Off-Topic but seasonal: Christmas wish list...

Asus EEE:
dinkiest damn computer you ever saw...

Wishlist at Library Thing:
librarything
Looks like you have to be a member at librarything to see the list, so instead you can see my chapters wishlist, which is roughly the same:
jason's chapters wishlist

iPod Nano
black, 8 gb

iPod Touch
instead of a nano, this would be really cool...

xbox360 games
halo 3
need for speed prostreet
the orange box
bioshock
project gotham racing 4

comfy chairs x 2
from UA - not necessarily these ones but in this style. It's gotta be comfy! or
from lazyboy or
this is the front-runner - also from lazyboy

salt cellar
alton brown salt cellar

instant read digital thermometer
another alton brown thing

safety razor
merkur progress safety razor

blades:
feather double edged safety razor blades


"my own place stuff"
cutlery
pots/pans
sheets/towels
couch
table + chairs
tv/dvd player/amplifier/speakers/cable box
vacuum cleaner
bed frame - hopen from ikea
dresser/wardrobe
freezer/microwave

*********************************
New stuff as of December 4th:

Yoga membership:

Bikram Yoga Abbotsford

Apollo membership fees

ongoing membership fees

Mandolin from Lee Valley

Mandolin

or a cheaper one:
mandolin from Paul's Finest

Mortar and Pestle

low profile mortar and pestle

Jamie Oliver flavor shaker

flavor shaker

thestick

stiff stick or power stick

Blade Runner

complete collectors edition

undefined is null

Doing a "very bad thing", as according to Microsoft, often has consequences. The other day I tried to add a column to a list in the Sharepoint site I am developing. The form failed, with an error message that "undefined was null".

Huh?

Not one of the more informative messages you could get. Until I started to think it through a little bit. Not only was a variable lacking content ("null"), but the variable itself was missing ("undefined"). This put me on the thread of a passing mention in the article I had based some of my Sharepoint hackery on.

This article was "One Master to Rule Them All", which proposed and illustrated a means of redirecting requests for application.master in WSS and MOSS from the stock file to your own customized version.

In the article, David Wise mentioned that you should, in your customized application.master file:

"Throw any ContentPlaceHolders that you are not using in a hidden DIV at the bottom of the page - but before the closing FORM tag (the only exception to this seems to be "PlaceHolderUtilityContent" which goes in after the closing form tag)..."

Once I tracked down this article, which was the one I vaguely remembered having a warning about placement of a particular contentplaceholder on an application.master page, I reviewed my own application.master page and found that, yes indeedy, I had put the placeholderutilitycontent contentplaceholder in the hidden div rather than immediately after the form closing tag.

Once I changed the file to put the contentplaceholder immediately after the tag, adding the custom column to the list worked just fine.

Phew. I didn't have to go back to square one with the site design like I feared I might when I first ran into this error.