Hello, I'm   Jason

There are times that you may need to install an older Windows application especially something developed using Visual Basic 6 or earlier. In these cases, you should always ensure that the installed application is using the most current common control library available from Microsoft. If not, you may receive strange error message that logs the following in the Event Viewer (abbreviated exception):

First of all, before I begin, please know that in every case, you should detect browser features and not browser versions. However, there are still times that you may need to know the browser version (such as providing screenshots of various browser alerts – ie: ActiveX installation).

If you’ve ever built a Windows Phone 7 or Windows Phone 8 application, you may have found that your app looks great when building it in Visual Studio. However, as soon as you attempt to change the theme of the application, the design would not appear correct.

As the years go by, more and more research, information, and documents can be found online. However, several business verticals still use CDs and DVDs to access research content, backup documents, and share files. In every position that I’ve ever held, I have been asked by someone to locate a disk. I had an old WMI script that would grab the information, place it in a text file on a machine, and notify me via a net message that the file was ready. This was great and did the job, but I wanted to see how I can do the same using PowerShell (and WMI).

So today is the big day where my wife is being induced with our fourth child. Given the past, today’s experience should last between 6-10 hours. Knowing I’ll be hearing monitors in the background, I figured I should do some work. Since I haven’t spent the time to complete an app for Windows Phone yet I figured I would challenge myself. I’ll be live blogging this experience today and am up against mother nature. My goal is to see what comes first: my new baby boy or my new Windows Phone app. Wish me luck (on both fronts)!

On May 3rd, Wrox Press released Professional ASP.NET 4.5 in C# and VB. I co-authored this book with two Microsoft employees Pranav Rastogi and Scott Hanselman as well as two Microsoft MVPs Christian Wenz and Todd Miranda. The book is packed with the most current information about ASP.NET 4.5. It is also the only book I am aware of that explains One ASP.NET. The foreword for this book is written by Scott Hunter of the ASP.NET team.

Recently, we made the decision to change one of our Verizon Wireless plans. The plan was a family share plan that has existed for quite some time now. Both phones on the plan were “dumb” phones and the near $130 price point for up to 1400 minutes and no data seemed way too steep. When evaluating other Verizon Wireless plans, the price would increase even more for the two devices plus taxes.

Earlier today, the Webby Awards and Internet Explorer teams announced a joint project to showcase the Webby Award winners since the awards were handed out in 1997. This new website is built on Web standards which are truly emphasized in Internet Explorer 10. I’ll have a post in the future to highlight Web standards and the modern Web. However, if you’re too anxious to wait, feel free to check it out on the IE team’s Modern.IE website. In fact, the IE team seems to be so pumped up about the Webby Awards that they released an updated version of the Modern.IE website along with some cool offers such as a special offer for Mac developers.

This stemmed from a strange request that came across my desk. I had the need to pull a date 7 business days ago by using T-SQL in Microsoft SQL Server. Sounds simple right? Here’s the catch: the date had to be the 7th business day in the past after removing the days the individual was off.

One of the tasks that seem awkward in Windows 8 is the shutdown and restart process. One of my co-workers, Mark Beleski, had discovered a nice keyboard shortcut today. It’s nothing new, but something that I rarely used.