I’m sure most of you have seen this by now, but for those that havent… Microsoft has published the C# version 2.0 specifications, including generics, anonymous methods and partial types.

is to accidentally run an MSDE install on the same machine.

I managed to do this today, while testing a custom installation. Instead of running it in my Virtual PC instance, I ran it on my desktop. When I rebooted, the SQL server popped up a message box saying that the installation had been tampered with and that I should uninstall and reinstall.

The great thing about that was that neither the SQL Server, or the MSDE installer would uninstall via the Add/Remove Programs option.

I ended up performing the following steps to get things up and running again:

1. Copy the contents of my data directory to a new folder, so I could sp_attach_db later.
2. Open up regedit and search for Microsoft Sql Server, and delete anything I found that matched
3. Reboot
4. Reinstalled Microsoft Sql Server and SP3
5. Copied the databases back, and performed an sp_attach_db on them to get the server to see them.

Ultimately, this ended up only costing me a half a day of time on an already late project. I suppose it could have been worse.

I ran into an old friend from high school a few weeks ago, and we talked about going fishing some weekend.

He called on Friday, and we made plans to go sturgeon fishing on Saturday. It’s been a long time since Ive been fishing for anything, and really dont consider myself a good fisherman. I’d never went fishing for sturgeon before, but thought what the heck… This could be fun.

So, we drove out to a pretty popular spot in the Boise area around 2:00PM, took a short boat ride up the Snake River and found our spot. Bites were happening almost instantly, but we werent able to get anything hooked. We were situated right below a dam, and after they turned on another turbine, the bites just quit. So, around 7:00, we got back in the boat and went down river a bit.

We ended up finding about an 18ft deep hole in the river, docked the boat and set up shop there. It was starting to get kind of dark out, so we put some neon glowsticks on the poles. Before long, my glow stick really started bouncing, and I had all the adrenaline going thinking for sure that I had one. As quick as it started, the bouncing stopped.

Shortly afterwards, Scott pointed out to me that my pole was now pointing opposite of the way I had cast it. Just about tripping over the fire, I grabbed the pole, and gave it a good hard yank. It *really* felt like I had a fish on, so I started reeling in. As the line came in, I saw a huge clump of reeds on my line, and disappointment started to set in. I just new that Id hooked a big bunch of reeds, or a tire, or something.

About 15 minutes later, I saw the fish at the surface (via Scott’s spotlight). I’m not sure Ive ever been that excited. Another 5 minutes, and I had finished catching my very first sturgeon.

It was not a big one, only about 3 1/2 feet. Some sturgeon can grow upwards 10-12 feet and get up to 300+ pounds. However, for my first one, I’ll take it. We didnt have a digital camera with us, but Scott took some pictures of me with the fish, which Ill post up here as soon as they get developed.

We took the hook out, and admired the fish for a while, and then turned him around and let him go. What a wonderful day. I cant even wait to go again.

Anyone in the Boise area wanna go fishing?

I know these have been around forever, but in case you haven’t seen them…

http://www.despair.com.

My favorite? Humiliation.

I’m very disturbed by the fact that the person that deflected the foul ball (that was in the stands) even had to make this statement.

This guy had his phone disconnected by 8AM this morning, was unable to go into work, and has had news vans and helicopters surrounding his house all day. This is just so indicative of the society we live in today.

The way I see it is that the Cubs were up by 3 runs before this guy deflected the ball. They were also up by 3 runs *after* this guy deflected the ball. The thing I’m having a tough time with is that nobody is talking about the routine double play ball that Alex Gonzalez (one of the best shortstops in the league) bobbled. Had he turned that double play, the Cubs would have been out of the inning, and more than likely on their way to the World Series.

But, he didn’t. While I feel for the Cubs fans, I think its ridiculous to blame the outcome of the series on a fan. The Cubs were simply outplayed by the Marlins. The best of the Cubs (Prior and Wood) went up against the best of the Marlins, and the Marlins came out ahead.

That’s just the way it goes. Life is full of disappointments, and doesn’t always go your way. For the love of God though, leave this guy alone…

Ugh. My contact form is broken again.

The fine folks at blogomania are looking into it for me. I’ll let you know when it comes back online.

I’m currently using CGIEmail as my email script, and am wondering if this is where some of these problems are coming from. Does anyone have any ideas for this type of a script?

Thanks!

A few weeks ago, Anil Dash had a very informative post about Google’s AdSense program.

I have implemented this on the mattberther.com front page, in hopes of offering some target advertisements. I’m still trying to decide which layout I like better (down the right side, or across the top). If you have any thoughts, please drop a comment.

I believe that Google has really created a non-intrusive way of displaying ads. However, if you feel that the ads are intruding, then feel free to drop me a line and let me know.

mattberther.com has finally been upgraded to MovableType v2.64. If you come across anything the seems out of the ordinary (links dont work, etc). Please drop me a line and let me know.

I just got finished helping Sage with some problems he encountered with installing MovablePoster. No issues with MovablePoster, thankfully.

We managed to get this done via MSN Instant Messenger. Im just completely taken aback by where technology has taken us. That I can sit in my office in Boise, Idaho and help him while he’s sitting at his desk in Boston.

The other day, my boss accidentally hit the Audio button while we were having an IM conversation, and we managed to have a conversation that rivaled in quality a conversation that we would’ve had via phone.

I couldn’t have imagined this five years ago. So, people sometimes ask… why are you in technology? This is why… I can’t wait to see whats next.

So, I think this is the first time I’ve ever disagreed with anything that Joel Spolsky has said. However, his take on exceptions is ridiculous, in my opinion.

The reasoning is that I consider exceptions to be no better than “goto’s”, considered harmful since the 1960s, in that they create an abrupt jump from one point of code to another. In fact they are significantly worse than goto’s:

1. They are invisible in the source code. Looking at a block of code, including functions which may or may not throw exceptions, there is know way to see which exceptions might be thrown and from where. This means that even careful code inspection doesn’t reveal potential bugs.
2. They create too many possible exit points for a function. To write correct code, you really have to think about every possible code path through your function. Every time you call a function that can raise an exception and don’t catch it on the spot, you create opportunities for surprise bugs caused by functions that terminated abruptly, leaving data in an inconsistent state, or other code paths that you didn’t think about.

A better alternative is to have your functions return error values when things go wrong, and to deal with these explicitly, no matter how verbose it might be.

Wow…

From my own experience, it is much more intuitive to catch a (for example) FileNotFoundException, than it is to get back the results of an OpenFile call, and determine what the error was based on a myriad of constants defined in the windows api header files. Granted, SEH isnt all that it could be, *but* return values and error codes are much worse.