PersonalCapital.com as a replacement for Quicken

With Windows XP retiring, I looked for a replacement for my Quicken financial software which ran on my soon-to-be-obsolete XP computer.  I never liked Quicken, but it worked and was barely adequate.
 
After evaluating many software programs and web sites I settled on PersonalCapital.com.
I was queasy about uploading sensitive data to their site, but realized my home computer can be hacked as easily as their site - no place is safe anymore.

I love PersonalCapital.com.  It's one easy place to consolidate all my finances.
The best part is their asset allocation function which looks across all my accounts to determine if I  have the right mix of stocks and bonds, foreign and domestic investments. 

Their charts are simple but effective in showing trends in my finances.

I update my check categories and PC shows  how much I am spending each month on food, gas, entertainment and other things.

The coolest thing happened this last week.  PersonalCapital sent me a notification that one of my investment funds had a higher than expected fee.  Sure enough I researched recent changes in my retirement account, and our company had re-allocated our previous funds at Vanguard into new funds.  One of the new funds had a much higher fee than the previous fund.  Now I know I need to switch funds.

Thank you Personal Capital.

Remote Editing of Files with Emacs Through a Proxy on Windows 7

I've always loved emacs for editing files on remote machines.  I started with Ange-ftp, then tramp,  and then plink.  Now with blocked ports and a proxy to navigate, I've upgrade to plinkx.
With plinkx you can fiddle with the setting in PuTTY to get everything perfect and then use the PuTTY saved session in Emacs.
This is much easier than trying to set all the communication protocols in lisp.
Here's some setup code from my .emacs file.  The tricky part is that the tramp-default-host is the name of your saved session.

    (progn  
             (require 'tramp)
             (setq tramp-default-method "plinkx")
             (setq tramp-default-user "myUserName")
             (setq tramp-default-host "f");;the Saved Session from PuTTY.  See below.
             (setq tramp-verbose 10)
             (setq tramp-debug-buffer t)
             (setq password-cache-expiry nil)
    )




Now it works great!

WebDAV error "HTTP Error 405.0 - Method Not Allowed" using WebAPI

This morning I ran into this error on our .Net WebAPI project:

 "HTTP Error 405.0 - Method Not Allowed. The page you are looking for cannot be displayed because an invalid method (HTTP verb) is being used."
"This error means that the request sent to the Web server contained an HTTP verb that is not allowed by the configured module handler for the request."

This is after we did the excellent fix suggested at http://evolutionarydeveloper.blogspot.com/2012/07/method-not-allowed-405-on-iis7-website.html.

The problem turned out not to be that the handler was not configured to handle a GET, but that my routing was ambiguous. I edited WebApiConfig.cs and modified the routing to be more specific. Now it works like magic.

(Note to Microsoft: Not to be whiny, but would it be so hard to give us an error like, "ambiguous route"?).

Photos from Austin .Net Users Group July 13, 2015

David McCarter talked to 55 people about 10 things to do to improve your code. David has many years of experience so it was interesting to hear his thoughts.
His contacts:: website: dotNetTips.com, email: dotNetDave@live.com, twitter: @realdonetdave

His tips for writing good code:
* Layer your code. Typical layers: Data, Business, Communications, UI
* Design for occasional internet connection. Why can't I post on Facebook when I don't have a connection?
* Make your app faster. Cache long running reports, use cloud based region data centers. Make "chunky not chatty" calls over the net. (Visual Studio 2015 will make performance issue better)
* Most of your code should be in portable dlls. Only code in client app loads data and interacts with the user.
* Check out IntelliTests in VS 2015.
* 3 Pillars of Object Oriented Programming: Encapsulation, Inheritance, Polymorphism
* Only application should log errors, not the dlls.
* Exceptions and Event Logging. His open source logging utility to fix the problems in .Net's trace logging: dotNetTips.Utility.Logging. Log Severity, Category, CLR version, free physical memory, virtual, OS.
* Internationalization string birthDate = p1.BirthDate.ToString(CultureInfo.CurrentCulture);
* Introduction to Localization and Globalization in .NET by Jeremy Clark on pluralsight.com
* Store format string in Properties.Resources.UserInfoFormat "birthday:{0}, name: {1}"
* Use Strong Naming to prevent spoofing
* David Recommends CodeItRight which finds and fixes errors.
* Use code obsfication, but not the free microsoft one, but buy a commercial obsficator.
* Stop the copy and paste nightmare
* Use code analysis e.g., FXCop
* Use application profiling for memory and performance

Austin .Net User Group Pictures from June 8, 2015

Chander Dhall spoke to the Austin .Net Users Group last night about JavaScript. Here's two pics. The room actually filled up after I took the first one so it was Standing Room Only. Chander was an entertaining speaker and really showed how JavaScript is really weird. My cryptic notes for the evening:
Use Xamarin tools for coding Android and iOS apps in C#
UserGroup.tv has lots of tech videos.
Chander had no powerpoint, just raw code.
JavaScript is not going anywhere.
Angularjs is having problems, so reactive is getting some traction to replace angular.
You really need to understand the weirdness of JavaScript - frameworks are not going to solve your problem.
The answer is IIFE.

How to remove Perforce from the right-click context menu in Windows 7

When I right-clicked on a file in Windows Explorer it took an agonizing 8 seconds for the context menu to appear. I noticed that "Perforce" was in the context menu.

 I tried to go to the control panel and modify the P4V installation to remove it, but windows whined about not being able to find a log file. No dice.

So I did the next best thing. I renamed the actual program from P4EXP.dll to something else in C:\Program Files\Perforce\P4EXP. My context menu now appears in under a second.

I'll let you know if this causes downstream perforce weirdness, like files with two heads or three arms.

Windows 7 Outlook issue: "ost is in use and cannot be accessed".

I got to work early today, ready to get to work, and was greeted with this cheery note from my Windows 7 box when opening Outlook:

"The file C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\username.ost is in use and cannot be accessed. Close any application that is using this file, and then try again. You might need to restart your computer."

Restarting the box did not help. I had to open the "Windows Task Manager" (Ctrl-Shift-Esc), select "Lync.exe" and kill it (you might also need to kill "Communicator", "ucmapi", or "Outlook" itself). Then Outlook was happy and I could start my day.

This morning's ambush reminds me of Cato hiding in wait for Inspector Clouseau to return so Cato can attack him, just to keep Clouseau sharp.