I need to watch these: http://www.noupe.com/design/7-must-see-web-design-videos-and-presentations.html

I need to watch this

http://www.terrenceryan.com/blog/post.cfm/apptacular-coldfusion-builder-extension-scaffolding

I need to watch these videos

From Smashing Magazine:

"We're all mostly accustomed to educating ourselves by reading articles. Rare are the opportunities to attend conferences or watch live shows on subjects that we're interested in. That's why we are presenting here phenomenal videos and related resources on the topic of user experience (UX) by different presenters at different events. We have focused on current content but have included some older videos that are still relevant. It will take you more than 16 hours to watch all of these videos. So, make some popcorn, turn off the lights and enjoy."

The videos: 25 User Experience Videos That Are Worth Your Time

Hopefully this tip will help someone down the road too, or maybe someone can enlighten me as to the "right" way to code for the physical file path of an application.

I was setting the following code in the OnApplicationStart() method to set the application's physical file path (http://mydomain.com/myApplication):

The application uses index.cfm as a "controller" (i.e.index.cfm?disp=thispage) so I THOUGHT it would set the path relative to the root of the application (C:\inetpub\wwwroot\mydomain\myApplication)

Well, it does...MOST of the time....I still haven't gotten to the bottom of it, but sometimes the rootpath would get set to nested directories (C:\inetpub\wwwroot\mydomain\myApplication\middle\). I can only assume that the application would sometimes reinit when it was in the middle of processing something in the "middle" directory.

Long story short, I'm about to deploy this code fix to (hopefully) resolve the problem:

The application.applicationname is the same as the "myApplication" directory, so I'm hopeful that this will work....at least my three test runs worked..lol

More syntax I never remember

I never remember this file path/syntax when setting up a new machine (instructions courtesy of Adobe support)

1. Make a backup copy of C:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\WEB-INF\jrun-web.xml, and then open the original version of the jrun-web.xml file.
2. Edit the system-path attribute to change to the new web root directory:

Note: Remember to use forward slash characters in the pathname.

3. Save the file.
4. You can now move the CFIDE and cfdocs directory to the new web document root. These directories contain the files for the ColdFusion Administrator, the ColdFusion documentation, and the ColdFusion example code. Caution: Do not move the WEB-INF directory. It must stay under the cf_root\wwwroot directory.
5. Restart the ColdFusion server.

I never remember this syntax...

DBCC CHECKIDENT (mytable, RESEED, 0)

Courtesy of http://www.pcmech.com/article/dont-rebuild-virtual-pcs-copy-them/

"One very handy trick I found is that you can copy virtual hard drives (.vhd) files and instantly get another environment. For example, you could build a new virtual PC hard drive and load XP with all the updates and then simply copy the VHD file to a new file name and, whola!, you now have two ready to go environments. All you have to do is just run through the virtual PC creation wizard and set it to use an existing hard drive (your copied VHD file) and you are ready to go."

I had some trouble getting network connectivity on my virtual Windows Server 2003 Instance. Thanks to this post, I learned that I had to set the Networking Settings for the VM to use Shared Network (NAT) as the network adapter, and then:

"To fix the Shared Network (NAT) Internet no connection or not working issue, the resolution is to manually assign the IP address for the DNS Server for the guest operating system to 192.168.131.254, the virtual gateway IP address used by Virtual PC. To make the change (in guest operating system), open Network Connections folder (in Windows Vista, access via Network and Sharing Center), and right click Local Area Connection network icon to select its Properties. Then double click on Internet Protocl (TCP/IP) under General tab or Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) under Networking (for Windows Vista) tab. Click to select the radio button of Use the following DNS server addresses, and then type in 192.168.131.254 into the IP address box for Preferred DNS Server. Click OK twice to exit, and voila, the Shared Network (NAT) now works as it should with Internet access."

So It tried VMWare and the web browser GUI thing wouldn't load right...I hacked around an got the Web play something or other to load but when I tried to log in I got another error...something about ports this time or Tomcat not working right..I said "Tomcat? Come on!".....so I uninstalled it and tried Microsoft Virtual PC...installed without a hitch and ran perfectly..I got Windows 2003 Server and the new Windows 7 beta running in no time.

I couple of learning points that I needed to Google around for: ~Install Virtual Machine Additions on your VM instance to get file drag/drop and copy/paste from the parent OS working (very nice to have)...I'll let you Google how to do that. ~If sound doesn't transfer out to your host OS's speakers, following this post's advice to "update the audio driver with the "C:\Program Files\Virtual Machine Additions" folder.

Ah, playing with a fresh OS is a geek's dream!!!!