As some of you may have noticed, my site was down for 3-4 days. The reason, was that, the server I was hosting on at Virtuoso Net Solutions was hacked. What’s more is that the company cliams all the backups were compromised as well. Now I don’t know about you, but I think you should store the backup away from the server! I don’t really know if they are telling the truth about that or not, seems kind of careless it if is. What’s more is that Shanghai Blog was hosted on the same server, so I am going to have to find a new host and restore the backup of it as well, as soon as I can.

Right now I am hosting this site on GoDaddy, which so far I am pleased with.

Well stay tuned for more developments.

PS - Some of your most recent comments may be lost, due to the fact, that I had to restore the backup from about a month ago.

This is a clip I took of my dog and cat in our backyard wrestling. They do this very offen and the cat usually will submit to the dog, but every once in a while the cat gets fed up!

Well, I have embarked on yet another pet project. This time it is with the help of Jiang and Siqing. We have created and launched Shanghai Blog. It is basically a community blog for the city of Shanghai in China. So, if you are not interested in Shanghai and/or your not from Shanghai, then this probably doesn’t interest you in the least…so I’ll shut up now about it.

Lastly, I recently finished up another article for 4GuysFromRolla, on the cutomizing the CreateUserWizard in ASP .Net 2.0. As soon as it has gone through the editing/approcal stage, you should see it up there (give it a week or so).

Update: The article is up now here: http://aspnet.4guysfromrolla.com/articles/070506-1.aspx

I’ve been reading another book by Bill Bryson entitled, “I’m a Stranger Here Myself”. Each chapter in the book is basically from a regular British newspaper column he wrote for, on his experiences coming back to America after being away in England for 20 years. Some chapters can be a bit boring or just too sarcastic, but most are pretty funny and sum up a lot of my own feelings about American culture. Check it out of your local library as I did, if you have the chance. Also, check out the audio book version of “A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail” by the same author, if you like travel diaries (it really funny in spots).

The article in which I was approved to write for the website 4GuysFromRolla, has been posted live and can be found here:

http://aspnet.4guysfromrolla.com/articles/062106-1.aspx

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this (I hope you have or this will make no sense whatsoever), but recently I have been picking up on some patterns when it comes to older people’s speech. While listenining to an older member of my extended family, it dawned on me, older people tend to repeat the same stories and life experiences–the same ones everytime you see them. But, that’s not the interesting part. What is even more interesting, is that I have noticed that they tell the stories using the exact same idiocyncratic speeh and words as they did the other time you heard it. It is as if they not only have latched on to these life experiences and stories so much, but they also have told them so many times, they have a set way of recounting them.

So, next time you are listening to you grandpa tell you again, how he got lost in the woods and meet Jacques Cousteau–listen closely. Next week he will probably tell the same story the exact same way. Now if you will exuse me, I have rewrite this article several thousand time, so I can repeat it well later in life.

In the beta releases of ASP .Net 2.0, one could simply set the Visible attribute to False on a BoundField column in a GridView control, and then retrieve the value of the BoundField’s selected row by accessing the SelectedValue attribute of the GridView like so (maybe in the SelectedIndexChanged event):

string SelectedRowValue = GridView1.SelectedRow.Cells[0].Text;

But, in the final release you cannot do this, for security reasons. The previous code will just return an empty string. Now what should be done to get the value, is to not include the BoundField column you do not want to display at all. Instead, you should include the column name in the DataKeyNames attribute of the GridView. Then in the event you can retrieve the value like so:

string SelectedRowValue = GridView1.DataKeys[GridView1.SelectedIndex].Value;

Just a quick note to say, I was approved to write an article for 4GuysFromRolla. I used that website a lot for reference material and tutorials when I first was learning ASP .Net. The article is basically an easy introduction into AJAX using Microsoft’s Atlas framework and ASP .Net 2.0. Hopefully after the review process it will be up there in the next few weeks. Wish me luck.

Recently I’ve been diving into ASP .Net 2.0 pretty heavily and I wanted to share a few helpful articles I have come across and have found invaluable working on an ongoing personal project (shhhh it’s a secret).

• ScottGu
• “Building a DAL using Strongly Typed TableAdapters and DataTables in VS 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0“
• “Always set the “applicationName” property when configuring ASP.NET 2.0 Membership and other Providers“
• MSDN
• “Storing User Information with ASP.NET 2.0 Profiles“
• Extra info from Jelle Druyts “The ASP.NET 2.0 Profile“

Got a speeding ticket this last weekend. Came out to $107 dollars ($10 off since I was wearing a seat belt). Word to the wise, watch your speed when on Hwy. 65.

On a totally different note, I found this long lost photo taken by mister Luke Williams, while on a company retreat: