Parsing the ridiculously large DNC file – .NET Edition

So previously I posted about a problem one of our customers had parsing the DNC. The solution was done in perl and you can read about it in the Perl Edition of this. And it worked rather well and very quickly. However it presented a support issue: They didn’t have a linux box nor the inclination to install perl on a windows box just for that meaning each month we needed to parse it for them.

So I rewrote it in Window using .NET…
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Parsing the ridiculously large DNC file – Perl Edition

Recently, one of our customers had a unique problem. The national Do Not Call (DNC) list they pay $15,000 (yes, that’s a comma and yes those are zeros after it) per year for access to exceeded the 2Gb limit imposed by older systems they were running. Specifically, fox pro couldn’t handle 2Gb+ files. So they asked if we could make something for them that would separate the file into smaller files that could be consumed by the out dated system.

So we did…
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Expand your desktop with Synergy.

The other day, several clients from up north came to visit as we helped them launch a new marketing product. As they sat watching me pound out code on my computers, they were quite curious about my three monitors. They watched me flow back and forth amongst the three, changing this, checking that, saving here, reloading there… normal operations for me, but not for them. One, who had some previous programming experience, asked if I preferred Linux to Windows. I replied that both had their uses and so I was using both. He was somewhat taken aback by my statement and looked closer at my monitors.

Yep, two windows, and one linux…
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Powershell and Mysql featuring the null byte (x00)

For those of you who follow our blog, Brett does a lot of articles about PowerShell and how great it is. So the other day when I need to do a mysql dump of some data on a Windows 2008 server, I fired it up. The deep blue background touched my inner California beach bum, and the verbose bright red error messages made my inner programmer smile.

“This is pretty neat,” I thought. “Maybe Windows has finally made something to compete with Unix’s shell in a real and meaningful way.”

The dump finished and immediately my Common Sense began tingling…
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Installing Subversion – Fixing Missing Dependency: perl(URI)

Without a doubt, the Missing Dependency: perl(URI) error is the most annoying error to run into when doing a quick, so-called painless yum install of subversion. We use subversion here to handle all our source code and when rolling that code out to new servers. So it’s pretty important that all our Linux servers (all running CentOS) are equipped with subversion. But time and time again, I was running into this problem and finally, through many Google searches, and compiling tips from a variety of sites, found a method that works for us here. Hopefully it works for you too.
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Power of Perl – Controlling and expanding Cpanel/WHM through the Cpanel/WHM API

When running a shared hosting environment, it is impossible to stay competitive without the use of some form of control panel. And in the world of linux shared web hosting, no control panel is as widely used as cPanel Inc‘s cPanel/WHM combo. The Cpanel team has put a lot of time and effort into the remote administration of WHM, and through that Cpanel. With a little ingenuity and not much work, really, this API can be extended to include any functions you can imagine, up to and including the system administration of the machine itself. So lets look at the basics thereof.
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Debugging Perl on Linux – Just __END__ it now! it later.

The art of debugging differs, some, with each language and it’s specific tools. Perl provides an interesting challenge to programmers since it, like most linux-originating languages, has no real IDE wherein it can be debugged step by step with breakpoints and like methodologies. Instead, the perl programmer must resort to using print statements, logging mechanisms, and then there is the __END__.
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A new SSD by ACard

ACard has a new Solid State Drive that supports up to 64Gb of DDR2. While this particular model ( ANS-9010 ) was designed as a 5.25 drive they also have a model designed for 2.5 drives. While you will be able to increase speed over traditional drives, you won’t be saving any money at $399.00 and no.. Ram isn’t included.

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