goHull

Back in 2007, I began working on a web project using Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2005 Express as the back-end database.  OK, thought I, I’ll start with the authentication controls.  Asp.Net framework v2 handles it very well, taking all the donkey work out of all the coding for login forms, registration forms, forgotten passwords etc etc.

So, I found an excellent online video demo of how to build it.  First things first, create a database.  So I did.  Didn’t create any tables yet, but I didn’t need to, not yet anyway because there’s this clever little utility called aspnet_regsql which allows you to set up the login tables and so on.

The wizard opens and you enter the server and choose a database from the list (which it populates from the SQL Server).  Well, it should do, but chose not to, spitting out the error “Named Pipes Provider Error: 40 – Could not open a connection to SQL Server”.

After a lot of digging and searching for error codes, it appears that it can’t be done with SQL Server Express.  So, I’ve uninstalled it and am about to install a trial of the grownup version.

****

So, I now have the 180-day evaluation installed, and am trying to connect to the server using the aforementioned aspnet_regsql utility.  I kept getting the same old Named Pipes error (40).  So, I again added a password to my windows user, and used that to log into the server.  Still getting the same error.

Incidentally, every time I make a change, I have to restart the SQL Server service, which takes about 15 seconds on average.

I make sure that Named Pipes are enabled.  Same error.  I make sure TCP/IP connections are enabled.  Same error.  I open the port for the named instance on Windows Firewall.  Same error.  I use another little utility called cliconfig which also allows me to enable TCP/IP and Named Pipes connections.  Getting the same error.

This is getting annoying.  I’ve read through about a dozen blogs and forums on the MSDN site, all to no avail.  I then enter the server name as server/sqlinstance.  Nothing.  As a last ditch attempt, I use a backslash instead, thus entering server\sqlinstance.

JOY!  A different error.  That might sound silly, but to me, that’s progress.

I load up SQL Server Management Studio and log in with Windows Authentication.  While I’m in there, I attach the database I want to use.  No error messages, it’s looking good.  I then create a new login, select my database as the default and click OK.

An exception occurred while executing a Transact-SQL statement or batch.

 It says I used invalid characters! (Error 15006).  Did I hell.  Hang on, maybe I did.  It entered the login name as server\Mark. I hastily change it to Mark and click OK.

The MUST_CHANGE option is not supported by this version of Microsoft Windows (Error 15195).

 For the love of all things holy.  No wonder database experts get paid so much, it’s so they can pay for therapy when they have a breakdown every couple of years.  I enter this new error into Google, find another MSDN blog and pull some more hair out before it turns white hopefully.

A-ha!  It appears that SQL 2k5 has lots of security features such as password expiration and so on, but these only work with Windows 2k3 Server.   So what the bloody hell do I do on Windows XP??  Then I see it.  A check-box labelled User must change password at next login.

I unchecked the box, click OK and it accepts it!!  HUZZAH!  I celebrate by dancing a dainty jig into the kitchen and put the kettle on.

My breath suitable bated, I run aspnet_regsql and log in.  ARGHH!  It won’t let me login.  I’ve created a login?  What does it want?  Flesh? Burnt offerings?

I load up the SQL Management Studio and notice that I can setup a login for the individual databases.  This login setup screen is different.  It goes on about schema.  There’s about a dozen of them followed by a list of database role memberships.

I enter the login name, and select all the schema and click OK.

You must enter a name

 I did!  No wait, that was the login, there’s also another box.  I add a name and click OK.

You cannot alter the schema ‘guest’. (Error: 15150)

 I deselect the guest schema and click OK.  No errors.  So, back to aspnet_regsql, log in and a new error.

Invalid object name ‘sysdatabases’

 <sigh>

Another search, find another MSDN blog which mention something about default databases.  I launch the SQL Management Studio again, find the login I set up and change the default database to ‘master’.  Click OK, back to aspnet_regsql.

HALLE – BASTARD – LUJA!

Excuse the vulgarities, but guess what?  It worked!!  Time for another jig round the room.  All this trouble so it can populate a drop-down list from a list of databases running on the server.  I select the database and click next to confirm, however it throws up another error.

Exception:
An error occurred during the execution of the SQL file ‘InstallCommon.sql’. The SQL error number is 262 and the SqlException message is: CREATE PROCEDURE permission denied in database.

This error is somewhat more vague than the rest and I had trouble finding anything relevant to what I was doing.  I open up Management Studio yet again and look for anything to do with permissions.  Nothing.  I’m starting to get a bit tired of all this now.  As a last ditch attempt, I go back to the aspnet_regsql wizard, and use windows authentication.

It works!!!!  The wizard completes its tasks.  I click finish and eagerly open up the Management Studio and look for my database.  Sure enough there are a load of new tables.  I am a database god!

Back to the ASP.NET video and Visual Studio and see what occurs next…

I first posted this on another website, where I go by the username “Sandettie”:

Back in days of teenage feelings, young man’s hormones whirling, wheeling
Seeing fellow school kids in ways never noticed once before,
Whilst in streets or whilst in classes, suddenly I saw the masses,
Of dishy girls and pretty lasses, causing mine own soul to soar
Girls and maidens that caused my soul to soar,
‘Tis the grievance I did abhor

I remember I was fourteen, yet to try out dating, courting
of girls and squeezes like my friends have oftentimes before
I was too bashful, far too shy, for them to see this other guy,
for passion that I could supply,  passion from my very core
They could not see nor spy the passion harboured deep within my core
A resolution that I must explore

By sixteen music was my passion and other art of form and fashion,
I beheld delight at the treasures that the music room had bore,
Like our own common room we treat that grandest music room and yet,
we were a proud elitist set hidden away behind the music room door
Segregating ourselves from beyond the music room’s stout door
We need not mingle anymore

In our clique a celebration organised by our corporation
A birthday party held for the only female member of our corps
It was a function not attended by myself, I’m told was splendid,
The guest list had been extended, extended by many a score
Many guests and friends had turned up by the score
I’m not sure why I didn’t go.

Three days later our group had grown by extra people who’d been shown,
The sanctuary and haven that our private chambers bore
Steve had met whilst at this function a girl who would not cause dysfunction,
Or Steve exhibit no compunction, for she had brought unto the fore
Her very best friend in the world brought unto the fore
And there she sat upon the floor.

She sat there demure, not speaking, she was the cure that I was seeking
For the loneliness, the emptiness that was my cardinal woe
All us lads we were besotted with this stranger, though she’d spotted,
me and then she’d plotted, that I be the one she did adore.
I and no one else within that chamber did she adore
And there she sat upon the floor

But her feelings she had kept to herself as I feebly stepped,
clumsily with languid limbs to where she sat upon the floor
She arose and with a start, said that she needs to depart,
and then a smile to stir my heart, a smile that I could not ignore
a smile to me as she crossed to the music room’s  door
Just a smile and nothing more.

Then I felt within me the butterflies that did all flirt and flutter
Eyes, her gaze that had thrilled me to my heart’s own core
Will her being cease my sorrow, should she return upon the morrow,
Though I have to beg and borrow the memories of her from before
How I remembered her sitting quietly on the floor
Just a smile and nothing more

An hour or two had passed since my heart for her did bold evince
A fixation not held to any fair since many years ago.
When the blue tenebrous room elevated from its dreary gloom,
as my fair fancy did resume her erstwhile place upon the floor
She had returned to my delight to sit upon the chamber floor
My luck was growing ever more.

I was not aware that she felt the same longing that my heart dealt
So we sat there in silence not making any advance afore
No progress made through reticence or reliance on some odd sixth sense,
I know I must take the offence and go a wooing with some words of yore.
“Hello,” said I, “Dost thine feelings for me mirror mine for thou, I implore?”
“My love for thee I can’t ignore”

She then beckoned me over and like an automaton unmanned
I drifted slowly without sense nor guidance to join her sitting on the floor
“Yes” she whispered and held me near so her voice was crisp and clear,
“and I mean that most sincere” and then flashed the smile I so adore
Her smile and mien of angels I doth so much adore
This is love, not felt before.

Then came along a mere suggestion, to which there simply was no question
“Be mine forever, love, caress me like you have no one else ever before”
And so years pass and on the jetty, she doth agree with much confetti,
To becoming the Mrs Sandettie that I’ve mentioned e’er before
Mrs Sandettie you’ve all heard about before
And this she’ll be for evermore.

Mark Oglesby – 12 Nov. 2009

I was walking home from shop when I saw my mate cycle past. I shouted and he looked round to see who it was. However, whilst he was doing that, a car just ahead of him had stopped at a crossing. My mate, who was going a fair speed hit the back of the car and his bike stopped dead. He didn’t however, and the momentum carried him over the handlebars and onto the roof of the car. He would’ve most likely glided right over the car to land on the road at the other side if the car aerial hadn’t snagged on his jogging bottoms, which caused him to slide out of them.

Now, the occupants of the car had spun round to see what the bang was and then turned back around in time to watch my mate slide down the windscreen minus his trousers with his bare genitals pressed against the glass and being stretched out, doing a fine impression of Deirdre’s neck (from Coronation Street), finally coming to a halt, face first, with his chin resting on the car bonnet in a very awkward upside down position.

He thrashed about a bit trying to get down, and resigned to pulling his legs out of his trousers completely, whereby he rolled rather gracelessly off the side of the car bonnet and onto the pavement. He picked himself up and in front of a small crowd, stretched up to retrieve his jogging bottoms from the top of the car, giving him the opportunity to press his bollocks against the passenger-side window this time.

I laughed so much I started getting a bit light-headed and had to sit down, and for the next three days my sides ached as if I’d been beaten up.

I enrolled at my former 6th Form college to do a couple of A levels. I would be in classes with kids half my age and I wondered how I might be received. Fortunately I wasn’t shunned as some weird outsider that would be on the watchlist of social services and pretty much got on with everybody.

The college broke up for Xmas and on my return in the new year, a good many of my classmates brandished iPods. I however didn’t as I’m not keen on listening to music through earphones. In maths, the teacher woud allow us to listen to music whilst working through an exercise book and I was pretty much the only one in the class that didn’t have an iPod. This would not do.

The next lesson, we were working through a trigonometry exercise and people were plugging in their iPods so I fished out of my bag my answer to this ubiquitous over-hyped music device. A 20 year old Aiwa personal stereo, complete with battery cover held in place with red electricians tape. It drew considerable attention. Do kids nowadays have no knowledge of older technology? When I was their age, I knew what a Dansette record player was and that it played 78s, and TVs that could be fixed by your dad belting the side of it with his shoe and I could even have recognised a gramophone.

But no, this was like some weird alien device that they couldn’t even comprehend. It played a format that they had no memories of and was obsolete before they even started nursery school. Surely their parents must own similar stuff. This was proved when one of them declared that their dad had something in the loft that played cassettes.

To complete the image, I dug out “Now That’s What I call Music 10″. The problem was that it needed rewinding and notwithstanding the technical wizardry of Aiwa’s R&D department, my player had no rewind function as it used up batteries on a scale not seen since Big Trak. Rewinding the tape involved slotting the cassette spool onto a Bic biro and spinning it around and around and this actually drew gasps as if I had just levitated out of the window.

If only I still had the original headphones which were those strip of spring-steel affairs with a sponge headphone pad at each end; none of these uncomfortable ear-plug things for me

Until recently, in my opinion, the Gillette Mach 3 was the best shaving method by a country mile. The two-blade Gillette Sensor isn’t quite enough and the Wilkinson Quattro is just too big. The 5-blade Fusion thing is so wide it just drags.

Complaining about the price of them, my mate got a Gillette Safety razor, the chrome things that you fit a razor blade into the top and screw it into place. He demonstrated it when I met him at his house before going out on the lash. It seemed quite cool, but I wanted something more bad-ass.

So I bought a pair of cut-throat razors and strop off eBay. They needed honing a bit and not having a proper whetstone, I used a kitchen knife steel to sharpen the edge, and then sat at my desk and stropped a keen edge to the blade for a good half hour making me look a bit of a serial killer, as my wife pointed out.

I prepared my face with hot flannels, soap and so on and then went to make the first pass whereby I jabbed myself in the cheek with the edge of the blade. 10 minutes later, standing in a bathroom that now resembled a slaughterhouse I finally stopped the bleeding and had another go.

It was ace, and apart from the leading edge of my chin it was pretty simple. Apart from slicing my face open, I only nicked myself twice. It takes maybe 2 or 3 shaves practice before you can avoid drawing blood. However, my wife can’t watch and refuses to be in the room at the same time.

Oh, I will add that the only way I’d get a closer shave would be to do it from the inside.

Obligatory length joke: About 4 inches, surgically sharp like a brand-new scalpel and held inches away from your eye obscured from view behind your hand

my brother offered to sort out some wiring on his mate’s Triumph (a 2000 I think, it was certainly a large car). It had a 2 litre engine and went like a rocket. Well it did to me as a ten year old because I was used to tootling around in my dad’s 1100 Mk1 Escort.

Anyway, to do said wiring, he removed the driver’s seat and managed to lose two of the bolts down a drain and so had to go to the scrapyard to get some more. He secured the seat with some twine from my dad’s shed and set off gingerly.

He forgot all about being careful at a set of traffic lights when a neighbour pulled up alongside of him in a Cortina. The lights changed, my brother floored it and the car lurched forward.

However, the drag race was short lived because the twine snapped and the seat tipped backwards leaving my brother on his back like an astronaut in the ill-fated British Leyland space program, with no control of the car or any way of seeing where he was going as it coasted slowly to a halt three-quarters of the way across the junction.

He said it was a very awkward position to get out of and took slightly longer to right himself than it took for a policeman to wander over and squint down at him through the window with a bemused expression his face.

I was in a Netto-a-like shop when I saw a good deal. Ten packs of three chocolate bars for a quid. “I’m having those” I thought.
They were about the size of a Penguin/Club/Rocky biscuit and were yummy.

I must’ve ploughed through maybe 8 of them that afternoon. It was then that Mrs Sandettie pointed out that they were sugar free ‘Candarel Bars’. I didn’t care. For sugar-free they were rather tasty.

Then my guts started gurgling. Shortly after that, my bowels starting moving. Well, I say moving. It was more like sprinting. I sat on the toilet, passing rusty water from my arse which was so thin it actually sounded like I was taking a piss.

I visited that room 6 times in all. Later that evening, my mate came round and found it most amusing that I had to sit on a rolled up duvet because I had a arse like a brakelight.

Don’t OD on sorbitol or aspartame, it’ll fuck you over for days.

There was a time in the early 90s when I tried curries of various grades of heat in order to work out my favourite. From pashwari, a fruity dish made with lychees, bananas and coconut all the way up to the bowel-wobbling vindaloo. Along with everything inbetween.

It was then that I discovered the ‘Cobra Bite’ in an Indian takeaway in West Hull. The Cobra Bite was a curry that was hotter than the Stygian conflagration of Hades itself. The takeaway menu graded the heat of the curries by displaying a number of chillis. Korma was one chilli, Madras was five chillis and Vindaloo was six. The Cobra Bite was twelve.

The proprietor of the takeaway caused me to sample a forkful before he would take my money, which was probably a clause in the shop’s liability insurance.

I did manage about 75% of the meal with the help of over a quart of water to prevent gastro-immolation. But by Christ, the next day I knew about it. I knew it was going to be bad, but not this bad. I was beginning to think someone had used my arsehole as a crucible for smelting tin. Either that or my wife was secretly buggering me with a soldering iron.

Never again, and nowadays even the thought of eating anything with more heat than a dansak makes my barking spider go into spasm.

..once moved into a council house in one of the more vibrant parts of the city. It came with quite a large, yet not the most salubrious garden which looked like it had been neglected for a long long time. The sort of morass where you joke about Japanese soldiers living in there who don’t know the war is over. Because they were busy making the inside of the house habitable, the garden was relegated to the bottom of the to-do list.

One day they received a letter from the council telling them to get the garden sorted pronto as it was making the area look bad. Which is a bit like saying Peter Sutcliffe makes the inmates of Broadmoor look bad. Apart from opening the back door when they first got the keys, they hadn’t ventured out there at all.

About a week after the letter arrived, they were woken early one morning by a knock at the back door. Joe went downstairs, opened up and was greeted by some scruffy bloke.

Joe: “Yeah?”
Scruff: “Just letting you know that I’m moving back in with me mam.”
Joe: “What’s that got to do with me?”
Scruff: “I just wanted to say thanks for letting me stay for a while.”
Joe (perplexed): “I don’t know what you’re on about.”
Scruff: “I’m just saying thanks for not kicking me out from me box. I’ll take it wi’ me and sling it in me mam’s wheelie-bin if you want”
Joe: “Er..” and then it dawned on him. At the back of the garden was a large cardboard box, the sort that a fridge comes in, which had been there since they moved in. This scruffy, yet oddly polite and seemingly grateful vagrant had been living in there for who knows how long and had assumed that my friend knew and let him stay.

The scruffbag cleared off, taking the box with him. After Joe related the story to his girlfriend, she dragged him out there and they spent 3 days clearing everything out, chopping down the weeds and grass and getting a cheap temporary fence up.

So, if your housemates are excessively untidy and never wash up, clean the cooker etc, get a down-and-out to live in the cupboard under the sink.