Infernal IMAP, Sadistic SQL Server, Worrisome Word

Well, it seems that my computing gremlins have returned to make my experience hell. I thought I was finally rid of them, after a stage where my laptop broke every four months. Well, for Christmas, I got new, updated gremlins. In their quest to destroy my mind, they have taken it upon themselves to trash my programs. Here we go:

I’ve heard people say good things about IMAP, which is an email delivery protocol that offer push email, reliable transmission, and good security. I have been using POP3, another protocol, to have messages from my Gmail account downloaded to my computer, into Outlook. This was all working well for me, but it wasn’t push email, so Outlook needed to run a send/receive before messages were actually delivered. IMAP is push, and I figured instant delivery was reason alone to get it, as well as the other reasons. So, I went along and changed my protocol to IMAP. Sure, it took a while, since Gmail uses custom settings for all its ports and encryptions, but that wasn’t too hard, as there was a helpful setup guide.

Sure, all sounds good right? Wrong, it has created another data file in Outlook instead of using the current one, which means that all my lovely integration was gone. Instead of having one data file that contained all my tasks, contacts, appointments, notes, events, etc. as well as email, it had split. This was really annoying, since the effortless integration between my mail and organiser was gone. Furthermore, IMAP didn’t actually download the messages properly, only the headers, which meant that every time I visited my inbox, it needed to communicate with the server to find out what was in the mailbox. Then, to read an email message, it then needed to download that message. Overall, it was excruciatingly slow (ok, that was an exaggeration, but an Australian ADSL connection is quite slow, compared to the instant response from something already on my computer), and Outlook frequently stopped responding by downloading headers and messages. There were some other problems with it, but I can’t be bothered whinging about them right now. Fortunately, I have rid myself of the infernal IMAP and have returned to my faithful POP3. That problem is solved. However…

I have been having a fair bit of trouble getting SQL Server working properly. I am sure it has nothing to do with trying to install a server-class application on a notebook, and is just the computing gremlins at work again. Now, I do a fair bit of programming, and recently have started building decent data-driven applications. For this I have been using SQL Server Compact, an excellent solution for small-scale applications, based on SQL Server, but with a greatly reduced footprint and requirements. This was all fine for building client applications, but now that I am doing web development, BluemonkeyBlockLand, Visual Studio has decided that SQL Server Compact is not sufficient. Fine, I thought, I also have SQL Server 2005 Express on my computer. Peculiar; although I have the management and configuration tools for SQL Server 2005 Express, the actual application seems to be missing. I reasoned that the tools may have installed with the Compact edition, and so would still need to get SQL Server. I downloaded the installer for SQL Server 2008 Express. And that’s when the fun really began.

Well, the installer takes a couple of minutes to configure itself; so what, I have time on my hands. It then launches into a full-blown installation manager: very nice; it looks a lot like a high-end server product, and this is the free Express edition! I run the environment-checking tools to make sure my system is ready. Turns out I need to download Windows PowerShell, which is a new Windows shell meant to replace the archaic DOS Command Prompt. Personally, I haven’t ever used it, but I’ve heard it’s an improvement. Also, it integrates with the .NET Framework, which I love and adore. (Back to the story) That was fine, I now passed all the criteria and was then ready to install. And that’s when it finally hit me how much this was marketed for servers. The language used in the confirmation dialogs was enough to send me chickening out, not wishing to mess up my laptop too much. With my tail between my legs, I retreated away, whimpering, from the scary server application ready to install on my laptop.

Later on, I was talking with Gizmolio about it, and I realised it wasn’t anything to be worried about. I went back to the installer, got it all ready and- cannot find installation resources. Great, now it cannot find itself, and hence it can’t install. I think that means back to the drawing board, since I have no idea where it put the installation resources, and cannot be bothered manually trawling through my hard drive just to find them (I can’t search for it, since I have no idea what it is called). When my spirit has recovered enough from being crushed, I might try again.

On a lighter note, and this isn’t really a problem, more of a peculiarity, the default document name in MS Word is now no longer Document1. It is, in fact Document2, for reasons totally unknown to me. It is just one of life’s mysteries that exist purely to confuse me, and of course, another reason to blog. Now, congratulations for reading this post, which I have managed to ramble through to 931 words so far, as well as everything I type after that number, which I won’t count since that will just enter an endless cycle of repetition. Anyway, thanks for reading, and keep commenting, pingbacks, etc. Ok, I will just write one more thing, the word count is now exactly, precisely, absolutely, completely, accurately, (more stalling adjective words (and brackets that help alot)), truthfully, (I love thesaurus!) equal to 1000.