Silently Fail - The Death of Happiness

Sometimes programs fail to do what they should. Usually they pop up an error message. Occasionally they explode in a fireball of death. But that is not as bad as silently failing. You press the send button, it looks like it sent, but it didn't. You tell it to save your file, it looks like it's saved, but it's actually not. These silent failures are the death of happiness.

Recently I have been setting up a web server at work. I want this server to be running Asp 2.0, with .Net Framework of 3.5 because I'm crazy like that. Last week it was all set up, ready to go... It was eagerly awaiting my website to be added so that it could serve it to the masses.

Yesterday the piece of code I have been working on has reached a point where it could be tested by humans (humans being non-programmers). I uploaded it into the virtual directory, and what did I get in return? http 404. WHAT?!? 404?!? It's sitting right there! I access an image in the same folder, and it displays. Why is it refusing to display my aspx file? What is going on?

After a bit of tinkering, I told that virtual folder to run in asp 1.1, at which point it gave me errors that I would expect to see if I ran it in 1.1... I put it back to asp 2.0 and it gives me a 404. Why would that happen?

Well, after a bit of tinkering, I discovered that it was because the framework 3.5 install did not complete. I had installed it, it said success, but anything I run that requires any framework above 2.0 would not work. The install had silently failed. I spent two days hunting this problem down when I should have been doing something meaningful with my life.

But now I reinstalled 3.5, and low and behold, it is all working perfectly.

Yes, silently failing is the death of happiness.

Flickr Video

Wow, what a cool idea. Normally I think video on the internet is completely silly. But I like this idea. Flickr has decided to allow users to upload very short videos.

This actually makes a lot of sense. Flickr is a place for people to share their personal photos with each other. Sometimes it's art pictures, and sometimes it's just personal pictures. But the thing is, a lot of times people are taking videos, not pictures. Our digital cameras take videos as easily pictures.

Very cool. They are limited to 90 second videos. They are supposed to be snapshot videos. Or 'moving photos'. Only trouble is, you have to sign up for the pay version of Flickr to upload videos. I've been contemplating upgrading for a while just so I can put more pictures up there. Maybe I should go ahead and pay for all the cool features.

Today

Well, we all knew it would happen eventually.

I have gotten bored of this blog thing. It turns out that I actually don't like ranting about random topics. I find blogs to be pretentious, and I find those that write them, and those that read them, to be pretentious.

I simply just don't have anything to say. I'm not a very wordy person, so it's so hard for me to come up with things to blog about. So it's just silly for me to keep this up.

I'll go ahead and leave my blog up for a few more days, just so everyone can snag any links off of there that they want. And then I'll be deleting my blog. I'm thinking I should probably take down my website too, http://oakwright.org.

I've also been thinking about giving up video games too. They are boring. I've been trying too hard to be a geek. I burn out on MMO's, and find myself just fiddling around to waste time. So I've decided to take up something that would better me as a person, and entertain me. I'm thinking perhaps taking up a sport... My coworker tells me about this game called Frisbee Golf. I liked paintball, so it makes sense that I should like other outdoor sports. I might just go ahead and try golf instead though, or maybe baseball, I hear it's the right season for that.

I've also decided that I should give up on giving up meat. I never really liked meat. But why? It's pointless. So what if it's the cooked flesh that came out of a living being that had big soft eyes before it was mercilessly slaughtered? It's just a cow. Moo. So tonight, I am going to have a big steak.

No more doing the dew either. That stuff is bad for you. I think I'm gonna give up caffiene altogether. For real. I mean it this time.

Does anyone want to buy my Alienware computer? Since I'm not going to play video games I don't really need it anymore, let me know your best offer. I could use that money to buy my new golf clubs.

I think I'll get a haircut tonight. The long hair thing is so overdone. I should shave too.

A Prolific Squalor - IM's gone mad

I have stumbled upon a great blog. It is simply snippets of IM conversations. They are great! I highly suggest checking it out, it's called A Prolific Squalor.

Some of them are mild, and boring. Some are awesome. In the spirit, I have a piece of an IM conversation I had today for you all to read.

A: shut up I hate you
B: bapa
A: no
B: no
B: I say no to your no
A: I'm gonna no your noing no
A: no
B: nononono, and just for good measure I'm going to no your nonononono
B: for shits and giggles I'm gonna yes your nonononononono, if it gets that far.
A: what if it was only a nono though?
B: I might maybe that.
B: Did you get C's microphone fixed yet?
A: heh... no.

No alternative

Well, my car died. It's alternator blew out. I guess that's a bad thing. I hate car mechanics. I'm pretty convinced they all want to squeeze all they can. I just think most of them aren't honest people. I hate that. More than being screwed by a car mechanic, I hate that it happens so often that it builds a stereotype. I don't like that I view used car salesman, mechanics, and lawyers as inherently shady people... But it turns out that most of them that I have met HAVE tried to con me.

Google Calendar Sync - Failed Synchronicity

A while back I tried out a few software options that are intended to sync Google Calendars to Outlook (article is here). Well on March 5 Google released their own version. It is appropriately named Google Calendar Sync.

So I decided to give it a try. Before I started, I could envision gSyncit and Google Calendar Sync trying to sync at the same time and completely screw up my calendar duplicating everything. So I uninstalled gSyncit, and installed Google Calendar Sync.

Install was a breeze. I input my Google username and password, and was presented with three options. Sync Google to Outlook, Sync Outlook to Google, or 2 way. I decided to start with I would just sync Outlook to Google. I would prefer my Google cal to be screwed up than my Outlook on (Google is personal, Outlook is work. Screwing up my toys is fine, but screwing up work is bad).

So then came the big moment, I told it to Sync. It said "Loading Google Calendar Events" and some little green arrows did a little dance, and then it was done! Or so I thought. When I hovered over the icon, it told me "last sync completed: 9:12". So I pull up my Google Cal, and alas, it didn't work.

I surf around and figure out that it only syncs events and appointments, but not meetings. Well, that's goofy! Everything on my Outlook is meetings! After some research I discover that you need to tell Google that your work e-mail should be associated with your Google Account. You do that by going here: https://www.google.com/accounts/ManageAccount and click on edit. From there you can update your e-mail addresses.

And then another attempt at hitting Sync. It told me "last sync completed: 9:25". And my Google calendar remained empty. I shut it down, and started it back up. At that point it actually gave me an error message stating WHY it wasn't syncing. It told me I needed to connect to the internet. Whoa, I guess all that time I had spent looking through the less than useful docs on the net and surfing Google and checking my Google Calendar I actually was NOT on the net? Wow. I am guessing it's a firewall issue. I am behind a pretty tight corporate firewall. Google Chat doesn't work here either, so I guess that shouldn't surprise me. After quite a bit more searching I could not find the port that the little syncer actually uses. So I don't even know what to tell the folks over in the networking department what ports to open.

Not only that, but while researching the port, I discover that you are only allowed to sync ONE calendar. You know how in Google you can have TONS of calendars and view them all together? Well this tool only syncs the 'main' calendar. Which is NOT the one I would want synced to Outlook, I would like it to sync the calendar named 'Work'. Go figure.

In the end I decided it's a bust. It says it last synced at 9:35, but it didn't. And now all of a sudden half of my appointments in my Outlook are... gone... again. Anything that was before today is gone. If it was a recurring set that was setup before today, it's gone. So that's about half my appointments. I don't know if Google Calendar Sync did it, or if gSyncit did it on it's way out the door.

Either way, this post comes to an end. I think I have an appointment, I'm not sure, since neither of my calendars says I do, but I'm pretty sure... I wonder what the meeting is for... or where it is...

Breaking Radio Silence

Things have been a bit quiet from me lately. And now has come the time for me to explain why. I bought a house. I am no longer an apartment dweller. The extra work and stress of it all left me feeling not much in the mood for updating things. But now we are moved in, things are stable, and good. When I get the boxes unpacked enough I might put some pictures of the place up on flikr.

Back to your regularly scheduled blog.