Here’s a video of the first half of my commute to work. I keep up with traffic pretty well. I am driving aggressively to keep up, though.

I am a complete novice at arc welding. I bought a stick welder for $90 at Harbor Freight before Christmas and I have done only a few test welds with scraps of metal. Today I took the remnants of the old battery tray, cut it in half, grinded the pieces smooth, and welded them together. That turned out pretty well so I started in the car.

My practice run was not a valid indication of my proficiency. I botched the weld in the car. I did manage to tack it into place, though, so I proceeded with applying sealant around the tray. I’m sure I managed to botch that, too, but it’s air-tight and it’s not going anywhere. I lost my motivation part way through because it became evident that my entire pan has got rust problems and I will have to replace the entire thing eventually.

The tow-bar went pretty quickly as soon as I had all the parts I needed. The bolts required were no longer on the car, so I just had to track down some nuts, bolts, and washers to get it onto the car securely. Now it’s ready to be towed and to have the engine pulled! That should be tomorrow, after the EV parts arrive.

The first step in the repair is to clear the area. This involved removing the seats and kick panels, and also a heating duct on the side with rust damage. I won’t be using the heating ducts, so I was a little more reckless than I should have been.

It’s pretty cold outside, so I didn’t want to work in the garage all day. I brought some cardboard into the house and made some scale battery mock-ups. I will have 10 batteries in the car, but I can get away with only 5 battery mock-ups.

The mock-ups fit so well, I’m worried about them being off by just a few fractions of an inch. If those batteries are any bigger than expected, I certainly won’t be fitting 5 in this spot as planned.

The other five batteries are more tricky. Many people put three or four up front where the gas tank used to live. I will keep playing with the mock-ups to find the best way to store the batteries. The biggest consideration other than just making them fit is how their weight will affect the suspension and handling.

The point of this is to have a good comparison so I know how I do after the conversion. Ideally the car will be only slightly heavier as an electric car, and should accelerate and slow at roughly the same rate, at least while traveling at city speeds. Also a reason for the video is to compare the kind of noise the engine makes versus an electric motor.

It’ll take a few months to finish the conversion, at least, but stay tuned for more info about the electric conversion project.

We got this error because the default website was not enabled.  The solution was to enable the default website and access the administrator through it.

Thanks to Paul Vecchione at Creative Computer Services for the fix!

Error details:

The web site you are accessing has experienced an unexpected error.

Please contact the website administrator.

The following information is meant for the website developer for debugging purposes.

Error Occurred While Processing Request

this does not appear to be a valid class byte array

Resources:

* Check the ColdFusion documentation to verify that you are using the correct syntax.

* Search the Knowledge Base to find a solution to your problem.

java.io.IOException: this does not appear to be a valid class byte array

at coldfusion.compiler.ClassReader.findEndOfClass(ClassReader.java:219)

at coldfusion.compiler.NeoTranslator.parseClasses(NeoTranslator.java:394)

at coldfusion.compiler.NeoTranslator.translateJava(NeoTranslator.java:269)

at coldfusion.compiler.NeoTranslator.translateJava(NeoTranslator.java:106)

at coldfusion.runtime.TemplateClassLoader$1.fetch(TemplateClassLoader.java:282)

at coldfusion.util.LruCache.get(LruCache.java:188)

at coldfusion.runtime.TemplateClassLoader$TemplateCache.fetchSerial(TemplateClassLoader.java:223)

at coldfusion.util.AbstractCache.fetch(AbstractCache.java:58)

at coldfusion.util.SoftCache.get(SoftCache.java:81)

at coldfusion.runtime.TemplateClassLoader.findClass(TemplateClassLoader.java:422)

at coldfusion.runtime.TemplateClassLoader.newInstance(TemplateClassLoader.java:391)

at coldfusion.tagext.lang.IncludeTag.setTemplate(IncludeTag.java:149)

at coldfusion.tagext.lang.IncludeTag.setTemplatePath(IncludeTag.java:84)

at coldfusion.filter.CfincludeFilter.invoke(CfincludeFilter.java:64)

at coldfusion.filter.CfincludeFilter.include(CfincludeFilter.java:33)

at coldfusion.filter.ApplicationFilter.invoke(ApplicationFilter.java:172)

at coldfusion.filter.RequestMonitorFilter.invoke(RequestMonitorFilter.java:51)

at coldfusion.filter.PathFilter.invoke(PathFilter.java:86)

at coldfusion.filter.ExceptionFilter.invoke(ExceptionFilter.java:69)

at coldfusion.filter.BrowserDebugFilter.invoke(BrowserDebugFilter.java:52)

at coldfusion.filter.ClientScopePersistenceFilter.invoke(ClientScopePersistenceFilter.java:28)

at coldfusion.filter.BrowserFilter.invoke(BrowserFilter.java:38)

at coldfusion.filter.GlobalsFilter.invoke(GlobalsFilter.java:38)

at coldfusion.filter.DatasourceFilter.invoke(DatasourceFilter.java:22)

at coldfusion.filter.RequestThrottleFilter.invoke(RequestThrottleFilter.java:115)

at coldfusion.CfmServlet.service(CfmServlet.java:107)

at coldfusion.bootstrap.BootstrapServlet.service(BootstrapServlet.java:78)

at jrun.servlet.ServletInvoker.invoke(ServletInvoker.java:91)

at jrun.servlet.JRunInvokerChain.invokeNext(JRunInvokerChain.java:42)

at jrun.servlet.JRunRequestDispatcher.invoke(JRunRequestDispatcher.java:257)

at jrun.servlet.ServletEngineService.dispatch(ServletEngineService.java:541)

at jrun.servlet.jrpp.JRunProxyService.invokeRunnable(JRunProxyService.java:204)

at jrunx.scheduler.ThreadPool$DownstreamMetrics.invokeRunnable(ThreadPool.java:318)

at jrunx.scheduler.ThreadPool$ThreadThrottle.invokeRunnable(ThreadPool.java:426)

at jrunx.scheduler.ThreadPool$UpstreamMetrics.invokeRunnable(ThreadPool.java:264)

at jrunx.scheduler.WorkerThread.run(WorkerThread.java:66)

By following the steps outlined at the official Microsoft IIS site, you can record entries to the event log any time something is changed in the IIS configuration.

This script has been tested only on Microsoft SQL Server 2005.

View the code snippet at GitHub.

I’ll start off clearly: one device is not superior to the other.  There are going to be tradeoffs, so your decision should be made based on how you use your device.

Someone who masters a BlackBerry and stays with it:

• …can type an e-mail without looking down.
  Muscle-memory can take care of letting loose a few sentences without really paying attention to the keyboard.  An occasional glance at the screen to make sure you’re on track, and the words are going to just fly out of your thumbs.  I had become so comfortable on the keyboard that I would type out messages as if I were at my desktop, as long as I didn’t need to look anything up in order to respond.
• …can use keyboard shortcuts to navigate quickly through lists of messages.
  A few keyboard shortcuts can make dealing with e-mail a quick procedure.  You can find messages quickly, and file things away without much hassle.  My boss says filing messages on the BlackBerry works better than Outlook, and it’s true.  The procedure is a lot easier.  The BlackBerry is really good at managing e-mail, as long as you take the time to learn to use it.
• …do not need to make compromises on call quality or battery life.
  BlackBerries have evolved to the point where they make pretty good phones.  Battery life starts out at about a week for normal use, to a few days with heavy call volume and Bluetooth activity.  One is fortunate to make it 16 hours without needing to plug their iPhone in or turn it off to preserve a few milliamp-hours to make an emergency call.

Then again, if you want to stick with your BlackBerry, you:

• …should be comfortable with sending and reading only plain-text messages.
  The iPhone renders HTML mail beautifully, with few compromises.  The small screen means you don’t always get an easy reading experience with newsletters, but it is really easy to zoom in to a particular part of a message.  BlackBerry users are stuck with plain-text versions of e-mail until the OS 4.5 update is widely available, or users upgrade to a new BlackBerry, like the Bold.  This shouldn’t be too long, but some users may be held up, because the IT folks are going to need to upgrade the BlackBerry Enterprise Server to support HTML e-mail.
• …can give up hope on navigating the web effectively.
  I am absolutely serious here.  Given all the drawbacks of the iPhone, you can pry it from my cold, dead hands.  Having a competent web browser with a fresh input methodology (multi-touch) has got to be one of the coolest and most useful things to have at your disposal–at least for a dork like myself.
• …will miss out on the App Store.
  There are some problems with it now, but put simply, there are lots of really cool applications that take advantage of the iPhone’s hardware.  These are only going to get cooler as time goes on.

Sometimes I miss the ruthless effectiveness of a BlackBerry as a device to keep my e-mail in check.  However, given my experience with the iPhone, I don’t intend to switch back. Its drawbacks are manageable.  I’ll write up the habits I’ve developed to stay happy with the iPhone and link to that post when it’s ready.

No, Really — I think that perhaps it is in your best interest to join the Windows Customer Experience Improvement Program.  You wouldn’t want something to happen to your Customer Experience, would you?  That would be very unfortunate.

Unable to cast object of type ‘Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.SimpleObjectKey’ to type ‘Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Agent.JobObjectKey’. (Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo)

This happened on the workstation which runs Vista x64.  I am trying to use it as my primary workstation, but my RDP session to my XP box is nearly always open.

It’s not really a Vista issue, but it’s fun to blame Vista for everything.

The solution is to install SQL SP2 for the client tools on the computer you get the error from.

At first, I had lots of trouble, with not a lot of ideas on where to start troubleshooting.  You try with the basics like HTTP logs, firewall logs, and the Windows event log.  Well it’s not always easy to tell when you’re on the right track.

In any case, when you run your Outlook Web Access system on the same server as your mailbox stores, you generally are going to have a lot of set-up to do for Outlook Mobile Access, ActiveSync, or RPC over HTTP.

On to the fix.  After trying several things, I stumbled upon a word doc on Microsoft’s site, highlighting the steps to take when you’d like OMA and ActiveSync to work on a single-server Exchange installation.  The Page numbered Thirteen is where the tasty bits start.

Essentially, services like OMA and ActiveSync are built on top of Outlook Web Access, only they are unable to communicate with the OWA services via HTTPS.  The steps in the document lead you to a way to create an instance of OWA on your server which will be accessed by only by OMA and ActiveSync.  After going through the steps in the document, the shiny iPhones worked like champs, and the IT staff at my company can begin evaluating their fitness as Blackberry killers.  The prospects are good for full on Blackberry annihilation, except there has been reluctance about the on-screen keyboard.