Merry Christmas Eve Eve

On this, my last day of work for 2009, I want to say thank you to all of my friends. Those I know in person (IRL), those whom I've met through Twitter and LinkedIn, and those who I know from much earlier in my life on FaceBook. Thank you for what? Well, just for being there. For sharing a little of yourself with me. For allowing me to get to know you better. I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and a safe and prosperous New Year. Let's accomplish greatness in 2010!

SharePoint? No, SwearPoint!

I’ve been working on a SharePoint project for work for the past few months, and I’m getting close to the “go-live” date.  Actually, it’ll go live whenever I’m “done” (whenever that will be…).

But that’s beside the point.

The point is that I’m becoming less and less impressed with SharePoint as a development platform.  And I didn’t start out with a great love for it in the first place.

Perhaps it’s because I’m constrained to only using SharePoint Designer.  No .NET code allowed on the site I’m working on.  That bums me out right there, since I consider myself a great .NET developer.

Most of my work has revolved around customizing SharePoint lists, and using SharePoint Designer to create custom workflows to support the operations of the team I’m developing this for.  Not necessarily hard, but the requirements have been challenging to implement, to put it nicely.

One main requirement, as it turns out, isn’t really possible to implement fully in SharePoint, at least in a nice way.  There are two groups of people who are responsible for different items (a.k.a. “fields” or “columns”) in a list.  One group, let’s call them “Group A”,  doesn’t want the other group (“Group B”) to be able to modify Group A’s fields.

Now let me stop right there!  I understand that SharePoint is a “collaboration” tool, so preventing users from collaborating just doesn’t jibe with the core of SharePoint.  That’s pretty much the crux of the problem.

If it were possible to set permissions on the field level, this blog entry would not be needed.  But it is not possible to restrict access to only certain fields in a list to a certain group of people, so I had to think of ways to enable this functionality, and the way I came up with is sub-par at best.

I ended up creating 3 lists: one for Group A, one for Group B, and one which shadows Group B’s list.  Then there are workflows which copy Group A’s fields in Group A’s list to Group B’s list, and Group B’s fields in Group B’s list to Group A’s list.  The “shadow copy” list is there to prevent the workflows from running in an infinite loop—the items are only copied back to Group A’s list if they are different between Group B’s list and the shadow copy list.

As it turns out, this is not without problems, since if someone in Group A modifies one of Group B’s fields in Group A’s list (did you follow that?) then it will remain out of sync with Group B’s list, since Group B’s fields aren’t copied from Group A’s list to Group B’s list.

As it turned out, thankfully, this wasn’t as big of an issue for this particular solution (whew!).

It was my intent to set permissions on the lists such that people in Group A only had read access to Group B’s list, and vice versa.  However, as it turns out, the workflows will fail to copy data since they run as the user who initiates the change to the list.  So when a Group A person changes an item in Group A’s list, the workflow tries to copy that change to Group B’s list but can’t because Group A only has read-only access to Group B’s list.

So I thought I could change the permission to allow Group A to edit Group B’s list, but then just set the “Hide from browsers” property on Group B’s list so that Group A couldn’t find it when browsing the site.  So instead of preventing a modification of Group B’s list through the use of SharePoint Permissions, I would be preventing the modification of Group B’s list by making it very hard to find the list.  Problem solved!

Not.

Once again SwearPoint, er, SharePoint worked against me, and here’s how:

If you set the “Hide from browsers” property on the list, it does, in fact, hide the list from site when you click on the “Lists” or “All Site Content” links in SharePoint.  HOWEVER, it also hides the list from workflows!

[UPDATE: The list’s name is the only thing hidden from the workflow.  The error I was seeing which led me to the previous conclusion was due to a user-error (and, no, I wasn’t the user!).  The workflow continues to operate successfully if the referenced list is hidden.]

So my final solution still has three lists, one for each group and a third to ensure that the workflows eventually stop, and each group can see the other group’s lists.  Not at all what I set out to accomplish!

It’ll just have to be a training issue to keep each group out of the other’s list.

So much for collaboration (at least in this project).

Not off to a Good Start

Since I don't have a personal license for Visual Studio, I decided to download and install Visual Studio .NET 2008 Express.  Microsoft makes it very easy to install everything you need by downloading the Microsoft Web Platform.  That was the route I took to install Visual Web Developer.

It downloaded a small "loader" application which I used to choose which options to install.  There were many more options than I really needed, so I just chose the ones I knew I needed, and a couple others that I thought sounded cool.

That overall experience was nice, but required two reboots to complete.  One reboot for .NET 3.5 and another for the Microsoft Installer.

Then I started up Visual Web Developer, chose to create a new project, chose "Silverlight Application", gave it a name and folder to put it in.

Then it terminated unexpectedly.  No warning whatsoever.

When I started it back up, my project was listed in the "Recent Projects" list, so I clicked on it.  The Silverlight application was listed, but the web site to host it was not, so I assume that the crash happened when the web site was being created.  Not sure.

Stay tuned as I dig into this problem and try to get this first Silverlight application up and running!

Silverlight Resume Project

I attended a Silverlight Firestarter event last Saturday at the local Microsoft office, and let me tell you: I'm pumped up about the possibilities.

Monday I went to work only to find out that they didn't need my services any more.

So today I'm going to try my hand at creating my resume, online, using Silverlight.  I'll post the progress as I go.

Wish me luck!

Something I Never Thought I Would See

This morning I noticed that there was a Java update available for my computer.  It had been a while since I updated, so I decided to go ahead and update.

Imagine my surprise when I saw this part of the installation:

Isn't that a little like dogs and cats living together?  Sun was recommending that I install a Microsoft product.

I think this may be a signal that we're in the "end times", never mind what the Washington politicians are doing!

Twitter

So I'm on Twitter now. I wasn't expecting to "get it", just like when I joined FaceBook, but this one grew on me faster.

I like the fact that Twitter integrates very easily with FaceBook and some other sites, so that I can send a "Tweet" and my FaceBook status is updated at the same time.

But I think the coolest part of Twitter is that I have a Rockstar following me.

No, really! I have a Rockstar who is following me.

Not that I expect that he reads anything that I post, or would "nudge" me if I haven't sent a Tweet for a while, but still, it's pretty cool. What's even better is that he is the lead singer for one of my all-time favorite bands, Simple Minds: Jim Kerr.

And, no, I'm not ashamed to admit that I love Simple Minds. In fact, I just ordered their latest CD from Amazon.co.uk. It's called "Grafitti Soul". I've heard some snippets from it, and I can't wait to get it. Should be here in another couple of days.

So if you're wondering why I haven't updated this blog for a while, that's why. Blogging takes more time that I have these days, but Tweets are quick, and that's where I focus my "Social Networking Energy" right now.

Flashback...

Listening to a cassette tape of INXS in the truck while driving around town instantly transports me back to my highschool days. Something about the nuances of the cassette tape sound, not digitally perfect, satisfies me.

Wordle

This morning I heard about a site that makes pictures out of words, giving larger font sizes to words used more frequently. So I decided to take the Fulton County Elementary School Curriculum and feed it through the tool. Here is the result for the 200 most used words:

Of course, "students" was on the list, and in probably the largest font (that's a good thing!). But I found it interesting that "appropriate" was prominently featured, as well.

Working for Food Again

Just wanted to let you all know (yeah, like I have throngs of people reading my blog!) that I landed a job at a small company about 10 miles from home.  It's a short commute, but at least I don't have to travel on GA 400!

I've been there for a week-and-a-half, now, and it seems to be going fairly well, despite the heavy work load (they warned me about that before I said, "Yes", so I knew what I was getting into).

So don't worry about me.

Oh, and my severance pay from my last job has become the closest thing to a Christmas Bonus that I've ever had!

Happy Holidays!

Will Work For Food

I got laid off yesterday.  I suppose I'll just be another number in next month's unemployment statistics.  Actually, probably not, since I got a decent severance package that should last through the end of the year, and I don't think you can file for unemployment until after that runs out.

I'm planning on having another job before that happens!

In the meantime I've been reworking my resume, getting it ready to send out.  I've e-mailed several people to see if they know of any openings, either where they work or elsewhere.  I already have  a few leads, but no interviews lined up.  Should be an exciting few weeks while I discover what awaits me out there!

Wish me luck!

Levitation

I'm teaching my boy to levitate.  He's a fast learner.  In this picture, he's about 8 feet off the ground.  It's pretty easy once you get the hang of it.  Really--you just throw yourself at the ground and miss!

Shopping at IKEA

A new Ikea opened in Atlanta a couple of years ago, but I had not visited until recently.  I had been to the store up near Washington D.C., at Tyson's Corner, so I sort of knew what to expect inside.

What I didn't realize until it was too late was that if you pay using a debit card instead of a credit card, you get a voucher for 3% of the sales price that you can use on a later visit.  We had bought some bookcases for my home office, and if I had known that I would have gotten a voucher for over $23!

Now I know!

I'm Staying Away From hhgregg: a Review

[Let me begin this post by stating that what follows may or may not be indicative of hhgregg as a whole, or even the particular store I visited. Maybe it's just me. I just wanted to share the (bad) experience I had.]

Our microwave died. So we wanted to buy a new one. Makes sense, because of the convenience factor of warming things up quickly, like one of the many cups of "hot chocolate" my kids ask for during the course of the day. And when they say "hot chocolate", they just mean milk with Nestle Quick in it, warmed up to slightly above room temperature.

But that's a different story.

We had looked in a few different places around town, and even online, for a new microwave. We put it into our monthly budget, even, to make sure we had the cash available to us for this expense. Basically, we were prepared to buy a microwave. (And fast--we had been without a microwave for nearly a month! Unheard of in this day and age!)

So for whatever reason we decided to buy one at hhgregg. A new store had been built near our house a couple of years ago, and I had purchased a TV from there back then.

As it turned out, the microwave we decided on buying was not in stock, so they had to special order it. This is where things got a little dicey. My wife had talked to a very nice salesman the day before, and when I went to place the order the next day, that same salesman had not started working for the day. So I talked to another salesman, but I mentioned the first salesman's name and showed his card to the second salesman (the card also had information about the microwave we wanted to buy). Well, the man I spoke to put the card in his pocket instead of returning it to me. I believe that hhgregg operates on a commission basis, and my thoughts were that this second salesman wanted to get the full commission so he didn't want me to have the first salesman's name handy. I asked for the card back and he obliged, but it left me with a sour taste in my mouth--and I hadn't even completed the sale.

So this second salesman puts in the order, informs me that it's not in stock and should be about 10 days before it comes in. Same with the trim kit.

[In case you don't know, built-in microwaves are really just counter-top microwaves that are put into a cavity and finished with a "trim kit" which makes it look as if it is flush with your cabinets.]

I pay for the whole thing up front, receive my yellow copy of the receipt (noticing that the salesman had put 7 days instead of 10 days for my order to make it to the store), and I go home, happy that we'll soon have a new microwave. The salesman even assured me that he would call when it arrived.

Fast forward 7 days. No call from the salesman.

Eight days after the sale (I gave them an extra day--is that so wrong?) I called to inquire about my order. One of the options on their phone system is tracking your order, or some similar-sounding name, so I chose that option. It went straight to voice mail, indicating that "that extension is not available". I figured that they were busy with another customer, left my name and number, and waited for a return call. After about an hour (I think--I don't recall exactly) and no return call, I called again, and chose customer service this time.

I got put on hold while they tried to figure out where my stuff was. I held for probably 15 minutes, with various hhgregg advertising blaring into my ear. Occasionally the phone would ring on the other end, followed by what sounded like someone picking up the phone and putting me right back on hold. That didn't sit well with me. I'm a consultant and I needed to get my work done--if I'm not putting in hours toward my project then I don't get paid, after all!

I finally was told that the microwave was in the warehouse, not at the store, and that it should be on the next day's truck. I was instructed to call back the next day after 1 PM, since they should have the inventory there by then.

At 1 PM the next day I called back and was informed that the truck had not arrived. I should call back after 3 or 4 that day.

I think it was about 3:30 when I called back. After another 20 minutes or so of someone "tracking down my order" and listening to the hhgregg commercials instead of hold music (personally I would have preferred music) I was finally told that the microwave and trim kit would not be in the store until Saturday--another 3 days!

Fast forward to Saturday. My wife called the store this time and verified that everything was there, so I drove to the store with my younger two kids, handed over my yellow copy of the receipt, and waited. And waited. And waited. Finally someone was nice enough to come over and tell me that they found the microwave but they were still looking for the trim kit (this was after waiting for about 15 minutes). I asked them if they could go ahead and bring out the microwave so we could get it loaded into the car. "Yes, you can pull your car around," was the reply.

I went to the car, loaded in the kids, got them buckled, folded the stroller and put it in the rear, folded the back seat down so there would be room for the goods, and then pulled to the front of the store, where I sat, with the engine running and air conditioning going (it was hot outside after all) for another 5 to 10 minutes!

Finally they brought not only the microwave but also the trim kit out, I signed for it (by this time I was too annoyed with waiting with small children to worry about actually inspecting the goods like the small print above where I signed my name indicated that I was doing), and drove home, relieved that we finally had our new microwave.

Fast forward a bit more, to after dinner and after the kids went to bed. I started installing the microwave. Long story short: I had the wrong trim kit!

So I took the trim kit back the next day, indicated that it was the wrong one, told them the correct part number (that was on the manufacturer's web page on a link from the microwave's information) and did the exchange. I spoke to yet another person for all of this (the "Operations Manager", whatever that means), and he told me it would be about a month to get the new trim kit, but that I should call to check on my order every few days.

That's when I told him that I absolutely HATED calling the store. I related to him how many times I had held for someone to tell me anything about my order. He didn't seem too concerned. I told him I was at the point where I just wanted my money back and that I would order the trim kit (the correct one, mind you) online.

His reply? "This paper shows your return. This paper shows the order for the new part. Sign here."

I just about lost it, but I decided to remain cool. I went ahead and signed, but I drove home rather perturbed. When I got home, I found an online store which had the same part for sale with no tax and no shipping fees for about $24 less than what I had paid.

I called hhgregg back the next day (it was late by the time I returned home) to cancel my order. I ended up speaking to the same person I had the day before (the "Sign here" guy), and when he asked why I wanted to cancel I told him that I found the same item online for less and that they could get it for me in less than a month. He asked the price, and I told him, thinking that he might match it. Instead, he wanted me to talk to some other person to complete the return, but she was busy right now so could he have my number and she would call me back?

I did that and finally got a call back about an hour later.

Long story short: hhgregg might be OK to buy things at if they have it in stock. If you have to special order something then, based on my experience, I would recommend that you go somewhere else. Way too much hassle for just a microwave and trim kit.

So as it stands now, we have the microwave but I'm waiting for the new trim kit to arrive and I'm waiting for my refund from hhgregg. Hopefully the refund will come before the online store charges me for the trim kit!

Sorry this post was so long, but I expound on things that strike a nerve with me! Thanks for reading, if you made it this far. And if you have any horror stories to share about hhgregg, write a comment to this post.

[UPDATE: hhgregg refunded my money on the same day that the online store charged me for the new, correct trim kit. I received the correct trim kit about a week after I placed the order. I recommend Home Everything for kitchen appliances! They didn't charge me shipping on my order, either.]

Mis-Hearing Commercials

My oldest daughter was really excited the other day.  She heard on the TV that they were holding a contest, the winner of which would be flown with their family to Hollywood to meet the star of Disney's Hannah Montana, Miley Cyrus.

The reason she was so excited?  She thought she heard, "Many will enter, you will win."

I had to bring her back down to earth and explain to her that what it really said was "few" will win...

What American Accent Do You Have?

I came across this quiz, and I thought my results were interesting:

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The West   Your accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you're a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big Southern cities like Dallas or Atlanta.
The Midland
Boston
North Central
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The South
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Why do I think that the results are interesting?  Well...

1. I was born in Southern California
2. I grew up in Florida
3. I now live in Atlanta

Animation-ish

One more quick post for the day...

I just heard about this software and wanted to share. I think it would be something cool for my kids to play around with, though it may be a little over their heads at the moment. Well, over the 3 y.o. and 1 y.o. heads, but maybe not the 6 y.o. and probably not the 9 y.o.

It's called "Animation-ish". It just looks cool. Try it out.

I downloaded the trial and tried one quick "wiggle-ish", but I was on a laptop that didn't have a mouse hooked up to it and had to use the touch pad, which is on its way South... So my result was less-than-desirable, but still kind of fun. Here it is (I hope this works, but if it doesn't then right-click here and save the AVI file to your local disk--be sure to have "repeat" turned on, because the video is only 3 frames long!):

Digital Music Library

I have almost completed my first phase of going totally digital in my home.  I spent a few days last week ripping all of my CDs to MP3 format.  Well, like I said, I ripped almost all of my CDs.  I haven't gone through the Christmas CDs or my classical collection.

I used Windows Media Player to rip them at 320K, which is the highest setting it supports.

Why not use iTunes, you ask?  Well, I do have iTunes installed on the same computer, but I'm only using it to get music on and off of my iPod.  I like how WMP organizes the files, especially when it comes to album art.  With iTunes I see a file that claims to have the album art, but I don't know what format it's in.  With WMP there are actual JPEG files that get set as the folder image when browsing in Windows Explorer in "Thumbnails" view (like you see in the background of the picture above).

Plus, my ultimate goal is to get a Windows Media Center PC and extenders so that I'll have access to my media everywhere in the house, so I want to keep this as an all-Microsoft solution.  For the moment, though, I'll wait: the current CableCARD technology doesn't support "On Demand", yet.  Someday it will and my home media system will come to fruition.

In the meantime, my entire cabinet of CDs has been compressed down to one 500GB external USB hard drive.  It's a funny thing: now that I have my entire collection readily accessible I can't find anything to listen to!

Thank You "Angry Asian"!

I know that I already sent you an e-mail expressing my thanks for the stuffed animals that you made and sent to my kids, but I thought I would follow up with a blog posting since I saw that you had the animals featured on your blog.

My kids  (well, my girls anyway)  saw the pictures on your blog and reported back to me, "Our animals are famous!  Their picture is on the computer!"

First there's Zack.  I picked the horse for him, before his sisters had a chance to pick out any of them for themselves.  He's one boy among lots of girls, so I have to look out for him.  :-)  I tried getting a better shot of him with the horse, but he was having too much fun grabbing it and slinging it down to the floor.  Unfortunately, he hasn't taken to it.  He's got lots of toys, and has focused on other things that make more noise when they hit the floor.  Fortunately, though, that means that he's giving the horse every chance to survive, and keep from getting sent to the glue factory.  Or at least the recycled fluff factory.

Next, Ella.  I think she was next to pick an animal, but only because she was home and the older two had not returned from school, yet.  As you can see, she loves the pink pig.  What you can't see is that the pink pig now has a cape on it.  I think it fits quite nicely, and is a welcome addition to the pig's wardrobe.  The pig thinks so, too.

I don't recall at the moment if any of the animals have gained names, yet.  I'll have to write you back  to let you know if I find out.

Now for Emmie.  She chose the monkey.  The picture on the left was taken at the bus stop one morning.  Emmie can take a "friend" with her to school for nap time, and I think the monkey has accompanied her each day since his (her?) arrival.  Some of the stitching on one, maybe both, of the arms is coming loose--I think I can sew it back up if I can ever get the monkey off her back.  Ok, sorry, bad pun.  But you know what I mean.

I don't have a picture of my oldest with the cat.  But if you would,  imagine that there is a picture of the most beautiful 9-year-old girl here with a big smile on her face, similar to Emmie's or Ella's, or Zack's for that matter, holding the stuffed cat.  Truth be told, that's a bit contrived--she's more into her American Girl Doll at the moment, but did think it was cool to see pictures on the famous animals on your blog.

And for any of my two other readers of this blog, the story I'm referring to (if you've made it this far) can be found here.

Phun is, well, Fun!

I first heard about Phun a couple of weeks ago, but finally downloaded and installed it a couple of days ago.  Be warned, it is addictive!

I have barely started learning what all it is capable of modeling, but already have created a scene (not the one pictured--that one actually comes as part of the download) with an incline, rolling ball, a platform with a spring, and a few other things.

It's phun to watch thing "come alive" once you click the play button.  Sometimes you get unintended effects, like once when I didn't balance a large ramp that I drew freehand.  It ended up falling over, when in fact I was expecting the ball I placed on top to roll down its side.  (That was easily fixed by "fixing" it in place with one of the controls from the toolbox.)

From reading the web site (link is above) it appears that there is a lot of work planned for this free download.

Take my word for it, download it and start having phun!

Birds (but no Bees)

These birds have built a nest in a pot we have on our side door for the past several years. Actually, they may have been absent last year, but they're back this year. If you can tell me what kind they are, please do. Oh, and I say "birds", but you only see one in the video (shot with my phone). They take turns--the other one hangs out by the deck railing. I guess he (or she) is the lookout. Anyway, here goes:

This was the third video I shot in a span of about 5 minutes. I stood very still on the inside of the door. In the other two videos you see mostly pot but no bird. As they say, third time's a charm. I guess the bird got a little used to me by this time.