Chris May

Here is an article that discusses how to write a telnet application that can reboot your server remotely... a must for windows computers :).

I was just messing around looking at some hacks for installing a PC into a car. There doesn't seem to really be a good product out there, but here were some of the links I found:

http://www.gnetcanada.com/

http://www.via.com.tw/en/VInternet/Peter_Bridger_Car_PCPower.pdf

http://www.microsoft.com/automotive/windowsautomotive/

http://www.mobilevideo4less.com/mobile-pc.html

http://myhtpc.net/

http://www.caseoutlet.com/

http://www.opussolutions.com/itx_work.html

http://www.trumanmobile.com/prod/Default.asp

http://www.dashpc.com/

This page is a great tool for calculating all kinds of stuff for loans and mortgages.

It is really robust, and with all my recent mortgage, and now car loan stuff, it has been really handy.

I didn't need to link to it before because it was number 2 on google for "Mortgage Calculator, but for some reason it has fallen to page 2 of their rankings.

Here is some online documentation for PHP.

Slashdot had a review for a book on hacking TiVo, which led to a discussion of that topic and the various other PVRs out there.

I could walk to this guy's store from my parent's house. $85 to do the HDD upgrade, or you can buy the HDD yourself and just follow his directions. I'm not sure if it is worth $85. I could probably do it in an hour myself, but maybe just to make sure I don't screw it up.

Here and here you can find some forums on TiVo and hacking it.

Most interesting to me was the mention of MythTV, a linux based product that is free, and can support 2 tuners. Aside from that, it also can do a lot of other cool stuff from what I have read, such as pictures, audio, weather reports, web browser, web server, etc. I also read somewhere that you can setup one as a "

Interesting.

This PDF explains a little about Kerberos, why we need it and how it works.

Here are some articles about stuff with Flash and VB.
Article 1
Article 2

Article 2 is supposed to get rid of the right click that flash has.

Here is a list of common ports used by Windows 2003 Server.

This microsoft page didn't help me any, but it is a useful referenece.

AD DNS Lookups

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I swear that for the amount of time I save by using VS.NET and ASP.NET over Visual Interdev 6 and ASP (or Java), I lose more than that amount of time in dealing with the terrible design, performance, and bugs of VS.NET.

I installed a test certificate on my laptop so that I could work code that forced pages to use HTTPS. If the page was not running over SSL it would redirect to https://www.therealsite.com/. This worked fine for weeks. The only problem was that when I would preview or debug it would, by default, launch the browser to http://localhos/etc.. which would then be redirected to https://www.therealsite.com/. I would then have to manually change it to httpS://localhost/whatever.aspx to keep it from redirecting.

Aside from that everything was grand.

So then last night I decided to improve upon it. Where it checks if you are running over SSL, it also checks if the server is "localhost". If it is, then instead of redirecting to to https://www.therealsite.com it would redirect to https://localhost.

Everything was great.

Then I went to reopen my project this morning.....

"The host name in the certificate is invalid or does not match"

followed up by:

"Unspecified Error"



Are you kidding me?

Project wouldn't load or reload.



Of course to get to this error takes a minute or two each time because VS.NET is so amazingly slow, even on my 2.4GHz machine. I love it when VS.NET turns 100% white as it sits there doing nothing.

To make things worse, VS.NET FORCES you to contact the webserver to open the project. So I couldn't make any changes, like trying to change my code back to what it was. BTW, why the hell should my CODE effect my ability to OPEN THE PROJECT!? So frustrating!



So then I decided to remove the SSL certificate from the computer, and remove HTTPS from that website. I tried to open the project again.

After another few minutes of waiting....

"A connection with the server could not be established"



Awsome.

After screwing with it for an hour, including 2 reboots, I ended up solving it by removing the SSL certificate, removing HTTPS from the site, and deleting the DLLs in the BIN folder of the website.



VS.NET and I have a very strong love/hate relationship. I really really like so much about it, but .... argh frustrating! I had to make a minor update to an old VB program the other day... I was SHOCKED at how fast the VS6 IDE was, now that I am used to VS.NET, even though the computer with VS6 had a 1.1 GHZ, and my computer with VS.NET has a 2.4 GHz cpu.

This is a .NET component that you can put on your site to allow customers to contact you for live questions/service.

Pretty cool, and you can install a client app to do it as well, so you don't have to actually be on the site. But it costs 200+ bucks.

I havn't downloaded this article but I probably could have used it when I was struggling with setting up VSS with VS.NET.

It really is a poor integration of those 2 products. Very poor.

I'm on a car related posting binge here.

LeaseTrader.com hooks up people who are looking to get out of their lease with people that want to pickup that lease, without the downpayment. :)

CarsDirect.com offers to sell you a car online, and they have up front, not haggle pricing. Nice.

Here is a page that contains a calculator to help pick if you should buy or lease a car.