I administrate an ASP.Net web application that requires our users to log in throughout the day and enter their time/expenses into the accounting system.
When left idle for 20 minutes, the browser session times out and the user is forced to logout and sign in again. But there is no indicator or timer showing when the session expires and most users find out only after they try to save a record hence losing all their work.
The software manufacturer addresses this issue on their support wiki stating that you simply increase the Session Timeout variable located in IIS under YourWebSite -> Properites -> ASP.NET-> Edit Configuration -> State Management. Seems legit to me, but didn't work out to well. I applied these changes to several different objects up the tree in IIS thinking there was a global configuration that was trumping my changes but after I had changed every instance of Session Timeout i could get my hands on it still timed out after 20 minutes.
Then I checked the properties of the Application Pool related to my web application. Under the Performance tab there is a section labeled Idle Timeout where you can set the idle time required to shutdown the worker processes. The default was 20 minutes (sounds familiar). I bumped this up to 1200 minutes and restarted IIS. This solved the user session timeout issue!
When the worker process times out and shuts down, the related user session is deleted and the user is force to start a new one. When the user refreshes the page after this has occurred the application behaves as if the session has expired.
This year we had our 3rd annual corporate management retreat in Maine. I took a sea plane from Bangor right to Chet's Camp front door. We climbed Khatadin, floated the Saint Croix River, I flipped my kayak and lost a good pair of headphones. I can't wait to get back up there again.
Today I launched DanielleDavisArt.com. Danielle Davis is a portrait and wedding photographer located in Little Rock, Arkansas. The main site is a flash-based template customized to Danielle's style of work. Her blog is powered by WordPress and utilizes a custom photography theme that is unlike anything I have seen in the photography market. Her private galleries and print procurement are powered by DigiLabs.
I was fortunate enough to visit Niagara Falls while on a business trip to Buffalo, NY. When we got there I noticed Mindy Kaling from 'The Office'. When I got down to the Maid of the Mist, her crew boarded as well. I muscled up the courage to ask her if I could get a photo with her, she kindly obliged.
I spent last weekend near Aspen, CO in the Maroon Bells - Snowmass wilderness on Condundrum Creek Trail. There was a lot more snow than we had anticipated for this time of year, but it was a beautiful trip.
Here's a little python snippet i created to dynamically update my apache config with a new virtual host when a new user signs up to BlogPlot.com. I will be calling this script from Zope via an external method in which i will pass the users domain name from the sign up form.
I am working on a new content project which will be powered by Joomla. Joomla is a popular open source content management system written in PHP. There are tons of extenstions and templates out there, I recomend RocketTemplates for great templates. I ran into an issue with one of their latest templates "Dimensions". Joomla's WYSIWYG editor uses the site's template's CSS to apply style. With the Dimensions template, the background gets set to black, and your text is black, therefore you can't see anything you are typing. To fix this, in the administration panel, go to
Mambots > Site Mambots
then click on TinyMCE WYSIWYG Editor in the listing. Under Parameters on the right-hand side, scroll down to Template CSS classes and select the No radio button. That's it!
I ran across the T-Qualizer on ThinkGeek.com last week and I just had to have it. My wife thinks I am an idiot. Here is a goofy video demonstrating how the shirt reacts to sound (BTW my wife made me go out in the garage to do this).
Obviously this would be really fun to wear to a concert. It's one of those shirts where you think you are cool and you can imagine the band calling you up on the stage to show off your cool unique shirt but when you get to the venue there are like 5 other guys (who also have internet access) wearing the same shirt. Maybe I could take it to an Amish festival or something.
I have been posting alot of entries about helicopters lately and I'm sure you are tired of seeing them, so here is another entry about heli's. We flew at Burns Park this weekend. Ryan spent most of the day installing his new V2 frame joints. Alex was sporting his new custom canopy featuring the colors of his homeland. Perfect weather, good flying, no crashes.
This Craigslist posting from Minneapolis is too funny not to share with everyone I know. The poster describes his evening feeding ritual for his 2 cats, Cat #1 and Cat #2.
Like a nuclear reactor meltdown, cat #1 pukes all of his half back into his bowl, licks his chops and saunters away. Mission accomplished, everything is fine.
This weekend Danielle and the girls were out of town, to visit her family in Denver. This left me with a full open schedule to fly heli's and what not. We flew at Burns Park on Saturday all day, and I even got to ride in a Robinson 44 (real helicopter) at the Relay for Life marathon in Maumelle. We also got some simulator time in on the big screen.
Check out this photo of Alex's Trex, the blades appear warped due to the high head spead (2400 rpm's) I guess.
I tricked out my plain white Trex canopy last night using satin finish spray paint and truck decal striping that I picket up at Wal-Mart. It turned out pretty well.
So I finally buckled down and purchased a Trex 450S, after much influence from an un-named individual. This machine is amazing, it is the cadilac of electronic RC heli's. After several nights, Alex and I assembled it in my hotel room while out on a project. I can't wait to fly it... try to fly it.
I have recently installed Microsoft Vista Business along with Microsoft Office 2007. I have beta tested Vista, so I kinda knew what I was getting into but Office 2007 was quite a shocker. The interface for all Office applications has changed drastically. I will be documenting things I learn as I go here on my blog as a reference.
The first thing comes from Access 2007. The default layout of the application has a navigation panel on the left side, which lists tables, queries, etc. The default view is set to "Tables and Related Views" which shows only tables and any other objects that relate to them (obviously by the title). This view confuses the crap out of me. I want something remotely similar to Access 2003. I found by right-clicking the navigation bar header, you can categorize by "Object Type". This view is much clearer to me as it shows all database objects separated by type. It seems obvious now, but it took me 2 hours to finally figure this out.
It seems that during times of crisis, society turns to ferries and pixie dust to remove themselves from the issue at hand. Remember the face of Satan in the smoke plume from the twin towers? These statistics (see image below) were taken as the first cease fire agreement between Israel and Lebanon was mentioned on August 12, 2006. The #1 story at that time wasn't about the cease fire, it was about a tree that was leaking "God's water". This magical tree that's leaking water is a sign that... wait a minute what could that possibly mean?
Get Anderson Cooper on the line, because I just had a glass of "God's water", it started leaking out of my faucet when I turned the knob. Isn't all water God's water? Just thinking out loud.
The need to believe in phony wonders sometimes exceeds not only logic but, seemingly, even sanity.
I love shopping at Urban Outfitters, whether I'm online or in a city with a retail store. I always look forward to taking the quarterly catalog to work and leaving out on my desk so people think I shop there.
I hate it when I wear something from UA twice, then it falls apart. Every single item I have purchased (web orders, multiple retail locations) has either lost its buttons, torn at the seams, un-frayed, or ripped within a months time. Can someone tell me why I keep buying thier crap?
I thought it would be interesting to take the STS-121 landing ground tracks posted on NASA's site and overlay them in Google Earth to get a rough idea on the shuttle's approach for tommorow's landing. Then I traced the approach from the image with the path tool and made it a planar surface so I could view relative to my current location. Download the KMZ file here.
I couldn't resist the temptation to create a packing tape sculpture of my self after reading about it. Last night I did my left arm. It was kinda scary because the tape got a little too tight but I couldn't just bail out halfway through or I would have ended up wasting a lot of tape. Tonight Ryan is going to help me do my torso and legs. The big question is where is 'he' going to live when he's done?
If you have no idea what I'm talking about see this article on how its done.
Darkness promotes the production of melatonin, which is the hormone that promotes sleep. Even the slightest glow of a night light can have an inhibiting effect on melatonin production. Less melatonin = bad sleep/wake cycles = more stress + elevated blood pressure
Reduced melatonin production has been proposed as a likely factor in the significantly higher cancer rates in night shift workers.
Save energy by using less electricity. (kinda obvious, sorry)
I love sleeping in total darkness... I always have. My wife on the other hand likes to have the TV on or a hall light on. When I stay in a hotel (frequently latetly) I have the luxury of "darking out" the room.
I have been wanting to do a 3D model of something since Google annouced their purhcase of Sketchup. I decided to model what any one else would: my house. Check it out as a Google Earth KMZ file.
This morning I put the live feed of the STS-121 mission (via NASA.gov) in the background of my work environment to just listen in and occasionally watch. I found that if you mix this live feed with your favorite music (I am currently mixing it with Regina Spektor's new album Begin to Hope) it is much more enjoyable. It feels almost like a feature film. The monotone voices of the control center scientists and the awesome scenes of the Earth's rotation from onboard cameras are entensified by the soft notes and sudden vocal breaks of Regina Spektor. If you have time I encourage you give it a try.
This is the personal web blog of Brady Davis. At work, I dabble with web application development, environmental data management, GIS, and field communications development. In my spare time I play around in Zope, Photoshop, Python and what not. Contact me... bradydavis at gmail dot com
