.
24. Click close once you have done that.
25. Click next
26. Access Rule Sources. Choose External. Click next
27. Access Rule Destinations. Choose "Local Host"
28. Click next
29. Leave default "All Users", Click next
30. Click Finish.

That should do the trick. It should work immediately.
The next problem I had was giving users log on local rights. I was able to logon immediately after the above as an admin on the iGoldmine server, but regular users could not until I made some changes. I will talk abou that in my next post.

"Error 15023: User or role '%s' already exists in the current database."

Got this error recently when I downloaded a clients database from a shared host to my local machine. Tried to add the same user.

This article resolved it for me: http://www.codeproject.com/database/OrphanedSQLUsers.asp.

Here is the SQl that I ran "sp_change_users_login 'auto_fix', 'user'"

Tethering my Blackberry to my Laptop

When I first got my blackberry one of the things that interested me was the fact that I could "Tether" myh blackberry to my laptop. Which means that I could use my blackberry to get high speed internet access from anywhere I could use my cell phone(blackberry) Well the software to allow that didn't work with Windows Vista, so I kind of forgot about it for a while. Until today. I figured out that the motel my wife had got from hotwire didn't have high speed internet(I always try to remind her how important that is for me).

Anyway I called verizon and had them add the $15 a month thing that I needed for this to work and got instructions on how to download the software that I needed. The told me to go to http://www.vzam.net/. After driving around for about an hour I finally found an open wireless connection and was able to download the VZAccess Manager that I needed.

Wow. Here I am sitting in the middle of a big parking lot at some factory stores near Park City Utah, checking email and doing other tasks. And it was fast. I had a full bar EVDO connection and it screamed. The connection back at the motel is only 2 bars and it is bearable for email and surfing, although noticeably slower.

Turns out this "Motel" is actually condos and there was a DSL modem sitting on the floor unplugged. I plugged it in and I have DSL so I didn't even really need to set up the Broadband access with verizon, but hey I will be getting stuff done while the family is school shopping so I am going to stick with it for at least this month. Where I live, we don't have the EVDO towers. I wish verizon would get that rolled out to all their towers.

David Mineer

Ten ColdFusion 8 OneLiners

Ten ColdFusion 8 OneLiners

Blog entry about some of CF8's best new features.

Importing Outlook Email into Google Apps (Gmail)

Here is an article about different ways to import existing email into your new Google Apps account.

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/MigratingAFamilyToGoogleAppsFromGmailThunderbirdOutlookAndOthersTheDefinitiveGuide.aspx

This is mentioned in that article, but looks like a tool to make some migrations very simple: http://www.limitnone.com/products.php

Maybe not free, but what is your time worth?

Yslow for Firebug

As mentioned in Sean Coorfield's Blog. Yslow for firebug is a great little utility to use on your own web site.

The proper way to ask questions in newsgroups and other forums

Sean Corfields blog had a great post about blunt to the point article about posting quesitons to newsgroups, email lists and other forums for technical answers. I am one that is always nervous to ask a question, but this does not offend me, yet instead offers some good insight on the effort we should all take before we expect someone else to spend their valuable time helping us. There are alot of people that offer alot of help and to them I am grateful. The article:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

Problem Rotating Images

Several Times my users have complained to me that they were unable to rotate images using windows picture and fax viewer. This seems odd to me because they can rotate other pictures, just not some.

Anyway I found an article that provided the fix for this:

http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windowsxp.photos/browse_thread/thread/bf93b6a7f38c2520/68e7606cddf2dd30%2368e7606cddf2dd30

Just click the ctrl and X button in windows picture and fax viewer and it will reset the warning message, which, if you choose yes to go ahead anyway will rotate the picture.

Yep, as simple as getting the dialog box back. I guess you just have to answer the dialog box each time.

Next N records, paginated sql server results

I have several places on my web site where I let the user page through search results and recordsets. Usually this is inneficient because your return all resulsts and essentially hide everything but the rows they want to see. This is very inneficient and the only examples of doing this correctly were difficult at best.

Well, with SQL Server 2005 there is a new feature - ROW_NUMBER() that makes this simpoler to implement. Not 100% intuitive but I was able to figure it out. The following link is a good tutorial that helped me:

http://www.davidhayden.com/blog/dave/archive/2005/12/30/2652.aspx

Dynamic SQL Where statements

I was trying to figure out how to use an if statement in the where clause of a sql statement. I came across this article that explains the use of coalesce. This is a great way to handle this.

http://www.sqlteam.com/item.asp?ItemID=2077

SELECT Cus_Name,
Cus_City,
Cus_Country
FROM Customers
WHERE Cus_Name = COALESCE(@Cus_Name,Cus_Name) AND
Cus_City = COALESCE(@Cus_City,Cus_City) AND
Cus_Country = COALESCE(@Cus_Country,Cus_Country)

Read the article to understand it. Basically if there is a value provided to the stored procedure then the comparison is done. If there is no value it essentially includes all records or (matches itself). I know, that doesn't make sense.

Setting Parameters in Crystal Reports .NET

Well, I missed the post about setting parameters. That was one of the puzzle pieces too and I got lazy and didn't post about it. Here it is.

Setting Parameters in Crystal Reports .NET

A number of methods out there use the CrystalReportViewer control to set parameters. That's great unless you need to export your report to PDF (or XLS or RTF). This is a code snippet I use, it comes from Business Objects tech support:

rptCount = New ReportDocument
rptCount.Load(Server.MapPath("reportname.rpt"))

''Get the collection of parameters from the report
crParameterFieldDefinitions = rptCount.DataDefinition.ParameterFields
''Access the specified parameter from the collection
crParameter1 = crParameterFieldDefinitions.Item("Param1")
crParameter2 = crParameterFieldDefinitions.Item(“Param2")

''Get the current values from the parameter field. At this point
''there are zero values set.
crParameter1Values = crParameter1.CurrentValues
crParameter2Values = crParameter2.CurrentValues

''Set the current values for the parameter field
crDiscrete1Value = New ParameterDiscreteValue
crDiscrete1Value.Value = Request.Form(“param1value“)

crDiscrete2Value = New ParameterDiscreteValue
crDiscrete2Value.Value = Request.Form(“param2value“)

''Add the first current value for the parameter field
crParameter1Values.Add(crDiscrete1Value)
crParameter2Values.Add(crDiscrete2Value)

''All current parameter values must be applied for the parameter field.
crParameter1.ApplyCurrentValues(crParameter1Values)
crParameter2.ApplyCurrentValues(crParameter2Values)

Crystal Reports Database Login

The last major piece of my puzzle. This code lets me pass database and login information.

http://diamond.businessobjects.com/node/134

VB.NET
---------

Imports CrystalDecisions.CrystalReports.Engine
Imports CrystalDecisions.Shared


Dim crtableLogoninfos As New TableLogOnInfos()
Dim crtableLogoninfo As New TableLogOnInfo()
Dim crConnectionInfo As New ConnectionInfo()
Dim CrTables As Tables
Dim CrTable As Table
Dim TableCounter

'If you are using a Strongly Typed report (Imported in
'your project) named CrystalReport1.rpt use the
'following:

Dim crReportDocument As New CrystalReport1()

'If you are using a Non-Typed report, and
'loading a report outside of the project, use the
'following:

Dim crReportDocument As New ReportDocument()

crReportDocument.Load("c:\myReports\myReport.rpt")

'Set the ConnectionInfo properties for logging on to
'the Database

'If you are using ODBC, this should be the
'DSN name NOT the physical server name. If
'you are NOT using ODBC, this should be the
'physical server name

With crConnectionInfo
.ServerName = "DSN or Server Name"

'If you are connecting to Oracle there is no
'DatabaseName. Use an empty string.
'For example, .DatabaseName = ""

.DatabaseName = "DatabaseName"
.UserID = "Your User ID"
.Password = "Your Password"
End With

'This code works for both user tables and stored
'procedures. Set the CrTables to the Tables collection
'of the report

CrTables = crReportDocument.Database.Tables

'Loop through each table in the report and apply the
'LogonInfo information

For Each CrTable in CrTables
CrTableLogonInfo = CrTable.LogonInfo
CrTableLogonInfo.ConnectionInfo =
crConnectionInfo
CrTable.ApplyLogOnInfo(crtableLogoninfo)

'If your DatabaseName is changing at runtime, specify
'the table location.
'For example, when you are reporting off of a
'Northwind database on SQL server you
'should have the following line of code:

crTable.Location = "Northwind.dbo." &
crTable.Location.Substring(crTable.Location.LastIndexOf(
".") + 1)
Next

'Set the viewer to the report object to be previewed.

CrystalReportViewer1.ReportSource = crReportDocument

Crystal Reports Export to PDF

Well, I finally did it. The code below is what lets me export a crystal report to a pdf file. Previous entries outline some of the steps I have taken to get here. Not sure if all were necessary but it works. No I have to figure out how to pass parameters, datasource and login information. On to figure that out.

Option Strict On
Imports CrystalDecisions.CrystalReports.Engine
Imports CrystalDecisions.Shared
Partial Class _Default
Inherits System.Web.UI.Page
Private exportPath As String
Private myDiskFileDestinationOptions As DiskFileDestinationOptions
Private myExportOptions As ExportOptions
Private myReport As ReportDocument
Private selectedNoFormat As Boolean = False
Private Sub ConfigureCrystalReports()
myReport = New ReportDocument()
myReport.Load("C:\websites\rpt\report1.rpt")
'myCrystalReportViewer.ReportSource = myReport
End Sub

Protected Sub Page_Init(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Init
ConfigureCrystalReports()
ExportSetup()
myExportOptions.ExportFormatType = ExportFormatType.PortableDocFormat
myDiskFileDestinationOptions.DiskFileName = exportPath & "PortableDoc.pdf"
myExportOptions.DestinationOptions = myDiskFileDestinationOptions
myReport.Export()
End Sub
Public Sub ExportSetup()
exportPath = "C:\Exported\"
If Not System.IO.Directory.Exists(exportPath) Then
System.IO.Directory.CreateDirectory(exportPath)
End If
myDiskFileDestinationOptions = New DiskFileDestinationOptions()
myExportOptions = myReport.ExportOptions
myExportOptions.ExportDestinationType = ExportDestinationType.DiskFile
End Sub
End Class

Use a javascript confirm box to ask the user if they want to delete.

Found this here: http://psacake.com/web/iw.asp

<a onclick="return confirm('Are you sure you want to delete?')" href="delete.page?id=1">Delete</a>

Crystal Reports XI on Windows Vista

http://support.businessobjects.com/downloads/service_packs/crystal_reports_en.asp

Talked to tech support about this and this was the link he gave me for the new build that is vista compatible.

Crystal Report Viewer missing images

I think I mentioned in a previous post that I had done the server install for the .net crystal report viewer appication or whatever you want to call it. Everything worked except for the images on the toolbar weren't showing up. I found this post concerning that which fixed my issue:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=566717&SiteID=1

Look at the post marked as the answer.

Tutorial: Exporting to Multiple Formats

I have been eager to get back to the office and continue my quest to get Crystal reports exporting to .pdf. Today I worked on a tutorial to export to different format. I am mainly interested in .pdf but the tutorial went through exporting to many different formats. The link to the tutorial is below.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms227606(VS.80).aspx

I didn't hit many roadblocks. This tutorial does not show you the exported file, it only gives you a message of success or failure. You have to browse to the location of export (Default: C:\exported\) to see the file that was created. I am sure a redirect wouldn't be too dificult, but I can do that later.

Now, on to passing parameters to the reports.

Dave

Crystal Reports and the Web Part 2

Here I am 7 hours later and I have been pretty good today to focus on the issue at hand. Deploying crystal reports to my web server. I had to learn .net from almost scratch cause I have never used it before.

I did it. Got it working. If I had to do it over again, I could do it alot quicker. I hope these notes will benefit somebody.

My Setup:
Dell Lattitude D820 Windows Vista Business
Server: Windows 2003 (Hosted)

1. Install Visual Studio 2005. I got a free 90 day trial from Microsoft. After today I am almost positive I will buy it. Seriously, The time I saved on this one project will pay for the $700 or so that it costs. Without it I could have spent week(s). In fact I did spend several days without success last year on this.
2. Installed SP1 for Visual Studio
3. Installed SP1 Update for Visual Studio for Windows Vista(I first tried to install just this file, but come to find out you need the main Service Pack installed first.
4. Installed SP2 for MSSQL Server Express
5. Then I found the tutorial here: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms225276(VS.80).aspx
6. I followed the developer link.
7. Next I clicked on the link "Persisting the ReportDocument Object Model Using Session" This seems a little strange, I know but it has a good step by step tutorial which I followed.
8. You will notice all the resources on the left under the Crystal Reports heading. 80% of the information I found was from this MSDN site.
9. Some search results from the MSDN Site: http://search.msdn.microsoft.com/search/Default.aspx?brand=msdn&locale=en-us&query=crystal+reports
10. One thing I got sidetracked on was installing IIS on my laptop (Dev Machine) That is unnecessary. Visual Studio has a development web server built in. The way I found to use it was to right click on the "default.aspx" file in the solution explorer and choose "View in Web Browser". This starts the devel0pment web server and lets you view the page.
11. The tutorial was detailed enough that I didn't really stumble to much in that section.
12. On the server side I had a few problems. Yesterday I had installed Crystal Reports XI SP 2. This, I think is unnecessary. I didn't uninstall it since I already had it, but the key to making it work on the server was downloading this file: http://support.businessobjects.com/communityCS/FilesAndUpdates/crXIr2_net_server_install.zip.asp
13. The page with the link to that file is here: http://support.businessobjects.com/downloads/merge_modules.asp#06
14. I used this download: "Crystal Reports XI Release 2 for Visual Studio .NET Server Install - This file contains the Server Install file for Crystal Reports XI Release 2 for Visual Studio .NET."
15. That worked great, after I installed that on my server, it was working.
16. The only problem left was the icons on the toolbar for the crystal report viewer are not showing up. I will troubleshoot that later.
17. I created a simple test report with no datasources and just a little text to test it and it worked.
18. Other Helpful links:
19. http://www.businessobjects.com/products/dev_zone/net/2005.asp
20. http://www.businessobjects.com/global/pdf/dev_zone/VS2005_Walkthroughs.pdf
21. http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms225593(VS.80).aspx
22. There was alot of talk about building an msi installation package. I played with that in different sorts of ways until I finally found the server install package listed above. I think that if you just install that, you won't need to try and package the crystal report stuff, you get them from that install.

Monday I work on passing parameters and programatically outputting to .pdf. And I have to figure out why the toolbar icons don't show up.

Dave

Crystal Reports and the Web

For years I have been using crystal reports to output the contents of our database to a nice newsletter format. I use coldfusion for most programming and I started by using a web viewer that came with version 8 or something. Then I found an .asp page that would pass parameters to the report and export it to .pdf. This was perfect, although it felt very "kludgy". Well now I am faced with an upgrade of Crystal reports and a new server. It just seems impossible to find anything that will let me use coldfusion to directly call a report and output it to .pdf.

So, I start my first trip into the .net world. I only know that crystal reports integration with .net is fantastic. Now we see how fast I can get up to speed on .net.

I will try and keep you posted. I just downloaded 90 day trial of visual studio 2005. Service packs are downloading now. We will see if this is as easy as they say.

New Blackberry

Last friday I ordered a new blackberry phone with Verizon. They messed up that order so yesterday I finally just went downt ot the store casue it is only an hour anyway. Well they set me up in a hurry and now I am the proud owner of a blackberry 8703e. This phone is cool. It just acts the way you would expect it to.

I mostly wanted this phone for the calendar and tasks, along with some email. I once had a dell axim, which was nice but I never used it because it was an "Extra" thing to take with me. This blackberry just combines the axim with a phone so I always have it with me. Maybe now I will use it.

I decided on the blackberry over the Motorola Q or Treo mainly because two different guys at Verizon said the blackberry was better. I haven't regretted the dicision yet.

Recover Admin password for Google Apps

I set up a google app account for a buddy some time ago and he called because he couldn't log on. I tried with the admin info I used to set up the account, and I couldn't get on either, even though I swear I had the right info. Well If ound a solution to resetting it.

You can follow this link:

https://www.google.com/hosted/replaceDomain/forgetAdminPassword

You need to replace "replaceDomain" with the the domain with the forgotten password and then use the login for the account that you used to set up the google app account in the first place.

This is just for admin password. If it is just a user password, you can login as admin and reset that for them.

Cannot open/design report in MSAccess

I just had a recent issue come up where all of the sudden I could not open any of my reports in an access database that I use.

Turns out that it had to do with a printer that I just installed. After searching and finding a comment about that, I changed my default printer and that fixed the problem. I had just hooked up an HP Laserjet 1012 to my Dell Lattitude via the docking station.

Where to put Transfer code

There was a great email sent to the transfer list about design and architecture in your apps using transfer ORM. I put alot of my stuff in my controller. So essentially I follow the first example, when everyone else seemed to agree that the second example was better.

Have a look:

http://groups.google.com/group/transfer-dev/browse_thread/thread/1574d19bfad50946?hl=en

Mcafee Security Suite Blocks Hotel Internet Access

I have blogged about my new Dell laptop before. I love it. I figured out running programs in windows xp compatibility mode and my only problem (not being able to run some programs) is not as bad anymore.

Anyway, over Easter the family went to Phoenix for the weekend. We left thursday night because the kids were out of school. First stop, Flagstaff. After a ruckus at the hotel we had reservations at, we ended up at the days inn.

Booted up the old laptop at 5:00 A.M. the next morning. NO INTERNET ACCESS! I tried everything. Got dell tech support on the line(North American Based). Nothing. Well I was ticked, but figured it was the motel. Next night, Super 8 in Gilbert AZ. Same thing. Finally, saturday morning I took a shot and uninstalled 3 of 4 components of the Mcafee security suite that came on the computer. Spam(I use gmail anyway), privacy control, and one other I can't remember. I left only virus scanning. BINGO. It worked. I don't know why I didn't try this in the first place. I have never used the "Security Suites" cause I have problems with clients who use them all the time. Something about the security suite and the internet access at the hotels didn't jive. I assume it was something to do with that redirection that happens when you first login. You go to the motel web site and have to click the agreement or whatever.

I should send Mcafee and email. Maybe I will

How do I use a variable in a TOP clause in SQL Server?

http://sqlserver2000.databases.aspfaq.com/how-do-i-use-a-variable-in-a-top-clause-in-sql-server.html

I have a web page that runs a script which is so slow that it will time out if the number of records is too great. The temporary solution is to split the records into two subsets and then process those sets seperately. Doing that manually was not too big of a deal, but I wanted a better way.

I calculate the number of rows / 2.
Then I needed to use that value to automatically split the set. The only thing I needed to change was the brackets around the variable. So it turned out to be this:

Select top (@myvar) from mytable.

The article goes way more into depth

Dell Latitude D820

I am just one month shy of the 3rd birthday of my existing laptop, a Dell inspiron 8600. It still runs ok, but takes forever to boot up and is slow enough that I knew I needed to get a new one.

So, I ordered a Dell Latitude D820 that arrived last thursday on Mar 1. I love this computer. Of course it was a huge upgrade from the 3 year old laptop It replaced. It has Windows Vista Business on it, 2 gig of ram, 15.4 in monitor and I added a port replicator to it.

I am testing the waters with this machine to be a desktop replacement. I don't know how it will work but I would love to be able to sit down anywhere and be just as productive as I am sitting at my desk in the office. With our recent subscription to google apps, and buying a dedicated hosted server, we are really trying to go in a direction that supports remote users.

We really don't buy anything but dell and I have always been very pleased with the equipment we have received from them. This laptop is no exception. It is screaming fast and I am loving it. I have installed most of the essential software that I use and it handles it all no problem and still is fast.

David Mineer

Windows Vista

I purchased a dell latitude D820 that arrived last thursday on March 1(more on the new computer later). It came with Windows Vista Business. I thought I would share some of my first impressions about Microsofts new operating system.

I like it. It is intuitive and just seems to click for me. I haven't had too much trouble finding my way around. This laptop is awesome so of course speed doesn't seem to be a problem. The start menu is probably what has given me the most grief, but after I figured out that I could find what I was looking for simply by searching, that has been ok. I still need to take some time and figure out the start menu without searching.

Searching seems to be greatly improved in vista. Most programs have run ok, but there are a few that won't.

Overall I am impressed. The more I understand it the more It will be ok. I am not sure but I think I am using the upgraded "Halo" version and it is visually appealing and everything seems to flow pretty smoothly.

java.net: ColdFusion for JSP Developers

java.net: ColdFusion for JSP Developers

A great article that explains why Java developers should consider Coldfusion for some of their development. It has some advantages and since it is written in Java, the skill set of Java Developers is not lost.

I don't know Java at all, but, nice to feel a little like coldfusion is in the family, if only distant.

Remote Synthesis: Mach II or ColdSpring? Understanding the Differences Between ColdFusion Frameworks

Remote Synthesis: Mach II or ColdSpring? Understanding the Differences Between ColdFusion Frameworks

This is a super article that does what the title says. I wish this would have been written when I was first trying to understand all this.

Installing IIS 7.0 on Windows Vista Business or Vista Ultimate

Installing IIS 7.0 on Windows Vista Business or Vista Ultimate

I just got a new laptop and I need to install IIS and Coldfusion. Here is a simple, to the point article on installing IIS 7.

Refreshing web services

Are you trying to create web services with CFMX, but for some reason when you make a change it is not picked up. One of those things that can frustrate you to no end. Coldfusion makes a list of web services you create and you can view them in the administrator. You can also create them in the administrator. But the key here, is you can refresh them in the administrator also.

Open your administrator for the server that publishes the web service, login, and go to Data & Services > Web Services. There you will see the services and you can refresh, delete or add.

A good article with more about it and how to do refresh web services without opening up the administrator can be found here, by Charlie Arehart.

Hosting

About a month ago I bought a shared server account at hostmysite.com. They come highly recommended by the Coldfusion community and I definately want Coldfusion support, especially some tags that most providers prohibit, such as cfobject.

I first moved my ftp site over to this hosted account. I have users that send images back and forth to each other. Now, instead of all fighting for bandwidth on my DSL link to servers inhouse they now share a Huge pipe of bandwidth at my hosts site. I don't see a downside to this.

A few weeks ago I made the jump to a dedicated server. I haven't moved the ftp over to that site yet, but i am planning to host as much as I can. Hostmysite is awesome and for not much money I feel like we just hired a 24/7 systems admin. We also get security, backups, redundancy and many more features.

Having private company information off-site may seem scary to some but they are much better equipped to protect my data than I am. One guy can only do so much. Our company has grown to a point where we needed to hire additional IT staff. Hosting is a much more cost effective and reliable way of doing this. I am pleased so far.

Goldmine and Gmail

I want to move my main domain to a hosted email service, Google apps for domains. I know this domain generates a lot of email traffic so how nice not have to worry about that.

Our sales department uses goldmine. This means they use the email interface inside goldmine to allow them to attach email communications to the prospects they are associated with. Goldmine does not support SSL in their email client. The work around can be found at this site:

http://www.castellcomputers.com/index.php?p=2. Be sure to read comment #1 as it includes an important change to the stunnel.conf file.

Also, Don't click on the link to the stunnel.eze file. Go to the page and get the latest. I noticed that the newer versions have the ability to install stunnel as a service and I am not sure some of the older versions have all those features.

I tested this on my machine and it worked great. No I am one step closer to being able to host my email.

Transfer ORM

ORM stands for object relational Mapping. I am not sure I understand everything it does yet but I do know that it automatically creates CRUD DAO objects. I use to spend hours writing beans, DAO's and gateways. Well, Transfer does the beans and DAO's automatically and even some of the simple gateway queries.

Previously I had been using http://rooibos.maestropublishing.com/ to generate beans and then I would cut and past generic DAO code for the CRUD methods. CRUD stands for Create-Read-Update-Delete. The standard things you do to an "object" or row in a database.

Setup is probably the most difficult, as anything else, especially the first time you attempt it. In Transfer you have to download the open source code from: http://www.compoundtheory.com/?action=transfer.download or you can get the latest BER (Bleeding Edge Release) via SVN at http://svn.riaforge.org/transfer .

You place this code in your root directory. You will then have a "transfer" directory under web root.

you need to initialise the transfer object, which I did for my test in my application.cfc file. You can just do it on a page if you want. You can get further instructions here: http://www.compoundtheory.com/?action=displayPost&ID=112. This page also offers examples of using Transfer for the basic CRUD operations.

Once you define your datasource and your table in datasource.xml and transfer.xml. It is this easy to get a row from the database:

transfer.get("user.user", userid).

Want a query of all users:

transfert.list("user.user")

It took me about as much time to figure out how to use the basics of transfer as it would have to generate all the DAO, Bean and simple Gateway methods for 1, maybe 2 projects, but now I can save my self tons of time not having to create those anymore.

I am amazed at the creators of such "frameworks" as transfer. They are wicked smart and provide a real value to me. Thanks to Mark Mandel and any others who devote their time and smarts.

Invalid Color Space error in Acrobat Reader

Had a user that was getting this error when trying to read an acrobat attachment that I sent her:

 

"Invalid Color Space"

 

This prevented her from seeing some of the images I had put in the document.

 

http://www.abcteach.com/help_topic.php?id=134 mentioned that this error would be resolved by upgrading your acrobat.

Google Apps for Your Domain

You can host your email for free using google Apps for your domain. This is awesome. You set up an account, point your MX DNS record for your domain as per the instructions and wallah! Google handles all your email for you and your users.

I set up one of my domains to use it and it works great. It did take one of my networks 3 days to get the dns changes but when it kicked in it worked just as I hoped. Check out the benefits:

Google Apps for your Domain

The have a few other things than just email, and I am sure they will add more.

There are a couple of downsides to this. Your email is hosted outside your company. I currently don't have a way to connect to gmail using CFMAIL.

The upsides are huge though. They take care of software, bandwidth, spam filtering, administering etc.. Lots of reasons to take advantage of this.

156 Useful Run Commands.

Interesting article about run command you can issue in windows. As it states, most are available via the GUI interface of windows, but there are some nifty ones that you may find usefull.

http://www.fixmyxp.com/content/view/20/42/

I have been using subversion for a few months now and I love it. It has been my first real run at source code control. I installed subversion locally on my development machine. This was a little difficult but I haven't had a moments problem with it since I installed it. The one drawback is accessing the code repository from remote locations. And there is also the matter of backing up and updating.

Several times I have thought about finding a subversion host online, but the meager attempts I made were not succesfull. But I came across one a few days ago and took the plunge. It was a peice of cake. For testing I started a new project. I just sent support and email about importing the existing project I had. Everything is the same. Only know I don't have to worry about backups of my code and updates of the subversion software. And best of all I can access the code from my latpop at home or wherever. It is $15.00 a month. I price I feel is fair. I had I small issue I sent to tech support and the resonded very quickly

So far so good. The site:

http://www.wush.net/

A site I came across when looking for ftp hosting. Looks like the offer other stuff too and great prices and functionality.

http://www.siteground.com

Here is a great link that explains mapping network drives when a user logs in to small business server.

http://msmvps.com/blogs/kwsupport/archive/2004/11/03/17830.aspx

We have some fields that we want to default to a certain value in Platypus. The main one is the suppress receipts filed. A while back, platypus support sent a script to make this work. It never did. Turns out they had a slight error in the script. The sent me the corrected script last week:

insert into options (name, value, descriptio, category) values ('Default Suppress Receipt','Y','The default Suppress Receipts option for new customers.','Customer Defaults')

This worked, but not until I deleted to old incorrect value out of the options table. I also restarted platypus. One of those two things made it work.

This gave me the idea for another field also. On my own I did the following:

insert into options (name, value, descriptio, category) values ('Default Suppress Statements','I','The default Suppress Statements option for new customers.','Customer Defaults')

This now enters the correct default value for the Suppress Statements field. I am not positive how it works, but it appears that you can add a row to the options table to cause default values. Just have to use the word "Default" in front of the actual field name. Should work for any field, at least on the general tab.