Posted on January 13th, 2011%
I’ve been trying to find a SQL programmer/DBA to hire for nearly two months. Each qualified resume I receive gets the same technical screening email with four SQL-related questions. They are not difficult, and most mid-level candidates would be able to answer them in their own words.
“Using someone else’s words isn’t going to get you a job, or help you keep a job if you get it.”
The tip here is to always respond to a technical screening email in your own words. We all know that there are answers to every question on the internet, and we all use the internet as a resource to help solve our problems. This is fine. But when someone sends you an email with technical questions, they want to hear the responses in your own words. It’s OK to provide references to web sites, or quotes/snippets — this shows you know how to do research. But don’t pass off the whole response as your own.
In . . .
→ Read More: Tip: Don’t plagiarize when answering technical interview questions
Posted on December 21st, 2010%
Today, I needed a PFX (public key file) to sign a ClickOnce deployment. I spent a fair amount of time trying to figure this out, so I figured I’d share it!
There were plenty of suggested solutions out there, but the best one was from MSDN blogger Maxime Lamure.
In short, do the following, replacing MyCert with the certificate file name (without extension), MyName with the name you want on the certificate (your name, or a company name), and password with the public key password.
Open a Visual Studio Command Prompt. If using Windows Vista or Windows 7, be sure to run as Administrator.
Create your certificate (.cer) file by typing: makecert -sv MyCert.pvk -n “CN=MyName” MyCert.cer
Create your public key (.pfx) file by typing: pvk2pfx -pvk MyCert.pvk -spc MyCert.cer -pfx MyCert.pfx -po password
At the end, you’ll have your very own certificate file and public key!
. . .
→ Read More: Create your own .pfx file for ClickOnce
Posted on November 16th, 2010%
The ASP.Net MVC framework comes with built-in model validation using the Data Annotation validators. Unfortunately, the Data Annotations aren’t as robust as other validation libraries, such as the Castle Validators.
Implementing a custom model validator (for server-side validation — client-side validation requires more than is covered in this post), you need to write an implementation of the ModelValidator and ModelValidatorProvider classes that support the Castle Validators.
An example of how to do this follows. Though it hasn’t been fully tested, it worked for a handful of situations I experimented with. Use this as a starting point for your own server-side model validator implementation. . . . → Read More: MVC model validation with Castle Validator
Posted on September 2nd, 2010%
After upgrading the CSFBL forums to vBulletin 4.0, I noticed that performance was slightly worse than in the previous version. A little searching revealed that vBulletin supports memcached (an in-memory distributed caching system). Since I’ve got RAM to spare, I figured this is worth a shot.
Unfortunately, getting memcached running on the server (Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit) took a few tricks, and getting memached running through IIS/PHP was another. To help other people through the same process (and to remind myself in the future), I’ll share the installation and configuration steps that worked for me below.
Downloading and configuring memcached
The official distributions of memcached are written for Linux systems, so the first task is finding Windows binaries. The memcached project site, fortunately, has links to Windows binaries, which are hosted by NorthScale. Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions are available.
(Note that NorthScale also offers their own . . .
→ Read More: Installing and configuring memcached and PHP on Windows
Posted on June 25th, 2010%
I was busy typing away on my laptop yesterday when suddenly, a window flashed on the screen, quickly closed, and my computer began restarting.
The window was nothing other than the “Windows Update restart now” dialog box. I don’t know what the default button is, but considering windows will “click” on a button based on keystrokes, and I was typing at a fast pace (as I am known to do), I had no time to stop typing to avoid unintended activation of an unwanted feature.
In other words: Please tell me what moron would design an operating system that works this way?
In my ranting, I did manage to begin calling Microsoft to complain, a task I quickly gave up on due to its inevitable futility; instead, I focused on using my friend Google to find the best way to turn off the damned restart now prompting from Windows Update.
One of the most common suggested solutions was to . . .
→ Read More: Stop the “restart” popup from Windows Update
