*Words of Wisdom From The Elder

I was filling out a document during lunch today for a speaking engagement.  There were the typical questions on the form:  name, email, phone, bio, session abstract and personal photo.   Nothing major, I have all that easily available.  The next question it asked for was a personal logo.  I scratched my head, personal logo.  Hmmm, I don’t have one.  A quick search revealed this link about them but this is the first I’ve heard of one.  Am I officially un-cool now?  How many geek points does this cost me because I don’t have a personal logo?  Not wanting to lose my geek points I quickly went back into the archives.  I mean way back to the “ZorKa” archives. 

For those that have only known me recently, I used to have a blog that was called “ZorKa”.  For those that would like more clarification as to what ZorKa stands for read this and to get the full history read this.  ZorKa was an alias I used throughout the Internet.  I still have friends in certain circles that call me ZorKa and some newer friends that mix with the old friends have no idea why they call me that.  The reason I stopped using ZorKa and created this blog branded with my personal name awhile back is because ZorKa is actually my web hosting company that I’ve owned since 1997.  I needed to separate the company from the personality.  I sleep better at night now knowing I have a true separation.

I tell you this because it does tie into the personal logo quandary I’m in.  In the mid 90’s I created what I guess I would call a “personal logo” for ZorKa using The Gimp (open source Photoshop for those that don’t know).  After much digging around I finally found it on my server.   It is truly a work of art (cough cough) and is the ONLY image I’ve ever drawn from scratch by hand with a computer program.  For now, this will have to do to fill the void for my personal logo.  Geek points are now restored.

The only problem is when I shrunk it down to the 32×32 required size, it looks like crap.  Thus, I’m posting it here so everyone can enjoy it to its fullest.  Drum roll…….. I give you the all mighty ZORKA!

I took another one of those personality tests.   This one I don’t know how much weight it holds but in the end, I’m 73% Megatron.  Here is the overview: 

Megatron is the leader of the Decepticons. He will stop at nothing to establish his empire and destroy the Autobots, starting with Optimus Prime.

Like Megatron, you are not compassionate and harbor evil thoughts. You are inspiring, confident, and a natural leader. The Decepticons have chosen well. In addition, you enjoy being one step ahead of your friends as far as trends and technology.

I don’t know about the harboring of evil thoughts but my wife definitely tells me I have no compassion.  The next sentence is of course dead on.   As far as trends and technology I don’t enjoy it to be ahead of someone else, I just enjoy it.  So close and then again not so close.  My friend Moonkhan was 89% Megatron.  Scary.  Ok now, your turn.   Take the test.

http://www.funflip.com/quiz/transformers

Since I wanted to move my generated proxy class generated by svcUtil to a separate C# Class Library project I ran into another problem after I figured out how to generate the collection type I wanted.  The problem I ran into was the namespace wasn’t correct.  At first there wasn’t a namespace.  I knew there was a namespace switch in the svcUtil.exe but the lack of documentation on it and examples left me scratching my head a few times.  Why people don’t include examples of every single switch is beyond me.  I guess I am too much of an educator to understand why simple things like that go undocumented. 

The namespace declared for the data contract in the WSDL was something like http://My.Namespace/ and  I wanted it to map to My.Proxy.  Here is the switch for svcUtil that gave me what I wanted.

svcUtil /n:http://My.Namespace/,My.Proxy

Of course combine this with the post from yesterday where I mapped the collection type of List<> and we are on our way to creating a pretty good proxy for the service. 

I just ran into a weird situation and I’m documenting it so I think I’m crazy later on.  I have the following method in a WCF service which basically returns a List<> of data contracts.

There is nothing weird or fancy about the service.  It just returns a collection of data contracts.  When I first generated the proxy for this service I added a service reference to the Winform project (right clicked project, add service reference).  The above collection of RuleSets got returned as a BindingList<RuleSetDataContract>.  To me that was weird, I had expected it to be RuleSetDataContract[].  Basically an array of objects.  It was weird but I lived with it whilst I was prototyping. 

Later as I fleshed my app out more I moved my proxy class into a C# class library all on its on.  When I generated the proxy class from a plain old C# class library class, the BindingList<RuleSetDataContract> collection was in fact replaced with an array of RuleSetDataContracts!   If someone cares to go deep on this and explain why you would get two totally different types of proxy classes generated for me I’m all ears.  Right now I’m in the coding zone and have to get done so let me leave you with my fix so I can get back to coding. 

In the end what I really wanted to deal with were generic lists (List<Object>).  Instead of using VS2005 to generate the file I shelled out to the Visual Studio command prompt and ran this command:

svcutil /d:. /noconfig /o:OrbbService.cs /r:DataContracts.dll /ct:System.Collections.Generic.List`1 http://localhost:57199/MyService.svc

Here is the break down of what these switches mean:

• /d – working directory
• /noconfig  – don’t generate the config file (duh)
• /o – filename for generated code
• /r – Used to specify assemblies that might contain types representing the metadata being imported
• /ct – fully qualified name of the type to use as a collection data type when code is generated from schemas

By running the above command I now have everything the way I really want it with List<Object> for all of the return types.  Life is good.  I can now continue my regularly scheduled programming.

The other night I came in and decided I was going to burn the stumps in my yard.  I am sick of looking at them and mowing around them.  My John Deere lawn mower hates driving in circles, as does his rider.  Officially, I have waged war with stumps in my yard.  I grabbed a can of gasoline and soaked them down.  Took a match, lit it from about 10 feet back and threw it toward the stump.  POOOOOOOOF!   Instant stump burning.  Here are some pictures of my stump burning escapades.

This tree was killed by the hurricane.  I had to finish cutting it down about a month ago.  May it rest in peace.  Once this stump burns out, this area will become my new pit.  I’m taking some red blocks and building a wall around this area and adding a man made grill.  Instant BBQ pit.  Great for cooking dogs and burgers.  Who needs charcoal!  

Smaller stump.  It didn’t have a chance but has proven to be a worthy adversary.  Turns out there is a very large hole under this stump.  I have yet to touch bottom on it. 

The largest of all the stumps.  About a three feet in diameter pine tree stump.  It was also a victim of the hurricane.

Once all said stumps have burned I will be taking my tiller and tilling the ground, leveling it, then placing some centipede sod over the top of it.  When all said and done, you’ll never have known a tree once lived there.