I was getting the following error from MS-Build:
MSBUILD : error MSB1005: Specify a property and its value.
Switch: /p:Deploy=true;DeployToEnvironment=es1ci;Configuration=Debug;UsingNUnit=true;
The problem turned out to be the last “;”. Apparently MsBuild doesn’t like it!. Took it out and MsBuild was able to run!
I came across this article on LinkedIn recently and found it interesting as, in a way, it kind of tells you what someone with good work ethics would not do or say at work. (its based on answers given by bosses at some new technology companies). I wish more people would read this.
1. 'I Am Just Here for the Money'
In China, it is very common for a lot of employees to work just for the money. This means they will leave if you fail to give them a raise or if their peers start to make a lot more money than they do. Our interview process has filtered this as much as possible but if we hear through the "grapevine" that the person is just doing the job for the money we will let them go very quickly.
- Derek Capo, CEO and Founder, Next Step China
2. 'You Never Told Me to Do It'
When something important doesn't get done, the worst thing you can say is, "You never asked me to do it." There are few better ways to neglect yourself of that promotion, a raise, or even job security.
- Ken Cauley, President, Advanced Media
3. 'There's Something Wrong'
It's easy to complain about what's wrong. It's hard to come up with solutions to fix the problem. My former manager at LivingSocial said, "Be a problem solver, not spotter," and I've taken this advice to heart in my everyday life. If you see a problem, don't address the situation with what's wrong; address the situation with an answer. If you don't have a real solution, wait until you do.
4. 'I Want to Do What's Easiest'
We have a client who had an employee literally explain that he would rather do a particularly menial task than the task that the employer had assigned because it would be easier for him. We were shocked. This is the most explicit way to alert your boss that you don't care about improving your skill set without directly telling him. Never do this if you care about your career!
- Patrick Conley, Founder / CEO, Automation Heroes
5. 'That Takes Up Too Much Time'
Through the years, we have had many operational restructurings that have required large amounts of data to be filtered and edited or re-formatted in some manner. There's nothing worse than an employee who complains about the amount of time required to move the company to the next level.
- Laura Land, CFO / COO, Accessory Export, LLC
6. 'I Could Be Doing Other Things'
Bratty much? Don't complain about your job. If you hate it, quit. If there's something wrong with it, find a way to fix it. If someone or something is really ticking you off, don't project your anger onto others, especially not your boss. If it's a good job, be grateful for it. If you want more out of your job, make it happen. Be diplomatic about it and make it your dream job, or leave.
- Danny Wong, Co-founder, Blank Label
7. 'I Promise to Do That'
Don't ever tell your boss you're able to do something if you know you may not be able to deliver. It is better to be honest, ask for advice and have a proactive attitude. If you fail to deliver, then it has negative repercussions for the business, which is taken much more seriously.
- Christopher Pruijsen, Co-Founder / Partnerships, Afrostart.io
8. 'It's Too Difficult'
I get fired up when someone is paralyzed and doesn’t complete a task because it’s difficult or because few others have done it. We’re a disruptive company that has to innovate, that has to do things few have done before us. One of my advisors here has a quote: “If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.” We won’t win if we don’t think big.
- Marcos Cordero, Chief Gradsaver, GradSave, LLC
9. 'I Agree to Disagree'
Whether it is said explicitly or passive-aggressively, this mindset has no place in startup culture. Those who have this mindset should either found their own startups or go work in big corporate America where this goes unnoticed. At a startup, you're either all the way in or all the way out.
- Danny Boice, Co-Founder & CTO, Speek
10. 'I Don't Have an Opinion'
The people who just sit and nod their heads are the ones who are expendable. If you want to make an impression as a valuable member of the team, offer your insights. No one ever agrees with his boss 100 percent all the time, so make your opinion known if you have something worth saying.
- Nick Friedman, President, College Hunks Hauling Junk and College Hunks Moving
11. 'I Can't'
I don’t want to hear excuses ever! We focus on hiring can-do, positive, creative employees with passion, drive and determination.
- Kuba Jewgieniew, Founder and CEO, Realty ONE Group
12. 'I'm Not Optimistic'
The most important thing for any team member is to stay optimistic. Being a pessimist and doubting the future of the company is a real downer. There is nothing wrong with being realistic; however, people who are melancholy suck the life out of an early-stage company and cannot last long.
- Raoul Davis, CEO, Ascendant Group
13. 'I'm Clocked Out'
There is nothing more discouraging to an entrepreneur than when an employee says he is not willing to go the extra mile because he isn't "clocked in." We remind our employees that they work for a young company and they are in control of their own careers. Acting within the status quo never gets you to the top!
- Darren Solomon, President, Kid Ventures
14. 'That's Not My Responsibility'
It’s critical that everyone feels invested in the success of all areas of the business. Everyone should be willing to pitch in, even if what’s required isn’t part of their normal day-to-day activities.
- Robert J. Moore, Co-Founder and CEO, RJMetrics
15. 'That's Not My Job'
Your responsibilities aren't limited to what was listed in your original job description -- especially at a startup. Unless your boss is asking you to do something illegal or unethical, you should do it.
- Mary Ellen Slayter, Founder/Managing Director, Reputation Capital
16. 'I Don't Like Working for Other People'
An employee actually told me that he didn't like working for other people. That person doesn't work for me anymore!
- Andrew Angus, CEO, Switch Video
17. 'I'm Not Working Hard'
I never want to know that someone who works for me isn’t working hard. People can disagree with me, and I’m fine to hear criticism. I’ll never lose respect for anyone because he disagrees with me or because they failed. I don’t want to know if someone is giving less than their best effort or that someone lied. I have high expectations of people when it comes to their work ethic.
- Dries Buytaert, Co-founder and CTO, Drupal
While registering a CRM 2011 plugin I kept getting the following error in only one of our test environments.
Assembly must be registered in isolation
After a lot of searching I found out that the reason I was getting this error in only one environment was that I was not designated as a “Deployment Administrator”. Once I had that fixed, the error went away!
| Unhandled Exception: System.ServiceModel.FaultException`1[[Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.OrganizationServiceFault, Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk, Version=5.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35]]: Action failed for assembly xxxxxxxxx, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=yyyyyyy': Assembly must be registered in isolation. |
A very good presentation on how we can make the field of software engineering better by Greg Wilson: http://vimeo.com/9270320. He also brings up some thought provoking data-points:
Greg Wilson - What We Actually Know About Software Development, and Why We Believe It's True from CUSEC on Vimeo.
From the slides in the presentation:
/// <summary>
/// Interaction logic for App.xaml
/// </summary>
public partial class App
{
/// <summary>
/// This should be a unique name which is used to determine if another instance of app is running
/// </summary>
private const string APP_UNIQUE_NAME = "UNIQUENAME_FOR_MY_APP or use a GUID";
/// <summary>
/// Initializes the Mutex class and make the calling thread have initial ownership of the mutex
/// and a string that is the name of the mutex.
/// </summary>
static readonly Mutex _mutex = new Mutex(true, APP_UNIQUE_NAME);
|
[STAThread]
static void Main()
{
//using TimeSpan.Zero as we want the mutex to test state of wait handle and return immediately
if (_mutex.WaitOne(TimeSpan.Zero, true))
{
//calling waitone stops everyone else from entering the code in this block until the mutex is released
try
{
App app = new App();
app.InitializeComponent();
app.Run();
}
finally
{
_mutex.ReleaseMutex();
}
}
else
{
MessageBox.Show("Only one instance of the app can be run!","App Name",MessageBoxButton.OK, MessageBoxImage.Exclamation);
}
}
|
a. Right click on the application’s project file and select properties. On the tab “Application”, set the “Startup object” to the name of the “App” class we modified above.4. Build and test the application!
b. Right click on the “App.xaml” file in your project and select properties. Change the “Build Action” to “Page” from “ApplicationDefinition”
Encountered on the InterWeb. Unfortunately this is often true and I see a lot of software engineers treat their users like cave-men. Its unfortunate, because it leads to software engineers not listening to their users or changing features as they (software engineers) think is the right way to implement it. Never a good idea.
Respect and trust between the 2 groups is important otherwise you risk building the wrong things for the users.
I recently bought an Obi202 VOIP phone adapter so that I could receive calls on my Google Voice number on my land line phone. (Will post a review soon – but for now just know that I am amazed by this product. Love it).
Anyways, the device was working fine until this morning after which phone calls to my Google Voice number were not ringing on my land-line phone. After a lot of trouble shooting what I found out is that to received calls via the Obi VOPI adapter, you need to enable Google Chat as a forwarding phone. You do this by logging into Google Voice and click on the gear icon (upper right) and then choose “Settings”. Under the “Phone” tab, make sure “Google Chat” is checked.
I recently encountered a compiler error, where I could not apply the [NonSerialized] attribute on a field that was an event.
The error that I got was: Attribute 'NonSerialized' is not valid on this declaration type. It is only valid on 'field' declarations.
I made the assumption that, the reason for that is that events are not serialized by the serializers and so went ahead and left the field without any serialization modification attribute. Alas, the next day, I got emails from a bunch of people at work that my checkin had broken the app! FIRE DRILL.
Apparently, on fields that are events, one needs to attribute them using [field:NonSerialized] attribute.That fixed the problem and life continued on as usual.
Found this good explanation for the various timeouts in WCF and which ones get used on the client and which get used on server.
Brief summary of binding timeout knobs...
Client side:
Server side:
Important: This will not work if your application targets 64 bit. It will only work as a 32bit app as the AcroPdf.dll is a 32 bit dll.
1. Create a WPF Control Library
2. Add a Windows Forms user control
3. Open the user-control form.
4. In the toolbox, right click and choose “Choose Items…”
5. On the “COM Components” tab, select “Adobe PDF Reader”
6. Drag the “Adobe PDF Reader” from the toolbox on the user-control.
Name the control that was added on to the form as "axAcroPdf”
7. Make sure the Anchors are set to “Top, Left” and that Dock is set to “Fill”
8. Add the following code to the code behind:
private AxAcroPDFLib.AxAcroPDF AdobeAcrobatPDfControl
{
get
{
return this.axAcroPDF;
}
}
public void LoadFile(string pdfFilePath)
{
AdobeAcrobatPDfControl.LoadFile(pdfFilePath);
}
8. Create a WPF UserControl. Name it WpfAcrobatCtrl.
9. Drag a WindowsFormsHost WPF control onto the design surface.
10. Set the following properties on the WindowsFormsHost control:
Width and Height to Auto
HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment to Stretch
Name: wpfWindowsFormsHostCtrl.
11. Add the following code to the code behind of the WPF control:
public static readonly DependencyProperty FilePathProperty
= DependencyProperty.Register("FilePath", typeof(string), typeof(WpfAcrobatCtrl), (PropertyMetadata)new FrameworkPropertyMetadata((object)null, new PropertyChangedCallback(WpfAcrobatCtrl.FilePathChanged)));
private string _filePath = string.Empty;
private CustomAcrobatCtrl _customAcrobatCtrl;
private static void FilePathChanged(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
{
((WpfAcrobatCtrl)d).FilePathChanged((string)e.OldValue, (string)e.NewValue);
CommandManager.InvalidateRequerySuggested();
}
public WpfAcrobatCtrl()
{
InitializeComponent();
_customAcrobatCtrl = new CustomAcrobatCtrl();
wpfWindowsFormsHostCtrl.Child = _customAcrobatCtrl;
}
public string FilePath
{
get
{
return _filePath;
}
set
{
this.SetValue(FilePathProperty, value);
}
}
private void FilePathChanged(string oldFilePath, string newFilePath)
{
_filePath = newFilePath;
_customAcrobatCtrl.LoadFile(_filePath);
}
12. Create a new WPF Window.
13. Drag and drop the WpfAcrobatCtrl onto the design surface.
14. Set the file-path in XAML or code-behind.
Eg: wpfAcrobatCtrl.FilePath = "C:\\test.pdf";
or in XAML: <WpfAcrobat:WpfAcrobatCtrl x:Name="wpfAcrobatCtrl" Margin="0" FilePath="C:\\test.pdf"/>
That’s all!
Note: The above code adds a little extra stuff for the dependency property “FilePath”. This allows for setting the file path via XAML (which was important for me as I needed to be able bind to the property).
Note 2: If you try and use the AcroPdf.dll in a 64 bit app, you will get the following error: {"Class not registered (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80040154 (REGDB_E_CLASSNOTREG))"}