It seems as if it's not software giving me problems, it's hardware. Lo and behold, the pieces to my dishwasher:



I can only guess at what's wrong with it - but it leaks when it runs. My assumption is that one of the O-rings inside the pump (seen above) is dried out/cracked/messed up or otherwise f*cked, thereby leaving me with no choice: either replace the whole thing and spend lots of money, or possibly find the couple of two dollar O-rings and replace them via my local and friendly appliance store.

The first task I had was to find out how in the hell the whole thing came apart in the first place as I had never done any kind of repair on a dishwasher before. I discovered that you can remove the bottom face-plate with relative ease. You're then presented with many, many nasty looking cables which inspired me to turn the electricity off to the kitchen (the reason it appears so dark in the picture). Aided by some work lights I bought at Menards I started thoughtless sticking my hand in and amongst the wet, dark electrical underbelly of this damn thing (yes, sounds safe doesn't it?),  found the clamp that removes the whole pump unit, unattached the hoses and the electrical wires and voila - had the whole thing in hand.

I then pulled it off to the side, and started disassembling. Currently I'm stuck as I don't have the right sized wrench to remove a particular screw (I'll get the wrench tomorrow). Stay tuned and find out how damaged this poor thing can get in the hands of a software developer (and a hacker, no less).....

....as an interesting yet meaningless side-note, I also know how to put in ceiling fans now....

    Two major traps hit me today - both of which were caused by me, but aided by the compiler (in my opinion). The first is the issue you can see below (the previous post). The one I'm about to blog about here is slightly more idiotic than the previous, but something about the compiler is making it actually work sometimes - which makes absolutely no sense (and aided to the overall confusion of hunting the problem down).

    Here's the scenario (in case you couldn't gather) - I'm migrating a huge group of pages over to master pages, which is quite time consuming and grueling. In an attempt to be clever (which shot me in the end), I simply renamed the old page to <page_name>2.aspx, and added a new page called <page_name>.aspx - that way I could toggle back and forth in the browser and see my new page and my old page side-by-side. Seems good? Well, it's not - in fact, it's quite evil.

    For all the pages that existed, there also exists a code-beside file which has actual VB code in it. The classes are placed inside a namespace and so when I copied the page, I also copied the classes - and so created two code files which compile the same class scoped under the same namespace. The freaky part - it actually works sometimes whereas other times I get strange, bizarre-o compiler errors that seemingly point me in hundreds of desparate directions (literally hundreds). After tracking down a handful of pages (the ones named <page_name>2.aspx) and excluding them from the project - it suddenly started working again, only to find, a little while later, that the errors started coming back and I was forced to remove the several more pages.

    The ONLY thing I can think of is that this only becomes a problem when I visit a page, cause the page to be compiled, and therefore clutter my namespace (at runtime) with two classes that (somehow) the IDE catches at compile time. Therefore, if I continue browsing through these pages, eventually I'll have to fix each and every one. I just don't get it yet - but I'm hoping I'll remember this issue and, when I have more time, come back to it and figure out what's going on....but, for now....I know how to fix it.

    When you're fooling around with master pages, occasionally you'll run into a situation where you must change the master of a content page from one to another (masterA.master ---> masterB.master). The problem you'll sometimes encounter when doing this is that your <asp:Content> controls do not match up (they are named differently or there is a different number of them) between one master page file and another: your content pages will then be hosed with improperly assigned ContentPlaceHolder properties on the <asp:content> controls.

    For example, say you have the following <asp:content> controls already on your page (because of the master page the content page is assigned to):

<asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="ContentPlaceHolder_Etc" Runat="Server">
</asp:Content>
<asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="ContentPlaceHolder_ActionsTitle" Runat="Server">
</asp:Content>
<asp:Content ID="Content3" ContentPlaceHolderID="ContentPlaceHolder_ActionsSubTable" Runat="Server">
</asp:Content>

    You then swap master pages and this master page has two more ContentPlaceHolders on it; and sometimes the IDE will do the following:

<asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="ContentPlaceHolder_Etc" Runat="Server">
</asp:Content>
<asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="ContentPlaceHolder_ActionsTitle" Runat="Server">
</asp:Content>
<asp:Content ID="Content3" ContentPlaceHolderID="ContentPlaceHolder_ActionsSubTable" Runat="Server">
</asp:Content>
<asp:Content ID="Content4" ContentPlaceHolderID="ContentPlaceHolder1" Runat="Server">
</asp:Content>
<asp:Content ID="Content5" ContentPlaceHolderID="ContentPlaceHolder2" Runat="Server">
</asp:Content>

Note how the final two are given generic ContentPlaceHolderX values to the ContentPlaceHolderID property. In my master page file, however, they are (specifically):

<asp:Content ID="Content4" ContentPlaceHolderID="ContentPlaceHolder_Graphic" Runat="Server">
</asp:Content>
<asp:Content ID="Content5" ContentPlaceHolderID="ContentPlaceHolder_TitleIntro" Runat="Server">
</asp:Content>

Be mindful that just because it "looks" right, it still may not function right. My recommendation? Go through and make the change globally and then do a global name replacement of ContentPlaceHolder1 ----> ContentPlaceHolder_Graphic, or whatever you choose.

Check out this thread of discussion on the Channel9 board: http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=168842#168842.

Go down to where I respond (I'm user BenRush) and check out the pics of the setups we have here at work. See others' too....

    WithEvents variable 'XXX' conflicts with property 'XXX' in the base class 'Page' and should be declared 'Shadows'

    I got this compiler error today when transforming a bunch of legacy 1.x pages over to master pages. The problem was that someone created a control on the .aspx page called 'PreviousPage' (replace that with the 'XXX' above), which is taken and therefore caused an inheritance-based naming conflict. I simply renamed the control from 'PreviousPage' to 'PreviousPage1' and everything compiled fine.

    Woah! http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=165438#165438.

    ...now is the time to start thinking about getting a Vonage line, saving money, and being smart about your telephony. Check out Steve Kiene's entry on the subject.

    ....then you need to at least note this entry.