Spent another quite day at Mom’s. Once again I did some Cocoa programming while Sandy and Jayson slept in. Mom had a great Breakfast, and the three of them played some cards…Our big event today was going to see Shrek 2. Great movie. Jayson and I thought it was just as good as the first. Afterwards we went out to find a hot spot. Have had no Internet connection since leaving home. Had a local address for a spot that I found on the Internet. However, when we got to the place we found that it was a home in a gated community…NO HOTSPOT. Using KisMAC we then did some WAR driving. I have only done this once before, but was again surprised on the number wireless connections even in the small town of Winter Haven FL. Ended up in a parking lot just outside of a medical building with a very fast internet connection. Posted a blog, and retrieved email. No issues from work. Will be nice when we can all connect with wireless from everywhere. Then it was back to Mom’s for dinner, and some card playing. Sandy won again….

Spent the day at Mom’s. Jayson and Sandy slept in late. I spent the morning doing some Cocoa programming. Love the language and platform. It would be nice to have a job using this platform. Jayson, Mom, and Sandy played cards. Old Maid, and Go Fish.
When Jayson was three, he wanted to play cards with the adults. I told him he had to be five years old before he could play cards. He never forgot, and now that he is five he reminds me that he is now old enough to play. Actually he is a good card player. Caught on to the rules fast and won a good share of the games. The Ladies were surprised that a five year old was beating them. Mom fixed a great dinner…watched some TV, played some cards, which Sandy won again…then bed. Tough day!

It’s off to Epcot today. We arrived at 9:15 AM and parked in the last section of the first parking lot, just a short walk from the entrance. The weather was beautiful. The humidity was much lower today. The forecast is for rain in the afternoon. Our first stop was at “Mission to Mars”. It is a simulated trip to Mars that begins with a blastoff in a rocket from earth, a slingshot maneuver around the moon and finally a tricky landing on Mars. It is my favorite ride. Jayson loved it. He was the captain and was required to perform several activities throughout the flight. Jayson performed each flawlessly. Thus we had a very successful mission. From there Jayson played a video game, crawled through some jungle style mazes, and composed a picture of himself as a monkey and emailed it to his Mom & Dad.

Our next stop was Test Track where we stood in line for 35 minutes with out moving. Jayson convinced us to get a fast track ticket and move on to Innovation. There we rode the ride and saw the presentation of Honey I Shrunk the Audience, Jayson and Sandy were scared by the three-d snake and mice which ran through the audience. You could feel their tales as they passed. Next we visited the Land and rode the Living Land, On this ride we saw baby alligators, hydroponics gardens and a fish farm, From there we detoured through the Cold Spot, an igloo like building, sponsored by Coke. Here we enjoyed various drinks from around the world. Jayson enjoyed trying each drinks. We visited this place three times during the day. Next we used our fast-track ticket at Test Track. This is a ride in a mock NASCAR vehicle on a test track that simulates the g-forces a driver encounters. Great ride. Jayson was thrilled.

We pretty much did everything at Epcot…even watched the fireworks at the end of the day. Jayson was so tired that he took a short nap in Germany. However he did wake to see all the fireworks.

Time does fly when you are having fun. Our flight to Tampa was very pleasant. The plain left on time and we arrived about 15 min early. From Tampa we drove about 80 mi. to Mom’s house. Stopped and picked up a bouquet of roses for her. Arrived at Mom’s about 6 pm. Spent some time catching each other up with the latest family news…then got to bed about 11 pm Florida time or 8 pm our time.

Tuesday was a big day. It was Jayson’s first trip to Disney We got up early and arrived at Epcot at 9 am. After two monorail trips we arrived at Disney’s Magic Kingdom. We purchased parkhopper tickets with the intention of returning to Epcot for the evening fireworks. But Jayson never made it past 6 pm when we took a break; he just fell a sleep on his Grandma’s lap. He jut could not wake up after that. He did have an exciting day. We road Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, The Haunted Mansion, Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin, and Tomorrowland Indy Speedway. We watched Cinderella’s Surprise Celebration, the Galaxy Palace Theater and Country Bear Jamboree shows, and visited with Diana the littlest mermaid. Enjoyed Mickey Mouse ice creams, hotdogs, and french-fries. The weather her in Florida was 92 F and very humid. We were dripping wet all day… drank gallons of water and soda. All in all it was a wonderful trip. Jayson chose the Buzz Light Year space ranger pistol for his gift and a Goofy hat.

Today Jayson and Sandy slept late. I did some recreational Cocoa coding. Later we went Wall Mart and picked up a small TV with a built in DVD player. It will serve to entertain Jayson when we are not at Disney’s. We then visited the local mall so Sandy could get her shopping in. They have a full size carrousel in the food court. Jayson rode it several time the last of which was with Sandy. He managed to get her to sit in one of those seats that spin as the carousel rotates. Sandy got a little motion sickness. That night we played cards. Jayson, since he is now 5 years old, was able to play also. He lost interest and watched some TV before retiring early…. Tomorrow is another day at Disney.

Well it’s off to Disney World again. Seems like only a few weeks ago when we last made the trip. This time we are taking our grandson Jayson. It’s his first time. He is very excited. I remember our first trip. It’s been close to twenty years ago. On that first trip I remember how new, colorful and clean everything was. Disney has people handling down to a well-honed science. We waited in many a line, but each was organized such that you could not see its full length. Along the wait path interesting displays were strategically placed to distract your attention from the wait. Over the years we watched the theme parks change and grow from three to five … they have included so many resorts I have lost count. One day we will stay at one of these resorts. For now, we stay with Mom. She lives just a short 30 minutes away.

Will be taking my trusty powerbook. Hope to spend some quality time writing Cocoa code. This will be a nice change from my every day work in C#. Don’t get me wrong I love C#…its just that the Mac is my favorest, and bestes machine. Have a goal in mind to write an application in Cocoa that will access the www.my-list.com database using web services. Really am disappointed that Apple has not included in Cocoa the ability to connect to mySQL. That is one of the nice things about the Microsoft platform, the ability to easily connect to a database. Have looked at some of the ODBC stuff for Mac to mySQL. However, found installation confusing, difficult and POORLY documented. I could get none to work. Even tried the Java stuff with the same result. Now perl and php connect easily to mySQL. So with perl SOAP should be able to create a web service to do the connection, data retrieval, insert and updates an make it all work.

Plan blog my progress…thats if I can get to a local hot spot.

Here it is … fresh from Microsoft Training…

Steps to Install MS-Content Management Server
Prepared by Murali Kothapalli Date : 5/27/04

Assumptions
You are installing it on
Window 2003 Server with IIS 6.0 installed (in a Lockdown mode)
Or Window 2000 Server with IIS 5.0 installed
– we shall refer it as WEB_SVR and there is an external SQL DB Server available to be used. – we shall refer it as SQLDB_SVR

Prerequisites
Has a Window domain account eg(CMSadmin with password as P@ssword) with Admin permissions on the WEB_SVR

Steps
1. Install SQL server Client Tools – from the SQL server CD
   a. Choose Install Database option and finally choose Client tools only

2. SQL Server SP3 (Servicepack 3)
   a. Run the setup.bat

3. Install Visual Studio.NET 2003(or 2002) (optional – if you want develop on this PC – you may need it initially)

4. Adjust IIS Permissions (2003 only)
   a. Choose Web Service Extensions
   b. Allow Server Side Includes

5. Create Database for CMS
   a. Connect to SQLDB_SVR and create a new empty database say name it as CMSDB

6. Install IE Webcontrols
   a. Run setup for IE Webcontrols – from the CMS2002 install CD/ms web

7. Install CMS – base version
   a. Run setup.exe and choose all defaults
   b. When prompte for DB point it to SQLDB_SVR\CMSDB

8. Apply SP1a (not SP1) for CMS
   a. Run the setup for Service Pack 1a for CMS2002

9. Run Setup again from Installed folder
   a. Look under C:\program files\Microsoft content Management Server\Setup.exe
   a. Run this setup.exe
   b. Choose all the relevant components
   c. download and install the Sample sites
   d. download and install Office Authoring Connector

10. Remove SSL for Admin site (2003 only)
   a. Launch IIS Admin tool
   b. Look under Admin Web properties
   c. Open Directory Security Tab
   d. Edit Security (last button)
   e. Uncheck SSL enable (remove SSL security)

11. Verify Installation
   a. Launch https://localhost/woodgrovenet
   b. Login as administrator

12. Allow Woodgrovenet to Guests
   a. Launch Site Manager
   b. Launch User Roles
   c. Subsribers add new group ‘Guests’
   d. Add Doman Guests as members
   e. Add Required channels to be viewable under rights tab
   f. Launch SCA – Site Configuration Application
       i. Security tab
       ii. Allow Guest – Yes
       iii. Change context as IUSR_{WEB_SVR} account

Purchased a great product for work, Contribute 2 by Macromedia. This tool gives our web site owners the ability to manage content. What is really sweet is that we can control what they are allowed to edit. In general, they have control of the site text. It took just one little demo session to get our first owner up and running. It’s so great not having to fix those little things like contact names and phone numbers.

We have a mixture of both internal and external sites with architecture of ASP.NET and ASP. It can’t handle Perl CGI sites.

This product does not work on my Mac…. big disappointment. It loaded fine. Auto connected to my .Mac web site. Connected to my web sites via FTP no problem. However, both of my sites are CGI-Perl. With the exception of a few html pages nothing was editable through Contribute. The main page, which was editable, would not render properly in the edit mode. That is to say it only displayed the left side of the page. The balance was black on black. One big problem was that its window would slide off the screen when attempting to move the page.

Overall, this solves a problem at work ,,,, but has limited applicability once you move away from ASP, HTML, and .NET sites.

Stumbled onto a blog, “DavidM” with some great C# code for data table relational operators. Contained herein is code for UNION, JOIN, INTERSECT, PRODUCT, and DIFFERENCE.

Noticed a bad pixel on my powerbook this morning. This 12” powerbook is only two month old. I have heard about this problem with iBooks, but never suspected that it was also a problem with the powerbook. Since it’s under warranty I took it to out local Apple store where it was purchased. Much to my surprise, they advised that one bad pixel was within the technical specifications. Having paid close to $2K for this system, I politely advised them that this condition was not within my technical specifications. Fortunately when I started the system to show the bad pixel it was gone. Apparently it reset itself. I had previously restarted the system with no effect, but seems like a shutdown, followed by a restart about 1 hour later did the trick.

This is my 6th Apple laptop and the first time I have experience a pixel problem. In addition I have owned several flat panel displays and PC laptops with no such problem. Perhaps I have just been lucky, but never encountered a bad pixel before. I am starting to get concerned about Apples quality. I have always been confident that I could count on Apple providing the highest quality products, and when problem occurred providing a no hassle fix.

Last year I purchase an iPod. Had to return it 4 times for replacement before I got one without a problem. The issues included display problems, battery problems, and hard drive problems.

Is Apple quality degrading form the use of cheap materials and/or cheap labor?