Hard to beat free

Today while browsing my junk email folder I found what appeared to be a inquiry from a recent ad posted on Craig's List. Further investigation showed that it was spam sent from what appears to be a rival seeking to duplicate the Craig's List format - free online advertising by region. If you really want to get a new service going I don't think that sending spam with a From name of Tommy Tallywaker to a recipient of back.be.nimble26@gmail.com is going to do the trick.

Craig's List really has demonstrated the power of the web to offer an incredible amount of value all for free. How traditional media will complete with this model is still to be determined.

Subreport Linking

Sometimes the simplest things cause the biggest problems. In this case it's the Subform/Subreport linking feature of Access. My application uses a two-field primary key that links two tables together and this works perfectly with Access forms. However when I try to use the same technique in the report module, it just does not work. Period.



A Google search returned no pertinent posts about this problem. However testing has shown that a single field key works in both contexts. The solutions seems to be to add a extra key (Autonumber field) to the tables just for reporting purposes. I hope this post somehow gets indexed and saves someone else from the frustration of finding a work-around for this issue.

Please disregard the previous post.

330.945.4865 is currently experience trouble - again. Please call 330.310.6097 for information.

Phone Phinaly Phixed

For the last three weeks some callers have experienced static on the line or worse - no service at all. After over a dozen support calls and five on-site visits the systems now seems to be stable. At least one technician at Time Warner knows his trade. If only he had been the first one out the problem would have most likely been fixed the first day.

This experience has produced one (hopefully) positive outcome however, i.e. the email-based ticket tracking system. The idea here is to collect and post any software request or bug fixes to a database that will allow you to check the current status of the request/problem with a single click on the return email. No log-in or complex online system to learn. After all software is supposed to solve problems, not create new ones.

Marketing Mode

Slow rentals have me in a web marketing mode as well as traditional newspaper ads. The problem with print ads is that they used to be about $10-15 to run a three day ad, but now all they offer is one week at $60 or two at $75. Craig's list is giving then a run for their money though. It's hard to beat free.


Looking for a place to stay?

(can't hurt to repeat links right?)

Quxior Web Site circa 2008

Finally the new version of the Quixor.com web site is live. This version includes new graphics rather than the Zen inspired simplicity of the old site site which consisted soley of text formatted via Cascading Style Sheets. The essentail layout and features remain the same, but I like having my company logo back in place.

Although not visible, one big change was the move from a table based layout to one driven by css formated <div> tags. The change to div made it somewhat simpler to design the page but not terribly so. Complicating matters was the concurrent change to the use of ASP "Master Pages." This new technology allows a single main page (Master) to be designed that determines the essential layout and the detail pages supply the content. The advantage here is the reuse of site-wide code for things like navigation and user login and security. The key new technique is to learn how to use the FindControl() method to reference portions of the master page HTML inside the detail page's code.

The site is now .Net 3.5 ready as soon as the transfer to a new server takes place. With any luck this should be complete this evening. Now everything is in place to allow me to play with Ajax and Linq.

I finally attended a GCPCUG web development SIG and was very glad I did. Brian Gorbett is a recent addition to MS’s developer evangelist team and his presentation convinced me to add Silverlight to my “technologies to check out” list. Apparently MS is planning on using the 2008 Olympics to push version 2.0 into prime time. One gee wiz thing he showed was called “deep zoom” that allows you to embed one large graphic inside another and then zoom in several levels deep - fractal style. Not really something you would do everywhere but it could have some interesting possibilities. For example you might want to do a Google Earth type thing and scale details of a map.

He also mentioned that the upcoming IE 8 has been made to be more standards compliant and will reportedly break 40% of the existing sites. Fortunately they have a compatibility mode that reverts it back to a version 7 rendering engine. He convinced me to run right home and download it since I’m in the middle of a complete conversion of my web site and want to make sure it's legit HTML-wise. So I did. Big mistake. Apparently it is not yet compatible with VS 2008 new menu control which is now front and center inside my site. I should really know better that to try something in beta on my development machine. Can you say “Virtual Machine?”

If you are just dying to see Silverlight in action you can check out MIX or Memoribilia portion of the Hard Rock site.