blogz0r ___ v57

If you’re doing any .Net ADO work with an Excel sheet, and want to explicitly enable or disable automatic handling of the first row of the sheet being set as a heading by the data handler, you have to set HDR=YES or NO in the connection string’s ‘Extended Properties’. OK, you may say, but what I ran into the other day was the following helpful message as soon as those properties were added to my connection string:

“Could not find installable ISAM”.

Huh? What’s happened? Dave’s started banging his head against a brick wall, that’s what.

It turns out that the formatting of the connection string has to be quite strict (read: stick random linebreaks in) to get it to work, so here is how I managed to get the damn thing working again:

OleDbConnection connString = new OleDbConnection(@"Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;" +
 "Data Source=c:\somefile.xls;" +
 "Extended Properties=" + (char)34 + "Excel 8.0;HDR=Yes;" + (char)34);

Hope that helps some poor sucker scouring the web who’s run into the same issue.

First off, sorry about the lack of posts.

Secondly, sorry for the usual hollow apology – I usually copy and paste that line from a file on my desktop called blog_apologies.txt as it’s so frequently used on here.

What’s happened between now and the last proper post? Our kitchen is almost finished apart from some bits and pieces that I’ve not had time to sort out. Once that’s done I’m going to post some before and after pictures (everyone loves a before and after) to look back on fondly.

I quit my job a couple of weeks ago. Yeah! The plan is to work on some paid projects for a couple of months and use the time off to find another job that’s a bit more fulfilling – it’s ok being a code monkey, but I’ve been doing this stuff for the the past 6 years or something now so a change in direction (obviously in the same field – I’m not going to go and retrain as a plasterer) will be good for me. Besides, getting the fuck out of an office will be GREAT for me for a while so I don’t have to work alongside another Winter’s victims of bad diets. Sniff. Sniff. Sniff. Arrggh.

If you’re finding that MOUSE_OVER or ROLL_OVER MouseEvents are being fired on animated movieclips at a rate of knots (for example a button or movie element that animates on rollover), and have ensured that mouseChildren is off for the clip – take a look to see if you turned on cacheAsBitmap for the element and try setting it to false…

I can only assume that the internally cached bitmap is interrupting the mouse events when it’s being redrawn, but why exactly is beyond me. This first example will exhibit the weirdness – mouse over the edges of the squares to see.

So there you are.

I’ve just had a weekend in Bratislava, Slovakia for a friend’s stag do – it was a pretty good trip all in all, we did the usual stag related activities (drinking Pilsner, eating, partying, strip joints), plus an activity I’d never done before – shooting guns.

Fuck yeah. I was really looking forward to this particular activity – you get driven out to a remote quarry with an English speaking guide, get some basic safety information, then are unleashed on a series of more powerful weaponry as the session goes on. We started off on Glocks firing 9mm bullets, which were ultimately my favourites (I’ve always preferred the idea of using a handgun) and moved up through Scorpion semi automatics, to AK47s, big ass shotguns and finally a sniper rifle.

The whole session was progressively scarier as the guns got bigger. Until you’ve held a gun with live ammunition in it, you don’t really realise how dangerous it feels. All in all, recommended if you can find somewhere that’s relaxed enough to let someone with no weapons training loose on heavy artillery.

Here’s me owning the targets with the Glock:

They just don’t get it do they?

*yorkshire sigh*

Unfortunately the Update Police came knocking at the weekend and informed me I had to post, otherwise they’d throw me in jail for ever more (well, I assumed that was the case – these kind of threats tend to carry a subtle underlying tone of menace that’s hard to ignore).

What’s happened since the last post you may ask?

House purchase:

Despite all the doom mongering going on at the moment, Han and I have bought a house to live in (shock horror! People need somewhere to live!). This is the 3rd property we’ve attempted to buy, and seems to be actually going somewhere. The last place ended up going tits up due to God knows what, but resulted in us finding somewhere else that’s probably more suitable.

Property buying ultimately leads to content buying for said property, so in the past few months we’ve been buying furniture (including but not limited to a sofa, a reclining chair, an antique French bed, some white goods and lots of stuff for the kitchen). It’s all lovely, but when it’s all stacked up in our two bed flat, kind of in need need of some proper space. Roll on completion.

Work

I’m still working for the same company I started at almost 2 years ago now. The work I do is pretty dull these days and if I didn’t have other things cooking I’d be moving on to pastures new. I work in a relatively new technology environment, but the amount of new tech I’m getting exposed to in a “traditional” web development company is nil at the minute (in a professional capacity).

Other work

More on this at a later date

This has turned out to be a pretty dull post. Sorry.

Following on from Jof’s well received post, “A story of Tuesday October 30th”, I bring you my version.

We were meant to complete on our house today, but that didn’t happen. Anyway – this is my usual day:

8am, get up, have brekkie. While the kettle is boiling I watch the car park fill up:

I usually have muesli but we were out today:

8.35, set off to work via Asda house:

Wait for the bus (8.41 to Morley – it’s late).

9am. Arrive at work :

9.05 – 5.30 coding

5.30 onwards  -travel to Derbyshire. Hit the kitchen!

Bit of lager:

People arrive, curry time!

More beer and some telly, and party hats:

Grand finale in the hot tub:

And that’s that.