Blogs

Joe stars as Mercutio (Romeo's best friend) in Romeo and Juliet

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 02:41:00 GMT

Today Libby, Grandma Millie and I went to see Joe play Mercutio (Romeo's best friend) in the Frontier Regional High School production of Romeo and Juliet. Joe was AWESOME - a natural talent with great stage presence. The cast was wonderful and the production was a tasty blend of contemporary music, Shakespearian prose and rhyme with an occasional dance number. Truly entertaining!

Here are some more photos of Joe as Mercutio.

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Stupid DotNetNuke Trick #1: Customizing Search field with disappearing "Search" text

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 03:06:00 GMT

I am building another DotNetNuke website with the wonderful Flex2 skin. My client asked that the Search field have some sort of label to make it more clear what the function was. I wanted to to do what the "cool kids" do: put the text "Search" in the field when it is "empty" and then automagically remove the text when the user clicks in the box.

Since this is a DNN 5 site that has jQuery support built in, I could use a slightly modified version of this simple jQuery code from Brian Reindel (that I tucked into the skin's drnuke-height.js file that is already loaded by the skin):

/*
   Doctor the DNN Search field to display the word "Search" when it's "empty"
   and remove this text when the user clicks in the field.
    
   jQuery code compliments of 5 JavaScript Tricks Made Easy with jQuery
   jQuery JavaScript Samples by Brian Reindel
   http://www.reindel.com/five_javascript_tricks_jquery/
*/
$(function() {
    swapValues = [];
    $("#dnn_dnnSEARCH_txtSearch").each(function(i){
        $(this).val("Search");
        swapValues[i] = $(this).val();
        $(this).focus(function(){
            if ($(this).val() == swapValues[i]) {
                $(this).val("");
            }
        }).blur(function(){
            if ($.trim($(this).val()) == "") {
                $(this).val(swapValues[i]);
            }
        });
    });
});

Thanks Brian!

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Lessons Learned Code Signing a Visual Studio 2008 .MSI Setup Project

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 01:59:00 GMT

I thought my mission was an easy one:

Code sign an existing MFC application (Metafile Companion) setup installer

I should have known better. :-) I was successful and it really isn't that hard once you find out what to do. But there's the rub - the web is full of options that end up being dead ends. Below are some of the lessons I learned.

Lesson 1: You really can pay $99 for a one-year signing certificate from K Software.

There are other more expensive Certificate Authorities (e.g. VeriSign and Comodo) that charge more than this. But the K Software certificate (issued by Comodo) seems to work just fine. I would recommend using either Firefox or Internet Explorer to place your order and later downloading your certificate so it is added "automagically" to the system certificate store. Also, follow their export instructions so you have a backup of your certificate.

Lesson 2: To see what certificates are on your system, run "certmgr.msc".

This is how you can be assured that your certificate was properly stored on your system.

Lesson 3: The MSDN article "How to: Sign Application and Deployment Manifests" doesn't apply to older MFC / VC++ projects.

While this might work for newer C# projects, for my older MFC / VC++ application in Visual Studio 2008, it doesn't. So don't try to hard to find options that aren't there.

Lesson 4: The SignCode utility is "obsolete"; use SignTool instead.

SignCode has a nice wizard mode, but it doesn't show you a corresponding command line for the options you choose. SignTool is command line only, but is the current tool.

Lesson 5: Add a call to SignTool as the PostBuildEvent property for the Setup project.

Once you figure out all the options you need, adding the event is easy. Here's what I used for my project:

signtool sign /a /v /d "Metafile Companion" /du http://www.CompanionSoftware.com/ /t http://timestamp.comodoca.com/authenticode "$(BuiltOuputPath)"

You can read the documentation for what the various options are. One time-saving thing is the "/a" option which automatically uses the "best" signing certificate it finds in the store. If you only have one, there this works like a charm. A while back, I had added a "self-signed" certificate to play with. I had to remove this (using CertMgr.msc) to get my purchased certificate to be the "best" one.

I hope these lessons help anyone else that might be trying to do something similar!

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Joe shines in the Frontier Band Winter Concert

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:45:00 GMT

Last night was the Frontier Regional Winter Concert. Joe was definitely one of the stars of the show. He had a nice solo, was inducted into the prestigious Tri-M Music Honor Society and looked quite dapper in his holiday "chapeau".

You can see more photos of the concert.

I do admit to feeling a little sad that this might be the last Winter Concert with one of my kids in it.

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"It's NOT a Clunker... It's My New 'Toy'"

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:47:00 GMT

After Laura's boyfriend Jim traded in his "clunker" (a beautiful late-model Mustang) for an even newer Honda Civic, that got me thinking. Would the U.S. Government give me $4500 for my 1995 Mercury Villager with over 148,000 miles on it? Is the "Cash for Clunkers" program (aka the "CARS program") for real?

This answer is a resounding YES. And I have a brand new 2010 Prius III to prove it!

I do want the world to know, my old Villager was not a clunker! It took me all over this country - even back and forth to Florida just a few weeks ago. I'll miss it (but have a pleasant distraction to ease the "pain").

You can see more pictures of my new car.

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Joe Blows a Mean Sax!

Tue, 05 May 2009 16:58:00 GMT

Joe has been practicing hard on both the alto and tenor saxophones. He's in the high school band as well as a separate Jazz Band. The day of his Cabaret Night debut this past Thursday, he got a shiny new Keilwerth alto sax from his mom:

You can watch Joe perform Take Five at Cabaret night on YouTube:

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An Old Friend Returns from the JanSport "Hospital"

Sun, 03 May 2009 18:39:00 GMT

My JanSport backpack and I have travelled everywhere together - all across the United States, Germany, Scotland, Italy and right here in lovely Sunderland, Massachusetts. I use it a lot as a ride my bicycle around town to do work and run errands.

I often throw a laptop, a few folders or some boxes to be mailed into my backpack and pedal wherever I need to in our little town. So I was quite sad when the zipper on the pack started to give way. After a while, it could no longer be trusted to hold everything reliably. What to do?!?

Go out an buy another JanSport backpack, of course! I loved my old one, so I went online and found a new one similar to it. I couldn't find my favorite burgundy color, so I settled for green (my other favorite). It arrived quickly and looked great. As I was unpacking it, I noticed that the JanSport information said simply that all JanSport backpacks come with a lifetime product warranty. So I figured, why not see if they would fix my old one.

This is where JanSport really surprised me. Not only did they make it incredibly easy to send back my old backpack (e.g. no receipt required), they also went above and beyond in fixing the pack. I only reported a problem with the zipper. But they noticed that one of the buckles was broken and replaced it. And they put new pull cords on all the zippers. My old friend is as good as new. So now I can choose burgundy or green, depending on my backpack mood. Thank you, JanSport. You are amazing!

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Oulook 2004 Junk Mail Filter Stopped Working? A Solution!

Sun, 03 May 2009 18:31:00 GMT

I've been using Outlook 2003 for a long time. A couple of days ago, Outlook no longer filtered junk mail into the special Junk Mail folder. All the spam just accumulated in my Inbox. Since I have public email addresses, I get literally hundreds of spam messages an hour. I rely on the Junk Filter working properly.

I am suspicious that this behavior began right after I installed the trial version of Microsoft Publisher 2007 (so I could view a .pub document someone sent me). I'm my search for a solution to the problem, I did see some other reports of people suspecting Office 2007 (and other Microsoft updates) affecting Outlook.

I stumbled on the solution that worked for me in a forum article titled "Junk mail filter stopped working". This solution is very simple:

In Outlook 2003, select Help > Detect and Repair from the menu.
Follow the on-screen instructions.

After this, I restarted Outlook and the Junk Mail filter started working again!

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Warning: The Plesk database is corrupt. Please launch the Reconfigurator utility to fix it

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:52:00 GMT

Here is a problem experienced recently... and a solution!

Using Plesk 8.6.0 for Windows, I removed an SSL certificate from a domain and then added a new one back. When I went to Server > IP Addresses > 208.109.105.22, I saw the message:

Warning: The Plesk database is corrupt. Please launch the Reconfigurator utility to fix it

I also did NOT see the new certificate I had added in the combobox of certificates.

I launched Reconfigurator and ran all the fixes, but the problem still persisted. I rebooted the server a number of times and that did not help.

This problem has been reported by three other users in the thread The Plesk database is corrupt.

There is a Plesk Knowledge Base article about exactly this problem titled [FIX] Plesk database corruption warning on IP address management page.

However, when I ran the command listed (substituting my Plesk password for " ", I got the error:

ERROR 2003 (HY000): Can't connect to MySQL server on 'localhost' (10061)

So I needed some advice on how to resolve the problem. GoDaddy Support responded:

The instructions provided on the Plesk site are only for use when the Plesk database engine is MySQL. Plesk on a Windows server by default uses an Access database. This can be changed through the Plesk Reconfigurator utility if you wish however I recommend attempting to correct this issue before changing the database engine. Unfortunately we will not be able to remove a database entry for you however you can download an Access viewer/editor that will allow you to view and make changes on the database directly.

So then the search began to find a simple way to edit the Access database file short of installing Access over the net onto my web server. The key find was that Visual Studio's Server Explorer can open and edit Access databases. So here is an outline of how I solved the problem:

On the web server, navigate to %plesk_dir%\admin\db. There you should find the Microsoft Access database files psa.mdb and psa.ldb.
Make a copy of these files as a backup (Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V).
Copy these files to a computer with Visual Studio (or Access) installed.
Open the database (in VS, use Server Explorer), open the "repository" and "certificates" tables.
Manually implement the SQL statement

delete from repository where rep_id=1 and component_id not in (select id from certificates);

Note: I found the repository rep_id, component_ids to be:

1, 1
1, 2
1, 3
1, 4

However, the certificate IDs were 1, 2, 3 and 10. So instead of deleting the row, I modified the value from "4" to "10".
Copy the two database files back to the server.
Try reproducing the problem in Plesk. The problem went away for me!

I hope this works for you as well!

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2008 Christmas Dinner

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 21:41:00 GMT

Vickie and I had a nice Christmas dinner with Laura and her boyfriend Jim. We feasted on lasagne (both traditional and vegan), sautéed spinach and garlic and a loaf of braided bread (that Laura braided) made with stone-ground wheat flour and topped with sesame seeds. The green casserole dish (for the veggie lasagne) was a Christmas present from Sarah and Jarett that was put to immediate use!

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