I have a client which offers data recovery and computer forensics services. I am very happy to say that I have not been in need of their service (knock on wood).

We recently ran into a very strange problem with their site dropping completely out of google’s index. My first instinct was that the seo company they were previously working with had gone a little to far, and was responsible for getting them banned. However, upon further investigation, I learned that their site had vanished because of a problem with their robots.txt file. Apparently there was a problem with their custom 404 page which was raising a 500 server error. Google interpreted this differently than if their robots.txt simply didn’t exist at all. Instead google assumed that it must not be safe to crawl this site period, since they are unable to adhere to the robots rules.

The weirdest part of all, is from what I can tell, nothing has been touched on this site in years, and their 404 page has probably always behaved this way. Google must have recently changed something on their end which cause this unfortunate series of events.

The good news is, it only took me a couple minutes to fix the offending robots file and google had reindexed the site and was bringing in traffic again within a few days.

I just wanted to give a shout out to one of my clients. They are probably the most “green” company I have ever worked with. We recently developed a custom accounting system for them. This reduced their paper usage by over 60%. They are no longer faxing/mailing reports between their satellite offices and the corporate office, because they now have access to that same data in real-time. And they can email statements directly to their customers.

We recently integrated their website into the accounting system. This allows users to order sod online, and eliminates redundant data entry.

On top of all that, their product keeps our air fresh and clean. They grow and distribute tons of grass every day.

Next hurdle, get them to the top for Sod Riverside, Sod Los Angeles,
Sod Sacramento

If you manage windows servers, or access remote desktops you should be using the Remote Desktops mmc plugin that comes in the Administration Tools Pack. The standard remote desktop application that comes with Windows XP is OK, but this one makes it much easier to manage multiple machines, and to save all your connection settings.

However, we did run into a major problem with the Remote Desktops MMC plugin. The initial copy of the Admin Tools did not allow you to specify an alternate port when entering the IP address of the server. It was really annoying and forced us to use the standard RDP client when connecting to servers with a non standard RDP port. Port 3389 is the default port, but for security reasons, it is a good idea to change the port your server listens on.

The Service Pack 2 edition of the Administration Tools finally fixed this bug, and now we can use the MMC plugin to manage all of our servers, regardless of the RDP port. Simply specify the port after the IP/name in the format 192.168.0.1:1234

I decided to cleanup my old UPS Webservice Rate Calculation code, and implement some XML literals as well as Linq to XML. The below code is much easier to understand and maintain. I love the new xml syntax for accessing elements.

Private Function GetShippingMethodsFromWeb(ByVal ZipTo As String, ByVal Weight As Integer) As List(Of Linq.ShippingMethod)

    Const URL As String = "https://www.ups.com/ups.app/xml/Rate"

    If Weight < 1 Then Weight = 1

    Dim XMLAuth = <?xml version="1.0"?>
                  <AccessRequest xml:lang="en-US">
                      <AccessLicenseNumber><%= App.Settings.UPSAccessKey %></AccessLicenseNumber>
                      <UserId><%= App.Settings.UPSUserID %></UserId>
                      <Password><%= App.Settings.UPSPassword %></Password>

                  </AccessRequest>

    Dim XMLRequest = <?xml version="1.0"?>
                     <RatingServiceSelectionRequest xml:lang="en-US">
                         <Request>
                             <TransactionReference>
                                 <CustomerContext>Rating and Service</CustomerContext>
                                 <XpciVersion>1.0001</XpciVersion>
                             </TransactionReference>
                             <RequestAction>Rate</RequestAction>
                             <RequestOption>shop</RequestOption>
                         </Request>
                         <PickupType>
                             <Code>01</Code>
                         </PickupType>
                         <Shipment>
                             <Shipper>
                                 <Address>
                                     <PostalCode><%= App.Settings.ShipFromZipCode %></PostalCode>
                                 </Address>
                             </Shipper>
                             <ShipTo>
                                 <Address>
                                     <PostalCode><%= ZipTo %></PostalCode>
                                     <ResidentialAddressIndicator>0</ResidentialAddressIndicator>
                                     <CountryCode>US</CountryCode>
                                 </Address>
                             </ShipTo>
                             <Package>
                                 <PackagingType>
                                     <Code>02</Code>
                                     <Description>Package</Description>
                                 </PackagingType>
                                 <Description>Rate Shopping</Description>

                                 <PackageWeight>
                                     <Weight><%= Weight %></Weight>
                                 </PackageWeight>
                             </Package>
                         </Shipment>
                     </RatingServiceSelectionRequest>

    '<% If Length > 0 And Width > 0 And Depth > 0 Then %>
    '   <Dimensions>
    '    If Length Then
    '        sXML &= "<Length>" & Length </Length>"
    '    End If

    '    If Width Then
    '        sXML &= "<Width>" & Width </Width>"
    '    End If

    '    If Depth Then
    '        sXML &= "<Height>" & Depth </Height>"
    '    End If
    '    sXML &= "</Dimensions>"
    'End If

    Dim objRequest = System.Net.WebRequest.Create(URL)
    objRequest.Method = "POST"

    objRequest.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"

    Using myWriter = New System.IO.StreamWriter(objRequest.GetRequestStream())

        myWriter.Write(XMLAuth.Declaration)
        myWriter.Write(XMLAuth)
        myWriter.Write(XMLRequest.Declaration)
        myWriter.Write(XMLRequest)

        myWriter.Flush()
        myWriter.Close()
    End Using

    objRequest.Timeout = 5000

    Dim xmlResponse As System.Xml.Linq.XDocument

    Using objResponse = objRequest.GetResponse

        Using sr As New System.IO.StreamReader(objResponse.GetResponseStream())

            xmlResponse = System.Xml.Linq.XDocument.Load(sr)

        End Using
    End Using

    If xmlResponse...<ResponseStatusCode>.Value = "1" Then

        Dim Rates = From r In xmlResponse...<RatedShipment> _
                    Select Code = r...<Code>.Value, _
                    Charge = CDec(r...<MonetaryValue>.Value)

        Dim db As New DataContext

        Dim ShippingMethods = (From s In db.ShippingMethods _
                              Where s.Active AndAlso s.Carrier = "UPS" _
                              Order By s.SortOrder).ToList

        For Each s In ShippingMethods

            Dim r = Rates.SingleOrDefault(Function(a) a.Code = s.Code)

            If r IsNot Nothing Then
                s.ShippingCharge = r.Charge
            End If
        Next

        ShippingMethods.RemoveAll(Function(a) a.ShippingCharge = 0)

        Return ShippingMethods

    Else

        Throw New Exception("An error occurred while calculating UPS shipping rates: " & xmlResponse...<ErrorDescription>.Value & ". Location: " & xmlResponse...<ErrorLocationElementName>.Value)

    End If

End Function

What were you doing this day (May 15th) in the year 2000?

I spent 6 hours working on a redesign of PowerComEnergy.com, 0.4 hours working on LubeSource.com, and 0.3 hours fixing bugs on BestBolts.com.

You may be wondering how I know this. And yes, I do have a really good memory – but not that good.

You see, earlier that same month I also launched a site I built: TrackMyHours.com. I have a complete record of all my hours on any of my projects all the way back to 5/5/2000. TrackMyHours.com is great for consultants like myself who need to track billable hours.