Geiger

Woolly Mammoth Found

2012-02-08T19:35:01Z

I SOOOOO want this to be real. However some are saying…

- This is a bear with a huge fish in it’s mouth. (However Bears have necks so I disagree)

- It’s an elephant that travelled too far North and is lost.’

The video was “Supposedly” taken by a Russian civil engineer that was surveying for a future road.

Cartoons We Can All Agree On

2012-02-06T19:53:12Z

This is the 2nd post in my series on “Stuff My Dad Emails Me”

Salary of retired US Presidents …………..$180,000 FOR LIFE This is stupid !
Salary of House/Senate …………………………$174,000 FOR LIFE This is stupid !
Salary of Speaker of the House …………..$223,500 FOR LIFE This is stupid !
Salary of Majority/Minority Leaders …$193,400 FOR LIFE This is stupid !
Average Salary of a teacher ……………… $40,065
Average Salary of Soldier deployed in Afghanistan ……….. $38,000
I think we found where the cuts should be made! If you agree… RE-POST

“You cannot get the water to clear up
Until you get the pigs out of the creek.”

How to Catch Wild Pigs

2012-02-06T19:53:00Z

Welcome to my new series on “Stuff my Dad Emails Me”

CATCHING PIGS

There was a chemistry professor in a large college that had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab, the Prof noticed one young man, an exchange student, who kept rubbing his back and stretching as if his back hurt.

The professor asked the young man what was the matter.

The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country’s government and install a new communist regime.

In the midst of his story, he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked: “Do you know how to catch wild pigs?”

The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said that it was no joke.

“You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come every day to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming.

When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence.

They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side.

The pigs, which are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat that free corn again.

You then slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd.
Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom.

They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught.

Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.”

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening in America. The government keeps pushing us toward Communism/Socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tax exemptions, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc. while we continually lose our freedoms, just a little at a time.

One should always remember two truths:

1) There is no such thing as a free lunch, someone is paying for it

2) And when you begin to think that having your government
provide for you and make your decisions is ok, realize that you’ve
also given up the freedom that goes with making your own choices.

If you see that all of this wonderful government ‘help’ is a problem confronting the future of democracy in America, you might want to send this on to your friends.

If you think the free ride is essential to your way of life, then you will probably delete this email.

But God help you when the gate slams shut!

Add jQuery to ASP.net

2012-01-26T15:40:12Z

Quick Background:

I don’t know much about jQuery other than it’s a library of Javascript functions. I wasn’t sure of how to add it to an ASP.net website running on IIS. It’s a lot simpler than you’d think but there wasn’t a good explanation out there.

Quick Example:

Add…

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.1/jquery.min.js"></script>

That links the library so that later on the page you can call jQuery. For example this…

<script type="text/javascript">
    $(document).ready(function () {
        $("a").click(function (event) {
            alert("Thanks for visiting!");
        });
    });
</script>

Will change all links on the page. Instead of linking they will create a popup saying “Thanks for Visiting”.

Summary:

Adding jQuery to an ASP.net page is the same as adding it to any html/php/etc… page. While you may download the javascripts I suggest using Google’s repository as it will likely load faster than hosting your own.

You can also change the version by changing the number. The above version is 1.7.1 but you can use any versions out there.

How much does H&R Block Cost

2012-02-03T21:20:24Z

Doing a tax return is overly hard even if you are using the easy form (1040EZ). Most people feel dyslexic just reading the first question. People can’t help but feel that the government makes it hard so that you and I pay so called “Experts” like H&R Block to do it for us.

Paying a few dollars more to know that the job is done right might be worth it to some.

It is usually not worth it for people who make less than $40,000 a year.

Recently, a woman very near and dear to me that makes less than $25,000 a year went to H&R Block to have her taxes done. The price of doing a simple tax return at H&R Block was over $140.00!
Now this person who I love very much likes things simple. She doesn’t have a car and walks to work. She could find a higher paying job but likes the stress free style that comes with a small office where the employees care about each other. There she is an important cog of a small business. Some may say the American dream is to earn riches but this woman is rich in everything but money. She loves to make stockings for everybody at Christmas, make the occasional crafts, take care of those around her and live in a quant All American town that still has cobblestone streets in some places. She takes care of everything herself and spends her dollars wisely on the things she really needs.

H&R Block doesn’t care about this kind of thing, just the dollar, not the person.

There are sites like TaxAct.com (sponsored link) that charge a total of $15 file your taxes. ($0 for Federal and $15 for State).

The woman in this story chooses the path of least resistance so instead opted to rely on the “Expert” who “Expertly” parted her and her money. For me this is the last time and next year I will be taking her through doing it online at TaxAct or some other similar site.

Summary: Don’t let your friends or family waste money on H&R Block. Help your grandmother, grandfather, aunt, uncle or elderly neighbor across the street or down the hall save a $100.00 by taking 15 minutes and guiding them through the online tax forms for them.

For me, doing that is the real American Way.

Kindle Fire Shipped

2011-11-14T15:24:56Z

My Kindle Fire is on it’s way!

If you are jealous you can still order one here.

ORDER A KINDLE FIRE!

Congratulations – your Kindle Fire is on the way. Learn how to get started and discover what your Kindle Fire can do!


Kindle Fire puts Amazon’s incredible selection of 18 million movies and TV shows, music, apps and games, books, magazines, and more at your fingertips. Shop now and your titles will be available on your Kindle Fire after you’ve connected to Wi-Fi.

Free month of Amazon Prime

Prime members enjoy unlimited, instant streaming of over 10,000 movies & TV shows and can read thousands of books for free – as frequently as a book a month, with no due dates. Not a Prime member? Your Kindle Fire comes with a one month free trial. Learn more



Upload your music collection

With Kindle Fire, you can enjoy your music wherever you are. Discover over 17 million songs in the music store to add to your collection, plus upload your existing music now so that you can stream or download to your Kindle Fire the moment it arrives. Get started

Web browsing

Experience Amazon Silk – our new mobile web browser, exclusively available on Kindle Fire. Learn more



Outfit your Kindle Fire

Protect and personalize your new Kindle Fire with covers, sleeves, screen protectors, earphones, and more accessories made especially for the Kindle Fire. Shop accessories now

To easily shop for books, movies, music, apps, and more right from your Kindle Fire, you’ll need to connect to a Wi-Fi network and have a 1-Click payment method.

Connecting to a Wi-Fi network

Kindle Fire connects wirelessly over Wi-Fi networks. Don’t know how to connect to a Wi-Fi network? Learn how
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Kindle Fire is beautifully simple and easy to use. Have any questions? Check out the Getting Started guide and our online support pages to learn more about Kindle Fire.

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Information on How to Fix Your Webservice Client

2011-11-07T20:41:27Z

Background: (Skip to the bottom if you don’t really want to understand)

In Visual Studio (VS) when web services work, they are nice and simple to understand. When they don’t work, there’s no way of finding out what the real problem is.

In Visual Studio 2008 (and the editions before that), VS used WSDL.exe to consume the webservices for you to use. Most people would simply right click on the project, type the webservice URL and then click add reference. Most do not care about the specifics of how it was done.

Visual Studio 2010 threw out WSDL.exe and decided to use something called WCF (Windows Communication Foundation). WCF uses version 4.0 of the framework. Instead of adding a “Web Reference” you add a “Service Reference”. I thought these were the same but one uses WSDL.exe and the other uses WCF (SVCUTIL.exe).

When the webservice/service reference is created right, you don’t care which one you use as long as it works. Most don’t care about SOAP, WSDL, XML or anything else. They just want to have a class that wrapped around the webservice and not think about all the little parts that don’t matter.

For my Taleo Reference that kept not working I would get errors like…

Unable to import binding ‘…Binding’ from namespace ‘…’
or…
Custom tool error: Failed to generate code for the service reference ‘…’. Please check other error and warning messages for details.

It took some trial and error to figure out what exactly was happening wrong. I quickly found a Microsoft Page about the error but did not think that was the problem but it ended up pretty much being that but the solution it gave was not pretty and has you rewriting the WSDL file. Because the WSDL files in my case are so complex, I did not consider that an adequate solution.

The problem for me was that the WSDL file was trying to import an XSD schema and wasn’t doing it correctly. For me WSDL.exe and SVCUTIL.exe kept failing because it did not import the “Schema” properly.

Fortunately you can use WSDL.exe and SVCUTIL.exe from the command line and add in the extra XSD’s that you want it to import.

WSDL.exe and SVCUTIL.exe simply create a C# (or VB) file that wraps up your webservice nicely. Here are 2 examples…

WSDL.exe Example (VS2008 and Older)

cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin\"

wsdl /out:c:\MyProxyClass.cs /username:USER /password:PASSWORD /pd:PROXY-IF-YOU-USE-ONE /p:PROXY-PORT-IF-YOU-USE-ONE "https://WSDL-LOCATION.wsdl">https://WSDL-LOCATION.wsdl" "http://www.w3.org/2004/11/xmlmime"

SVCUTIL.exe Example (VS2010 and Newer)

cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Bin"

svcutil /language:cs /out:c:\MyProxyClass.cs /config:app.config "https://WSDL-LOCATION.wsdl" "http://www.w3.org/2004/11/xmlmime"

Note that if you use a proxy and SVCUTIL you may have to download the WSDL file as SVCUTIL does not work with proxies. (Silly but true)

Backup and Restore Encrypted SQL Databases

2011-10-06T14:10:05Z

I am writing this article because I could not find a simple explanation on how to encrypt, backup and restore a SQL database. This applies to SQL 2008 and 2008 R2 and most likely any version that uses Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) in the future.

Other titles/search-terms that you may have searched for are…
- How to Encrypt a SQL Database
- Apply TDE
- Restore a TDE database
- Restore an encrypted SQL database
- Backup/Restore a TDE Certificate

Below are the steps to Encrypt a SQL Database. The MOST important part though is to note the passwords used and to save the certificate and private key files. If you lose any of that information, you database can never be restored and is lost forever!

Enable Encryption on a SQL Database

1. Create a master key encryption in Master database.
2. Create a Certificate that TDE will use.
3. BACKUP the certificate to 2 files. (A Cert File and Private Key file that is encrypted with another password)
4. Create a Database Encryption Key based off of the Cert you created in step 2
5. Turn Encryption on in the target database

Sample Encrypt Database Script
–Step 1
USE master
go
CREATE MASTER KEY ENCRYPTION BY PASSWORD = ’1StrongPassword’
go
–Step 2
CREATE CERTIFICATE TDECert WITH SUBJECT = ‘TDE Certificate’
go
–Step 3
BACKUP CERTIFICATE TDECert TO FILE = ‘C:\Temp\TDECert.Cer’
WITH PRIVATE KEY (
FILE = ‘C:\Temp\TDECertPrivateKey.pvk’,
ENCRYPTION BY PASSWORD = ’2ndStrongPassword’)
go
–Step 4
USE SecureTest
go
CREATE DATABASE ENCRYPTION KEY
WITH ALGORITHM = AES_128
ENCRYPTION BY SERVER CERTIFICATE TDECert;
go
–Step 5
ALTER DATABASE SecureTest
SET Encryption ON

Needed in order to Restore an Encrypted Database
1. The Master Database Encryption Password
2. The Certificate File Used
3. The Private Key File Used
4. The Decryption password for 2 and 3 (It is the same password for both).

Restore Encrypted SQL Database

1. Create the Master Key in the Master Database
2. Restore the Certificate used for encrypting the database to the Master Database.
    This is done from 2 files (which are encrypted using yet another password)
    -The Certificate File and the Private Key File.
    -These are restored using the "CREATE CERTIFICATE" command as "RESTORE CERTIFICATE" is not a valid command.
3. Restore the database normally.

Sample Restore Database Script
–Step 1
USE master
go
CREATE MASTER KEY ENCRYPTION BY PASSWORD = ’1StrongPassword’
go
–Step 2
CREATE CERTIFICATE TDECert
    FROM FILE = ‘C:\Temp\TDECert.Cer’
    WITH PRIVATE KEY (FILE = ‘C:\Temp\TDECertPrivateKey.pvk’,
    DECRYPTION BY PASSWORD = ’2ndStrongPassword’)
go
–Step 3
–Restore database normally. It will use the cert from step 2

Obama Job Plan = $210,000 per job created

2011-09-09T14:01:09Z

I just got done reading a NY Times Article about Obama’s job plan.

Conservative estimates set 1,300,000 new jobs by the end of 2012 and 800,000 more by the end of 2013 for a total of 2.1 million jobs.

Others say that it might be 2.7 million jobs created.

The cost of this is $447 billion. That’s $447,000,000,000.00 for 2,100,000 jobs. That means that each job costs the government $212,857.14.

(Unless the high estimates are right and it ends up costing only $165,555.56)

Alas I don’t know the details about the job plan and all the “Trickle Down” thoughts put into it. However, I would think it should cost a lot less than $200k per job. What are your thoughts?

Anonymous Resumes

2011-08-24T14:36:54Z

No matter how happy you are you want a better job, more money or both. With Monster, Indeed, LinkedIn, SimplyHired, etc… it’s a real mess.

Sure, you could search the web, every job site and company site in the world but you’d never get the exposure you want. Even worse… your current employer sees that you’re looking for work which could be AWFUL!

There’s a simple solution though. Twitter!

Now how the hell can Twitter + You = A Better Job/Life? It’s real easy, here’s my list of why’s then I’ll tell you how.

The Why!

1. Anonymous
Anybody can set up a Twitter Account and be Anonymous.
Your current employer will have no idea you’re looking.
2. Simple
You have to get your skillset down to 140 characters. This means NO BS! Just the facts Maam!
3. Even Playing Field
It’s not who you know, it’s what you know. Other than that, all Tweeters are viewed as equal.
4. Instant World Exposure
Putting your resume on a blog or other website is slow and takes Google a longtime to show in searches.
Twitter is instant!
5. Free!
It costs an employer $400+ to post 1 job on Monster. Twitter is free for both you and them!
6. Easier than the job sites
It can take 10-15 minutes to setup a resume on the big job sites. Twitter can take as little as 1 minute.

The How!

1. Signup for Twitter at Twitter.com
2. Use your real name or make up one to hide it from your bosses.
3. Post a tweet that starts with this…
“@TweetResumes #Resume Skill1 Skill2 Skill3…” where Skill1 is your first skill and so on.

Example…

Before you know it, you’ll twitter resume will be getting seen by hundreds that would never have known you existed previously.