The other problem was a bit obscure. The application is built in ASP.NET 2.0 and written entirely in C#. It also makes use of Microsoft‘s AJAX Toolkit for ASP.NET to “pretty up” some of the interface interactions. Unfortunately, one particular user began to experience problems with the system recently. Since she’s the project manager, needless to say the problem was escalated to top priority with little to no delay. To make things more difficult, the problem was especially cryptic. In true Microsoft fashion, the pop-up JavaScript error dialog offered little to no useful information:

Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManagerServerErrorException: An unknown error occurred while processing the request on the server. The status code returned from the server was: 500

Google, of course, is my friend and found no shortage of pages where this turned up. The odd thing was that none of the purported causes for the error were anything that I was using.

After much searching, I finally happened upon this site. It seems Ted Jardine hit the same problem I did. He had narrowed it down to something to do with the .NET session, which he wasn’t really using but I was using extensively. What I found most interesting was his solution:

So, based on one of the comments in one of the above posts, even though I’m not touching session on one of the problem pages, I tried a hack in one of the problem page’s Page_Load:

Session["FixAJAXSysBug"] = true;

And lo and behold, we’re good to go!

I followed the various links he provided—as well as Googling for “FixAJAXSysBug” itself—and found lots more anecdotal evidence to support its usefulness. I applied this “fix” to the common header of the application to make sure it took affect everywhere and, so far, all reports seem to indicate its success.

Needless to say, I was instantly reminded of this GPF strip from the crossover with Help Desk. I can’t remember now if that joke was my idea or Chris Wright’s. It doesn’t matter now, really… it audacity is as brilliant now as it was eight years ago. The idea of setting a simple Boolean flag to “turn off bugs” is something I will always find hilarious.

Now if only all Microsoft bugs were so easy to fix….

I, of course, have a mild bit of self-interest here; I consider the “Ubersoft v. GPF Software” crossover to be an essential part of the GPF archives and I don’t particularly want to lose archive integrity. (If it comes down to shutting down Ubersoft.net, I may ask Chris if I can reproduce his comics inline into the GPF archive at least until the site can come back up, but I’d much rather send traffic—and thus ad revenue—his way instead.) But what I think is much, much more important is what Help Desk represents to webcomics as a whole.

Help Desk may not have numbers rivaling PVP or Penny Arcade (while at Keenspot, I was privy to most Keenspotters’ raw traffic numbers) and by his own admission Chris’ art isn’t going to rival anything like Sarah Ellerton’s. But I consider Chris to be a master humorist, especially in the realm of technology and the tech industry. What he lacked in measurable art skills he more than made up for in wit and wisdom, sticking it to Microsoft, IBM, Apple, and just about everyone else in tech that more than deserved it. In my mind, he pioneered the webcomics “genres” of both “clip art comic” (Chris routinely “assembles” his comics from pre-rendered vector art he designed himself) and “writing so good you forget about the bad art”. Before there was GPF, before there was User Friendly, there was Help Desk (it was hosted with OS/2 eZine in 1996). To lose Help Desk would be a great loss to webcomics, especially when so many of us have celebrated decade-plus anniversaries recently. Chris is on year #12; I’d much rather see him reach year #20 or 30.

Whether it’s a donation, a purchase through his store, or just words of encouragement, I ask everyone to swing by and give Chris as much of a hand as you can. If you’ve enjoyed Help Desk over the years, let Chris know just how much you appreciate his humor and art. If you’ve never checked it out, make sure to rectify that situation immediately. You’ll be gald you did.