If only the truth was a base class...

I was having a discussion with a friend of mine and, as fate would have it, we managed a brief stint over the theory of truth and lies...
"Lie" is such a strong word - to alleviate this burden some think it's better phrased as "extending the truth". Now if only there was some technical implementation of this.... hmmmm....

Fear not! I have done it. Here it is in all its glory...

The truth as a base class.

(in C#)

   1: public class ExtenedTruth : Truth

   2: {      

   3:     public override string TellTheTruth()      

   4:     {          

   5:         StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(base.TellTheTruth());          

   6:         sb.AppendLine(" and we extend over here... ");           

   7:         return sb.ToString();      

   8:     }

   9: }

Done! All this without any lies involved. What a pleasure... :D

P.S. please notice the use of the StringBuilder so that we can append loads onto the "truth" with as little of a performance hit as possible.
P.P.S. I am pretty sure this would compile on the Mono framework.
P.P.P.S I think I need to patent this.

I hate those Permanent Temporary Failures...

This is one of those things that make you laugh on your Monday morning...

Let me set the scene for you. A few days back, I was attempting to send a file via email (gmail) to various recipients. It would send, but never reach its destination. Frustrating to say the least, especially when you take into account that 12 previous attempts had already been made.

Now the more technically savvy among you may say: "Why not just use FTP? Email is notoriously bad for reliably sending files, especially when its important..."

Bottom line - I couldn't. Lets just leave it at that and be done with it. Below is a snippet of the delivery failure I got from Google (obviously I changed the email address and bolded the important parts...).

*snip*
...
subject:
Delivery Status Notification (Failure)

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification
Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:
names.changed.to@protect.the.guilty
Technical details of permanent failure:
TEMP_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 16): 451 qq temporary problem (#4.3.0)
  ----- Original message -----
Received: by 10.100.212.14 with SMTP id k14mr997577ang.1193785829292;
...
*snip*

Well, I thought it was funny... a permanent failure with a temporary problem. Sweet.

P.S. what is also quite interesting that Google marks those failure notifications, from itself, as SPAM. I'm not complaining, just an interesting side note.

It seems Windows Live Writer has a problem with publishing...

any posting that has been assigned a category with an "!" in it.

For those of you who don't know, Windows Live Writer is a nifty little tool that allows us to blog away independent of the native blogging editors provided by the various different flavours of blogging software. I rather like it.

Aaaanyways...

I get the following little error notification when attempting to do so:

The software is still in beta, so little issues here and there are to be expected I suppose. The upside is that the software didn't crash and my post wasn't lost... just incase you were interested... ;)

When simple is just not enough...

We all have felt the pain at one time or another. Yes... you know it... its that warm fuzzy time when you have to maintain someone else's code.

Generally, its difficult enough to adapt your thought process/logic to that of someone else, however, the added fun comes when the person who actually created the masterpiece of code, did it with a complete disregard to any sort of afore mentioned logic.

Now please, don't get me wrong... I don't usually go around ragging on code that someone else has done to the best of his/her ability (in this particular case lets hope, for the sake of the creator, it was the result of something closer to an alcohol induced coma as opposed to a fair reflection of said ability), but sometimes, especially at 01:20 in the morning, having to sift through what can only be described as a waste of time, I am a little less in the forgiving mood...

I believe the following sums it up:

   1: CultureInfo cuInfo = CultureInfo.CurrentCulture;

   2: NumberFormatInfo numberFormatInfo = cuInfo.NumberFormat;

   3: string strNegativeSymbol = numberFormatInfo.NegativeSign;

   4: if ((dtbContract != null) && (dtbContract.Rows.Count > 0))

   5: {

   6:     decContracRate = Convert.ToDecimal(dtbContract.Rows[0]["PayoffAmount"],

   7:                        System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

   8: }

   9:  

  10: if ((decContracRate.ToString().IndexOf(strNegativeSymbol) > -1))

  11: {

  12:     btnPrintPayment.Enabled = false;

  13:     if (btnIsVoid.Enabled == true)

  14:     {

  15:         btnIsVoid.Enabled = false;

  16:     }

  17: }

  18: else

  19: {

  20:     btnPrintPayment.Enabled = true;

  21: }

Excluding all the other issues with this code snippet, unless I am missing something extremely sneaky - I am pretty sure the following would have done the trick:

   1: if( decContractRate < 0 )

   2: {

   3:     // oh look - its a negative

   4:     ...

   5: }

Yup... sometimes simple is just not enough...

The first posting...

Well... here it is. Finally. My first blog posting. I have been thinking about doing this for quite some time now.

Today, it seems, is that day...

Heaven help us all ;)

- Mike