This past weekend was UFC 60: Hughes vs Gracie. The event was hyped
to be headlined by one of the greatest fights of all time. As an MMA fan I normally get together with a group of friends and we order UFC pay-per-views from Dish Network and this one was no different. I personally do not order the event as I have neither digital cable or dish, or have the space required to comfortably hold 8+ screaming UFC fans, so we usually go over to Nick and Becky’s house (they have dish). Since they do not have a land line (He and his wife both just use cell phones), We have two options when it comes to ordering PPVs from Dish Network. He can call their 800 number and use the automated service or He can log into his online account and order it from there. Both work equally as well, but the first option of the 800 number costs you an extra $1 for a “service fee”.

For the last 2 pay-per-views when he has tried to order with his online account. Each time he was presented with a ‘the system is unavailable, try again later’ error. How very convenient for them to have an outage right before a big pay-per-view event to force customers to call and get charge them an extra $1. So for UFC 60 last weekend, He logged into his account and attempted to order but was again presented with the error message. This time he figured that there was no way this was a legitimate outage. He tried a couple more times, and just as he was about to give up, order by phone, and eat the $1 service fee he decided to try using Internet Explorer. Low and behold he was able to order the pay-per-view fine on his first attempt with IE.

Clearly Dish needs to do some work on their website compatability, but even more so their error messages. Instead of ‘the system is unavailable, try again later’ something along the lines of ‘Browser not supported’, or ‘Site only compatible with Internet Explorer’ would be a much better suited message and would of saved us the $1 service fee. Sure, we all use firefox for our normal day to day browsing but we don’t have problems switching back when something clearly doesn’t display properly.
Dish, get your shit together!

Technorati Tags: Dish Network, Firefox

What will $82 million dollars buy you now a days? Apparently the Rolling Rock name, recipe, and brewery located in Latrobe Penn. As of Friday May 19th, Rolling Rock (InBev USA,) has been purchased by American beer monopoly Anheuser-Busch. Had I known that the company was for sale, I would of scraped together all of my liquid assests and put down an offer. All in all doesn’t seem like a good thing for the beer and it’s regular drinkers (which almost seem to be an occult following)
For me personally this was the first beer that I really came to enjoy. It’s light, crisp, and unexplainably refershing when served as physically cold as sciense allows (33 degrees) without having pieces of ice floating in it. I mean what other beer comes in a cool green bottle that has it’s own urban legends about what the ’33′ ‘s represent. Hey maybe it’s the temperature at which rolling rock is best served?!
Care to learn more about Rolling Rock, or the different rumored meanings of the ’33′ check out the links below
Rolling Rock.com
Rolling Rock Urban legends
Article about the Anheuser-Busch purchase

Technorati Tags: Rolling Rock, Beer, 33

Well, here is something I’ve been toying around with at work. Turns out I’m not going to use it because the .net program I wrote is far more efficient.

This Stored Procedure will do both Inserts AND updates from a single data file. I have yet to find anything on the net to allow me to do this with any simplicity so here you go.

This however is not without certain stipulations.
1. Your tables must have the SQL Default Primary Key naming convention PK_SOMENAME.
2. You need an empty table that has the same structure as the table you are trying to load. It must be named TEMP_ and then the name of the table you’ll be loading (ex. TEMP_AUTHORS)
3. Add a column to the TEMP_ table ‘NEWROW’ Make it an INT and Default to 0.

And yes I know this is messy, cluttered and not written in the best manner… I just through it together for testing purposes. If you want to use it feel free, but clean it up for crap sake.

SQL BulkInsertUpdate StoredProcedure

If you use it, or have questions, let me know. And for the rest of you that don’t care about such things as SQL Server Stored Procedures I have included some ascii art of a bunny. Enjoy!!

Technorati Tags: SQL Server,  Bulk Update

   _     _
   \`\ /`/
    \ V /
    / .  . \
  =\ T  /=
    / ^ \
 {}/\\ //\
 __\ ”  ” / __
(____/^\___)

Today while listening to my playlist I decided to take the words (in order based on the number of syllables) from the songs played in order and put them into Haiku format.  i.e. Word one came from Song 1 syllable 1, Word 2 came from song 2 syllable 2, etc.  It turned out pretty decent for being totally random

Just can this whisper
Of garbage shaft fine really
You without one number

Yeah, deep I know….  Here are the songs the words randomly came from

Just – The Mars Volta  — Televators
Can  – The Postal Service  — Against All Odds
this    -  Nirvana — On a Plain
whisper coldplay — Whisper
Of – Rage Against the Machine — Killing in the name of
Garbage – Incubus — 11 AM
Shaft      -  Incubus — Shaft
Fine      -  Incubus — Clean
Really  -  The Arcade Fire — Neighborhood #3 (power out)
You      -  Jurrasic 5 — Break
Without – Beastie Boys — The Move
One      – Our Lady Peace — Under Zenith
Number  – Smooks Eaglin — Drive it Home

Technorati Tags: haiku, playlist poetry

Is IAMS putting crack in their Large Breed dog food?

I think these postage stamp sized videos prove my point, but you be the judge.
(Links 1 and 2 are the same movie in different formats)
Crazy Wrigley (.3gp format)

Crazy Wrigley (Divx/.AVI format)

TURBO Crazy Wrigley (.Mov format)

Technorati Tags: Wrigley, Crack, Vizsla

What the hell is May Day? Ya got me, but i want to praticipate, or celebrate or do whatever it is you do today.

Edit: Apparently not many people know about May Day, besides the fact it’s what you yell when you’re a pilot and your plane is going down. Oh and Wrigley and I are pretty much ninjas.

Technorati Tags: May Day, May Basket