Problem​

On a Microsoft SQL Server 2005 installation with a linked server configured to "myserver" (which happens to be 2000), execution of a remote stored procedure (EXEC myserver.mydatabase.dbo.mysproc) fails with error:

Msg 7411, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
Server 'myserver' is not configured for RPC.

Problem​

Microsoft .Net Framework 1.1 and .Net Framework 2.0 don't play well together (as ASP.Net apps) on Windows 2003 Server 64 Bit Edition.

Solution​

either upgrade any ASP.Net 1.1 to 2.0 or switch to 32 bit compatibility mode. Of course switching to 32 bit mode will cause you to lose out on some performance benefits, but maybe you're okay with that (unless you're running under a very high load). Two easy steps:

Problem​

Need to convert an image from one format to another using .Net.

Solution​

Microsoft has really made this easy. The key is the System.Drawing.Image class, combined with the System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat class.

Steps:

Problem​

In a .Net 2.0 Windows Forms application, user action causes a new

row to be added to a DataGridView control. When the viewport fills up, causing the vertical scrollbar to appear, the most recent entry is hidden "below the fold" — off the screen. Users want to see the latest entry at all times.

Breathing, eating, sleeping. Typing, gardening, speaking. These things Evolution's end — but not my own. Life begets life, begets continuous wonder and love. Ambition brings no love, births no wonder nor praise for the Universe. Life must be praise, not ambition. Must be love, must be passion mixed with sense mixed with openness. Open to the Mysteries, open to the wide skies above the plain and deep places hidden in the gorge. Open to the divine. Praise be to Thee, O Universe of limitless perfection. Grant that I may Live for Thee.

A friend of mine, Sarah Talcott, recently wrote the Global Youth Cooperation Circle about an interfaith youth exchange she is planning in Cyprus. In that message she asked,

I would love to get your thoughts and ideas about how you see peacebuilding and sustainability education linked. How do the two influence and / or impact the other? How do you see these links in the work you are doing in the world? It would be nice to be able to integrate the ideas and input from this global network of young people into the exchange, as well as to take the findings and insights of the exchange back to you all.

I happened to be thinking of these very issues as I pulled dandelions up from my front yard this afternoon, so when I came inside and read her message, I felt called to respond by rapidly composing the following, which is thought-through but admittedly makes a few leaps in logic (to do otherwise would require a far larger tome!).

An interesting little discussion on the intersection of science and religion has unfolded in Special relativity and the Bahá’í Faith (dead link removed; SF 2025). In references in Some Answered Questions and elsewhere, 'Abdu'l-Bahá speaks of "ether," a concept that was abandoned by the majority of scientists with the acceptance of Einstein's special relativity. The question then is, which should we adhere to? The religious truth or the scientific one?

Fortunately I believe this is a false dichotomy, at least in this specific situation. Despite having a masters degree in physics, I’ve never been bothered by the "ether" quotation. For example, 'Abdu'l-Bahá writes:

"Reflect that light is the expression of the vibrations of the etheric matter: the nerves of the eye are affected by these vibrations, and sight is produced. The light of the lamp exists through the vibration of the etheric matter; so also does that of the sun, but what a difference between the light of the sun and that of the stars or the lamp!"

I was recently watching a show on PBS wherein the narrator was traveling the lands of ancient Canaan, illustrating the paths of Abraham in the book of Genesis. At one point he and his guide climbed a slope next to the Dead Sea, and, having entered a tunnel in the cliff-side, found themselves staring up an immense shaft blasted by salt. Due to a confluence of geographic and climactic factors, the pressure from the Sea will often push great fountains of salt up from the seabed through this shaft, and thence cover the plains above the cliff.

These very plains are one of the rumored locations of the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. The film crew left the tunnels and returned to the cliff top plains. The land was harsh; the uneducated eye would have no idea that salt covered all, preventing growth. Was this spray of salt perhaps the origin of the Bible's story of the destruction of these cities? Even more interesting to me, however, was the pillar of salt that the crew passed – just bigger than a person. "But Lot's wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt" (Gen 19:26). Could this be she?

Completed shortly before his death in 1948, University of Wisconsin forestry professor Aldo Leopold grants his readers the supreme privilege of seeing nature through the original ecologist's eyes. Leopold was probably not the first to use the term "ecologist", nor the first to be be so branded; surely he was the first to deserve it. Though it may appear a quaint historical piece at first glance, its message is no less potent and relevant in the 21st century: nature, the land, deserves full respect and love without regard to traditional economics. Without this, effort at conservation will be a vain half-measure at best.

"To love what was is a new thing under the sun, unknown to most people and to all pigeons," writes Aldo Leopold in his Sketches Here and There. "To see America as history, to conceive of destiny as a becoming, to smell a hickory tree through the still lapse of ages — all these things are possible for us, and to achieve them takes only the free sky, and the will to ply our wings. In these things, and not in Mr. Bush's bombs and Mr. DuPont's nylons, lies objective evidence of our superiority over the beasts."