I thought that the article Five Myths About Nuclear Energy by Kristin Shrader-Frechette was very well presented and enlightening. For the past few years, I have been considering whether or not we should consider increased use of nuclear energy as one of our ways to reduce our dependence on oil. However it is becoming clear that not only is nuclear power still dangerous (e.g. nuclear plants are vulnerable to terrorist attacks and we still don't know how to safely dispose of the radioactive waste), it is also not cost-effective (with wind turbines producing energy at less than 1/2 the cost of nuclear - with none of the safety issues of nuclear).

It speaks volumes when billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens is investing big time in wind power and has developed the Pickens Plan. So environmentalists...

When I changed the domain name for a client's site from "burtcohen.com" to "burtcohen.net", the Repository module started reporting:    A critical error has occurred.    Access to the path 'C:\Inetpub\vhosts\burtcohen.com\httpdocs\Portals\0\Repository' is denied. when all the other modules had no problem. I did some spelunking in the SQL database and found the following entries in the ModuleSettings table:    383   anonymouslocation   C:\Inetpub\vhosts\burtcohen.com\httpdocs\Portals\0\Repository    383   folderlocation      C:\Inetpub\vhosts\burtcohen.com\httpdocs\Portals\0\Repository    383   folderlocation      C:\Inetpub\vhosts\burtcohen.com\httpdocs\Portals\0\Repository Note the ".com" in all these paths. This path no longer exists, so that is the cause of the problem. Simply updating them to ".net" fixed the problem. I don't believe the Repository module should be saving absolute paths to its folders. I have submitted this as a DotNetNuke Repository module bug recommending that it saves...

I guess I was sort of naïve in believing that the idea of teaching creationism alongside evolution in science class is something that would just fizzle and die. Then creationism evolved into "intelligent design" to appear more scientific and less religious. Now, the NY Times article Opponents of Evolution Adopting a New Strategy describes the next step in the evolution of this misguided campaign. The idea is for school boards of education to direct teachers to teach the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution. Of course the scientist in me says, "sure, why not?" But I see that this strategy is just a ploy to keep creationism's foot in the scientific door. It is my view that religion and science are two related but orthogonal axes -- like the X and Y axes on a graph. Science is about things you can prove, religion is about things...

Well, Lady Luck visited me again on the Saturday before Mother's Day. Libby and I were on our way home from doing a little Mother's Day shopping when we pulled into Annie's Garden & Gift Store in North Amherst. I was hoping to pick up a red hot pepper plant (for the red hot Mama in our house)! The peppers weren't ready yet. But Jaz Tupelo from WRSI was broadcasting live from Annies as part of a Mother's Day prize give-away.

I said "Hi" to Jaz and filled out an entry card for the contest. I gave it the gentle crease that my Dad said makes them more likely to be picked.

That afternoon while making dinner and listening to WRSI, I thought I heard then to announce the winner of the contest as "Lenny Daniele of Sunderland". Now, I was only listening with half an ear. So I thought, "Maybe it wasn't me. Well, they'll call if I won."

One week went by. Two weeks went by. Vickie and I were at Annie's to buy...

What mom can resist a homemade Mother's Day card from a kid? Well this year the artist in Joe was thriving:

(click image for larger version)

Of course, Joe's inner comic was in good form as well:

If you try to view your webmail for a domain managed by Plesk and get either the default Plesk web page or a "page not found" error, here's a fix that worked for me (on Plesk 8.1 on Windows Server 2003):

1. Set Plesk > Server > Components Management > Webmail to "None". Click on OK. Then set it back to "Horde IMP H3 (4.1.3)" and click OK to reset the webmail server.

2. Remote Desktop to IIS. Navigate to the "webmail(default)" web site. Properties > Web Site > Advanced. Make sure the domain you want is in this host header list. E.g.

    208.109.27.122
    80
    webmail.LarryDaniele.com

Sometimes disabling and re-enabling web mail for the individual domain will fix this, but not all the time (in my experience).

My brother Phil's daughter Jillian had her first communion at the Our Lady of Lourdes Church in West Islip, New York yesterday. The church was absolutely filled with many familes there to celebrate their son or daughter's special day. As you can see Jillian was both angelic and charming! Her three-year-old sister Annabella was my best buddy all weekend! Afterwards, we had a wonderful family celebration at Francesco's Italian Restaurant in Babylon. It was great to see my Long Island family including cousins Kevin and Dan....

 

If you are reinstalling Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express on a server running ASP.NET and Plesk, when you try to view an ASP.NET web page, you might see a message like the following:

Cannot open database "TellUWhen" requested by the login. The login failed.Login failed for user 'MIGHTYMOUSE\IWAM_plesk(default)'.Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.Exception Details: System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Cannot open database "TellUWhen" requested by the login. The login failed.Login failed for user 'MIGHTYMOUSE\IWAM_plesk(default)'. The basic solution to the problem is to make sure that the specified user name (e.g. ASPNET or IWAM_plesk(default)) is a member of the SQLServer2005MSSQLUser$server$SQLExpress group.Here are the specific steps to do this for the user "" on "":

Right-click "My Computer" and choose "Manage". Navigate to "Local Users...

It seems there have been heated debates about whether DotNetNuke can be installed on a GoDaddy.com shared web hosting account. I am here to say that it can be done since I did just that on the website of my artist friend Debbie Hennes. Specifically, I installed DotNetNuke 4.8.0 on GoDaddy with the Hosting Control Center v2.4.2.

I basically followed the instructions on the Northern Star Solutions site. However, like over 70% of the people surveyed on that site, it didn't work by just following the instructions. Here are some points of confusion and suggestions:

When the instructions talk about going to Content > Directory Management, this is now Content > IIS Settings. Adding a Directory in this section makes the folder "read and write only". Checking...