Basically, I’m still at Corporate Research International.  I’ve been there for now about 2 and a half years.  About a year ago now I was promoted to Senior Programmer. It’s not that big of a change.  I still work on the same things pretty much.  A little less of the low level stuff and more higher level but overall it’s the same.  I have more responsiblity and get to boss around the underlings.  Overall, I’d say it’s ok but not great.  We’re always swamped with work and spend a lot of time playing catch up.

Anyhoo, that’s pretty much it.  Still at the same place and still doing the same things.

Crazy how time flies sometimes.  Lots of stuff has happened in my life.  Too much to write all here and plenty I’d rather just forget.

The short story is basically this.  Still at the same job and still with the same girlfriend. 

I’m going to try to start blogging again.  We’ll see how long I can keep it up.

Anyway.  Peace out!

If you happen to see this error pop up on your Windows Server 2003 system here’s how to fix it.

Basically, the problem is there are two user groups (IIS_WPG and NETWORK SERVICE) that don’t have permissions set on the following three folders:
%systemroot%\Help\IISHelp\Common
%systemroot%\System32\Inetsrv\ASP Compiled Templates
%systemroot%\IIS Temporary Compressed Files

%systemroot% is usually C:\windows or C:\winnt by the way!

For “%systemroot%\Help\IISHelp\Common ” give both groups; Read and Execute, List Folder Contents, and Read permissions.

For “%systemroot%\System32\Inetsrv\ASP Compiled Templates” and “%systemroot%\IIS Temporary Compressed Files” give both groups full control.

then after that you’ll have to restart IIS.

1. Click Start, click Run, type Services.msc, and then click OK.
2. Right-click IIS Admin, and then click Restart.

That should fix that silly problem!

Between work and starting my webhosting business I’m just short about 12 hours a day!

Someone help me!

I have and wait till i tell you what goodies I received and gave this year.  I’m pretty dead right now and busy yet but in another day or two I’ll get that posted.

Merry Christmas!

Long story short, I went with my girlfriend to the Historical Museum today.  They have this nice Christmas display they run every year.  Anyhoo, they were playing Christmas music and it was “Christmas Time is Here” from the Charlie Brown Christmas album.

It’s a great song and I really wanted to have it so I started digging around the net for it.  I found out it’s in the eMusic.com library. 

eMusic I think is the only pay music site on the net that actually uses normal non-DRMed MP3s.  They do a monthly subscription model where you can download a preset number of songs.  It varies but the cheapest plan is 9.99/mo for 40 downloads.  That’s not too bad when you think about it.  One cd will burn you 12-20bucks right? And it only has maybe 10 songs.  I’d say 10 bucks for 40 tracks is a pretty good deal.

So I see they have a free trail membership where you can download 50 songs for free and keep them even if you cancel your subscriptions.

So, this is where I’m getting 50 free MP3s legally.  I’ll be downloading the whole Charlie Brown Christmas album plus whatever else I find this week then cancel my subscription.

The only downfall to their service is the music quality.  Songs are only encoded at 192kbps variable bit rate.  Which is good enough for most people but it would be nice to have the option of getting nice 320kbps archive quality files.

But it’ll do just fine and I’ll be happy with what I get considering it’s free!

Well as I said in my last post, I no longer work at UPS as I have a new job working at a company doing actual IT work!

Well, I’m basically a month into the job and so far things are going great.  Everyone is nice and I’m slowing getting to know them.  My coworkers have been very helpful and understanding of my learning the systems and procedures.

The place is growing by leaps and bounds and it just constantly impresses me.  It’s nice to see a company growing and not doing mass layoffs (You hear that GM?  Maybe you should send your execs to come mentor here, so they can learn a thing or two about how to run a successful business!)

So anyhoo, the job is great but just a bit tiring with the commute.  I’m up at 6:30am every morning.  Shower, shave… you get the idea.  I’m on the road by 7:15 and in the lot by 7:50ish.  Clock in and at my desk by 8 and spend the day busily working.  The day’s over around 5-5:15ish and I’m back out and on the road.  I get home by 6 and start the nightly decompress.

That’s why I haven’t posted in a month.  I’m usually pretty tired and I get sidetracked doing other things.  So Mr Blog gets put on the back burner. 

I’ll try to be better about posting now that I’m getting used to the routine.  Big things are a brewing and I’d like to try to document it all as I think it would be very interesting for everyone.

How’s that for a teaser? HA!

Today was my last day working at UPS.  It’s been mostly fun but it’s time to move on to bigger and better things now.

It was a pretty easy day, thankfully.  Volume was 147,000 total and 8000 for the area.  That means none of us had to work very hard which was nice.  We’ve been getting out butts kicked every day this week.  The idiots running the unload would screw around all day and barely move anything, then the last hour of the shift they would go crazy and dump on everyone.  As a result the PD would burn down and it would take forever to clean up.

Anyhoo, it was a nice day.  I joked around with everyone and several supervisors and staff members stopped by to wish me well.

My girlfriend made cookies for me to take in and they were a hit.  Everyone was happy to have something good to eat.

The day finally came to an end and I took off.  I’ll probably never see the inside of that building again, which will be just fine by me.  No more noisy machinery, dirty trucks or heavy boxes to lift.

It’s time to move on and start using my brain every day instead of my brawn.

So Goodbye UPS, it was fun!

The FANUG website is at http://groups.msn.com/FindlayAreaNETUserGroup

Next Meeting:  November 30, 2005

Topic:  Applying Architecture and Design Patterns in .NET

Presenter:  Martin L. Shoemaker - The Tablet UML Company

Meeting Sponsered by:  INETA
Description:  Investigate how particular design patterns are represented in a mix of C# and VB.NET code.

Martin L. Shoemaker

Martin L. Shoemaker is a software developer with 17 years experience in the industry. He has worked in the fields of color science, on-line shopping, databases, material handling, medical imaging, and customer relations management.

Martin is also an accomplished speaker, having presented to the Detroit Colour Council, the Ann Arbor Computer Society, the Ann Arbor IT Zone, the Rubi Con security conference in Detroit, the Visual Studio Live/Visual C++ Developers Conference in San Francisco, and the UML World Conference in New York. His most popular presentations are Richard Hale Shaw’s UML BootCamp, written and presented by Martin. He has presented this course both in public settings and for individual clients.

Pizza and pop will be served.

Time: 5:30-7:00 PM

Location:  Marathon Findlay Offices, 539 S. Main St., Findlay, OH

Cost:  Meeting is Free.  Drawing held at end of meeting. 

FANUG Purpose: To assist developers with their education in Microsoft’s .NET technology. This group seeks to attract professional software developers and students from Findlay and the surrounding areas. Our meetings will encompass presentations from area experts that will contribute to the learning of each individual. Through our membership in INETA, we hope to attract internationally known speakers on various .NET subjects.

For the next year, until Nov 2006, they’re going to let you download any of the Visual Studio Express programs (Visual Basic, C#, C++, J# and Web Developer) plus SQL Server Express for free.  Normally, these programs go for something like 49.99 I believe.

They aren’t that bad in size.  Under 100mb per program so go ahead and download them.  You never know when it might come in handy.  Burn it to a cd and keep it for future use.

Thanks MS!