Active Directory and Web Form Validation in ASP.NET (How I am learning to love Active Directory)

So it's been a little while since my last post. I have been working on a project that of course is due by the end of the month or even sooner if I can. The best part about this project is we are using active directory for our authentication engine. (If it's good enough for the network login it's good enough for me.) The data that this project is dealing with is very hush hush, only upper echelon people get to read kind of stuff (This would not be me!). So it has to be very secure and very reliable, and I have had a month to get it done. (humm, not sure how that worked out)

The tough part about this project has been the Security. It has to be tight, and with good reason. So we decide to use AD (Active Directory). Now how about find good information on authentication with AD? Not so easy really. There is not a great deal of stuff out there, and I have had to reread a lot of it to get the idea. But it is now starting to click. There is two parts to it. The LDAP authenication, and the FormsAuthentication. The first is to authenticate the user against AD, and the second is to make sure they don't have to login on every page. I don't have all of this mastered as of yet, but I am hoping to by wednesday.

Here are some of the links I have collected in this authentication journey.
Use Form Authentication with Active Directory
Forms Authentication with Active Directory
Active Directory Authentication with ASP.NET
ASP.NET Forms Authentication

Movie Quote

Movie Quote for the Day
Movie : "Mystery Men"
Character: "The Shoveller"
Quote: "We have a blind date with destiny and it looks like she ordered the lobster."

RSS Feed Junkie...have iPod will Travel

So I admit, I am an RSS feed junkie. I rather have my RSS aggregator open and the feeds stream into it, then to open a browser and look at the site that the content is coming from. At work I leave it open all day, and check it whenever it is updated. Now I know that everyone has worked really hard to make their blog nice to look at, I know that I have, but I just like having the content coming to me, instead of me going to it.

Now, I have my iPod, and it is great for my music, but what about RSS feeds. I know what you are thinking, those two things have nothing to do with each other. And at one time that is true. However, someone has written an app that lets you sync RSS feeds on your iPod. It is called iPod Agent. It is written in .NET (of course) and does a lot of stuff to make your iPod not only your music play, but a real world PDA. You can sync Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, Notes, Weather and RSS News Feeds.

So now,  I can listen to Dave Brubeck "Take Five" and catch up on reading my Email, and favorite blogs! Engagdet has a great post on it.

Quote of the Week

The Wayward WebLog (Matt Warren) has summed up how it has been at work for me lately.

Some days you get stuck and you end up doing more thinking than anything else. On those days it?s easy to take a break and punch out a few paragraphs of pondering for the internet elite. But all this week I?ve been reluctant to do anything but spit out for-loops and conditionals.>I think my F10 finger is getting sore from too much debugging.I tried to go web-surfing and it started to hurt whenever I clicked. Maybe it?s some typing related malady, or maybe it just hungers for more code.

For me, it is the F5 key, but basically the same idea!

The Code Project

The Code Project is one of the best sites I've found for coders to get great examples and tutorials from other coder.

XAML

XAML stands for "eXtenisible Application Markup Language". basically it is a new technology that allows you to created user interface of your Windows applications using markup syntax to create and describe, text, links, images and controls. This will be available on the next Windows operation system. (code named "Longhorn"). Here is an interesting article showing an application created in XAML running on "Longhorn". Click here

Started a Photoblog

So yesterday I started a photoblog. I plan on updating it once a week or so. So far, I have gotten some nice comments about my train picture. Check it out

The next Wave of blogging

So I have been reading about mobbloging. It's been around for about a year, but with cameraphones getting cheaper, it is becoming more and more popular. What is a moblogging? Simply put it is the practice of submitting text messages and images directly to online diaries. This article from the Guardian Unlimited explians the whole thing better than I can.

It's an interesting movement. I have thought for awhile that some of the beauty of the photos that I've seen from cameraphones is the candidness of them. That the picture was very much of the moment, and had very little to do stoping everyone and getting the camera out and taking the picture. While I love those pictures, they aren't as truly a representation of day to day life. I really love the fact that moblogging lets you share those real life/real moment images with your friends and family and even the world.

Some links to check out:
textamerica
http://www.buzznet.com
http://cellphones.engadget.com/

DNS Changes

So yesterday, I made some (scary) changes to the DNS for our Domain at work. I changed the DNS Servers used for the domain, and transfer all of the records to the new DNS Servers. If I  goofed up, little things email for the entire company would of been down, and no one would of been able to get to our website.

I am happy to say that none of those bad things happened. The transfer and propagation happened in about 14 hours. (which is incredibly fast) Which means when I show up on monday, I get to keep my job :-).

Meetings are options, days off required

So I am not sure how it worked. We were suppose to have a meeting today about a project that is on a tight timeline. So feeling miserable, I get myself out of bed to come in to work, for this meeting. I was suppose to present what I have coded up. To show the protype site (1/3 of it with functionality built and usable) and get feedback. Little design and usability tweeks. Anyhow not one of the other people sheduled to be in the meeting were in the building today. Now, most people have a good idea earlier in the week that they are going to take friday off don't they? My boss was the only one that told me. And truth be told, he deserves some time off, he is a hard worker, and does his best to make my job easier. Sometimes he is the only reason my job is even doable. But how come the others couldn't reschedule.

In the end it was probably good I came in, there were issues that I needed to take care of. But still it would of been nicer to be sick at home instead of sick at work.

feeliing Ill

Just not feeling well today. Got sick at work. Can't seem to keep anything down. But tomorrow is friday, maybe it will be better tomorrow.

Wrote something cool, saw something cool

Wrote something cool
So as a programmer, it is in my best interesting to be lazy. Not afraid of hard work lazy, and not slacker lazy. I mean lazy in a way that I never want to write the same code twice. Moreover, I don't want to write code, that I can generate with other code. Funny enough about this kind laziness, you can spend longer on writing a solution, then just doing the task at hand. Fortunately I broke even today. So what I wrote today, is a little utlity, that you feed a xml document, and the xsl stylesheet that your wrote for the xml, and it creates a html file from your xsl. So including the xsl I wrote 270 lines of code (145 for the xsl, 125 for the utlity), to create an html document, that only has 185 lines of code. Why would I do that?

Several reasons come to mind. First, accuracy, the xsl is going to more accurate, in writing the links, that I am going to be. In 185 lines of code, there are 150 links. Anyone would started to get a little bored and start to let their mind drift off, and the links won't of been as accurate because they are thinking about lunch or that movie they just saw. Second, flexibility, what if tomorrow, my boss says hey, 'Russ that looks great, but lets try this format instead'. Correctly changing the html page around could take a lot of time. However, changing the format of the xsl, is much quicker, and I can regenerate the html in half a second after the xsl is finished. Finally, that laziness factor we were talking about earlier. I don't want to write the code, when I can have something else do it for me.
An example of this would be the electric handsaw (skilsaw). Now you know it took longer to make the first skilsaw, then it did to cut 10 boards. But did it take longer to create the skilsaw then it would of taken to cut 5000 boards? Probably not.

In a couple days once I get my little utility all polished I will post it. I still need to write in some error checking and clean up the UI. (Ed we can do a command line version if you want :-> )

Something cool I saw
Checking the logs today I saw that I got a someone who came to my site from a yahoo.com search. I was pretty please to see with the keywords "Real Life Adventure" I was ranked 6th on the search results. So, I am thinking, right on, movin my way up the search engine ladder. Out of curiosity I typed in the title of my blog "Adventures in Real Life" and I came up ranked 2nd in the search engines. Now how cool is that.

All About Blogs and RSS

Here is a good article on what blogs are technically all about. It doesn't go in to the community that bloggers have, but it is quite informative. Check it out!

New Dev site

Ziff Davis has started a new developers site just for Windows/.NET Developers.  It's called  DevSource. On my first spin around the site it looks like it has some very useful articles and great tips. One of the articles that caught my attention was under their using VS section. ".NET Rock Stars: Chris Sells", it's an interview with Chris on windows development. It's pretty much a must read. The other article interested me was again, under the using VS section "Framework Patterns", this article specifically is targeting exception handling. It's good stuff, check it out.

Geek Glossary Part I

It was brought to my attention that I use a lot of acronyms ;-). And it's true, I do. With my job, it saves me about ten hours a week using acronyms in emails, phone calls, and in meetings. The computer industry is just over flowing with them. However, some acronyms have a different meaning depending on how they are used. It's like all the rules we have in the English language at it's worst. Let me give you an example. Here are two sentences using the same acronym to say two different things.

• wrote something in ASP today.
• I need to call our ASP to find out what happened.

So if that wasn't confusing enough I use phrases like "Classic ASP" and "ASP.NET". These are referring to versions of Active Server Pages. So in truth "Classic ASP" means version 3.0 and "ASP.NET" means version 4.0 and 4.1.

During a recent meeting at work, we were discussing the "API" for interfacing with this or that, and one of the people in the lending department asked what an "API" was. I thought this was a great question, because as geeks we forget that not everyone knows or even has any clue as to what we are talking about. So what does "API" mean? Well, it stands for Applications Programming Interface. Don't you feel better knowing that? So now you are going great, what does an Application Programming Interface mean in English. What it really means is, it is a way, or more correctly an program that someone has written that has methods of letting you talk with this other program, without having to know the particulars about it. Now, you are thinking so APIs are something that makes it easier to program for something. And the answer to that is a very positive, ummmm sometimes, maybe...

The last one we will cover today is "blog". It isn't really an acronym, and it's barely a word. Basically it's slang. What blog actually started out as was "Weblog". Then someone started to drop the "we" of "weblog" to make it "blog". So basically a blog or weblog is a web page that is updated almost daily that consists of someone?s ramblings, rants, raves and even geeky thoughts. (Kind of like this one).

Until our next installment of Geek Glossary, here is a link to a great Geek Glossary to look up computer acronyms and other computer industry mumbo jumbo.

Thing one and Thing two

thing one
 I noticed something the other day but didn't have time to mention it. The blog has passed 1000 views. What's even cooler than that is for the most part my views aren't counted. Which is kind of cool because it is just the count of you guys visiting.

 When I started this blog four months ago, I didn't think about anyone visiting it. It was more like writing to the ether. However I have had people visit the blog from Sweden, Italy, Japan, Spain, Germany, China and of course from all over the United States. It's interesting to see on my little blog, the effect the internet has, and the whole global village idea coming true.

 Now I know that most of the readers of my blog are friends and family and I thank you for thinking that I have something interesting to say. Even when I go on and on about ASP.Boring (as one comment suggested ;-D ). I want all of your feedback, so please don't hesitate to use the comments feature. Just click Comment(n) and write away. If you have a popup blocker on, you may have to turn it off to use comments.

thing two
 On tuesday's blog I talked about a little utility called BlogJet. What it is, is a windows applications that works like Word for your blog posts. You don't really have to know any html to write you posts and have it look like you want it to. It has bold, italics, underline, bulleted lists, images and hyperlinks tools built in. It also as a really nice feature for people like me that lets you look at the code. (Being that I dream in code, I couldn't image not being able to see before posting my blog.)

 Every post since tuesday has been done through Blogjet. I am not sure why, but I find it more convenient to write and edit my posts in it. It's fairly intuitive and is really easy to set up. It even has settings to allow you to post blog account (for example I use blogger.com) and upload any images you are using for your blog to another server. While I haven't used this yet, it is a great idea and really speeds up the time it takes to post content to your blog.  Another nice feature is it allows you to connect to different blogger accounts. Not everybody uses only one  blog service and the creators of blogjet understand this.

 While I do think this is a great little product I do have a short feature wishlist. (Remember it is still in beta 1)

• Spellchecker
• CSS support
• Cleaner HTML code in Code View

I am happy to tell that these features are on the feature request list on the BlogJet forum.

Got to code today

Today ended up having fun coding this afternoon. We needed something that let people securely move the data. So that is what I wrote. It was in classic asp and it was made up of little components that I have created over the last year or so. I also used some components from AspUpload that are really nice and easy to use. We also purchased and are using thier XUpload product which is a very user friendly way of uploading multiple files. It even lets the users drag and drop out of windows explorer.

It has been a little while since I've done anything in classic asp. It was actually nice. I am surprised about how easy it is to switch languages some days and so difficult others. I didn't have any problems today. Everything just flowed from a code point of few. For the most part I got a secure upload and download application done in a couple of hours including the user interface and security. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a modular piece of code that is reusable and perfect to use in ten other things. It was a one off solution. But it works and it solved a problem. Sometimes it's really nice to be able to solve a problem quickly.

Of course I am working on a .NET version of the same thing that is way more modular and will use Active Directory for security of the internal users and a salted hashed password for the external users. It will always create and delete directories and documents on the fly or scheduled. It will allow the helpdesk group to create the secure transfer sites on the fly.

late train early day

So today started at 5:00am, to make it to the train at 5:30am to get to work by 7:15am to get work done before the meeting at 8:00 am. After the Meeting at 8:00am ended at 9:00am, we had a meeting that lasted from 9:15am to 5:30pm. I caught the last train for home at 5:50pm. Got stuck in union station because the train taking me home at 7:00pm hadn't even showed up yet at 7:15pm. So I took the gold line to pasadena that left at 7:20pm to get to old town pasadena at 7:50pm. My beautiful wife picked me up at 8:00pm and we got home at 8:45pm.

XML-Based page templates

So at work I am trying to find ways of automating and templatizing everything. One of things that I found today with this goal in mind was an article on xmlforasp.net regarding XML-Based ASP.NET Page templates. This is such a nice was to things. While all of the internal/intranet applications that Ed and I write have different functionality, we are trying to keep them having the same look and feel. This goes a long way to help that happen. The other great thing that this article addresses is making it easier for Jr. Developers and Content Publishers to use these templates. They only need to know basic html to get the job done. If you've ever tried to discribe a for loop to a non-technical person, you know how wonderful this is.

Test of something new

I downloaded this cool little utility called BlogJet. It seems to be working okay. I will try it for the next couple days and let everyone know what I think.

Happy Monday

Well today is my Beautiful Wife's and my three year anniversary. Three years has gone by so fast. It is such a pleasure to be with her. I so enjoy her company, her wit and sense of humor and even her `onery streak. (I find it so adorable, I can't help but be completely in Love with her.) She really is the love of my life!

Today is going to be a happy monday. I am playing hookie from work (with the proper forms filled out in triplicate and signed by the correct people in human resources and management) and the little boy is play hookie from school (told the bus driver friday he wasn't coming in) and we are going to Disneyland. It should be a beautiful day for it.

I do have to say, I got the coolest thing for my anniversary present. I got a 20gig apple iPod.It is an amazing device. This little mp3 player will hold up to 4000 songs and is about as thick as two CD cases stacked. The other thing about it is the sound quality is so amazing. It's really nice gift. I know I will enjoy it for a long time.

I know that it's been like three days since I've blogged, it was almost a test to see if I could go a weekend without writing anything in C#, XML, XSD or HTML. So apparently I can, however the withdrawals and terrible :-). I ended up dreaming in code. Speaking of code, one of the other gifts I got was a gift card to Barnes and Noble. This was very nice indeed, and of course I ended up picking out a book on C#, XML and XSD. (Not a big surprise now was it). It's called ".NET and XML understanding the code and markup behind with Wizards", its one of those great O'Reilly books, that us techy geeks love to have on our bookshelves.

Welp, I am off to get ready to go to the happiest place on earth....The Apple store... hmmm I mean Disneyland.

It's okay to Love Cartoons but...

It's okay to love cartoons, but trying to live them is something completely different. Apparently someone loves the Simpson so much that they built a really life replica of their house to live in. Now that's going just a little bit to far don't you think? I mean, I loved the cartoon the transformers growing up, but I'm not in the garage night after night trying to make a porcshe that transfroms into a robot.

Now don't get me wrong. I do enjoy watching cartoons. With a three year old in the house the view choices are rather limited. Fortunately there are movies like "Finding Nemo", "Toy Story" and "Monsters Inc" that were created by people who know how to entertain children and adults in the same film. Like I said, it's great to love cartoons, but don't try to live one. In the life of a cartoon, you never know when a piano would get dropped on your head.

Which OS are you?

Which OS are You?

iPodraces

I love it when someone is as creative as they were here in iPodraces. You got to like when someone merges the best MP3 Player on the market with the best part of Star Wars Episode I.

If you catch on to it quick enough you can pretend you where there

Friday night, I was reading by blogroll and came across some that struck a cord. It was on ComputerZen, it linked to a post called "Real Coders, Real Code" by Mat Warren.

It's late, do you know where your coder is? Really, it's a very good question. You think your spouse is sleeping next to you at night. They are not. They are awake, bleary, weary and barely lucid, secretly feeding their addiction. Yes, it is sad and depraved, and utterly reprehensible. Of course, they don't want you to know because they need to keep the mystery. It will make it all the more poignant when the truth does come out, because they have a plan, and it is big. They need to code. It is what makes them go; the juice that makes them feel alive, and it is all leading somewhere. You see, there's an app, and it does something wonderful, and you'll understand when you see it, but it's not exactly done yet. It would be if they could just figure out that frigging API, but the doc sucks straws and the on-line help is out to lunch.

It's nice to know your not alone stressing and obsessing over your code. The comments on the post sure reflected that. My favorite comment was from a women married to a man that is struck with the same "affliction". What she had to say was genius.

Oh yes, I knew this already! I pray for the day my husband comes up from the cold, dark, stinky basement and asks for a beer and plops down in front of the TV to watch the Packers play. Heck I'd settle for a white wine spritzer and figure skating at this point! I sit with a smile on my face nodding as I listen to him excitedly rant about .Net and how he got a (whatever you call it) down to .003 seconds from its previous 3.8! I hug him and tell him I'm proud of him and he can do anything because I know that one day, that idea that's clawing and chewing its way out of his brain will make it out! Yep, I love that coder of mine!

First Review: Dell Latitude D800

So I got the laptop Friday morning, of course I wasn't able to get switched over in an afternoon. (despite how hard I tried) So this weekend took it home, and of course it passed the first test, the curbside appeal. My Beautiful Wife said that it was a very nice looking machine. (from a Mac user that is a very nice complement) The next test was the home network. I have a DLink WiFi router (802.11b, yeah, I know only "b" but, my DSL doesn't do 54mbps, yet so..) and of course it found it immediately. I had no problems with the connection all weekend long, in every room!.

I definitely think that ordering the faster 5400rpm harddrive was the way to go. Between the faster drive and 1gig of RAM it is amazing how fast applications open up. When I got into work today, the last test was completed. Dual Monitors. I have two flatscreens at work and it is something that I am very used to having. I've been running dual monitors since Windows 98. So it was important to me that it worked and it did. After a little Tinkering I set my 1st Monitor up with the DVI connection in the back of the port replicator and then the 2nd Monitor with the anolog VGA connection. They are working and looking great.

The screen on the laptop itself is simply stunning, the color depth and the resolution is awesome.

I can tell that this is going to be a real workhorse of a laptop. I am sure that we will create many wonderful apps together.

Rockin Laptop, Rockin Demo

So this morning when I came in this morning, by Boss told me that he had signed for my laptop today and it is in the building. So I had to do my best to not jump up and down and clap like a fool. I got a new Dell with 1.7ghz Processor, 1 Gig of RAM and a 60gig Harddrive. Of course it has WiFi and Bluetooth. My phone is Bluetooth is it should be a happy little device. So this weekend is going to be taken up with playing...hmmmm I mean working with the new laptop. My first impression is that it is larger than I thought it would be, but it is beautiful.

Yesterday was other vendor demo. It differed from the previous by the answers to the questions. Everywhere we were told "No" in the demo on wednesday, we were told "Yes" in the demo yesterday! So that is just amazingly impressive. Something that works out of the box and yet is amazingly customizable and cofigurable. I am sold. If the decision was up to me we would have gave them a check yesterday.

One part of the demo that I really enjoyed was their Chief Architect , Scott Hanselman going over the architecture of the product. It really open'd some eyes! I was in heaven. I am very thankful Scott took the time to go over that with us. I have to say later that night I had visions of XML Schemas dancing in my head!

One of the other thing that I got from Scott's presentation was CodeSmith. If you aren't using CodeSmith, why? I know what you are going to say, I don't really like the idea of code generators. Well, what about one that you write the template for, hmmmm? Something that saves you 60% of your time doing the redunant coding for you. Okay wait it gets better. Eric Smith has made it a freeware. Now there is a professional version, but isn't only about 80 bucks. Come on, does it get better than that. That is so worth the two to three hours we all spend finding that typo on the easy stuff that we just goofed on.

thought for food

The images that was posted here is no longer available

More Quotes

Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary

The time to stop talking is when the other person nods his head affirmatively but says nothing.
Henry S. Haskins (1878 - 1957)

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965), on the eve of his 75th birthday

Architecture is the art of how to waste space.
Philip Johnson (1906 - )

The long Parade of Salesman

So today was the first in the Long Parade of Salesman. We are going through the vendor demos for the project at work. It's a large project for us, so the vendor demos last about 8 hours. Yes friends 8 hours! Dare I say it again, 8 hours.

Today was the first one and it went fairly well. Tomorrow is the one I am looking forward too. It's a great company that starts with the letters "cor" and ends in "illian". I get to meet Scott Hanselman tomorrow!

Fuzzy's ready to go

Who's Fuzzy? Actually the question is what is Fuzzy? Before your minds go to far with this..Fuzzy is the Quad that my Dad, brothers and I build. It started life as a YZ 490 dirt bike and is now a full fledge quad. Fuzzy is a purebred mut! It's front suspension and brakes are off of a Honda 250R FourTrax. The Latter half of the rear swingarm and brake are from a Suzuki LT250R, while the first part of the swingarm is the stock YZ490 parts. It using the YZ 490 rear shock and linkage. Keeping with the Mut theme, the front plastic is from a 1986 Honda 250R FourTrax and the Rear Plastic is from a 1987 Suzuki LT250R. The Tank is (strange enough) stock YZ490. We fabricated, modified and welded the frame ourselves. We had a friend do the aluminum welding that merged two swingarms in to one.

In the end, Dad has a one off quad that doesn't look, sounds or ride like anyone else's. It is fast and stable and just a lot of fun to ride. There is a lot of bragging rights that goes with building your own quad. Anyone can buy one, but not everyone can make one!

Quotable Quotes

I currently don't have anything interesting to say, so I will differ to those that do.

No animal should ever jump up on the dining-room furniture unless absolutely certain that he can hold his own in the conversation.
-Fran Lebowitz

Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.
-Benjamin Franklin

We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others.
-Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
-Mark Twain

Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do not be awe struck by other people and try to copy them. Nobody can be you as efficiently as you can.
-Norman Vincent Peale

It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go.
-Bertrand Russell

Why is it drug addicts and computer aficionados are both called users?
-Clifford Stoll

Home computers are being called upon to perform many new functions, including the consumption of homework formerly eaten by the dog.
-Doug Larson

Taking the fun out of fishing

I was taking a little break from coding this afternoon and decided to check out some of my regular blogs. While surfing Engadget.com to check out the latest geekwares and what do I find? The Fishing Cam, a camera that goes on your line like a floater and then inline you add the wireless transmitter. Of course right about your Penn reel you have a video screen showing you what the camera sees. No don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of technology. I mean I program for a living.

However somehow this fish cam idea seems just wrong! I mean one of the great things about fishing is being outdoors on a beautiful lake, with friends and family. I mean some of my favorite fishing trips was with my two brothers, Dad and Granddad K. We rented a couple of boats and fished lake skinner for the day. We told stories and jokes all day long. As far as the fishing catching goes I think only K got a fish, and we all had "the one that got away" stories.

The other thing about fishing is the thrill of the hunt. Your pray is almost invisible to you and the only way for you to get your pray is to have knowledge of it. Trying different lures and baits. Trying different ways of moving the bait. All the guess work is removed, you see the species and know exactly what bait to use. At that point why don't you just buy the fish at the market and pay a fishing video game.

XSL in ASP.NET the Easy way

Well Boys and Girls, I am about to get geek here. I've just spend an hour trying to figure out how to write a function in C# that will let me display my xml transformed with my XSL Stylesheet. That is nothing cool then seperating the data from the presentation layer! So how come it took an hour? Well, because I was thinking in Classic ASP mode. Yup we all do it from time to time. You see in Classic ASP if you were going to transform your xml with an xsl it looked something like this:
dim xmlDoc, xslDoc
Set xml = Server.CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument.4.0")
xml.async = false
xml.load(Server.MapPath("book.xml"))

Set xsl = Server.CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument.4.0")
xsl.async = false
xsl.load(Server.MapPath("output.xsl"))

Response.Write (xml.transformNode(xsl))

So of course this is how I was thinking that I was going to have to do it in .NET. I won't bore you with the details of everything I tried. Let's just say that after trying the StreamWriter and still not getting what I wanted I was frustrated. I was thinking this can't be harder in ASP.NET then it was in Classic ASP, that would be a step in the wrong direction. So I did one more google search. Ah-ha, there was what I was looking for. It was easy I knew it had to be. So here is how to do the same thing in ASP.NET...Ready

< asp:Xml ID="books" DocumentSource="xml/books.xml" TransformSource="xsl/output.xsl" Runat="server" />
Yup, that's all there is too it! I have to thank aspalliance.com for doing such a great job of documenting the controls and giving great example code.

Happy coding :-)

A Nice surprise

So yesterday my Beautiful Wife surprised me with some gifts. Presents are always nice. Just little things to know you are thought of always makes one feel good. Anyhow she got me something that I have wanted for years. The movie "Animal Crackers" on DVD. This is so amazing, because amazon hasn't had it for over two years now. I don't even know how she found it.

I am just a huge fan of the Marx Brothers. There is something about their humor being witty and corny at the same time, I just love.

"One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I'll never know."

Plus the characters, that Harpo and Chico always played, they were the underdogs but you knew they would make it. And of course there is always something amazing about the way that Harpo played the harp, and Chico played the piano. Two completely different styles, yet both filled with showman ship.

And we can't forget Groucho shooting off the oneliners like a machine gun.

Well in the words of Jeffery T. Spaulding - "Hello, I must be going, I'm glad I came all the same I must be going, I'll stay a week or two, I'll stay the summer through, but what I'm telling you is... I must be going"

typographic illustration

Surfing the blogs and found this link. Typographic illustration
Having a background in typesetting and pre-press work, I found this illustrations to be both beautiful and intriguing.

How to Read a RFP response

A good portion of my afternoon has been spend reading some of the RFP responses we have received for a project we are doing at work. What is an RFP? Well friends it is an acronym for Request for Proposal. So we sent out a fifty page RFP. What we get back ranges in size depending on how bored the sales and marketing teams are at each company. From this I have come away with some useful information. No so much on the products but on how to read a RFP response.

1. If within three paragraphs they mention how flexible the product is more than five times, it probably isn't.
2. Gleaming technical information from marketing materials is like reading hieroglyphics, it is doable it just takes a lot of studying and it may not be a true representation
3. A RFP response is like staring at the sun, if you look long enough you will burnout your retina.
4. Brevity is our friend...All of those marketing people out there, repeat after me brevity is our friend.
5. Sending me a RFP response in PDF format is great, but don't expect me to read 200 pages off of the screen, cause, I'm just not going to.
6. Most important of all, the ones that include pictures keep you from getting bored as fast! If their in color it's even better.

Saturday night....

Well, it is Saturday night. So party party party, right...no not so much. I either have a really good cold or a really bad sinus infection. It hasn't decided what it wants to be yet. So I'm sitting in bed, watching movies on my puter DVD player and curled up with a good RFP (Request for Proposal) response. Unfortunately the cold medicine has me groggy. Happily the RFP is a really page turner, and the movie, Second Hand Lion is wonderful. Being that sudafed has left me with a peanut the size of a brain. I'll leave you with a couple of quotes from one of my favorite comedians.

I must confess, I was born at a very early age.

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.

Why was I with her? She reminds me of you. In fact, she reminds me more of you than you do!

Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others.

I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it.

I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception.

I must say that I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a book.

-Groucho Marx

quiet

Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world.

- Hans Margolius

McGyver's iPod

This is the kind of story I love. Guy, buys iPod, guy wants more battery life from iPod, guy builds iPod battery pack. Mr. Drew Perry is a real life McGyver, Folks! He had a need and with a couple of rechargable batteries and a deck of playing cards later he had his iPod battery pack! Better yet, this fine gentleman has even posted schematics on how to build your own battery pack. He says that he is getting an extra 10 hours out of it.

New Gadget Blog

Surfin some of my favorite blogs, I found a link to Engadget. This is a great blog for those that have to have news on the latests and greatest gadgets. It covers the whole spectrum of gear. Cellphones, Desktops, Digital Cameras, Handhelds, Home Entertainment, Laptops, Misc. Gadgets, Peripherals, Portable Audio, Portable Video, Robots, Tablet PCs and Wireless. Basically, if it's geek, they'll tell you about.

So far my favorite article is on the "Devil Duckie". I love the fact that someone had a enough of a sense of humor to make a rubber duckie in to a USB storage device.

The toys of my Childhood are now Online

When I was growing up we use to love rainy days. Why? Well first off, growing up in Southern California, there just weren't a lot of rainy days. And secondly and most importantly was our rainy day toys. These were Lincoln Logs, Tinkertoys and Legos. My favorite was the Legos. I was always building castles and cars (okay, things that looked like cars if your crossed your eyes and used your imagination).

So today I was just kind of surfing around and I went to one of my favorite design site. Chopping Block.com. I mean any site that has a theme song by "They might be Giants" is pretty cool if you ask me. Anyhow one of their newest projects was for Legos. So I checked it out, and what did I find? My childhood rainy day toy is now available 24/7 on a computer near you. I was taken back for a moment. I thought about this and was a little hurt at first. My toy was now a computer program. Then I thought about it a little more, humm if it's on the screen that means there isn't any little plastic pieces to step on in the middle of the night. Whoever thought of this is a Genius! My poor parents must of stepped on about four hundred million of those little legos at night. I won't have to now. When the little boy wants to play with legos we can just fire up the computer and way he goes!

So with Legos found, its off to google to see about Lincoln Logs and Tinkertoys. There is still a version of Lincoln Logs around. Infact they even have PDFs of how to build the bank, and the barn and other buildings. Tinkertoys however took a little more searching but I did find something about them. Hasbro still sells Tinkertoys. Somehow it is nice to know that they toys of ones childhood are still around in some fashion.

Win a Date with Javascript

So I have a couple of pages on our site that use javascript to display the date and or time. And of course none of them have the same format. Right now each page has a different javascript to display the date. And if course that isn't very modular. So I wrote an fairly complete javascript function, that if you tell it the format you want it in it will give today's date in the format.
Here are the formats available:

shortdate: 3/2/2004
shortdatetime: 3/2/2004 10:35
shortdateUTCtime: 3/2/2004 18:35:27
longdate: March 2, 2004
longdatetime: March 2, 2004 10:38
longdateUTCtime: March 2, 2004 18:40:12
longweekday Tuesday, March 2, 2004
longweekdaytime Tuesday, March 2, 2004 10:41
longweekdayUTCtime Tuesday, March 2, 2004 18:42:18


You can download the source code here. Download the text file and change it to a iDate.js. The file is commented on how to use it. Feel free to use it in your projects.

Which Forgotten 80s Cartoon Character are you?

I got this link from PixieStitch. She was Butterbear from the Wuzzles. Too Funny!

You are He-Man from Masters of the Universe! You
take life very seriously, and you should, considering you are the keeper of all that is good and right in the universe! However, your nonstop suspicion of Skeletor and his henchman can start your friends wondering why you don't loosen up once in awhile.

Which Forgotten 80s Cartoon Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

The funny thing about this, is He-man was one of my least favorite cartoons. I always thought if it as filler. I always thought I would me more like Lt. Quicksilver, from the Silverhawks.

"This land was once, green and good"

Yesterday I bought the movie "The Dark Crystal". I knew what all of the characters where named for the most part, but I didn't remember the story. The details of the story anyway. So my Beautiful Wife and I are watching the movie. The narrator is telling the history of the story. He says, "This land was once green and good, before the crystal cracked". I thought, hold the phone, I have heard that recently; in fact I know all of this. It isn't that my memory was that good. It's the opening lyrics for "The Crystal Method" song "Trip like I do". Which I thought was very hip. It's not the same voice as the narrator in the movie, which somehow I like even more. I forgot how beautiful and enchanting this film is. It is simply amazing to me that this film was made in 1982. Jim Henson was a genius.

I have seen "The Dark Crystal" tons of times when I was a kid. Not in the movie theater though, we didn't go to the movies that often. You see when I was growing up we had the movie on CED disc. Our first CED player was a Zenith and we got it at GEMCO. Mom and Dad had put it on layaway. I remember when we picked it up. It was a Friday night and we even got the movie "Dumbo". I remember going home and watching it all the way through and feeling like I had stayed up really late (9:30pm). I must have been 8 or 9 years old. Then the next morning we got up early to watch it again.

It’s really funny the flood of memories that comes back thinking about these CED movies. The little store in Arcadia that we use rent the CEDs from, the library of CEDs that Grandma and Grandpa use to have. In fact we had just come home from the Video store when I got my finger partial cut off in the car door of our old 1973 ford pinto station wagon. I had the movie ”Alice in Wonderland” in my left hand, and I took the tip of my ring finger off with the car door on my right hand. The same car door, that my Brother and I would ask Mom to leave the window rolled down so that we could jump through it like they did in “the Dukes of Hazzard”.

I remember when Dad figured out to hook up the CED player to the stereo. (This was like in 1985-86 mind you) and Dad had these big tower speakers that he had built. They were taller than I was at the time. Anyhow us kids were watching the movie “The Neverending Story” and Mom was ironing. It got to the scene where the Rock Biter was riding his stone scooter and the floor shook. It was so cool. It felt like you where in the movie. I looked over at Mom grinning and she smiled at me and pointed at the measuring cup full of water on the ironing board and you could see the ripples in the cup from the stereo. We also use to watch the CEDs that were music videos for kids, It was called DTV (Disney TV). and it would have a montage of cartoons edited to go with songs like Hall and Oats’ “Private Eyes”.

I just did a search on ebay for CED. I was amazed with what came up. Hmmm, I may have to pick a couple up for Nostalgia.

Quick observation

If you don't get much sleep the night before, and you have a lot of busy work to do in the morning, A Quad (4 shoots of espresso) White Chocolate Moca is the only way to go. I just got three hours worth of work done in an hour. On the flipside, I am hoping that I will be able to blink again fairly soon.

A musical interlude

How about a little break from all of the technical mumbo jumbo that I talk about all of the time? How about music? I was talking about music with a friend tonight on the train home. We were talking about what we were each listening to, and what we liked or didn't like about each band or artist. Then we got on the subject of music that we didn't like.

Interesting enough for me, it is music that is over produced. Music that feels like it has been overcrafted by the A and R man at the record company. For example any song where the band or artist has their name in the song more then two times, definitely out. If all of the human qualities are carefully edited out of the track, thah is another one that is out. The other thing that I don't like is the band in their songs, or interviews telling me that they are hip and that I should listen to them. That's not how It works, they get to play the music and we as fans get to tell them if they are hip. Of if they shouldn't quit their day jobs.

I listen to a fairly wide variety of music. Techno to Jazz, Singer Song writer to Big Band. And some of my favor music has little mistakes in it. It makes it human. When the singer stands back to take a breath and you hear it. The sounds of the guitars fretting the strings as he moves his hands up the neck of the guitar. The drummer slowing down just enough to notice at the end of a long set. I like these things in a recording. I think that some people have gotten away from the true meaning of a album or a recording. It to me was to represent the live peformance, that you were either present at, or wished you were. Now don't get me wrong, I am not saying that all bands should peform each song exactly as it is on the album. I mean almost the opposite. The albums should have a flow, and a freedom that a live concert has. The freedom leave those little mistakes in.

So when I got home, I was in the mood to listen to some Jazz. So I grabbed my copy of Blue Miles, Miles Davis. This is an amazing album. I forgot how good it really is. This album isn't the kind of Jazz that has musical runs for the sake of the musicians. Nothing like that, you can tell, that Miles felt that each note was valuable and that runs like that was wasting a commodite of music. Each song is a master piece in Jazz. The best way I can describe it is, the he plays these very logically musical phrases, and them builds on them, and lets them build on themselves. Each note feels handcrafted. When he plays it, you completely expect it to be there. Which is simply stunning. Think about the songs that you add an extra note to, or leave one off when you hum or sing. That is because something about that note didn't make sent to you. Your mind says this should be added or this should be removed. There isn't any of that with this album. Every note needs to be exactly where it is. It is quite amazing.

Something about music that I have always loved is that it can be completely logical and completely emotional all at the same time. That the music has this structure yet in our minds we link a song to a time, place, feelings, people. There is something so strong in that.

So what is your favorite thing about music?

Quote of the Day

<quote source="DuckSoup">you are consumed with thoughts of ASP.boring </quote> Okay DuckSoup I will try (I make no promises) to not go more than two entries in arow about Programming. Hummm I may have to start pickup the news paper again, or I can use Google News.

A little .Net issue reminder

Ed asked me if I had used hidden field in ASP.NET. I said, "I think so?". So we went to check out the issue. And it is simply this, even if you are using an html control in ASP.NET, if you are going to fill the value of that hidden field from a function or programmatically, the html control needs the attribute runat="server". when you think about it, it makes sense, how else would ASP.NET know that the html control exist. Ah the joys of programming for a stateless protocol

things to do at 3:30 AM

I guess I couldn't sleep last night. So at about 3:30am I gave up trying to. Now there are a couple things you can do at 3:30, I mean hey, the 7-11 is open, some of the finest informercials are on at that time. So what would I do? Humm, I think I'ill start studying and creating an XML Schema for our real estate rates at work. Now, I know what you are think, 'hey man, you can't have that kind of fun at the time of the morning, it is illegal or something.' And in all truth it should be, but it isn't.

So I started looking around for some good sites on XML Schema. The first site the showed up on my google search was of course the W3C. They are the people that create most of the standards that are using on the internet link HTML,XML and XHTML. I am thankful they are there, but I have never been able to sucessfully read any of the documentation on their site. So I looked a little more and I found w3school. This was a little more like it, they broke the content in to byte size pieces, and in an hour I had the startings of my first XML Schema.

.Net Rocks and the CMS goes on

So I finally got to hear the .NET Rocks show with Scott Hanselman. Well what can I say, the guy is brilliant. He introduced a concept that was very new to me, but instantly made sense. It's called "Declarative Programming". He talked about writing code that generated the code for you. So you write an XML schema that follows the business logic of the application you are writing. Then you write an engine to render your schema. So now you can change parts of the schema at will, without having to rewrite all of your code. Also you can test sooner and faster. Like I said, this is a new concept to me, but I plan on studying it.

I am still working at putting the content in to the CMS. I have approximately 120 pages of the site in the CMS now. It is looking really good. Now I have to track down all of those pesky orphan pages and give them some structure. Also I think that I am going to rewrite the Site Map page to take advantage of the fact the CMS is so structured. That way I never have to update the Site Map. I can just let the CMS take care of that.

Well, my handy dandy Sony laptop just keeps plugging away. I took it to work today, because I usually do so work on the train or work at home, and needed to sync up with my station at work. Man, am I glad I did, It seems this weekend the power supply or more specifically the power supply fan had felt the need to give up the ghost. The fan still spins, kind of, it sounds terrible and you just know that at any minute that the thing is going to freeze up. So I worked from my laptop today, and left the workstation shut down. That means this little machine has been going for almost 14 hours today. What a great computer. It's hard to believe it is already three years old. This laptop is more reliable then some people I know.

Is that a Peacock in my livingroom or are you just happy to see me

So Friday I didn't have much excitement. I worked from home. I was going to drive in for the interview we had for the eMarketing position, I got about halfway there and my boss (The coolest boss in the whole world ) called and said, 'hey, if you haven't already just turn around and go back home'. And being that I had already been driving an hour and the way traffic was going it was going to be another hour before I got to work. I took his very wise advice. So I had them call me in to the interview and I did my part on the cell phone on the way back home.

Oh, on Friday Scott Hanselman was going to be on .NET Rocks. And I made sure I told everyone at work that would even be remotely interested. So what did I do? I forgot that it was on 9am PT and missed it! D'oh!

Friday night, over at the Folk's playing darts on the new dartboard my brother had just bought for Dad. (It's a really nice one, way to go big-little brother!) So we are joking around and I let something out of my mouth that was sharper and flew truer than the darts. You see Dad has been a city inspector now for about a year and four months. Before he was, we always had this saying about inspectors, but no one had said it since Dad became one. So I did. <quote src=”me”>You know what they say big-little brother, those that don't do, inspect!</quote> So my two brothers, I and my Dad and laughing so hard we are crying. What can I say, it had to be done. Of course Dad has a great sense of humor, and took it great!

Saturday I worked from home, on getting content into the CMS. It's a lot of tedium but in the end it is going to be a good thing. Saturday night we went to my Folks house, for my Cousin's anniversary dinner. What can I say never a dull moment at the Folks'.

Today was a nice day, this afternoon My Beautiful Wife and I where just relaxing and decided to go to the movies. We saw “Something's Gotta Give”. It is the second time we've seen it and we laughed harder than the first time! It's a great movie and very funny, however it is not made for the 18-35 year old demographic. You need a little life experience to get how funny this movie is.

Anyhow so we come home and what do I see in my living room? A peacock! No, I am not talking about the terrible sunday night lineup on NBC, I mean a real life, bird brain, crapping on the carpet peacock! I have to admit this took me back a moment. It isn't everyday that you walk into your living room and see live poultry.

It seems that my step-daughter's friend found it and brought it over for us to see. I don't like birds, I really don't! All I can say is being 10 years old and watching Alfred Hitchcock's “The Birds” at 2am will scar anyone for life, okay! So they are telling me what the thing eats (mind you there is a flippin' peacock in my living room!) and so I ask how it feels about garlic. The look at me with a puzzled look and I suggested that it would be best served with garlic and walked out of the room.

Blog Blog fun for boys and girls

So I was listening to dontNetRocks and Robert Scoble was the guest for their November 04, 03 show.<warning>This is a geek radio show put on my computer nerds and geeks for computer nerds and geeks, yes they wear glasses with tape in the middle and pocket protectors and yes I am sure they can quote every line from the entire Monty Python library. However they are specifically discussing the programming language that I write in more of everyday than I do english, so I have to listen.</warning>

And it was all about blogging. Which was pretty cool. One of the sites them mentioned in the show is a site called feedster.com. Feedster is the google of blogs. Which is very nice. So I thought lets see if my little blog was on it. It was, I was amazed, I did a search on "BBQ and the ZOO" , the title of my blog on Monday, Feb 16th, and it came up, not only did it come up but it came up in the second position. (Whoa!) So I now have search on my blog, and it uses feedster as it's search engine!

It has been fairly quiet here today. Infact it has been almost 24 hrs since I threw my little hissy fit walked away from my desk and threaten not to come back. Everyone was very nice to me today and just wanted to know if I was okay. (IE these are the people that won't be targets when the repeater rifle and belltower scene plays out) Anyhow today is nice and quiet and I am gettings lots of work done!

Wednesday and XML

Are we sure that it was a wednesday? It really felt more like a thursday to me. Anyways it was a day and that is good enough. I was about to wake up and take a deep breath. (and cough immediately afterwards) I'm not sure that I was completely ready for the day. But it came anyway and in the end I am glad I was a part of it.

---

Well on to more constructive things. XML and XSL. XML and XSL are a great way to handle some of the navigation choirs that we have to deal with day in and day out. For example you have a page that some users want links to sites, and other users want links to blogs. Why not keep all that data in one place.


<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="links.xsl"?>
<navroot>
<link id="1" name="google" navlevel="1">http://www.google.com</link>
<ink id="2" name="builder" navlevel="1">http://www.builder.com</link>
<link id="3" name="tech republic" navlevel="1">http://www.techrepublic.com</link>
<link id="4" name="lockheed" navlevel="1">http://www.lockheedfcu.org</link>

<link id="5" name="Computer Zen" navlevel="2">http://www.computerzen.com</link>
<link id="6" name="Chardy" navlevel="2">http://chardy101.blogspot.com</link>
<link id="7" name="Adventures in Real Life" navlevel="2">http://o2bjang.blogspot.com</link>
<link id="8" name="Pixie Stitch" navlevel="2>http://pixiesitch.blogspot.com</link>
</navroot>
As you can see the site links have a navlevel of 1 and blog links have a navlevel of 2. Easy enough right. So how are we going to show these links to our users? This is where XSL comes in. What we are going to do is write an XSL that will show only the navlevel we specify, lets say navlevel 2. It would look something like this:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:for-each select="/navroot/link[@navlevel='2']">
<a>
<xsl:attribute name="href"><xsl:value-of select="." /></xsl:attribute>
<xsl:value-of select="@name" />
</a>
<br />
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>


What we see in this example is that the XSL is looping through all of the <link> elements and looking for the attribute navlevel='2' when if finds it, it writes and a href from the <link> element and the name attribute with in the link tag. So in the browser it looks something like this:
Computer Zen
Chardy
Adventures in Real Life
Pixie Stitch


Let's go over the xsl in a little more detail of what the XSL is doing. First we are have the XSL loop through all of the link elements in the XML document and take an action when it finds a navlevel='2'. This is handled in the <xsl:for-each select="/navroot/link[@navlevel='2']">. Think of this as XSL's for loop. This was a fairly simple example of what can be done with XML and XSL but I hope that you find it helpful.

BBQ and the Zoo

Today is president's day, so as many people do, I had the day off. Being that my wonderful Wife was away at a seminar all weekend this was our day to spend sometime together. And of course the little boy had the day off too! So we planned to go have some serious (Yet not to expensive) fun. So we decided on the Zoo, it was close and fairly cheap. (we thought that before we got there) On the way to the LA Zoo we decided to stop and have lunch at the "Black Cow Cafe" in montrose. It is someplace that we used to eat at all of the time when we lived in pasadena and montrose. Of course we get there and they are closed for presidents day.

<sidenote>It's amazing how irritating it is when a restaurant closes for a holiday. But that it's fine for you to have it off.</sidenote>

So we walked around downtown montrose and found this little place called Zeke's Smokehouse.It looked great and had things on the menu I can eat. (It's amazing how limiting being allergic to wheat is in your food choices) So we thought we would give it a try. It was fantastic! This is just hardcore food, no apologize, no tree hugging vegan entrees! Ribs, Beef Brisket, Meatloaf, Beef and Pork links! It's the first time that I have seen real hushpuppies in southern california. The meal was great! My wonderful wife had the BBQ chicken sandwich, the little boy had the chicken and I had the Beef and Pork links. It was all so good that I kept eating long after I was full.

So now that we are all fed, and in need of a walk. We were off to the Zoo. There was an issue with this, that we didn't know of before we left the house. Everyone else was off to the Zoo too! I haven't ever seen so many people their. You would of thought that they were giving money away. There was a 20 minute line to get tickets. There was a line for everything. Don't get me wrong it was a lot of fun. The little boy was nothing but a kick. He is such a ball of energy. Zooming from here to there to here again. Keep up! He would cry dragging My Wife and I behind him. After a little bit we need a little treat. We weren't really hungry just needed something sweet. So I went to the little Zoo cafeteria there to get some Ice Cream. Now here is where they get you, by the time you have stood in the line long enough to get up to where you can see the prices on the sign you aren't going to leave. So with credit report in hand I was able to finance three small ice cream cones with a fairly good interest rate for the next 36 months. (They told me that my credit score wasn't good enough for three large cones.)

We got to see some skunks, monkeys, deer, elephants, weasels, camels, flamingos, pimps and hoes. (funny enough not all of the creatures listed above where in cages some where walking around the park looking for mates). The hours of the Zoo are officially 10am - 5pm. However I feel these are a little inaccurate. True enough that it opens at 10am. However the closing at 5pm is a little deceiving. What they really mean is that if you are in the park at 5pm find a safe place to sleep because they have closed the gates and left for the evening. Really and truly leaving at 4:50pm is pushing it.

In the end we had fun and it was a good day off. However there were two lessons learned. One never go to the Zoo on a holiday. Two, don't even eat breakfast before you go to Zeke's for lunch.

A great waste of time

So I found this little game online that I can't stop playing. It's the only Trials game I've ever seen. You only have the arrow keys to balance, accelerate, and jump. To begin wasting your time on an addictive little game click here

Quote of the Day

<quote src="PixieStitch"> PH34R His Madskillz. < funtion run="translation" value="True" > Fear his abilties. </quote>

Thanks PixieStitch, this made me smile! :-)

Starbuck flows through my blood

I know that I haven't blogged since Wednesday. And lets face it, that one wasn't terribly exciting. (Not that this one is going to be some great literary work either) It's just that work has been so nuts. We are implementing the CMS from Bravo Zulu. It's called SiteSolution. I really can't speak highly enough about it. It uses XSL to translate the XML extract from the database in to, well your website.

So now that I have this amazing web publishing and content management tool, I have to get the entire web site into it. That doesn't sound that bad right? I didn't think so either, until I did the spreadsheet. I listed the pages, and the elements that need to be on each of those pages. It looks like I am creating star charts. The thing is huge. And of course, I need to have this all done yesterday. So I haven't been sleeping too much here lately.(IE the complete lack of creativity.) Don't get me wrong, I am really happy to do this project, it is something I have wanted at work for 2 years now. But it is a lot of work. I have to not only touch every page, but every element on the page. I was working from my memory as to what was done and what wasn't till yesterday. I can't believe I did that. It was so much to keep track of. So like I said, not sleeping great. And you know what that means. Yes more coffee. Starbuck Venti Quad Soy White Chocolate Mocha.(I believe that in the future this may replace fossil fuels in cars) Starbucks flows through my blood, currently it is the replacement for oxygen. (being asthmatic oxygen and I have always had a sketchy relationship as it is.)

prepare for the documentation

So I was up till just about 1am last night getting all of the documentation and programming standards completed and ready for presentation at our meeting today. So of course we ran long and no one even got to see all of the hard work that Ed and I have into it. In less than two days we have come up with out programming standards, a group version and install of VSS and documentation coding standards. Now that rocks. The next things we are going to have to work on are application standards and modular code practices.

Documentation from Comments in C#

Documentation is one of the hardest thing for a developer to do. Not because we don't understand what needs done. No that isn't it at all, it is because it is boring. However it is amazingly necessary. Have you ever written something down and dirty and then later have to go back and update it, and find that it takes 2 hours to figure out what you were thinking when you wrote that? I know I have. This is where C# comes in. More specifically C# in Visual Studio. In C# there is inline documentation. So if you comment as you code, you can actually build your documentation as you build your project. Here are some great links that explain it all very well

• Documenting C# with XML comments
• Using NDoc: Adding World-Class Documentation to Your .NET Components

New Must have App

So Ed today finds this new "Must have" app. And he was right. A little background is order. At work we are a Microsoft shop. So we have applications that are written just for IE 5.5 and above. These are internal applications where some of the MS-only functionality is helpful and allowable. However I hate the fact that Internet Explorer doesn't have tabs. Netscape had it, Opera has it, Firefox has it but not IE. So what Ed found was MyIE2. So not only did they write it to use the Internet Explorer Engine for Rendering pages, it will also use the Gecko engine too. This is the best of both world for me. I can see how pages will render in two different browsers types and use tabs. Tabs are so nice, because you can have multiple browsers open in one window. Which beats having three or four IE windows up like I had to do before today.

Jim, my friend from the train has started a new site, http://goberserker.com. This is his second EverQuest related site. For those of you who don't know EverQuest is the largest Online RPG. He also runs another EQ (EverQuest) site called EQ Interface which is focused on EQ interface mods and improvements. If EQ is your cup of tea, I suggest checking out Jim's sites.

Sunday Night ... Where did the Weekend go.

So today was my only day off. It wasn't plan'd that way it just happen'd. (Yes, I am going to be doing the Walt Whitman 'd thing) Anyhow, yesterday I spend a good portion of the day tracking down and fixing a strange server problem. Then in the afternoon I was able to help my dear friends move. Which is what I want'd to do with my day.

Friday Morning

The poor little boy isn't feeling well. He got up several times last night. He finally decided that at 4am he was ready to be up, and that he was ready for us to be up with him. He is weezing and really congested. I ran to the store this morning and got him a vaporizer and some medicine.(There are some of the strangest people that work and shop at walmart at 4:30am) My wonderful Wife has sent me back to bed. While she is up with him.

Just another Manic Thursday

Well it has been a thursday...<quote who="Arthur Dent">This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.</quote>

Today was one of those days where you wake up with the greatest of intentions. You are going to put a huge dent in that big project that is due yesterday, infact you think, hey if things go well enough I can have it finished early. But somehow you still done seem to get anything done.

I got up early, grabbed the 5:50am train into LA, got the 6:50am into burbank, was in at my desk by 7:15am. Starting going at it and got four pages of content in the CMS in 45 minutes. I was rockin'. But (there is always a but isn't there) then people started coming in. So you know how it goes. You can't focus on what you are working on because every ten minutes you are putting out fires. Some of them, three at a time like this afternoon, and it's flustering. It's one of those happy problems. If you weren't any good they wouldn't bother you. But I am fairly good at what I do. So I get asked for help on everything from graphic design work to server problems. And I am happy to help, but at the end of the day, I still have to get my work done, you know...

I have been working hot and heavy on the CMS project. I've come up with a list of questions. So I called over to the vendor we got it from, and my contact wasn't in. (He is the guy that wrote the CMS) I've called a couple times before and got the same thing. Of course he is incredibly cool and gave me his cell phone number so I can call him. So I did, and I asked him today about it. He says yeah, if I am in the office I get bombairded with requests. So if I have to focus or do anything like programming logic I do it from home.

Now this is my ideal situation. This sparked in my little memory something I had talked with my boss about the other day. Working from home on Fridays. A couple of Fridays a month to start. So I went in and asked if it would be cool of I worked from home tomorrow. And he thought for a moment and said, 'Yeah, I don't see anything wrong with that.'. So I am a happy programmer. I get to work from home tomorrow. No 2 1/2 to 3 hours work of train rides. No interuptions...Except the little boy....hummm. Maybe I should think this thing through.

The day after a rain

There is something about the day after a rain here in So. Cal.. The skys are so beautiful, the air is freshing and cleansing. Even the trees seem to be smiling. Of course the ones without leaves are feeling a little embarrassed about being sans verge with the weather being so nice. Outside my window here at work, I see the lovely swaying of green trees with the purple mountains serving as a back drop. The Blue sky with the light whispy clouds that act like they have nothing to do but hang around and watch the day go by. It's hard not to just stare out there into space and do nothing.However that isn't going to happen.

We just got out of an interview with a new canidate for the eMarketing position here at work. The person we interviewed seemed to know what they are doing. They would probably be a good fit. But change is hard. I worked with KrissV for two years. She's my friend. So its hard to think that, there wll be this new person, who you are going to be working with for x amount of years. And of course questions pop up in your head that you can't really answer or even ask of this new person. How this affects you, your workload? Is this going to be a nice person, that is easy to get along with, or are they going to fight you on every point all of the time? It all comes down to time, I guess. Working with KrissV was easy because we had spend enough time working together that we knew where the limits were. Now there is a new person and you have to invest the time in finding out where the limits are going to be. Like I said change is hard. I didn't used to think that, but as I grow older, change grows more difficult.

myDoom Hits it's target

Well, it seems like the myDoom virus that has been spreading like wildfire had hit it's target. Rueters has the story on their site, as do countless other news sources.

MyDoom Net Worm Scores Hit, Knocks Out SCO Site

This virus was responsible for 10% of all emails on the internet last week. Which is just an amazing number. SCOs CEO Darl McBride is offering an reward for information that leads to the arrest of the person or persons that are responsible for writing this virus. Though I don't think anyone is going to come forward. What SCO did with it's IP (Intellectual Property) lawsuit against Linux and IBM struck at the core of a very tightknit and powerful community. Some of the best programmers in the world work on and write code for Linux. I also find it interesting that SCO itself had a Linux program going and it stopped work on that after it had sold Microsoft rights to Unix. Humm, a big influx of money from Microsoft and then SCO stops their Linux program and starts going after anyone else that is working on linux.

I can't condone whoever wrote this virus, even if the intentions are good, this is causing more work to an already over worked IT staff. And in the end the people that will be affected by it have no idea about the SCO/Linux controversy. However, the person(s) that wrote this virus probably don't have all the money that a big corporation does to fight this out in the court system for years and years. I can see both sides of the story. I can't condemn them either. The DoS attack that they are launching is in essense a digital version of a protest. I know that not everyone sees it that way. But what is the differents between the Grocery Strike here in CA. where the striking employees were physically preventing the deliever trucks and customers from entering the parking lot. They are simply digitally not letting customers get to the web store front of SCOs parking lot.

At the root of this controversy is one word "Monopoly". (No not the board game) There is a good chance that if SCO wins this suit, that microsoft will have a Monopoly on the Intel based computing operating systems. Now don't get me wrong, I am not anti-Microsoft, in fact I make my leaving writing in microsoft's C#. However I do think that computing needs are too diverse for one company to be the end all be all. I want to be able to have different operating system running on my machine. I also think that there are some computing tasks that Linux is the only platform I would choose. Also did the government split of Bell because it had a Monpoly of the phone/communication systems? How is this any different then that?

A programmer is born!

Last night I had a mountain of work to do, and was actually inspired to do it. I started writing this C# console application that handles sending emails once it is called from a stored procedure. I know, I know, the words are english, but is he saying anything. (If you are a programmer, the answer is yes, if not...sorry) So on the train home I started laying out the structure of my application on my handy dandy sony viao laptop. When I got home, I wanted to just kind of keep the flow going. But the little boy wanted some attention. So he got some, what we did was combine our interesting. So what we ended up with was the little boy writing his first try catch statement in C#. Not bad for a three year old. try { } catch(Exception e) { writeError(e.Message); } Now before you start stating you astonishment, let me explain how his first programmer session when. Trav, which one is the "T", good, now which one is the "R", no that was a "E", which one is the "R", very good you did it. So it took us about 15 minutes to write our try catch statement. But we did do it, and we did it together. I put comments in the code of the application starting the date that the little boy had written his first snippet of code.

Jason Mraz : Waiting for my Rocket to Come

So the other day we got the Jason Mraz album "Waiting for my Rocket to Come". The only song I had really heard from the album is "You and I both". This was poppy and had a beautiful acoustic ring of a up and coming Signer song writer. So we got it. I listened to this album over and over again today. I couldn't stop. Mraz has to be one of the best lyricist to come around in a long time.

There some song on this album that you will just finding yourself singing along by the second verse. (to the horror of my co-workers). I was amazed at the diversity on this album. I expected acoustic pop, and I got that, but I also got funky groove, regae moves and outstanding lyrics and one of the best new voices to come to rock in a while. Songs like "Curbside Prophet," have the great feel, of classic J. Love, with some Nashville funk thrown in. While "I'll Do Anything" has an amazing reggae beat, with smooth lyrics flowing in to a melodic chorus, while avoiding lyrical cliches`that would of been easy to fall into. I think the song "The Remedy" will be the next song that gets radio play from this album. It has that pop rock feel, with out feeling like a teen bopper hit. It's obvious from this album that Mraz influences are many and diverse. Which for me is really nice to hear.

The other thing that impress me is Mraz website, someone was smart enough to figure out you have to give some music away to sell it. There are seven mp3s for the download. But I'm telling you that after listening to those songs you are going to want the album.

Session Variables in C# how to use them and win

So I have been hitting my head against the wall with Session variables in C#. For instance, you can see a variable by just calling it and giving it a value.  Session["myValue"] = value Which is kind of like working in VB.NET. However when you go to read values from there it is a different beast all together. This comes from the fact that Session variables are actually objects and can be set to just about anything. So if I am going to read a value out of the Session variable it looks something like this: Response.Write(Session["myValue"].ToString()); Okay, now so far this isn't to bad, but what VB and VB.NET programmers are not use to, is have to initate the Session that you are going to use later. For example you have a Session variable that only gets a value if a event happens. If that even happens you don't initate the variable. Later in your code you have a condition statement that checks against the value in your Session variable. In VB you can do this all day not, and if there value is empty (ie you didn't initate the Session variable)  it returns an empty or null value. However in C# you get an error stating that the Object has not be set.

So this got me, jumpin up and down flustered. Then Ed told me the secret to it all, and I will now share it with you. (Though I figured you have guessed it by now) Initate all of your Session variables in the Session_Start function in your Global.asax. This way they are always initated and if you run conditional statements against them you can get an empty or null value.

Happy Coding

Mr. Rodriguez, you have my attention.

Yesterday afternoon, I was kind of restless, so I drove over to the local music store. While I was there I walked around a little bit and a tried a couple of guitars. Mostly feeling smart, because so far mine at home sounded much better then the ones I played. (And mine is less then half of the cost of the ones in this store) I walked over and played a couple of classical guitars.

I love the sound of nylon strings. There is a warmth to the tone, that I find so wonderful to listen to and to play. Anyhow, I pick up this acoustic classical, with a cutaway body so that you can reach high in the fret scale. I just strummed an E chord and all of the sudden, my ears said 'that sounded good, do it again!'. So I do, again my ears go, 'do that again!'. So I must of sat there played that beautiful guitar for close to 20 minutes. So by this time, I am in love, ready to take it up to the man behind the counter and ... put it on layway (what? You know you have to do that too!).

So I find the little card thingy that is the price tag and look. Once I regain consciousness... I looked at it again. $1,600.00 ... On Sale. So of course I put it back really gingerly, holding my breath until it is back in the guitar stand. Come to find out it is a Rodriguez C Cutaway. If I listen to the tale from the website, it is a handcrafted guitar made from the trees that Mr. Rodriguez grandfather planted many years ago.

Well, short story long, the guitar got to stay at the music shop. I got to come home and complain. I mean, I have a family to support, bills to pay, I can't talk myself in to buying something like that! That thing cost more than our rent (Though not by much). Though I have talked to the guy at the music shop and he says I can come back to visit, just as long as it's not to often.

Weekends?

How come weekends seem to go by so fast? There never seem to be enough time to get everything done.

Blah

Wow, am I feeling blah. It was a long night. I couldn't get comfortable. I went from the bed to the floor to the bed to the floor and back to the bed. My stomach hurts and all noise seems to be extra loud. I mean the hard drive in my laptop spinning was keeping me up, and I had to shut it down.

OneNote

The other day I downloaded the trial version of Microsoft OneNote. I am amazed how quickly this has become one of those necessary apps. My boss told me about it and I thought, well it is probably good, but more for Tablet PCs. And yes, it does work with Tablets very well, but what it lets me do is brainstorm digitally. I can't sit down and write out how my next web application is going to work linearly. I do think object orientedly, in clusters of functionality. And once those are down, I figure out what I am going to need to built that function. So I have been mapping out my applications this way for years, usually with just a pad and a pen. OneNote lets you work that way on you PC.

So say you figure out you need two functions. One named myName and the other named yourName. Now we have the functions, what else do we need. Well maybe to create a superClass over the two functions because they have name in common. Well how do you write that out in Word? And once you have it written down, how do you move the text around to show relationships?

Well OneNote, works with textboxes, so you just click in the note space and start writing. And say, does that need to be higher in the document? Grab it's header and drag it up, or left or right.

When I work, I have Web Browser open to Google. I like to reference articles and blogs I have read, that have great information or ideas. How do you include that in your Word document. Add Hyperlink right, well with OneNote, you simple drag the URL from the address bar into the OneNote notespace. Or an image, drag that in too!

Okay, what if you don't want to type, you just want to, I don't know, talk about it and have that in your notes. OneNote can handle that too. It can record audio and have that linked in your document.

I test lots of applications, and very few of them, get in to my, required tools category, but OneNote has done that rather quickly.

Today was another Thursday. I had tons to do at work, but had to solve other people's issues. (grrrrr) So as far as I can figure it, I only spent ten minutes working on my stuff today. However I did somehow keep a good mood, despite the fact I am being buried in others work. We still haven't gotten everything straighten out with the vendor we are buying our CMS solution from, so it looks like we aren't getting it till next week. So on the 26th I will get it. At least they don't expect me to have it done by the 31st as original projected.

Through the rain there is some sun. I run two monitors at work, and the left side one was a CRT 19" Dell. It was getting blurring and being that I run the resolution really high, it accentuated this problem. So today it got replaced with a 18" Flat screen Dell, which is identical to the right side monitor. So now I have more desk space (a 19" CRT takes a ton of room) and two rockin Flat Screens. All I need is two more!

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It was really nice to get home before 6:30pm tonight. That hasn't happen'd in a while. I caught an earlier train and walk the 8 blocks from the train station to the house. It was a wonderful evening for taking a walk. A little brisk, but just really nice. As I walked down the street, I could smell everyone's dinner cookin'. This house on the right is having Chili, and this one over here is grill hamburgers and hot dogs. So I picked up my pace, because I was starting to get hungry.

On the way home, there is a little park. And there is where the Cheer Nazi does her work. You see it is dark outside and brisk but the Cheer Nazi doesn't care. She has what could be bright young women out there in the cold, in the dark practicing "the Perfect Cheer" until these girls pass out. This really bothers me, I mean these young women could be come doctors or scientist, to really make a difference in the future but no, she is turning them in to cheerleaders, yeah, cheerleaders. Bottle blonde, perpetually smiling, snooty, 'like oh my god', cheerleaders. I tell you the thought if it just makes me sick. Now, I know that some one is going to say, Hey, I was a cheerleader. And to that I ask one question, what did cheerleading teach you that you use in your day to day adult life. And please no "Miss America" answers. I want a really answer.

So this women (the Cheer Nazi) is out there screaming at these girls, 'no, no, no, do it again but right this time'. What pleasure can she possibly get from screaming at teenage girls ( I mean besides the obvious) to step to the exact rhythm of the stupid teeny bopper on the boombox. Is she creating a army of cheerleaders to take over the world?

So, I take the train back and forth to work. I find that most of us computer geeks have an issue with driving in traffic. Now, don't get me wrong, we love to drive, just fast, and without cars in the way. I am of course this way, that is why I take the train.

Interestingly enough, I get to meet all kinds of interesting people on the train, Computer Programmers, IT professional, TV Syndication Experts, Marketing Gurus. There is always something to talk about and it makes the train ride go fast. But then there are days, when it is a long lonely ride and the only company you have is the book that you brought. Sometimes, I find these to be the some the beautiful moments.

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There is a new movement from web developers to move away from using tables for placement of images and text elements. For accessibility we as developers are now to start using CSS2 and HTML. Which is all well and good for me. I mean it isn't a big change, I use CSS and DIV tags all the times, now I just need to start using positioning in my CSS. However there are a couple of issue that none of the articles seem to mention. First, writing code in this format, does not lend itself to liquid designs. So a page that scales in size is a lot more testing. Secondly, I just got my Jr. Web Developer proficient at using nested tables, and now I have to tell him, stop! Unlearn everything that you have been learning for the past two years. That isn't going to be a smooth transistion.

So there are always those people that believe that the Operating System they run is the best. And if you say you like something about Mac OS X, they will tell you why Windows XP is better, or Linux is better then Windows 2000. Well I believe these gentleman have come up with the perfect answer to the question, "Which OS is the best?"

So as you can tell from the time stamp of Friday/Saturday's entry, I was having trouble sleeping. Which we all have from time to time. So I figured that I would compile a short list of links for insomniacs. Oddly enough I checked this links out when I wasn't able to sleep Theses, will make you laugh, make you cry, and most will just make you wonder why. Without any further todo or gilding of the lily Links for insomniacs

Vanity pl8
Yes friends someone has brought it upon themselves to photograph every vanity plate they see and bring it to the masses, and I in turn bring it to you.

Origami Boulder
Did you say, Origami Boulders, I sure did, Origami Boulders or even Origami Boulders that have Haikus written on them is what you find at this site. Yes, this is a real site, yes, you can purchase one and if you don't believe me check out the FAQ at the bottom called "Letters from Dumb Dumbs".

Crushed Cans
The concept is simple, you send them 4.95 and they send you an artistically crushed can. If that isn't enough, check out the photo gallery, some of these cans have been to hipper spots then I have.

The French Horn
This last entry, is simply amazing, something only the french would think up. The concept is a simple one, stick bicycle horns all over your body ,and figure out how to play Mozart with them. Too Funny. (a media player is required for this link)