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Wednesday, September 27, 2006

IIS Problems

Stardate 60092.7
Warning!!! Technical entry. I am keeping a note about this here because I can't think of a better place for it.

I got my new laptop, and installed Internet Information Services on it. I then installed Visual Studio 2005. I ran a simple web page, and got a Server Application error, please check the event log for more details. The application event log recorded the message “the sever failed to load application ‘/LM/W3SVC – The specified metadata was not found.’ The event id was 36. Lots of stuff on the web about this; apparently it’s a common error. It took a while to find the specific fix, and I am not sure how some of the steps were done.

The first problem was that the Distributed Transaction Coordinator was not running, and was not even listed in the Service Control Manager. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling IIS, which was a mistake. This is where I am not sure. I mucked around with msdtc.exe on the command line, and after a while it showed up in services, although it was not running. I set it to start automatically. Tried again, got the same page error, but the event log showed ‘/LM/W3SVC – Class not registered.” I went to the Component Manager and per another web page deleted IIS In-Process Applications, IIS Out-of-Process Pooled Applications, and IIS Utilities. I needed to shutdown IIS before I did this, but I could not remember the shell command. Another Google search reminded me it was IISRESET. I tried IISRESET STOP, and was greeted by ‘The RPC server is unavailable.’ It took another hour before I discovered the command was IISRESET /STOP. Then I went to %windir%\system32\inetsrv, and typed:
rundll32 wamreg.dll,CreateIISPackage
Then
regsvr32 asptxn.dll

I tried the web page again. This time I got an ‘XML Parsing Error: Not well-formed’ on the first line of the page. Another quick search revealed my problem, I had uninstalled IIS, and it no longer knew about ASP.NET. I ran the Visual Studio command prompt (the same as the normal command prompt, except it adds a few more directories to the PATH), and typed:
aspnet_regiis –i

I tried the page again, and again, the same error. Further down the same Google search was a question about running under Firefox, and how it caches the page. I did a Ctrl-F5, and lo, it worked. And there was much rejoicing.

End of Entry

Monday, September 25, 2006

Updates plus M-CII

Stardate 60192.5
Mike Gibby wanna-be, that’s me. It’s been a few weeks since the last entry. Scouts, soccer, TV season, convention, and a host of other things have kept me busy.

Thomas and some of his friends are Tiger Scouts now, and Patrick is a Bear, scout that is. They are enjoying it so far. Some of the new parents are asking when the camping starts. Unless you are a Weblos, day camps are it.

Soccer is fun, although Thomas’s team is a challenge. They get distracted very easily. The second Saturday we played it rained and hailed, so the fields were a mess. They stopped in the middle of a game to pick up the hail. It was also a double-header for both Patrick and Thomas. Patrick did well, and I put him on Thomas’s team for their second game, because we were playing Patrick’s old team (he moved to an older age group), and to show Thomas and his team how to play better. The other coach was telling his kids to hold back, but I told him Patrick thinks he’s ready to turn pro, so pour it on. It didn’t help. Patrick blocked all the goal shots, even one kicked high in the air. There is also interest in doing indoor soccer again, and I told some of the parents I’d be willing to coach. That will start at the end of October.

The TV season took April and I by surprise. All of the sudden, new shows are appearing on the DVR.

Mountain-Con II was a success. Kudos to Carl, Justin, Rex, Dani, Kevin, Jani, and dozens of others for a great con. I was also pleased to see Brian and Jeremy of Done The Impossible. Yes, I will have to watch Firefly now. I have known both of them for about 20 years, and unfortunately it’s been almost that long since I saw Jeremy.

End Of Entry.

Thursday, September 07, 2006

The Crocodile Hunter

Stardate 60190.7
Crikey! As you have already read about, Steve Irwin, whose sobriquet is The Crocodile Hunter, was killed by a stingray last week. I think that some animal killed him is not a big shock to most people, but the circumstances were bizarre. It’s still sad to lose a famous environmentalist and entertainer.

The kids are all back in school. No problems, no kid getting lost. They don’t like the earlier bedtimes, although Rachel admits she is not as tired as she was over the summer. I thought Thomas would have a problem with Patrick now going to St. Joseph instead of St. Benedicts, but he was fine with it. One exception was the second day of school, when they needed to go to Extended Daycare Program. They need to type a number into a computer to check in and out. Patrick did this last year for both him and Thomas. Thomas started to panic because he did not know how to do this. He calmed down quickly when I told him just to ask for help if he had a problem. He knows the teachers there, so he should be comfortable with asking.

I went to the Northern Utah .Net Users Group meeting Tuesday. They demoed a JavaScript tool called Mochikit. It looks fun, but I’d still like to find a tool that I can use to draw the elements on a website. Visual Studio does that, but it wants things done with IIS. The asp.net module for Apache is no longer supported.

So Wednesday ordered a new laptop from HP. I was going to get a Gateway Tablet PC from Office Depot, but April talked me out of it. I use the computer for games and software development, so it does not make sense. Tablet does not come with IIS, and as I said, VS wants that. Office Depot’s only solution was to buy the machine, and then spend $200 extra on the XP Professional upgrade. HP has the option to customize a machine, although it’s a little off. They give you options for different processors (Celeron, Dual Core) and graphics, and then tell you it won’t work. I settled on an AMD processor and added XP professional for $50 extra. I hope the graphics will be good enough to play games with.

Speaking of games, I installed Barbarian Invasion. It’s not too different from the original. There are different factions such as Huns, Goths, Saxons, etc. There are new formations, such as spearmen can hedgehog (form a circle with spears facing out), which makes them invulnerable to cavalry but bad against archers. Mounted troops are more important now. There are only two historical battles, Teutoburg Wald and Chalons (you can look those up on Wikipedia for descriptions). I played both, lost the first (ran out of time), and won the second (although Atilla was killed). I am in the middle of a campaign now as the Vandals. The goals are to capture and hold 10 cities, and three have to be Cordova, Rome, and Carthage. The Roman Empire is divided into Western and Eastern, and the west currently holds all three cities. I sent an envoy to Constantinople to appeal for help, only to find the Huns had taken the city. The western empire has sent four large armies to stop my invasion and each was handed a decisive defeat. The computers strategy seems to be attrition. The three armies I had with over a thousand men each are down below two hundred each. My stupid spies can’t seem to determine if they have more to throw at me.

Wednesday was another visit to the dentist. I had a few fillings done. The only problem is that as he started to drill, and I told him it hurt. He gave me another shot of anesthesia, and tried again. More anesthesia. It still hurt a little, but my jaw was numb, so I didn’t say anything more. He wants to try a different anesthesia next time.

The boys and I went to a Real game on Saturday. The boys got bored, but I had fun. Real lost, although I am not sure why. They didn’t count one goal, I guess for a penalty.

End of Entry

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Jobs

Stardate 60090.2
It’s been a little rough this week. I got two ‘sorry, you don’t have the skills we need’ rejects from job interviews in one day, and a co-worker who has been with the company for almost as long as I have left. It’s frustrating. Years ago, I asked to be replaced on the project I was on. It took a year and a half to find someone, another year to get someone up to speed. In the meantime, a replacement is being worked on. I’ve asked to be part of it, but the answer was that I could not be spared from the other project. Now that I can, I am told the replacement is almost done and they don’t have any place for me on it.

The kids started school again. Thomas goes to one campus by himself now. I thought that would be a problem, but he seems to like it. The exception was Tuesday, when he had to go to Extended Daycare Program. The kids need to check in by typing there number in on a computer. Patrick always did that last year, so Thomas got upset because he didn’t know how. He got through it. He and Thomas aren’t happy about having to go to bed at a set time, but they have to accept that. So far, they have been getting up ok, although Thomas complained he wanted to take a nap in school.

We had the downstairs painted this week. The guy prepped on Monday, and by Wednesday he was done. It looks great, except the color we picked for the fireplace wall looks pinkish in the light of the lamps. We tried rearranging the front room, but most of the furniture needs to stay where it is.

I bought the Barbarian Invasion expansion pack for Rome: Total War. I have not installed it yet. It looks pretty cool. I’ve been playing Rome again.

End Of Entry