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This post is really a test of sorts. If you can read it, that means that Windows Live Writer still works as a desktop blogging platform. It’s been many years since I’ve actively blogged, but so far for 2014 I’m 2 for 2 (3 for 3 if this works). In the days of old, Windows Live Writer (WLW) was a great little tool for blogging, creating and saving your blog on your PC, then easily publishing it out to your website.

Last night before bed I had an Adobe update that required a reboot. So set my machine to reboot while I went to bed. I woke up this morning to a machine that couldn’t boot up. A few quick trials before I left for the office turned out to be unproductive. Then at home this evening I spent an hour, swapping cables, trying to boot, trying different SATA ports, trying to boot to a Windows 7 CD to try and do a repair.

Holy Cow! If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area and don’t have plans tomorrow, or if you do have plans, cancel them. You need to get the Maker Faire at the San Mateo County Event Center. Check out www.makerfaire.com for more info! I went this morning, and I am going to go again tomorrow, this time taking the family with me. This morning I headed over with my GoPro camera attached to my head, with the intention of time lapsing the day. I stuck it to the top of a trusty Boston Red Sox hat, which I hoped would last.

So I’ve been finding it harder and harder to use up my Zune pass credits every month lately. I’m pretty sure I’ve missed a month or two as well.

What am I talking about? If you subscribe to Zune pass ($14.99/mo) you can pretty much download almost all the music you want (ex: the social network soundtrack is apparently not available), but that music is only good as long as you have a subscription.

With your subscription you also get 10 “credits” a month that you can use to download and keep 10 songs, meaning they won’t expire if you cancel your subscription.

Lately I’m finding myself not really branching out into new music, I listen to Cake and Pearl Jam primarily, and often times I just use Pandora to pick my music for me. I’m thinking it is likely time to shut off the Zune pass subscription, at least until they come up with some “video” content that would allow me to cancel my cable service…..

Over the years I’ve collected a lot of data, music, photos and documents mainly. Thousands and thousands of photos, thousand of music files, and not so many documents, but still important nonetheless. For the longest time I just kept them all stored on an external hard disk. This worked alright, until the disk starting having overheating issues, and my wife wanted to be able to access the photos and music from her computer.
So I was playing around with Technorati tonight and decided to create a profile over there so I can claim all my blogs!   Technorati Profile  Technorati...
I've had no luck with Charter and Directv Customer service over the past month.Here's a letter I sent to Charter this morning via their website. "I'd like to know how Charter is going to make me a happy customer. Here's my story.During the storms in July I lost my Directv service. They were unable to come out and restore my service in a timely manner, totally missing an appointment. I called charter, was told I could get a DVR, Digital Cable, and HD service installed at my house the following week, all for a good low price based on the fact that I was leaving Directv.Fast forward three weeks, that's today. So far all I have is a digital cable box, no HD and no DVR, and a $350 bill from charter. When the technician came to install the DVR and Cable box he showed up without either piece of equipment and told me I would have to go to charter's offices myself. I went there, and was told I couldn't get the DVR. That $350 bill includes charges for the DVR, cable service, and $100 of installation charges. I was told when I signed up my installation would be waived due to me switching from Directv.I'd love for someone from Charter to call me and schedule an appointment for my DVR to be DELIVERED and INSTALLED. I tried picking it up myself two weeks ago and was told I couldn't as it had to be professionaly installed. Then, last week I was told they were out of stock in STL, though when I ordered they were in stock.I'm extremely unhappy with the level of service I've received thus far, and if these matters are not corrected, all the promised equipment installed and working by Friday the 18th of August I'll be cancelling ALL my services with Charter and going to SBC and Dish networks.Unhappily,Chris...
I've been doing some testing on a recent DNN module and noticed some issues that I think a 301 Redirect will handle. Doing some quick googling I came up with the following topics to setup 301 redirects in asp.net. http://www.wwwcoder.com/main/parentid/263/site/2668/68/default.aspx http://scottwater.com/blog/archive/2004/04/14/PermanentRedirects.aspx I'll be building this into the module tomorrow and will report back on the results in the next couple of weeks. Currently I've got a site with close 100 pages of content, but google is only seeing 6 of those pages. I'm thinking if I implement 301 redirects for a link tracker I'm using this may help. Time will...
Over the years I've followed the job hunting/recruiting on blogs. It's been interesting to watch more and more folks get hired from a blog. I was hired at my current employer due to my online presence. They found me posting on what is now http://forums.asp.net and hired me to work on various DotNetNuke projects here in town. It's been very lucritive for all parties. I've been able to delve deeper into the DotNetNuke world, even becoming a DotNetNuke Core Team member, and for the business we've been able to create and fill a need in a totally new market. Today I was surfing around and somehow stumbled upon http://www.stlrecruiting.com, it looks like there's a body here in town, not sure who or where, that's using it as a place to discuss recruiting and positions local to St. Louis. Consider that site bookmarked, always interesting to see how other people do their...
I took the oil pan off the L28ET motor tonight to try to get inside and see what all I could find out about the motor. I've posted a few pictures over in the 240 photo gallery, check them out, let me know what you think of what you see. http://sccaforums.com/photos/christoc/category1053.aspx Here are some of the recently uploaded...
That's right, my xbox360 is going to start blogging! When it does it'll be available at http://www.360voice.com/blog.asp?tag=christoc I think it may take a day or two for my 360 to know it can blog, we'll see what it comes up with for it's first...
Community Server can be a pretty powerful tool if you take your time to setup a decent site for your users. Here are a few tweaks I've made to SCCAForums.com to make it a bit more user friendly. On the home page there are sections for active, unanswer, and my posts(if logged in). These controls don't provide much information to the user though, by default only a link and portion of the subject of a forum post. On SCCA Forums I've setup the controls to display the user who made the last post, link directly to the last post rather than the first post, and also display and link to the particular forum that the post was made in. To do this you need to add the following script to your default.aspx page. <script language="C#" runat="server">  int getPageNumber(int replies) {  int page = 1;  if (replies > 14)   {   page = 1 + replies /15;  }   return page; }</script> You also need to change the ItemTemplate section of the ThreadRepeater controls to look like the following <ItemTemplate>        <div class="CommonSidebarContentItem">    <strong><a href="<%# ForumUrls.Instance().PostPaged((int) DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "MostRecentPostID"), getPageNumber((int)DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "replies")))%>"><%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "Subject").ToString() %></a></strong>    - <%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "MostRecentPostAuthor") %>    (<a href="<%# ForumUrls.Instance().Forum( ((Thread) Container.DataItem).SectionID ) %>"><%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "Forum.Name") %></a>)        </div></ItemTemplate>     More tweaks to come....
I just went through and enabled HTTP Compression for the server that ChrisHammond.com, Solo2.org, and various other websites run on. Now, I can't tell if the difference is noticable, or if I just think it's noticable? hmmm Followed the instructions in this article for setting up HTTP Compression on IIS...
If you're looking for the MHCC, Maryland Heights Chamber of Commerce  then you should check out http://www.mhcc.com/. This is one of our client sites here at...
Just a quick blog post for a friend. Don't ever buy an ABS Laptop! Their notebooks suck. He's had it for 2 months, now, well, let's say he's owned it for 2 months, and had it for all of about 2 weeks. He just got it back today, and guess what? It still doesn't work! So this is a warning, ABS Laptops suck! The real irony is ABS stands for Always Better Service!...
ChrisHammond.com has gotten a long over due software update! With the update there are quite a few changes with the skins. I'll be making more adjustments later this weekend, stay...
XM Radio signed Oprah Winfrey to a 3 year deal worth 55 Million dollars. That's awesome, not that I will ever listen to Oprah, but that is a great move for XM Radio. Down with the Sirius and that dumbass Howard Stern! Long live XM...
As in my previous blog post I ordered 3 Bags of Crap from www.woot.com the other day. Today they showed up!   4 Panda Express Panda Bears 10 DVD+RW Discs and Cases 2 Packages of Fake Legos 1 Camo Gun that makes noise and lights up. 15 Feet of Air Packing Bags ...
Just a quick post to aid in a little bit of search indexing for...
I've been trying to track down a copy of Pow Wow '93 for the past few years, but have been unsuccessful in doing so. Pow Wow was the annual talent competition held at Maconaquah High School in Bunker Hill Indiana. I was in a band back in 93, my sophemore year, called The Flying Gimps. We performed in Pow Wow, playing Helmet's "Unsung". We ended up winning $100 from the competition. At one point I had a copy of Pow Wow for that year but it got recorded over by something a few years later. I've tried contacting the school, but the media teacher who ran the show for many years no longer works there and no one there has an archive of the old shows. A few weeks ago Derrickfound me on Myspace.com. Derrick and his brother Sean were in the band as well, Derrick actually wasn't going to play in the show but do to some unfortunate circumstances had to take Sean's place and fill in. I asked if he happened to have a copy and he gratiously offered to dupe me a copy and send it over! It should be here in the next few days! I'm hoping to digitize it and get it online, as well as get a copy for Lindsy as she also performed in a different part of the competition. More on Pow Wow...
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Chris Hammond

Chris Hammond

is a father, husband, leader, developer, photographer and car guy. Chris has long specialized in ASP.NET and DotNetNuke (DNN) development, so you will find a variety of posts relating to those topics. For more information check out the about Chris Hammond page.

If you are looking for DotNetNuke consulting please visit Christoc.com Software Solutions

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