Where I store my tech stuff

I’ve had a Gmail account for awhile, but I’ve never really used it. I already have so many email accounts to check. Until yesterday, they were all consolidated in Outlook. After taking another look at Gmail, I’ve decided to give it a go. The feature that sealed the deal for me was being able to impersonate my other email accounts. When I send an e-mail, I can click the From address that I want to use. That was my main reason for using Outlook. Of course, I had to have my own SMTP server, which was a pain. With Gmail, I can eliminate Outlook and Ypops from desktop, and eliminate SMTP from my server.

I have most of my accounts set up to automatically forward to Gmail. I’ve saved my main account, because I want to have some time to play around with Gmail before I go completely off Outlook. But so far I really like it.

Sigh. I’ve been working on the data chapters for the book I’m writing about Visual Studio 2005. I decided to use the Adventure Works sample database because M$ recommends it with SQL Server 2005. Unfortunately, the database makes extensive use of schemas, and the Data Source Configuration Wizard in ASP.NET doesn’t understand schemas. (Works like a champ in Windows apps!) Sure, you can make a connection and see database objects. But the resulting SQL doesn’t fully qualify the table’s name. You can even browse the data all day long in Server Explorer, but when it comes time to run the query, you get an invalid object error.

There are a few workarounds:

• Manually edit the commands generated by the wizard
• Use the Query Builder
• Run the synonym script that creates synonyms for all the table objects

I decided to manually edit the commands. That allows me to walk the user completely through wizard. Eventually, the wizard will be able to handle schemas, and this will be a non-issue.

One other thing, the table object name is case-sensitive. To access the Department table, your FROM clause must read HumanResources.Department or [HumanResources].[Department].

According to CNN, America’s phone carriers want to use tiered billing to create different levels of service for Internet traffic. I remember reading about this billing software back in the late nineties. I wonder how much of this additional cost will actually get pushed down to the average user. I’d imagine that folks using services that require higher priority like VOIP, video streaming, and gaming may have to buy premium Internet access while the rest of use the cheaper, throttled-down access.

As far as I’m concerned, the cost-to-value ratio for Internet access isn’t where it needs to be. I pay about $50 a month for cable broadband and another $27 on top of that for VOIP. I’m not amused. I’d like to spend in the neighborhood of $20 to $30 a month for high-speed Internet access, telephone, and cellular phone with data. I’ll dump my access altogether before I’ll pay more.

Check out Tim Sneath’s blog post on ASP.NET, Atlas, WinForms, and WPF. For a closer look at Windows Presentation Foundation, see this MSDN article.

Mel sent me a link to ihatebestbuy.com. It seems many folks are frustrated by, among other things, the whole extended warranty scam. For most items you buy, it just doesn’t make sense to buy an extended warranty. One time I bought a $20 shower clock at Best Buy, and the cashier asked me three times if I wanted to buy an extended warranty. After I said no the last time, she rolled her eyes, and said that if I didn’t care then she didn’t care. Hello? The warranty costed almost as much as the damn radio.

I noticed that ihatebestbuy.com recommends that folks shop at Circuit City. Allow me to share my Circuit City extended warranty experience…

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I added 1GB of RAM to my new laptop, and now it’s smokin! It was a total dog before I added the memory. I still need to contact Toshiba about my shorted power supply. What a rip.

I learned something new in this experience: You can buy Crucial memory at Newegg. Unfortunately, I already ordered my memory from Crucial before I found it on Newegg for $40 less. Oh, well. I contacted Crucial to bitch about it, but they suggested I return the memory to them and order it from Newegg. Apparently, the dumbasses at Crucial prefer that I use the memory configurator on their site and then buy my memory from Newegg. OK, I can do that.