In Valid Logic

I haven’t been very good about blogging regularly lately, and hope to be fixing that soon. My schedule should be clearing up and I’ll be able to sqeeze in some time to write up good stuff. My list of things to write about keeps growing.

One thing I had stumbled across over the weekend has been looking pretty good: RememberTheMilk.com

It may sound a little odd, but it is kind of like Backpack for to-dos. From what I’ve seen of Backpack, it is more for lists, while RTM is pretty much just for todo items.

It is really easy to use, very nice interface. A lot of very good use of ajax. Very easy to get to. If you just go to the site and are already logged in, it takes you to your Overview (or Tasks if you have it skip the overview) and you are good to go. Can easily email in items and set the due dates, priority, tags, notes, etc. Nice and simple.

So far, I have different tabs for Coding, Emails, Home, Phone, and Someday. I don’t really break things into projects, but will have a little prefix for the project (like CS, NNTP, MG) and will set the tags.

I like it better than using Outlook, since Outlook was often too cluttered as I’d have my Home tasks next to my Coding tasks. Even though I had them grouped and collapsed, still wasn’t 100% how I wanted it. But Outlook+ClearContext had the advantage of being really easy to create tasks from emails and such.

One other nice thing is the RTM Mobile Edition, though I couldn’t log into it using my phone (page would just refresh). Will have to play around with it some more later.

Lately, Dave Burke has been drooling over the News Gateway feature of Community Server.  It is probably my favorite of the add-ons for CS, since it is so simple and easy to use.  The funny thing is that so many people don’t realize how many useful little features are already in CS or available through add-ons.

My own favorite thing about it is that the read status of a post is sync’d back to the website when you are viewing posts over NNTP.  If you download a list of posts, when you view the post and it gets the body, the post will be marked as read on the website.  So when you go back to the website, it will only show you posts you haven’t seen.

There are a few limitations though.  If you view a post on the website and then later download it over NNTP, it will still show up as new.  With NNTP, there is no way to say “here is a new post, but you’ve already read it”.  The other limitation is that posts are marked as read when you download the full body of the post, not when they are viewed.  Most of the time, the reader downloads the post only when you go to view it.  But say you are going on a flight and want to download all the latest posts to go over on the flight.  It will mark all of them read when it downloads them, so if you don’t look over all of them, when you go to the site, they will still be marked as read (unless there was new post since you downloaded them the last time).

Thought I’d take a minute to give a quick happy birthday wish to Jayson Knight, one of the CS MVPs.

Would also recommend checking out Jayson’s CS Tidbits series.  He has some real nice ones, like compression modules and some simple SEO mods.

Today, iis.net launched.  This will definitely be the source for information on IIS7.  Going to watch The .NET Shows on IIS7 later this afternoon.  Ohh, by the way, the site is running Community Server.

Yesterday, the new version of weblogs.asp.net went live running CS v2.1.  Chris Hammond blogs about how to syndicate posts from your blog to weblogs.asp.net.  Think I may go ahead and set this up for my technical related posts, as my blog on there has been dead for quite a while.

Also, updated my own website to CS v2.1.60519.  Still need to make a few skin updates, for things like my tag cloud.  Perhaps I’ll do that tonight while setting up syndication and watching The .NET Show.

It was a hot Mother’s Day on Sunday. On Sunday, we went to Mickey Grove Park with my wife’s family (my parents were supposed to come, but unfortunately, my mom wasn’t feel well… she is better now though). I took this picture when we got in the car on the way home.

I don’t always trust the temperature sensor in the car, as I sometimes wonder if the heat of the engine or road could influence it, or if the wind could cool it off, etc. Though this was on the way home, when we had been driving for a while, so if it was cooling it off, it would have done it already.

I was so mad last night.

24 is normally on at 9pm on FOX every Monday. At some time yesterday afternoon, my MCE box had updated the program guide and it showed 24 was starting at 9:20pm. I figured it was right, because Eric had commented on the same thing a few hours before, and he was in Texas.

So I was sitting there watching Deal or No Deal to kill the time before 24. I notice my laptop said it was 9:21pm, while the MCE box said it was 9:14pm. I figured better safe than sorry and don’t want to miss anything of the 2nd to last episode of the season. So I have it switch channels early.

What do I find?

24 HAD ALREADY BEEN ON! It started at 9pm, like it normally does. Someone at FOX, or the program guide service, or whoever came up with the goof that made it think it started at 9:20pm owes me 15 mins back!

But the damage is done. Will just have to be sure to not let the season finale next week slip by.

As I am fashionable late in reporting, Telligent recently hired Dave Burke to be the first Community Server Evangelist.

One of the first things that he has done is to come up with the Community Server Daily News. This will be the place to get your daily taste for what is happening in and around Community Server. Topics will range from development news, goods put out by community members, sites using CS, tips/tricks, and interesting bits from the forums.

The big news from today’s edition is that Office 2007 Beta2 will support blogging directly from Word with specific support for Community Server! Yes, that is right! Community Server will be listed there right next to Blogger, MSN Spaces, and Sharepoint! This will definitely be exciting!

Be sure to subscribe to the CS Daily News RSS feed!

Not too long ago, Jose pointed me to this Coding4Fun Time Tracker article/code sample that he had started using to help keep track of his time spent on different projects every week.

I used to use this program called Timeless Time & Expense, but eventually grew tired of the program, since it had some annoyances like never remembering to minimize to the taskbar when I first boot up, and it reports were a little flunky, etc. All I really needed was a very plain and simple application.

So today I started using the application Jose pointed me to and quite liked it. Was nice, easy to use, and incredibly simple. Though right away, noticed a few minor annoyances. Though the nice thing is it is free, and it comes with the source. Its architecture is nice and simple, so when chatting with Jose, in the course of like 20 mins, we basically solved all of our annoyances. Added a number of things:

• Made it so it changes its task bar icon when you are Punched In vs. Punched Out (though my icon editing skills are weak)
• Made it so when you change projects while punched in, it will punch you out of the old one, switch, then punch into the new one
• Updated the “View Time Info” tree view to anchor to the bottom when resizing
• Added a “Clear Time” button to the “View Time Info” screen
  • For this, we actually made it so if you were punched in, it will punch you out, save the data to backup file, clear the data, then punch you back in if needed.
• Added a node to the “View Time Info” screen that has the total time, with all the projects as child nodes and the total node defaults to being expanded.

The Coding4Fun article is definitely worth checking out. If anyone is interested, I could probably post some of our modifications.

Those skills I thought I would never use again actually came in handy tonight. I was checking out this program and a piece of it was in the form of an ASP script that would pass some commands from the web onto a command line interface (yes, not a very secure thing, but that is besides the point).

The problem was it wasn’t working! I had searched online for the error message and found someone with the exact same error, but no one with a fix, update, or anything.

So, since I used to do classic ASP at my job before Telligent, figured I’d dive in (past the line that says “Do not change anything else”) and was quickly able to figure out the problem. It was passing commands onto the system that were overly escaped. It was passing " when it just needed ” and " when it just needed ". A little replace(strCommand, chr(92) & chr(34), chr(34)) action and it was good to go!

The one thing that was troubling me was I am used to using “\"”, but that wasn’t flying. Had to fall back on chr(). My ASP is a little rough… been two years and haven’t even touched anything ASP since.

I find it a little funny how MSDN Subscriptions seem to be fulfilled in reverse.

Back in February, I had signed up for an MSDN Subscription with Visual Studio Team Suite through Scott. They said it would take 6-8 weeks til I get everything. So I waited about 6-7 weeks, and was expecting it anytime, but I had some problems with another package that was sent USPS. So I contacted them to see if it has shipped yet and if it was by USPS, so that I could have them try to locate it as well. They said it hadn’t shipped yet and that they were behind on orders and it could take another 6-8 weeks.

Fast forward a little, and Jose, who registered his like a week after I did, already got all his stuff, but still I hadn’t heard anything.

Then last week, out of the blue one morning, I get a package that contains the MSDN May Update. Ohh wow! Update CDs! Wait, but what about the rest of them? I get my update before I actually get the welcome package?

And then the next day, my welcome package finally comes with the binder and all of the CDs and I was happy. But then I scratch my head for a minute… where are my product keys? I hadn’t yet received my subscription ID by email so that I could sign in online and get my keys. So the CDs were basically useless.

And in a triumphant conclusion to the reverse-order-fulfillment process, last night I finally received my subscription ID by email last night and was able to get my product keys. The thing I found most humorous was it said “You should receive your first shipment within 7-10 business days.” Um, nope, try that in reverse. “You should have received your first shipment 7-10 business days ago.”