Cheryl on the Web

I have decided that my relationship with Microsoft can only be described as love-hate. I mean, as a Microsoft developer I have to appreciate the Microsoft technology with which I work, in particular .Net. But at the same time I can’t help but despise the proprietary, non-standards-compliant and quirky technology Microsoft sometimes releases. (more…)

In case you haven’t heard, Microsoft has started pushing out its new web browser, Internet Explorer 7, to everyone using Windows Update. In fact, if your computer automatically installs Windows updates, you may get IE 7 without even noticing it - until you reboot your computer.

In theory, the upgrade isn’t all bad: (more…)

I’ll bet you’ve always wanted to know: how can I access an Oracle database from .Net in the most easy way possible? With Microsoft .Net Framework, accessing Microsoft databases is easy since the Framework comes with the required drivers (naturally). But since Windows doesn’t come with the drivers for accessing Oracle, and Oracle itself is notoriously terrible in making install packages for their drivers that reliably work on Windows, it is a royal pain to get it to work - sometimes. But now I’ve found the way - read on for the answer. (more…)

My mission tonight was to get my Maxtor external hard drive partitioned, formatted and shared in such a way that it would be attached to my Mac with one Mac-dedicated share, but also have two shares readable and writable from Tim’s WinXP computer. Those of you non-geeks already know this post isn’t for you… but the elite few can read on.
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With this post I am inaugurating a new category on my blog: Tech Talk. For those of you less technically inclined (or not at all) you will have to disregard these posts I’m afraid. However, I can’t honestly contribute to the wealth of “talk” on the Web without including my 2 cents about the technology with which I work each day.

Today’s topic: deploying a web project built in Visual Studio 2005 (VS2005) - a first look. (more…)