There I was, debugging an application using VS2008 and stepping through the code, and suddenly, when I press the F11 key to step into a method in another class, up pops this dialog box saying something like "No source available for the current location."  Options are to show disassembly (wow, that would help) and I think not to show disassembly.  Meanwhile, despite any breakpoints in the method I'm trying to debug -- that's logical, because if there's no source, then how can it breakpoint? -- it runs to completion and execution resumes at the next breakpoint in the code that I can see.

This is most perplexing, because the source code most emphatically exists -- I can see it -- and restarting VS2008 doesn't help, rebooting the machine doesn't help, and when I load another project and attempt to F11 into code in that one, it works just fine.

This last gives me a clue.  I'm not much for delving into the operating details of Visual Studio, but it seems to be that if I can step into code everywhere else except this one class, maybe there's something going on with the class, and not VS or the machine.  I then have this flash of insight: maybe it's the .PDB file for the assembly that is toast.  How to fix this, if true... hmmm.  I could edit it and force a recompile (I'm going to edit it anyway as soon as I can figure out why it isn't working right), but perhaps a similar problem might have occurred in some other assembly.  So the best thing to do under the circumstances is to force a rebuild of the entire Solution. 

I click on Build -> Rebuild Solution, and it goes through everything.  Now I try the debugging with the F11 Step-into, and BINGO!  It works.  Great, 'cuz I was beginning to get worried that I was going to have to use up some precious project time debugging Visual Studio!!  Thank goodness I am now back on track.  I'll be finished today, if all goes well, and ready to deliver to QA for testing!

It's time to register, Al Qaeda!  South Carolina now has a law on the books requiring subversive and terrorist organizations to register! 

http://rawstory.com/2010/02/south-carolinas-subversive-activities-registration-act-force/

It costs just $5 to register, so expense is not an excuse.  And what organizations are covered by the law?

"...every corporation, society, association, camp, group, bund, political party, assembly, body or organization, composed of two or more persons, which directly or indirectly advocates, advises, teaches or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States [or] of this State."

I guess this means that the Libertarian Party must register or face a $25,000 fine.  Or maybe the Republicans.

I thought it might be noteworthy to note that I am currently developing a replacement for the Inter-Agency Payment import system that my friend Paul Mehner developed while he was on contract here.  It's about time, as Paul wrote this in VB6 using the now-obsolete ADO RDS technology, and the application has started acting rather quirky over the past couple of years. 

I had my choice of technology to redevelop the application, and I decided to use Websphere MQ as the transport layer, and a Web Service for the business layer interface.  I am supposed to be finished by the end of next week, or at least, have delivered the application for QA testing by the end of next week.  I will be done well before that, in fact.

It's very much fun to be back in the coding saddle, I have to say.  Cranking out code is what I like best when it comes to work. 

I have in the past coded up Windows Form or Console apps in Visual Studio (2005 and earlier), and the IDE has facilitated linking up with a web service.  Now I am building a console application that needs to consume a web service, but when I right-click on the project (or References), I do not see a "Add Web Reference" context menu item (for WinForm or Console app).  There IS one if I right-click on a Web Application project, but this doesn't help me, as the application I am building MUST be a console app.  This was not the behavior in VS2005, or earlier!  What's up with that?  The MSDN page that describes the process for .NET 3.5 does not make a distinction; i.e. does not acknowledge a difference.

I am not making this up, and it is not an optical illusion.  Here's are the two context menus, side by side:

So now I am wondering how I am supposed to hook up a web service to a Console application. I imagine that this is still possible at a lower level (i.e. it can be hand-coded), but I am unsure how to proceed. I have posted the question on StackOverflow.

And StackOverflow Comes Through With an Answer!

With VS2008 MS is focused on WCF-Services. You can select a Webservice Reference by clicking "Add Service Reference..." and on the following dialog clicking the "Advanced..." button. In the following dialog you can choose to add a Web Service Reference.

And just as Filburt said, so it was. I love StackOverflow!

But my observation is: Leave it to Microsoft to hide something that used to exist in a highly visible location, and without comment in the documentation, shove it into an obscure location 2 levels deeper in the IDE! I can imagine some design wanker saying to himself, "Well, nobody cares about this anymore, so we'll just hide it where the sun doesn't shine." Did someone take a survey to decide this? He probably just asked his liberal-arts degreed girlfriend, and when she said "Huh?" he ticked the box marked "Asked the users?"

At work they enforce changing our passwords on a periodic basis, and that's a fairly common security measure in order to avoid having hackers hijack computer resources.  I have learned to accept this grudgingly as a good, yet annoying, process.

However, Steve Gibson of Gibson Research has passed along word from another security guru named Cormac (didn't pick up the last name) that changing a perfectly good non-hacked password on any kind of rational schedule is likely quite pointless.  When he said this (check out the podcast Security Now!, episode 229, "The Rational Rejection of Security Advice") I was at first aghast at the idea, but the rationale for not bothering seems upon some thought to be quite valid.

Consider that if someone who is not supposed to learns your password, when is he going to use it to do something bad?  Right away, or is he going to wait for a couple of weeks?  The answer is, probably right away.  So if you change your password every six weeks, for example, what are the odds that you're changing the password just before someone who has learned your password is going to use it for the first time?  Almost no chance at all!  And if they do learn my password, and use it, I'm going to find out in very short order and change it immediately -- especially if it costs me money (like my bank account getting hacked).  So the whole notion of changing your password periodically only makes sense if the account you're protecting doesn't matter all that much!  Heh.

I listen to Security Now! regularly, and I recommend it for anyone who wants to keep up with security and the mitigation of security threats.

I recently read on Slashdot that Microsoft is worried about the threat posed by OpenOffice.org to MS Office.  Apparently, they are trying to hire someone with OOO experience to give them a perspective on the problem.

Rubbish.  OOO is a nice product, in its way, but I've used it and it actually sucks.  I don't care for it.

If I couldn't afford Office, then OOO would be adequate.  But I can afford Office, so there we are.

Yesterday, a Nigerian man named Abdulfarouk Umar Muttalab apparently attempted to destroy the aircraft he was riding in, by way of burning his lap off, except his device failed to work properly and his fellow passengers subdued him (they should have beat the crap out of him, but being Dutch, they were probably incredibly polite about it, mores the pity).

That's one thing, but now the "authorities" have ratcheted up security precautions one or two more notches as a result. And we are definitely approproaching the ridiculous. My friend Paul Mehner (@paulmehner on Twitter) re-tweeted Rick Strahl (@RickStrahl) on the new rules and procedures being put into effect.

Here's the Yahoo News report:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Airline-passengers-see-apf-2678313752.html?x=0

Passengers getting off flights from overseas reported being told that they couldn't get out of their seat for the last hour of their flight. Air Canada also said that during the last hour passengers won't be allowed access to carry-on baggage or to have any items on their laps.

I can see it coming. We will eventually be manacled into our seats for the entire flight. What, you need to use the lavatory, you terrorist? Just wait a moment while we unshackle you. And of course, our security officer, Bubba, will accompany you into the lav, to ensure you don't do anything funny.

Because that is what's happening here. We have reached the point where we are all considered to be terrorists, by default. And we will be treated accordingly. As Rick Strahl points out, this is good training for sheepdom.

I just learned that Kim Peek, the mega-savant who inspired the fictional movie "Rain Man" (with Dustin Hoffman in the title role), passed away on December 19, from a heart attack.

He was literally amazing, and sometimes I wondered if it were possible that somehow or other I might be able to tap the same kinds of mental power in myself that he had.  While retaining the ability to dress myself, at least!  Because Kim couldn't do simple motor tasks like that -- nevertheless, what he could do showed that there is more to any of us than meets the eye, and if only we could unlock that potential we would all be quite literally amazing!

Rest in Peace, Kim. 

My son has a landscape business.  And he doesn't have a website for it.  Rather than having him go to some outfit who will charge him a few hundred (or thousand) dollars for building him a website, so he can finally drop the overpriced Yellow Book and Yellow Pages ads, it seemed that I ought to help out and create a nice one -- for free!  Well, anyway, at cost.

So, viola!  http://www.greenscapeconstruction.com

The site went live just a few days ago, and it's still a bit what I would call spare.  You know, less content than one would like?  But I'm still working on it.  There's behind-the-scenes infrastructure to build yet (for example, it doesn't use a database for its dynamic features so far -- that's on the way -- and although there's a login for administration, there's no administration features yet.  But as a fun little project it is just great!  I plan to shove some jQuery effects into it before I'm done.

Now for the Doh! moment.

Ideally, if one wants search engines to index your site correction, you have to have some meta tags (although those are nowhere near as important as they used to be), but Yahoo! tells us that the site's Title is very important.  And I couldn't get the site title to change from the default.  I changed it in the html part of the .aspx on the master page, but it wouldn't change in reality.  It was starting to make me crazy -- what on earth could be causing that?  Some kind of weird caching thing going on?  Turns out: Nope.

I was setting the Title text in two places.  Once in the .aspx, and then in code during Page_Load.  Yikes!  The Page_Load event code had exactly the same Title that the original .aspx had.  So OF COURSE it's not going to change. 

Gotta watch for that kind of thing.

Actually, I've been trying to avoid jQuery for several months.  I've had enough on my hands at the moment without digging down into some JavaScript nonsense -- aside from the fact that as much as I respect JavaScript, I could say with some degree of exaggeration (OK, a huge amount of exaggeration) that I hate JavaScript to the root of my soul.  Well, jQuery is JavaScript, and it's starting to get as ubiquitous as JavaScript, so I should hate it, too.

I turns out that jQuery may, however, be my salvation as far as JavaScript is concerned.  Because if you want to do anything remotely nifty and peachy keen on the web, you need to know JavaScript, and the niftier and peachier that you want to be, the better you better know JavaScript!  This is largely because it is an integral part of AJAX -- which stands for Asynchronous JavaScript And Xml. 

So, it's jQuery to the rescue!  I bought a book, jQuery in Action, by Bear Bibeault and Yehuda Katz, and CoDe Magazine has been publishing a new series on jQuery, by Rick Strahl, so it's time to dive deep and see what treasures I can wrest from the deep. 

Who knows?  Maybe I'll actually become good at this.

For you non-programmers out there here's a fair warning, this is probably going to be of little interest to you.

The rest of you, if you haven't heard of Stack Overflow yet, this is one Rockin' site for developers.  Just have a quick look:

Stack Overflow

It is a marvelous place to ask programming-related questions, mainly because there are people there who will answer them!  I've done some comparisions between Stack Overflow and the MSDN Forums, and my experience is that questions that garner 2 or 3 views in a week or two on MSDN (and maybe no answers) will get several views in an hour and a first response within minutes.  Awesome.  Maybe they've all gone over to Stack Overflow, I don't know, but this is one heckuva "social networking" site for nerds, let me tell you.  Nerds want to talk about tech, and programmer nerds want to talk about programming, and even better, show off their smarts.  This is the place!