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CyberPower Intelligent LCD CP1350AVRLCD with not so intelligent software PowerPanel

2010-11-19T08:59:00.001+01:00

I purchased the ups CP1350AVRLCD because of the small format, lcd screen and great uptime. My main purpose was watch 2 servers, 1 NAS, one switch and one router. No problem – those could just be plugged in.

Before purchasing I did not look at software. I just *expected* that it has some basic functionality to notify me on email and shut servers down when battery level become lower.

I was wrong. The “Personal Edition” that came with the UPS was only able to beep and shut down one computer. That did not help me. I searched for another application and found the “Business Edition”. I was ready to pay for it but no – after talking to support they told me that that software did not support my UPS. They also told me that I should buy another UPS that supported this software. This did, of course, not help me at all as I had already purchased the product.

Anyway, I was able to start that “Business edition” but I was not impressed with that either.

So, I started to try to communicate with the UPS and finally found a way to get battery level and power status from the UPS. I will now add some email support to that test application and also support to shut down multiple computers.

If you are reading this and would like to have this alternative application then please let me know!

The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.

2010-03-20T15:54:00.001+01:00

So, I released a new version of one of my applications. This application is a Windows service. Nothing strange about this version so I rolled it out. Suddenly, a lot of users where complaining about that the service did not start.

One strange thing was that when changing the user that runs the service from SYSTEM (which is my default) to a local administrator it worked.

I tried to create similar environments but could not reproduce the problems. I got desktop access on one of the users server and saw, while running ProcessExplorer that a lot of queries were done to CryptoAPI dll’s before it finally gave up and timed out. This led me to think of that it was some deeper security problem.

I recently started signing my service with GlobalSign instead of Thawte so maybe it was something about that. I ran into this KB: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936707

So, I added the following lines to the config and it started to work when running as SYSTEM:

I don’t know if the problem is specific to GlobalSign. Implementation error or that root certificates are missing. Or that my previous signing certificate was cached in some way. If you know – then please let me know. Right now, I am just satisified that this solution works.

ClickOnce and obfuscation with .NET Reactor

2010-03-10T10:25:00.001+01:00

The above could have been easy and straightforward if there weren’t for, what I call, design errors in the building and publish process.

My first thought was that I could just add a post-build event, calling a command line protecting the applications/dll’s then just copy them back to the output folder. I was thinking that the “Publish” feature would use this output folder.

That weren’t the case unfortunately.

The Publish feature seems to store the built exe’s in memory or in a temporary location. Then it will overwrite anything in the output folder. So, your recently protected items will be overwritten. Then, after this, all signing and publishing magic will occur.

As my original approach did not work I had to do this manually:

1. I need to publish first (which builds).
2. Then protect the files
3. Copy the protected files over the build version folder
4. Update the application.manifest file (so that new hashes are createad for each file)
5. Re-sign the manifest file
6. Update the ApplicationName.Application file so it hashes the new manifest file
7. Re-sign the *.Application file

To work with the files we use the manifest tool mage.exe. I am not sure if the version for Visual Studio 2008 has all functionality so I downloaded the RC for VS2010. I run all commands to the VS2010 command prompt.

We don’t want to create new manifest files as that would reset other stuff you may enter within the Publish designer (and may not exist as option in mage.exe).

Here is a rough script how I did it:

REM http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms165431.aspx
REM http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/acz3y3te%28VS.100%29.aspx
REM msbuild /target:publish /property:BootstrapperEnabled=true

REM Protect files
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Eziriz\.NET Reactor\dotNET_Reactor.exe" -project c:\sourcefiles\Reactor\AnyConnect.nrproj

REM Copy protected files
copy C:\sourcefiles\code\AnyConnect\bin\Release\protected\*.dll "C:\sourcefiles\code\AnyConnect\bin\Release\app.publish\Application Files\AnyConnect_1_2_0_0\"
copy C:\sourcefiles\code\AnyConnect\bin\Release\protected\*.exe "C:\sourcefiles\code\AnyConnect\bin\Release\app.publish\Application Files\AnyConnect_1_2_0_0\"

REM update hash files and sign
cd "C:\sourcefiles\code\AnyConnect\bin\Release\app.publish\Application Files\AnyConnect_1_2_0_0\"
mage -Update AnyConnect.exe.manifest
mage -Sign AnyConnect.exe.manifest -CertFile c:\sourcefiles\sign\netcart.pfx -Password myPassword

REM update application file
cd "C:\sourcefiles\code\AnyConnect\bin\Release\app.publish\
mage -Update AnyConnect.application -AppManifest "Application Files\AnyConnect_1_2_0_0\AnyConnect.exe.manifest"
mage -Sign AnyConnect.application -CertFile c:\sourcefiles\sign\netcart.pfx -Password myPassword

You can improve this a lot so you don’t have to update version number and maybe even build the project but right now this works for me.

Remember when uploading the project to upload both the version folder and the *.application file.

System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Incorrect syntax near 'storedProcedureName'.

2010-02-03T19:41:00.001+01:00

So, you were trying to use the SqlCommand and got this cryptic error when you tried to execute a stored procedure?

Try changing the CommandType property on the SqlCommand:

command.CommandType = System.Data.CommandType.StoredProcedure

The CommandType is by default Text.

TF14040: The folder {0} may not be checked out.

2009-10-20T11:35:00.001+02:00

After moving to a new computer and started to open my old Visual Studio projects I got this error when trying to open an old dataset for example.

The problem is related to permissions and I got around this by removing the Read-only flag on the project folder.

Edit hosts file in Vista/Windows 7

2009-09-19T13:19:00.001+02:00

What is the hosts file?

The hosts file contains a list of IP address to hostname mappings and can be useful especially for web developers if they need to point a hostname to a specific IP address while developing or testing a website, without having to change settings on a DNS server. On Linux and Unix systems it is typically at /etc/hosts and on Windows systems (Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Windows 7) at c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Errors when editing the file

Depending on operative system you may get derrors below when trying to edit and save the hosts file:

“Contact administrator”, “Permission denied”, “Path is not correct”.

Run as administrator

What you need to do this to open Notepad as administrator. Right click on Notepad and choose Run as Administrator. Then browse to the hosts file (you may need to turn on “View all files” as the hosts file does not have the txt extension”. Now, just edit and save the file.

Windows 7 boot remove

2009-09-18T14:35:00.002+02:00

Thought I would share this with Windows 7 (beta and non beta) users, if you are running XP and removed Win 7, but can't get rid of the boot record "your pc attempts to dual boot still" you can use this command along with disk...

In XP, put in the Win 7 disk, go to Start, Run, then type this into run window...

whatever drive your Win 7 disk is in, eg..D,E:\boot\bootsect.exe /nt52 ALL /force

Click Ok.

Take out disk, restart the computer, you should then boot right to XP.

Invalid object name 'sys.configurations'. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 208)

2009-09-13T17:44:00.001+02:00

An exception occurred while executing a Transact-SQL statement or batch. (Microsoft.SqlServer.ConnectionInfo)

Perhaps you wanted to try Azure and especially SQL Azure. Maybe you wanted to connect to your SQL server in the cloud (especially as Microsoft provides a connection string) through Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (MSMS). Forget that for now. Microsoft has no support for this currently.

There are some workarounds. You can, while in the Management Studio, open a new connection. Login. You will get an error. Click ok. Now, you can browse your tables but you can atleast peform SQL queries.

Guess we have to wait for the final release.

Windows live writer

2009-09-07T23:14:00.001+02:00

This is a first test using Windows live writer. Let see if this post can be done!

This is Kian – almost 6 months and already facebooking!

TF31003: Your user account does not have permission to connect to the Team Foundation Server

2009-01-07T14:27:00.002+01:00

My bad concience of not spreading my experience regarding this error led to this post. I noticed this strange popup error when I wanted to add a new user for accessing my Team Foundation Server. It was nothing wrong with the actual user, rather, I discovered it had something to do with accessing it from another computer. I could not even log in with my existing user from a remote computer without getting this error.

I found a solution and I have no idea if it is a good or bad fix - but it works. If someone knows that this is a stupid solution and have a better one then please tell me.

I figured out that it had something todo with the computer/domain name. So, I went into C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc and edited the hosts-file. I added the ip and a name for that ip. I saved the file. Then I opened VisualStudio again and added that servername. The server name can be anything as long as it is pointing to the correct ip.

pxhelp20.sys, x64 and Sony Picture Utility

2008-12-30T10:35:00.005+01:00

My wife wanted to convert some AVCHD videos to a smaller format. I know there are tons of programs for that but I decided to use the free utility that came with our video camera SONY HDR-SR8 - the "Sony Picture Utility".

Everybody knows, that have worked with video that these kinds of tasks take time and CPU. So, I wanted to use some excessive CPU on my Windows 2008 Server - using latest Xeon CPU. This server is 64 bit operating system. I installed the software. It asked me to reboot. Since I only saw pictures and no videos I decided that maybe I had to reboot. By the way, I hate software that requires reboot!

Rebooting..It does not start..Moving a screen to the Server shows that Windows can't start because "pxhelp20.sys is corrupt or missing" - location \Windows\SysWOW64\Drivers\pxhelp20.sys. It seems like this driver is used by a lot of dvd tools and also the Sony Picture Utility. I started my Windows CD for repair but repair did not repair. My only way was through the command prompt. The file was there! I did not have any other 64 bit Windows 2008 so I asked a friend to send me same file for Vista x64. Replaced the file - same error. I was starting to getting nervous because I had a database on that Server that needed to be up and running. As a last option I deleted the file from the command prompt and hey, Windows started.

While this was a success in the end the story does not end here. I quickly noticed that all my cdroms where gone. Even Deamon Tools drives. This was not critical but needs to be solved.

Updated 2009-09-13:

Thanks to Junior-PL I got a solution:

1. Start->Run and open regedit
2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM and open key CurrentControlSet/Control/Class/{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
3. There may be a lot of keys with this name but search for one that has (default) value DVD/CD-ROM drives
4. Now, when you have found this one you delete strings "LowFilters" and "UpperFilters" (if existing)
5. Reboot and pray (should work!)

PAP2-T, Gigaset SL780 and change of time

2008-12-29T13:07:00.003+01:00

Recently I "updated" my home telephony to IP-telephony. I was installing the Linksys PAP2-T IP telephony adapter together with the new Siemens Gigaset SL780 phone.

Everything worked great except one thing. I noticed, that sometimes the time on the phone was set back 7 hours. Finally, I found that this happened when someone called us. The support at Siemens had no clue - of course..

I had a hunch that the time from the PAP2-T was sent over to the phone which proved to be true. When browsing the web interface of the adapter the timezone was 7 hours off. Changing this and making one call to myself set the time right. I am not the average consumer which leads me to the question:

How in the world are we ever able to move over to new technology when setting the time on a phone requires browsing a telephony adapters web interface and change properties? New technology should be easy to implement!

"Specified Service Already Exists"

2006-06-29T19:51:00.000+02:00

I ran into this problem when creating a setup in .NET and choosed "Repair" at a later stage. The problem was due to that I was creating my own Custom Actions. When doing a "Repair" the custom install action is run as well. To prevent this you need to add: "Not Installed" at the Condition property of the Custom Action.

Problem - loop through a repeater for controls

2006-06-12T09:19:00.000+02:00

I was using ASP.NET, C#, and wanted to auto translate some controls on a Page. I had no problems looping through controls like the GridView but when I tried the Repeater control I ran into problems. No controls or items were found when looping through it.

The problem was that the controls/items were created at a later stage than Page_Load where my function was executed.

I moved my function to Page_PreRender and everything went just fine..

ToolStrip and it's responsiveness

2006-04-30T20:15:00.000+02:00

I had a problem with the new .NET 2.0 component "ToolStrip". The problem appeared when switching between forms within an application by clicking on one of the toolstrip buttions. The first click was not "catched" as an event. This was really annoying and I was near switching to the toolstrip components of Infragistics.

First I found a quick solution. I added the event "MouseHover" and then focused on the toolstrip like this:

Private Sub tolMain_MouseHover(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles tolMain.MouseHover
tolMain.Focus()
End Sub

It worked but it seemed unnesseary. I did a quick search on the Internet and I found a post from one who had faced and solved the problem. Read more about it here: http://blogs.msdn.com/rickbrew/archive/2006/01/09/511003.aspx

He hade made a C# example and here is my code, converted to VB.NET:

Imports System.Windows.Forms.ToolStrip
Public Class ToolStripEx
Inherits ToolStrip
Private bolClickThrough As Boolean = False

Public Property ClickThrough() As Boolean
Get
Return bolClickThrough
End Get
Set(ByVal value As Boolean)
bolClickThrough = value
End Set
End Property

Public Sub New()
MyBase.new()
End Sub

Protected Overrides Sub WndProc(ByRef m As Message)
MyBase.WndProc(m)
If bolClickThrough Then
If m.Msg = NativeConstants.WM_MOUSEACTIVATE And m.Result = CType(NativeConstants.MA_ACTIVATEANDEAT, IntPtr) Then
m.Result = CType(NativeConstants.MA_ACTIVATE, IntPtr)
End If
End If
End Sub
End Class

Friend Class NativeConstants
Friend Const WM_MOUSEACTIVATE As UInt32 = 33
Friend Const MA_ACTIVATE As UInt32 = 1
Friend Const MA_ACTIVATEANDEAT As UInt32 = 2
Friend Const MA_NOACTIVATE As UInt32 = 3
Friend Const MA_NOACTIVATEANDEAT As UInt32 = 4
End Class

Long time no blog

2006-04-24T09:15:00.000+02:00

There have been a lot of work on VisualCron lately. There is a clear roadmap but sometimes I get busy on sidetracks - smaller o bigger requests by customers. Luckily, my dad, a professional tester has been there helping with testing and documentation.

On the personal side, I have a lot of things that I look forward to. First, the average temperature is increasing every day. Second, there will be a lot of traveling this year. In the end of May, me and Neda are traveling to Istanbul, Turkey. In July we will travel to Malage in Spain. Later in the autumn, me and my friends are going to London.

I haven't had the time to work with the studio yet. Hopefully there will be more time soon..

WMI Adventures - "Invalid Class", "Not Found" and "Access Denied"

2006-01-25T16:05:00.000+01:00

I was trying to monitor the registry with WMI - Windows Management Instrumentation. I could find almost everything in the namespace "root\CIMV2" for my needs except for registry changes. Those where located in "root\DEFAULT" and did not use the regular WQL polling operator "WITHIN".

I searched for examples on the net using C# or VB.NET. The net was quite dry on this subject. I found some examples but when implementing those I got "Invalid Class". After some testing I found that you need to specify the class in the EventQuery. And the class changes depending on the type of registry query you want todo.

Registry changes are divided in three parts:

RegistryTreeChangeEvent - Monitors changes to a hierarchy of keys.
RegistryKeyChangeEvent - KeyPath Monitors changes to a single key.
RegistryValueChangeEvent - ValueName Monitors changes to a single value.

This is a VB.NET example:

Dim evQuery As New WqlEventQuery()
evQuery.EventClassName = "RegistryValueChangeEvent" <--- here you specify the classname which should match the "tablename" in the querystring evQuery.WithinInterval = New TimeSpan(0, 0, 0, 10, 0) evQuery.QueryString = "SELECT * FROM RegistryValueChangeEvent WHERE hive = '" & _ "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE" & "' AND KeyPath = '" & _ "Software\\Activision" &amp; "'" & _ "AND ValueName='mamma'"

So remember to change the EventClassName depending on the tablename.

While testing I also stumbled upon the ManagementException "Not found". This error is due to that there is not match in the WQL. Maybe you have specified the wrong KeyPath or your are missing the double backspace.

The error "Access denied" is however not solved. I am getting the error when using the LIKE operator in WQL. If you have any idea about this the please comment that :)

MSMQ permissions needs a "touch"

2005-12-20T13:59:00.000+01:00

Recently I was working with a project where I needed to set up some MSMQ queues at the install phase. I realized I needed to change the security attributes when converting the c# application to a windows service. After scraping the web I found a way to set attributes.

The install went fine but when trying to access that queue I still received errors about permissions. I looked in the MSMQ attributes for that queue in Administrive tools. All was set right. After unchecking and then rechecking a box followed by Apply it worked again. A bug! This workaround/step would not be accepted by the end customer so I had to find a work around. After some testing I found that I could use the function SetPermissions on a queue after setting the permissions in the install. The result looks like this:

// local system account
Trustee t1 = new Trustee();
t1.Name = "SYSTEM";
t1.TrusteeType = TrusteeType.User;
t1.SystemName = ".";
AccessControlEntry ace1 = new AccessControlEntry();
ace1.EntryType = AccessControlEntryType.Allow;
ace1.GenericAccessRights = GenericAccessRights.All;
ace1.StandardAccessRights = StandardAccessRights.All;
ace1.Trustee = t1;

// any other computer
Trustee t2 = new Trustee();
t2.Name = "Everyone";
t2.TrusteeType = TrusteeType.Group;
t2.SystemName = ".";
AccessControlEntry ace2 = new AccessControlEntry();
ace2.EntryType = AccessControlEntryType.Allow;
ace2.GenericAccessRights = GenericAccessRights.All;
ace2.StandardAccessRights = StandardAccessRights.All;
ace2.Trustee = t2;

AccessControlList acl = new AccessControlList();
acl.Add(ace1);
acl.Add(ace2);
MSMQInstaller.Permissions = acl;

// This corrects a bug when previous settings are not correctly applied
// Using the SetPermissions after adding the accesscontrollist applies previous settings
// Remember to use Allow below to keep existing settings
MessageQueue m = new MessageQueue(MSMQInstaller.Path);
m.SetPermissions("SYSTEM", MessageQueueAccessRights.FullControl, AccessControlEntryType.Allow);

Every day is a new day

2005-10-13T09:23:00.000+02:00

I has been a while since I last posted here. I have been spending a lot of time on VisualCron. The future of VisualCron is becoming more clear. There are still of lot of things to implement but the foundation feels very stable.

The "singing-booth" is also ready now. It's a black rectangle, 1.2 * 1.5 meters with 2.2 in height. It is painted black now and I have put up some diffusers. It looks quite good and it sounds very good. I may post some pictures here later. I have to spend some time singing every day. Training singing is like training a muscle. I am very "untrained" right now but a little practice will do the trick!

Both my friend DJ and I have had very little time over to spend on our new project. But it will get better! Our next meeting is on sunday and hopefully everything will be clearer then!

X-Station finally here

2005-09-07T09:42:00.000+02:00

I received my X-Station this monday. Finally. I played around with it for a while. I am a newbie on that area but I got it working with Reason 3 and upgrade the firmware.

At the same day I bought Battlefield 2. Now I am stuck on that one too!

This month will be hectic. A lot of happenings will occur. As usual, besides the music project and BF2, I have another project going on with my friend DJ. Can't tell you anything about it yet but we hope that our idea is as great as we think! :) We'll be finished, hopefully, in the middle of November. But that's a very tight schedule! ;)

Neda and I has booked a trip to London the 16th of December. Just for the weekend. Can you imagine that I have never been there before?!

VisualCron 2.5.0 released

2005-08-21T22:51:00.000+02:00

Finally, after many weeks of work the version above of VisualCron is released. This version was an important step for me and VisualCron.

I have listened to a lot of user requests and implemented the most important things, you can read a list of changes here. Hope you'll like it!

My personal life has been suffering and I hope that this version will calm down most of the users for, at least, a shorter period. So after another weekend of work I go to sleep and wake up to my regular work again ;)

Free caribbean cruise

2005-08-19T18:24:00.000+02:00

I just got a computer, automated call on my home phone saying that I won a caribbean cruise like this:

Congratulations! You’ve won a free caribbean cruise. To reclaim your prize, press 9. That’s the nine-key on your telephone.

I didn't press 9 - I hung up and I think that you should do it too because I have heard that they will charge you 800 Euro and you won't get any trip :)

Result is what counts

2005-08-12T16:50:00.000+02:00

I have not been lazy - I have just been busy like a bee. In the previous weeks I have dreamt about VisualCron and worked late nights. A lot of important steps has been made both which I have mentioned before and new ones.

You, VisualCron users out there, has been lucky because the fact that I have not received my X-Station yet.

I expect the VisualCron release to be within 2 weeks from now.

Going to Sicily

2005-07-26T05:06:00.000+02:00

The clock is 5 am and in less than two hours Neda and I go to Giardini-Naxos in Sicily. It's really hot there right now, about 38 degrees Celsius.

Last week I were with my friends in Gotland, Sweden. The weather was bad but it did not affect the partying! Anyway, I used some of the bad weather to develop VisualCron and the new features are doing great.

The cab is waiting now!

X-Station delayed..

2005-07-12T17:59:00.000+02:00

I received a mail today saying that my X-Station was delayed. "Hopefully" it would come in stock at the end of this month. We'll see, I was thinking of swapping to an M-Audio Ozonic but I don't like the idea of firewire and it has no synthesizer. Cheaper though. I don't have the time anyway right now :) so I'll guess I wait.

Another hot day today. This evening I am going to the gym. Finally I am back on track :) Have I felt this feeling before? ;)

Soon vacation..

2005-07-11T17:01:00.000+02:00

It's been a lot todo lately. Both at work and home. This week is the last before my three weeks of vacation. A short vacation this year.

It's hot in Sweden. Today it is 32C and it has been like this for two weeks now.

There are many things to finish up before the vacation. I hoped to have a new version of VisualCron before the vacation but that seems hard now. I made a version but wasn't satisfied with that design, so now I am redesigning it - hopefully you'll like it. I have received a lot of interesting emails from interesting people lately. It's nice to get to know you, who you are - you out there!

A major event of this week is the arrival of my new toy. Hopefully it will be delivered by end of this week. It isn't crucial because I have so many other things todo so I can't play with it. Are you curious? :) It's a Novation X-station, a midikeyboard with integrated synth, soundcard and mic preamp. I am also building a cube for recording songs. The strategy is to order some sounddiffusers from Germany. I am not sure what will be produced - it's just for fun! But maybe I'll place a link here later!

About vacation. This year we are leaving, all of my friends to Gotland. Gotland is a small island which belong to Sweden. Next, me and my girlfriend are leaving for Sicily, Giardini-Naxos. After that, we'll visit my parents cabin in "Värmland".

Time to go home for today!

BF2 is not good for VisualCron

2005-06-22T15:09:00.000+02:00

A few days ago I tried the Battlefield 2 Demo and now I am stuck. I am thinking about buying the retail version at the release tomorrow. I don't like paying for software but I'm paying for the service, to play online etc - that's the way it should be.

Anyway, I am still making changes to the new version of VisualCron with "Time exceptions". It is some massive gui changes todo as well as coding changes.

On friday we have this holiday in Sweden called "Midsommar", midsummer. I'll spend some time with my friends and Neda to eat and take a break from work. Maybe I'll post some pictures later.

DNSExit is down

2005-06-13T12:59:00.000+02:00

DNSExit.com is down. I haven't had any problems before so this is the first time. Anyway, shit happens. I have spent a lot of time with VisualCron these days. Some minor corrections and some building on new features.

I have some problems with running jobs under certain credentials. After some research I have found that the problems exist due to some security fixes of Microsoft. The user, which a service account normally runs under, can't to any type of impersonation, i.e. try to run a process as another user. What I have heard, this will be possible in .NET 2.0. I am really interested in beginning developing in 2.0. but a small issue :) is that nobody has the runtime, so you are on your own if you try to redistribute it. I thought that I could come around this by just changing the service so that it runs under a different user. However, this produced some other errors, the service could not log anything and logon in the SSL was slow (don't know why). When I tried to impersonate it also produced an initialization error. So I have 3 errors to handle. That's why I am postponing the credential-thing and focusing on time exceptions and running so called "missed events" (when the server has been down or something like that). After that, I promise to take care of the credential thing - maybe that will be in .NET 2.0.

Personal stuff. Yesterday, Neda and I, invited her parents along with some other family members. We ate indian food and had a nice time. Now, it's monday and I am back on work!

Later.

Cleaning VC up

2005-06-09T08:38:00.000+02:00

After the release of the new VisualCron beta I have spent some time fixing bugs which were expected to be somewhere :) A newsletter has been created which the users can subscribe to. I try to send a mail about anf for every update I make.

Right now I am working on time exceptions, i.e. if you don't want your job to execute on a holiday or something like that. This may take some days to finish, I have spent a lot of time in front of the computer lately and I have bad concience for Neda.

Next in line is the "missed events" functionality. If you computer shuts down or something like that, VisualCron will run all the events that should have been run during the downtime, at startup.

See you later..

Cisco does not like Cisco

2005-06-01T09:35:00.000+02:00

After months of struggling with my home network I found a solution. What I experienced was regular disturbance in the network. Listening to WinAmp radio failed after 10 minutes. Strange logs in my router. I have router Linksys RV082 (produced by Cisco). I also have IP-telephony and that device is a Cisco ATA-188. I realised yesterday that these two doesn't like each other. The problem disappeared when I placed a switch between those. I don't know why and I don't want to spend more time on that problem. I am just happy that it works now!

VisualCron 2.0.1 - Beta released!

2005-06-01T09:18:00.000+02:00

After many months of work I have released the beta of the new VisualCron. It has a lot of new features which I mentioned before. Soo, maybe I can relax for a few hours and sit and wait for the first bug report to arrive. =) This version feels stable but I had to cut in new functionality. I will be working on the upcoming features - maybe already tonight!

Please send me your comments about the new version - I hope that I am on the right way and this version is for you out there!

Tough weekend

2005-05-30T17:10:00.000+02:00

This weekend has been spent moving heavy items from Neda to me. I was out with the boys on the saturday and when I came home to the apartment it was totally remade. Neda, with her sister and mother were responsible for the makeover. It both looks and feels great.

The sunday was spent on VisualCron. It feels stable right now and I am making minor changes. I have decided what to bring in this version and what to bring in a future versions. The translators have done a great job. Almost all languages have a complete translation.

I am heading home now from the work. Time for some workout and maybe later some VisualCron development.. :)

5 days

2005-05-27T16:25:00.000+02:00

I've spent 5 days on my new job now. Most of the time has been spent on installation and filling gaps in knowledge. There has and will be a lot of other things this week. Neda has started to move in with me. Yesterday she came to me with her car fully loaded with clothes. I had to throw away some of my clothes but I'm sure that I won't miss any of them. This weekend is dedicated till helping Neda moving to me and VisualCron.

VisualCron has kind of paused during this week but I'll continue later tonight. The most important thing is to have a stable beta so new users can try it out and old users can upgrade without having to much disturbance. VisualCron is totally rebuilt and with the changes made I have a totally new platform that better supports new functionality. I have added a lot of new functionality which I hope that users will appreciate.

I have decided that some functionality have to wait due to some problems. For example, running commands as a different user. I know this is an important feature but when VisualCron is running as a service under the system account this is impossible due to security issues. Changing serviceaccount displayed some strange error and I have to do more research there.

I'll try to post changes made here, and what I have been spending my time on.

More information later..

Post about Neda

2005-05-25T16:55:00.000+02:00

Before mentioning her name I in any post I would like to tell you who she is. Neda is my love, grown up in Iran. We have seen each other for about three months now. It feels good - I am feeling relaxed which in itself is a very good sign.

The news is that Neda is moving in with me! We have already started planning the whole thing, which furniture to use and not. Here is a picture, isn't she nice!

Looking for energy

2005-05-24T17:03:00.000+02:00

These days at my new job has drained a lot of energy. Maybe it is some kind of tension - I don't know. I feel comfortable anyway. I am just disappointed at myself. Last week I a lot of energy for VisualCron but not this week - yet. I have to go to the gym and look for energy over there. It's different now when I can't train on the lunchbreak. Also, maybe I should drink some more redbull!

I spent one hour playing HL2, one of few games worth buying. Anyway, I did not get any satisfaction from that either. Have to find out what's wrong..

First day at my new job

2005-05-23T12:39:00.000+02:00

I've just been away on lunch from my new work at Cybercom. Working as a consultant may be very different from my last job. But here I am, just hooked up the new computer, installed some programs etc.

Last friday they celebrated me at my old job. Feels a bit sad to leave them all but the best time to leave is when it feels best. We went to TGI, ate some good food and then entered the party life of Stockholm.

This weekend I spent some time with the new version of VisualCron. VisualCron is a task scheduler for Windows. It has more functions and remote control. It is freeware and I hope that the users will appreciate the new functions.

Now I have to continue with the installation of software.

Serialize me!

2005-05-19T17:04:00.000+02:00

Ripped from wikipedia:

In computer science, serialization means to force one-at-a-time access for the purposes of concurrency control, or to encode a data structure as a sequence of bytes. The opposite operation, to extract a data structure from a series of bytes, is deserialization.

When I say serialize me I am talking about the process of describing me, the text on this page are serialized versions of me. When you have all information you can deserialize the text to an object, me.

I am serious but a second truth is that all other names where taken :)

Back to bullshit. The advantages of serialization among other things are:

making an object persistent
distributing an object

This utterly boring part was the first and last description why I am using this address/username/title etc.

Over and out!

First time / My eyes hurt

2005-05-18T17:09:00.000+02:00

I'm in a hurry but I'll try to make a decent first impression. Blogging is new to me. I am used to be a pioneer on most things on the Internet but not this time. Feels like I'm the last this time!

Right now my eyes hurt! I am a programmer and I have spent a lot of time on my personal projects the last days. I'll tell more about them later! A lot of time is being spent in front of my computer. Feels like I have been surrounded by computers all my life. I only react to silence now, cause noise is what I'm used to.

Have to go now - see you later!