GoDaddy, ASP.NET and Discount ASP

Seriously, sometimes I wonder why I stay with GoDaddy.  Here I am developing a cutting edge app over at DrinkingFor. I just installed URL Routing on the app from the ASP.NET SP1 release.  I get to the point where I upload my changes to the site and what do I get?  I get a freaking Error.  SP1 for ASP.NET has been out for over 3 months now and GoDaddy still has yet to support it.  Why do I stay with them?  Sometimes I will never know.

I decide to take action.  So I call up GoDaddy support to ask them when do they plan on supporting SP1.  I waited on the line for about 10 minutes, and then someone finally answered.  The problem was that he was actually SNOOTY with me.  It was just plain sad.  I decided to go ahead and ask him when they expect the update.  Now being such a LARGE company, you would expect they would have roll out dates and times set up as to when they would start supporting a software upgrade.  Well, I talked to them and he said specifically they don’t.  They don’t have any kind of time line for SP1 or any other release.  I was just plain frustrated so I quickly hung up the phone with him and went to check out their competitor Discount ASP.  I come to find out that GoDaddy has a superior control panel than DASP.  I also found out that DASP is about double the price of GoDaddy.  I am a poor developer and I just really don’t make enough money to move my stuff over to a double the price hosting service. 

But, If Discount ASP was able to come down on their price a bit and upgrade their control panel, I would have moved over no questions asked with 20+ websites and customers.

Now as for GoDaddy, I am putting out a warning that if you don’t change your service and make software upgrades faster and let your developers know when its made, you will begin to see a mass exodus of your service.  I will make the promise that when I am able to pool enough funds together for about 20 websites, I will be moving.  I have had enough of the Big Daddy in the room.

Has anyone else had this bad of service?  What do you think of Discount ASP?

The Hackers of the Past

The Hackers of the past are a dwindling group of people.  The hackers of the future have a bright journey ahead of them.  The whole culture behind a hacker has shifted and is evolving over time.  The new culture is taking over a dwindling past time.  Phrack and 2600 both talk about the hacking underground changing and morphing.  They both don't see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I will to show them a new tunnel.  The hacking underground is still alive and well, but in a different format.  Hackers of the past were for freedom of information and to some, open source software stated by Richard Stallman.  Both Phrack and 2600 are looking for new outs and ins.  They both talk about how hackers have left the underground and joined the computer security job.  While security is important, it has basically ripped through the underground and taken a big chomp out of its culture.  No one knows how long the underground will stay active and they are of course looking for another course of action, but who will provide?  At this moment, there could be three type of hackers in the world.

The first type of hacker is your old school underground hacker.  It isn't your script kiddies, but the ones of the past.  The kind of hackers that ethically or unethically broke into computer systems for the freedom of information. To open the world to more information.  This is the hacker of the past.  The underground hackers still exist today, but their culture is falling to the floor with its last foot on the step. I hope to revive the culture in the coming years.

The second type of hackers are the ever failing computer security hackers.  This type of guy left the underground years ago to earn some money for doing what they love.  These hackers, left a large gaping void in the underground culture and have stopped the true ideal of a hacker.  They no longer hack.  They now prey on the underground for security secrets to divulge to the world.  About 6 months ago, a huge flaw was found in the basic dns of computers.  It was the security hacker who released the flaw before it was patched.  It was the security hacker who put the entire world at risk just for a little more publicity.  Why does this type of hacker need the publicity?  Because their jobs are turning into nothing.  They are losing work, though staying very busy, they are no longer having as much fun as they were sitting in front of a computer at 3am in the morning working on the next system and show them it has a flaw to the world.

Taken by Ted Percival

The third type of hacker has been around for years and years.  It was supposedly started back in the 1950's with amateur radio enthusiasts.  Looking for a new way to improve performance, which they coined the term hacking.  They have come from MIT in 1959, Stewart Brand in 1972 when he publishes SpaceWar.  It was made popular around 1982 when Tron and WarGames came out.  The third type of hacker is the hobbyst.  The guy that goes home after working a 9-5 job and working on some piece of software or hardware.  This is what hacking and the culture has turned into.  The type of person that enjoys solving real world problems.  The person that might choose to make a few bucks with their new gadget they just created or release it to the open source market which Richard Stallman and the creator of Linux Linus Torvalds strive for.  The term hacking has even morphed and created user groups such as Ycombinator and Hacking News.

The culture has changed a bit, but the underlying ethical ideals are still their.  Open up to the world. The Homebrew Computer Club started it all, hackers of the underground kept it going and now hackers of the future will have continued the legacy.  The security consultants though, will die off as the software of the future hackers get better.

The computer and the idea of software engineering is still in its infancy.  We have yet to see what new changes can be made, but I do know this.  The culture changes, but the ethics remain the same.

Which type of hacker were you?  Do you feel upset by this culture change?

Goals for 2009 and Beyond!

I know its about a month late for me to post something like this, but I wanted to document my ideas and goals for the new year.

My 2009 Personal Goals are:

1. To Release two Web Applications this year! - This does not include drinkingfor.com, but it would count at the end of the year if I found another website that just worked really well for me.
2. To improve apon DrinkingFor.com. I have about 8 more tasks that I want to complete with it, but after that I will need to make a decision whether to carry on with the site or throw some advertising on it and start a new site.
3. To write better blog posts.  I have been on the down side of how informational my posts are and I want to change that.  So here I am prepared to be more informational on my posts.

My Current Long Term Goals:

1. Acquire Boomers.com.  I hope to one day have a company called Boomers, so I will of course need to buy Boomers.com.
2. Be a keynote speaker at a convention.  I first have to start speaking, but after that all things should rise to the top.  (Hopefully)
3. Live off the money made from my web start ups.  The road could be long and hard, but I hope to make enough money each month to go home and work instead of going to work and work.

Now, Lets see how many I accomplish!

Best Practices for CSS Style Sheets

A while back Microsoft released a program called "StyleCop".  StyleCop is almost like a style guide for code, kind of like what CSS is for HTML.  It gives the rules for how HTML should be setup and react.  Now I only wish someone released a stylecop for CSS.  In my many years of dealing with CSS I had to come up with a best practice or thought on how I would like all my Style Sheets to look and feel.  This would help me determine exactly where to look over each sheet.  I realized that this guide was in my head and I had never put it down on paper.  So here today, I won't put it down on paper, but will post it here for all to see.  I have seen many style sheets and this is the guide that I use when I start to build my sheets.

• Style sheets should always have the basic essential styles which are things like underline, bold, italics, predefined h1, h2, and h3 fonts, colors, link variations, and sizes of fonts.  This allows for a similar look and feel on every page of the site.
• Style sheets should be downloaded as fast as possible from the server and therefore must have the least possible white space while still allowing for the ability to separate styles with the human eye.  This is where a one line per style should come into practice.  For each style used, it should only take up one line of the style sheet.  No longer should you use one line per declaration of style.  This new way is an easy way of looking over each feature of the style while still allowing for fast downloads of the sheet. For Example:

• Style names should be camel cased starting with the name/abbreviation of the tag the style applies to and then the name of the div tag/style. 
  
  • For Example:  I have a Div tag with an id of userName, I should name the style divUserName. 
    
  • If I have no name for the tag, I should name a type of ID for the style.  For Example: divPageInformation. 
    
  • Unless it is a standard id like .bold, .italic, etc... I will not declare what the style does, rather I would declare where the style belongs. For example for links: aPageTitle
• Style grouping is a way to organize your sheet for better readability and navigation of the sheet.  In the past, people used to just put styles up on the sheet and forget it.  Not thinking that they would have to later come back to the sheet for editing.
  • If the style is generic through out the entire site, I group it at the top of the sheet with all the other generic styles.
  • I then group all the styles by page and then control/object it styles.  I then alphabetize the styles in each group for a fast skimming rate.

For Example:  I have an accordion that is generic along the entire site, so I would group the entire accordion together and then alpha sort the tags.

/* Accordion */
.accordionContent { border: 1px dashed #2F4F4F; border-top: none; padding: 5px; padding-top: 10px; }
.accordionHeader { border: 1px solid #2F4F4F; font-family: Arial, Sans-Serif; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; padding: 5px; margin-top: 5px; cursor: pointer; text-align: left; }
.accordionHeader a { text-decoration: none; }
.accordionHeader a:hover { text-decoration: underline; }
.accordionHeaderSelected { border: 1px solid #2F4F4F; font-family: Arial, Sans-Serif; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; padding: 5px; margin-top: 5px; cursor: pointer; text-align: left; }
.accordionHeaderSelected a { text-decoration: none; }
.accordionHeaderSelected a:hover { text-decoration: underline; }

For another Example:  I have a reports page.  I group the reports page together separated by one line and then group the report styles together while sorting them.

.liReportChkbxs { list-style: horizontal; margin: 0 5px 0 0; display: inline; }
.ulReportChkbxs { float: left; margin: 0 5px 0 0; }

.liReportsList { list-style: none; padding: 5px 0 5px 5px; }
.liReportsListHorizontal { display: inline; }
.ulReportsList { text-align: left; display: block; list-style: none; }

I hope that helps in your style sheet endeavors.  I sure do wish I didn't have to go through the learning phase of this type of style.  I would love to hear my readers thoughts on this guide and how they differ from it.

My 2 Year Anniversary

Today is my two year anniversary at my job.  I haven't been congratulated, appreciated or even thanked for the work I have done with my company.  (Was congratulated the day after with cup cakes and a card...) I guess you have to speak up and let people know what is going on before it happens.  I have learned a lot at my job and have taken very little to do so.  These days that go by feel tiring and sad.  I am in a supporting role now after I built an application from the ground up.  The SQL database, the documentation and the code.  I came out of college knowing very little about databases and even less about coding.  I develop in ASP.NET and C# which I had to learn from the start with this job.  I have barely had a lick of C or C++.  I was a computer Engineer, yet this job took me in to build a web app for the customer.  The project was built by me and it is my little baby.  Now I am in a supporting role in a team of 4 which I am the only one working in .NET while my other co-workers work in coldfusion.  My job was interesting when I first started building the application, learning things for the first time.  Now most of my time is spent experimenting with new technologies and research (cough, cough surfing) the internet in search for more.  Trying to learn new things and doing my damnedest to learn more of C#.  I have a firm grasp on the easy parts of C#, I just started using classes about a year ago and have figured out methods and code reuse when I was just starting out.  I remember the day I figured it out.  I must have deleted 1000's of lines of code.  It was nice.  It was a good day. I am just now picking up expressions and actually have my own personaly framework sitting at home.  I have a vast collection of extensions, methods and classes that I have written 90% my self.  I love the term "code reuse".  I used my framework in every application I make and it sure does come in handy when I want to do something really fast without having to re-invent the wheel. Having your own framework makes life a lot easier when you want to shell out code fast for a customer that you have already used before.

I remember my co-worker first pointing me to CodingHorror and I was just flabbergasted.  There were people out there who had way more experience than I.  It was an entire community.  I was so impressed. I wanted to join it, and be apart of it.  I talked to my boss about attending my first conference Dev-Connections where I again was so impressed.  I loved it.  I got to talk with some of the most appealing ASP.NET guru's.  I learned a lot from that conference and now I want to go back as a public speaker.  I went to see how to do it finding that I needed to submit a few ideas about what to present.  I missed the deadline the first time by a few days and the second time by 2 months.  I have signed up to the list to know when they decide to ask for speakers and one day I will be a presenter.  I have been known to be a great speaker in my time and can present upon a subject well.  I just stink sometimes at writing about it.  Thats why I started a blog a bit before DevConnections. I wanted to write better and be able to put my thoughts down on paper.  So now on the spare time I have I write a blog post or two.  I enjoy blogging and hopefully one day I will become a .NET MVP.  That day will be here before I know it hopefully.

I built my own bug tracker for my application and I usually get one or two fixes a day I get to work on.  By 12:00 Noon, I have my work down for the day and need to find another 6 hours to use up.  After I came back to the job from DevConnections, I presented my boss with an ideal for an admin assistant program.  They couldn't give me funding so they told me to work on it on my off time.  I haven't truly touched it in about 6 months.  I find my self getting bored way to fast with nothing to do.  I have told my boss during my meetings with him that I have nothing to do and he told me to present the customer with this and see what he says.  

After two years, I have tried to move up the latter a bit, but since I am located in Melbourne, Fl it is hard to find another programming job around the area.  I am here and can't move because the woman I love is going to school.  I have been called by Microsoft a couple of times to come interview, but sadly and respectfully decline not wanting to waste their time because I wasn't able to move.

After two years, I enjoy my time because I get a lot of free time with little to no dead lines, but it does get boring.  I wish I could find a better job in my area, but don't see that happening any time soon.  I am trying my hardest to build applications during my off time at home and have been decently successful.  As you can see from my Profile, I have done a bit and am still working on DrinkingFor.  I hope to have that finished in the next month and be working on another few ideas I have very soon.  Time will only tell how far I get.

I got this job straight out of college and I feel it is time to move on, hopefully to one of my Startups but I could be happy with another company for now. The future is bright with my startups, hopefully I get to work from home by my third year.

Thanks for Listening.  

Happy two years to me!

Create a Demo for Me? Ahh, No Thank You.

In dealing with customers and potential customers you have to be clear and precise with them.  You have to make clear your requirements from up front.  As a full time employee of a company,  I would suggest you read My Bill of rights as a Programmer, on the other hand if your a freelancer or contractor you must tell your customers up front what you expect.  If you do not, then you will be stuck in an endless grind working for low income while doing mountain loads of work.  A customer once came to me and asked if I can show them a mock up. 

They said that we have a few potentials and need to choose between them. They asked if they can see a mock up or an example of what I would create for them.  Now in my early days as a contractor/freelancer, I would have given it some thought, but in today's world where everyone and their mother and daughter need a website, well I respectfully decline.  For those new programmers out there reading this, move on to another job.  For those experienced programmers, show them some of your passed work.  If they aren't happy with what they see, then say thank you, but we can't do business together at this moment.  Now, you will get one of these two replies.  Alright, lets talk about what you can do for me OR okay and thank you very much for your time.  You have to be able to walk away as a person in order for them to want you back.  This doesn't happen with big companies very well, because you have to draw up a "free" proposal and be picked among many.  When you have a small business that is in need and talks to you personally, well it works better for everyone when you can walk away. 

Taken by mikebaird

The point is you need to be able to say NO when they ask for a mock up or an example of what you can create for them. Don't do work for free.  Most likely, you will just be wasting your time anyway.

To Thread or Not To Thread Comments

With building a Social Site you always have to weigh the needs to have interaction with the site.  The current standard for any interaction is the comments section of the sites. The comment section is the talk back, the conversation to the site.  It is what allows for user participation and what most people would declare what Web 2.0 really is.  It allows the comment section to enable user interaction.  In building a site that would be used as a somewhat social site, you have to ask your self do you want to see a conversation another one sided page that has no interaction.  Would you rather get user feedback or just be one sided in everything you write or have to say.  You can't get feedback to see if they enjoy what your posting. You won't get a conversation going which inevitably makes the user want to come back to the site. The fact is, we need comments in the internet, we need conversation.

So in building a site, you have to worry about if you want it to be web 2.0 or web 1.0.  Comments in general are becoming standard on any site out there.  It is on all major social sites and it allows for more interaction between the users.  I don't see any problems with comments.  But I would like to start calling it something different.  A Conversation.  I call it a conversation today because more and more people are commenting.  More and more people are clicking that button to get a notification on what people say.  When you comment you save a part of your self on that site.

The Point

Comments are good, but threaded comments are better.  We are trying to build an online world.  We are trying to create a conversation that any person of any race of any creed and color can voice their ideas on.  Comments allow for anonymous participation in the world of tomorrow.  Free Speech.  Governments ban it and people are killed over what they say, but on the internet, you have all the free speech you want.  To create a conversation, you have to allow talk backs, you have to allow the user to reply to any other user.  You have to make sure a conversation can be had with any other user on the Web 2.0 site.  So in developing my site, I chose to use threaded comments as the default. Flat Comments can be chosen if they want to see flat comments.  Some people just can't handle threaded comments.  But if you think about it, Flat comments can also be threaded.

Just think of when someone posts:

@John,
Your Wrong!

@Tim,
I don't care what you have to say, threaded is better.

A conversation is happening right here if you like it or not. Threaded comments are at least for now the way of the future.  Someone else will invent a better way to have a conversation over a website, but for now threaded is my default and it should be yours too! Help carry on the conversation of the world and thread your comments.

Ask the Readers: What do you think, should threaded comments be a default?

Shameless Plug: DrinkingFor, it is still in Beta.

The Hackers Manifesto

A few days ago, I wound up opening up old memories.  Viewing old things I bookmarked such a long time ago.  I found many things that I meant to come back to and read more thoroughly, but never did.  These days time is of the essence in most peoples mind.  People find it hard to stop and smell the roses as the saying goes.  I find it the same way with me as well.  I have to slow down and smell the roses.  When I looked over my bookmarks from so long ago, I ran into an old article.  A very old article that has graced the pages of thousands of websites and still holds true today.  The culture has changed a bit and the life style of a hacker is a bit different, but why not bring something out of the closet that has created such a huge movement.  Most developers or hackers under the age of 22 have never seen this article and hopefully it is still out in the mainstream.  I sometimes thought it should be required reading in computer classes around the world.

taken by Joi

The Hackers Manifesto.  I want to ask my readers who actually read this way back in the day to throw a comment down or even if your seeing this for the first time if you enjoyed this article and it just excited you.  You see, for Gen X this article has been seen by millions and confirmed by millions.  For Gen Y, this article has been seen so few times that it is sometimes irritating.  The article subscribed to me why I first got into programming, why I first got into jumping on a computer and hacking.  I once considered my self a hacker.  I was expelled from HighSchool for hacking and was restricted to ever touching a computer again in my HighSchool.  I had my hay days and the younger generation will have theirs. 

The manifesto greatly sums up the conscience of a hacker.  They are smarter than most and have an ability to excel in their work.  They don't do manual labor, they do intellectual labor.  They use their mind instead of their body.  They are the ones who are curious.  They are the ones who strive to push forward.  To push above and beyond their current status.  They are the hackers of today and yesterday. The term hacker has literally changed from days of the passed.  Today a hacker means both the hackers of the passed and a new generation of 9-5ers or college kids striving to make their mark on this world.  They want to launch an application in 5 minutes flat and have it go viral in another 5 minutes.  Hackers today are a different culture, but this manifesto still applies.  Maybe making a manifesto #2 is needed to describe the new hacking culture...

I do ask that you contribute in the comments to know if you have ever seen this publication before. 

Here I present to you a publication that has been read by millions.

taken by BvdL 

Introducing DotNet Instant Messenger

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, Friends of all ages:

I am proud to present to you DotNet Instant Messenger.  I have built for the open source community a new Instant Messaging client that works fully out of the browser.  The client is built with ASP.NET, C#, JavaScript and LINQ.

Why build a new instant messaging client?  Well, I decided that the current instant massangers were all proprietary or built in another language.  I wanted one strictly for ASP.NET.  The project in all took about 2 weeks of good old fashioned programming.  I had to learn a bit of JavaScript and Web services to get this job done, but it was fun.  I took the images from Ajax IM, I am not going to lie about that.  All the code is completely mine and built with my two hands.  I used Ajax IM’s database and enhanced it a little bit.

Taken by alicepopkorn

1. You must have the default ASP.NET membership schema already set up.
2. You will need to run IMQuery.sql on the database.
3. You must allow pop-ups for the Client to work – This is required so when a user starts a chat, the new window will open for the user on the receiving end.
4. Note: IM’s could take up to one minute.  When the buddy list and the chat box isn’t open, there are minute intervals on the browser which means it only checks for new messages once a minute.  When you have the Buddy List open, the interval is cut down to 5 seconds.

I have made this for the community and expect the community to hopefully give me some feedback.  I am fully into making this thing fully functional client if the community sees it as a good messenger. 

The project is available on Codeplex and at www.DotNetIM.com.  The Demo is located at www.DotNetIM.com. Go check it out and please leave me some feedback.

My Projects

At the time of writing this, I finally got my second real website out for customers and would like to publish my profile online.  So at the time of writing this, I have completed two sites for customers.  This list will grow with time with each new project I create.

• Lumber by Lance - 12/24/2008 – This site is for a customer that produces logs to lumber and then has a kiln to dry the lumber out.
• Indialantic Volunteer Fire Department - 6/20/2008 – This site is for a volunteer fire department out of Indialantic Beach, Fl.  I was quite happy with this project because all the white space is completely updatable before I found out the concept of what a CMS is.
• DotNet Instant Messenger - 12/28/2008 - This site was designed by a friend without a website.  I designed and created DotNet IM.  Pretty proud of this one actually.  First real engine I have put out on the internet.
• DrinkingFor -1/09/2008 - Been working on this site with my partner in crime.  I knew asp.net and he knew only java.  Since C# and Java go hand and hand, he wanted to jump onto a simple project.  This is it.  We are working on it to make sure it up to web 2.0 standards but it has been launched.
• UtopiaPimp also at UtopiaShrimp - 6/30/2009 - I started this site well over a year ago and gave it a break so I could work on DrinkingFor.  I am back at this site and it is working well for me. The site is built for a Online game at Utopia.Swirve.com.  It is a game that requires a bit of intellect and collaboration.  The learning curve has said to be high, but it is still one of the best and if not oldest online games in the world.  UtopiaPimp currently has over 30k users.
  
• ItFeelsLike -10/1/2010- I built this site to show how it feels for different things in our lives.  Physical or mental Feelings.  Have you ever been shot?  Well I haven't and would love to know what it actually feels like if someone can describe the feeling.
• DeMotivatedPosters - 12/1/2010 -  This site was mainly built for fun and to learn ASP.NET MVC. It is for all those DeMotivational poster lovers out there!  It gives you a chance to create your own DeMotivational Poster!
• PostSecret Collection - 12/1/2010 - I created this site because there was no real archiving place for postsecret.com.  I loved the site, so this is somewhat of a tribute to it.  The entire collection has been downloaded using several different sites to hunt down the postcards.  I since implemented Germany's, France's, The UK's, and Spain's into the site.
• Roller Derby Penalty Timer - 9/1/11 - I created both a paid and free version of a penalty timer application for Roller Derby.  This application is currently only on the Android Phone.
• Audingo - Oct-Nov/2011 - I built this Android application for a Start up out of Texas who is trying to be the next company to sell things at a discount, but instead of reading things, they want to call and text them to you.  Cool idea and could be used elsewhere.  I guess time will only tell if they do well.
• Dolphin Words - 7/1/2011 - I built this simple little website to help others out when trying to solve a Cross word Puzzle.  Its simple and nice looking. Probably the nicest looking Crossword, Words With Friends, Scrabble, and Words by Post Helper out there on the web.
  

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