Category: Miscellaneous
The Perils of Renaming in TFS
Apparently, renaming an assembly is a bad idea when TFS is your version control system.
Earlier this week, one of my co-workers renamed an assembly to consolidate some functionality in our application yesterday, and even though TFS said the changes were checked in, they weren’t.
I got the latest code the morning after the change, and got nothing but build failures. We’re using the latest version of TFS and it’s very frustrating that something like this still doesn’t work properly.
Ultimately, the solution was found at the bottom of this thread.
The only way I’ve found to avoid this kind of hassle is to create a new assembly, copy your code from the old assembly to the new one, change any references to the old assembly to use the new assembly, then delete the old assembly once you’ve verified the new one is working.
Please Learn to Code (Continued)
A couple days ago, I wrote a post on why Coding Horror is wrong to suggest people shouldn’t learn to code.
Here’s a much better post on the same subject by Jon Galloway (hat tip Scott Hanselman, and his e-mail Newsletter of Wonderful Things).
Wedding Website Up
Here it is: http://ebandscott.tying.the.knot.org/
Thanks again to my friend Sandro for setting this up.
Candied Sweet Potatoes
Last month (for Thanksgiving), my dad, sister, a few cousins and I cooked so mom could have a break. The food turned out so well, she asked us to do it again for Christmas–including a candied sweet potato recipe I cobbled together from different ones on the internet. The recipe is below.
Ingredients
4-5 lbs of sweet potatoes
1 20oz can of crushed pineapple
1 1/2 cups of dark brown sugar
1 1/4 cup of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter
cinnamon, nutmeg, & ginger to taste
Instructions
Fill an 8qt pot 2/3rds of the way with water. Bring to a boil. Boil the sweet potatoes for 15 minutes. Drain and set aside to cool for peeling and slicing later.
In a saucepan, melt the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, add the brown sugar and stir. Add cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger until the sauce tastes how you want it.
After you’ve peeled and sliced the sweet potatoes, lay down a layer of them, drizzle/smear on some of the sauce, and sprinkle on some of the crushed pineapple. Repeat until you’ve filled whatever casserole dish or foil pan you’re using.
Bake this at 425 degrees for 90 minutes.
My VW Passat and the Check Engine Light
I took mine in for service this week for its regular 5000-mile service, and a check engine light that has been going on and off intermittently for the past month or so. When I got the car back, I found out that the reason for the check engine light coming on was the need for a software update.
This is the first time I can remember that I’ve had to take my car to the shop to get new software. I just wonder how long it will be before car companies can beam us software updates by satellite.
Stockholm, Sweden
Yesterday, before our concert at Ekebyholmsskolan, we got to tour Stockholm. We arrived there from Finland via a Viking Line ferry named Isabella. Two other chaperones and I spent virtually the entire time touring the older parts of Stockholm, including a number of churches. Of the cities we’ve visited so far on the concert tour, Stockholm is the most beautiful. I really like the architecture. Bicycles get their own lanes. It’s a city that’s very easy to tour on foot. The fact that it’s on the water is also a big plus in my book.
We’re getting on our tour bus in another 15 minutes for the drive to Oslo, Norway.
Scandinavia Tour
I’m writing this from a school dorm at Toivonlinna, a Seventh-day Adventist school in Finland. I’m one of a number of chaperones for a high school choir giving concerts in Scandinavia. We gave a concert at the school this morning (and I really do mean “we”, since the chaperones got drafted to sing also). Our concert yesterday in Turku went well enough that the choir went back up to sing an encore. Iceland was our first stop, and despite its name, it was warmer than Finland is now. Even as I type, it is snowing.
The next stop on our tour is Sweden. We’ll be taking an overnight ferry there from Finland (assuming the weather cooperates) after lunch, a cathedral tour, and some shopping.
Taxes
For the first time in a number of years, I had a professional do my taxes. I’d been a TurboTax Online user for the past 6 years, but got a referral from a friend and figured I’d try them out. The parking situation wasn’t ideal, and the wait to be seen was long (over 3 hours for me), but the size of the refund I got back made it worthwhile. If you don’t mind a wait (or the fact that they’re cash-only), visit Newby Tax Service at 6315 Windsor Mill Rd, Gwynn Oak, MD 21207.
Rates are $150 for single filers, $300 for businesses. The charge for e-filing is an additional $80.
Aftermath: The Failure of Virtual Case File
The FBI awarded Lockheed-Martin (my former employer) the lead role in implementing Sentinel, a follow-up effort to the failed VCF project, in March 2006. Nearly two years later, it will be interesting to see what lessons (if any) the FBI learned.