Hello, I'm   Jason

I had an issue this week binding a custom IList to a DataList. I struggled with this one because a was able to bind directly to a DataGrid. I knew that DataGrids bind differently than DataLists, but forgot what the difference was. They both look for an IEnumerable, however, DataGrids are more particular. Ambrose Little pointed out in an email that the DataGrid builds its own enumerator of type PagedDataSource.EnumeratorOnIList whereas the DataList is relying on a custom GetEnumerator function. I sent Teemu Keiski a copy of my code so he can act as a second pair of eyes (always a good thing). Luckily, he spotted that for some strange reason, I missed the Return keyword in my GetEnumerator function. I placed that in and everything works now. Thanks to everyone that helped me out. Hopefully if someone else runs into this foolish issue, this helps! ;)

I just finished reading a fairly decent article about maintaining your Windows Server 2003 boxes. You can find the article here: http://www.ftponline.com/channels/security/wss/2004_12/magazine/features/kgardinier/. There is a free registration to read the entire article.

The .NET team has released a snippet editor for Visual Basic 2005. You can download the editor by visiting http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/downloads/2005/tools/snippeteditor/.

I finally got around to posting the pictures from the Greater PA MSDN Code Camp 2005 event in Philadelphia. They are posted on the .NET Valley User Group website at http://www.dotnetvalley.com/Photo+Gallery/default.aspx. Hopefully next time I can make it to both days!

If you plan on keeping your SQL Express data when you deploy an ASP.NET 2.0 application that you add the applicationName attribute to each of your providers under each special ASP.NET configuration section (ie: Membership). If you do not, ASP.NET 2.0 will look to see if the app was run under a different application or not. If it was, it will create a new application entry in the database and none of your users and profiles will be associated.

You can add personalization to your ASP.NET 2.0 website by adding a Profile section to your web.config file. After you setup your properties, you can begin to add, edit, retrieve, and remove these properties from a profile. Most users like to set personalized properties when they first establish account. By default, the CreateUser control does not include a step to ask for these profile properties. So, you must create your own step. When you get finished adding in your fields, modify the step’s next button click event. In the subroutine, add the information to the profile. This can be accomplished by using something similar to this:

I posted a question to the ASPAdvice.com forums regarding the limitations of SqlExpress 2005. I already knew that there was no limitation on connections. However, Scott Forsyth was able to provide me with additional info. Here you go directly from the post: The database size limit is 4GB. There is also a memory limit of 1GB of RAM and a limit of 1 CPU. You can install it on machines with more than 1 CPU, but it only utilizes a max of one. There is a tool to manage SQL Express that can be downloaded from http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/sql/.

If you are attempting to visit Google.com, be careful. If you type Google.com incorrectly such as Googkle.com, you may become infected with a virus. DO NOT GO TO THIS WEBSITE TO TEST.

For more information, visit http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/googkle.shtml.

This morning while listening to the radio I heard a story about a woman receiving an email. The email she received talked about a girl being approached in a parking lot by 2 guys looking to sell perfume. As the story goes, she received some scratch and sniff samples from these men and ended up passing out. While she was out, she was robbed.

This isn’t a true story. In fact, there are many false stories or “urban legends” that are passed around via email. Folks who have not heard these before are likely to forward these legends off to coworkers, family, and friends.

If you are in an environment that receives similar emails, you should make your users aware. There is a website called Snopes.com with a listing of various email hoaxes. Users (or administrators) should delete these emails and not forward them off. The scariest thing about this is that some day a virus can accompany one of these emails!

-- Just some food for thought.

Microsoft is looking for a new PC design…