digitalMoto.net

ENV: The printer is wired up to the network and is exposed to users via a server.

ISSUE: The printer says it is out of paper when you print from your (Win7) desktop. The unit is not out of paper. It can copy and and scan without any problems. The woman asked me what to do. I suggested all of the usual things, power off, wait 2 minutes, power it back up, pulled the tray(s), make sure there are no pieces/scraps of paper in the path, etc. If that doesn’t work, contact Dell tech support.

The woman has a long conversation with Dell tech support. They go through all of the usual steps that we’ve already covered and throw in a few more. Everything checks out. The sensors are working. The problem is between the desktop and the printer. All of this leads to “Uninstall it from the server and reinstall the drivers.”

At this point, I’m asked to see what’s going on. I log in remotely, well after business hours to have a look. There are 2 print jobs and one fax job stuck in the print queue. I delete the print jobs and the fax queue clears on it’s own.

I ask the woman to double check everything when she gets into the office.

Everything is working again.

SOLUTION: If you have a printer out of paper error, check the print queue and clear any hung jobs. It fixed our problem.

I just realized something. My new glasses give 2D images a 3D quality.

One downside of my constant computer use is the damage it has done to my eyes. The first time I had problems with my eyes and vision induced headaches was back in college. I was leading a team of drafters drawing floor plans for grocery store end caps. It was a subcontracting gig. We’d get large piles of hand done drawings, done on grid paper. The team would convert the drawings into AutoCAD drawings. My job was to hand-out the daily work items and validate the results. So I spent hours hunched over drawings, comparing line drawings printed from AutoCAD against the hand-drawn field drawings. My eyes suffered. Read more…

Setting a WPF / XAML Margin control within the designer can be done in two different ways. If you want a single value for all directions: Margin=”5″. If you would like different margins, then put a space between each assignment: Margin=”5 10 5 0″ The assignment order is left, top, right, and finally bottom.

I found this today. I need to convert an enumeration into a string list to populate a combobox. I had been looking at converters to do the heavy lifting, but realized that I should do the work in the ViewModel. That simplifies the XAML a bit. While I was typing out code to read the enum values from the settings file Resharper showed me a choice… I could use my custom converter or use the one in the Component Model. Well, I’d rather use the framework solution over a custom solution any day. If nothing else it’s less to test.

Here’s an example from MSDN:

  using System.ComponentModel;

  var myServer= Servers.Exchange;
  string myServerString = "BizTalk";
  Console.WriteLine(TypeDescriptor.GetConverter(myServer).ConvertTo(myServer, typeof(string)));
  Console.WriteLine(TypeDescriptor.GetConverter(myServer).ConvertFrom(myServerString));

Enjoy,

References:

MSDN EnumConverter Class
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.componentmodel.enumconverter.aspx

I signed up for Live Mesh this morning. I’m curious, but not super excited about it. It is still in the beta phase so it could crash and burn at any moment, but it is still worth looking at. I usually carry around a hard drive with all of my music and code samples. This might save me a lot of that hassle/risk. If I copy my music to a local disc (update as needed) and throw all of my code files into the cloud, I might be able to skip the whole thing. I do have backups of the disc from the nightly Home Server backup process, but it is still a hassle and a risk to carry around a hard drive all of the time.

At the office, I need to repair a RAID disc failure, get another backup protocol online and then start looking at backing everything up to the cloud. I am thinking JungleDisc might be the way to go based upon the current situation. Anything that I can reduce a process to a one-click and/or a click-and-forget is very good thing.

It’s all about data storage and retrieval. I wonder if MS has anything available to BizSpark members…

References:

Live Mesh
mesh.com

Jungle Disk
http://jungledisc.com/

Super colliders fail because of time travelers.
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/10/is-a-time-travelling-higgs-sab.html

Agile is treating the symptoms, not the disease.
http://www.javaworld.com/community/node/3530

And for the gear heads…
GIpro X-Type – Gear Indicator
http://www.pashnit.com/product/gipro_x_type.html

“Yes, have some.”

Fun? No, not really.  Learning isn’t always fun.

Interesting? Yes.

Informative? Yes.

Repeater? Not sure about that. Maybe. Maybe not.

I signed up for a track day at PIR for this weekend. I’m excited but nervous. I know there is a vast amount of knowledge that I lack. I want to learn how to “really” corner, fast, smooth, safely. Anyone can go fast in a straight line. Cornering is defining skill when it comes to riding a motorcycle. If I can learn to corner “correctly” at 90+, then navigating the cloverleaf at 35 should be easy, even when things are not perfect and/or drama ensues. Right?

So how did this come about? Read more…

I was up late again last night. Actually it’s the first time I have stayed up programming past midnight since we returned from vacation. I went to bed after 01:15 and was awake past 02:30.

Why?

I am having a problem with data not updating consistently on the CRM at the office. Everything works fine on my home/dev network (of course). The transactions appears to work correctly on the office network. The app loads. Data is returned and populated into the grid. Items can be editted. The problems start (or don’t) when you click save after making a change to the data. The event appears to work, but the item refresh restores the original values. The main grid (which is visable behind the edit screen) shows the new/updated information. Close the edit screen and click refresh. The original data returns. WTF? Restart the app. The original data is still there. All edits were disgarded. Really? WTF?!? Read more…

I’ve been up to my eye-balls in WPF development lately. It is a bit different from ASP.Net and WinForm development. I found a utility today that helps me understand exactly what is going on with the UI: Snoop. Snoop can “see” all WPF apps running. You can examine the logical tree and even map UI elements to specific items on the UI surface. (Ctrl + Shift + Mouse-Over the UI element)

Snoop:
http://blois.us/Snoop/

Enjoy,