Less than Express

I'm heading out today on vacation for the week, far away from all things digital, miles and miles away from anything with a functioning central processing until, no cell phone coverage, no bandwidth, just blue skies, mountains, tall green trees and the sea.  Of course, that's why I'm bringing my laptop, so I can code.  Can you blame me?

I figured it would give me a chance to take that C# Express out for a spin.  So I cleaned my machine of all alien debris and installed it off the external net, just like everyone else. It went smoothly.  (Don't worry this isn't a cheer leading post.  It took just as long to install for me as it did for you, except maybe my bandwidth was a wee bit higher.)  Anyway that's not the story.  I actually had the machine set up quite some time ago.  I knew it was functioning so I figured I'd put it to use.  What I also needed for my beach side endeavor was a functioning database.  Since the C# install also pulled down SQL express I figured I ought to be in hog heaven. 

Except I wasn't.  I was just too stupid to get the thing to work. I thought it would just work automatically, you know since it installed without a hitch.  Maybe I should have read some docs? Were there any docs?  I asked around my building and actually found a few others that had ventured to try it, and none of them had figured out the secret incantations either.  Sure the server was 'running' but no one could access it. Over here we say that's a "no hire."  After a three hour tour of utter frustration I finally had a bright idea.  I googled for the answer.  Thank goodness for the Internet, a bunch of you savvy developers had already figured out what ailed me and had many good posts on making the thing actually function.  Now all I needed was a graduate degree from MIT to finish the job.  Fortunately, I squeaked by with my lousy credentials.

Now I'm off to that remote location, for fun, sun and endless coding bliss. You may still be hearing from me if I can figure out how to dial in (there is a phone somewhere), RAS over VPN and sit through ten to twenty minutes of painfully slow security downloads, connect back out to MSDN and get a post off all before the modem drops.   See, now that's living dangerously!

Matt