ASP.Net US States Dropdown List

For large projects I usually databind my dropdown lists, but sometimes you just need a no-nonsense dropdown list of US States. For all you folks Googling to save time, here’s that code. Enjoy! 🙂

<asp:DropDownList ID="DropDownListState" runat="server">
	<asp:ListItem Value="AL">Alabama</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="AK">Alaska</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="AZ">Arizona</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="AR">Arkansas</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="CA">California</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="CO">Colorado</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="CT">Connecticut</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="DC">District of Columbia</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="DE">Delaware</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="FL">Florida</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="GA">Georgia</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="HI">Hawaii</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="ID">Idaho</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="IL">Illinois</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="IN">Indiana</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="IA">Iowa</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="KS">Kansas</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="KY">Kentucky</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="LA">Louisiana</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="ME">Maine</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="MD">Maryland</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="MA">Massachusetts</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="MI">Michigan</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="MN">Minnesota</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="MS">Mississippi</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="MO">Missouri</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="MT">Montana</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="NE">Nebraska</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="NV">Nevada</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="NH">New Hampshire</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="NJ">New Jersey</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="NM">New Mexico</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="NY">New York</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="NC">North Carolina</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="ND">North Dakota</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="OH">Ohio</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="OK">Oklahoma</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="OR">Oregon</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="PA">Pennsylvania</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="RI">Rhode Island</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="SC">South Carolina</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="SD">South Dakota</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="TN">Tennessee</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="TX">Texas</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="UT">Utah</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="VT">Vermont</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="VA">Virginia</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="WA">Washington</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="WV">West Virginia</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="WI">Wisconsin</asp:ListItem>
	<asp:ListItem Value="WY">Wyoming</asp:ListItem>
</asp:DropDownList>

ActionScript 3.0 – Global Variable & On Mouse Click Event

I got to do a little ActionScript 3.0 work today. I can’t help but wonder what type of things I could create using Flash and ActionScript. Seems like it could be pretty fun. Do ActionScript programmers make good rates compared to .Net programmers?

Anyways. Here’s a few examples of some really basic ActionScript 3.0 stuff.

Here’s an example of how to create and use a global variable in ActionScript 3.0.

var intClicks:int = 0;

function showDoves():void {
	++intClicks;
	if(intClicks >= 5){
		_movieDoves.visible = true;
	}
}

And here is an example of how to add an “on click” mouse event listener function in ActionScript 3.0.

_btnFact1.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, onClickBtnFact1);

function onClickBtnFact1(evt:MouseEvent):void {
	_fact1.visible = true;
}

That’s all I got. I just wanted to document this so I can reference it later. I hope it’s helpful to you. 🙂

Why is "Content-type: text/html" displayed at the top of my CGI pages?

Recently one of my clients was having some issues with a CGI script they purchased. They’re running IIS on all of their servers, and oddly, this purchased script worked on one of their servers but not the other. On the server where the script wasn’t running correctly, IE displayed “Content-type: text/html” at the top of the CGI page. If I remember correctly FireFox displayed the entire markup of the page in text.

After quite a bit of research I found this excellent Perl for Win32 FAQ and learned that when you setup Perl for IIS you have two options, you can use “Perl for Win32” or you can use “PerlIS.” In my client’s case, they were running Perl for Win32 on the server with the working script and PerlIS on the server with the broken script.

Perl for Win32 = perl.exe
PerlIS = perlis.dll

They are both the same version of Perl, and both come included when you download Perl for Windows. However, even though they are the same version of Perl, they are different “interpreters.”

Perl for Win32 and PerlIS are mostly alike, but PerlIS requires that your scripts include the HTTP response status line as well as all headers for the response. Using Perl for Win32 you only need to specify the headers.

PerlIS is about two times faster than Perl for Win32. However, most CGI script that you purchase, or download for free, do not specify the HTTP response status line. This is because most scripts are not written for PerlIS. (Ok, I can’t backup that claim, but that seems to be the case in my experience.)

If your Perl scripts are displaying the content-type at the top of the page, try configuring your IIS server to run Perl using perl.exe instead of perlis.dll.

How to delete an entire directory via SSH

I know this is probably common knowledge to Linux and Unix geeks. But every time I need to remove a directory with files in my NearlyFreeSpeech.Net SSH terminal I end up having to google for the command. So here it is for anyone else who’s out there googling!

rm -r -f YourDirectory

rm = remove / delete
-r = recursively deletes the directory and all files in it, including subdirectories
-f = will not ask for confirmation before deleting