Life in the trenches

Virtual GPS

Well this is interesting; Virtual GPS is available for java enabled phones that don't already have a built in GPS device.  I might have to download this one just to see if it works.  It's a product made by Navizon.  You basically pay for some mapping software, after the trial if you like it, and the GPS functionality is rolled in there.

User Account Pruning - Update

Just and update on this.  As it turns out you can easily create the context you need for an administrative account in a CSModule and CSTask.

All of the examples I saw told you that you could generate a CSContext by using something like this in the ITask.Execute() method:

SiteSettingsManager.IterateSiteSettings(new SiteSettingsListIterator(RunMyJob));

and in the RunMyJob method make a call to:

CSContext.Create(SettingsID);

That in fact is what I used in the first run of my ProfileAging class.  Now with the User Pruning we actually needed a user whos profile has IsAdministrator or IsMembershipAdministrator set to true.  The reason for this is that the Users.DeleteUser method requires that level or authorization to complete the delete.  When I was looking around in the API I noticed that there is a CSContext.Current.User attribute but I assumed that this was a read-only field.  I also assumed that this property would only get set via some type of login or impersonation.

I'm happy to find out, thanks to Phosphorous on the CS fourms, that you can actually assign it this way:

CSContext.Current.User = Users.GetUser(UserID);

Wow, that was easy and now my delete call works like a champ.  I was able to complete the main logic so that an account is disabled after X days and deleted after Y days.  The values for the UserID, X Days, and Y Days are all in the configuration file.  I also set the logic to where you don't have to have the number of days for delete in which case deletions don't happen buy the disapprovals do.  Now all I need is the remaining logic but I might adjust the flow a little bit so that an event is thrown for each of the tasks.  This will allow isolation of the functions so that anyone wanting to swap out the functionality will be able to do so without changing the main processor.

Gods and Heroes - Rome Rising

I just saw the new game play video here and it looked pretty good.  They start out with the PCs getting it handed to them and the half way through the NPCs get owned.  I've been keeping an eye on this title and it looks like it might be fun.

We'll have to see how it develops as it gets closer to launch which is slated for Q3.

If I were a butt my name would be Capital One

Ok, here's the scoop.. I missed my payment last month because I payed someone else twice by mistake.  Sure that's a bad thing but hey it happens from time to time.

Now for the good part.. I've been trying to pay my account online for the past 7 days or so.  I pay 99% of my stuff online but I can't log into the web site now.  They said that my access has been revoked because the account is overdue and using the web to do things to my account is a Privilege.

Ok, so you take a person that is trying to make a payment in good faith and prevent that?  Isn't there some kind of law about that?  All I can say is this account is going to be closed and Capital One can kiss my account goodbye.

My wife and I talked to 7 or 8 people over there and each one tells you that they can't help you because its the other departments issue.  The solution that they give you is to have you do an e-check;  Now that might be fine for some people but I don't care to give out my back account information over the phone.  My wife told them at one point that given the caliber of the people we had already talked to that she wouldn't even give them the name of our dog.

Finally we get to the escalations department, make a note of that.. good term to use when dealing with butt-heads, and they enabled my account.  All I wanted to do was make a payment.. go figure but the account is still going to be closed.. I don't think they deserve the Privilege to acquire my interest payments.

So what am I playing these days

Well I picked up the Lord of the Rings preorder last month and started playing that.  So far so good, I decided to go into retail and have been enjoying the game so far.  Currently I have a Guardian and added a Minstrel.  I was actually suprised by the Minstrel; he's only level 5 right now but it's fun to play.  They get a shout thats actually pretty funny.. they actually do shout, or yell as the case may be.  The first time I used it I had to laugh.  At any rate I expect to play him for a while since healer classes are what I'm really drawn to.

User Account Pruning

Yes, all users are prunes.. no that's not right.. Dead user accounts should be pruned but I don't want to do it manually.  There we go that's better.

I'm working on a Task Module for CS'07 that will do this for me.  So far I have all of the core code in place but ran into a problem.  It would seem that there is some kind of permission that the ITask based module doesn't have.  I get down to the user deletion call and get a DeleteUserStatus.InsufficientPermissions result back. In the mean time all the job will be able to do is disapprove the account until I can figure this out.

Oh yes.. here is the idea behind the module:

Spammers like to create accounts and they normally have creation = last activity = last login for the dates in the profile.  These are the accounts that I was to automatically delete. This should occur on a time based rule.. X number of days.. disapprove the account.. Y number of days delete the account.  This is valid for non-spammer accounts as well but the dates will not all match.. in this case you have cut offs on the last activity but I'm thinking that it might be better for those accounts to send them an email with the standard warning..

You need to log in soon or your account will be deleted and we'll take all your stuff.

I have yet to implement the email and adjusted rules for the non-spammer accounts sinceI got side tracked on the delete problem.  Hopefully a little more research will yield an answer.  I did look at the code in the admin screens that deletes users and they work basically the same way as my module.  The only difference that I can see is the fact that this is a module; perhaps modules are not trusted?  That could explain the problem.