New job Links

I've been in my current position for over 3 months now, I found this series of articles from Rands in Repose interesting,

"First off, there’s A Glimpse and a Hook, which will describe how managers read your resume. Then we’ve got The Sanity Check, which will prepare you for the phone screen. And finally, there’s Ninety Days, which sketches out a plan for the first three months of your new gig."

Visual Studio 2008 - Unrecoverable Build Error

Using VS 2008, I just started getting this error for no apparent reason, after a few hours of frustration recreating the solution adding fresh web setup projects etc, I found this link.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/329214/EN-US/

which didnt work,

then this link
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=128028&SiteID=1

suggested trying
"regsvr32 ole32.dll".

which did work...

Using the System Restore wizard I was reminded that yesterday I uninstalled SnagIt as the trial period had expired... putting SnagIt and ole32.dll into google brings me the SnagItGuide page telling me that back in March 2007 - "Fixed the bug where SnagIt removes ole32.dll registry keys." As I just got the SnagIt trial a month ago I guess the bug wasnt fixed to well after all.

Stored Procedures - Reasons to use/not use them

Some reasons to use/not use stored procedures found from doing a bit of googling..

Reasons to use them

• Your organization's DBAs won't give users or applications SELECT privileges on production SQL Server tables.
• Stored procedures result in easier maintenance because it is generally easier to modify a stored procedure than it is to change a hard-coded SQL statement within a deployed coponent.
• Stored procedures add an extra level of abstraction from the underlying database schema. The client of the stored procedure is isolated from the implementation details of the stored procedure and from the underlying schema.
  

Reasons not to use them

• LINQ
  

Validation of viewstate MAC failed....

Getting this error just after release to prod. Its a simple .NET 3.5 app without any web farms etc... this thread suggests the following solution is to update your web.config as following..

<pages validaterequest="false" enableeventvalidation="false" viewstateencryptionmode="Never">
</pages>

Thread title is
Validation of viewstate MAC failed / The state information is invalid for this page and might be corrupted

Thread link is
http://forums.asp.net/t/955145.aspx

Visual Studio Keyboard Shortcuts

F12	Goto declaration for selected symbol in code
CTRL -	Return to where you were before pressing F12
CTRL K CTRL N	Goto Next Bookmark
CTRL K CTRL P	Goto Previous Bookmark
SHIFT ALT ENTER	Toggle Full Screen
CTRL M CTRL O	minimise functions in code view
CTRL K CTRL C	Comment section
CTRL K CTRL U	UnComment section
ALT W ALT L	Close active windows.
CTRL K CTRL M	add a method to existing class.. by writing it as if it exists bool b = aNewMethod()
CTRL .	add a method to another class.. by writing it as if it exists bool b = myClass.aNewMethod()
CTRL ALT P	Open up Process window

Links to the Microsoft Visual C# Default Key bindings

VS2005
http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/7/9/e79cce22-b196-4b9f-9ea7-b1a21f5342e9/VCSharp_2005_color.pdf

VS 2008
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=E5F902A8-5BB5-4CC6-907E-472809749973&displaylang=en

Tools and Utils - Install an iso image

Tool to emulate mounting a drive, point Daemon tool at iso image and you can then install as normal.

http://www.daemon-tools.cc/dtcc/download.php

Tools and Utils - Regular Expressions

Simple application to help you write and learn Regular Expressions.. "Regular Expression Workbench"

http://blogs.msdn.com/ericgu/archive/2003/07/07/52362.aspx

Tools and Utils - SQL Scripts

Generate INSERT scripts from existing data (amongst other things)

http://www.sqlscripter.com/

Tools and Utils - PDF Reader

One that is small in size and doesn't do to much in the background...

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader_2/down_reader.htm