Monday, August 14, 2006

Henry

Henry
Henry,
originally uploaded by b3ardman.
Saw Mike and Cate at the weekend. Was another weekend with too much time spent in the car, especially as we went the wrong way (twice) when we got to London, but it was good to see them.
The main purpose of the visit was to see Henry, who's going to come live with us once we get back from our holidays. Fortunately, Amy wasn't too allergic (she got a bit snotty, but her eyes seemed ok). Henry seems like a dude, he didn't seem to mind Amy fussing him, or me not fussing him. In fact, the only thing he seemed to be concerned at all about was his dinner (but then that's cats I suppose).
Amy and I are already looking forward to him coming to live with us. It'll be great to have the patter of paws around the house.

Friday, August 11, 2006

Cracked it.

Finally, found a way to AppUnload IIS sites using PowerShell.

New-Object System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryEntry "IIS:// servername/W3SVC" | %{ $_.get_Children() } | where { $_.get_SchemaClassName() -eq "IIsWebServer" } | where { $_.serverComment -eq " sitename" } | %{ $site=$_;"-----";$site.get_Name(); $site.ServerComment; $site.get_Children() | where { $_.get_SchemaClassName() -eq "IIsWebVirtualDir" } | %{ $_.Invoke("AppUnload") } }
where { $_.serverComment -eq " sitename" } is useful if you need to pick site via the "server comment", which is the name displayed in IIS. If you only have one site (like on XP), then you can remove/ignore this. Also, it prints out the site "name" (this will be a number) and "server comment", which isn't strictly necessary, but then at least you'll get an ideas what's going on.

The bit I got stuck on was that the full path to a the object that has "AppUnload" is "IIS:/localhost/W3SVC/1/ROOT" - I was trying to do it on the "IISWebServer" element...

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

OMG

so, after yesterday's childish reaction to rewriting the spec, I got told that the incomprehensible pile of shit that I had written was "a lot better", and the only comment I got was that "[what I posted yesterday] has to be the longest sentence [project manager has] ever seen".
Thank fuck I'm out of here.

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

too much?

I hate writing functional specifications, thus I write bollocks, like this sentence:

A Review Schedule is created for documents with the status of "Published" on the "Create Review Schedule" page by selecting the first review start date, which the system will check as being after a date in the future, the first review end date, which the system will check as being after the first review start date, thus also a date in the future, and the review frequency with which the document in the status of "Published" is to be reviewed, which may be monthly, quarterly, biannual, yearly, two yearly, or three yearly, but the system will ensure is greater than the period between the first review start date and the first review end date, then clicking on the "populate review schedule" button, which will populate the review schedule by initially calculating the next review state date as being the first review start date plus the review frequency and calculate the next review end date as being the first review end date plus the review frequency, then by calculating subsequent review start dates as being the previous review start date plus the review frequency and the associated review end date as being the previous associated review end date plus the review frequency, and continue this calculation until it has populated the review schedule with eleven further review start dates and eleven associated review end dates, which will be presented to the user to modify as they which, but which the system will ensure do not over lap, by checking that each review start date is before its associated end date and that each start date and associated review end date represent a discrete time period within the review schedule, and then allowing the user to save the populated review schedule once they have made any changes that may be required and which the system validates as representing a valid review schedule.
So far I've written 3 pages of this durge. I did follow Joel Spoelsky's advice, but I got told off, so they'll have to put up with this.

Monday, August 07, 2006

Bristol's a long way away

Nine hours travelling (there and back), which is a bit much for a weekend. Nice to see Amy's sister mind. Amy's got crazy ideas about living down there, so I had to take the scenic route back, the one over Pole Moor, where you can see all along the Colne Valley. Picture's of Clifton Suspension bridge. I was too scared to walk across it, it's fucking high up. Posted by Picasa

nvarchar(max)

Although I can find little information about it, nvarchar(max) is one of my favourite features, to-date, of SQLServer 2005. (It's not a LOB, it's a Large Value Datatype!)

Goodbye pens

I let Amy borrow my Muji pens which I'd kept hidden in my bag. I'll never see them again then.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

PowerShell + sourcesafe = :D

gci -i "*.aspx" -r | select-string "searchstring" | %{ $_.RelativePath($(get-item .).FullName) } | %{ ss checkout $_ -i- -gf }

{checks out items from current project dependant if they contain the pattern searchstring}

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Dorest Cereals

Dorest Cereals (their homepage doesn't work at time of writing) have redesigned their packaging, and it looks really good: check it out. (There's some pictures of the old style here).
Apart from fitting in the cupboard better, and being easier to close, they are  harder to recycle (due to the plastic windows), and contain more packaging, as there's a polythene bag inside of the box.
Aesthetically, however, they are very smart.