SwitchBL8’s gebazel

In the first half of 2005 I wrote a utility that could synchronize the ERP application I was working with at that time with Outlook. The users wanted the appointment data offline on their PDA’s (PocketPC’s), so I figured: if I download the data to Outlook, ActiveSync will automatically synchronize that to the PDA. And so it did.
The utility, far from finished but still very functional, was written in a trial edition of VS.NET 2003 and when the beta was there, I managed to get the code working in VS 2005 beta. Because I used the “full” version of VS, I assumed that the code would not work in the now free version of Visual Studio: VS Express. To my surpise, after converting from the 2003 to the 2005 version (conversion of the .sln file) I can compile and run the program. And when I define the proper ODBC-dsn on my system, it comes back with an error that the table or view I try to access does not exists. Which is correct, since I don’t have the ERP-data(base) at my disposal.

VS Express editions are not supposed to support remote databases, nor development for Office. What I now know is that things can be done, albeit it not via some wizardy-click-a-the-click approach. Hey, real programmers don’t use wizards 😉

Perhaps this utility has some future after all….

Do you use Windows? And you play the occassional video? A trailer from the internet, some other downloaded videomaterial (we will not go into detail about the content (-; ). And then suddenly Mediaplayer complains about the codes, or the version of your player. Okay, let’s update. Genuine Software check. I actually do have a genuine legal version of Windows XP Professional, but still the Microsoft site refuses to recognize it as Genuine (who cares, it runs anyways).
I know that WinAMP plays certain video’s as well, but…WinAMP is for music… Just today I discoverd the VLC Media Player. Free, and available for just about every platform: Linux, Windows, MacOS, BeOS, FreeBSD, Solaris, whatever. It plays MPEG-1, 2 and 4, DivX, DVD’s, VCD’s and just about every audio-format you can think of.

So go and have a try. It’s free.

Because a salesperson I know could not send mail to my domain (rare-it.com), I checked the mailserver log to find out what was happening. Turned out that his domain did/does not have a proper reverse DNS-lookup. That is, the IP address of his mailserver resolves to another hostname than he sends his email from. This is true for my domain too, but I have my office at home, and have a normal connection with a regular ISP. His domain is from a company that exists for about 10 years now.
So, I decided to turn of the reverse DNS check for a moment. I know I switched it on to prevent spam, since most spam is easily filtered because of the failed reverse lookup.
Today I had 24 e-mails MORE spam than the regular 1 or 2. That’s 1 day. You know what will happen when I leave this backdoor open. Backdoor is closed again. Nailed shut. Big iron bar. And just to be sure, a bouncer as well. You never know.