Julie Barrett is a freelance writer and photographer based in Plano, TX.

Oops

Fresh when it gets here from Julie Barrett
Tuesday, March 7, 2006


Lost a couple of entries, but it was for a good cause - I hope. I'll repost the picture in a few minutes.

To catch up for those who missed out: I ran into problems with my web site, some of which are chronicled below. Those problems, as it happens, became a spur for me to do much of the conversion over to ASP.Net 2.0. I'll keep it non-geek if at all possible: This is just a technology, but what you would see in the end would be improved performance and I'd also enjoy improved maintenance. A plus, all around, I'd say - except that many of the pages required massive reprogramming. But I promised I'd stay away from the Geek.

So last night I decided that I was ready. I pulled (nearly) all the data off of the web site (yes, I backed it all up first) and moved the new stuff out. The entire process took a couple of hours and it turned out that the new pages don't work, possibly due to a configuration issue on the hosting end. So I'll have to look into that when I get a bit of time. In the meantime, I pulled the new stuff off and put the old stuff back out.

This morning I noticed that the home page wasn't working properly. I don't know if I forgot to move a file out or what, but I couldn't find the cause. Heck, it was even acting up locally, so I decided that it was time to take the plunge and pull all of the PHP pages and go to ASP. The pages look almost the same, but I made a few extra changes, like making some of the navigation database-driven. It's things that should be mostly transparent to you. Visiting a web site is like driving a car: The mechanics and technology matter less than whether or not the thing runs as it should. Unless, of course, you're a car or web geek in which case you want to know all about how things work under the hood.

Make sense?

I thought not. ;-)

Anyway, I did a few other behind-the-scenes things to the site to make the transition to .Net 2.0 more smooth once it does take place. For both of us that means less downtime.

So that's how I spent my day: Banging away at code, working database tables, and testing. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. And at one point I thought I'd backed up the database but apparently hadn't, so I lost today's two entries. Sorry about that.

The polls closed about fifteen minutes ago, and I'm so glad to have the barrage of phone calls stop! Last night we got one that used the name MICKEY MOUSE on the Caller ID box. The number was from MD. I stayed away so I could sign a peitition for the governor's race. I've talked about that before so I won't rehash it.

Amongst today's junk mail was a large envelope marked "Priority" but not real Priority Mail. The tipoff that it was junk was that it was address to "Resident." But then I took a second look at the colors on the envelope. Wait a minute, those are Verizon's corporate colors. Wonder if they want to sign me up for wireless? Or maybe they're announcing a new service. Yes indeed, we have FiOS in the area! We're looking at the pros and cons and right now we're leaning in the direction of going with a trial.

The only caveat is that FiOS is a fiber optic service, which means they'll tear out the copper. So if we decide we don't want the service then we have to pay for them to re-install copper or perhaps go with a FiOS voice-only service. So we'll be researching it this evening and making a decision. This isn't a snap decision; we've been looking into it for a while, but I want to read up some more about customer experiences with the service. And they have a free month, so we can keep our existing broadband which will give us time to migrate e-mail addresses and the like. This should be interesting. I'll keep you posted.

Guess I'll repost my picture and then settle in to watch House. Howard Hesseman is the guest star tonight. This could be fun.

PS--I'll be catching up with e-mail later.

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Filed under: Technology   Life   House MD      

 

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