being sick sucks.
i've been wiped out for a few days now and its killing me.  I have so much stuff to do that i dont have time for this.
reminds me of the quote from Predator:

“I ain't got time to Bleed.”

its 2 a.m. and i'm still researching for the book.
I'm in a groove now, i believe.  a few days researching and note taking.  a day of outlining and then 2 days of chapter writing.  aggressive and deservedly so.  this book is turning out to be the hardest thing i've ever done in my professional life.  and will most assuredly be worth every minute of effort i expend.  i'll probably stop at every bookstore on any trip i take, just to see if its on the shelf there.  assuming i have anything left in me, by the time i finish the thing.  took a break and goofed off in photoshop for a bit:

I have to say that the encouragement that i receive from peers/co-workers and friends has been motivational and a definite boost to morale.  its a very sustaining force when you're running out of clock, energy and vision at 2/3 a.m.
Attended the .Net Users Group meeting tonite at Waterworks.  It was a pretty good turn out tonite.  A few Nusofters (I believe 6-7 or so), Teksystems Reps and various others.  The pizza was good and the service outstanding.  I'm excited for whats in store for us next year.  Bill announced a tentative speaking engagement schedule for the coming spring, including yours truly as presenter of all things Ajax.  We'll also have a code camp coming up, that will include various gurus and a multitude of topics.  Nick and I will be there as well.  Although we have yet to really nail down some topics.  I'm sure that I'll probably be dishing out Ajax and hopefully Nick can get into some Community Server stuff, or possibly Asp.Net 2.0.  Its an exciting time to be a software developer.

Ranjan: Hi
daniel: hello
Ranjan: how may i help you?
daniel: it appears that i have been hacked
daniel: i have fix.asp, fix.htm etc... in every directory on my sites
daniel: the files say "hacked by eno7"
daniel: i'm the only administrator on these sites
Ranjan: what is your domain name?
daniel: i have a few
daniel: www.danwoolston.com
daniel: www.bishopsoftware.com
daniel: i've been deleting for a while
daniel: but there are so many files that theres no simple way for me to delete these fix.* files from all of them
Ranjan: if you are only administartor
Ranjan: please change your ftp password. database password
daniel: i'm about to do that
daniel: my main concern was getting the files off
daniel: it doesnt appear that theres any files other than the fix.* files
daniel: so theres nothing being served from the site
daniel: is there a faster way to delete all of these fix.* files from my sites?
Ranjan: you can delete through webshell
Ranjan: just login in your control panel
Ranjan: and click on ftp manager
daniel: k
Ranjan: then webshell windows will come
daniel: i'm there
Ranjan: then you will selete all files which are you want to delete
daniel: does that mean i have to go thru every directory one at a time?
Ranjan: yes sir
daniel: thats going to take forever because i have a bunch of dnn sites
daniel: i just did a search for fix.* and it says 3500 files
Ranjan: but there is a no any options to delete faster
Ranjan: you should going to directory one by one and delete all these files
daniel: well as an admin you could right click on the root folder, do a search for fix.* and then delete them
Ranjan: yes i knoiw
Ranjan: but that is risk
Ranjan: so i request to you if you will delete that through web shell or ftp client software
Ranjan: it will be better
Ranjan: ok Sir
daniel: not for me it wont
daniel: it will take me days to do it this way
Ranjan: you can download domain directory at your end
Ranjan: and delete it by search at your local machine
Ranjan: then upload it
daniel: won't that blow out my bandwidth usage for the month?
Ranjan: yes bandwidth will calculate for this month after download and upload
daniel: o.k. well i guess that's what i have to do. it's unacceptable and poor hosting.

o.k....so i work with web servers everyday.  i have a pretty good idea on how server administration should work.  i've been “hacked” or there's been a security breach at jodohost.  its a rather harmless hack.  just some crap files tossed around to every directory on my site.  well over 3500 files to be exact.  All of the files are named fix.asp or fix.html etc...(they all start with fix.*)  so deleting them from a root level is as simple as right clicking on the server root name, choosing search (for fix.*) and selecting all the search results and hitting the delete key.  would probably take about 2 minutes.  but jodohost wants me to hit every directory, manually, and delete the files, or, download my entire hosting package, do the search and destroy and upload them back to jodohost.  in the meantime, all that download and upload counts towards my monthly bandwidth.
i'm discouraged by this lack of support.  this is, as the saying goes, the straw that broke the camels back.  I'll be moving my sites to another host.  totally unacceptable.  avoid jodohost like a disease.

Given the rather disturbing trend of Xbox 360's overheating, I found it rather ironic when I came across this article on bloombergs site:

read the article for yourself at:

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000006&sid=aoslPl1.6C7U&refer=home

Guess you gotta be careful what you say about your products.

o.k.  this is a non-tech post, but here goes anyway. I hate stupid criminals.  its bad enough that they're doing something dumb in the first place, but to be blatantly stupid in your response to getting caught is just too much for me to handle. Take this idiot in Georgia (the country not the state), who chucked a grenade at President Bush is a total loser.  Read this quote from CNN.COM:

 Arutyunian acknowledged that he threw the grenade in the direction of the tribune and said that he would try again to kill Bush if he had the chance.

He has refused to testify before the court and demanded the presence of rights monitors.

"The verdict is preordained," he said Monday. "I demand that the international organization Human Rights Watch be present."

o.k. so another united states hater.  no big deal, theres tons of those morons out there.  whats interesting is his demand at the end there.  He demands that the Human Rights Watch organization be present.  I guess nobody filled him in on the fact that the HRW was born and based in the good ole' U. S. of A. (www.hrw.org).
idiot.

if anyone knows of a really good DTS packages backup utility, I'd sure love to here about it.
our current product, does an almost-decent job of migrating them from server to server, however its screwing up the visual aspect of the job and losing a few workflow processes along the way.  Case In Point:

The original package:

And now the ugliness it became, post migration:

I would pay good money for a tool that not only preserved the layout, but didnt orphan work flow process too.
There is a serious lack of decent third party DTS tools out there.  Hopefully sql2k5 will make migration a bit easier.

A Happy Customer At Spout.Com:

Our first generated order has run full cycle.  definitely cause for celebration!

ha ha.
if i sucked at my job as much as he did,
I would've been fired too.

maybe its me..but waiting over 11 minutes for someone to answer the phone is kinda lame.
and on top of that, they didnt have a site map.  who retails a asp.net web site and NOT supply a top level view of the site?  no page flow.  no form descriptions.  and the comments suck.  bad.

my current work project is almost to beta launch.  coming soon:

if you want to see a community site taken to the next level, definitely check it out.
no date set, but it's soon.

yahoo's attempt at a Google Suggest clone is crap.  why would they release it with so little functionality?  search results appear to be drawing from a db of about 250 rows.
http://instant.search.yahoo.com
for example, I search for microsoft on both sites, with a starting type-as-you-go entry “micr”.  Here are the results:

• better formatting on the popups.
• replaced incident icon with actual icons rather than red/blue box.
• totally modified the Javascript logic so that a new map is only grabbed as necessary.
• Implemented new method of placing Pushpins, as the sample code wasnt working.
• Maintain proper spacing of pins when zooming now.
• Pushpins are actually located where the GPS says they're supposed to be.
• Modified the Control panel.  Added zoom buttons rather than dropdown.
  
  

all in all, its been an interesting Ajax.Net project.  If i'm up to it, I'll try to park the code somewhere on the site.