Wait wait don’t tell me: Radio podcast

I stumbled across Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, an NPR show recently one Saturday morning.  Few shows makes me laugh outloud but this one does and I highly recommend it.  It’s actually pretty informative since they take news items of the day and make fun of them.  I’ve subcribed to the weekly podcasts in iTunes

Using Source Safe with Visual Studio 2008

Seems Source Save 2005 is still the official version to use with VS 2008.
Go here to learn more

Cross platform development between Windows and Mac

Cocoa/Windows parallel development thread
Creating Cross-Platform Applications with Core Foundation and Open Source

Cocoa funny business with NSTextView

I couldn’t hide a NSTextView control until I found this articles explaining why setHidden wasn’t working.

I continue to be unimpressed by Apple’s documentation and tools.

Door-to-door solicitation

Door to door solicitation is a a common problem in neighborhoods and one that comes up periodically in mine.
Municipalities can pass rules governing solicitations but the Supreme Court has upheld the constitutional right of missionaries, politicians, and others to knock on doors without first getting permission from local authorities. Go here from some references on this ruling: 1 2 3

The Berkeley Police Department offers this advice on handling Door to Door solicitations:

If you feel that the person who has come to your door is trying to sell or solicit anything under false pretences, please immediately telephone the police. If the solicitor threatens, intimidates you or refuses to leave, please dial 911 for immediate service.

We also recommend that you acknowledge anyone knocking at your door or ringing the door bell.
After not answering a knock at the door, residents occasionally find that they were victimized by the person who had just knocked at their door. You should never open the door to someone you do not know, but always acknowledge that you are home. If you prefer, go to the door with the phone in your hand.

None of this is intended to say that all persons going door to door are doing so illegally or that they are criminals, although historically, there have been many persons soliciting under false pretences. You are the only who can decide if you feel that the solicitation is suspicious. If you are not certain, call the police for assistance. You have the right to ask them to leave printed materials so that you can check into the business or organization. Then you are able to do your own research and if you decide, you may send them a check at a later time. Never provide a door to door solicitor with a check or credit card number. As you may know, identity theft is the fastest growing crime internationally.

There may also be a correlation between someone soliciting and persons casing your house and neighborhood for burglaries. Even if you do not give someone money or buy their products, someone else in your neighborhood may become a victim. Call the police anytime you feel the person or solicitation is possibly illegal. It is also a good idea to let your neighbors know, in case the solicitor tries to victimize them also.

Visual Studio 2008 Install

I got my January MSDN update in the mail yesterday. In it came Visual Studio 2008. The installation did not go smoothly. I got errors that it failed. I ran the setup again in “repair” mode and it got further.

I tried creating a simple C++/MFC application and it did not compile complaining of missing windows.h and winres?.h. I can’t remember the letter missing from the file but it wasn’t winres.h it was looking for. It was looking in ./Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0/VC/atlmfc/include.

I tried repairing again and the files did not appear. I then ran the setup, went to add/remove components and deselected the C++ MFC component, then ran it again and selected it to reinstall it. Though the files that were “missing” did not appear, something changed and when I tried building an C++ MFC app, and Win32 app, those files were not referenced and the projects built successfully. Weird. I then tried compiling a 2005 C++ MFC project I had and it built fine as well.

Relevant Links:
What’s new in Visual C++ 2008
Breaking changes in Visual C++ 2008
Visual Studio 2008 Readme

Can’t remove jobs in spooler

I was unable to print today because there was a job that was pending and I couldn’t delete it.
Ralph explains you can restart the spooler in a command prompt window by typing net stop spooler, net start spooler.  In Vista you must start the command prompt window as an administrator.

Thanks Ralph!