Not that anyone asked for another browser but Google has taken it upon itself to create its own.  Let me just cut the crap and get right to it.  I'm going to look at this from a networking standpoint first, because well, that's where you end up no matter how pretty something looks.

Here's some normal IE8 beta 2 traffic

GET / HTTP/1.1
Accept: image/gif, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, application/x-ms-application, application/vnd.ms-xpsdocument, application/xaml+xml, application/x-ms-xbap, application/vnd.ms-excel, application/vnd.ms-powerpoint, application/msword, application/x-shockwave-flash, application/x-silverlight-2-b2, application/x-silverlight, */*
Accept-Language: en-us
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0; Trident/4.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Media Center PC 5.0; .NET CLR 3.5.21022; InfoPath.2; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30618; MS-RTC LM 8)
UA-CPU: x86
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Host: www.cnn.com
Connection: Keep-Alive

here's some normal firefox 3 traffic

GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.cnn.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 300
Connection: keep-alive
Cookie : <removed>

so far, so good, so what?  BEFORE you even hit that go button in Chrome, here's what's going on that you don't see as you're typing (in my case, www.cnn.com)

GET /complete/search?client=chrome&output=chrome&hl=en-US&q=www HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/0.2.149.27 Safari/525.13
Cookie: <removed>
Accept-Language: en-US,en
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,*,utf-8
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,bzip2
Host: clients1.google.com
Connection: Keep-Alive

I'm sorry?  clients1.google.com?  Navigate to it and surprise, it's just a simple run of the mill google search page.  After this magic traffic to client1.google.com, I send out my request to cnn and I'm surprised again by what type its built on.  Wait for it...

GET / HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/0.2.149.27 Safari/525.13
Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5
Cookie: <removed>
Accept-Language: en-US,en
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,*,utf-8
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,bzip2
Host: www.cnn.com
Connection: Keep-Alive

How interesting, Apple has said they've got a big announcement later this week.  Hmmmmm.  Are we going to see a Goople phone?  Anyway, moving on to the rest of the application, I do happen to like a couple developer features they built into it, such as debug javascript, javascript console and task manager (even got a "geek stats" button in that task manager thats really cool). 

I don't see myself using this browser much really.  Yea it's another option, yea its from google, but ...so what?

I've been running IE8 beta 1, just upgraded to beta 2 and I noticed something I don't know if I like - "Suggested Sites".  I like my suggested sites to come from people I know or based on a search, but anyway, here's what you're hit with after install.

Then there's the usual "let us setup everything for microsoft's search/maps/blogs/etc" -- no thanks and wasn't unexpected.  What did irritate me was after install, "Suggested Sites" blinks.  Maybe I'm being picky, but if I say "no, don't turn on" that doesn't mean "hey, remind me about this right away".  Egh.

There's some slight color differences, thats cool, always nice to re-skin, and I noticed something ... maybe I wasn't paying attention which is very possible, but I see a web testing thing now in IE (maybe it was part of the vstudio 2k8 Sp1?)

Cool.  Otherwise, well, my blog works still minus a few miss placements and another noteworthy thing is the "Emulate IE7" is gone and now its "Compatibilty View" under tools as well as "Safety" is now in the top right with the all well-known "InPrivate" browsing ...also known as something else.  I'm not really noticing a lot of speed difference right off but again, I could be wrong.

I always get the fun research projects.  Ok, this really isn't research its necessity (don't ask) but I was asked so I did.

First thing, house keeping -- head on over to the WordPress, PHP and MySql website and get your downloads. 

For the record, I used WP version 2.5.1 - why?  After looking at their forum and noticing the post after post after post about problems upgrading, installing (new) and not seeing many responses and experiencing these same issues myself, I found it necessary to use an older version.  Guess what?  It DOES work, perfectly.  Scrap the 2.6.  Let me say this again, only using a larger font size...

WordPress 2.6 did not work with the following instructions, use version 2.5.1

Moving on -- while those are downloading, setup IIS on your box and enable CGI.

Now that CGI is enabled, let's talk about the php install.  Surprise, you can't do the all mighty next next next next on this install.  Well, you can, but there's reasons why not, so first up, we change the install path.

Why?  Later on, setting up a handler will yell at you if there's spaces in the path.  No really, so NO SPACES in the install path.  Valid install path : "C:\php\v5", "C:\someDir\MyDir\YourDir\".  Invalid install path : "C:\php v5\", "C:\its installed over here\php\in this spot".  Got it?  Ok, moving on.  Select FastCGI from the list of options as such ...

Click next and onto the big "gotcha".  If you plan on tagging this thing into a database, now's the time to tell it under "Extensions" -- in this example, we're using mysql, so expand "Extensions" and find it and tell the installer you want it.

Next and you are done with the PHP side.  Onto mysql.  I'm using version 5.0.67-community, run the setup.  You want a basic install, next next next and when prompted, yes, you want to configure your server now.  Standard config, install the service and include the bin, (next) set the SA password, and off it goes.  MySql is installed.   While we are here, setup the database for our wordpress install. 

Now we have to tell IIS to use the FastCGI that we installed, so with the help of this blog post, open up inetmgr (type it into the command line search box)

Nav down to your main site and pop open "Handler Mappings".  In here, we need to tell IIS "when you see this extension, use this stuff" so we will as the following.  Don't forget the * as highlighted.

If you can't find the exe in the popup, switch out the dropdown.  This confused me for a minute.

Click ok, you'll get an info popup saying "do you want to enable it?" and yes, you do.

Now, fire up your favorite editor, notepad, and type in the following to retrieve the php info screen

<?php phpInfo(); ?> and save it as phpTest.php into the root of your website.  Navigate on over to yoursite/phpTest.php and you should get a nice, detailed page as to what all is running, configured and otherwise ready for you.  Find the mysql section to ensure that it is running (its alphabetical so its not hard to find).

Yay.  Now, for wordpress.  Unzip the files into your website directory and pop open the file "wp-config.php".  Immediately you'll see "db_name", "db_user" etc.  These are what you would think they are.  Fill them out.  Don't forget to generate your secret key.  Now if all is good in the world (and it is if you listened to the Don't use 2.6 warning earlier) you can now navigate over to http://localhost/index.php and you will be prompted for a blog name and given a strange password that you should change.

This past friday, something absolutely amazing occured.  Before I get started, let me say first that most of my friends/family have no freakin clue what I do, much less understand to any degree how complex it _can_ be and in effect, don't care what I do, its "something with computers".  Well, my girlfriend started to ask about it because she didn't understand why some of this stuff zaps my brainpower after a day at work.  This was a mix of things that brought this on.  1, an ad on TV about "get a technical degree in multidirectional impact devices!" and 2, I had mentioned I was doing stuff with this really cool-named product, Ninject.

I know she's got the mindset to figure this stuff out and a little mind stretch is never bad so why not?  I offered to show her the bare bones of programming, a simple (cringe) hello world website with the cliche button, textbox and label.  No sweat, easy stuff, went very very smoothly and with a slightly concerned face, she looks at me and comments "this ...really isn't that hard" then something astonishing happened - she says "well, lets do something for the dogs, I want it to say who was a good dog today".  Ok, so we removed the textbox with a dropdown and went along with that until "what if I want to say more than one dog was good? ...and can we make it say the other dogs were bad?".  The ball was rolling at this point!  Did I mention we were using "best practices" in control names too (lbl = label, txt = textbox, etc)?  That she was telling me?  Correctly?  The first time?  She was getting it!

After a while, we ended up making a design decision that we would use a checkboxlist, run though the list, display which dog was good, which was bad now insert the astonishing comment "wait, if we have Buck and Kimber selected, the (verb) tenses won't be right ...we can't have it say Buck Kimber was a good dog.  We'll have to do ...something that figures that out won't we?  And can we put and in there when there's more than one selected?  What about commas?  Is that possible?"  Where's the heavenly awe music when you need it??

We had to write an if statement to check the counts, make a decision and give us a string that was acceptable along with a flag that let us know if it was a good dog comment or bad dog comment.  After about 2 hours, she was happy with what we'd created and was amazed at the level of complexity that something as "simple" as making a page say what dog was good and what dog wasn't.  I also demonstarted that since we put in the work now, if we added 5 more dogs to the list, it didn't matter, it just worked.  When we were finally done she commented, almostly slyly "I'll never look at checkboxes the same ever again" - HA!

I happen to notice some activity on my network this evening and, well, that shouldn't, so I looked into it.  Upon a google search regarding UDP port 50085 and came across a term, GateMAC -- search away!  What I found was the following clones (see:ALL THE SAME).  This irritates me to no end.

http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-3383218.php

http://www.winvistaclub.com/forum/windows-vista-general-topics/7031-gatemac.html

http://forums.techarena.in/vista-help/891380.htm

http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/31485161/what-is-a-gatemac-network.aspx

http://www.vistax64.com/vista-general/120869-what-gatemac-network.html

http://www.mindfrost82.com/f166-windows-vista/39494-what-gatemac-network.html#post541507

6 of them? I mean seriously. that's ALMOST as bad as having search results of search results.  What the hell!?  This does nothing than waste my time and clutter my searches with CRAP.  From now on, I'm calling them spoogle.  That's right, spam + google = spoogle.  From now on, when I run into spoogles, I'm posting them.  How exactly are these things created?  WHY are they created?  More ads?  More angry blog posts from people like me?  What's the reasoning behind this crap?  Egh, and to think, sometimes I found things useful @ egghead.

Oh and no, none of them contained a useful answer.  I ended up writing a quick IPSec policy that prohibits 50085 udp traffic outside of my home network, period.  Take that.

Around 3pm today I get a message on my phone from data@cuofohio.org and the message went as such

Your Credit Union of Ohio services was suspended for suspicious activity, call us at 3054337563

Immediately my BS flags were going off.  For one, CU of Ohio operates in :GASP: Ohio.  305 goes back to FL.  So far, so full of it.  Next, I do a google search for that number -- nothing found useful.  So far, STILL full of it.  The last bit came when I called them from THEIR website ...and low and behold, the message contained a comment about the text message.  Hopefully, if anyone else searches for 305-433-7563, they'll get this page and realize its a fraud.

If it looks like BS and smells like BS...

A nice little suprise this morning!  A quick hit on it - .Contains() returns a bool value and expects you to pass in an object that is in your list whereas .Exists expects a predicate (but still returns a boolean).  Let's dive right into this because its easier to show than blab/explain.  Make a new list, shove it into view state.  Feel free to add this where ever you like, just as long as it is not in pageload, make it a button event.

This works, both values are true.  "So what's the difference?" -- Create yourself the following object...

and switch out the code just a touch that loads up the viewstate...

and the check behind button 2 like so...

List<Agent> SavedAgents = ViewState["Agents"] as List<Agent>;
Agent foundAgent = new Agent("008", "Unknown", "Unknown");
bool ContainsAgent = SavedAgents.Contains(foundAgent);
bool IsSavedAgent = SavedAgents.Exists(delegate(Agent agent)
{
     return agent.AgentId == foundAgent.AgentId;
});

This might surprise you, but ContainsAgent will be false.  If you do "return agent == foundAgent" for the .Exists, it will also be false.  I'm -guessing- it's using reflection.  Because of this, I insist using .Exists instead, since you can test properties directly.  Even more curiously, using the various .Equals yeilds false, such as :

bool IsEqual = Equal(SavedAgents[1], foundAgent); ...or

bool IsEqual = SavedAgents[1].Equals(foundAgent); ...or even

bool IsEqual = foundAgent.Equals(SavedAgents[1]);

I've been kicking around this idea for a little while and it gives me a good excuse to use Beta 2 of silverlight -- a new, semi-interactive header for my blog.  I'm not completely sure how this'll work, probably with a master page swap out, but we'll see. 

Ideally, I'd like to have my header, as you see it now, only with ...I don't know, maybe a water effect.  You click or move across it and ripples appear on it.  Something seemingly simple ...maybe?  Well, off to work.

8/18

After some of that work I ran into something interesting -- I'd like to stretch out the header text like I have currently and I happen to find a property named "FontStretch".  After some googling, the jist of it is: some fonts you can stretch, others you can't, and its an enum style value as well (normal, expanded, condensed, like in word) and it appears verdana is not one of them which doesn't add up to me.

If you have no interest in politics at all, stop reading now and ignore.

I was part of city government for a while.  Not an elected official or anything but I was kinda higher up in the ranks.  I also was involved in a campaign, "support the peeples court!" (I'm AMAZED that site is still up!) and that was fun as well, which takes me to my next issue...ignoring your constituents, which is a fancy way of saying citizens you represent, is really dumb.  Ignoring the ones that are motivated, with blogs, is even worse.

Recently in Ohio, a certain bill was put up, voted on and passed that was very common sense (yes, I read the bill).  I went to review how MY rep voted and was personally offended to find out he voted NO.  Being a curious person, I genuinely wanted to know why, maybe there's something I missed?  I NEVER RECIEVED A REPLY, at all, ever.  He could've literally drove down the street and made a personal visit but I guess he's too busy.  This is overly annoying and downright offensive ...not for the lack of a visit but the lack of a simple email reply.  For verification, here's my email, minus my home address, copy, paste.

from: Jesse Riley
to: district25@ohr.state.oh.us

date: Thu, May 29, 2008 at 2:11 PM
subject: Vote on SB184
mailed-bygmail.com 

Representative Stewart:
 
I just happened to come across the vote for SB184 and was somewhat surprised by your vote.  On paper, 184 (also dubbed "Castle Doctrine") seems to make a lot of sense, your nay vote cast raises questions -- maybe I'm missing something from this bill or a pitfall somewhere that the 23 nay votes might foresee a problem?  Can you please explain your vote?
 
Jesse Riley

I know for an absolute fact gmail addresses get though their servers.  I also know for an absolute fact they have interns to check these emails.  I hope that at some point Dan Stewart finds this and gives me an answer.  Otherwise, I'm still waiting and I've given you MORE than enough time.  (Honestly I don't expect a reply)

This morning I was having a battle royale with a small xml file and fighting with the idea of "what's the best way".  As usual, there are approx. 2 billion ways to do it, about 3 of them are the "right" way and, of course, there's 1 that's the best way.  Mildly annoyed (xml files and I have a history, mutual love/hate relationship) I tossed the question out and Lori says to use xsd.exe to create the things I need.  Ahhh yes, xsd.exe, how I remember thee.

the ole xsd has come along since last I used it with 2.0 and I was very happy to see this ...

enable databinding with INotify!  Sweeeeeeet.  They also include a linq aspect of it as well.  Nice.  I don't need the linq part, but that INofity will be perfect.  To create the xsd, I ran ...

xsd C:\xmldata\myXmlFile.xml /out:C:\xmldata\

and get my nice xsd file. From there, I want the classes with that awesome INotify (/edb) and I want to start on a particular element makes a cleaner class (/e:myXmlElement) and I want it in c# (/l:cs) ...

xsd C:\xmldata\myXmlFile.xsd /classes /e:myXmlElement /l:CS /edb /out:C:\xmldata

It's too bad the output class STILL comes with Arrays.  I like lists myself, but can't complain, easy fix.  Now lets make this do something useful...like this. 

StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(Server.MapPath("MyXmlFile.xml"));
XmlSerializer serial = new XmlSerializer(typeof(MyXmlFile));
MyXmlFile xmlData = new MyXmlFile();
xmlData = serial.Deserialize(reader) as MyXmlFile;
this.RadGrid1.DataSource = xmlData;
this.RadGrid1.DataBind();

Solid.