ask Shaffer -- if you dare.

Like I said up before, I got to do a little light reading recently, so I thought I'd rap out a little review on each. Coder to Developer by Mike Gunderloy I saw this book and was intrigued by the topic, "Tools and Strategies for Delivering Your Software". I was also diggin' the price, at $20 a value in today's book world. I still own Mike's book on VB6 and ADO , it was one of the few books at the time that got me through learning ADO when all I really knew was DAO (way back in '98?). Because of that book, I thought I'd give this one a try. At work we are in the process of (hopefully) re-engineering our processes so it seemed like a good fit. It's a very good read, not too heavy, not too light. I saw some reviews on Amazon that took issue with the .Net centricity of it. While that's true, I don't think it's oppressive...it has many "agnostic" ideas that would work in...

A lot of people have inquired about my dad and offering best wishes. Thanks to all. It really means alot. But I think I'm ready to tell the whole story. I think it's quite a story, but I'm a little biased since he's my old man and all.... One night, my mom and dad were sitting around watching the tube, a nightly ritual in their house. At the commercial break, my dad decided he needed to get up from the couch so he did, but noticed something on the floor while he was getting up. So (like most of us do) he did about 13 things all at once, getting up and bending down to pick some catalog up off the ground. He had just been working out (doing a little light walking on treadmill) so he was a little winded. So these attributes combined, collided and in the process of getting up and bending down, he basically passed out. He stumbled a bit and fell into a corner of their family room. My startled mom was on him in a second. She gets over to him and rolls him out flat (he's c...

So where ya been? That's the question that has literally been tearing up my email and phone lines. Yep, it's been a while. But I've been a busy beaver. Here are just a few things that I've been involved with since Thanksgiving: My dad got very sick and had to go to the hospital. Heart stuff. My mom was certain he was gone. So I've been a little distracted there. But thank God, he's at home and doing great. Work has been crazy. Been working on trying to lob out the first Windows Forms application this place has produced. I was brought in late to the game, so much (if not all) the "design" had been done. Or rather, most of the code was done and there was never any design. So I've been trying to cope with that. Work has also been wacky. We are in the process of make a fairly significant paradigm shift, and I've been an agent of change. The new boss is planning to impose a strict "all Java" rule on all new development. That means all ASP ...

As usual, nothing goes as smooth as you'd like. This project has been no exception. But I'm happy to report that everything is working and my server has 2 shiny new 160GB external drives, just waiting for data. It was a little crazy to get there. I had to install my new USB 2.0 card into the machine. No problem, Windows just spotted the card and installed everything hunky dory. Then I read the directions to the card and they recommend loading their drivers. No problemo. When Windows was finished, it recommended a reboot, but when the card drivers were done, they didn't. So I took the time to reboot the machine...so far so good. I plug in the first drive after Windows comes back to life. Grind, grind, grind. BAM!!!!!!! Straight into the blue screen of death. Bummer. Now this is a Windows 2000 Server, with all the latest patches and service packs. The error message was "Violation of License Agreement" or something like that. Hmmm... So I let it do it's thing, re...

Circle in the Sand by Belinda Carlisle When the GoGo's first came out, it was like, cool an all girl group playing reasonable pop/rock. They launched out about 3 big hits and then by the mid 80's had seriously flamed out. There was all sorts of "MTV News" talk about fighting and bickering in the band. There was always the rumor that some of the girls didn't really know how to play their instruments and a big dose of substance abuse. I think I remember reading that their lead singer, Belinda Carlisle was in rehab drying out, or something like that. So she tossed out a solo album, innovatively titled "Belinda" and it had a hit "Mad About You". She then tosses out this album with a couple of hits, Circle in the Sand being one of them. [Warning: obligatory negative and cynical thoughts to follow.] I don't like this song. I don't like it all. Never did, never will. I don't know if it's the droning sound of her voice or what, but I do...

This weekend I had a chance to see 4 (count 'em Four) movies. We normally don't see that many, but due to circumstances beyond my control, I had to sit back and relax and watch some flix. Van Helsing My wife and I got the rare opportunity to rent a couple of DVD's without worrying about the girls. They were both at sleep overs Friday night, so being crazy, impulsive and most importantly, without kids, we did what any red blooded couple that are passionately in love...we rented movies and got Chipotle burritos. OK, we're boring. Van Helsing was pretty good. The special effects were staggering, but almost in an obtrusive way. The level of effects is so high that we are beginning to not appreciate them I feel. But this one had some nice effects. The story was a little confusing, more so for Kristie, as this was not really her type of movie. And it seemed like they chopped it up a bit for what ever reason. But all in all, it was an okay movie, not one that I would let my g...

I got the USB drive boxes last night from the Fed Ex guy. I ended up ordering them from a place called Deal Sonic . They were a good price, like $21 a piece and I got 2 USB 2.0 cards for $3.99 a piece. My "server" is so old that it doesn't have USB 2.0 and I think I want the speed. Not a bad deal. So I ran down stairs and promptly screwed in my Seagates, hooked the drives to my laptop (which has USB 2.0)... And nothing.... Windows XP recognized 'em as USB drives, even knew about the sizes, but didn't "stitch" them into the OS. Hmmm..... So I unscrewed everything and jammed the drives into another machine, straight on the IDE cables, same thing. What do you bet these guys needed to be formatted? Sure enough. But the machine that I had chose for this operation I hadn't bothered to plug in a mouse and trying to use Windows utilities without a mouse is a pain, so I loaded some Seagate utility that formatted these monsters. I was fully prepared to wait ab...

A lot of these cool blogs have "what I'm listening to now" on them. I'm not nearly that cool and I don't listen to anything while I'm working. It's kind of a thing of mine. But I thought I'd mention (for anyone who could possibly care) what I listened to on the way from basketball practice this morning. My normal commute is about 20 minutes but that's at 6:30AM. When we have hoops practice, I don't get out of the school until around 8:00, so the traffic is a nightmare . For some reason I decided to drive our car that's for sale (1989 Landcruiser, awesome shape) and it has the 6 disk player that I've always dug. So I threw in a couple of disks and got to listen to them. They were: Joe Jackson Live 1980-1986 J. Geils Band House Party LIVE A quick thought on both. If you think of Joe Jackson as this crooner/piano player, you're right. But if you don't think of him as a jammin' rock musician, you're wrong. This live album ca...

Cherry Bomb by John Cougar Mellencamp When I heard this song this morning, I honestly stopped and said "Wow, I haven't heard this song in a long time." I did. I really did. This song came out in 87, and the album was following up a strong string of hit albums. I remember when he first came out as Johnnie Cougar, then John Cougar, then John Cougar Mellencamp and now John Mellencamp. And I even sorta remember when it was JC Mellencamp and apparently it's cool to refer to him as just JCM. So there you have it. I used to have the album (actually the tape) of this album and I can say that Cherry Bomb, while naturally a single, wasn't even close to my favorite song. I liked Paper and Fire and Real Life a lot better. He did some things on Cherry Bomb and the rest of the album that moved him from just a pop singer to this bluesy/folksy thang that he started on Scarecrow (the album that was before this one.) He's got a girl that sings with him on this album (later foun...

Heart and Soul by T'Pau Since I've been doing this little blog (was it the late 50's when I started?), I've taken the time to do a little research, mostly to find the little album cover for the song that I'm going to babble about. So when today's song hit, I bounced out to Google, did a little poking around. My impression of this song was always pretty high, I liked it. Certainly not my favorite song of all time, but different enough to be good without being "just another one of those songs..." And that's about all I knew about it. I sorta remember the video (some girl singing) and I placed them squarely in the "One Hit Wonder" bin of mind. I also knew that their name came from Star Trek, some Vulcan leader or something. But that was about it. But I've learned more, yes I have. The girl singing: her name is Carol Decker. The song "Heart and Souls" was released in 1987 on the album "Bridge of Spies". I would have pl...

I love meetings. So glad that we're spending so much time in them.

I didn't get a chance to do one yesterday and I'm late today, but with good reason. I started this little bloggercize with the "rule" that I'd flip on my radio and somewhat coherently scribble down my thoughts on the first song that I heard. As I mentioned previously, the station that provides me the source for this inspiration is Jack FM in Denver, a station that purportedly plays 80's classics, but in reality, they're all over the place. I decided to research every song and always have a back up in case the first song is disqualified, specifically not from the 80's. So I was excited to hear the Eurythmics crank out Missionary Man this morning...always liked the song, etc... So I fire up the Googlizer and BAM!, the album was released in 1990. Thanks for playing. With great trepidation I realized that I'd have to fall back to the second song I heard this morning, and quite honestly, I've been in denial about it. So unfortunately, here's t...

Got summoned for jury duty. Had to make the call last night to see if my number, Juror #3016 would be needed in some no doubt hyper critical legal affair going on at the Jefferson County Court. The saps with #'s 2350 - 2915 had to report. Can't say I'm sad, but either way, I wasn't going to get sucked into the juror thang. Now I'm a firm believer in a jury trial. I think it's a right and a privledge to serve on a jury. All of that is good. My employer (fortunately) would've been cool if I had to be on the jury. The real honest answer is: I don't want to. It's just that simple. So what if they had called my number? The first thing that I would have told them is that I believe that jury nullification is a valid right of every juror. That seems to get you rapidly dismissed from any court around. And I'm okay with that. I think it's George Carlin that says: Do you really want a trial by a jury of people who weren't clever enough to get out o...

That's the question plaguing literally thousands, perhaps millions of loyal readers of this senseless diatribe... I was "lucky" enough to be sitting in an all day meeting, from 8:30 AM to like 4:15PM. Yeah, it was a blast. Our little development group is embarking (allegedly) on a major Phase II development arc on a series of internal applications..the ones that we just spent more than two years working on. Some of the development will be changing stuff that wasn't quite right, some will be adding functionality, and lastly some will be new from the ground up. We got to sit in this meeting as a group because our boss (who is brand new with the company) has a plan. A vision if you will. His first order of business being the new guy was to sit down one on one with us old guys to find out what's going on. Good idea. 11 out of the 12 developers here all described a crazy duct taped and marinara drenched pile of spagetti code that this near billion dollar enterprise run...

A day late... We've been to only a couple of Rockies games ever, and only 1 since moving back to Colorado in 2001. Luckily a friend of ours is a high powered exec of the phone company, Qwest and he couldn't go to a game this summer, Rockies vs. Giants. His wife asks my wife and bam , we're sitting in primo club level seats on a beautiful July afternoon. Legend has it that this was the only truly watchable game at Coors Field this year, so I'm glad I was there. Saw Larry Walker play in one of his last games as a Rox and got to see Barry Bonds smack a 1 run homer (actually it was more like a bloop home run if that's even possible). I set the Lumix to full 12x zoom (gotta love that Leica lens) and firing on multiple/action I time lapsed a nice sequence of Bones smacking it out of the park. I really think it's cool that you can see the ball being lobbed at the batter, milliseconds from leaving the hand of one of the Rockies rag arms, milliseconds away from being sw...

Human by The Human League Ahhhh...a real 80's standard. Human League was one of the first Pop/New Wave bands to break through the US market. Their first big song, Don't You Want Me, was a huge "dance" song. Lot's of synth, funky (for 82) beat. Had the obligatory MTV video and Human League was a hit. They tossed out Fascination, which was a fun little song/EP. They then re-emerged with Human, which if memory serves me, was a bigger hit than anything they had (or every will have). Kind of the same story as Don't You Want Me about unfaithfulness but an even stronger Pop hook. I've always liked this song, especially the way Philip (Oakley?) sang on this song mixed with the girl (don't even know if this was the blonde or the brunette singing). The Human League (to me) was one of those bands that is truly defined by the 80's and define it too. I don't think they survived into the 90's but they were big, big in the 80's. They were one of those...

I remembered another thing that Ron said in his talk at the school. He quickly laid out the story in Matthew 14 where Jesus walks on the water out to the boat where the disciples are. Then Peter, after being invited by the Lord steps out and walks on water too. When he gets afraid, he sinks. He (Ron) used this story to challenge us all to get off the boat. The sea for a person of that time & belief was a great abyss, and for Peter to step out into it, was a true act of wanting to be like his teacher, to follow his Rabbi. How many of us that claim to be followers of Christ are still sitting on the boat, where it's "safe". Again, more things to think about.

Taking the day off for Veteran's Day.

Today is Veteran's Day. I know that because I have the day off (all the stories about banker's holidays are true). Selfishly and not thinking about the true meaning of the day, I can say I'm glad I have the day off. I have some painting to do, some web surfing to find time for.... But some how I think there's more to it. Veteran's Day isn't about having a day off from work to goof off or do chores. It should be a time to remember those who have served in the US Military to fight and maybe die for our freedom. That's a pretty good reason to have a day off in my opinion. So even if you don't have the day off, take time, even a second, to say thanks to those men & women who have served to protect us. Thanks.

At home we have the typical home network: cable modem into a router/hub/wireless dude (DLink was on sale that day). Beaming out signal to 2, sometimes 4 machines in the house. I also have hard cabled into the DLink a "server" which is really just my old PII running headless. I can get to it via VNC or Drive Sharing, typical stuff really. Our primary machine is where we save all our digital pictures (we committed to being film free over a year ago after dabbling in it for years). Other than that, the machine mostly has junk that I've accumulated over the years (you wanna see my source code from an assembler project on the Apple II from 1988? I've got it...). So my big losses data-wise would be the pictures and some of the historical stuff, but mostly pictures. The biggest pain is reloading the OS and all the other crud like apps and service packs. So I've been thinking alot about back up. I used to work for Exabyte and our CEO's catch phrase was ...

Introduction: Last time I scratched out a frenzied look at the basics of Attached Behaviors. Based upon a couple of comments, I'm going to dive into them a little deeper and spend a little time on the actual code used in my now infamous a_datebox.htc . If you'd like to see the requirements for this little monster, take a gander at Episode 6 in "Our Requirements". Lest anyone think that I'm a card-carrying expert on all things Behavior, I need to provide the following disclaimer: Most of this "knowledge" was acquired by reading "Windows Web Scripting Developer's Guide" by Dan Heflin & Todd Ney. I've mentioned it before and I'll mention it again, it's about the only book I've found on Behaviors and these guys did a commendable job describing the technology. It's out of print, but I picked it up on eBay for like $5.... As I've mentioned a couple of times, Behaviors are nothing new in the JScript...

Preamble: Wow, it's been a long time since we last met...that dreaded work/personal life took over and suddenly scratching out AF() articles fell way down on the priority list.... Let's get back to it! Introduction: The previous two AIJS episodes focused on the standard IE behaviors. While they're great and all, we're all coders right? We like to build things with our bare hands! The boys and girls in Redmond didn't let us down...we have Attached Behaviors to satisfy this thirst. Back when IE 5 came out, these were called DHTML Behaviors, then in a moment of supreme revision, they renamed them Attached when they intro'd the other Behavior, the Element Behavior (more about those in the next episode). Remember, for the most comprehensive (and it ain't much) coverage for behaviors, I look to MSDN . Attached Behaviors let us write a small (or large) amount of code (JScript naturally -- but OK, OK, it could be VBScript) and attach it to a ...

Introduction: Last week, I spent a long time unpacking in a (hopefully) logical way that you can leverage the IE Default Behavior, userData to be a super cookie. Hopefully you found it useful or at least well written...maybe you just liked the font. Either way it represented the world "as I knew it". So being the proud papa that I am, I showed my latest effort to a co-worker here (Keith Pelletier, all around web and UI dude..that's really his title). Keith takes one look at it and says, "no, that's not true. I think..." And in the nicest possible way, systematically unravels my entire concept, in a good way of course. So this week's episode is a sequel to last week, kind of a Special Enhanced Edition, if you will, with all new special effects! While you read this, I'll be sitting down having a huge serving of Humble Pie..along with a cuppa Yorkshire (Gold preferred, splash of milk and a sugar). No You Can't: Last week I pr...

Preamble: It's probably time for a re-introduction of the concept here and what I'm all about. What I'm documenting here is the Microsoft specific implementation of ECMAScript/Javascript, and that's the title: JScript. This stuff won't work on any browser except IE. Right now IE 6.0 is the best IE there is. Now that might be akin to having the nicest trailer in Brighton (a local suburb of questionable repute), but that's just the way it is. I spend all day writing applications that use the IE browser as their execution container and IIS as the deployment server. Some people call that web development, some call it web applications, I prefer to call them web enabled/web deployed applications. Some really smart people call these Zero Footprint Apps...and there are lot's of good names for them. Honestly, I'm not a very good web page or web site developer, but I do enjoy messing around with that from time to time. But if you hate IE (and perhaps you have a ...