A while back I received an e-mail: a Spanish-speaker in my area had called 1-800-22-UNITE to learn more about the Bahá'í Faith, could I return the call? I got in touch with the individual, and nervously chatted for a few minutes in a mixture of Spanish and English (her English was better than my Spanish). She had already read about the Bahá'ís online and wanted to know more. So we agreed to study a book called Reflections on the Life of the Spirit together. This small but profound workbook is composed of three units: Understanding the Bahá'í Writings, Prayer, and Life and Death. Each one contains a number of passages from the Bahá'í writings as well as questions designed to help the person remember and apply the text.

A few weeks ago I stumbled upon a tool called Pex from the Microsoft Research Labs: "Pex finds interesting input-output values of your methods, which you can save as a small test suite with high code coverage." Not having much time to spend exploring it, I was fortunate to have time to attend a Twin Cities Developers Guild meeting tonight and hear a talk on on how to use the tool, which now has me jump started. First a few highlights of what I learned (without cribbing too much from Jason Bock's presentation), and then sample results from the method in my last post.

Finished Dune Messiah (2nd time, read 6-7 years ago too?). We all recognize that Tattoine is more than a little Dune-like, and the Sarlac pit is a great nod to Shai-hulud. I'm sure I'm not the first to notice that Annakin had some level of prescience. His prescience warned him of his wife's death. But he accepted the bargain, became a tool. Thence the jihad and establishment of empire. Slightly twisted — Annakin is right hand, rather than Imperator, and jihad occurs post-death rather than ante-. And then I remembered the twins.

No television show in recent memory has been so thought-provoking and forward-looking, in a real-Earth-future sense, as The Dollhouse. At times it waxed smarmy — but the point was more than just titillation, it was classic sci-fi exploration of what might happen when technological innovation and amorality come face to face and embrace each other.

Now the Dollhouse is gone. Few were spared, the story is over, it is time to put down the book. Return to real life. But think. Continue to think, continue to be aware, continue to push yourself to be the best a human can be rather than allowing yourself to sink to the worst.

Most inappropriately-timed commercial ever: OnStar showing how they can remotely slow down your car if it is stolen. I expect that there were an awful lot of Dollhouse fans who immediately swore never to purchase a vehicle with OnStar.

My team often starts Tuesday morning status meetings with a round of win/learn/fun - a team-building exercise where each person gets to mention an exciting "win", something they learned in the last week, or just something fun. Several weeks ago someone brought up C# Extension Methods as a learn. I could see the potential, but I didn't immediately think of any practical examples.

They are the aliment of imagination,
The wellspring of delight.
They turn stars into heroes,
Bring peace to the night.

Fear they can banish,
And in good measure bestow.
All good stories teach;
Even heroes they bring low.

Words are more than letters,
As letters are more than lines.
In the mirror of darkest tales,
Verily even sorrow shines.

When polished in contemplation,
The reflection you will find,
Far eclipses all that
The narrator had in mind.

Inspired by Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie

Strange on the surface, but makes deep sense to me: currently reading Darwin's Origin of the Species, and also started reading Stories of Baha'u'llah and Some Notable Early Believers (Baha'u'llah is the prophet-founder of the Baha'i Faith). Social-scientific evolution gives us a Charles Darwin and social-religious evolution/God gives us the Manifestation of the Cause of God for today. One brought us a better understanding of the physical world, and the other a better understanding of the spiritual world — and its implications for how we live out our lives as sentient beings in that physical world. Its implications for how we live amongst each other, for how we treat that Nature, which Darwin so carefully analyzed and loved. For how we reconcile ourselves to the seeming pointlessness of the universe (dead link removed; SF 2025).

Amid turmoil, Iran set to try 7 Baha'i leaders

(CNN) -- A trial for seven Iranian Baha'is that has come to symbolize the persecution of followers of the faith is set to unfold next week with added controversy and global attention.

Problem​

SSIS 2005 (actually, Microsoft SQL Server Business Intelligence Studio) crashes every time you click on an OLE DB Source to edit it. (there are probably similar errors for OLE DB destinations).

Solution​

oddly enough, synchronize a few DLLs:

Version of the assemblies msmdlocal.dll and Msmgdsrv.dll must be the same of the ones installed into "%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies\" and the ones installed into "%ProgramFiles%\Common Files\System\Ole DB" location.

If it is not same for any or both of these DLLs, then replace the ones in PrivateAssemblies with the ones from ole db.

Hat tip: Calculation tab not working — SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services

Problem​

You have an ASP.Net web service/site that needs to access network resources, and IIS is running in a service account that you do not want to have access to those resources.

Solution​

Create a custom network account and setup a separate application pool. Microsoft article How To: Create a Service Account for an ASP.NET 2.0 Application outlines some pros/cons and gives a few alternatives, as well as giving the basic instructions. However, I found that these instructions had to be modified with inclusion of a few extra security rules. Steps: