My last living grandma just had a stroke. Her right side is paralyzed, and she's having a hard time talking. She is 87, and we don't know if she's going to make it. My mom flew down to Puerto Rico to be with her. I haven't been back there since we moved to the Western US back in 1982.

I last saw her about about a couple years ago, when she came up to visit my parents in New Mexico. I make a habit of calling her about once a month. I didn't get to call her this month before this happened. She's the first family member that I feel close to that has been in harm's way like this. I wish I could fly down to Puerto Rico and be with her in case she doesn't make it. I don't have any extra money, so I'm stuck here in Utah. The hardest thing to take is knowning that I'm one of her favorite grandkids and that I probably won't be there for her.

Life is not bad most of the time, but at times like this, it surely sucks!

This has got to be the easiest thing I've ever done with Inno Setup!

I was looking for how to show the license/EULA text right at the beginning of the install process. Here's all you need to add to your Inno Setup script:

[Setup]
LicenseFile=PathToYourLicenseFile

WOW! That was easy!

So here are the things that I want to tackle on the next release of PainlessSVN:

• The ability to change repository types, ie from BDB to FSFS
• A Subversion property dialog, or at least a list for each object that has them
• Import dump files
• Import repositories on different servers or repository directories
• Finish the sub commands for the svnadmin command

Now for the release after that I want to tackle:

• Hook script editing
• Better handling of repositories on shared drives
• A wizard to walk through setup the first time PainlessSVN is run
• Handling of Realms
• Handling of Path-Based security

Also in the works are the Standard and Portable (runs from USB drive) versions of PainlessSVN.

I just got done creating the final install package. On a lark, I went and installed it on my Windows 2008 Server 64-bit. It works!

I got the integration between ActivePurchase and the Infralution license generating system working now. It took most of the weekend, but that was because this was my first time doing something like this. It will probably take no more than an hour for the next product I need to integrate.

I'm writing a big HOWTO article, that will take people through the steps to make this work. This will have both screenshots and code. I started writing it, but it will take a little while to get it done. I have 2 loose ends with PainlessSVN itself, then I'm turning my attention to fixing up some pages in this site.

I already put up the download trial and buy buttons, but you'll only see them if you are logged in. I will be putting in a couple discount codes. So if you want to buy PainlessSVN at a discounted price, you'll need to watch this blog. Create an account, and you may see some other goodies.

MMC 3.0 has a horrid About box mechanism. You have to put the information in an external dll. This dll needs to be a regular C++ dll, that only contains the resources. This about box looks pretty horrible even after jumping through all these hoops. The information in the dialog is hard coded. Here's what it looks like:

I thought this was a big no-no, so I decided to add my own about box. This will let me communicate more information to the customers, without all the hassle. Here's what the custom about box looks like:

I'm quite happy with the results. Kudos to anybody who understands that last phrase in the license key text. HINT: It's not Spanish.

I've been coding quite a bit in the last few days. I finally got the licensing bit from Infralution working correctly. I had to create a custom license generator for Infralution that would work for both the application and as part of ActivePurchase. 

It took me a while to figure out that I couldn't just use the source code classes from the licensing system. It was expecting a specific signature from an assembly. Once I added a reference to this assembly, then the custom Infralution key generator started working perfectly. All in all, I spent less time than what I had scheduled in my FogBugz (free version) case. What can I say? I'm a horrible estimator!

I decided to use a new PayPal account for the payment processor. I was previously using my personal PayPal account, but decided to make my life easier and got me a PayPal Business account. I just verified all the bits, so this is ready to go.

My last bit of work now, is to create a custom step in ActivePurchase that will generate the key, then email it to the customer. Thankfully, I have experience writing modules for DotNetNuke, and I had already translated a VB.NET custom step sample provided by Will to C#. So, I'm not going in totally blind.

It looks like I'm going to make my early September release after all. Maybe even September 6.

I had a LOT of people ask me about how to recover/reset passwords in a damaged DotNetNuke (DNN) installation. I wrote a quick Winform app to do just this. It's fairly crude, but it get things done. I cleaned up the code a bit and wrote intructions in the read me file.

Here is the opening screen:

Here is the screen after you press the Get Users button

This is what it looks like when a password is ok. The password will show up in green.

This is what it looks like when the password is damaged and can't be recovered through the ASP.NET Membership APIs. The Reset Password will reset the password in the DotNetNuke database, then the UI will display the randomly generated password you can email to your user.

The zip file contains the source. It is a Visual Studio 2008 C# project.

Please read the "Read Me.txt" file, inside the zip file, for how to setup the config file. This program will not work if the config file is not setup correctly! I didn't want to spend time creating a wizard to create the configuration file.

Internet Explorer users - Please right-click on the links below and select "Save Target As"

DNNUserManager_source.zip

DNNUserManager_binaries.zip

I have chosen September 6, 2008 as the current tentative date to release PainlessSVN 1.0. The actual hands-on work is less than a month to complete, but life has a way to interfere with my plans.

I had to take into consideration my slow recovery from cataract (eye) surgery. I still get pretty tired by the time I get to work though. My eye doctor doesn't want to get me a new prescription until at least 3 weeks after the surgery. I'm on my second post-surgery week. I'm finally down to only one medication (from 5). I'm still getting some really fierce headaches every day. That's the number 1 reason why, I'm not coding more at home, after work.

I've also taken into account family obligations. Thankfully, I'm not doing any moonlighting, so I have more free time. My wife got a job closer to home, so I'm carpooling with her. My parents will be visiting us this week. They haven't seen my family since I got married almost 8 years ago.

I've been getting myself ready to code at home, by working to fix small bugs and usability in the free utilities. I've only been able to concentrate for about 25 to 30 minutes at a time, in between headaches.

I wanted to put out a public date, so that I will push myself to get this thing out the door.

I'm sorry that I have been silent for a while. I have been prepping for my eye surgery for a while, and finally had it this Tuesday.  I had a cataract removed from my right eye. Recovery had been made more difficult than usual, because I had scar tissue from a long lasting Iritis.

I have been putting 4 different kinds of eye drops, four times a day as part of my post-op treatment. I have to wait 5 minutes between each drop. All of the pain medication that I'm taking has made me woozy. Also, my right eye now sees better than my left eye, and my eyeglasses need the lens changed. It makes looking at any screen a chore.

I'm finally all moved into my new home office, so at least that's taken care of.

I know that a lot of you have been anxiously waiting for PainlessSVN to finally come out. I'll finish what's left, once my eyeglass prescription is fixed. It's sort of disturbing to look at the screen with my old prescription, and very hard to get much done.