Here’s the rundown of all the places I went, with my notes. [EDIT: I almost forgot that this all started on Friday of the previous week, and that I've left out one place, so I've edited this list post-publishing.]

• Friday (8/6/10) - White Lotus, This old downtown Dayton diner (”Yummy Burger” in it’s heyday) has been taken over by an old Thai woman. She’s hilarious. I got the impression at times that I wasn’t getting her jokes due to the language barrier. However the red curry chicken I had was absolutely phenomenal! If it hadn’t taken 45 minutes to get my meal, I might go back every stinkin’ day. It also has the drive to downtown working against it. However, I’ll make this a regular spot… perhaps monthly? I think my meal cost about 9 dollars. (8 out of 10)
• Monday - Mekong’s, This hole in the wall Korean place had a pretty mean lunch special. I’m not really sure what it was, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think I paid in the range of 8-9 bucks, which isn’t bad. But hey, it’s Friday and I don’t remember all that much about this place so it must not have been that good, right? (7 out of 10)
• Tuesday - J. Y. Bamboo, This is a Thai/Japanese/Chinese/Korean/Some other random types of food/etc. restaurant with a huge menu and really mediocre food. I had the red curry chicken, and while it was definitely decent, I just can’t imagine going back to spend another 9 dollars with all the other choices out there. (5 out of 10)
• Wednesday - Siam Pad Thai, This is a small almost hole-in-the-wall Thai place. I understand that this place was lacking a lunch menu in the past, leaving a pretty hefty bill for lunchtime. Now, however, there is a full lunch menu with relatively good prices (~$8-9). The food here was excellent, but I felt like something was missing. Both my colleague and I ordered our food as spicy as possible plus some, and the server said she would bring an extra dish of spices, which she did follow through on. Even with the spices, the meal felt bland. Granted, sitting next what you would find in 99% of all Chinese restaurants, I don’t think I could call it bland, but for Thai food it just wasn’t all there. The location is a bit rough for me too (about a 15-20 minute drive). (6 out 10)
• Thursday - Pearl Bay, This is a Thai food restaurant with a lunch special for each day of the week. Thursday was Panang curry day, so I tried it. I wasn’t too impressed with the Panang curry, but the price was right (5 bucks, out the door with $6.13). I’ll be back several times to make sure I don’t like this place, cause I like the price and location. (7 out of 10)
• Friday - Linhs, Vietnamese. HOLY CRAP! This food was fantastic! I’ll be back and many many times. This place was so packed for the lunch hour that people were literally forming lines out the door and onto the sidewalk. The price was pretty good, I think most lunch specials were about 6.95. I was pretty blown away by the yellow curry chicken meal that I got, but I think I’ll be back for one of the lunch soups that I was drooling over as they went by to other tables. Later on in the day I was having ‘Nam flashbacks over how spicy my meal was (which was a huge +++ in my book). (9 out of 10)

The symptom is that when I run my application, I get an exception in my Main form’s constructor that is essentially a FileIOPermission failure while trying to access the executing assembly information. If I’m not allowed to access my own assembly data… what data should I be able to access? This seems like a bizarre thing to do, so I have to assume that it’s a side affect of some other change to .NET security.

I’m still unsure of actual problem, but on a hunch I thought that maybe the problem is that the Main form is not actually the same thread as the Main() function. So, I used F11 to step into the elusive Main() function automatically generated by the VS project and I added the assembly data access that I needed (simply the assembly’s version string) to the Main function and provided it to the constructor of the form. Wallah! Problem (sort of) solved!

What on earth caused this retarded security restriction, and what is the real solution?! I even checked to make sure that my app had full security (Properties -> Security -> “This is a full trust application”). The cynical conspiracy theorist in me says this is all part of a plot by the Microsoft team to kill .NET applications on Windows XP in order to force XP users to upgrade to Windows 7. Since most user’s need better hardware to run Windows 7, Dell probably paid off Microsoft to enable to change in order to generate sales. OK, that’s all quite a stretch.

In any case, does anyone know how to solve this?

Tony: I like the voice feature, it’s a nice addition. The position tracking could be better.

Nathan: This previously poorly rated navigation application is completely reworked. It now does turn by turn directions including spoken street names and re-routing lost drivers. It has the option to view turn by turn or map view. This is no “garmin”, and it has lots of minor bugs, but I’d expect a very quick turn-around of the app’s rating. For me, I’ll be using this in absence of the garmin my wife always steals from me. Plus… it’s FREE!

Tony: Easy to use, awesome app.

Nathan: Bumping is awesome. Aside from it’s minor glitches and bugs, it’s relatively seamless.

May 24, 2010