Do you have ICE in your mobile?
Putting ICE along with a name and telephone number will enable the emergency services to contact your family in the event of an emergency.
I highly encourage everyone to put ICE in their mobile phone.
Konfabulator
I recently heard of Konfabulator www.konfabulator.com when reading that Yahoo had bought them and they're going to be renamed Yahoo! Widgets
Konfabulator implements a pretty slick concept of "widgets" that are what you want them to be.
Combining the use of XML and JavaScript for implementing widgets definitely speeds up development.
Messing around with a widget I downloaded last night proved to be highly addictive.
They have a lot of widgets in the widget gallery.
I intend to release the updated Radar widget that I worked on last night.
Check 'em out, you'll like 'em.
I am Kung Fu Master
 I am Kung Fu Master.I like to be in control of myself. I dislike crowds, especially crowds containing people trying to kill me. Even though I always win, I prefer to avoid fights if possible. What Video Game Character Are You? |
Willing to go?
The other day I was out fishing. I was trying out some new tackle I'd received for father's day. I had made a couple of casts when one hit. I could tell that it was a good size fish by the way it was fighting and it was pulling line back out too. I was playing it and hoping that it would show itself. Then it did one of those flying through the air like a ballerina moves. It was beautiful. We continued our struggle. I was giving it slack when it needed it and reeling in when it tired. Then, it decided to bolt for the open water. This would typically have not been a problem. I would usually let it run and give it the slack it needed. But this time, I felt I couldn't. If I would have given it the slack to run it have taken the line under a low foot bridge (that I couldn't pass under) and I would have had a heck of a time playing it then. So, I grimaced and tried to bring it in the last couple of feet. Then with the extra tension on the line the fish did a 180 degree turn and freed it self. Retrieving the expelled lure intact was my only consolation. Nothing else was biting that day.
There is a lesson here and it has been sticking with me so I feel compelled to put it in bits. In contract work we are always out fishing for clients. Sometimes we get a bite, a requirements gathering meeting and a request for quote. As we're getting into the details of the requirements and design we see the prize. The big bass in mid-air. As we continue working on the quote, we have to struggle with do we want to go where it's taking us? Are we willing to stretch and work under the foot bridge? Or are we going to pull too hard and lose the client?
What areas of our life do we need to evaluate our willingness to go where we're being pulled?
The fish aren't biting.
Well, last night the fish weren't biting at all. It's been over a year since I've gone fishing and not caught at least one or two fish. I was fishing in a new area for me at an odd time. I tried several different lures and varied the presentation. No go. Last Sunday, I pulled a 16" 2lb bass from the same waters. So what was different? Different time of day, different temperatures and slightly different lures.
Reflection
What can I learn from this? That even though yesterday we used a technique and it paid off big doing the same thing today may not have the same return on investment. We need to be constantly changing, improving adapting. (Different lures and presentations.) And even then we still may not see the return we want. However, giving up isn't an option. If anything the lack of result kept me out longer than I had intended. Maybe the lesson there was cut your losses and get on to something more productive. I keep thinking if I had gone back to a more familiar location I would have at least caught something.
Kind of like Extreme Programming versus Waterfall. Even if you don't get to the target you had hoped you at least have some deliverable for the effort that was put in.
Life lessons from fishing
Goals
Say you start the outing with the goal of bringing in a big bass.
This could be like the life goal of landing your dream job with better salary.
Changing the lure
You get to fishing the lake and you're not having any luck bringing in the fish of your dreams. This is like trying to get that dream job. So, you have a couple of options; change your location, change your goal and self improvement.
Changing your location
This is pretty self explanatory. If you're fishing the bank, keep moving around. If you can get out on the water. If that's not working change lakes! Life story, work the job, angle for promotions. Move to another department or division for promotion or change jobs to get that raise.
Changing the goal
Maybe you are satisfied to not get the big bass. You've resigned yourself that they just aren't biting right now. Change your goal to fishing for panfish. Land one and be happy. This is like a soft job market. It's going to be tough to increase the income level for now so change the goal to be do the one thing I need to do that will best increase my marketability when the market firms up.
Self-Education
Read and study up on knots, lures, equipment and techniques. Practice before you get to the water. Life story, while you're away from work learn new skills that improve your marketability and potential wage earning capability. Maybe these new skills will give you the edge in landing that big bass (job).
Networking
Talk to other fisherman. Learn from them. They know the lay of the land. They have a feel for what lures work, the times of day and the hazards. In life your network can help you improve your work skills, tell you how to get through the red tape and warn you about the politics of the situation. And they can help you land that big bass.
Success
When it's all done, you can rest satisified. You did the best you could. You landed three bass and two crappie. None of them the dream bass you're after but you've learned, built relationships and had fun.
Busy day with webapp
Well, spent a bunch of time working on an ASP.Net application today.
I haven't done much at all with ASP.Net so there was a bit of head pounding.
However, by days end I had forms authentication set up. A table with the UserID, Password, etc info was built on SQL Server. Using stored procedures to get what I need. Getting the spike solution integrated into the real application proved to be a little interesting. I was running into issues because I hadn't remembered to abandon my session authentication between test runs.
I got the application set up to be cookieless and save all state information with a state server hosted on separate machine. Had to edit the registry to permit non-local users to connect to the service. Then I was able to set some session variables for the application.
Then I did some refactoring and created a common logout function for the application. I also set up the application to get configuration (connection) information from the web.config.
So finally feeling like I had accomplished something, it was time to go home. It was a beautiful ride home on the Harley. It was extremely hard to keep from flexing the wrist. The icing on the evening was catching a couple of crappie right off the bank (they were nesting). Then I reeled in a nice small mouth bass with my ultra-lite combo.
Now to get some rest before getting back at it tomorrow.
ColdHeat Soldering Iron
I just received a ColdHeat Soldering Iron as a gift. https://www.asseenontvnetwork.com/vcc/coldheat/coldheat/115785/ It's a pretty slick little device. The two big things that caught my attention are that it's cordless and they claim that the tip cools off near instantly. Well after working with it a little bit I can say the following:
Don't plan to use it for really fine work. It has a split tip that works more like a welder than a soldering iron.
It works best on smaller gauge wire. Seems like it would be great for splicing wires in the field.
My initial assessment is I don't think it would work well to solder coax or coax connectors. Because of the mass involved with the coax braid and the connectors I think it would be tough for this device to heat them up well. I think with larger wires and connectors we'll see lots of cold solder joints using this device.
Overall, I like it for it's intended use, soldering small gauge wires together in the field. This will come in handy for antenna work.
High Schoolers win underwater robot competition
Check out this article. Unbelievable. These guys need to be in college (but can't afford it).
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/robot.html?pg=1&topic=(none)&topic_set=(none)
Been busy - work, antennas, motorcycle
It's been a little since I last made an entry here.
I've been busy on a work project. A conglomeration of VB.Net, Lotus Script, VBA, SQL server, DBF and XML stuff. It's nearing test/production and I'll be happy to move on to the next project.
I was working on my motorcycle this weekend getting ready summer and came up short some parts. I made the hour and a half round trip to the Harley dealer only to get home to find out he'd given me a male part that I needed as female. That'll have to wait now. Having to special order some vinyl tubing from another dealer too. I'm really anxious to get the bike going again so I can get to the shop and have a new rear tire put on.
So, what to do since I couldn't get going on the bike? I built an antenna. A colinear design from the September 2003 QST. It's about 9' tall (I built it for a higher frequency) and it works gang busters! A friend will be putting it to use out at his farm so I'm looking forward to hearing how well it performs there. I may build another one for putting out on a remote weather station.
Tonight I played a little QRP portable. I was outside with a random wire (sort of) antenna with a tuner and RG-62 coax. Worked VE6CQ in western Canada. What a blast! He had a bit of a hard time copying me at first, so I switched to the home rig. Copy there was 59/59. We did a quick swap of mics on the FT-817 to the regular mic with the One Big Punch installed and he said the signal was considerably stronger. However, with the set up I had, RF was definately getting back into the mic. Ah well, it was fun!
ADO.net, the Connection Pool & Garbage Collection
How often do we code something like this:
for each object O in ObjectsCollection
SharedFunction.Processing(O)
do some stuff
SharedFunction.WriteToDb(O)
nextA little background The SharedFunction.Processing call does some SQL reads. I'm using the SQLHelper from Microsoft.
Problem
The problem is that with the above code after about 120 objects O I'm getting an error. Connection Time Out or Max Pool Size reached.
The Cause
It is such a tight loop that garbage collection isn't having a chance to clean up the left over connections from the Processing and WriteToDb.
Solution
The solution I used was to force a garbage collection. Then everything is honky dory.
Currently their is a "global" of sorts that carries the SQL Connection string. I didn't want to mess with a global connection as that's just asking for problems. However, an alternate solution could be to refactor SharedFunction.X to be instance functions, instantiate a connection in the instance and reuse it with the instance functions.
After looking at this some more, the alternate solution really isn't that nice to implement. It would require modification of two Business Logic Layer code modules and their associated Data Access Layers. I'd rather not be worrying about carrying a connection around and be more focused on what I'm really trying to accomplish.
Zeigarnik effect
I read this with interest. I would have to agree with it from my own personal observations.
What does this mean to us in terms of software development? Is it better to end the day (or go to lunch?) in the middle of a task?
The Zeigarnik effect is the psychological tendency to remember an uncompleted task rather than a completed one. Bluma Zeigarnik first discovered this effect in the 1920's while in a viennese coffee shop. She noticed that a waiter was able to...
[Rachel Davies]
Untitled
The audio that spewed forth assaulted my ears and shook my core. The piercing highs made me wince. Mushy bass churned in my stomach, like a bowl of left out too long cereal.
The Omelet model of Management
Ok, so I believe in looking at the world around you and seeing if there is a metaphor their that goes along with some concept I've learned. The other morning I was cooking an omelet and saw how the steps I was taking fell in line with the primary functions of management. POSLC: Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Leading and Controlling.
Decide what type of Omelet - what you want in it. | Plan |
| Gather ingredients | Staff |
| Prepare cook area and ingredients | Organize |
| Saute the ingredients w/seasoning | Training |
Cook the omelet
| Management functions
|
| Eat the omelet and smile | Appraise and give feedback |
7 Habits & The Church
It's been about 10 years since I last read this book. Now that I am working through it again I am able to internalize it much better. Definitely a book that is worth re-reading.
In my opinion it would behoove church leaders to check this book out. From what I have seen the church at large needs to re-examine it's mission and goals and objectives. I think we will start seeing more of this viewpoint with Generation Y'ers.
Generation Y people and to some extent gen X'ers are examining their faith's goals and objectives and are finding that they are inconsistent with current practices. One example is the "mega-church" with it's multi-million dollar building and expensive fixtures. The question is, "Why did we spend $10 million on a new church instead of going for a modest structure and planting a lot more new churches?"
Counterpoint, how Spartan is too Spartan? I recently attended service at a new church plant. They are meeting in a former grocery store (for now). They do plan to build a "real" church. They purchased chairs for seating and they have a band for the service. This all seems reasonable. But when does reasonable become too much? The gen Y'ers I know would be more than happy to meet, study and worship in someone's house or out in a field.
More later...
Pave Hawks go to Sri Lanka
Check out this brief article and some pictures of our Air Force sending some helicopters to help out in Sri Lanka.
Washed my flash drive
Well for the second time I've washed a flash drive. The first flash drive came through ok, although my level of confidence in it's reliability dropped significantly. This drive seems to be sealed much better. We shall see later today how it faired. This has got to happen more often than we'd think.
UPDATE: The drive seems to have made it OK. Both drives are made by SanDisk. One is the Cruzer Micro and the other a Cruzer Mini. The only issue I've had is that the caps don't seem to fit very well now... too loose.
Be careful to make sure that ALL moisture is removed from the drive. Water can real a do job on your device by causing corrosion between the legs on the SMT components. You can try and remove by flushing with rubbing alcohol and placing the USB drive in a container of uncooked rice.
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