Purchased iLife 04’. Could not wait to play with all the new tools especially GarageBand. Was disappointed that no keyboards are available from my local Apple store. I was told there is a 6-week wait. Discovered that my G4 iBook could not handle the demands of GarageBand. Bummer. Sold the G4 iBook on eBay and purchased a 12” powerbook with a superdrive. The powerbook is great. It’s got the power to meet my GarageBand needs. I’ve owned a 15” Titanium in the past. However, for me the 12” format is the best. It’s just easy to carry around yet has more then ample power for my needs. In the last two days I managed to pull all my videos from a DirecTV Tivo box. Cancelled the service but wanted to save the accumulated videos. The PowerBook with iMovie and a Cannon ZR45 did the work without a hitch. Look forward the challenge of transforming these into DVD’s.

We are back from Vancouver. Our flight was good. Only 2.5 hours flying time. The training at Pivotal was intense. Feel confidant that I can successfully modify our installation now. The foundation of the Pivotal product is Microsoft SQL Server. Since I have lots of experience with SQL Server, even certified in both Administration and Design, I figured this couldn’t be too difficult. Wrong! The less one knows about SQL the better. This product uses screens to do everything and none resemble writing traditional SQL code. Once you get your mind past that, things start to work.

The weather in Vancouver was a gray overcast and rain every day. The sun did peek out for a very short time Friday afternoon. Never did get a chance to see much of the city. Did manage to find a good bookstore and see some of the underground mall. Everything is very expensive. The exchange rate helps. I do like what I saw and look forward to my next visit. Hopefully next time it will be in the summer months.

Daylight view from our 12th floor hotel room…

We made it. Arrived in Vancouver BC about 3:00 PM there time. It was a very comfortable flight. We flew non-stop on America West. Departed about 40 minutes late because the planes log was incomplete. Don’t know what that was all about, but hey this is America West and you never know what to expect.

Expected very cold weather. However it was a very pleasant 44 degrees F. We are staying at The Georgian Court Hotel downtown Vancouver on Beatty St. I picked this place because the rooms include a complementary high speed internet connection. As it turns out this place is quite nice. Big rooms, nice view, clean and comfortable. The network was a snap to use. After I verified the network worked, we toured the local area around the hotel. We found many interesting place to visit and eat. Sandy of course identified a number of stores she intends to sharpen her shopping skills on.

This is the evening view from our 12th floor hotel room.

Just when you think you got it all planned out, a new wrinkle appears. Friday everything seemed under control. Had plans for dinner with friends, and tickets to Vancouver BC for Sunday. Looking forward to a combination business and pleasure weeklong trip. But wait, hold on…. Mom took a fall and was transported to the local hospital. Now, she has had both hip and back surgery. With this in mind we rushed to the hospital, our plans all cancelled and fearing the worse. Fortunately there is no broken hip or damage to any surgically implanted parts. However, there does appear to be a problem with one of the disks in her back. The prognoses are with just bed rest she will recover. Isn’t life grand?

We have lots (25+) family members in the local area, so the trip to Vancouver is still a go. The flying time is only 3 hours, so if needed we can return quickly.

The business part of this trip entails a week of training on Pivotal. My company purchased Pivotal sales management and my task will be to modify its functionality to support our business needs. It’s a great tool.

Well It’s off to the hospital…

For some reason I have a mental block on the syntax required to get information from the Web.config file in a .Net web application. Its not difficult, you just need to include the System.Configuration name space with a using statement in the header of the C# code behind page. Then you can access any of your configuration values from the static property AppSettings in the ConfigurationSettings class. The AppSettings property is a NameValueCollection. So you can retrieve a particular value using its key.

Example:

---

using System.Configeration;
…
string path = ConfigerationSettings.AppSettings[“NA_PATH”];
…

---

Example web.config file:

---

…
<configuration>
…
<appSettings>
<add key=”NA_PATH” value=”D:\documents\engineering\” />
</appSettings>
</configuration>

---

Acquired an Apple wireless keyboard today. I purchased the wireless mouse several weeks ago and found it to work flawlessly. The keyboard seems to work the same way. That’s two less wires on my desktop. It could be a perfect world if we could eliminate ALL computer wires…. Well maybe throw in world peace, the end to all disease, and elimination of world hunger for true perfection. The Microsoft Bluetooth keyboard and mouse will just not stay connected. I tried to use them with my iBook but had the same result. Tomorrow, they go up for sale on eBay.

Installed the new iLife4. Was most interested in Garage. Unfortunately the local Apple store did not have any keyboards in stock. Want to play around with making my own music. Was able to load up some demo stuff that came on the CD. Seems to work well. The only concern was that on a couple of occasions I received a message telling me my hard drive was to slow. I’m running a relatively new G4 800Mhz iBook. Never expected to have any hardware issues with Apple software. Think the issue is you can’t ask the hard drive to provide any data other then that required playing the music.

It’s the New Year already. Just don’t know where the last one went. I had great intentions with regards to this blog. Like writing entries every day. Each was to witty and on point about various development issues. Didn’t start to bad, just never stuck with it…. just too many other things got in the way. In keeping with the traditions of a new year, one of my resolutions is do a better job of regular and meaningful blog entries.

I am currently involved in a rework of a eForms system. This is a web-based application. It provides means to complete and submit various company forms. The current system is a mixture of ASP and .NET. It works most of the time but changes are a nightmare. Seems like the current system is actually nothing more then a wrapper for some very convoluted ASP. The eForms system simply presents a form, which a user completes. Upon submission the form data is inserted into a database and an email with a link to the form is sent to the users supervisor. The form initiator is responsible for entering the supervisors email address. When approved by the supervisor, the record is updated in the data base and copies sent to the appropriate individuals for notification and action.

One set of eForms deals with system security. It requires multiple forms per individual to get needed system access for given position. For example a help desk position requires 5 different forms to secure the necessary job permissions. Redundant data is required on each form and results in multiple emails to the same individual for review and approval’

eForms is a relatively simple application. However, it needs to be architected such that changes can be implemented quickly and with little effort. Ultimately, organizational elements responsible for the form should have the ability, through admin screens, to alter the forms themselves. To this end, we have devised a system where form elements are automatically detected and passed to a stored procedure. The stored procedure determines decides if the request is an update or insert. Changes simply become a matter of adding a new object to the form and corresponding field to an associated database table.

The new eForms architecture consists of one class, which encapsulates all the work needed to assemble page data into an argument string. One stored procedure that determines if the calling arguments constitute an insert or update, and performs the indicated action. Many .aspx files, one for each eForm, and a common .cs code behind page. This architecture does place some constraints on the coder. First each form must have its own database table. Second, The form ID must be its database table name. Third, the form object ID’s must correspond to the associated table column name. Fourth, the form objects are limited to asp: components. CheckBoxList and RadioButtonList components are not allowed.

Started my new job on the 24th of November. Worked three days…. then enjoyed a 4 day Thanksgiving Holiday. With the new job I have a lot to be thankful for this year. Last week was my first full week at work. It was great. Every one I met was very friendly. Managed to actually be productive. Nothing to challenging, but it was a beginning. Mostly I spent time learning network and systems setup and functions. One surprising event was the resignation on Friday of one of the members of our team. With my start our team grew to three developers, now within two weeks we will be back to two. I did hear that we would get a new manager. Currently we report to the MIS Director. Now that a flat organization.

Currently I am writing a windows service in C#. Its purpose is to clean out multiple directories of outdated files. This is a very straightforward task. However, for some reason I am having problems getting the service to read its config file when started. Its probably something simple I overlooked.

Yesterday was my last day of work with CWIE. It felt a little unreal as I said my goodbyes. I only worked for CWIE for the past 20 months. However, it seemed more like 20 years. I sincerely appreciated the job. It was the only thing I could find in the first quarter of 2002. The development job market in Phoenix is dead. Seems like all the work is being outsourced to cheap labor in India. There have been many articles in various IT periodicals discussing this development. Each advises that developers now need to become business savvy. Seems like now we need to work with the business to design applications for others to develop. We will be the integrators. To this end, next Monday I start my new job with Allied Waste. The new position is titled Web Systems Analyst.

This is a great picture…