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Techemistry Blog

Daily Tip - Update AddRemoveProgramsIcon (and other properties) in a Visual Studio Installer Project

6/11/2019 8:35:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

So this one drove me nuts. It seems soooo simple. I have a Visual Studio 2017 solution with a Window Service Project and a Installer Project. For the life of me, I could not figure out where to update the specific properties that would allow the installer to: Name the application correctly (if a friendly name) Specify other text values like Author, Description, Manufacturer, Title, ProductName, etc. ...

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ZeroSSL with IIS 10

5/3/2019 5:11:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

I have an IIS 10 server behind a VPN/Firewall, and was bound and determined to use Let's Encrypt even though the server can't be reached by Let's Encrypt to authorize the SSL certificate request. I ran across www.zerossl.com, but was very confused has how to successfully complete the process. Here's my suggestions that allowed me to get it working: In IIS, create a Certificate Request (CR). Copy the contents of the CR to the clipboard....

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MinerGate.com Review - Mixed Emotions

2/3/2018 6:44:00 AM -- Ted Krapf

During the 2017 Q3 Crypto-boom, I finally decided to look into cryptomining. I understood it at a very high level, but had never gone past understanding it conceptually. As with any good project, I first started with research. I wanted to know things such as: Is it worth it? What kind of hardware do I ideally need? What hardware can I get away with to get my feet wet? What coins can be mined, which cannot? What is a...

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Account Breach Monitoring

9/20/2017 3:36:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

As a software developer that has to deal with user accounts, one of the topics always in my mind is security. Is the box/vm/host secured? Did we implement strong enough password/login rules? What ciphers are enabled? Have the rules changed? Are the users doing something crazy that could compromise the security of the system? As with social engineering, the weakest link in a well designed security model is usually the users. So, what happens if one of the us...

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DBML Visualizer VERY Slow - solved!

3/29/2017 8:15:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

Greetings fellow coders! I've had this super annoying recurring issue with Visual Studio (2010, 2013, not sure about 2017 yet as I haven't started using it on a daily basis yet), the DBML visualizer, and Windows 10 --- the DBML visualizer is just dog slow and frustrating to work with. After some snooping around and looking through task manager, I realized that tabtip.exe was interfering with Visual Studio's DBML editor. T...

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Poor Man's SQL Log Shipping (Kinda)

12/23/2016 9:54:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

Hi all, A Very Happy Holidays to everyone out there! It's been a very exciting and busy year helping clients with unique needs and solutions. I'm looking forward to what 2017 will bring! I recently was tasked by a client to come up with a simple (as elegant as possible), and inexpensive Log Shipping solution for Microsoft SQL Server Express. Yes, I know SQL Server Express doesn't have Log Shipping, and the solution would just be to purchase a ...

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Excel Column Letter To Number.com

4/8/2016 3:06:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

Have you ever been working with a large Excel or other spreadsheet document and think, "man, I wish I could look up what the number equivalent of column BD is!"? Me too! So I built a crazy simple web app that converts an Excel column letter (or letters) to its numerical value. For example, BD = column #56. I frequently use this for figuring out the column number when doing a VLOOKUP. Or when I'm working on very wide spreadsheets. You can find the free E...

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Easy & Powerful Ecommerce Solution

4/5/2016 7:58:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

Looking for a simple, beautiful, yet powerful e-commerce solution for your business? Check out www.Shopify.com Shopify has beautiful themes, an amazingly simple and clean user interface, a really slick Apps add-on store to extend the functionality of your site and much more. Let me know your experiences with Shopify!...

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asp:Menu Flicker on Page_Load - Solved

7/13/2015 1:48:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

Have an asp:menu that is flickering on (showing all the sub menus) on page_load and/or post back? Of course you do, because that server control is pretty squirrely. Here's the simple CSS fix that corrects the issue: