N4IXT's QTH

Well well well, my dear wifey finally did it. Went out and got her own blog. Yes dear friends, now our arguments are not limited to our home, driveway, and the wal-mart parking lot. Now we can carry our complaints to the world wide web!

Seriously, her first posting was very entertaining, you should pop over and tell The Southern Tinker Bell what you tink. I mean think.

Just call me 8 toes...

Had the toenail on my left toe ripped off Friday. Of course it was under controlled conditions and the doc had numbed me all up, so it didn't hurt until later. She (the doc) did my big toe on right foot about 6 weeks ago, so I'm down to 8 toenails now. At least they won't grow in crooked anymore and slice into my feet. Shouldn't grow back at all, based on the amount of acid gunk they dumped down it.

Of course the toe ain't half as bad as the anti-infection meds. Oh sure the toe bleeds everywhere and throbs and looks nasty. But the dad-gum meds give me constant nausea and headaches. Sort of like being sea-sick with out having to pay lots of money to a cruise line. Ugh.

New user group...

I joined yet another user group tonight. This one is rather interesting, their focus is not so much on coding, i.e. how to's but on methodologies. If you are in the area check out the Magic City Technology Council.

Civil War Reenactment

As my darling spouse mentioned in her blog, we went to a Civil War reenactment over the weekend. Because of my toe we stayed a short time. Showed up just before the battle, got good seats and kicked back for a while and enjoyed then headed home. This was one of the better shots I got during the height of the battle.

I found a real gem on the web:

Code Smells on Coding Horror

I highly suggest every coder read through the list to look for scent of code in need of refactoring. I've made it mandatory reading for my team.

73

Every so often my wife and I each take a kid and have "date night" with them. Gives them time apart, and one on one time with a parent. This time my oldest was with my wife, and wanted to stay home and scrapbook.

My youngest however decided she wanted to find a new "My Little Pony" for her collection. Off we went on the adventure. We finally wound up at the toy store, and she found two she really wanted. Since they were only five bucks each I said what the heck and got 'em both, thereby avoiding 20 minutes of "I can't decide".

We "rescued" the ponies from the toy store, and of course they were hungry. Everyone knows a pony's favorite food is "red dot pizza" (pepperoni). So we head to the pizza place where the new ponies got well fed.

Afterward my five year old decided one of the ponies was still a little nervous, but an ice cream cone would make the pony feel better. Hey, I'd hate to leave a pony feeling all stressed out, so over to the DQ we went for some chocolate dipped cones.

We sat out front and ate cones, and pontificated about the evenings adventures. (Nothing quite like a pontificating five year old for entertainment). We decided to call our adventure "The Great Pony Rescue". And so we did.

73

I just heard the old phrase "15 minutes of fame" on TV. Of course they were talking about that idiotic idol show, but it still got me wondering...

I wonder if the proliferation of blogs today is simply to feed the ego of ourselves, a way of feeding our need for "fame".

To late at night (or too early in the morning) for such deep thoughts... Drop a comment and let me know what you think, I'll respond when I'm more awake.

73

Our code camp last weekend was a great success, at least as far as I'm concerned. Part 2 will be held Friday evening June 16 and Saturday June 17. I volunteered to teach three of the chapters, doing master / detail pages in ASP.Net, Object Binding, and Web Services. As they say, ya'll come! The event is sponsored by the BSDA.

Found a cool item (literally) at the last code camp. One of the other attendees had one of these: http://shrinkster.com/f4x It's a Targus Notebook Platform. It's sold with the idea that it cools the laptop, but to me the nice feature is that it elevates the back of your laptop up an inch or so (it's adjustable to your liking).

I'm amazed at how much easier it is to type with just that little bit of elevation. Plus the base swivels, and it will indeed keep your pricy laptop cooler. If you have an ultrawide laptop like I do, it comes with an add on bar to help stabalize the width, and it works. Very stable. Well worth the few bucks.

73

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all the mothers in my life.

First off is my grandmother Pearl, N4SGJ. Without her, Dad wouldn't be around, and it's pretty much his fault I turned out to be a nerd. Little did he know the corruption he would cause when he brought home that TRS-80 oh those many years ago. And she's a ham too, so she's indirectly responsible for two addictions in my life. Hmm, maybe she's a dealer?

Next is my own mother Peggy, who nutured me and took care of me and even wiped my butt from a tender young age. I just wish she'd stop. Mom: I've figured out how the whole TP thing works, OK?

Then there is the other Peggy, my mother in law. Without her I wouldn't have the hot babe who I tricked into marrying me. Thanks for being a cheapskate and leaving the porch light off so we could go parking behind the house.

And speaking of the hot babe, thanks to my long suffering wife Ammie. She takes care of our little darlings with tender loving care, and way more patience than I could ever muster. Thanks sweet-ums!

Happy Mother's Day!

73 & 88

I decided that while the basic black was quite stylish, it was a pain to read. I picked this color scheme and hacked it a bit to make what you see now. I still need to fiddle with it some, but the black text on white is a LOT easier to read.

Oh well, it could have been worse, at least I didn't do the whole thing in Pepto Pink!

I just completed my first mini code camp. Lots of fun. Small group, about 8 to 10 of us, but I learned a whole lot. This session concentrated on ASP.NET 2.0, covered a lot of the basics. We covered the first half of the book Murach's ASP.NET 2.0 Web Programming with C# 2005. Pretty good book, I have never looked at the Murach's series much before, but it has lots of "oh by the way, here's a critical little piece of knowledge you must get xyz to work" types of things.

At the next session in June we'll do the second half of the book. I volunteered to teach several of the chapters at the next session, I love to teach and give speeches and what not so I'm looking forward to it.

Speaking of speeches, one more and I'll have finished my basic Toastmasters certification. Apparently public speaking seems to be one of the biggest fears that people have. Never quite understood that as I love hamming it up in front of others.

My point of this entire post is: get involved. Go join a local user group. Join a local toastmasters club. Just do something to get involved with your local professional community. You'll learn a lot, make new friends, and have a lot of fun in the process!

By the way, thanks to Microsoft for the pizza and donuts they sent us today! Easier to learn on a full tummy! And thanks to the BSDA for putting this on, and letting a couple of newcomers (my friend Bin came along to the camp with me) join 'em at the last minute.

73

I'm literally sitting here in a ASP.NET 2.0 code camp, and when I mentioned the Consolas font everyone wanted a link. Soooooo.....

http://shrinkster.com/f0s

This is a link to the Cosolas font pack at the Microsoft website. This is the new programmers font for Vista, but we can start using it now. Be warned! You must have "ClearType" enabled on your system in order for it to look good, otherwise it looks like two week old leftover chicken fried rice.

To set or ClearType, right click on the desktop and pick properties.
Now click the Appearance tab.
Click the Effects button.
In the dialog, make sure "Use the following method to smooth edges of screen faults" is checked on.
In the drop down underneath it, make sure ClearType is picked.
Click OK a few times until you are back to the desktop.

Even if you don't go get the Consolas font it's worth turning on ClearType for better system fonts.

I've heard Cosoloas doesn't always look good when using it under Remote Desktop, although I haven't tried it yet.

A special thanks to Marcos over on the DevExpress newsgroups for finding this and posting it!

73

I attended a rather good user group meeting this week. The Birmingham .Net User Group had Doug Turnure of Microsoft come give a speech on Interfaces in .Net. What a great speech! I'm really sold on the use of interfaces in my apps and just how powerful they are in reguards to extensibility.

I also have to give Doug a big "Atta Boy" award for making it to the meeting that night. This poor guy had to fight Atlanta Airport traffic, then I-20 construction delays, then a blinding rainstorm just to make it to our meeting. Took him six hours to make the two and a half hour trip! Atta Boy Doug!!

I'm also excited because another group I joined recently, the Birmingham Software Developers Association is putting on an ASP.NET 2.0 mini-code camp tonight and all day Saturday. It'll be nice to flex my muscles in the ASP arena, I've done reading and other classes, but most of my coding to date has been WinForms. I'm dying to get to work on some ASP 2.0 stuff.

73

I'm at a company sponsored retreat right now at Mt Cheaha. It's the highest point in the state of Alabama. Our IT group rented the entire lodge. It's not huge, 12 bedrooms, but there's only 12 of us so it works out. And with my laptop, dial in connection and a 25 foot phone cord I can still get my daily internet fix.

For dinner we have two chefs in the group who did an expert job out on the bbq grill behind the lodge. Chicken, steaks, and deer sausage filled us up nicely along with some potatoes, corn on the cob and onions all boiled together along with a little crab boil.

For you folks north of the Mason-Dixon line, crab boil is this little bag of seasoning that you toss into boiling water, along with whatever you are cooking. Yes, as you might expect from the name it was designed for crab, but works great with just veggies, or shrimp, or what have you.

We had a really good time cooking. In addition to our two master chefs, another fellow and myself served as assistants. I have problems cooking toast, but am an expert taste tester, and am decent at fetching things from the kitchen. The four of us had such a good time, we're talking about entering some of the BBQ contests they have around here.

While we were busy by the grill the rest of the team was busy inside, getting tables ready, setting silverware (OK plastic wear, but it was at least colored silver), and preparing drinks. A real team effort that resulted in lots of laughter and good times over the food.

The finale was the peach cobbler. One of our chefs has a cast iron dutch oven. Apparently this thing will sit down in the fire, and the lid is designed so you can pile more coals on top. He mixed up a cobbler right there at the grill and baked it in the fire and man alive that was some good eatin'!

Hmm, everyone else is in bed, and as I recall there was a little bit of that cobbler left over. Me thinks it's time for a midnight cobbler raid!

73