August 2007 Entries
I found out an interesting thing about the SQL Server POWER function. I needed a historical average for a pH value which requires using the POWER function. In testing we noticed bizarre behavior:SELECT POWER(10.0, -7.0) -- Returns: 0.0
GO
When you read the documentation, there is an example where SELECT POWER(2.0, -100.0) returns 0.0 and the documentation claims it is due to floating point underflow. What the documentation neglects to tell you is the conversion of literal numbers -- it must be converting the literal number into a DECIMAL type instead of a FLOAT or...
I was on vacation last week so now that I'm back at work it is even busier than ever so I haven't had much time to think much less blog. While I was visiting family I naturely helped out with fixing and optimizing computers. My sister's computer was not working so I decided to take a look at it. The computer would not boot up and was giving the following blue screen error: UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME STOP: 0x000000ED (0x83BCC868,0xC0000006,0x00000000,0x00000000) After reading various articles and MSDN reference material, I knew I needed to get to the recovery console but unfortunately we could...
I am almost embarassed to mention it, but in a past life I developed several major corporate applications using VB6. The applications are remarkably stable and have only been recompiled three or four times since their original deployment for various fixes or changes. This particular application has been in use for 10 years (since 1997) and uses Crystal Reports 5.0 for printing. Back in the day, I read Visual Basic Programmer's Journal (VBPJ) quite a bit and saw an article about using the Win32 API for Crystal Reports in VB. Since I was more of a C\C++ programmer thrust into...
I must be getting tired... Once again I almost damaged my blog trying to get a pristine local copy. This time I decided that it would be easiest to export the blog as BlogML and reload it into the local web application. However I didn't notice that when I first exported the blog, it generated an error (I think due to the "Embed Attachments" option) in the export so I regenerated the export without embeded attachments. When I went to import the BlogML, somehow I didn't notice that it was connecte