Copy File Forever

Hey Yo, Darth, My DUDE,

How's it hangin there Darth, buddy?   Cooleo!  You da MAN!

Just a quick note this morning since I've been pretty much ignoring all the other shit that your buggy software has been doing lately.  But this one I figure is worth your attention.   Minor thing, but ... anyway, here you go.

This dialog box has been copying my file to the backup USB Flash drive... it's been saying 5 Minutes for about 20 minutes so far.   Dude, you're killing me here.   Can you stop with the fucking "Estimated Time" already?  It's fucking bullshit.   You used to do the right thing, which was show how much of the file was actually transfered and how much is left remaining as the scroll bar.  That was fine.   So it jumped a bit while processing delayed momentarily.  Big fucking deal.   But instead some genius over there (was it you?) decided it would be much crueler and more unusual to have the progress bar just wave back and forth providing zero useful information except for "I'm working on it, maybe".   That kinda sucks, Darth.  Please fix it.   Put back the old way, and it'll all work out fine.  Thanks.

Excel Streaming Code

Here is my Level 5 Code on Excel Streaming.   As you can see it works to send a string to excel through the browser.   The user is then prompted to open or save the file.   You can use HTML to create excel output with formatting such as column colors, and fonts.   Try it out and let me know if it works for you.   It might do the trick to help you if you're interested in how to do this sort of thing.

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Dim strPrintOut As String = BuildOutputString(StoredProcedureName, aryParameters())
                   
Call PrintToExcel(strPrintOut, "MyFirstExcelStreamingDoc", Me.Page)


        Public Sub PrintToExcel(ByVal strPrintOut As String, ByVal FileName As String, ByVal pg As Page)
            Try

                Dim worksheetTitle = ""
                Dim strHeader As String = ""

                worksheetTitle = "WS_" & FileName
                FileName &= FileName & ".xls"

                strHeader &= ""
                strHeader &= ""
                strHeader &= " "
                strHeader &= " "

                pg.Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", String.Format("attachment; filename={0}", FileName))
                pg.Response.Charset = ""
                pg.Response.Cache.SetCacheability(HttpCacheability.NoCache)

                Dim stringWrite As System.IO.StringWriter = New System.IO.StringWriter
                Dim htmlWrite As System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter = New HtmlTextWriter(stringWrite)

                htmlWrite.Write(strPrintOut)

                pg.Response.Write(stringWrite.ToString)
                pg.Response.Write(" ")
                pg.Response.End()

            Catch ex As System.Threading.ThreadAbortException

            Catch ex As Exception
                MySession.BC.HandleMessage(ex, pg)
            End Try

        End Sub

Excel on Windows 7

Hey Darth ya old supermotherfucker, how are ya?   All well on the Death Star?  Cool man!  You da best!

Anyway, I thought I'd just send a quick message about my fun experience with excel just now.  I'm running windows 7 and trying, you know, to do some like analysis and stuff.  So I'm using Excel and everything is going great.  Excel is a little bit sucky in that I keep having to remind each sheet that the named ranges are not for different sheets which means I have to niddle around in that idiot fucking Name > Define ... box and give things names like "SLP_BonusA1"  because excel is too stupid to know that I mean on the current sheet, not some other sheet, but ok, that's not that big a deal.  So after an hour of niddling around and all that stuff and finally getting the formatting and stuff right, and everything looks good - excel crashes.

Thanks Darth.  You've done a real bang up job developing the foundations of computer software going into the 21st Century.  So we should all say Thanks Darth!  You DA MAN!

Then we should have a huge world-wide class action lawsuit to recover all the money you cost us in wasted hours spent redoing all of hour shit because you motherfucking software keeps crashing, no matter what the fucking version.  So let me think... I'm guessing that I've lost over the last 10 years about, conservatively, lets say, about a half hour every day.  

.5 x 365 * 10 = 1825 hours.

I pay myself about $100 / hour.

$100 * 1825 = $182,500

Plus pain and suffering for all the gawd damn mutherfucking frustration... I'd say I should get a multiplier for all of that.  What do you say about 2.5?   Sounds fair to me.  

$182,500 * 2.5 = $456,250

Now lets multiply that by all the computer users who use Windows.  Lets see last time I checked Windows had a huge fucking monopoly on Operating Systems world wide... about 90%.  Ok cool.  So lets say that, oh, conservatively, half the world uses computers.  That's about 3 billion people.   So 90% of that is 2.7 billion people.  Let's consider me an average computer user, losing about a half hour a day, every day, on miscellaneous gawdanm shit due to your incredibly effective project management over there on the Death Star.  Ok... here we go.

2,700,000,000 * $456,240 = $1,231,848,000,000,000.00

Oooo neato.  Looks very much to me like you owe the world: 

$1,231,848,000,000,000.00 !!

Yup, Darth.  I just double checked my math in excel and that's exactly right.  Fun!

I wonder if I can find a lawyer to take this case.   Because I'm guessing that the entire fucking world wants to rip you a new one about now, just like I do.   Funny that.   Gee, I guess you might have thought about that 15 years ago before you decided that it was a good idea to just pump your fucking shit out the door without quality controls, and without any consideration for what the entire world would suffer from your stupid fucking bug-festooned software.  Uh huh.  That's rrrriiiiiight Darth you old super-fuck.   All this shit is actually, really, your fault.  Because you were the one who decided that market share was more important than quality.  And this is the result.  Sooooo...

PAY THE FUCK UP YOU DUMB TWAT!

Sincerely,
Your Favorite Fan,
Darth Developer

But wait! There's more!

Ok, so anyway, Darth, I'm pretty sure you're thinking that I'm just ranting and there's no real reason for it.  That's ok.  You may be right.  But let me try to explain this to you so you can judge this for yourself.

So I'm finally I think at the tail end hopefully of upgrading to IIS7 for my project (instead of working on new business functionality).  So I created a new project as an ASP.Net Web Application.  I took all my files and folder by folder added them.   Then I spent three days debugging all the errors that came up.  Ok finally I figured out, without any help from MSDN which was completely useless, that I need to delete all the folders in the Temporary ASP.Net folder (why in the name of the Dark Emperor do you not simply do that when VS 2005 compiles, one would normally wonder - except of course it is a form of torture, so it makes sense).  Ok so I got through all that after three days.  Fine.  But then I notice that now that I finally have all the blue-squigglies resolved, and I can compile and run the site through VS2005, when I make a change to a file... it doesn't appear on the site.  WTF?

Ok well the reason for that, it turns out, is that even though I'm pointing IIS 7 virtual directory to the location on my d drive under Inetpub, the project got created under my USERS > bla bla bla > Projects folder for some fucking reason no one in the universe can understand.  So I then try to point IIS to the wwwroot folder where the project actually changed the file data, but then I get that big gigantit stinking piece of shit error message (see the post before this one).   Um.... Darth, Darth, dear darling Darth... WTF?  

You really just SUCK, don't you?

Admit it.  You SUCK.

Ok, well that's it for tonight.  After three solid days of struggling, fighting, ripping my hair out, I still don't have a development environment that works.   That's great.  You're so fantastic it's hard to explain.  Really. 

Keep up the great work, Darth.  You are Fantastic!

Sincerely, your devoted fan,
Darth Developer

PS - WTF is this?

Hey Darth,

Right, so WTF is that?  Notice that the error is in a Messagebox?  But it's so MUTHERFUCKING HUGE THAT YOU CANT GET TO THE FUCKING OK BUTTON???   Uh huh.  Yup.   That's right, Darth.

Why would you do that?   Is it like you just are too fucking stupid or what?   I don't get it.  You're obviously not that fucking stupid, or you wouldn't be The Great And Horrible Darth Vendor - but then again you did try to jump over Obi-Juan when he had THE HIGH GROUND and got your fucking legs chopped off like a moron, and the Emperor had to fucking build you that noisy-ass breathing-suit and shit, so well, maybe you actually are that mutherfucking stupid.  I don't know. 

Anyway, I think this messagebox kind of clinches it... common, just admit it... your a fucking stupid piece of fucking shit.  Yah?  Can I get an AMEN, BROTHER??  Ok.  That's good.  The road to recovery starts with admitting your a stupid fucking ass mutherfucking piece of goddam fucking STUPID shit.  Say it again.  Ok.  That's good.  Feel better?  Good.

Now, could you go down to the basement and start cracking heads together and using the Force and the Dark Side Lightning and shit on all the fucking morons working for you?  That would be great.   Then maybe we might get one year where your products and development tools don't make developers wonder if it wouldn't be a better life to live their lives up Jaba's skanky fucking ass instead. Ya know?

Ok, anyway, thanks again for all the good work you're doing, anyway.  I really like the translucent window headers in Windows 7.  That's incredible.  And the cornflower blue shading?  Brilliant!!!!!  Now, if you could just spend a tiny bit of time working on MAKING YOUR GODDAMN FUCKING DEV TOOLS WORK... that would be nice too.  Ok so thanks again!  You are the BEST!

Sincerely, your devoted fan,
Darth Developer

Dear Darth #6

Hey Darth,

Just thought I'd check in and see how you're doing up there in the Death Star and shit.   Wazzup!?!   :D

Anyway, all I gotta say about your development tools and stuff is this:  HOLY MUTHERFUCKINGSHIT!  What the fuck are you THINKING?   You know, Darth, I love you and shit, but your development environment is a big piece of stinking shit.  And I think you know that.  So here I am trying to build some business functionality.  But instead of doing that, which would be great - instead - I'm sitting here for an entire mutherfucking weekend figuring out what the goddamnfuck you did to the new IIS7 platform and Visual Studio to completely fuck my project up the ass for three fucking weeks.  Nothing personal, Darth, but you muthfucking SUCK!   Ya know?   So instead of working on my project and getting new stuff on my site, no - instead of that - I'm sitting here trying to debug your dev tools for you.   How fucking fun is that?

But I think you think I'm exaggerating, so let me give you just one fucking stinking piece of shit example so you can know for a goddam fucking FACT that I'm not kidding around here.  

Let's take IIS7.   1) NOTHING in your documentation warns a developer that if you don't purchase the Professional version of Windows 7, that you're completely fucked with that little piece of shit ASP.Net IIS emulator that fucks your site until it bleeds.  For example, why don't you try making a site in Visual Studio 2005 under IIS 6 with relative paths to images.  THEN try upgrading to the latest hot new shit Windows 7 Home Premium.   It offers to let you install IIS7 which is an upgrade, but ok, whatever.  You go right ahead Darth and follow along with me here.  This is going to be fun.  Now, look at the nice little image file in your site referenced with a ~/Image/MyFuckingImage.jpg.   Ok?  Looks fine right?  Ok now click that shiny little green triangle to compile and click to that page.  WOAH!!!>!>!&!!T!  WTF??!!?!   The image isn't there!  Instead you seeing that fun little red 'x' that says "sorry you stupid mutherfucker, but I don't know what fucking file you're looking for".  Uhhuh.  That one.  Yup.

So NOW go to MSDN and beat your fucking helmet against that for three days and see what that gets you.  Oh about 100,389 documents that never fucking mention one goddam word that you're using that insipid piece of shit ASP.Net emulator junk-shit.   Ohhhhhhhhhhhh...  so you have to UPGRADE TO PROFESSIONAL to make it work.  OHHHHH!!!  WELL WHY THE FUCKING HELL DIDN'T ANYTHING IN THE DEATH STAR DOCUMENTATION GIVE YOU A CLUE???  

I think you should ask your people about that.   And that's not all.  Honestly, THAT IS NOT ALL.  In fact the nightmare goes on and on and on and on, trying to upgrade to the HOT NEW PLATFORM.   uh huh.  You should try it yourself and see how much fun you have with it.   Go ahead, its fun.  I promise.

Ok so anyway, that's all for today, Darth.  Thanks for a great set of development tools.  You're the best!

Sincerely, your faithful fan,
Darth Developer

Dear Darth #5

Heyo Darth.  Ok just a quick note today.  

The ongoing nightmare continues, of course.  I know you "have foreseen" all of this, but I'll give you the skinny just in case you missed the shit going on with my computers here somehow. 

Anyway, first off I got a brand spanking new Acer Aspire 7736Z.   Great machine!   Unfortunately, for some reason, after I installed Visual Studio and other development software the display driver decided it was time to do the old Flicker Trick on me.  It was fine before, but now it goes into a variety of different colors, and/or half the screen gets rubbed out with those silly little gray lines and stuff.   Yay!  That's so fun Darth!  Yay!  Thank you!!   It's so great!  Now I can spend another few days trying to figure out what your software did to the display driver!  Woohoo!   This is how I love to spend my time!  How'd you know!?   Oh yeah... that whole Force Vision thingie.  Ok so can you "Foresee" what I'm doing with my middle finger right now?  

Thanks again for all the great work you do!  Please keep it up.  Not enough suicides among the developers quite yet.   Not to worry, I'm sure with a few more releases of the "new and improved" shit, you'll drive all development over seas where incompetent morons of various nationalities can do all of your shining bright development for you, and be driven mad by the defects in your products instead of us.  That will be much better.   Well, a lot cheaper for you, anyway.   So best wishes with your Galactic Conquest and all.   I'll touch base again when something else exciting happens.   Won't be long, I'm pretty sure.

Sincerely, your fan,
Darth Developer