Dell Synergistic Give Away

Ah ha! I have finally won something! Last month, Dell had a silly crossword-type game where once a day you can get entered into a drawing for some large prizes, and every time you enter, you also get a chance to win instant prizes. I've never won anything and didn't think I would win something, but there's always a small chance.

And Voila! I won a computer mouse! Yea, I know, it's just a mouse, and I thought it was going to end up being one of those crappy, corded dell mouses (mice?) that you get when you buy a desktop from them.

Then today, I got a suspiciously marked package...



It took me a couple seconds to find the "Dell" and then figure out it was my long awaited prize!

Logitech has always been a big favorite of mine, ever since my Logitech mouse died after 2 years, and they replaced it for free. And this mouse is just as awesome as I'd expect from Logitech!

Here's a picture of the mouse:

This is a compact wireless laser mouse. As you can see it's red, but the coolest part about it is that small little black/silver thing in the plastic. That is a USB wireless adapter to connect a computer to the mouse wirelessly. The reason that is so cool is because the USB plug is 3 times as large as the actual adapter.

I gave this sweet mouse to my wife as a late Valentines Day Present, she plugged the USB adapter into her computer, turned on her mouse and it worked perfectly. Plug-n-Play for the win!

If only Logitech had an affiliate program, I'd never stop raving about them ;)
-Ashton Sanders

Jensen HD Radio

I'm a big music buff, and I almost always have music playing on my computer. I really need an iPod... I know, I'm kind of ashamed for not having one yet, but I'm always on my computer so I haven't really needed an iPod.

I've recently run across a number of advertisements for iPod Docking stations that have an HD Radio. This brought me to this Jensen JiMS 525i HD Radio iPod Docking Port. It's a little expensive for my tastes, but it looks cool. The image they have on that page has a iPhone in the iPod port, so I'm assuming that the docking station will accept either iPods or iPhones. I didn't realize there were so many HD digital radio stations out there, but you can find all of the digital radio stations in your area by going to new music stations.

Probably the coolest thing I've seen is the iTunes Tagging. It looks like what happens is while you're listening to music on a HD radio station (on this receiver) if you happen upon a song you want to download, keep or get the info for, you can click the "tag" button on the receiver and it will save the song's information in a play list on your iPod. The next time you connect your iPod to your computer (iTunes), you'll be able to download all of the songs you tagged.

Of course you'll have to pay for them.
-Ashton

mssql_connect(): unable to connect to server:

I have a PHP script that I run locally (on my Windows XP Machine) that accesses a MSSQL server using the mssql_connect() function. I used xampp to get PHP on my machine.

Today I finished getting this to work on my second computer. The first time I did this, I also ran into a million problem - but didn't note any of them. So here I am rectifying my previous mistakes in the hope of not having to search for the same solution next time.

The error I was getting was:

mssql_connect(): unable to connect to server: 'www.ashtonsanders.com'

(Domain changed for security purposes.)

I handled it by replacing ntwdblib.dll with this ntwdblib.dll.zip in these two folders:

xampp/php
xampp/apache/bin

Enjoy!
-Ashton Sanders
(Note: algorytmy.pl was the final website that helped my handle my problem.)

Internet Arguments

Here's a great comic about Internet Arguments.

A little more humanity guys,
Ashton Sanders

Dreamweaver 8 Deleting Usernames and Passwords

I had a problem a long time ago, and again recently, and figured I'm not the only one to have this problem:

Every time I close and open my Dreamweaver 8 (weather I restarted my computer in between or not) I would not be able to connect to the website I had been using last. The username and password for that website was gone. I would have to manage that site in Dreamweaver, and add in the username and password again.

The guys over at Phoenix Development wrote a great blog post with a link to the Dreamweaver 8 update you need to install to get it to work.

Apparently the bug is created when you have Internet Explorer 7.0 and Dreamweaver 8 on the same machine. I have no idea why this would delete your usernames and passwords, but it does.

Enjoy,
Ashton Sanders