Rampidbyter Rampid byter: A byte of my .Net developing life.

I guess I should write about a brighter note. It was a little drowned out after I came back to find my bird so sick, but over Christmas I acquired two new weapons. I came into possession of a brand new M9 9mm handgun, and a new 12 gauge to replace my broken one. I’m a big fan of shooting clay pigeons, and have wanted to join a target range but without a handgun this was a bit difficult. So over the week I bought the 9mm hand gun, and received the 12 gauge from my Dad to replace the one that broke two years ago.

I took the 9mm to the gun range earlier in the day before having to run to the vet’s office. I shot off about 300 rounds and blew away about five body targets. For those of you who don’t know the M9 is the new standard military issue handgun. Unfortunately the shooting did not go as well as I’d have liked. The gun shot the spent shells up into the air, which hit the ceiling two feet above, and would fall onto me after each round. These shells tended to be a bit hot, and after the third or fourth shell landing on my arms and burning me I put my coat back on. I even wound up with a shell falling into my safety goggles and burning my cheek. This shell actually fell onto my eye but thankfully I was at the right angle for it to keep rolling so it didn’t burn my eye.

Later in the day after stopping at Taco bell and being dropped off by my friend a shell rolled out onto the grass while both my friend and I were admiring the Rotorolla (Corolla with a turbo charged rotary engine.) I had a suspicion one had fallen down my back (what with the burning) but it got stuck into my pants later to roll out. While I was driving later that evening the shell rolled onto my floor board from my coat pocket to the truck floor two hours later. I started chuckling over that one.

Tonight I came home to find my first pet Wilber sitting in the bottom of his cage (he’s a cockatiel) and was not attacking my finger when I poked it through the bar. For the last few days I’ve noticed he’s acted a bit strange where during the afternoon he was puffed up and trying to sleep midday. For the last three days I’ll say he’s been acting peculiar to say the least as he’s been rather lethargic, and was only slightly interested in performing the standard singing dance he does. When replying to my whistles he was slow in responding, but I told myself if he stayed like that for a few days I’d take him to the vet. Unfortunately it wasn’t until I found him today where he could barely walk on my finger and was not trying to bite me when I picked him up within the cage that I realized he truly needed help.

I sat him on my chest and tried to put bird food in front of him to see if he’d eat, and thankfully he took a few bites so I knew there was hope. I called the vet and after an emergency visit I tried to get my friend the help he needed. While being treated he sat in the palm of my hand as I tried to keep him warm while he slept. The vet was kind and went through all the things I needed to do in order to get him well. At the end of the visit the vet said we needed to give him some fluids to help with his dehydration. The vet held him and I held his leg while she injected him, during the first injection he seemed to be ok and tried to jerk away, but after the second injection he had a panic attack. She rushed him to the incubator where he’d be both warmed up and given pure oxygen while I waited for them to return. Only a minute later I hear the vet walking back carrying Wilber, and to my utter shock she told me he’d just passed away. My best friend for 16 years had just died. My best friend, my first pet, and one of the only things in the world that loved me for me had just passed away.

I was crushed to say the least. I am still crushed. I’m looking at the picture I took just a few months ago of the birds and I just can’t believe that he’s gone. I got him home and I can’t believe it but I kept petting him to see if he’d wake up. I just didn’t’ want to make the mistake of burying him if he was still alive. I ended up just sealing up the box I had him in with the towels I used to keep him warm and put him outside next to the giant bolder. My little friend you will be missed beyond words.

I recently took and did not pass a Microsoft certification exam. It wasn’t overly difficult either, at least looking back at it, but the questions were presented in a way I was not expecting. I took the 70-300 architecture examination and did not pass by 100 points. The score was poor enough for me to smack myself on the head, but not poor enough so that I am too embarrassed to try again. I think next time I’ll have to study more on how to interpret business requirements, to prepare for the case study readings, and in general just review the study books more. It’s a pain because I only had that one day to take the examination, and now I have to wait two months to get a free day. Next time I’ll have to remember failing is a possibility.

Sometimes you can do the dumbest thing without realizing what exactly you’ve done until it’s too late. The other day I ran into a new colleague named Bill who told me about the companies free luncheon they were having. I immediately skipped up and devoured turkey, taters, green beans, pumpkin pie, and assorted dressings. It was fantastic food, but anyway I digress.

I get back to my desk after filling my stomach and my new head boss comes walking by, stops, and goes "Rob, we’re having a lunch today free for employees did anyone tell you?" I waste no time immediately spewing, "Oh, I already hit that." Without blinking an eye my new main boss turns around and heads off, which I reply "thank you though" to him as he leaves. Immediately after I said what I said the guy sitting across from me started to chuckle at my response. That’s when I realized exactly what I had said, and not having meant for it to come off so disrespectful especially when I only said that because my boss was leaving as he mentioned to me about the free lunch. My foot still is dangling solidly embedded in my mouth…

For the love of everything Microsoft if you’re a programmer and you get the crazy idea in your head that you want to specify the full directory path to a database connection , or any file for that matter in code, stop, move away from the computer, and hit your face into the wall. If you’re hitting your face into the padded cube wall then you walk yourself out into the hall and you give yourself a second whack into the concrete wall.

If you’re in a situation where you need a file path put the code into the App.Config file and reference it from AppSettings.Get(“DatabaseConnectionPath”) or something useful. I’ve been working on a project where text files were hard coded, changing the application’s icon was hard coded to the previous developers My Documents folder. I’ve even run into a situation where database table names were using the linked data table’s name instead of the actual tables name on the deployed server.

Sir, if you ever read this you owe me five smacks of your face into the wall. That or you need to read on patterns and practices because your code looks like something I did five years ago.

I’ve found the most fantastic routine. Each morning I’ve been taking two 20oz cans of Bawls to work. I have a regular flavor in the morning, and sip on the cherry flavor in the afternoon. Considering the high amount of caffeine I’m amped all morning, and when asked what I’m drinking I still get a giggle saying ‘I’m drinking bawls’. My new client manager actually picked up one of the cans I have on the desk, and goes ‘I certainly wouldn’t tell anyone that you enjoy this brand, it may come off cheeky’.

I started working with a new client on Monday. I was actually gearing up for a gig with BlackBerry programming for a large international company, but during the negotiations of requirements/scope I was snapped up for a last minute opportunity. So Monday I started working for the new international manufacturing facility and I’ve been dropped into developing an application that fits between the 20 year old MRP system to the new enterprise wide ERP system.

Here in lies the problem. Originally the job consisted of performing last minute debug, and modification to the program to finish off two messages (xml documents) generated by the system for upload. Coming into the project I thought I’d be put into a situation where I’d have a code base loaded into visual source safe, some code documentation, if I was lucky some UML or business requirements documents, but wow was I mistaken.

First thing I find out is instead of a web application as put into the deliverables this application is actually a desktop application, and isn’t just one application but three. Each application uses the same database backend, but unfortunately nobody knows exactly what tables/fields to use. It also turns out that the developer I’m replacing used no source control whatsoever, and in fact I spent much of my first day just looking through his system/servers for his application solution.

I worked with the IT at the company, of which there were few, and was greeted to both pessimism and dismay. Things like MSDN were deemed unnecessary, nobody knew how to setup Visual Source Safe (VSS), but after some searching I did find a database. After trying to get access to the database I had to reacquisition a VSS installation, explain to the network admins what it was, and what I needed it for. From there I had to make manual backups of the code I found, and work off of copies of these solutions to perform development work.

It only got worse… I found that much of what the developer (whom left the company mind you) had done was unfinished, values and connection strings were hard coded, and there were infrequent and seldom used comments. The developer was supposed to be available via consult, only after normal working hours, but had yet to respond to emails/calls and generally has been a ghost.

Day three of this process and I’m starting to get a feel for what’s missing, and it far outreaches the initial scope. So, I’ve lost one week of my vacation in order to keep going on this project, and I’m drinking from the fire hose as they say. I’ll even say this project is in Visual Basic (VB) .Net, which is definitely not my preferred language. Frankly don’t care for VB at all, and after having jumped onto a VB.Net 1.1 project I am missing my C# 2.0 framework on Visual Studio 2005 even more. Well, I’m off, happy coding.

Today I’ve just completed my registration for my first two graduate level classes. Thus I embark on my new journey to secure a Masters of Information Systems. Hopefully this path will net me both the MSIS and MBA degrees completing my goal of getting four degrees. Unfortunately my arse is a bit sore as it’s going to cost me a whopping $4500 to take two classes as a part-time student. My god, no wonder our educational system is so goofed up. It is free for students from primary to high school (during a time kids don’t realize they need schooling), and then to continue on you basically have to become homeless to afford schooling through government grants. I have a well paying job and I’m going to suffer dearly for being single, white, and upper middle class! I need to move to China…

Today one of my peers contacted me about what some of the best methods I used for preparing for Microsoft certification exams. In general I usually forward them onto general references books from Wrox publishing company, or suggest getting one of the Microsoft recommended study guides.

I’ve recently completed my MCP (Microsoft Certified Professional), and MCAD (Microsoft Certified Application Developer) certifications using the Microsoft recommended study guides along with Transcender exams. Together this combination of materials is enough to get the most inept programmer up to par in order to pass these certifications.

Personally, if you’re going to get the Microsoft study guides buy the training kits that include 1-3 books along with a companion study CD, which includes it’s own practice exams. I think the most invaluable asset to my preparation was the companion CD. It wasn’t until I took these practice exams that I realized how the questions would be presented, the type of material likely to be used, and was able to formulate a good study routine accordingly.

The Microsoft practice exams combined with using the Trascender exams, which also consists of practice exams, digital flash card program, and most importantly is very difficult to pass. I found these two exam preparation sources were actually even more difficult than the actual certification exams themselves.

So if anyone else is out there looking to take a Microsoft certification exam please reference Amazon.com with the suggested books from the Microsoft certification requirement recommended study guides. You can find a link to the Microsoft certification home page below:

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/certifications.mspx

Good luck, good studying, and get those certs!

I’m currently at work learning the nuances of the PHP language for an upcoming project. I was thinking about a way to start off the one sided conversation we’ll be having from now on, and then it hit me. I’d like to take a moment to help you solve a problem that plagued our development team for three days with RDLC reports.

Just recently I was attending a Microsoft MSDN event, and of all places while I was waiting at the line for the concession stand I overheard a group of three developers complaining about RDLC implementations, and Infragistics control sets. Having just rolled off a four month project where RDLC reports were part of my primary development tasks I learned quite a bit. I won’t touch on the Infragistics controls just yet as the pain of dealing with them is still very fresh within my thoughts.

The most important thing that I learned during this period of time is that deploying/publishing a website with RDLC reports is a big pain in the butt. What you’ll realize is after you’ve compiled and deployed your site the RDLC files drop from the 30+KB file sizes to a 1KB size. This change alone can throw some developers for a loop, but fear not this is normal. Unfortunately most of you out there that deploy these reports will be exposed right away to this wonderfully descript error:

“The definition of the report ‘Main Report’ is invalid”

Having stared blankly at this error, and considering we had no reports definitions named ‘Main Report’ this threw us for a loop. Looking up possible solutions to this error through Google amounted to a heap of nothing. There were forums after forums making off the wall suggestions to correct the problem, and even a few MSDN forums with advice that amounted to adding three .dll files to the GAC (global assembly cache) on the deployed server.

It wasn’t until we found this very obscure site that mentioned that by default the .Net framework does not include the ReportViewer control. In order to display reports correctly you’d need to additionally locate, download, and install the ReportViewer software on the website server. For our development systems this was never an issue as Visual Studio (VS) installs the ReportViewer once installed, but for our VS-less web hosting server this became an issue.

At the time of writing this blog entry you can find a reference to this Report Viewer control from the Microsoft download link below:

Microsoft Report Viewer Redistributable 2005 

Additionally you can search on the Microsoft.com website for the Microsoft Report Viewer Redistributable 2005 software. This will correct the ‘Main Report’ error, and hopefully at this point the reports will be displaying correctly. I’ve seen a lot of suggestions, everything from replacing the compiled versions of the RDLC reports with their source versions to including additional files into the GAC. The underling cause of this problem is most servers do not have Visual Studio (VS) installed, and without VS the report viewer control is not installed by default. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed my first blog, and I look forward to talking at you later.