When On Trials; Day372; .Net2.0 Revisited

BUT NOW [in spite of past judgments for Israel’s sins], thus says the Lord, He Who created you, O Jacob, and He Who formed you, O Israel: Fear not, for I have redeemed you [ransomed you by paying a price instead of leaving you captives]; I have called you by your name; you are Mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they will not overwhelm you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned or scorched, nor will the flame kindle upon you. Isaiah 43.1-2

My Virtual Pantalan
 
Date:20091227
Location: San Gabriel River near Hwy 29
My virtual pantalan in Texas. When I was growing up in Merida (a small town in Leyte, Philippines) the pantalan [A Pier] was my regular place of solitude. Almost every morning, I ride my bike there just to see the sunrise and listen to the sound of the waves. The place is so peaceful in the morning and not too many people goes there for meditation. I was looking for a place like that here in Texas and I think I accidentally stumbled one. This is the place! Although it is 15 miles from home, I managed to make this place as a regular retreat every week. (Bike with me and you can feel how enjoyable a simple place like this can be.) I think people don’t need to travel far, there is always a special place somewhere undiscovered with hidden beauty.

I underestimated my new project of 3 water bottles per day of H2O.  When the clock was 2200h last night, I was still at the beginning of bottle#3. I have two hours to consume the 27oz of water and I was planning to go to bed by midnight or 1am.  Well, I have to force myself to do it because I told myself that I have to do it.  It’s going to be a long year of drinking water.  Long distance swim yesterday was fine (the usual 2.4) with the same pace, the same crowd, the same lifeguard, same chlorine smell. I felt that I needed to change my swimming training, it’s been boring nowadays doing the long distance swim.  My body already adapted to the training and I needed to change something (I don’t know yet).  I stopped because I reached my distance goal but I still had a lot of energy left in me.  Heart rate probably was on the 100’s (very low, not strenuous).

I accomplished a few things yesterday as I indicated in my MIT. I went to MB of Georgetown to get my wife’s low beam bulb fixed.  Spent around 1 hour to change 2 defective bulbs. It was still under warranty and cost was zero.  I’ve already googled on how to DIY the repair, I just needed to use up my warranty.

It’s been a while since I worked on ASP.net 2.0.  When Sharepoint 3.0 came out, I shifted all my DB programming to Sharepoint because it is so easy to deploy a simple data entry and queries.  Then as months goes by, I realized that Sharepoint has limitations regarding data access and it could not perform what I wanted to do with a certain data.  So then I dug up my notes and old projects and still found some useful templates in them.  I thought I have to start from ground zero but when I started playing with Visual Web Developer 2008, the projects that I build on .Net 2.0 was still working.  I am working on Windows 2008 environment and IIS7 was giving me a hard time.  Microsoft really changed the UI for IIS7 and I have to relearn where a certain features resides.

I am not a true .Net programmer, my background is more on hardware and electronics but I found Visual programming interesting and doable and easy to learn and that is why I am on this journey.  This is not my full time job but going through the motions with the project creates a more complex journey of learning (love the challenge) and later great results that might help somebody out there.  So if you are in the same journey, don’t hesitate to contact me. This is not a HOWTO document to show you step by step on how to deploy the project but rather a roadmap on how to start a project and finish it.  I have no other objectives but to learn. Join me as I took a dive into an unknown territories of web database development.  I think it will be fun.  If you already are a seasoned .Net programmer, help me out. Maybe we can join hands in tackling a project.  Please let me know if you are interested so that I can give you an account to my web server and you can start develop a project remotely anywhere in the world.

Requirements:
1. A Web Server – Dell PE2850
2. A Domain Name – rigel.dynip.com
3. Windows 2008 OS
4. SQL Server 2005
5. Visual Web Developer 2008
6. Log Parser 2.2
7. Log Parser Lizard
8. Time and patience

Objectives:
1. Learn ASP.net 2.0 and 3.5
2. Learn Data Recovery (must protect the OS and practice disaster recovery)
3. Learn SQL Server 2008 Admin

Completed Tasks:
1. Purchased a used Dell Poweredge PE2850 Xeon 2 CPU 4GB memory, 4x73GB SCSI drives. Cost=$160.00
2. Upgraded the PE2850 CD drive to DVD, Used my old notebook DVD drive. Cost=$0.00
3. Added a SATA card to PE2850, got it from FRY’s, Cost=$30.00
4. Added a 150GB 2.5” Notebook drive (eSata) for data storage, Cost=$80.00
5. Mirrored Disk0 and Disk1.
6. Made Disk2 as Virtual PC storage
7. Made Disk3 as Spare drive for the Mirror disk (this is a standby drive to fully recover an OS disaster)
8. Installed Windows 2008 x64 Standard
9. Update Windows 2008 x64 to SP2
10. Installed Virtual Server 2005
11. Installed Visual Web Developer 2008
12. Installed SQL Server 2005 Standard (Express Version Link)
13. Installed Virtual CD Clone Drive– to read .iso images
14. Installed Frontpage Server Extension on IIS7, requirement for remote development of projects
15. Installed VWD AJAX Extension
15. Installed VWD AJAX Template

Test Site
Book-Visual Web Developer 2005

MIT (Most Important Task)
1. .Net2.0 project
2.
3.

0000, Sleep
0100, Sleep
0200, Sleep
0300, Sleep
0400, Sleep
0500, Sleep
0600, Sleep
0700, Breakfast; journal;
0800,
0900, .Net 2.0 project
1000, .Net 2.0 project
1100, .Net 2.0 project
1200, .Net 2.0 project
1300, .Net 2.0 project
1400, .Net 2.0 project
1500, .Net 2.0 project
1600, .Net 2.0 project
1700,
1800, Backup Hyper-V
1900,
2000,
2100,
2200,
2300,
2400, Sleep