Calling regsvr32.exe against a COM dll will give you a 0×80004005 error from DllRegisterServer. As it turns out, the UAC in Vista was what was causing this.

The way to get around this is to Right Click on Start | All Programs | Accessories | Command Prompt, and click Run as administrator. Once you have the elevated command prompt, you can run the command as you normally would.

People have sent me email wondering why I decided to cancel my webhost4life account. Originally, I felt very happy with the account, however, what I noticed was that service quickly deteriorated. This was quickly realized when I asked them to do a restore of a sharepoint site that I had hosted with them. They pointed out that they did not have any backups. Imagine my incredulousness, especially as I recalled their guarantee.

Regardless, that’s not the point of this post… The point is that I’ve gotten even more signs of incompetence from this organization. About 3 months ago, I did cancel my accounts with them, and notified them in writing. I am no longer able to access any of my sites, however, I’ve been getting emails that state “your account is about to expire. Please take action.”

The best one was the one I got today…

Dear matt berther,

You have -5 days left before the following
webhosting account item expires:

Item Name = $19.95/Month Plan

Renew it before 1-24-2007 or it will expire.

If it is a Hosting Service Plan, make sure you renew it
or you’ll lose your website, and all referral commissions.

And remember, when your referrals renew, you’ll earn
commissions again!

-5 days left before the webhosting account expires. Awesome. Also, by my count, the difference between 1-24-2007 (the date it apparently expires) and 1-30-2007 (today) is 6 days…

Earlier today, we tried deploying an application to our clustered test environment. The application had gone through a fairly rigorous amount of testing and had passed with flying colors.

The strangest thing happened though, once we rolled to our clustered test environment… Funny how that works, isnt it?

Eventually, we were able to troubleshoot the error down to a CryptographicException that was occuring within WebResource.axd. If you’re not aware, the WebResource.axd is an ASP.NET IHttpHandler implementation that is able to extract embedded files from a resource assembly (javascript files, for example) and return them to the client.

Turns out that this was an issue documented at Microsoft. A little bit of googling turned up the fix.

Basically, what was happening was that both machines had their <machineKey> elements set to AutoGenerate. This was causing the cryptographic hash that was being used for the querystring to be invalid when the request came in to the other server.

There is also an article available on MSDN that has a little console application that you can use to generate the machineKey elements.

Pretty simple fix, for a problem that took up a lot of our day today. I’m posting this to hopefully help someone else struggling with the same issue.

Robert Scoble posted a question to Barack Obama regarding whether or not he has met with any bloggers yet. I find this very interesting in a number of ways, including the fact that bloggers helped keep the media honest during the last election season. It’s interesting to see how the candidates will engage the bloggers to help push their political agendas.

The first post to the blog at mattberther.com was 4 years ago in March. It’s interesting to see how blogging has evolved over the past several years, and to see how the main stream is using the technology to diseminate their ideas to people that are interested in reading it.

I still enjoy thinking of blogging and RSS in the same way that I was first introduced to it. Blogging is a forum for people to get their thoughts out. RSS is the vehicle for me to be notified when anyone that I find interesting says something.

This thing isnt going away anytime soon… :)

Am I the only one that finds it ironic that a company that has built their entire business model around searching and finding content does not have search capability built into their otherwise excellent RSS reader?

Bil Simser recently asked this question of Scott Bellware, a Microsoft MVP:

“Why NUnit and not VSTS since the mothership is your home? I’m all for NUnit and whatnot, but I thought this would be an opportunity to show that MS products really can be extended. Or are you leaving that up as an excercise for us mere mortals to do?”

Scott ended up blasting MSTest and the developers that built it, suggesting that there is much more innovation and possibilities in an open source environment.

“I personally don’t use MS Test. It’s a niche product built by a team that was largely detached from the developer testing community. It’s mostly visual glitz aimed at people who don’t really have the experience to be discerning, and who can be manipulated into buying tools by blinking lights and shiny surfaces. The VSTS product line segmentation is out of touch with the reality of the cross-functional roles that developers are increasingly called to play. It’s way over-priced.

There would be little value in me writing extensions for MS Test. The limited community of folks who have adopted it are largely following Microsoft’s guidance on developer testing and thus are missing the BDD point as widely as Microsoft missed the TDD point. The open source world is innovating in this space much faster than Microsoft can hope to – both in tooling and the appraches driving the tooling.”

I cant say that I disagree with Scott, but something tells me that he might not get his MVP status renewed… unfortunately.

Not to be outdone by Apple’s announcement of the iPhone, Microsoft has unveiled the long-awaited eToilet^*.

The eToilet is not unlike a regular toilet in its basic functions, but includes a 21-inch flat-screen monitor built into the toilet lid itself that swings out on a swivel arm when in use. Many of its functions are activated by touch, and the eToilet contains a proximity sensor that will protect the screen from spray during use or flushing.

* They really didnt.

As has been hyped for the past month or so, tonight was the first night of the 4 hour/2 night season premiere of 24, which is probably the single best show on television.

Jack Bauer is the kind of man that we all know works for our country, but no one wants to acknowledge… the guy that gets the job done, no matter the price.

An interesting tidbit for me… looks like CTU has also gone to the white side. It looks like the desktops and laptops inside CTU are now Macs.

As expected, Apple unveiled their jump into the mobile market today with the iPhone. This phone looks absolutely amazing (follow the previous link to see pictures), and as usual, Apple has absolutely hit the mark.

Some features that I’ve heard of include:

• Mac OSX running the phone
• Safari as the browser
• Ability to purchase songs from iTunes
• No buttons on the device. The screen is the device, and operates via touch control
• The device has a sensor in it and will orient itself according to how its held

As it turns out, the only thing Apple missed on this was the carrier, which will be Cingular. I was hoping that they would work with Verizion, but no dice.

Pricing seems reasonable… $499 for a 4gb device, and $599 for an 8gb device.

They should be available via Cingular in June.

How long will it take for the BCS honks to figure out that college football needs to have a playoff, just like every other sport out there?

After the 41-14 ass-kicking that Florida put on OSU tonight, we have one undefeated team in college football. The BSU Broncos won an improbable game against Oklahoma a week ago tonight, and with that victory went 13-0 on the season.

You know, I’m sure that the BCS folks were hoping that OSU won tonight, so they could sit back and say, “Yup, we got it right…”

Now, Florida is the national champion, even though they’ve lost a game. What is the drawback of giving the little guy a shot? Would BSU stand a chance against Florida? Probably not, but now we’ll never know.

This is the reason why you have to play the game. BSU wasnt supposed to beat OU, and they did. Utah wasnt supposed to beat Pittsburgh a few years back. Anything can happen when you play the game.

Come on, BCS… Give these kids a shot, and give them what they and everyone else wants.