Monday, August 20, 2012

Dead Tracks is a Done Deal

Got the new slider installed for the internal site links.
As it exists now, The Dead Tracks is pretty much a done deal, just awaiting fresh content, if I can dig it up from my, er, archives, wherever those archives might be buried.

Streetlights Facebook Page Has Launched

Jeff's Streetlights and Highways-Site on Facebook

Finally got this page going. So far, I've uploaded my old bridge photos. Will be uploading my old parkway content next.

New Streetlight Site under construction at: www.streetlightsite.com

Refurbished Dead Tracks website, still on Angelfire, but sans the awful banner ads, at :www.angelfire.com/ny5/deadtracks

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Rounding Image Corner the Hard Way

Finally got an epiphany after pulling my hair out trying to figure out why my Dead Tracks images' corners weren't rounding when my other sites' images were.
Was using the same @#$%^& code, the @#$%^&* CSS. GRRRRRRR!
Finally realized I had those images set for 3% padding elsewhere in the CSS.
Padding big NO-NO with border-radius. Border-radius no like padding!
Changed the @#$%^&* padding to margin and now everything is joyful in CSS land.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Fixing Wamp Server Not Starting Issue

Has your Wamp, Xampp, or other such Apache web server suddenly refused to start?
Hmmmm? Installed any Microsoft Visual Studio or SQL items lately?
I was saved this evening from tearing my hair out by this post on:
http://www.ferolen.com/blog/microsoft-httpapi2-0-use-port-80-cannot-start-wamp-apache/comment-page-1/#comment-12139

Basically, whatever I'd recently installed activated Microsoft IIS, the arch rival web server to all these Apache run devils.
But, I prefer to work with the devil I know, and did not wish to move all my www directories over to the IIS root. I like playing with Apache settings, even when they come close to putting me in an insane asylum.
Thanks to whoever wrote the article linked to above, I knew what to do to fix this - go into Administrative Tools from Control Panel, and basically tell IIS to go to hell (That means I turned it off, for all you gentle folk).
Then to services and do the same to Web Deployment Agent Service. And so much for that tag team.

Of course, the first usual suspect when this issue comes up is Skype, which by default like port 80, the port required by Wamp/Apache. That's also an easy fix. In Skype's connections settings you can uncheck the box where Skype uses that port.

This issue occurred on a Windows 7 64 bit PC.

NOTE: See update posted 8-23-2012. The above was not the end all solution.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

And that ain't all folks

Another interesting pain in the ass issue with Visual Studio 2005 concerns the control flow containers in the tool box. Discovered only after much angina that I couldn't drag them into the control flow area with the mouse like you can all the other items. NO! Not the high and mighty containers! No dragging them around like common tasks! To get one of them to deign to inhabit your control flow you have to double click on them.
Why, Microsoft, why?

Bugs in a Microsoft program? Nawwwww! Couldn't be!

I've been expanding my abilities in SSIS programming, but at present am forced to use the aging Visual Studio 2005 for such endeavors. Well looky, looky if I didn't find a major bug, and thankfully, the fix for it, while playing with a Forloop Container.
The nasty lil' ole bug is in the Script Task Editor, when you go to click on Design Script. The Editor simply closes and leaves you stranded looking at the control flow screen.
The fix, which I found only a couple of mentions of on the web, is to download and install the SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 patch.
As of this writing it's still available at: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=14752
For my aging XP desktop, SQLServer2005SP3-KB955706-x86-ENU.exe was the file of choice.
So far, I've noticed nothing else screwed up by whatever it installed.
Despite my fears it would, it didn't kill my more recent Native Client that my php scripts depend on.
and my more recent Visual Studios appear to be working fine.

Monday, January 24, 2011

You Can't Play Just 2 Quarters and Expect to Win

Message to big talking Jets. You Can't Play Just 2 Quarters and Expect to Win! Nice comeback try, but nice comebacks, like nice guys, well, let's just say they don't finish first. As for the Steelers vs Green Bay, I'm not seeing the team that almost blew a 24 point lead to the Jets beating a team that clobbered the Bears. The Pack by 14 points at least.