In order to appreciate Homestar Runner, you need to get past the queasy feeling of uncertainty and illogic. I have now found the panacea for this condition:

Sweet Cuppin' Cakes Decemberween Special

This “spin off” from Homestar Runner is so confusing, that watching it will make any other Homestar item appear 100% normal, if not two or three hundred percent.

[ For Trevor ]

Here's a somewhat interesting article:

MARS

When you select a set of rows using a SQL SELECT statement, either as a stand-alone or inside a stored procedure, SQL Server doesn't automatically produce a cursor over the set of rows as some databases do. Instead, it uses an optimized method to stream the resultset across the network, on occasions reading from the database buffers directly as the network library pulls the data in packet-size chunks. This is known as "the default resultset of SQL Sever" in SQL Server Boks Oline, or "the cursorless resultset". In versions of SQL Server prior to SQL Server 2005, there could only be a single cursorless resultset active on a single connection at a time.

[ Data Access and Storage Developer Center: ADO.NET 2.0 Feature Matrix ]

But the real reason for pointing out this article (besides MARS technology) is the new SQL Server Boks Oline. I've done a bit of research and no one has any details about this new feature of MS SQL. But it sounds pretty spiffy if you ask me...

So based on an off comment by N8, I went browsing on Amazon.com to see how many games are available for PS2 now, that will never be out for GameCube, that I would consider buying.

For Xbox this came up with about 2 or 3 games, and all but Halo are also out on PS2.

For PS2 this comes out to 14 games, and that's just a casual browsing on Amazon.com, and also doesn't include any upcoming games that I might like.

14 games is hard to shake a stick at, and hard to ignore. Why must I be tormented? Perhaps there is someone who owns a PS2 and has had such a bad experience that they wish to warn others away, and such comments might stop me before I buy again...

Link Already Used Gmail by Google, This link is all used up. The link you followed to create a Gmail account has already been used to create an account for YOU@gmail.com

[ Google Search: site:gmail.google.com "Link Already Used" ]

Someone evil is bound to stumble across this and start harvesting gmail accounts. I hope that Google is ready with some seriously good spam blocking algorythms...

Props to Steve

Cafe Asia Restaurant is indeed back in DC at 1720 I Street NW:

And from the Nasi Uduk I had for lunch, I can safely say that the quality is on par with the Rosslyn locale.

NASI UDUK

Indonesian coconut rice platter with spicy beef, crispy anchovies, pickled vegetables, emping (acron chips), gado-gado, chicken satay, & spicy prawn sauce.

[ Cafe Asia Menu (PDF) ]

However, their website sucks. And I mean sucks. For an establishment that has had such good success, and a decent eye for style, it amazes me what they tolerate for a website. It's ugly, 100% flash, hard to read, hard to navigate, non-sensical, and not even finished (try pulling up entrées in the flash menu).

Log in to Gmail before going to the link (let me know if you want an invite).

We're still spiffying things up a bit. In the meantime, we've listed the status of a few features most testers have already requested and a bevy of bugs that our engineers are working diligently to fix.

[ Gmail: Help Center ]

POP3 is the one feature that I think would be required for me. If I can't have my phone tell me when a new mail has been received, how would I know that I have mail? I can't be expected to remember to pull a web page up on a regular basis, can I?

My favorite thing on the list is “Spell check's not checking contractions” since they put a contraction in that list item, I hope that was someone's idea of being funny.

Although my fish abuse SpongeBob, and he's mostly just a place for algae to grow on, I like the kitsch that it adds to my aquarium. However, it makes me sad to think that SpongeBob can't go home, since there is no pineapple in my aquarium. Perhaps it's time to pony up the cash:

Now your fish can live in SpongeBob's tropical abode! Molded pineapple design with a door and window openings for fish to swim through. This great aquarium decoration is recommended for 10 gallon tanks and larger

[ SpongeBob's Pineapple House ]

Or, perhaps I just just get a small crab pot, and mock up the Krusty Krab.

Anyone else dislike CDOSYS (née CDONTS) as much as I do? Anyone else have a preferred substitute?

FreeSMTP.Net is a free SMTP component for the creation and sending of e-mail messages in .Net. Written in pure C#, FreeSMTP.Net is fully managed and incredibly fast. It is totally object oriented and flat out the easiest way to create and send Internet email. Best of all, it's free.

[ VB.Net, ASP.Net, C#... ]

Now that my .NET skills are decent enough, and I know what I can do an how fast I can do it, I'd love to use some of that in legacy code. Black Knight might be the answer, but how can I tell. It is an obscure enough “thing” and I'm not even sure exactly what it is. I have noticed that I can still build CFX tags in VisualStudio 2003 just as I could in VisualStudio 6, but since I've never written any c++ code, and everything that I disliked about c was increased 10 fold in c++, I don't think I'll be doing that any time soon.

Black Knight™ is the first extension to allow CFML developers to make full use of native .NET objects without having to build a custom COM bridge. This alone can save an IT shop dozens of hours of development time.

[ Black Knight™ ]

What would be awesome is if someone familiar with this product just happened to stumble across my site, and offered up their opinion. Since I doubt that will happen, the idle speculation of current and previous coworkers will have to suffice.

However, this lessens the blow:

1. Launch Acrobat ...
2. Go to Edit->Preferences ...
3. Click on Internet
4. Uncheck Display PDF in browser

[ Opening Acrobat PDFs in IE ]

Single dads will still make time for their favorite team once in a while, but you'd be hard-pressed to find one that devotes significant parts of his day to video games.

[ MSN Dating & Personals ]

I think I could find one...

Perhaps the author doesn't realize that some video games are 2 player, and kids can handle that...

If there are as many details about the Sidekick II out when this hits the shelves, and T-Mob carrys the Moto A630, I may not even think twice about picking this up...

Bringing you the connectivity tools you demand and the style sophistication you crave, the Motorola A630 breaks into the mobile scene with an eye-catching design and powerful feature set. At first glance the sleek and ultra-compact model A630 appears to be a small candybar handset; however a closer look reveals that the device can be flipped open to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard and vivid color landscape display.

[ Motorola Motorola A630 ]

Update: “The Motorola A630 is a Cingular Wireless exclusive at launch”

Hind sight is 20/20, isn't it?

When you access a page after an AppDomain load, for example, when you modify the Bin directory or the Web.config file on computers running Microsoft Index Services, you may receive the following error message:

Server Error in '/MyWebApp' Application

Configuration Error

Description: An error occurred during the processing of a configuration file required to service this request. Please review the specific error details below and modify your configuration file appropriately.

Parser Error Message: Access is denied: 'mydll'.

[ Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 329065 ]

I'm thinking that every time I had an error that looked like this, it was the friggin' Indexing Service.

Unfortunately not. Spork rarely appears on camera. But I think they could make this medley their own. (Warning: This is a direct link to a WMV file...)

[ Mario Medley ]

We've all heard of the “burger wars” and the “cola wars” and perhaps someday they'll be “espresso wars”, but who knew there were “molasses wars” just for grandmas?

Grandma^® Molasses v Grandma's^® Molasses

It's time for everyone to choose up sides, or to defeat both Grandmas in one swoop with a dark horse contestant...

If you have time, make up a batch of Gingerbread with Grandma and her recipe and then a batch of Gingerbread with Grandma's and her recipe.

So you thought that the choice of your company's name or flagship product was a bit out there, guess again...

"LaOX" is a coinage consisting of "Lar," the ancient Roman tutelary god of the household, and "Vox," voice or sound, meaning "the voice of the tutelary god of the household calling for happiness."

[ LaOX Company Information ]

(Of course this is like Stop #1 on my tour of Akihabara if and when I get there...)

It was like the California tech superstore Fry's but it was denser. It was Fry's on meth.

[ Japan: Tokyo: Akihabara ]

And I might get to visit...

Shiny Donkey now has TWO XML feeds, courtesy of Matthew. The first is "feed.xml", which gives recent threads & the total # of comments. The second is "recentblogfeed.xml", which gives recent threads AND replies. I'll update the template soon with links to both.

[ Shiny Donkey: .NET, SQL, bad jokes & lots of Bull... ]

Insiders say that the new “comments included” feed is more popular than the original. That begs the question, do readers of this 'blog crave comments in their feed? What about jimmies on their ice cream?

Do you know of an apartment, in the city of Alexandria, with rent under $1200, that allows a dog who weighs 50 pounds?

Or anything even close to that?

Post the results here, and the interested party will check back for your help.

Thanks in advance.