Dev::Blog

The blog is the new post-it note - at least, hopefully the next time I rebuild a computer I’ll think to look here. When setting up XP and IIS, it’s important to grand access to the web directory to IUSR_COMPUTERNAME and ASPNET. If you only mess with XP security settings when you rebuild drives, you might forget that it’s less than obvious that you have to unselect Tools -> Folder Options -> View -> uncheck “use Simple File Sharing (Recommended) in Explorer for the world to make sense.

Reinstalling everything on a computer really sucks. I haven’t done it in quite some time, and it’s probably been 5 years for a Windows box. Of course, this would have gone smoother if I’d used the same base that I already had, but I wanted to take the opportunity to experiment (sample lessons learned: using Virtual PC on a 3 year old laptop with 512 megs RAM isn’t going to give me the experience I want, and Windows Server 2003 doesn’t really work well with things like wireless network cards, go figure.)

I’m updating the IBM device drivers now. Best message so far (I know, this would go faster if I didn’t read the EULAs and install dialogs…):

“Note that clicking finish does not start the installation process.”

(OK, I later realized that that meant that I had to go and manually click on the setup apps for each driver, but that’s almost dumber than the message in the first place.)

OK, I love my PowerBook, underpowered as it is, and I love my ThinkPad, but now that they’ve both had hard drive failures, I’m feeling a bit of a bias. Observe:

HD replacement for PowerBook: remove a zillion screws, some keys on the keyboard, the keyboard itself, and perhaps consider installing a few extra things just so you can remove those too.

HD replacement for ThinkPad: remove THE SCREW.

Pretty has a price, no?

(Now to reinstall everything I own. Thank God for off-site CVS repositories!

Following Petzold’s much-linked Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind?, John Lam asks if if databases aren’t just as bad. The timing is fun - we’re working on a search-related product right now, and I can’t wait until everything stabilizes so I can rip the back end out and replace it with something a lot more interesting. MySql full text searches will take you some of the way, but in the end it’s just a generalized api call.

As per usual, too busy writing code to write about code. Still, that’s not a bad place to be. Quick quote from BigPictureSmallOffice.com: The One Thing: “wherever you are, be there.” On the one hand, kind of silly and pseudo-zen, but then again, exactly what I needed to read when I read it.