Archive: 2008

203 entries. 44,680 words.

January, 2008

Turquoise Spotted. 2008-01-02 9:52 PM.
- Gaming
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I saw that Red snuck in an update on the Crayola Wiki reporting that Turquoise (aka. Aaron Smith) can be seen in a picture shown at the end of Gears of War. I had no idea he worked on that game, so that’s pretty cool. 65 words.
No More COD4 I Promise. 2008-01-02 10:12 PM.
- Gaming
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I made Commander (rank 55) in Call of Duty 4 and it unlocked a gold Desert Eagle gun. Big whoop. Now what? 757 words.
The Early RtCW Elite?. 2008-01-03 11:00 PM.
- Gaming
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Found this little blurb in a random Google search. The Early RtCW Elite with a writeup about Crayola Clan. 231 words.
Life A VR Simulation. 2008-01-04 10:00 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Funny, we were just talking about this recently in the Krehbiel household: Scientist Suggests We Explore ‘Universe is a VR Simulation’ Theory. 22 words.
RSS Feed Fixed. 2008-01-04 10:05 PM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Oops.. I discovered my RSS feeds weren’t showing new posts. 29 words.
Excel Spreadsheet Table Names. 2008-01-08 1:30 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
If you have the unfortunate need to use an Execute SQL Task SSIS component on an Excel spreadsheet, make sure you specify the worksheet name as “[Your Sheet 1$]” in the FROM clause of your SQL statement. 84 words.
Google Reader Blows. 2008-01-09 2:27 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
What is up with Google Reader?? Half the time I click on anything the entire browser freezes up for minutes on end. I can only assume it’s doing some kind of asynchronous request that would probably take a fraction of a second on a non-sucky network connection. 92 words.
Blu-ray. 2008-01-09 2:27 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Sounds like Blu-ray will be winning the high definition DVD format wars, according to Slashdot. If memory serves, Blu-ray is technologically superior to HD-DVD, so this might be one of the rare cases where the better technology wins in the marketplace. 41 words.
Weather Wisdom. 2008-01-09 2:28 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Embracing global warming because it’s warm today is just as silly as refuting global warming because it’s cold. Partisans, please stop. It’s embarrassing. 23 words.
New Hampshire Independents. 2008-01-10 12:06 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
In the 2008 New Hampshire primaries, 42% of registered Independents voted Democratic and 34% voted Republican. http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/state/#val=NH 109 words.
Stosch and O’Bannon Bills. 2008-01-10 3:14 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Like everyone else in the Virginia blogosphere, I’ve been getting a bunch of RSS items from Richmond Sunlight this week. Let’s see what my illustrious representatives are working on. 134 words.
Candidate Ratings. 2008-01-11 11:04 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I don’t think a president needs too many skills. Delivering a good speech and bartering with foreign leaders is about it. Other than that, I figure the actual work of running the country is delegated far down the chain of command and the president himself is just a figurehead embodying the spirit of America to the rest of the world. 566 words.
Stepping Into The Framework. 2008-01-18 12:57 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Recently I learned that you can debug into the Microsoft .NET Framework. Other than idle curiousity, I can’t think of any reason why I’d want to do that, except to confirm or deny that there is a bug in the Framework. This suggests to me that Microsoft is basically trying to outsource analysis of framework bugs onto the community, and I’m guessing there won’t be too many payments for that service forthcoming. 84 words.
Portal. 2008-01-18 12:57 AM.
- Gaming
- thomaskrehbiel.com
So I picked up Valve’s Orange Box, which includes Half-Life 2 Episode 2, Portal, Team Fortress 2, and some other mini-games that nobody cares about. I got Orange Box for basically three reasons: 1) I wanted to play HL2 Episode 2, the continuation of the Half-Life 2 serial saga, 2) I’ve heard a lot of good things about Portal, and 3) I enjoyed the amusing TF2 trailers, plus Yellow said he’d played it, which I assume means it can’t be all that bad. In any case it’s a good value for three games, and it’s downloadable so I didn’t even have to leave my chair. 323 words.
What’s Not To Understand?. 2008-01-18 10:46 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Consider this post: Syntactical Molasses. The author claims that his test method is “syntactical molasses” which “makes the intention of the code so much more difficult to understand:” 178 words.
TF2 Griefing. 2008-01-22 3:15 AM.
- Gaming
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I probably shouldn’t be rewarding this kind of annoying pub server behavior, but Team Roomba’s “More Team Fortress 2 Griefing” YouTube video might just be the funniest thing I’ve ever seen, especially at the end with the trivia questions. (Warning: I wouldn’t recommend watching with minors present.) 47 words.
My First Look At WWF. 2008-01-22 11:45 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
So out of curiousity I started trying to figure out what “Windows Workflow Foundation” is and why Microsoft thinks we need to re-write all of our applications for it. Here’s the introductory paragraph that I found on MSDN. 235 words.
Gun Show Loophole. 2008-01-23 2:48 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I’m generally in favor of gun rights, but I’m not obsessive about it. I think I’m in the minority on that in Virginia. The only other opinions here seem to be the extreme right-wing we-need-to-stockpile-guns-to-prepare-for-the-zombie-apocolpyse opinion and the extreme left-wing ban-access-to-all-items-that-might-conceivably-cause-injury opinion. 261 words.
That Mysterious requirePermission Attribute. 2008-01-25 12:38 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I started upgrading an ASP.NET 1.1 project to 2.0, and I got this error: “Unrecognized attribute ‘requirePermission’ (C:WINDOWSMicrosoft.NETFrameworkv2.0.50727Configmachine.config line 14)” 77 words.
Where I Am With TDD. 2008-01-25 12:54 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Test Driven Development is one of the buzzwordy things that Agile and Extreme programmers like to push as the most important programming advancement since sliced bread. (Although, recently, TDD seems to be losing out in favor of a new thing called Behavior Driven Development (BDD), which as far as I can tell is the exact same thing as TDD, except instead of naming your tests “TestWidgetProperty,” you name your tests “Determine_if_the_widget_property_is_working_correctly.” (That is a humorous observation not meant to be taken seriously.)) 536 words.
links for 2008-01-26. 2008-01-26 12:51 AM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
SQL Prompt - Intelligent code completion for SQL Server Sounds like a nifty tool… if you’ve got $195. (tags: sql tools) 21 words.
Blog Designs. 2008-01-26 8:42 PM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I’m looking for a new web design for my page. I’d like to make a non-scrolling front page with “about” information, which in turn links to the various categories of blogs. I also want to try to seperate the blogs from each other. 71 words.
UvMoney Back to XML. 2008-01-27 3:17 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Note: This has been sitting in my drafts for months. 322 words.
MVPs Should Not Publish Bad Code Samples. 2008-01-27 4:41 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Some programming blogs are informative and trustworthy. Unfortunately, most aren’t. For example, in an otherwise good post explaining new features in C# 3.0, I found this shocking sample C# 3.0 extension method among the blogs at the popular site ASP.NET Weblogs. 314 words.
New Design Online. 2008-01-28 1:57 AM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
New blog design is online. 41 words.
Meet The New Boss…. 2008-01-28 11:49 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Since I first saw SWAC Girl’s post welcoming Spank That Donkey to the ODBA, I couldn’t help but think that there was going to be trouble in that organization. Could Spank and Shaun Kenney – bitter rivals on opposite poles of Virginia Republicanism – co-exist together in the same organization? 137 words.
links for 2008-01-29. 2008-01-29 12:43 AM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
What is diffrenece between string.compare and string.compareordinal More on string comparisons. 34 words.
Keep It Simple. 2008-01-31 2:03 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Ran into another post from our MVP friend Dan Wahlen: How Would You Refactor this Code? #1. I don’t normally respond to these kinds of things because it always devolves into a my-code-is-bigger-than-your-code conversation (if you know what I mean, wink, wink, nudge, nudge). 228 words.
The Outrage!. 2008-01-31 11:25 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I can understand why I wasn’t invited to the second annual Richmond Blogger’s Day. After all, I’m just, oh, a blogger who lives in Richmond. (Well, Henrico County – but close enough.) In response to this outrageous insult, I pledge not to vote for you, Lt. Gov. 103 words.

February, 2008

links for 2008-02-01. 2008-02-01 12:35 AM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
The Server/Client Balance of Power Continues Discussing the pitfalls of Microsoft AJAX. (tags: asp.net) c# code format Nice web tool to format C# code for blog posting (tags: blogging) Ten Essential Tools: Visual Studio Add-Ins Every Developer Should Download Now – MSDN Magazine, December 2005 Some nifty tools. (tags: tools) 50 words.
Times Are Off Again. 2008-02-01 1:36 AM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
The times are wrong on all the posts again. I feel like I’ve fixed this problem dozens of times over the lifespan of this blog. I have no idea why it keeps breaking. 76 words.
The Worth Of The Virginia Primary. 2008-02-02 12:00 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Many bloggers here are hoping (a bit desperately, I think) that the Virginia presidential primiaries on February 12 will matter. I’m skeptical. 352 words.
links for 2008-02-02. 2008-02-02 12:37 AM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
TDD or POUT Ah, another kindred programming spirit… POUT rules! (tags: articles) Php IDE - VS.Php Standalone Edition | Jcx.Software Corp. PHP plugin for Visual Studio? (tags: php) 28 words.
Afghanistan Update. 2008-02-02 1:40 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I heard a researcher from the Counterterrorism Blog on the radio this morning talking about Afghanistan. Apparently the Taliban fighters are conducting their own “surge” there. He also discussed the continued lack of freedom and human rights in the post-Taliban Afghanistan – in particular he mentioned a journalist who was sentenced to death for circulating a flyer asking why women couldn’t have multiple husbands under Islam. 104 words.
Crowhill Returns. 2008-02-02 1:46 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Hey I forgot to mention this: Cousin* Greg Krehbiel is back at blogging over at the Crowhill Weblog after taking some time off. Welcome back! 69 words.
Interview Questions. 2008-02-02 11:57 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I was asked recently to sit in on an interview to evaluate a candidate’s .NET experience. I thought about what kinds of questions I could ask, did some Googling, and thought back to some of the technical interviews I’d been through. 590 words.
UvMoney Concurrency. 2008-02-03 12:07 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I’ve been thinking more about concurrency issues in UvMoney. The last time I posted about UvMoney, I was switching over to a database back-end mainly to handle concurrency. Then I decided that was pretty silly, considering that in my current “production” environment, there are only two people that can possibly use the data at the same time. 773 words.
links for 2008-02-03. 2008-02-03 12:33 AM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Sperm Made From Female Bone Marrow, Men Obsolete? Hehe… Amazonian overlords! (tags: random) G4 - The Feed - The MMO Report: Friday, January 25th (tags: games) G4 - The Feed - The MMO Report: Friday, February 1st (tags: games) Best Super Tuesday Candidate for Technology? 47 words.
NuSphere PhpEd. 2008-02-03 9:14 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I’m trying out NuSphere’s PhpEd. For lo these many years, my PHP IDE has been a text editor and a web browser. Yep, that’s it. 199 words.
Superbowl Prediction. 2008-02-03 9:54 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Here’s what I want to happen: Patriots jump ahead early, Giants fight back and finally pull ahead late in the game, Patriots pull it together and win on final heroic drive. 88 words.
Slightly Different Analogy. 2008-02-03 10:39 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Ann Coulter: “Are you too busy boning up on Consumer Reportsâ€™ reviews of microwave ovens to spend one day thinking about who should be the next leader of the free world? Are you familiar with our â€˜no exchange/no returnâ€™ policy on presidential candidates? Voting for McCain because he was a POW a quarter-century ago or Huckabee because he was a Baptist preacher is like buying a new car because you like the color.” 100 words.
links for 2008-02-04. 2008-02-04 12:44 AM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Transhumanism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (tags: articles) Cellphones to Monitor Highway Traffic OMG they are stealing my ideas again! (tags: random) Bionic Arm Might Go Into Clinical Trials Transhumanism on its way… (tags: random) HOF Moment: Darrel Green 1.10.88 Wow… wish I could see a video of this (tags: redskins) Green Awesome Darrel Green story (tags: redskins) Monkâ€™s greatest hits 12.16.84 Art Monk rulez! (tags: redskins) Fame catches up to Monk Art Monk makes the Hall of Fame! 111 words.
links for 2008-02-05. 2008-02-05 12:44 AM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Mocks Aren’t Stubs Mocks vs. Stubs (tags: articles) Local Install Source (Msocache) Explains the mysterious MSOCache hidden directory. 37 words.
links for 2008-02-06. 2008-02-06 12:39 AM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
KCNN: Legal Risk Module In case you need a refresher course… how to avoid legal trouble in blogging. Basically, it boils down to: Don’t make stuff up. (tags: blogging) Hosting Process (vshost.exe) Details about what the heck those .vshost.exe files are for. 111 words.
Primary Results Spreadsheet. 2008-02-06 11:25 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
In case anyone is interested, I’ve been keeping an Excel spreadsheet summarizing the 2008 primary results. I made it because I couldn’t find anything on the web that gave a chronological summary. You can find an HTML copy of it here: 2008 Presidential Primary Results. 73 words.
Developing vs. Communicating. 2008-02-06 11:50 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
In response to Caio Proiete’s How to be a better developer? (Which is, in turn, a response to Rodrigo DÃaz Concha’s How to be a better developer?) 212 words.
Two Space Calamity. 2008-02-06 11:52 PM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
It’s happening. You know how HTML files always squish the two spaces after a period into one space? I’ve always hated that, since everyone knows there are supposed to be two spaces after a period. 81 words.
links for 2008-02-07. 2008-02-07 12:35 AM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Linq to Objects â€“ measuring performance implications of the where clause In case you didn’t intuitively realize this and needed numbers… Linq to objects is slow as crap compared to hand-coded queries. (tags: linq .net) Download details: Log Parser 2.2 Run queries against text files eg. log files. 50 words.
links for 2008-02-08. 2008-02-08 12:31 AM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
PRB: Read-Only Properties Cannot Be Exposed by XML Web Services What to do if you need to explose a read-only property in a Web Service. 27 words.
Twiceler. 2008-02-08 1:28 AM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Don’t know if anyone else is experiencing this, but my site has been hammered over the last week by this Twiceler robot: “Mozilla/5.0 (Twiceler-0.9 http://www.cuill.com/twiceler/robot.html)". Easily 15 times as many hits as from Googlebot. I guess they are trying to destroy whatever semblence of bandwidth is left on the Internet. 64 words.
links for 2008-02-09. 2008-02-09 12:42 AM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
New Robots.txt Syntax Checker: a validator for robots.txt files Nifty tool to validate a robots.txt file. (tags: web tools) The Years of Experience Myth Cool. (tags: articles) How to maintain the position of the scrollbar on postbacks with ASP.NET 2.0 Neato ASP.NET 2.0 feature. 50 words.
links for 2008-02-10. 2008-02-10 12:33 AM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
VS 2008 Web Development Hot-Fix Roll-Up Available Bug fix for Visual Studio 2008 (tags: vs) 15 words.
Iranian Test Missile. 2008-02-10 4:58 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I heard about this alarming story in passing on WRVA the other day, so I did a little digging to find out what really happened. As far as I know, this story was wholly ignored by American media in the face of Super Tuesday. 169 words.
links for 2008-02-11. 2008-02-11 12:33 AM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
C# Application Markup Language (CSAML): A Preview Mmmm, tasty sarcasm! 30 words.
Primary Eve. 2008-02-11 10:23 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Despite keeping a semi-watchful eye on the 2008 presidential race for what seems like an eternity, I have no idea who to vote for tomorrow. There are huge negatives with each one of the remaining candidates. 160 words.
links for 2008-02-12. 2008-02-12 12:33 AM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Know Why Uruguay is the IT Outsourcing Paradise… Interesting (tags: outsourcing) WPF: Threading basics in WPF WPF threading info that I might be able to use.. esp. BitmapImage.Freeze() (tags: wpf) 30 words.
links for 2008-02-13. 2008-02-13 12:46 AM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
WPF Tree View icons - MSDN Forums How to do images in TreeViewItems since you can’t just set an ImageIndex property anymore. 71 words.
links for 2008-02-14. 2008-02-14 12:41 AM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
TPCI - TIOBE Programming Community Index List of popular languages (tags: articles) Speedcabling - Untangling for fun and profit. Could this be the next big sport? (tags: humor) Transact-SQL User’s Guide UPDATE syntax with INNER JOIN. 38 words.
Visual Studio 2008 and WPF. 2008-02-15 1:08 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I’ve started migrating to Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 for my home projects, for whatever that’s worth. (We aren’t allowed to use it at work.) Nothing in my projects actually require .NET 3.5 features, mind you, so it’s not that great of an experiment, but hey, it’s a start. 430 words.
WPF: Skinning a TreeView with Resources. 2008-02-16 12:09 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
In my first WPF project (a port of a WinForms picture viewer), I needed to create a TreeView with icons on each node. It doesn’t take long to realize that the WPF TreeView doesn’t have this functionality built-in anymore. 420 words.
links for 2008-02-16. 2008-02-16 12:40 AM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Re: Backup stored procedures af a db, using a command line tool - TechNet Forums Nice script for backing up stored procedures (tags: sql) sqlcmd Utility Syntax for running SQL Server queries from the command line (tags: sql) WIC H_RESULT 0x88982F60 (WINCODEC_ERR_BADIMAGE) when trying to create BitmapImage - MSDN Forums BitmapCreateOptions.IgnoreColorProfile fixes exceptions loading JPEGs created by IJG library. 61 words.
HowManyOfMe.com. 2008-02-16 7:27 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Heard about this nifty site on the way home from work yesterday. 41 words.
links for 2008-02-17. 2008-02-17 12:29 AM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
ImpulseAdventure - JPEG snoop - JPEG Dump Decoding Utility Handy tool to show you everything you ever wanted to know about your JPEG files. 40 words.
Turned Off Daily Links. 2008-02-17 9:12 PM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I turned off the daily Del.icio.us link posts. 28 words.
WPF: Finicky About JPEGs. 2008-02-17 9:15 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Gah! I’ve found that WPF’s BitmapImage is quite finicky about the kind of JPEG files it will load. 293 words.
My FTP Broke. 2008-02-20 1:13 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I installed Vista Service Pack 1 this weekend. Now, I can’t seem to FTP into my web site with FileZilla anymore. I think it’s just a coincidence and that my web host’s FTP server is down for completely unrelated reasons, but they aren’t usually down this long and I’m starting to wonder… 52 words.
Fidel Who?. 2008-02-20 2:56 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I don’t know why we’re supposed to hate Cuba and Fidel Castro so much. Whatever caused this lingering animosity happened way before I was born, and all that’s left now is a vague sense that today we’re supposed to celebrate the news of the official end to Castro’s regime. I realize they’re godless Communists and all, but I was born too late to really appreciate the Cold War thing. 115 words.
Time for a Double-Take. 2008-02-23 3:52 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Thanks to the alertness of Daily Whackjob, I just learned that Ben Tribbet spoke in Manasass on a panel about ethical blogging. I think we all remember where we were when we first read Ben’s finest example of ethical blogging: “GILL’S LOGO IS AN ISLAMIC SYMBOL” and his thoughtful analysis, “WOW!!!!!!” (That fifth exclamation point really sold me on the story… I wouldn’t have believed him if he’d only used, say, three or four exclamation points.) 92 words.
Ralph!. 2008-02-24 10:53 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Ralph joins the race! Down with the corporations! I like this story mainly because it challenges the idea that God handed down a two-party system to America carved on stone tablets, and we citizens should learn to not just accept it but embrace it unquestioningly. 90 words.
Sharing Files Between ASP.NET Projects. 2008-02-25 3:09 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
These rambling thoughts document my search for a way to share files between Visual Studio web projects. 485 words.
Ed Sells Out.. er.. Moves On. 2008-02-25 10:58 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Captain’s Quarters: The Road Goes Ever On. How disappointing that the relatively moderate, thoughtful, and literate Captain Ed is being absorbed by the Michelle Malkin-branded corporate noise machine. (I can only assume this is a monetary decision… Malkin must be paying him more than he makes from his own blog.) 127 words.
What Does Unofficial Mean?. 2008-02-25 11:14 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Just out of curiousity, when one pastes a verbatim copy of a campaign press release into an unofficial campaign blog without any attribution, is it still appropriate to call it an “unofficial” blog? And when that same unofficial blog feed appears right on the official campaign web site without any disclaimers, with “Paid for by Jim Gilmore for Senate” at the bottom of the page, is it still appropriate to call it an “unofficial” blog? Seems like somebody should clarify that. 81 words.
Shell Schmell. 2008-02-29 12:29 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I’m reading The Pragmatic Programmer, supposedly one of the Bibles for modern programmers. It came highly recommended by one of my favorite blogs, Coding Horror. (Well, it used to be highly recommended… I’d swear there were only two books on his recommended reading list before.) Anyway, it’s a good book so far. 407 words.

March, 2008

Text Manipulation Languages. 2008-03-07 2:07 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I said before that The Pragmatic Programmer seems biased toward Unix environments and lacks much real-world experience with Microsoft environments. Here’s another example of that. 208 words.
Design By Contract and Spec#. 2008-03-07 2:17 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I’ve ragged a bit on The Pragmatic Programmer lately, but I wanted to mention one concept in the book that I really liked: Design By Contract. 240 words.
NAnt MissingManifestResourceException Tip. 2008-03-09 3:57 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
With NAnt 0.86 Beta 1, I found that I couldn’t use the element to include *.resx files in my task. For example, this didn’t work. 140 words.
Those are in Richmond?. 2008-03-09 4:57 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
So I guess SWAC Girl was in Richmond recently taking pictures again (which seems to be her life’s work now that the Republican party is leaning more moderate). What’s funny is that I’ve lived in Virginia all my life – have lived around Richmond for most of my life – and I’ve never seen any of the buildings in her pictures, let alone been inside them. I suck. 68 words.
The Magic Two-Faced File. 2008-03-09 10:12 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I was in a store recently where the clerk vehemently declared that we should stick with XP and not install Vista until there was absolutely no choice. 50 words.
I Second That. 2008-03-17 11:30 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Shaun Kenney will always be in the Virginia blogosphere Hall of Fame because of observant posts like this: What is Worse Than Reading Today’s News? 81 words.
On Obama’s Pastor. 2008-03-18 2:11 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I got the sense today that some of the anti-Obama people have been dying for a story like the one about his pastor to come out, so they can have a legitimate, politically correct reason to despise him. Previously, they would just hem and haw and say things like, “Well, I don’t know… he doesn’t have much experience, does he?” Now they are all buzzing around like, “Did you hear what that pastor said? He’s a raving lunatic! 236 words.
Open Source Licenses. 2008-03-19 2:02 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I’ve been thinking about releasing some open source stuff, so I’ve been reading up on Open Source licenses. They all seem to have a significant hole in them: It looks to me like a nefarious person could slap any GPL software onto a CD and sell it to the nearest gullible corporation for $5000. Granted, anyone could get the software from non-nefarious sources for free, but still, the nefarious person would probably be able to con a few people into handing over money for the free software, which is bad, but it’s even worse that the actual author – the person who did all the work, in other words – gets absolutely nothing out of the transaction. 464 words.
Company Smell. 2008-03-20 1:42 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I found this recent post on ASP.NET Weblogs sort of funny: Please question the need for whitespace. This person is actually suggesting that blank lines in your source code (which, for most normal people, are used to improve readability) could be a “code smell.” Then at the bottom of the post we learn that they are hiring. Hrm. 62 words.
Close But No Cigar. 2008-03-22 10:20 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I just got a 71% on a Microsoft 70-536 practice test (80% is required to pass). I got creamed in Globalization and Security topics (things I’ve never had an occasion to use before). I guess I should probably read over the material before I take the tests for real. 69 words.

April, 2008

Obama is no Kennedy. 2008-04-08 1:36 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
An old post from my Drafts… 335 words.
The Post-Surge Plan. 2008-04-10 2:36 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
A BBC headline (“US ‘must suspend’ Iraq withdrawal”) reminded me that we have yet to hear the most important part of the surge plan: What’s the plan now that the surge succeeded and the extra troops are leaving again? What have we gained if Iraq descends back into violence again? At that point, withdrawal isn’t a question of surrendering to terrorists, it’s a question of surrendering to incompetence in the Iraqi leadership. 164 words.
C++/CLI Properties. 2008-04-11 12:11 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Properties in C++/CLI are great and all, but, um, what if I want to put my class implementation in a different file from the class definition? You know, like, oh, every C++ program ever made in the entire history of the world. Microsoft even encourages the separation of definition from implementation by creating a .cpp and a .h file when you make the new managed class. 178 words.
Carl Sassenrath’s Blog. 2008-04-14 10:36 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I recently found out that Carl Sassenrath, creator of the Amiga Exec and (at the risk of starting a holy war) arguably the single most important force for bringing preemptive multi-tasking to the personal computer, writes a blog. He now spends his time developing the REBOL language. (He’s the only former AmigaOS developer that I’ve found who blogs.) 58 words.
UvSignalProcessor. 2008-04-14 10:37 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I’m calling my latest .NET project UvSignalProcessor. This follows UvMoney and UvNotes, if you’re keeping track, and neither one of those is anywhere near finished, so yes, I’m skipping around. But hey, nobody’s paying me for this stuff, so (insert Cartman impersonation) I can do what I want. 234 words.
Linux Core Distribution. 2008-04-15 12:50 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I got to wondering if there was a way to install just the Linux kernel on a computer without all the useless bells and whistles you usually get in the big Linux distros (which, as far as I can tell, only serve to clone the slow, bloated Windows OS that everyone in the Linux world hates so much – go figure). The closest thing I could find was the (unfortunately) defunct Linux Core distribution. 208 words.
Obligatory Augusta County Post. 2008-04-15 3:14 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
You have to admit, those Augusta County Republicans sure know how to liven up the Virginia blogosphere. 129 words.
Presentism. 2008-04-20 2:04 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Greg Krehbiel wondered: Is the past real? That’s something I’ve pondered from time to time myself. I’m certainly not an expert on this subject and have read very little about it, but it seems that an argument could be made that only “now” exists. 159 words.
Best Practices. 2008-04-23 9:13 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Rescued from my Drafts folder… 186 words.
Internet Safety Classes. 2008-04-23 9:22 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Rescued from my Drafts folder… 84 words.
Stack Overflow. 2008-04-23 10:15 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Two of my favorite modern software development bloggers and role models – Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror and Joel Spolsky of Joel on Software – are joining forces to create a new developer community site called stackoverflow (not sure if that’s the correct casing, but that’s how it is on the site). Because, you know, there just aren’t enough “community” startups on the Interwebs. But seriously: I listened to their inaugural podcast which described their vision for the site and I look forward to seeing what they come up with. 237 words.
Tree Topping. 2008-04-28 10:28 PM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
This past weekend I topped my first tree. I don’t think I’ll be quitting my day job anytime soon. (Dammit Jim, I’m a programmer, not a lumberjack!) It wasn’t a big tree, so at first I was just going to use a hand saw, but it didn’t take long to realize that I didn’t have the arm strength or the leverage to cut through a 6" trunk at a point way up over my head. 123 words.
The Upside of the McCain Backlash. 2008-04-28 10:43 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Funny stuff from United Conservatives’ Cargosquid, which I think generally exemplifies the Virginia conservative Republican sentiment about the upcoming presidential election: F**K YOU MCCAIN! An open letter to the McCain campaign. On the plus side, I admire his honesty. 163 words.

May, 2008

Twittering. 2008-05-05 11:31 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I’m starting to play around with Twitter. It took some work, but I finally figured out how to send tweets from behind The Firewall Of Doom. If you don’t know what Twitter is, you probably don’t care. 106 words.
Web v. Desktop. 2008-05-08 1:44 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I’ve been following Jeff Atwood’s Twitter feed for a little while now. I find that I enjoy his blog much more than his tweets, which sometimes tend toward preachy elitism. For example, in a recent tweet he said: “[T]he desktop is dead. 694 words.
Burma. 2008-05-12 2:47 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I haven’t read any Virginia aggregators in a while (what my wife aptly calls “aggravators”), so I pulled one up this morning out of curiousity, and the very first post I saw annoyed me: The Warmongers on the Left: “Is it time to invade Burma?” 205 words.
Light Gaming This Spring. 2008-05-13 12:22 AM.
- Gaming
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I deleted some comment spam tonight, which reminded me that I haven’t posted anything about gaming in a while, which is probably because I haven’t played anything much since I quit CoD4. I couldn’t get into Team Fortress 2 even though it was kind of fun for a couple weeks. I recently bought Neverwinter Nights 2, which I played for a little while but I got bored and distracted by other activities. 140 words.
Spolsky on Podcasts. 2008-05-15 1:38 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Joel Spolsky said that most people only listen to podcasts while they’re distracted. 217 words.
Jeffersoniad. 2008-05-30 1:09 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I’ve been living under a rock, so I’m just now noticing this Jeffersoniad thing. Seems to be a coalition of non-SWAC Virginia Republicans, which is clearly not a bad thing. Also seems to be a vehicle for getting in the pants of Virginia politicians. 49 words.
RPV Convention Weekend. 2008-05-31 4:29 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Republicans from around the state are invading Richmond this weekend to decide whether Jim Gilmore or Bob Marshall will run against Mark Warner this fall. I will boldy state my preference and say I’m hoping Jim Gilmore wins, because I despise everything Bob Marshall stands for (well, maybe not everything – but that whole thing where he tries to shove his personal belief system into everyone’s lives is rather annoying). The outcome of the convention will also affect which “Bloggers 4” group (Bloggers 4 Jim Gilmore or Bloggers 4 Bob Marshall) gets to gloat about winning the nomination for their guy. 298 words.

June, 2008

Project Implicit. 2008-06-01 2:39 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I saw this nifty research site mentioned on Republitarian and thought it was interesting enough to repeat: Project Implicit. I took the race demo test and the results were rather surprising to me. 33 words.
Offshore Drilling. 2008-06-02 10:46 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Recently I’ve been hearing a lot of people complaining about China drilling off our coast, as if we’re the only country entitled to drill for oil in the world. For example, see this rant on United Conservatives of Virginia: ChiComs Drilling Off the Coast of Fla. (This is clearly not a person who embraces change – we haven’t used the abbreviation “Fla” since, what, the 60s?) 425 words.
Kurt’s Future. 2008-06-03 10:57 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
So first we heard Kurt Michael’s contentious Augusta County chairmanship was upheld by the mysterious “Central Committe.” Then we heard that Jeff Frederick was elected as RPV Chairman at the convention. Then we heard Scott Sayre was named to Jeff Frederick’s new staff. Then we heard Kurt Michael intends to keep his promise of stepping down as chairman “for the good of the party.” 88 words.
Third Parties For President. 2008-06-08 10:14 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
To do my small part to destroy the thought-stifling two-party political system in America, here is some information about third-party presidential candidates running in 2008. This information was gathered from Wikipedia and various Google searches. 210 words.
Evaluating the 100-Day Plan. 2008-06-08 10:21 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I was scanning Jeff Frederick’s 100 day plan for the Republican Party this past week, and I came across this sentence. 342 words.
DPVA Invalid Too. 2008-06-09 2:02 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
To be fair, I should point out that the lack of proper W3C validation is not just a Republican web developer problem. The Democratic Party of Virginia’s web site fails W3C validation miserably, too. At the bottom of the page it says that Bullseye Interactive Media created the site. 82 words.
No Primaries For Me. 2008-06-10 2:56 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Primary day today in Virginia, but not for me. It’s just another boring work day unless you live in the 8th, 10th, or 11th districts. 193 words.
Death Penalty, Left vs. Right. 2008-06-15 5:01 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Vivian Paige usually stays above the fray and doesn’t speak much about the rest of the blogosphere (she is one of those incredibly rare blogging talents that actually creates material on a consistent basis), so this really stood out to me: Kaine commutes sentence - what say those on the left? 153 words.
Influence Peddling. 2008-06-15 5:55 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I came across an old post where I mentioned that “unofficial” Bloggers 4 Jim Gilmore content appeared on Jim Gilmore’s official site without any disclaimers. Out of curiousity I went back to the official site and there is now a suitable disclaimer at the bottom of the aggregator page. I expect my BNN influence rating to improve because of this. 61 words.
DPVA Convention. 2008-06-16 10:36 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
The Virginia Democratic Convention was this past weekend. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, there is absolutely nothing to say about it. If there is any controversy within the DPVA, they are keeping it pretty quiet, which is not very entertaining for the rest of the blogosphere. 97 words.
The Cloud. 2008-06-18 2:02 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I saw an article by John Dvorak – someone I usually find pretty abrasive – in the latest PC Magazine (it’s not online yet) that I actually agree with. He was (again) putting the smack down on computing “in the cloud,” which is yet another term for (basically) the trend of conducting business by running applications soley in a browser on the web. (BlackBoard is one example of this type of software, fyi.) Personally, I – and most likely any programmer over 35 – think this is a step backwards in the evolution of software technology, because we are simply re-creating the old days of dumb terminals connected to a mainframe. 589 words.
Neeraj Nigam makes ballot in VA 10th. 2008-06-18 11:33 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
There is a distinct lack of Third Party representation in the Virginia political blogosphere, so I’m going to start making a point to pass along any relevant third party news I come across. 74 words.
Opera Pretty Cool. 2008-06-19 12:39 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I downloaded Opera 9.5 the other day and I have to say I’m pretty impressed. I’ve wanted to try Opera for years, but I just never got around to it. Now I’m sorry I haven’t been using it all along. 391 words.
Offshore Drilling For Transportation. 2008-06-19 3:04 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I just saw this come through the ol’ aggregator and it almost knocked me right out of my chair: Chris Saxman to introduce off-shore drilling bill. They want to use offshore drilling revenues to fund the Virginia transportation budget. BWAHAHA. 281 words.
Silliness from McCain. 2008-06-24 9:17 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Here’s something I don’t get about John Sidney McCain’s offshore drilling policy. He’s fine with tearing up the oceans looking for oil in the continental shelves, but he’s against drilling for the oil we know is there in ANWR. Kids, can you say, “pandering for votes?” Or, “have your cake and eat it too?” Or maybe just plain, “WTF?” 108 words.
Budgets of Glimore vs. Warner. 2008-06-24 9:51 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I’ve been watching the recent exchange* between Waldo and Spank with interest. 414 words.
Eric Cantor for VP!. 2008-06-26 8:22 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Lots and lots of reports completely unsubstantiated rumors are flying around that Eric Ivan Cantor could become John Sidney McCain’s running mate. As someone who lives in Virginia’s 7th district, I’d also like to urge the The Partisan Robot to leave… err… run. 43 words.
Robert Yarbrough. 2008-06-27 3:30 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
As I’m writing now on the morning of the 26th, before bringing up the ol’ blog aggregator, I’m anticipating a predictable partisan silence from the right and predictable partisan outrage from the left regarding last night’s execution of convicted murderer Robert Yarbrough. 187 words.
Best and Worst Stephen King Adaptations. 2008-06-29 10:10 PM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Best movie adaptations of Stephen King works. 81 words.
Paid Bloggers. 2008-06-30 2:54 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Lowell wrote: Bloggers as Paid Consultants. So, um, was that supposed to dispel the myth that Raising Kaine is a pay-for-play blog? Lowell’s post basically says, “Yeah, I’ve always been pay-for-play, but since I’m telling you about it now, it’s okay.” 169 words.
Programming Goals Revised. 2008-06-30 11:00 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
At this halfway point of the year, I thought it would behoove me to examine how I’m doing on my programming goals for this year. Back in January, I wrote down some things I wanted to work on this year. I didn’t publish it, so you’ll just have to trust me when I say that those things were. 395 words.

July, 2008

Reversal of Fortunes. 2008-07-02 1:56 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I found this post on Too Conservative somewhat amusing: When Surrogates Attack. It’s a warning to Barack Hussein Obama and his surrogates about going down the road of attacking the military service of John Sidney McCain. 180 words.
New Design Online. 2008-07-06 2:23 AM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I’ve just updated the “skin” for Krehbiel’s Korner. As usual, I got completely sick of the old one and needed to make a change before I became physically ill. I admit that the design is heavily influenced by Drupal.org, which I think is one of the better minimalist web designs I’ve seen recently. 77 words.
Bathroom Repair Adventure. 2008-07-06 6:04 PM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Several weeks ago we discovered we have rather significant water damage in our downstairs bathroom. Pictures of this ongoing adventure can be found here: Bathroom Repair For Programmers. 1,102 words.
Gears of War Installed. 2008-07-08 11:21 PM.
- Gaming
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I installed Gears of War for the PC this past weekend. I bought it about six months ago… and only now experienced just the right combination of boredom and lack of creativity to turn to a video game. 981 words.
Nader in Richmond and Charlottesville, July 12-13. 2008-07-10 12:30 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
There is a noticable lack of Third Party representation in the Virginia political blogosphere, so I’m making a point to pass along any relevant third party candidate news I come across. 253 words.
July 2008 Buyer’s Guide. 2008-07-14 10:43 PM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I recently helped my niece pick a laptop for college, which got me thinking that I should write an article containing all of my computer buying recommendations. 1,399 words.
NanoPost: Whiners. 2008-07-23 9:20 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Phil Graham said we are “a nation of whiners.” So, um, what’s the controversial part again? Also: Doesn’t the very fact that everyone was whining about his comment sort of confirm his observation? 33 words.
NanoPost: Lambeth. 2008-07-23 9:21 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
With the upcoming 2008 Lambeth Conference, I’ve seen some reports lamenting the imminent demise of the ECUSA. It makes me wonder: Why exactly do we need these childishly squabbling human bureaucracies to have a relationship with God anyway? 38 words.
NanoPost: Furman on SWAC Girl. 2008-07-23 9:29 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Jerry Furman hailed SWAC Girl’s coverage of the Homestead debate between Jim Gilmore and Mark Warner as “unbiased” (compared to the local media’s coverage). That makes perfect sense, because SWAC Girl is an enthusiastic Republican activist, vice chairwoman of the Augusta County Republican Committee, and a public supporter of Jim Gilmore for Senate. 53 words.
NBC Loves Them Hurricanes. 2008-07-25 1:30 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Does anyone else get the sense that NBC Nightly News for Dummies simply can’t wait to report on another hurricane destroying a U.S. city? While they were spending approximately 20,000 hours reporting on The Long Road Back from Katrina, they must have put a lot of hurricane disaster reporting resources in place, because they sure are anxious to tell us about these things now. This year, they’re building up fear and drama about hurricanes before they’re even hurricanes. 263 words.
Political Chess Overseas (updated). 2008-07-26 3:08 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Too Progressive gives us the scoop (actually just links to the YouTube where Andrea Mitchell gives us the scoop). One of the meatiest nuggets that conservatives have found in Obama’s overseas junket to reinforce their “Hussein” fantasies is that he snubbed wounded troops !! in Germany. 588 words.
NanoPost: John Kerry, Party Animal. 2008-07-31 10:14 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
John Kerry partying with college girls? It’s hard to imagine a bigger buzzkill. Anyway, the Boston Herald provides a somewhat less sensational version of the story, if you’re interested. 72 words.
NanoPost: Commanders On The Ground. 2008-07-31 10:18 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
It occurs to me that there is a serious flaw with politicians deferring to military commanders on the ground when it comes to Iraq: It undermines the principle that the U.S. is a civilian government. This isn’t Burma, after all. Obviously you want military commanders leading military campaigns… but foreign policy? 72 words.
NanoPost: Phear RPV Tech. 2008-07-31 10:24 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Jeff Frederick’s stellar IT background has brought the exciting world of ASP (c. 1996-2000) to the Republican Party of Virginia’s web site: http://rpv.org/news.asp. What could be next? 50 words.

August, 2008

NanoPost: Sitemeter purged. 2008-08-02 2:27 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I never particularly liked Sitemeter because of the wacky redirecting it did, and I always intended to replace it. Today I see there is an even bigger reason not to like it: No site using Sitemeter will open in Internet Explorer. Nice. 90 words.
Election of Childish Nicknames. 2008-08-06 10:02 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
If you want to be taken seriously in political discourse today, it’s very, very important to create a childish nickname for the opposition – you know, something that would fit in with the fourth grade playground set. Here’s a look at the playing field so far. 445 words.
Blogger Shutdowns. 2008-08-06 10:26 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
There’s been some consternation lately about Google allegedly “shutting down” some blogs that were critical of Barack HUSSEIN! Obama. 525 words.
omgwtfbbq #dontgo. 2008-08-07 1:55 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Virginia blogger Scott White has been spamming the Virginia blogosphere with breathless posts about the Twitter thread #dontgo for the last several days. It’s being called a “movement,” a “turning point,” a “revolution,” an “online orgy of oil drilling bliss” (okay, I made that one up). 326 words.
Never Trust An Accent. 2008-08-09 1:52 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I didn’t think it was still possible for me to be disappointed in elected officials… John Reid Edwards’ admission of an affair proves they can never be trusted. I was actually somewhat impressed by the improvement in his rhetoric in the 2008 primaries. I should never have fallen for that Southern Baptist-sounding* accent. 94 words.
Russia fighting Georgia for Ossetia. 2008-08-09 1:58 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I heard a microscopic blurb on the radio this morning about violence between Russia and Georgia. The radio guy talked about missiles and fighting and troops and then went right on to discuss the opening ceremonies of the Olypmics or something, leaving me totally in the dark about news that sounded pretty freakin’ serious. Why do they even bother? 184 words.
WarHammer Online. 2008-08-09 3:34 PM.
- Gaming
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Is anyone I know going to be playing WarHammer Online? I see it’s going to be released pretty soon (Sep 18). If anyone I know is planning to play it, I’ll probably pre-order it, otherwise I’ll probably wait a year for a free trial version to come with a video card (like I did with World of Warcraft heh). 68 words.
Obama’s VP. 2008-08-19 11:04 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Three different scoops about Obama’s VP pick: One for Kaine, one for Bayh, and one for Biden. Take your pick. 20 words.
Obama’s VP Part 2. 2008-08-21 12:21 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
One of the previously mentioned scoopers now has a new scoop: Hillary. 145 words.
Biden As VP. 2008-08-25 11:09 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I actually like Joe Biden. He is long-winded, yes, and I don’t agree with all of his policies, but he always seems to skip past the B.S. and get right to the point. 246 words.
LINQ query syntax. 2008-08-26 1:47 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I’m starting to learn a little bit about LINQ. I am only doing this because I was starting to learn a little bit about the forthcoming ASP.NET MVC Framework by watching some handy screencasts, and the authors of the framework seem to think that we should all be using LINQ, too, so amidst the discussion of the MVC Framework they throw in quite a lot of tutorials about LINQ. 726 words.
GhostDoc Redux. 2008-08-27 3:35 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I had previously written that I tried GhostDoc but removed it because it didn’t write very useful comments. Well I re-loaded it today because it does have one very handy feature: Adding comments to classes that implement interfaces. It’s incredibly tedious to copy comments from the interface code to the class code, but with GhostDoc you just have to right-click on the class member and hit “Document This” and it will automatically bring the comment from the interface to the class. 83 words.
Opera Road Test. 2008-08-27 3:45 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Previously I wrote about Opera 9.5. Since then, I’ve been using it for almost all of my browsing at home (at work we still have to use IE6 rolls eyes). So far I’ve only encountered two real problems with it. 274 words.
The Conventions Part 1. 2008-08-29 3:20 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
We’ve been watching the DNC on C-SPAN this week. If you’re masochistic enough to want to watch a partisan convention, C-SPAN is definitely the way to go. It entirely cuts out the commercials and painfully ridiculous commentary that typically comes with the news networks. 434 words.
Agile Wall. 2008-08-29 8:52 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I learned a new software development term the other day: “Agile Wall.” For those of you who aren’t into renaming things that already have names just to sound more important, it is: “A bulletin board with project notes all over it.” Okay, okay, the notes are supposed to be arranged into three columns for “todo,” “in progress,” and “done.” Yeah, I can see how it’s a totally different concept now. 70 words.
Palin as VP. 2008-08-29 11:35 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I said before I thought Biden was an “interesting and bold choice” for Obama. Well, today McCain actually one-upped him. Gov. 374 words.

September, 2008

Virginia Third Parties in November. 2008-09-01 2:20 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I was curious to see how many third parties made it onto the ballot here in Virginia, so I went over to the Virginia State Board of Elections. Here are the candidates that will be appearing on the ballot in Virginia for U.S. Senate. 142 words.
This Is An Outrage. 2008-09-01 5:05 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I am outraged that Hurricane Gustav is interfering with the Republican National Convention. How am I supposed to compare it with the DNC now? 154 words.
Prediction. 2008-09-04 2:31 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I am going to make a bold prediction that Republicans will praise Sarah Palin’s speech (probably using baseball metaphors), and Democrats will not. 23 words.
Common Ground. 2008-09-05 12:52 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I’m going to try to find some common ground with Gov. Sarah Palin. 77 words.
Secure Your Teleprompter Text. 2008-09-05 1:49 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I was scanning over Gov. Palin’s speech as it was pasted at Caroline County VA Justice (original source unknown), and stumbled over this part, which plenty of others have also noticed. 65 words.
Liberal Media Bias Again. 2008-09-05 1:49 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Here’s some more of that damn liberal media bias again. I’m glad conservatives are finally holding the media accountable for this foolishness. 46 words.
Comparison of VP speeches. 2008-09-05 1:56 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I thought it would be instructive to compare the tone of the personal attacks in the vice-presidential candidate speeches at their respective conventions. 691 words.
The Conventions Part 2. 2008-09-05 10:16 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I’m not going to lie to you: The RNC was nowhere near as entertaining as the DNC. (Except as seen on The Daily Show.) Here are the all-star speakers from CSPAN’s YouTube channel: George Bush (introduced by Laura Bush), Fred Thompson, Joe Lieberman, Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, Sarah Palin, Lindsey Graham, Tom Ridge, Cindy McCain, John McCain. (Remember bloggers, embeds are not valid HTML. 173 words.
New Comment System. 2008-09-09 1:17 AM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I updated the commenting functionality on my blog for no particular reason. 47 words.
WAR Ordered. 2008-09-16 10:09 PM.
- Gaming
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Okay I ordered Warhammer Online (aka. WAR, which stands for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning). It’ll probably arrive in a week or so*. 316 words.
WAR First Impressions. 2008-09-18 10:09 PM.
- Gaming
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Well I finally got the WAR beta client downloaded, unzipped, installed and patched up for the head start (a process that stretched over two days and nights), and I played a little bit on the Grimnir server last night. That means I got a one day head start on the retail public riff-raff, since the public launch is supposed to be today, the 18th. 590 words.
Finally != Inevitable. 2008-09-19 12:29 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
For future reference: I had always heard that there were cases where finally blocks were not run. The other day I actually witnessed one of those situations: In a .NET console app, if you hit CTRL-C to exit the application, finally blocks are not executed. Fortunately garbage collection will still handle standard cleanup of objects for you (at least I assume so). 142 words.
WAR Report, Day 6. 2008-09-22 10:38 PM.
- Gaming
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Since I can’t play WAR anymore because it now requires me to enter the CD key from the CD that hasn’t arrived yet, I guess this is a good opportunity to write down some more impressions of WAR. (Yes, once again, people who pre-order games get screwed.) 1,262 words.
WAR Report, Day 7. 2008-09-23 10:28 PM.
- Gaming
- thomaskrehbiel.com
…and day 2 of not being able to play because I haven’t received my pre-ordered copy in the mail yet. That part’s not surprising, but it is beyond belief that Mythic made the unbelievably retarded decision to disable the head start codes a couple of days after launch. Honestly the more I read about Mythic’s business practices, the less I want to play this game. 326 words.
Darkfall?. 2008-09-23 10:51 PM.
- Gaming
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Darkfall sounds like it might be a cool new MMORPG on the horizon. The screenshots look really nice, and the feature list sounds impressive. I just signed up for the beta on a whim. 60 words.
Sorry IE7 Users. 2008-09-26 11:01 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
By the way I’d like to apologize to anyone who has viewed my site recently with Internet Explorer 7. Sometimes it rendered very badly, randomly writing text all over the place, shifting boxes around and generally looking ugly (see below). It had something to do with an overflow:hidden CSS attribute in the rounded boxes, which apparently is not well liked by Internet Explorer. 83 words.
WAR Report, Altdorf. 2008-09-26 11:05 PM.
- Gaming
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I was wandering around Altdorf the other night, which is the capital city for the Empire (ie. the humans). I don’t remember why I went there – probably to find someone to fulfill some quest. 276 words.
That Bailout Thingy. 2008-09-26 11:08 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I know nothing about the mysteriously ambiguous world of economics so I can’t speculate as to whether this bailout thing is good, bad, or indifferent. Well, actually I can – I can speculate that bailing out big companies sounds bad. Not so much for the dreaded socialism aspect but more for the fact that the upper echelons of all these failed companies won’t experience any consequences from their persistent record of gross incompetence. 224 words.
WAR Report, Day Something. 2008-09-30 11:05 AM.
- Gaming
- thomaskrehbiel.com
More notes from WAR. I don’t know what it is about MMOs that inspire a lot of commentary. I guess everyone has an opinion about how to make MMOs better. 1,414 words.

October, 2008

Death of a Bailout. 2008-10-01 12:29 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I’m kind of glad the bailout bill failed. The “credit crisis” hasn’t affected me in the slightest, and I have yet to see any specific explanation of how it might affect me in the future. So now I won’t be able to get a loan for more money than I can ever pay back… that’s a crisis? 178 words.
Who’s Going to Bail Out the Bailout?. 2008-10-06 9:47 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
So let me get this straight. 314 words.
Sitemap.xml and Google Webmaster Tools. 2008-10-14 10:04 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I just read about Sitemap.xml on Coding Horror. I’d never heard of it before (yeah, I’m not exactly wired into the whole SEO thing). Anyway, I just implemented a site map for my page, for what it’s worth. 70 words.
WAR Report, Fizzled Out. 2008-10-14 10:06 PM.
- Gaming
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Okay well I cancelled my WAR subscription and uninstalled it. Mrs. Krehbiel was starting to get annoyed and it was way too much of an uninspiring game to try to defend it. :) I should have stuck with my personal ban on EA games I guess. 229 words.
WAR Report, Cultivation. 2008-10-14 10:08 PM.
- Gaming
- thomaskrehbiel.com
One quick note on the WAR Cultivation skill: I applaud the concept – it’s a very cool idea to be able to plant seeds and grow them into herbs and things. Unfortunately the implementation in WAR is just awful. It takes about 2 full minutes to grow a single plant. 189 words.
EVE Online Impressions. 2008-10-14 10:26 PM.
- Gaming
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Before I wasted my money on WAR, I toyed with the idea of getting EVE Online instead. The idea of a spaceship-based MMO is fascinating – it harkens back to the golden age of TradeWars on the local dialup BBS – and I’ve wanted to try it out for, well, years. So now that WAR is gone, I went ahead and downloaded the 21-day EVE Online free trial through Steam and played with it over the 3-day weekend. 692 words.
Me vs. the MMO Engine. 2008-10-16 10:54 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
So I decided to write an MMO game engine*. 322 words.
New Collection vs. Collection.Clear. 2008-10-18 4:38 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Quick, which one of the following implementations is faster to use in a time-critical section of code. 320 words.
Evaluating MMO Engines. 2008-10-18 4:53 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Before I embark too far on the insane idea of writing my own MMO engine, I thought it would be instructive to peek at some open source engines out there (gathered from the first few pages of a Google search). 619 words.
Moving C++/CLI Properties Out Of Headers. 2008-10-18 8:54 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
A while back I railed against C++/CLI for its nonsensical inability to separate property implementations from the header file. Well, it turns out you can do it – it’s just not widely reported. Almost every example of a C++/CLI property shows it implemented in the header file. 164 words.
The Cynical Election Roundup. 2008-10-20 3:00 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
By the way, I’m purposefully avoiding writing and especially reading further about the presidential election. Thankfully I already have all the information I need to make a decision, because if I didn’t, I definitely wouldn’t be getting anything useful from television, radio or the blogosphere. I feel badly for anyone actually trying to decide how to vote right now. 143 words.
MMO Prototype Progress. 2008-10-20 3:14 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Here’s the progress I made on my MMO engine this weekend. 30 words.
India Launches Moon Mission. 2008-10-23 1:36 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
This is nifty: Indian Moon Mission Launched. Glad to see that somebody is doing something productive for the human race. This news surprised me because I can’t remember hearing about any other space flights to the moon since, you know, the 1970s. 73 words.

November, 2008

A Minor Reflection upon the Election. 2008-11-04 10:21 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
For some parts of the country, tomorrow will be a day of joy and relief, and for others, it will be a day of anger and despair. Both of those extremist groups will be flailing around a lot on television, radio, and the Internet in the days and weeks ahead while media producers scramble to further dramatize what is supposed to be the (latest) defining news event of our time. 256 words.
Poll Results from 2000 and 2004. 2008-11-04 10:25 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
It’s popularly believed (at least by the handful of people that I’ve overheard lately) that polls don’t mean anything, and the actual results of today’s election will be far different from what the media says it will be. I tend to agree with that theory, up to a point*. But I was curious to see if that viewpoint bears up against the historical evidence from the 2000 and 2004 elections, which as you may remember turned out to be toss-ups. 193 words.
Post-Election Musing. 2008-11-06 12:07 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I have many post-election thoughts. 571 words.
Azure and C# 4.0 at PDC. 2008-11-07 2:46 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
Most of the buzz from Microsoft’s PDC is about Azure and C# 4.0. I don’t usually pay too much attention to bleeding edge Microsoft technology until it might actually be used in real-life situations, but I thought I’d break from tradition and peek at these two shiny new things. 601 words.
Disabling Pluralization in Visual Studio. 2008-11-11 10:51 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I noticed with some concern that the Visual Studio 2008 designer puts an “s” on the end of table names when it builds LINQ to SQL classes. If you want to disable that, open Tools/Options, go to the Database Tools O/R Designer page, and change “Pluralization of names” option to false. 108 words.
Fed up with SyncToy. 2008-11-17 3:36 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I’ve been trying to use Microsoft’s SyncToy for my directory synchronization tasks, and I’m just about fed up with it. For reasons I can’t fathom, it routinely “forgets” what to synchronize. I frequently synchronize to and from a USB stick, and I find that SyncToy usually wants to copy far more files than have actually been changed. 146 words.
Less Mergers, Less Bailouts. 2008-11-17 3:43 AM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I’ve been thinking about this bailout thing. I’m no economist, but it seems to me that instead of the government bailing out large companies that fail, the government should instead work to prevent companies from getting so large that their failure would impact the nation’s economy. So I would suggest that whichever government agency is responsible for regulating corporations start cracking down and don’t allow big corporations to gobble up smaller corporations anymore. 82 words.
CookieContainer, HttpWebRequest and Secure Cookies. 2008-11-20 2:27 AM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I ran across a troublesome problem that took several evenings to debug. I couldn’t find a solution with Google so maybe somebody else will benefit from this. 287 words.
LINQ to SQL and Entity Framework Classes. 2008-11-21 11:15 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I’ve been starting to work a little bit with LINQ to SQL and now the ADO.NET Entity Framework* (to implement ORM** for UvMoney, my home banking system). There’s something that troubles me about both frameworks. Both require you to build a “model” of your database with a designer, from which strongly-typed classes are generated, which you can then use in your LINQ queries. 218 words.
Corporate GMail. 2008-11-21 11:19 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I didn’t realize this, but you can actually brand Google apps. The place where my wife works got some new computers, and their new web-mail system is actually GMail with a different logo up in the corner, which they get to through their own domain name. After a little digging, I found that it’s “corporate GMail,” apparently a component of Google Apps. 83 words.
When It’s Okay To Use C# 3.0 var. 2008-11-21 11:29 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I ragged a little bit on “var” a while ago, but there are some cases where I think it’s a handy shortcut. Those being when it’s abundantly clear what the underlying type is, like when creating new objects. For example, it makes perfect sense to change this. 373 words.
Bioshock. 2008-11-28 8:37 PM.
- Gaming
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I downloaded Bioshock from Steam for a measely $19.95 a while back. If you’re one of the six or seven people who haven’t played it already, it’s a very cool game. Definitely a five… out of five. 117 words.

December, 2008

Congress vs. The Automakers. 2008-12-08 10:23 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I have to confess that I don’t understand why Congress has been grilling the auto industry over the measly $35 billion they’re asking for, when they previously felt absolutely no restraint or shame over giving away trillions to the banking industry. I guess nobody in Congress owns auto stock… 108 words.
O Come, O Come Emmanuel, Three Versions. 2008-12-11 2:27 AM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
In the spirit of Advent, here are three different versions of O Come, O Come Emmanuel that I’ve recorded over the years. 122 words.
Blagojevich, the Transition and the Shoe. 2008-12-22 10:51 PM.
- Commentary
- thomaskrehbiel.com
I haven’t written much lately because I don’t have a lot of spare time. Well, that’s not exactly true. The more accurate statement is that I don’t feel like using up my spare time writing. 420 words.
Christmas Eve Tunes. 2008-12-24 8:33 PM.
- Blog
- thomaskrehbiel.com
In order to demonstrate to the malls and radio stations when it is appropriate to begin playing Christmas music, I now present two more Christmas carols I recorded back in 1995. 82 words.
New Blog Platform for 2009. 2008-12-26 4:17 PM.
- Technology
- thomaskrehbiel.com
As I’ve hinted, I decided to rewrite my PHP blog platform again. I’ve been working too hard to shoehorn features I want into the old code, so it’s time for a re-imagining. Besides, it’s just fun to write new code. 461 words.