The following code should be failed by the C#.NET compiler:

if (eventName != null && eventName.Length > 0)

It should never be used.  People, always use this instead:

if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(eventName))

It is much more compact, clearer, singleton, and as a String class method, more efficient.

So stop it!  You will thank me later.  Not to mention:  Where are your parentheses?  Block your code.  Other people have to read it too!

That is all.

Well, the new domain is finally up.  FWHagen.com if you want to see it, but there is nothing there yet.  I purchased the hosting account 2 weeks ago and have yet to have the domain name properly transferred to the provider. 

Many years ago, I decided I wanted to have FWHagen.com for myself, for professional development and personal/family use.  I took a chance on the upstart company GoDaddy when they started out because they were pretty cheap.  I was very pleased with their service, having dealt with Network Solutions for years before at work.  That is until this past week, when I tried to transfer it.  After waiting for several days, I discovered that the account was "locked" to prevent any accidental or unauthorized transfers.  If you have ever transferred a domain before, you know that is a bunch of crap.  I had to personally authorize the transfer, so why the lock?  Because of the subsequent failure to transfer, I have to wait 60 days to try again.  The waiting period is ICANN specified, and I really don't have any logical problems with that, except that GoDaddy now gets to hold it for another 2 months. 

I was able to forward the DNS records over, so it works for now.  And I have a long time left to get the domain settled, as well.  It is just very frustrating to deal with underhanded greed like that.  For the sum of $10/year. 

UPDATE [19:50]:  I was wrong about GoDaddy.com.  On my way home this evening, I got a call directly from them expressing concern about my problems.  Now, here's the thing, I only posted my concerns here.  They took the initiative to track me down and fix the problem.  Well, tracking me down in the sense that I posted my domain name and they called my contact info, which only they have.  Long story short:  I am so impressed with their commitment to personal service that I am cancelling the transfer and will simply use DNS forwarding for my new site, as it works perfectly well.  I will continue to use them as my registrar and will definitely use them in the future whenever I can.  BTW, the 60-day wait is ONLY for sucessful transfers.  It does not apply to failed due to locks or privacy safeguards.  And the $10/yr jab?  Only heightens my impression of them.  They surely spent more than that in time and effort on one measely IT guy's satisfaction.

Just why do I hate Flash requirements on sites so much?  I mean, every time I see a nice webpage marred by some Flash applet, I cringe and wonder why they decided to make that choice.

It used to be that requiring a user to have Flash installed just to visit your site was an inexcusable arrogance on your part as a web developer.  And then there was the bandwidth requirements for the content; after all, you are developing locally, so who cares that the end-user has to wait?  Well, you should, for starters.  And many times I see Flash, even still, being used as an easy way out or to simply animate a graphic. So historically, there were many, many reasons to never use Flash except for very specific applications.

Today, many of those arguments are not valid.  I believe all browsers have Flash preloaded, and bandwidth concerns are almost negligible anymore.  So why do I still find Flash to be a over-bloated gorilla on an otherwise clean design?  After all, I find the exclusion of PNG support on many browsers today to be inexcusable, but the inclusion of Flash a mere convenience.

Unfortunately, I don't have any clear answers.  To me, Flash doesn't belong on most websites I see today.  Yes, Flash does have it place in many online applications, but not as a graphic element.  And I believe that is the crux of the argument:  it is not a good replacement for some well designed image elements.  I am an old school developer that believes that good, solid, static design will always be superior to flashy, dynamic design in the long run.  Do not mistake that statement as a call to return to HTML as the primary development tool.  I refer to design; not content, which should always be dynamic, save of course for documentary content.  In my opinion, as a former CBT developer and current Intranet developer and BI Programmer, all design should be restricted to good use of CSS, PNG/GIF/JPG, and XHTML.  And there is also the fact that it is a closed standard.  Or actually, not a standard at all.  Flash is owned by Adobe, and is subject to their whims.  I just don't think that belongs in general web design from an end-user perspective, much the same way that I don't think it's right to use PDF as a publishing medium for web documents.

And don't even get me started on the crapware/bloatware/spyware that is a mark of Adobe products lately.  I flatly refuse to use Adobe's PDF reader anymore, but use Foxit Reader instead for any PDF files I might need to read.

The "Operating System Wars" are ridiculous, in my opinion.  There is NOT one better than all the others.  There IS a better fit for me than for you, or the latte-drinking poser using wi-fi (and nothing else) at the bookstore.  So if you have really strong opinions on the matter consider the following question:

Do you have any swag or merchandise that wasn't explicitly given to you?  In other words, did you PAY for a bumper-sticker, T-Shirt, laptop bag, etc. that is branded with your object of affection?

If the answer is "yes", then you are a fanboy and as such your opinion is worthless.  Because if you love a flavor of Linux, but would loathe it if Microsoft sold it, then you really don't have anything useful to add.  Or if your a Mac-fanatic mainly cause it ain't Micro$oft, dude, then you actually don't have an opinion, do you.  Even the Vista lovers who just think it's pretty, can't begin to evaluate the merits of the kernels.  You are only allowed an informed opinion if you actually have information.  Ok?

Also, if the answer is "yes", then shut up!  I'm sick of hearing it.

Thank you.

And before I get whiny comments, yes, there are other indicators that you might be a fanboy.  Consider them too.

No, really, what is wrong with that company?  During the Super Bowl (oops, now I owe the NFL money for using their trademark), they ran ads for their new laptop/notebook/purse.  The advert focused on one crucial feature:  it's size. 

It fits in an interoffice envelope. 

That's it.  It fits in an envelope.  Ok.  So?  Who buys a computer because it fits in an envelope?  Who cares!?  Does it run the latest software, games, 3D-rendering suites?  We don't know.  Wireless?  Firewire/USB/Bluetooth?  No idea.  Two buttons on a mouse?  Does it even have one?  But I can sent it to you via Interoffice mail!

This is but the latest example of what's wrong with Apple.  If it doesn't matter what your computer is capable of, do you even need to have one?  Especially one that is that overpriced?  I am tired of this company diluting the computing gene pool.  Call me old; call me a tech-weenie; call me whatever you want.  Form is important; but for a tool, NEVER over function.  Never.  Get out of the business and go sell purses.  Of course, then they'll claim they invented them....

Someone help me, please.  I don't understand why scalpers are "evil profiteering bastards" and Ticketmaster and the venues are not.  What is wrong with buying any commodity and selling it to someone else at a higher price?  It works well on Wall Street, why not in entertainment.

"Face Value" is a myth.  The value of an object is the price you can assign that object and find a buyer for it.  If I buy a comic book for $1 and sell it to you for $50, then it has a value (to me and you) of $50.  If someone buys 10 tickets to Hannah Montana for $50 each and sells each one for $150 each, what is the value of those tickets?  "But the scalper is not a fan, he should not be able to buy tickets."  Why?  Give me one rational, valid reason.  The scalper is no different than any other commodity broker.  He takes a risk and typically reaps reward; but only if the market will bear it. 

If you don't like the tactics of the scalper, fine!  I don't either.  Don't buy from him.  But know that if you do, you validate his business model, and therefore condone his action.  On the other hand, I guarantee that when it is no longer profitable, rather it becomes unprofitable, the practice WILL cease.  Do not force legislation, do not cry about it.  Stop supporting them, and they will go away.

By the way, the people you should be angry at are the ones who paid $1000 for tickets to Hannah Montana.  Shame on them.

Here's your reminder that DST is ending again this weekend and you will be losing your free hour everyday.  But Wait!!  Congress moved it this year:  It's actually next week!  Yay!  Another week of free hours.  It a good thing Congress is saving us Time and Money, and more than ever before!

StandardTime.com

When I am Emperor, I will have a quiet policy to fire any IT worker who starts an office lottery pool.  Not only are they wasting the time of people that are trying to get good work done, but they obviously do not have the mathematical and statistical skills to properly perform a programming or development task correctly.

What they do on their own time is, of course, their own business.  I love those who contribute to Ignorance Taxes.

I guess today is Administrative Assistants Day.  Thank God, I know Iwouldn't be able to do my job everyday without them!  Who would... um... ah... Wait, I don't have one.  But it's a good thing they have their own special day.

You know, I think the guy who sweeps up the floors at the slaughterhouse needs a holiday too.   How about Offal Removal Specialist Day?

Here's a link!  link

I'm on a roll tonight! 

Tonight's local newscast made sure to include the latest numbers of casualties in Iraq with a running total.  Now I am not belittling the sacrifice of the great men of our military; I feel the news media is.  You know, in this area, where there is a considerable percentage of military families, you'd think they would be more sensitive.  Oh, but that would be CENSORSHIP!

I don't yet have the numbers, but I am going to get them.  The Iraq war, and subsequent occupation, has seen one of the lowest casualty counts of friendly forces of ANY conflict on this scale.  I don't remember hearing the amount of whining when we were in Somalia, Bosnia, or Kosovo.  I do remember the occasional body count in the last two, but not like Iraq.  It's stupid.

And the protesters they always show.  Couldn't they find anyone better?  I mean these people are about as clueless as it gets!  I guess that is the problem, isn't it.

I know I am whining here, but I am spending some good money to get a degree in order to get a good paying job in the IT industry.  Oh, wait, I already have one!  Anyway, with 17 years in IT, I think I might one or two things, and have gained some predilections of technology, to be sure.

I don't appreciate the constant Microsoft bashing.  I don't care!  Yes, I like Vista.  Yes, I've gotten paid a crap-load of cash over the years supporting Microsoft products.  But guess what, I have other technologies too!  But to waste almost my entire evening evaluating reasons "Why We Hate It", Vista that is, I am annoyed, to say the least.  Evidently, the instructor downloaded the presentation from Apple.  At first I had fun disputing the stupid crap:  I had to spend tons of money to upgrade my system (uh... I spent $20 on a new USB Flash Drive to be able to use ReadyBoost, but didn't have to.), backup sucks (I love the improvements and especially the automatic versioning), harder to use (WHAT!?!), blah, blah, blah.

Glad my $800 is going to good use this semester...

Ok, I wasn't going to comment on the Apple ads.  They're pretty childish and outright lies.  But I will send money to the first person I see do a good parody of the Vista surgery ad.  PC's response should be, "I didn't have to upgrade, but why not?  How about you?"  Mac then gets ready for his upgrade by shooting himself in the head and is dragged off screen.  A new, bigger Mac shows up.  "Who are you?", PC asked shocked.  "Hi, I'm a Mac.  Sorry about the other guy, I needed an 'upgrade'."

Once again it is time for me to rail against the ignorance that is Daylight Saving Time.  But I will spare the vehement accusations of stupidity of the whole system and concentrate on our state of resolution.

I have always advocated removing DST entirely and possible all American timezones as well.  Why not simply use GMT?  It's all just arbitrary numbering anyway; after all, I use 24-hour time myself.  Anyway, the U.S. Congress, whose record of learning valuable lessons from the past include issuing yet another dollar coin the size of a quarter after the last two incarnations failed, decided to change DST this year.  But instead of a move toward elimination, they decided that it should come 3 weeks earlier and last longer.  I think it is now the norm, not the exception!

"Who cares?", you say?  How about every IT shop that does any business on this continent!  I will be working on Sunday to ensure all of my systems don't mysterious choke because of syncing issues, as will every other responsible admin and/or developer that has servers in this country.  Hopefully, it will only be the 30 minutes it takes to validate functionality, but who knows.

Sometimes I am SO proud to be American.  Yeah, whatever...

Or just (Democrat) politics, as usual.  Only days after Gore conspicuously accepted the Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth, a propaganda piece on energy depletion, ABC News exposes Gore as a incredible hypocrite.  It seems that Mr Environment uses 20 times the amount of energy as the national average.  While I don't condemn him for that practice, despite a personal feeling that it is a ridiculous inefficiency, I do find him in contempt of humanity and desire his public exposure as a fraud.  This is the politico that is constantly harping that I, and you, are destroying the planet through frivolous activities as driving to work and heating our homes.

Shenanigans!!  I am calling Shenanigans on Al Gore.

The man is a dratkcuf.  If I find out that he was behind the DST embarrasment, I just may have to start a crusade against the corrupt bastard.

I heard from a reputable program this morning that up to 83% of Americans believe that Christianity, including Creationism and the Resurrection, is true.

Yet, strangely, as many as 40% believe that astrology is also true, despite the fact that it is entirely contrary to Christianity.

I know what I believe:  Sometimes it is embarrassing to be an American.

Where do they find the instructors for IT?  I am attending a respected local university in their IT program currently.  The reasons why range from my wife is a teacher, to I never finished my degree 15 years ago.  IT is an easy course load for me since I have been doing it for nearly 18 years now.

However, the instructors I have experienced are wildly variable.  My personal advisor doesn't like to have a computer, or even a phone, on his desk.  It messes with his Phung Shui.  And his information filing system consists of a desk drawer filled with scraps of paper.  My general IT class instructor may have been current once, but never within my career span.  Not to mention the vast hero worship issues she has with women and fringe industry individuals.  Wow, I can't imagine life without Grace Hopper, who is single-handedly responsible for computer usage!  Forget Thomas Edison, "he had a lab full of assistants", so his contributions are negligable to modern technology.

I wouldn't care, but the other students drink it up like gospel.  AND she keeps giving advice about IT jobs and the industry in general that is just wrong.  Ah well, my future competition will be light...

When you are looking at someone else's code, at what point can you definitively know it is bad code?  I'm sure everyone has their metrics.  Here's mine and so simple too:

Server Timeouts

Yep, real simple.  Here's the thing:  Nothing else, in my mind, shows a greater lack of understanding of the basic architecture of a system than poorly set timeouts.  For instance.  while not a bad idea to adjust the timeout of the SQL connection to fit what you are doing, setting it to 1200 means you don't realize that it means seconds and you just told your application to wait 20 minutes before doing any damage control.  I don't know about you, but ANY application that makes me wait 20 minutes for anything (without showing me real progress) is broken; I am impatient after 20 seconds!  Another example:  setting an ASP.NET app to use a session timeout of 300 minutes means you don't care about your server at all.  Why not store user specific information (full DATASETS!) in memory for 5 hours after the user has left the page.  5 hours!

These are real examples of code I am working on today.  I don't care how elegant your architecture is, Server Timeout abuse has always been a very simple indicator of developer incompetance.  Oh, and it seems to be in direct proportion of scale too.  I have actually seen an ASP session set to 3000000.  Yes 3 MILLION minutes.  That is 50,000 hours.  5 years, 8 months, 14 days, 13+ hours.  Yeah, that'll work.  I was not well loved because I wouldn't allow crap like that to run on my servers.

BTW, 3M minutes was by the same coder who thought LastName is a good primary key on a DB.  And when that didn't work, how about a composite key on LastName, FirstName.  Yep, World Class programmer.

You might think that I dislike Daylight Saving Time.  You would be mistaken.

You might think that I liked Daylight Saving Time.  You would be wrong.

You might think that I hated Daylight Saving Time like a plague on society.  Now we're getting somewhere. 

The truth is, I find DST to be a blight on the intellectual accomplishments of modern man. 

To plan and execute something so incredibly ignorant and disruptive and then blame it on an innocent profession that probably couldn't care less about it, is an embarrassment to my intelligence.  It is right up there with prohibition. 

Time is probably the fundamental abstract measure of the universe.  Only size may be argued to be more so.  But even distance is a measure of "how long does it take...".  And as an abstract, does it matter if its 12:00, 3:00, 27:00 when the sun does something irrelavant?  Of course not.  So we take our fundamental unit of time and screw with it twice a year because why?  Maybe the American public is too damn ignorant to make their own decisions!  Maybe we can force the sun to stay out longer!  Maybe the day will be longer by an hour!  Ha!  Take that nature!

It's so depressing....

http://www.standardtime.com/

Go.  Now!

I love the lottery!  Most people think I don't, but I really do.  Good Lord, I would never actually play the lottery of course.  No, the lottery is simply my favorite tax.

What so many people don't seem to realize is that the lottery is a voluntary usage tax on ignorance.  If you understand number theory and basic statistics at all, you must necessary eschew the lottery as a complete waste of time and money.  Therefore, you are exempt from the tax and need not participate.  If you feel that $1 is a small price to pay in order to fantasize about how you would spend 50 bajillion dollars, then you have a small tax burden indeed.  If fear rules your life, and you feel compelled to participate in the office pool, because wouldn't it be horrible to be the only one not to win, then your tax bill might become a bit weighty.  But if you play religiously every week knowing that your time must come up eventually, then you get to pay the bulk of the ignorance tax, and rightly so. 

Now if only there were a way of advertising your participation in the lottery.  Then I would know which people I needed to avoid and to what magnitude.  And those who win, don't count, they already advertise well enough, and I will avoid them like the plague.

And by the way, if the office pool were to win and everybody took off, thank god that the group was culled so efficiently; I bet you can get a lot more work done now.  You won after all!

Over the last several million years, nature has raised man to a frightening level of ability.  We have conquered our environment, bested every predator, harnessed a few of the energies of the universe to do our bidding, and given back to nature true beauty in music and art.  But things have gone wrong.  The most dangerous accomplishment that man has created is himself.

Std Disclaimer:  I am not an environmentalist, nor do I play one on TV.  In fact, I am not taking the track of the tree-hugging, berry-gathering, short-sighted, inexperienced children of Greenpeace and PETA.  They're a bunch of twits. 

I am referring to a far more catastrophic disaster than the death of a few pitiful species.  I am talking about the reversal of evolution itself.  The death of our own species.

If man were the least bit intelligent, we would be taking great advantage of evolution and speed it up, much like we have done with our foodstocks and canine companions.  Before you get offended, realize I refer to the collective idiocy, not those few of us that can still bang the rocks together.  But no, we have decided to honor the stupid among us and so lower the quality of the gene pool ever further.  Think about it:  What incentive do we give Americans to be productive?  Or rather, what disincentive do we meet out to those who are not and drag down our economy?  Hint:  think welfare, Medicaid, unemployment, lottery, frivolous lawsuits.  Seems to me that it is becoming easier to not be productive and live off the middle class. 

Another thing, census data has shown that the higher levels of society produce fewer children than the lower classes.  I'm not going to drag the math out, you can do it.

So here's my solution:  testing and enormous tax deductions.  Testing is simple enough, if you can't spell your kids name, you shouldn't have any.  Also basic math, science and statistics.  Yep, statistics.  That will eliminate anyone who plays the lottery!  And notice I said tax deduction, not credit.  Yep, make the tax burden smaller for people who make money, not make money for people to breed children.  And people who adopt should get bigger ones, until there are no more to adopt because the idiots will not be allowed to breed.

Evolution weeded the weak and incompetent out for a very long time.  Now we protect them, encourage them, give them tax credits to breed.  Meanwhile, the top percentile is not doing their part to strengthen the gene pool by producing superior intellects.  We are in a downward spiral.  Fortunately, nature is smarter than us and will wipe out all but a few and set evolutionary process back on track.

Oh, don't even get me started on athletes and celebrities.

Linked through Cox & Forkum:  Conspiracy Theorists calling themselves "Truthers" demonstrated at the WTC site on Sept 11.  Also see the 9/11 photo posts at the blogsite TiffanyCuffLinks.  I especially love the signs suggesting that WTC was brought down on purpose with demolition.

Now I have been called many things from naive to fascist.  Many times by people who don't really understand the meaning of the works they use.  (Look up fascism in a reliable source before accusing someone!  No, wikis don't count.)  Furthermore, I never claim to understand everything that is going on; at least I hope the government is keeping some things classified to protect necessary assets and to minimize unnecessary panic.  Yes, I admit, the last bit is something of a sticky wicket.  However, how can anyone cleave to an irrational theory with no evidence especially when it flies in the face of other evidences and apparent facts?  Sure, everything we know can be fabricated, but to what end?

Things were different a thousand years ago when the exposure of mistruths was nearly impossible.  Then the populous was easily led and frequently, if not always, was.  Try not to notice historic Catholicism in this argument, it may just upset you.  But today, with rabid reporters and loads of documentation easily obtainable, it is arguable that anything can be hidden very long.  And the catastrophic consequences of revelation of misleading will destroy those involved.

Or so I've been told.

Please don't look at my public websites.  They all suck.  My personal one because I just don't have the time to build a decent one and the one for the corporation I work for because, well, I just work here.

Let me explain.  I am the Senior Web Developer for the corp.  That means I control the servers and design of all the company websites, right?  Well, not quite.  The Network group controls the servers.  Ok, I don't need to worry about patches, viruses, etc., so good.  Oh, and I don't write the content of the websites either.  Well, that's good too, I don't fully understand the needs of the business as communication to their customers is concerned.  So rightly so, I am relegated to the technical aspects, which I certainly prefer.  Wait, I don't do the design either, that is up to the marketing department and business owners.  Too bad our marketing group is entirely print oriented and don't really understand the unique nuances of the web; and of course the business owners shouldn't, that's not their shtick.

So what do I do here again?  I forget...