I wanted to start using SQL Server. I was using DiscoutASP.NET, and was paying $10/mo. If I wanted to add on SQL Server, it would have cost an additional $10 per month, brining the total to $240 per year, which was a bit more than I wanted to pay for hosting on a personal blog. I searched around and found a host named Arvixe.  The price was absolutely excellent.  The basic hosting package costs $5/mo, and it comes with 6 websites and 6 SQL Server databases. They also claim unlimited bandwidth and storage, although I’m not sure what it means.  I am pretty sure that its not really unlimited, although I doubt they’ll complain about my little blog.  The final price for Arvixe (I also got a static IP) was $96 for 2 years (that’s with a 20% off coupon, which can be found pretty easily using Google), with an additional $48 for a static IP for 2 years. Not bad, and way cheaper than what I was paying before. ...

It seems like FusionCharts does not support changing the color of a trendline via the TRENDVALUES style application.  The color always seems to default to the color of the trendline. The fix to this issue involves modifying the source of the XYPlotChart.as file (you’ll need the source for fusioncharts to be able to do this). Search the file for the following line (it should be line 1789): trendFontObj.color = this.trendLines [i].color; Right afer this line, paste the following code: ...

Finally got Rank 1 in a diamond league (random 2v2) in Starcraft II. I realize rankings don’t mean much, but its still cool to get there.

Here’s something I wasted like 45 minutes on, and it should be pretty trivial. I needed to make the TextArea component NOT selectable, yet still enabled (need the scrollbar to work). I started digging around the TextArea.as class, because no matter what I did in my code (such as myTextArea.textField.selectable = false; ), the TextArea was still selectable. It appears that when the TextArea calls the draw() or setSize() methods, it updates the text field in the TextArea to be selectable depending on whether the TextArea is enabled or not. ...

Logitech has started to send out the replacement remotes (890) as part of their settlement in the class action (Arthur Fulford v. Logitech Inc. Class Action Settlement). Mine came in the mail yesterday on April 15th.  It was a refurbished model, but everything seems good. It has already replaced the H1000 in my living room.

Intel has a new Client IT TCO tool available on their website, and according to the tool, new sizes of Intel drives are coming soon in capacities of 300GB and 600GB. I have an 80GB Intel SSD, and having something that’s 300GB in size would be sweet!

I downloaded the platform preview version of IE9 today to test out some CSS support. I ran a few tests through it, with the following results. The picture on the left was generated using Firefox 3.6 (keep in mind that I did have to use the “-moz” prefix in front of all but one style to make it work in FF). The IE content is on the right. It certainly is possible that IE requires some vendor-specific suffix like Firefox did. However, I did not use any prefix, so the style may actually be supported in some form. ...

Ok, I’ll get straight to the point: There is a lot to dislike about many websites right now when it comes to how these websites generate revenue. On many sites it is hard to actually find the content you were seeking due to the huge amount of ads that get displayed. I’ve had my browser crash countless times due to poorly designed ads (generally, it is due to Flash ads, but it certainly can happen with JavaScript as well). ...

I updated the look of the site so it doesn’t look like the default BlogEngine.NET theme. I’m not a graphic designer, but I think it could have turned out worse. It does look best in the latest version of Opera/Firefox (and probably Chrome and Safari…). Hopefully IE will have support for border-radius and box-shadow soon… I’m not holding my breath though.

This post is here for archival purposes only. The linked items are no longer available. I’ve added the reCaptcha to my contact page. If anyone who has installed the reCaptcha wants to add it to their contact page, the files are available here. These are just the updated contact page files.  You must have the reCaptcha already installed for these to work.