Custom Controls in ASP.NET

Tonight I wrote my first custom control. I was at a point with this project I am reworking a little bit, where I didn't want to have to create the same set of controls four times. I have no idea why I haven't done it before. I guess I was just to stuck in the old ways of doing things. I can't tell you how hard it rocks. I wrote the control, imported the control into VS, and used it. It worked first time! (now that never happens when you are trying something for the first time). I simple followed along with a great article at 15seconds.com. The article "Building ASP.NET User and Server Controls, Part 2 By Solomon Shaffer" is a great start. I followed along with the article and had my custom control built in about a half an hour. Mr. Shaffer's article is very easy to follow and he does an excellent job of getting to the real code and methods behind building a custom control. Everything I had read on Custom Controls before was so high level, that it didn't really do me much good. However this article makes it easy.

Interesting Blog

This evening I was reading an article about pixar. The article mentioned Steve Jobs and Disney discussing the contract. Of course this ended with Pixar going out on its own. But it got me thinkin' does Steve Jobs have a blog?

Guess what? He does JustOneMoreThing.com - Mac'N'Stuff - Steve Jobs' weblog ;-)

Searching Indexing Services with ASP.NET and C# Part III

I pretty much thought  I had this whole Searching Indexing Services with ASP.NET all wrapped up, till my Boss' Boss' kept getting an "Access Denied Error". However it was extremely intermittent. It would work great three of four times and then show up. These kind of intermittent problems are so frustrating. How can you fix something that you can't reproduce everytime? Or even every other time? So after about an hour of doing google searchs, I found an article on support.microost.com. FIX: "Access Is Denied" Error Message When You Try to Access Indexing Service from ASP.NET with Impersonation Enabled.

Being that I am using impersonation in my application, I felt at least this could get me on the right track. The first thing that it mentioned was if you are on Windows 2000 serve rupgrade to service pack 4. We have been a little leary of service pack 4, but I crossed my fingers, toes, eyes and installed the services pack. To my surpise it installed cleanly, but didn't fix the issue. So re-reading the article it talked about adding something to the web.config. My web config was already pretty customized, but I through caution to the wind (after making a complete back up) and added the code. It worked! This is what I added. Make sure it is outside of your current <system.web> node.

<location path="filename.aspx">
<system.web>
   <identity impersonate="false" />
</system.web>
</location>

It' basically turns off impersonation just for the file. And as I gave ASP.NET full access to my catalog. It runs beautiful.

Words, Words, Words

So the Little Boy's speech is getting better and better everyday. The funny thing about that is now he will go through his whole dictionary of words stringing them together for his own entertainment. (note: when the Little Boy calls out your name and strings it together with a vehicle, a color, a food, a smell and adjective, don't take it personally, however if your Wife does, that is a different matter completely) This is a dangerous time, but not for him, for us. He is at the parroting stage. However it isn't right after you said it. It's two hours to four days later. So you really have to watch what you say. You tell the dog 'you stink, bad dog', and two days later, the Little Boy is telling the some random kid at the park the same thing. Fortunately we can blame the school systems, being that he is in pre-school. 

There are a lot of words he knows, and by knows I mean he understand what they mean. Usually there are driving instructions that are yelled out from the back seat when I am driving. Like 'turn here' or even worse 'turn here NOW!', when we pass the toy store on the way to walmart.(I don't go that way any more, It takes ten minutes more to go the long way, but I feel it is worth it.) And the 'No No, No, turn here please' when I keep on driving. Of course if you are really driving poorly (which apparently I do quite often. I use to think I was such a good driver.) you hear "Stop the Car, Please!".

A new phrase that has entered the Little Boy's repertoire is "No NEVER!". He picked up this little gem from the movie "Peter Pan".  However he doesn't quite get how to use it. For example:

Me: "Would you like a glass of milk?"

Little Boy: "No NEVER!"

Me: *hand Little Boy glass of milk*

Little Boy: *Drinks it in two gulps*

Me: "Was that good?"

Little Boy: "No NEVER!, more please?"

So it makes me wonder what other phrases are going to be like that. I wonder what will be the next thing he says that will be my mental "quote of the week". He is growing so fast, and really starting to get use to using this strange language we call english. He has come so far, but still has more work to come. My Beautiful Wife and I were talking about this while doing some grocery shopping tonight. It must of been a sight to see two adults going down the isles saying "No NEVER!"

Finally we get a real action figure

There is finally a real action figure. This one doesn't have freakishly large biceps. It doesn't sling webs, but it's good on the web. He doesn't have x-ray vision or lasers that shoot out of his eyes. Infact he needs glasses to see his computer screen. He is the everyday hero. He can fix DNS problems with a single command. Able to parse large log files in a single view, he's faster then an over clocked pentium 4, he is the super-alpha-uber-geek, GeekMan! Unlike other action figures you'll find in the stores, Geekman comes with full documentation, yeah, I know, pretty exciting, huh?