GonzoMaximus - The Lion in Winter

Emerging from the Den

2011-08-02T15:48:00.001-07:00

I've been working on a project lately that involves some very sophisticated evaluation and extraction of data from JSON and XML web responses. Not that I wanted to; I'm a tester and my coding efforts have been mainly quality-oriented for several years.

Someone, though, had to write this code as it wasn't writing itself and I seem to have developed this inability to communicate abstract requirements to meet concrete needs to others. So I had to adopt a show-and-tell mentality and write the durn thing to prove it's worth.

It is (mostly) written using VS 2010 and C#. It's the sort of extensible utility that, if I were to show it, would garner a lot of oohs and aahs but I'm restrained from showing it as it's proprietary to my employer.

Hence the title of my post, "Emerging from the Den". Maybe I'm not the Lion in Winter any more. Maybe I can still eat lightning and crap thunder as a developer. Maybe...but I learned a few things:

Mentally and on a whiteboard I can architect a service or app with the best of them. This is probably because I have 30 years in this business and also because I don't have to think about implementation at that level.
My actual code likely sucks. I mean...it works but it's likely brittle. In my gut I know there are better ways to do a lot of what I have done. If I were focused as a developer it would be written better but as a tester forced to code I settle for "works within acceptability".
There are still things we could do in old VFP that aren't easily done in C#. For example, I need to read a value from a serialized file and ensure I can cast to a member with the right type. For the life of me, I can't figure out how to cast when the value type in the incoming file is not known until runtime.

To summarize I guess I'm relieved that I can still mix it up with hardcore developers on content without being pretty in code. My falldowns are due to not being a developer day to day and knowing where my syntax is weak; my upsides are knowing abstractly what should work and doggedly pursuing it.

Long Time Away

2010-12-21T15:09:00.000-08:00

Wow, it's been a weird several months.

The family and I are back in South Florida and I'm working for a fantastic employer and really enjoying my work for the first time in a while.

Now that things are settling down and as I get a better grasp on the extremely cool technologies I am working with I will try to post more.

Until then, have a great Holidays!

XSD, WCF, and The XSD Tool

2010-02-09T19:48:00.001-08:00

I'll make this short. If you are creating serialized data (XML) using DataContracts there are five things you need to be aware of upfront if creating XSD files using the XSD tool against the CLR DLL:

If your properties names are different than the DataMember names, the XSD will use the DataMember name while the XML will be using the property name. Solution: Keep the DataMember names the same as the property names.
Also for DataMembers, use the Order attribute AT ALL TIMES. This gives you the flexibility of populating and ordering property logic as you wish but ensures that the output is always in the same order - which is critical since MS XSD validation does not support the xs:all attribute allowing any ordering of elements.
If you are using private properties in the CLR class (I frequently use Count in my CollectionDataContracts for internal use) be aware that the XSD tool will think they will be serialized and dutifully put them into the XSD as expected elements.
If you are serializing from an inherited class the XSD types must list all base class elements first and then all derived class elements. I got burned trying to be cute by mix-and-matching properties from both in a mixed order.
Stay away from properties that are List(Of) base types, for example List(Of String). There appears to be no way to model this in an XSD. Create a class to store the string and convert the property to List(Of class).

If you haven't worked with XSD files this list will make little sense but read these tips right before going that route and it'll make a helluva lot of sense.

The Secular Religion

2009-11-06T20:28:00.000-08:00

I can't claim that this is an original thought, but the interactions I have had with folks at all ends of the political spectrum have led me to believe that progressive ideology is a religion.

You can't reason with these folks without tantrums and attempts to shut you down. They yammer to each other about how evil and misguided people who disagree with them are and they feel morally justified in doing whatever they damn well see fit because they are convinced they know better.

If you disagree with them there's no dialog - they just try to kick you to the curb. They operate on faith in their principles and are unwilling to discuss common sense and logic .... hallmarks of a religion.

How else to explain the approach to the scientific viability of climate change? There's far, far less conclusive evidence for climate change than there is for evolution, which we still call a Theory. Yes, a hardcore progressive equates those that question climate change with Holocaust deniers. No logic explains that reaction - it's a religion.

It all reminds me of discussions I used to have with "born-again" folks while stationed in Arkansas. Their absolute, unshaking belief that their way was the only right way was disturbing to my old pragmatic self. A Jew who has tended to the poor his whole life? Going to Hell. A Buddhist that runs an orphanage? Going to Hell!

Not to overstate it or look like a wingnut, but folks like that worry me. When a group of folks are so sure of their positions as a matter of faith, they justify themselves doing some pretty horrific things because they effectively dehumanize the opposition.

You see this time and time again throughout history. The Inquisition: The Catholic Church justified the burning of Jews, torture, and all sorts of depredations because they had faith that they followed the way of the Lord and that justified anything.

Nazi Germany: Jews were not people, so camp authorities who were good family men and loved their children routinely tortured and gassed Jews and Gypsys.

There are some, some right-wing religious nuts who potentially qualify under my theory but most of the progressives in pwer certainly do. And what to do? They're indoctrinated.

And More...(Hahahaha)

2009-10-31T09:55:00.000-07:00

Page 1432:

(4) CONTENTS OF ALTERNATIVE MEDICAL LIABILITY LAW.—The contents of an alternative liability law are in accordance with this paragraph if—
(A) the litigation alternatives contained in the law consist of certificate of merit, early
offer, or both; and
(B) the law does not limit attorneys’ fees or impose caps on damages.

You gotta be kidding me. We want tort reform, just don't limit fees or damages. Yeah. That'll work.

And Even More...

2009-10-30T22:26:00.000-07:00

Page 326:

If you maintain a health savings account and had to withdraw from it due to non-medical reasons in the past, you were hit with a penalty tax of 10%. H.R. 3962 doubles that to 20%.

Page 337:

Never forget that the rich are evil bastards who should be soaked at every opportunity according to the Dems. Oh, and it's not a tax on $1,000,000 incomes as erroneously reported - it's a tax on incomes over $500,000 per individual.

‘‘SEC. 59C. SURCHARGE ON HIGH INCOME INDIVIDUALS.‘‘
(a) GENERAL RULE.—In the case of a taxpayer other than a corporation, there is hereby imposed (in addition to any other tax imposed by this subtitle) a tax equal
to 5.4 percent of so much of the modified adjusted gross income of the taxpayer as exceeds $1,000,000.
‘‘(b) TAXPAYERS NOT MAKING A JOINT RETURN—
In the case of any taxpayer other than a taxpayer making a joint return under section 6013 or a surviving spouse (as defined in section 2(a)), subsection (a) shall be applied
by substituting ‘$500,000’ for ‘$1,000,000’.

Page 339:

‘‘SEC. 4061. MEDICAL DEVICES. ‘‘
(a) IN GENERAL.—There is hereby imposed on the first taxable sale of any medical device a tax equal to 2.5 percent of the price for which so sold.

I'm having another WTF!!!! moment. How does this reduce the cost of healthcare. C'mon, liberals, show some intellect and challenge me on this one! This is completely non-sensical tome insofar as it relates to the supposed goals of this bill. So, Joe gets hit by a car on his way home. Joe loses his legs. Sucks to be Joe - he or his insurer now pay a tax on Joe's artificial limbs.

Page 386:

Payments by Medicare to nursing homes are reduced by 2%. Hmmmm....

-----------------------------------
I'm on page 451 which is mainly Medicare terminology. They could tell me pigs fly in this section in bureaucratese and I wouldn't know the difference to be honest. So I think I'll give it a rest tonight.

More on H.R. 3962

2009-10-30T22:05:00.000-07:00

Page 297:

OK, here we see the 2.5% tax on adjusted gross income for folks who don't get health coverage. It applies to the individual or family if there are dependents. Interestingly, the tax penalty is tied to the average premium amount for a "qualified" plan insofar as it can't exceed it.

Here's what I don't get. So far in my reading I don't see anything that reduces the premiums we see today - on the contrary, as I pointed out in my last post there are ample reasons to believe that premiums will rise and the CBO is of the opinion that the "public option" pricing will not be any cheaper than private plans and may indeed be up to 25% more.

Soooo....a Hobson's choice. You either pay for a qualified plan or get nailed by a tax penalty that may or may not be less than the premiums but will be several hundred bucks for a family with an AGI of 40K or so.

So this doesn't provide a mechanism to get affordable healthcare for the disadvantaged, it mandates that all must get insurance regardless of the affordability or face a penalty.

And this is how we get the uninsured insured - ripping their arms off by mandating that they pay for a plan without (to be fair, so far in my reading) actually helping them do so.

Oh, and BTW, as I continue reading, this apparently sets up a whole new area of IRS administration since the proof of insurance is filed with the tax returns.

-------------
Still reading.....

Would Help If I Posted The Link

2009-10-30T22:02:00.000-07:00

Here's the link to the House healthcare bill. Thanks to Tim Greve for providing it.

http://docs.house.gov/rules/health/111_ahcaa.pdf

Still reading between bouts of retching.

Dissecting the Healthcare Bill (H.R. 3962)

2009-10-29T15:33:00.000-07:00

Having many years of consulting experience to the healthcare industry, I thought I'd study this bill and how it affects the healthcare market. Briefly:

Page 18,Line 23: Residency is a requirement for the high-risk pool but there is no exclusion of illegal residents.

Page 26 on lack of funds: the Secretary shall make such adjustments
as are necessary to eliminate such deficit, including
reducing benefits, increasing premiums, or estab
lishing waiting lists. Nope, no healthcare rationing here (sarcasm).

Page 32,Line 24: Hey,lookie here! Insurers must allow you to insure your children to age 26! WTF?

Page 50, Line 5: No more lifetime benefit limits. So reinsurers will have to buy more catastrophic risk as part of their excess layer package. That'll cost...who pays?

Page 52, Line 22: Hmmm...apparently, no annual limits either.

Page 63, Wellness Grants. Oh cool, the Government will provide preventative care grants to eligible employers. Here's the verbiage for the amount:

(i) the product of $150 and the number of employees of the employer for any plan year; and
(ii) $50,000 for the entire period of the grant.

Wow. That sure would encourage me as that equals about 0.7% of my plan costs paid by me and my employer.

--------------
There's more to read but I have to take a break for now. I'll post more later. What a nightmare.
--------------

Anyone have doubts that this is a government takeover?

Page 94:
(c) LIMITATION ON INDIVIDUAL HEALTH INSURANCE COVERAGE.—
(1) IN GENERAL.—Individual health insurance coverage that is not grandfathered health insurance coverage under subsection (a) may only be offered on or after the first day of
Y1 as an Exchange-participating health benefits plan.

You weasel-worded lying sacks of shit. Guess Congress thinks we can't read.

Page 102:

(c) PREMIUMS.—Nothing in this section shall be construed as preventing a qualified health benefits plan from increasing the premiums otherwise required for coverage
provided under this section consistent with standards established by the Commissioner based upon family size under section 213(a)(3).

Yeah, trim those costs.

Page 109:

(e) ABORTION COVERAGE PROHIBITED AS PART OF MINIMUM BENEFITS PACKAGE.—

Holy crap, a shred of honesty!

Page 131:

(a) IN GENERAL.—There is hereby established, as an independent agency in the executive branch of the Government, a Health Choices Administration

Yes, folks, we get a whole new agency with a bullshit name. They are eliminating choices, so why not include Choice in the name? Orwellian.

Page 150:

SEC. 262. RESTORING APPLICATION OF ANTITRUST LAWS TO HEALTH SECTOR INSURERS.

What constitutes anti-trust?? Insurance pricing is based on statistical science and one company's premium is likely to be very similar to another's given the same benefits package since actuarial tables are pretty standard. This is just the Dems pissing on another "Big".

-----------------
More later.
-----------------

Page 272:

Employers contributions are.....

(A) in case of individual coverage, not less than 72.5 percent of the applicable premium
(as defined in section 4980B(f)(4) of such Code, subject to paragraph (2)) of the lowest
cost plan offered by the employer that is a qualified health benefits plan (or is such
current employment-based health plan); and (B) in the case of family coverage which
includes coverage of such spouse and children, not less 65 percent of such applicable premium
of such lowest cost plan.

This is NUTS. Emplyers are already providing a benefit via reducing premiums via group coverage. This is nakedly to discourage employer-sponsored insurance.

Page 276:

Here's one of the more heinous parts:

SEC. 413. EMPLOYER CONTRIBUTIONS IN LIEU OF COVERAGE.
(a) IN GENERAL.—A contribution is made in accordance with this section with respect to an employee if such contribution is equal to an amount equal to 8 percent of
the average wages paid by the employer during the period of enrollment
(determined by taking into account all employees of the employer and in
such manner as the Commissioner provides, including rules providing for the
appropriate aggregation of related employers) but not to exceed the minimum
employer contribution described in section 412(b)(1)(A).
Any such contribution—
(1) shall be paid to the Health Choices Commissioner for deposit into the Health Insurance
Exchange Trust Fund; and
(2) shall not be applied against the premium of the employee under the Exchange-participating
health benefits plan in which the employee is enrolled.

Boil this down. You can opt out of your employee group plan which will become very expensive due to the provisions I detailed above by paying 8% of your employee wages. Right now, for an employee making $50,000 with a wife and 2 kids the premium is probably about $9,600 a year. Right now, it's a crapshoot who (employer or employee) is paying what but if you look at the previous provision the employer would be required to pay 65%, or $6,240. OTOH, the employer can forego an employer-sponsored healthcare plan and send 8%, or $4,000, to the Government. If you opt out you save $2000+ per employee per year and your employees are now in the Exchange and likely moving to the "public option". More lies about not taking over the healthcare market when the economics force otherwise.

-------------
Pause for reflection. I've read 1/6th of the bill so far and it's mainly a red herring for the crap the Dems claim that they wouldn't do, but they do it indirectly. Like killing private health plans.

Is it too much to ask for these fuckwads to come clean once in a while? Why lie, hide, and otherwise misdirect your intent if you're so sure it's right?

My liberal friends hate me because they claim I'm conservative. My conservative friends are upset because I'm libertarian. But what it all boils down to, for me, is the truth. Tell me the truth - I don't have to like it but it begins an honest debate. Lie to me, treat me dishonestly, and I'll never listen to you and I'll try to discredit you with the facts every chance I get. Today's absolute, no doubt liars are House Democrats. Somehow I doubt I'll get any factual rebuttals. Just your typical pod-people koolaid drinkers.

Fun With Regular Expressions

2009-10-28T17:01:00.001-07:00

I needed a regular expression to handle phone numbers in a variety of formats. Came up with the following:

([(]?\d{3}[)]?(- .)?\d{3}(- .)?\d{4})

It works with just about any U.S. number you can throw at it.

(800) 555-1212
800.555.1212
800-555-1212
8005551212

When I'm 64

2009-09-22T14:39:00.000-07:00

Was working on something interesting today - transfering images from a URL (technically a URI) via XML.

Wasn't all that hard once I got an idea of how it's done. Essentially, it involves creating a stream to consume the image via WebTransfer and then converting the stream to a Base64 object which can be serialized as one big blob of text.

Once I have all the error-trapping and kinks worked out, code samples will be posted.

A New Microsoft Technology!

2009-08-27T15:17:00.001-07:00

New to VS 2010 and Framework 4.0 is a new protocol: WTF

WTF stands for Web Transport Feature and is a means of publishing and consuming REST-style data to the cloud.

I experimented with it today. I coded a simple WCF service with an OperationContract and pressed F5. Visual Studio then crashed and restarted. WTF?! Yes, it was WTF. WTF is synchronous - if a transaction is interrupted the entire operation is cancelled. WTF!

Yes, I exclaimed WTF! a lot today.

(Surely you didn't take this seriously?)

WCF Localhost Gotcha

2009-08-27T15:13:00.000-07:00

.Net Framework 3.5 SP1

Beware the WCF Configuration tool in Visual Studio. Auto-magic gone awry. If you make any configuration changes and save them, it will place a certificate tag in your web.config that will blow away your ability to run your service through localhost.

The solution is: Nuke the tag.

This cost me 2 hours of research.

So Now Visual Studio Insults Me?

2009-08-26T18:20:00.001-07:00

'
' This code was generated by a tool.
' Runtime Version:2.0.50727.42

Sigh.

VFP to .NET Developer Survival Guide

2009-08-20T19:52:00.000-07:00

Reported from the Universalthread. I had a lot of positive response so I am reposting here:

Folks,I'm going to keep this simple. Early last year I went on haitus as a test engineer and moved back into the developer world. I was fortunate that I was hired by a company that I had already worked with years ago and they re-hired me by past reputation and were willing to overlook the fact that my last relevent programming experience was .Net 1,0 and sketchy with that and needed time to ramp-up.

I know a lot of you don't have that advantage and employers are looking for immediately usable skills. Especially in this economy. So I am going to suggest a series of steps to gain a foundation that you can use to get to where you need to be. I'm assuming that you're willing to bust butt on your own time while doing what you have to do to pay the bills.

Also, I don't want to take anything away from the EDS or Oak Leaf bootcamps and training. My only concern with those is that they go a mile wide but an inch deep. I'm not clear what marketable skills you gain with practical application.So here are the lessons I've learned and my suggestions. They are not all-inclusive. They are not expert. They are just what has helped me and the pitfalls I've run into and how you can mitigate them.

1. Language is irrelevent when at the ground-level. Walk away from the C# versus VB argument. From the VFP perspective, VB.NET is easier to understand and 99% as functional. What you'll find as you get more proficient is that it's just as easier to understand or code in either. So focus on VB.Net. Once you understand VB code without a reference manual, C# will make sense and you'll find yourself pretty much equally adept at either.

2. Get foundational literature. Anything by Charles Petzold works for me (the Programming Windows series, for example). I found myself using old functions like Str() because I could when I should have been thinking x.ToString. I had to make a mental effort to break that pattern and it really pays off as you get more into the complex Framework types.

3. Get a buddy. You are going to have, from a .NET developers perspective, stupid questions. It's inevitable. Have someone or someones who are willing to answer your seemingly dumb questions without issue.

4. Ignore the bleeding edge. If building a basic ASP.NET page befuddles you, you have no business looking at Silverlight or cloud computing. Get confident in the basics and it'll add tremendously to your understanding of the other stuff.

5. Set a functional goal. If an employer is not already paying you to do so, finf something simple worth doing and code your first project towards that. Or convert your simplest VFP app.

6. Apply Extreme Programming (XP) principles. Your first app may work but your code will suck. So what? One ot the tenets to XP is to refactor until good. Once something works, refactor towards best practices. If you break it,so what? Revert to working code.

7. Do not assume examples on the Web are canon, In the old Fox world, for the most part, people only posted code that they knew worked. Not so these days - there is a lot of crap out there. Take the ideas to heart as presented but be very leery of the code - especially if it's using Northwind or AdventureWorks since those dbs seem to be the refuges of the semi-competent.

8. Take pride of ownership, If you're a good VFP developer you will be a good .NET developer. Be proud of making things that work no matter how minor. You'll get better because if you've already mastered VFP then .NET is just a different syntax.

9. Give it time. Don't get frustrated, Think about how long it took you to master what you already know and expect another learning curve here as well. Not all skills are transportable to .NET from VFP but common sense is.

Generics Love

2009-08-19T20:08:00.000-07:00

Wow ... been a long time since I posted here. I've been really busy learning a whole new set of technologies and paradigms; well, at least new to me.

I'm on a WCF project in VB.Net, Framework 3.5 SP1. The class model being used is beautiful as far as OOP goes (yes, I think .Net has finally surpassed VFP in OOP in almost all aspects).

It's a bit of a pickle with the model handed to me which I must adhere to. The output will be serialized based on the model and the consuming requires a certain structure.

Here's a simulation of the model, roughly, in psuedocode:

Class ClubMember
(a number of attributes like Name, MemberID, et al)
Public Property Talks as Presentations
Endclass

Class ActiveMember
Inherits ClubMember
(a few more atomic properties+
Endclass

Class ActiveMembers
Inherits List (of ActiveMember)
Endclass

Class Presentation
(Buncha attributes for a presentation)
Endclass

Class Presentations
Inherits List (of Presentation)
Endclass

ActiveMembers are derived from a stored proc from a source table, Members
Presentations are derived from a Presentations table with a Many to One to Members

My question is, where is the focal point in this model to integrate the DAL when requiring ActiveMembers? Simply put, where does the code go to create the individual objects and the lists? I mean, I can make it work as it stands but it ain't pretty. What would be a best practice approach?

Cat - Fox Detente

2009-07-13T21:57:00.000-07:00

My zen-master cat has done it again. This time, he's made friends with a pair of foxes. When I went to let him in this morning he was sitting on the railing of my deck happily watching two foxes. One was rooting around on my deck and the other was nearby watching. It looked like they were a mated pair.

Beautiful animals. The larger one, I presume the male, wasn't really afraid of me and actually walked over towards me. I was late to work so had no time to explore this further but my guess would be that neighbors are feeding them and they are not scared of people too much.

I spoke with a co-worker who knows about these things and she said it's possible that they have a den nearby and that they're scoping out the area to see if it's safe to bring out the kits to play. That would be really cool. I wonder how I could make things more comfortable or protective for them.

If I was the mystical sort I'd wonder if it was karma - a fox family is comfortable with me and I was a comfortable member of the Fox Team. Hmmmm.....

My Apollo 11 @ 40

2009-07-10T21:16:00.000-07:00

Looking back, I really can't explain what transfixed me about the space program.

I was a little boy held in awe watching the last of the Mercury flights and then the Gemini series, when I could, on our Zenith console TV. I cried real tears when the deaths of the Apollo 1 astronauts were broadcast on the PA of my elementary school while most of my schoolmates looked at me as if I was crazy. I was vaguely familar with whom White and Chaffee were at the time but Gus Grissom was a hero! Gus Grissom died! A hero died!

As all small children do I got over it pretty quickly.

I recall not being impressed with the Apollo 7 mission because they didn't go anywhere. I didn't understand the concept of a safe mission to try out new hardware at the time.

Apollo 8 filled me with a sense of wonder. They were orbitting the moon! The moon! Of course, I was distracted by Christmas and the anticipation of presents as I was all of 8 years old. Frank Borman was the media darling of that mission and he was added to my pantheon of heroes.

Apollo 9 is a cypher to me. I can't recall anything about that shot. A pop song, the Monkees; something else must have taken front seat that I can't remember now.

Apollo 10 I followed as closely as a 9 year old could. When the LM descended towards the lunar surface I was mentally begging them to continue on and land. I could not understand how they could get so close and not just go all the way. Oh, it was frustrating for a young and impatient space junkie.

Then came 11. THE moonshot. I followed every little interview on TV and article in the paper - the Miami Herald in my neck of the woods. It was summertime and I had no school and no other responsibilities so I watched every televised moment of the mission.

It's funny - every one talks about Walter Cronkite and Wally Schirra's telecasts of the mission as being the definitive broadcasts. I have to say that Cronkite's lack of technical savvy turned me off even at that young age even though I knew then, somehow, that he was a news icon.

My TV hero for Apollo 11 was ABC News' Jules Bergman. The man knew his stuff. He would pick up his little models of the CM and LM and show how they worked and what they would do and you just knew he knew exactly what he was talking about. I also remember bit pieces on NBC by a very enthusiastic Jay Barbree who's still following NASA to this day. I don't know whatever happened to Bergman but he deserves attention for his insights and reporting.

July 20 1969: I sat on the floor a few feet from the old Zenith console while my parents sat several feet behind on the couch when the Eagle landed, in the evening our time. It was Christmas and the Fourth of July all rolled into one for me. My parents, alas, were less than elated. The TV said that the astronauts would take a rest period before leaving the LM and that meant BEDTIME to the folks.

I whined and cajoled and...just before being forced to bed the TV announced that the astronauts would be coming out soon! I reclaimed my spot on the carpet and watched various news analysts debate whther the men would sink into lunar dust and what other calamities may befell them.

Finally, FINALLY, a bit after 10 PM they exited the LM. The static-laced images came through as well as Armstrongs famous first words: "One small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind". He then moved around a bit and, belatedly, the TV image was overlaid with a "MAN ON MOON" caption. Or something like that; I'm sure I could look it up but it would steal from the memory.

After a while of watching my parent insisted I go to bed. It must have been around midnight and, frankly, I was so tired with anticipation and the excitement that I didn't complain.

The next morning the Herald headline was "MAN ON MOON" in the largest type I had ever seen. I sat at our dining room table until my Dad was finished with the paper and passed it over to me (I had been an avid reader for a while by that time). I read it quickly and without depth; I waited for my Dad's attention to move elsewhere. Then I took the front page and stashed it in my room to keep what I thought was forever (It was destroyed by Hurricane Andrew in 1992).

The later missions didn't impact me as much. I remember Shepard's golf drive and a few other things from the successful missions. The Apollo 13 crisis was surreal to me - I thought that NASA was infallible and that it was all going to be OK and it wasn't until years later that I understood how wrong I was and the depth of the crisis.

I'm 49 now and it's almost 37 years since the end of the moon missions. In 1974 I had to do a report for school on the Space Shuttle. I thought it was a great idea but when I saw it was limited to low earth orbit I knew, even at that age, that human spaceflight was going to be limited to a low ceiling for a long time to come. So when Viking landed on Mars shortly thereafter I wanted; no, I needed proof of life to be found to give us a reason to go out again.

Even if the most ambitious plans of NASA are funded to fruition, with typical teething delays, I'll be 70+ before a man walks on Mars. Buzz and Neil will no longer be with us. It doesn't seem fair.

Standards

2009-06-17T20:43:00.000-07:00

A smallish rant.

There are a lot of IT departments out there who have rigid standards on every aspect of application development. Coding standards, naming standards, etc etc.

Unfortunately, most shops have adopted standards as a means of control. Standards put in place for thus reason are often an actual impediment to the process of software design.

Standards should exist for one reason and one reason only - to ensure reproducible quality in work performed. A standard should not detract from the process but should enable a quality bar.

Hungarian Notation Diatribe

2009-06-16T19:46:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I think coding standards are like fashion standards. Often, styles and notation are fawned all over one year and then criticized and passe the next.

The current target of the code fashion moguls is Hungarian notation. That's the idea of prefacing a variable or object name with the type of variable or object.

According to what I've researched, this is no longer needed because of Intellisense and cute little popups when you hover over code telling you all about the source of the entity. So, if you still use code conventions like btnEdit for an button with an Edit caption, you're some sort of reprobate.

Interestingly, Microsoft stays away from this debate in code samples. To them, a Label is forevermore Label1 in sample code. I can kind of understand that since being an ex-Softie I remember the reluctance to embrace 3rd party"standards".

Personally, I still use a type of Hungarian and probably always will. I don't see why it's such a bad thing to name a variable boolActive when it's a boolean flag or intChildren when it's an integer variable. Who does it hurt? It makes hard-printed code easier to read and it's easier to "digest" a block of code with its intent. The name of the variable or object has no impact on the stack or heap so what does it matter?

Stupid code standard dweebs. Get a real job.

VS 2008 Bug with Master Pages

2009-06-11T21:19:00.000-07:00

This is really dumb.....

I created a template that uses a Master Page with the skmmenu control - a very common menu control. With the template I have a default.aspx file that has nothing but a reference to the master page. Simple enough?

When creating a web site based on the template, I get an "Error Creating Control" when I look at default.aspx. However, if I first click on MasterPage and leave it in Source view and then click on default page, the menu bitmap is shown and no error.

Obviously, there's a synch issue here but even more obvious to me is that there are a group of testers in DevDiv at MS doing a shit job.

It's becoming increasingly apparent to me that MS is pushing out code that isn't being vetted fully and UX (docs, examples) can't keep up either. C'mon guys....all the cool tools in the world won't help us out here in the real world if you don't testit or document it.

ASP Menu Control and XMLDataSource

2009-06-08T14:25:00.000-07:00

Alright, who's the dumbass who decided to make it so that it's very, very counterintuitive to create a horizontal menu strip using the ASP.Net Menu control with an XMLDataSource?

Beat my head against this one all day. It's easy in code, easy in markup, but only ONE root node from XML? Gimme a break.

Great Songs/Videos

2009-05-07T01:50:00.000-07:00

One of the best of recent years

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMryBJiGGqY

Tech Surfing, USA!

2009-05-01T00:13:00.000-07:00

Sorry....thinking about the title got me to thinking of old 60's beach songs. Anyway...

Being jobless for the last month put me into a lot of interview cycles. And, as is the wont, I was asked a lot of leading questions about my experience. How much do I know about Team Foundation Server? SQL Server 2008? WCF?

One can always buffalo and claim experience when the truth is that very few have a great amount of experience in any of these things. I opted for the truth - "heard about 'em, read about 'em - and I'll learn 'em when it's needed".

IMHO, anyone who claims expertise in anything in the development world with a shelf life of less that 2 years or so is a liar. Let's be honest here - a serious development project takes months of planning and requirements gathering. Serious and/or experienced developers don't bet the farm on brand-new technologies. They just don't unless they have really gullible clients.

So...the project kicks off and is projected to last 6-9 months (an IT average - look it up - used to be 18 months). During that time the dev team is doing their best to implement functionality using what they already know, right? So where does the new stuff come in? That's shit they play with at home.

SQL Server 2008? Gimme a break. Good DBAs don't mess with infrastructure without a compelling need. Sure, they might standup a SQL 2005 or 2008 database for a limited project but the business will likely be run on SQL Server 2000 ... maybe 2005.

TFS is great. From a test perspective it's nirvana in that you can create and manage tests within a development project. And it supplants VSS - a longtime standard. So maybe it has more traction in newer projects.

WCF? Everyone wants it, no one seems to really know it. It has reinvigorated looks into SOA architecture but we've had that since Web Services and SOAP and WSDL and all that junk came around in 2000.

The botton-line point I am making is that a good skills assessment should be made on what was hot 3 years ago because those are the only technologies that anyone is going to have any real-world experience with.

I am proudly ignorant of F#, cloud computing,and other current and future paradigms. Ask me again 3 years from now.

The Invaders!

2009-03-17T20:21:00.001-07:00

Something possessed me to add the old series, The Invaders, to my Netflix queue a few months ago. I vaguely remembered liking it when I was a kid when it first came out n 1967. So far, I've seen several of the original episodes and, man!, what a great show that was!

It's done by Quinn Martin,the same guys who did The FBI and The Fugitive and it has the same hallmarks: Voiceover intro and ending, "Act I", "Act II", et al.

The premise is that some guy sees an alien spacecraft land and can't convince anyone of it. Meanwhile, while he's checking it out, his home is burned down, the police think he's nuts, and his business partner dies. So now he's on the run hunting them down each episode.

Great show and it's an obvious influence on later shows like the X-Files.

Cat - Raccoon Detente

2009-01-08T22:13:00.000-08:00

If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes I'd never have believed it.

My family owns a cat that is the most peace-loving, mellow cat ever born. This cat had never attacked another animal as far as I know. It loves to go out on our back deck and watch the squirrels carry on and the squirrels have accepted the fact that it's a passive observer and will parade right in front of it without fear.

Sometimes I leave unsalted peanuts out for the squirrels and, the other night, there were several that the squirrels had missed. As I was reading on the back porch I saw a raccoon come up to the deck and - timidly - start to grab and each the nuts. Meanwhile, my cat came to the back porch door and wanted out. With some trepidation I let him out.

The cat went about halfway across the deck before noticing the raccoon. The raccoon backed off and started making itself look bigger by extending it's forearms and trying to look menacing. My cat just stood there looking left and right and never directly at the raccoon.

The raccoon advanced on the cat and got face-to-face and started swishing it's forearms and snarling. The cat continued to act non-chalant. The raccoon then took a few steps back and reapproached the cat peacefully, nodding it's head up and down.

It walked right up to the cat and both animals sniffed each other nose to nose. Satisfied, the raccoon resumed eating nuts while the cat sat scant inches away without a care in the world.

I called the cat in that night but the next night I let the cat out and a few minutes later saw my cat *playing* with the raccoon. Every few minutes the animals would stop playing and do a "kissy, kissy" with the noses again. It was clear that they enjoyed each others company.

Is that normal or am I raising the Gandhi of cats?

Burnin' For You

2008-12-22T21:25:00.000-08:00

My stupid science project:

Sometimes I can be a doggone good engineer but I don't build well. Therefore, half of my projects end up as scattered notes in a drawer or very cool diagrams somewhere else.

I've been studying radioisotope thermal generators (RTGs) for some time and think I've come up with a half-decent design for a heliothermal generator using focal mirrors and off-the-shelf thermocouples. Essentially, think a heat collector with thermocouples back-ended into a cool granite block for maximum temperature gradient.

My generator would look like a very shiny satellite dish about 18-20" in diameter focusing solar heat on a "hockey puck" containing the ends of about 50 thermocouples. The others ends are sheilded and pass into a granite block or other thermal-negative material to maximize electrical potential.

The math indicates I might produce about 380 Watts at 1vA under optimal conditions. Cool, huh?

I see more notes in more drawers in my future :-)

Live! (Almost) From the Atlanta MSDN Developer Conference

2008-12-16T20:04:00.000-08:00

Sorry there was no "heads-up" on this one; I've only known that I would be attending for the last few weeks. Normally I'd have posted something that I'll be at event X on day Y but my work schedule and the craziness of this time of year precluded that.

The Atlanta (and other cities) MDC is meant to distill critical developer sessions from PDC into a one-day event. I talked with a 'Softie about the purpose and execution of the event (dude, sorry, didn't note the name) and it seems that MS was not entirely convinced this was not a good idea since, at $99 per registration with speakers and MVPs comped, it was going to cost the company money.

Well, IMHO, I got more bang from the buck at this one day event than I have from any other in quite some time. If you'll excuse the phrase, MS went balls-to-the-walls and showed off a lot of stuff coming down the road that was definitiely ooh-and-ahh.

In the keynote alone, superbly managed by Ron Jacobs, we got doses of Azure and cloud computing, "Geneva", new SQL Services, Live Services, Silverlight/VS 2010 stuff, and Windows 7.

Ron used an interesting analogy to being aware of future technologies - he said is what like playing Age of Empires online and managing your kingdom only to find it rushed by your competitior without warning. I thought at first he was a bit melodramatic and was heavu-handed with the point but then, later, settled into more concrete and less fearful uses of the analogy.

My main take-away from the keynote was the unbridled enthusiasm and hope for Windows 7. Yes, "hope" not "hype". Ron was very open about what Vista falldowns are overcome by Windows 7 and showed a bit of a cool demo using the new HP touchscreen PC (which further justified my upcoming purchase of that machine - In your face, Tray!!)

Yeah, I could post a kool-aid faux knowledgable lie about the other things he talked about and say how wonderful they were since he used the stock phrase "isn't that cool?" enough times but, honestly, I am not familiar enough with the technologies to pass judgement and I'm not one to gush on hype. I have grown very conservative over the years judging upfront how a new platform or technology will service me and my customers so no insult intended for Ron or my former employer.

A friend from the Fox world, Alan Stevens, presented on the future of managed languages and cool stuff like JQuery (damn, now I'm doing the cool thing). Alan did a great, great job. Allow me an aside for a moment, this conference had a room christened the "Community Courtyard" with whiteboards and seats to discuss things. Alan *openly* sought out people looking for more information and then ran informal seminars in that room using the whiteboards and a clear, consistant manner to answering questions and directing the discussion. A few of the other speakers added commentary but Alan captivated about a dozen folks with expert insight into a variety of web architectural scenarios. It's easy to find technology experts, people persons, and great teachers, but it's RARE to find all in one guy. If MS doesn't hire this guy or make him a permanent addition to their speaker list they're missing the boat.

I continued to attend sessions in the Tools and Languages track and, thankfully, my co-workers attended sessions in other tracks so Advanced Systems Design got a full knowledge spread from their attendees.

I'm still digesting and I'll undoubtedly post more in the coming days as it occurs to me. It's almost midnight and I'm really tired from the 5 hour drive. I didn't immediately learn a lot but I never do from 75 minutes of being dictated to. However, I did have my interest piqued a-plenty and saw many things to be on the lookout for in the future.

Hey, Microsoft! Great job by your regional folks and you should do this every year. Thanks!

Being There (Part Two)

2008-12-12T23:04:00.001-08:00

I have to make this post to clarify a position since my Inbox indicates that my message was received as an indictment against VFP.

In a nutshell I said in my last post that I had disengaged from speaking about Fox or otherwise encouraging the Fox community because I thought it was akin to leading folks down a dead-in path.

What I DIDN'T say is that Visual FoxPro is a bad product or development platform. In fact it is my opinion that to this day and for some time to come Fox is a superior tool for delivering Windows-based line-of-business applications. It is also a superior tool for creating COTS applications involving heavy data.

VFP is the victim of indifferent marketing and secondary product placement. Not bad engineering. Good Fox apps will trump a lot of other apps in the Windows environment when written by good devs.

Being There

2008-12-06T23:59:00.000-08:00

My current employer has invited me to attend a one-day DevCon in Atlanta later this month. I accepted the invitation not because I was all that keen on attending but because I really like these guys and if they want me there I'll go.

As is probably obvious to thoise who know me, I've totally backed off of the conference scene - with the possible exception of the March MVP Summit. I don't respond to Call To Speakers and I don't solicit invitations to speak or attend conferences.

Why?

Several reasons.

While I cherish my part in the Fox community I can't see myself speaking to that community anymore because I don't have a good feeling about the viability of being a Fox developer in the future. Yeah, I could stand there and give a rousing presentation on CursorAdaptors or MemberClasses; I mean, I really know that stuff. But it would feel wrong to me; I would feel like the 50's actor standing on stage talking about the motivations of his character in a lesser-known movie from that era.

I am busting butt to ramp up my .Net skills. That's what I now do for a living but it'll take time for me to get to the same level of skill that I have/had in Fox. Therefore, I don't feel comfortable presenting in that area as well.

Finally, as a former member of the Microsoft VS Data team, people may expect me to have knowledge and skills that I don't have since all of my time there was spent on VFP. I don't want to look like a doofus. I'm not ready to live up to the expectations others would have of me because I was at MS during the release of .Net.

It would be easy - very easy I imagine - to parley my past into numerous speaking and writing engagements centered around Fox. But whom would I be serving? If I go out and tell developers that Fox is great, Fox is cool, and look what can be done!, aren't I forestalling them from considering other languages and professional growth?

Maybe I'm being maudlin but I believe I have an obligation to the hundreds of friends and the thousands of people who know me by reputation. That obligation is to not push folks towards technologies that are dying. It's to hold up a lamp in the storm and help point a way through the storm knowing I'm not a navigator.

Common Table Expressions

2008-11-26T11:08:00.000-08:00

Someone I work with turned me on to SQL Server 2005 Common Table Expressions (CTEs) a few months ago and I'm really starting to get into them.

CTEs are ways to create a derived set of data; sort of like a view but it doesn't persist in the database after being used. Here's a simple example:

WITH ProductSales (ProductID, ProductName, TotalSales)
(
SELECT product.ProductID,product.ProductName,
TotalSales = (SELECT SUM(Quantity)
FROM salesdetail
WHERE salesdetail.ProductID = product.ProductID)

FROM product
)

You then use SELECT * FROM ProductSales to get the results. Actually, you have to immediately query the results before doing any other non-CTE SQL.

I wonder if this is something we should have thought of for Visual FoxPro 9. Probably would have if Gene Goldhammer hadn't retired since he tended to think about new data features.

Bits of Madness

2008-11-22T19:45:00.000-08:00

I ran into an odd situation this week while coding a webform with Yes and No radiobuttons using the RadioButtonList control.

Traditionally, Yes and No are presented in a control with Yes being first. Therefore, in a .Net RadioButtonList control, the Index value for Yes is 0 (zero), while the Index value for No is 1. Being the old traditionalist that I am, I assigned 0 to the Value property for No and 1 to the Value for Yes.

This is an unbound control but is sourced to a Bit column in a SQL Server table. A Bit column is referenced in T-SQL as 0 for No and 1 for Yes, for example:

UPDATE mytable SET mybitfield = 0

This would set MyBitField to No.

When I grab this column into a Dataset in Visual Studio and want to convert it into an integer, I use the CInt function. CInt, though, converts a Yes to -1 and No to 0.

So now we have the following for my simple radiobuttons:

Yes No
Control.Index 0 1
Control.Value 1 0
MyBitField 1 0
CInt("mybitfield") -1 0

And this makes my head hurt

The simple solution is to assign Control.SelectedValue to Abs(CInt("mybitfield")) which will convert the -1 to 1 and leave the 0 values as is. But others might scratch their head while reviewing the code.

Another way to simplify this would be if I changed the control so that No came first, changing the control from Yes / No to No / Yes. That, however, goes against the way people think. I don't recall hearing anyone talk about a "No / Yes situation". I guess I could also reverse the assigned Values for the control so that No is 1 and Yes is 0 but that doesn't feel right either.

Sigh. Leave it to Microsoft to complicate something as simple as Boolean logic.

Been A While

2008-11-21T23:09:00.000-08:00

I've been coding my ass off. Plus, my wife accepted a new position about 5 weeks ago and she's now working 60 hours a week making my "free" time an exercise into being a more complete Mr. Mom along with my 40-50 hour a week work.

Some of you all are going to hate me but I've backed off of the VFP to .Net bootcamp idea because, in all honesty, the more I delve into this the less I see for an open-minded, dedicated, and professional developer to overcome. I'm sorry but it's just not that freaking hard what with the extensive online support forums and a learned approach.

I still hope to make the next MVP Global Summit as a guest of the lovely and brilliant Ms. Pountney...that's looking good! I can't wait to see old friends and co-workers. When I left MS 3 years ago I was suffering a lot of personal issues and I didn't believe I was being treated fairly by HR but I rarely held it against my team members (with one exception who is no longer with the company). For me it'll be emotional....it will be great to see them all.

Spore

2008-09-27T14:11:00.000-07:00

There's a new game out called "Spore" by Electronic Arts. It was designed by Wil Wright, the designer of SimCity. In Spore, the player evolved a species from a single-celled organism to a pan-galactic empire interacting on-line with other player empires.

I don't own Spore. I'm afraid to buy Spore. Given my previous addictions to SimCity, Civilization, and Masters of Orion I am deathly afraid of the addictive nature of Spore.

Spore: Be afraid. Be very afraid!

VFP to .Net Armageddon

2008-09-22T18:42:00.001-07:00

I cobbled up an article for VFUG about how Fox folks could apply legacy skills to web development in VS.Net I have to admit, though, that I could only get into the grossest points of the topic since it's a "mile-wide" topic and no single article does it justice.

Frankly, I'm not qualified to write a series of articles on all the particulars because I'm still figuring out a lot of it for myself. I'm heartened by my findings that my legacy skills as a Fox coder since 1986 are translateable but it'll take me years to become an authoritative source on the subject matter in totality.

Meanwhile, there seems to be a disconnect between early adopters of .Net from the VFP ranks and the rank and file. I'm not sure why. It may be that the general feeling is that the early adopters have it all figured out and are talking down to the VFP base. I know that's not the intent and I'm not trying to flame anyone.

Do we need a VFP to .Net bootcamp? I think so. Not some marketing BS or a con that glosses over topics but an honest to goodness Marine Corps style bootcamp? Hands-on, bring your laptops, share, explore, learn???

Some feedback, folks? I'd love to organize such an event but your valuable comments will help sway my decision.

Freaking Checkboxes....

2008-08-13T20:23:00.000-07:00

Why on earth do checkboxes not have both readonly and enabled properties and have the same behavior as other input controls with these properties? This is retarded and really hurts consistent UI design.

Useful .Net stuff

2008-08-13T20:14:00.000-07:00

Web work in .Net .....

I was deliberating between using a skin and a CSS for a control. The problem was that I needed to modify the behavior of a control and skins are only used, supposedly, for display properties. On a lark, I defined the behavior I wanted in my CSS file:

input.calculatedfield
{

text-align: right;

}

And then in the .skin file I added to the skin definition:

CssClass="calculatedfield"

To my surprise, this worked! The control, in this case a TextBox, inherited both the display attributes of the skin and the alignment behavior of the stylesheet.

Another tip for web newbies: Avoid the MS Sans Serif and Arial fonts. They only display well at 10pt and above size. Try Tahoma font, which looks great at 9pt and will save you about 15% or so of screen space.

Upcoming VFUG Article

2008-08-12T19:27:00.000-07:00

I agreed to write an article about .Net for VFP folks. Lately, I've been working with ASP.Net and web stuff exclusively but I see a lot of "hooks" that I think will register with the Fox faithful. There are a lot of parallels and I don't see where anyone has drawn those similarities together. I'll do my best!

Good Buddies

2008-07-27T10:37:00.000-07:00

I had a chance to chat with Randy Brown, formerly of the Fox Team, the other night. We had a great conversation. I am sometimes terrible about keeping up with people and haven't spoken with Randy for a few months.

He's getting married on the 9th of August and his fiance delivered a beautiful baby girl on June 6th. My family wishes his family all the best.

Here's a link to some baby pics on Flickr.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/randybr/sets/72157605562372633/

Technical Fixation

2008-06-26T17:35:00.000-07:00

Ever noticed that when some coders learn a new technique they apply it like slathering butter on bread even where it makes no sense?

I'm re-engineering a web page where there is a parent-child relationship between two entities akin to a user and what rights they might have. The original coder used two listboxes to show assigned and available rights (good!) but then used checkboxes in each listbox row with a check all box in the header (the newly learned technique). To move rights around you check your butt off and then hit Save changes.

What the hell? I'm replacing it with the traditional mover lists construct while enabling multiple selections in each list. A lot fewer mouse clicks when moving shit around and conforms to a better understood standard, IMHO.

To paraphrase an old saying, if builders built buildings the way some web designers code web pages the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.

I go back to what I keep preaching: Experienced Fox coders should run absolute rings around pure .Net weenies if they put up the intellectual investment to learn the syntax and idiosyncrasies of .Net. MS has had problems with migrating VB 6 coders to VB .Net and adoption of VB .Net has been slow. Wanna know why, IMHO? Because most VB coders couldn't architect their way out of a bird fountain. Experienced VFPers understand the interconnection between all aspects of the application and think long and hard about the architecture, meaning UI and classlibs, before writing a line of code.

You all could be rockstars. My sole regret is that it took this long for me to get this deeply involved with .Net not to see it.

A New Neurophysical Theory

2008-06-22T20:59:00.000-07:00

OK, this is complicated, bear with me.

I spent the day today watching the rebroadcast of Carl Sagan's Cosmos on the Science Channel. My wife, Teri, flitted in and out without a real interest in the show. After 18 years of marriage, I'm used to that - my sense of awe and wonder not being reflected back is common - she just doesn't care.

It sometimes bothers me. I know my wife is intelligent and I always took her lack of interest in science or history as an affront; a personal insult since - to me - a lack of interest was a vague reproof since she obviously had the brains to comprehend the material.

I know she loves me and wouldn't want to hurt my feelings, so there had to be another answer. Sagan inspired, I began to think about what was going on. I came to what I believe is an answer that has profound implications in a lot of areas.

What if she doesn't care about these topics because she's not genetically or intellectually predisposed to do so although entirely capable? Is it possible that there is an evolutionary governor in our brains that sets limits to the amount of interest we should show in certain topics?

I think it would be part of the survival mechanism. What good does it do for an individual to be too wrapped up in looking at the stars if a sabertoothed tiger is coming in for the kill?

Is there a mechanism in our brains that limits our interests in areas that have no direct bearing in our personal survival in the here and now? Is this why so many kids have a hard time learning abstract math like Algebra?

Are those of us who yearn for more information about the Universe and read history genetically inferior because we are diverting energies away from attention directly related to personal survival and the propogation of species?

Does evolution put soft barriers in our minds - "No, no you don't have to think about that" on certain subjects? Is that barrier elastic insofar as it can be stretched when an area of thought is linked to another area the brain thinks is important? I think so.

So many things make sense if my hypothesis is applied. I'm sure I'd word all of this better if I was a psychiatric clinician.

I wish I could explain it better.

What, This is Hard?

2008-06-18T16:08:00.000-07:00

More time diving into the peculiarities of the .Net Framework...

I have to say that I am not finding this very hard at all. Granted, I can't do UI design using Divs and such in ADO to save my life (mental block - I expect things to be rendered where I goddamn put them) the coding is nothing that any other experienced VFP-er would take very much time to learn.

In fact, I'm coming to actually love the way this all holds together. Mind you, this project is stuck with 2.0 Framework and I'm sure that a lot of what I'm grinding through is better handled in 3.0 and 3.5.

Still, though, there are weirdnesses that I guess are better handled by experience. It's the same in VFP, I suppose, but I had years and years and professional incentive to master those oddities. I'm now exposed to the firehose.

Example: If you include a column in a GridView but don't actually show it, the value is blank. WTF??? I can't count the number of times I had a primary key stashed in a ListBox or Grid in VFP and made it's length zero just so I could grab the value from the selected row when needed. Nope, not in .Net unless you use a Template field (I think that's what it is called - kinda away from .Net at the moment).

I'm finding that I leave a lot of my control state code (what's visible, read only, etc.. based on selections and environment after a postback) in the Page_PreRender method. Is that good practice? Dunno...works for me.

I'm heading in the direction of either being a damn good .Net coder or a damn bad one. Haven't figured that out yet; it may be years before I do. I wish I could get out to a con and bang heads and compare notes with McNeish or Markus to get a better feel. For now I have to operate under the guideline that if it works, it must be good code.

Is It Really That Hard?

2008-05-31T18:32:00.000-07:00

Another week with ADO.Net 2.0.

I'm finding that my experience in VFP apps is directly usable in my approach to the design and behavior of web forms. So, what doesn't seem obvious to co-workers insofar as look-and-feel and behavior is obvious to me. Then it's a matter of researching the framework and the .Net OOP model to see how to get it done. Folks I work with are much more familiar with .Net but it seems my approach is novel to them and, for the most part, admired.

I believe I'm pretty smart, but not exceptional in our community. I really think that if presented the right way, dyed-in-the-wool VFP developers would accept and thrive in the .Net environment. Oddly enough, it's the stuff that we take for granted and have the most experience with that drives traditional .Net developers nuts.

Confusion and Bad Docs

2008-05-28T21:01:00.000-07:00

Continuing on my reincarnation as a developer.

It's getting old that, in .Net, event x will only work when property y is set a certain way. In most cases, the documentation makes no mention of these cavaets and you have to stumble around until you figure this out for yourself. At least in the VFP world we attempted to document exceptional behavior.

Someone needs to compile a list of all these weirdnesses and then convince Whil Hentzen to publish a book.

Back In The Saddle

2008-05-14T20:54:00.000-07:00

I am now in the first week in my new position, for the first time in 10 years, as a pure software developer. I was dreading it but now find that I am really quite happy analyzing issues and proposing and architecting solutions. I never knew how much I deeply missed this aspect of IT.

I coded a fair amount at MS; writing tests and re-engineering our automation harness, Mace, to work with the departmental standard Maddog. But looking at a business process; stakeholder issues, and goals was something I hadn't done in a long time and ... darn it .... I still love it.

Yes, I still have to code .Net web stuff and T-SQL. Not worried; T-SQL is childs play and anything .Net is just a matter of syntax if you know how you want to proceed. Fortunately, I seem to have found an employer who appreciates the experience more than the language expertise.

Hurrah!

2008-05-09T19:32:00.000-07:00

I start a new job on Monday at somewhat better pay and benefits than my previous engagement.

The scary part is that it's ostensibly an ASP.Net developer position. Although I made it abundantly clear to the recruiter and manager that I was complete crap in ASP.Net they hired me anyway. Apparently, there's a trememdous amount of data munging involved with the project they have earmarked me for so perhaps my 25 years of xBase and SQL experience appeals to them.

Regardless of their reasonings, I am very happy to be gainfully employed again. I was tired of the job search - difficult in a small city such as this because of the limited number of senior level positions available.

Musings

2008-05-07T22:27:00.000-07:00

Lately, gas prices in Tallahassee have been hovering around $3.65 a gallon; perhaps a few cents higher than the national average. It's making an impact on me, I can tell you, since simply taking the kids to school and picking them up again is an investment of about 40 miles of travel. 40 miles is about 2.1 gallons of gas in my old, trusty 1996 Volvo 850 (with 210,000 miles!) which gets roughly 18 miles to the gallon.

If you look at the national average commute distances (I think it's 27 miles one way) and gas mileage (I believe it's 25 MPG) it's apparent that your average worker is paying $2-3 more per day to go to work than last year. Ugh. And it isn't going to get any better; I would estimate seeing trends that the average price for a gallon of gas by Summer, 2009 will probably be about $4.50. Another $2 per day gone.

There are attempts to manufacture an outcry versus the oil companies but they only produce about an 8% net profit in a highly speculative market so there's no real objective cause to rally against them. Having a gas tax holiday is just plain stupid - it won't impact consumers that much and we need that revenue for infrastructure.

Europeans have paid $4 a gallon and more since the early 90's. Maybe the chickens have finally come home to roost and we, as Americans, just have to deal with it.

Maybe, just maybe, the current "crisis" will spure shale-oil conversion and other domestically friendly energy initiatives and alternatives that will once again make this all affordable.

Then again, that assumes intelligence and objectivity in Congress. Hahahaha.

The Unholy Trinity of Dates and Other Comments

2008-05-07T11:07:00.000-07:00

This weekend comes my annual nightmare of having three important family days coming at or near the same day. My son's birthday, his 17th, is May 10th. My anniversary (my 18th) is May 11th, as is Mother's Day. I kind of wish that they were spread out a bit more because it's hard to give the kind of attention each event deserves.

My brother's birthday was May 9th but he passed away in 2005. He would have been 41 this year.

A few weeks later is my birthday, 48th, on the 26th. Not that I care about my birthday anymore.

I was reading Cathy's blog about an issue with report variables and multiple detail bands. A few issues apparently escaped our attention or were "Won't Fix-ed" during VFP9 testing as it was difficult to come up with automated tests for multiple detail bands and we were stretched really, really thin in personnel by that time. Sorry about that.

What to Do When Your MSDN is Stolen

2008-05-03T17:33:00.000-07:00

So, when I was terminated from my last position, I had the option of immediately retrieving my personal effects or of getting them later. I chose later to avoid turmoil. All of my effects were boxed up almost immediately and shipped to my home a few weeks later.

About 2 weeks ago I needed a SQL Server disk and went into the box that was shipped. My MSDN binder was not there.

I had a year-long MSDN subscription, courtesy of an MVP award to my friend Cathy Pountney, that expired last year but I had all of the critical disks - Vista, VS 2005, and Office 2007. I kept the binder and disks at work since I was constantly creating virtual machines for testing and the company's copies were not always available.

My first few inquiries to my former employer were not answered and, finally, they performed a search for the binder and could not locate it. Since they are a secure facility I don't have the option of looking myself.

I am left in a bit of a spot. I could report the missing disks to MS and as the regcodes are unique (I think, for the big stuff) perhaps they could invalidate them.

If I do this and the subscription disks were stolen, it'd be the right thing to do. If the disks were inadvertantly mixed in with the company's own subscriptions then it could cause them problems and I don't really want to do that.

What to do?

Fox Team 2008

2008-04-24T21:36:00.001-07:00

By pure happenstance, I've recenly had the pleasure to write or otherwise chat with a lot of the folks who worked on VFP 8 and 9. It occurred to me that there's no single source of information on everyone, if anyone cares, so here's what I know:

YAG (Y. Alan Griver). Still doing good communities architect work at MS and part-time involved with VFP issues and Sedna. Still happily attached to Ms. Beth Massi, another VFP superstar and now working with VB at MS.
Gene Goldhammer. Happily retired in Las Vegas. Honestly, haven't seen or heard from him since 2005 DevCon.
Ken Levy. Very involved with VSX so much so that he doesn't return emails from his pals (hey Ken!).
Randy Brown. Still (willfully) unemployed. Engaged with a child due in June and official marriage in August.
Calvin Hsia. Deeply involved with VB.Net and LINQ and still posting great code at http://blogs.msdn.com/Calvin_Hsia/
Aleksey Tsingauz. The database code master is also involved with LINQ at MS and impressing everyone, as usual.
Richard Stanton. Kicking butt still in the VS world for MS and doing some work for Sedna.
Mike Stewart. Working for a startup and loving every minute of it. Still residing in Redmond with his wife.
Chandra Srinivasan. Formerly a VFP tester, now a developer in the Windows division. He's now married (since July 2007).
Garrett Fitzgerald. Gainfully employed in Maine where he resides with his family.
Greg Reichert. Employed in Memphis, TN, since last year. Lost his wife earlier this year (so sad). One of the best and most intuitive VFP coders I have ever met.
David Anderson. Still going strong as a partner in Alden Anderson, LLC. A gifted database man.
Jay Jones. The buildmaster for VFP9, now working as the same with Visual Studio.

Boy, it's fun to remember old times!

Starvin Marvin

2008-04-16T21:20:00.000-07:00

Yep, that's me! Still unemployed after two months. Perhaps I have been too picky about what I wanted to do or where I wanted to be. I was in one interview track that lasted two months where my potential employer loved me but the client has a veto vote and ....ahem... exercised that vote.

As I said, maybe I'm being too picky. If I was willing to relocate, I'd have a job very shortly; I've turned down offers. But it doesn't seem fair to my kids to relocate as I've asked them to do so four times in the last seven years.

Things are tough for an old Fox hand. Oh well, I guess I'll have to soldier on.

Arrggh

2008-03-02T00:39:00.000-08:00

I was fired on the 15th of Feb. It's something I saw coming as my previous manager left the company and the guy I was placed under never liked me. He essentially orchestrated an "epic fail" situation for me. This company is in utter chaos when it comes to process and organization and morale is in the toilet as well. In a way, I'm glad I was canned as I was looking to leave anyway. I'm on the fasttrack to a much more rewarding job.

My previous employer is date-driven. They don't allot for true testing cycles and they don't provide functional specifications. Shit is released to testing with major functionality not working. They are a leader in law enforcement technology by being first in the market for some tools but also having marketers who are good buddies with the customers. They have dreams of being a $100 MM company but, honestly, I don't know how that can happen with the idiots they have running the show.

Along with the idiots are a couple of rat-bastards. Folks who feel threatened when underlings show initiative so they go out of their way to screw them. Further dinks in morale.

I have the feeling that I will have the opportunity to dance on their graves in the next 12-18 months. I feel bad for the friends who are still there but....thems the breaks.

As I said, better opportunities are coming my way.....

The Other Big Game

2008-01-10T19:20:00.000-08:00

I find it amusing that the TV pundits are almost all wrong on predicting the results of the primaries so far. They seem to be missing the point of the whole primary game. I recall discussing this with some of my co-workers at MS over lunch during the early part of the 2004 campaign when Howard Dean was the leader of the Democratic pack.

A few of my friends were convinced that Dean would go on to win the nomination. It was obvious if you understand the process that Dean would not - I predicted that Kerry would get the nomination and I was right.

Am I that politically astute? No. It's a simple study in psychology to understand how the process evolves.

Think about this: Who gets involved in the early part of the process? People at the fervent extremes of their ideologies. Moderates may have an interest but, I believe, unlikely to vote in primaries in as great percentages as the politically motivated.

Huckabee won the Iowa caucus. Will he win the nomination? Hell, no. The man is an uber-Christian preacher who attracts strong conservatives who are now the most active Republicans in the process. He didn't win New Hampshire and it's unlikely that he will win too many other primaries coming up. He's too polarizing. The GOP winner will be McCain, Giuliani, or Romney in that order of likelihood. As time progresses they will begin to moderate their messages as more moderates become involved in the process.

On the Democratic side it's a slightly different equation. There is a very strong Democratic Party political machine who greatly promotes the candidate with the best chances to win. Analysis may dictate that Obama is currently the exciting candidate and the change candidate but Clinton is the annoited one and the influence of the "machine" will gradually push her into the winning position as time progresses.

The behind-the-scenes deal that will occur, I believe, is that Obama will be urged to drop out at some point and become part of a Clinton/Obama ticket. For the Party as a whole that would be the "best of both worlds" - it would mix the candidate of change with the establishment and possibly ameliorate some of the high negatives associated with Clinton.

The Big Game

2007-12-29T01:02:00.000-08:00

I have to admit to being torn by this game. If the Pats win, they go 16-0 and are the first undefeated regular season team since the 1972 Dolphins. If they lose, hey, no big deal for the playoffs.

I am a lifelong Dolphins fan. I attended several of the '72 games with my father and was in attendance for that final game versus the Colts that sealed the Perfect Season.

But I have seen the '07 Patriots in action. Offensively, they are a juggernaut. They don't even bother with an honest running game since they can pass at will. I've watched 5 Pats games this year and the only weakness I see is perhaps in the middle versus the play-action run or power run.

Can the Giants stop them? Sure. The Ravens and Eagles almost did. Dumb playcalling and sheer luck stopped those two teams from winning.

Will they? Lord knows. Manning is not terribly reliable but the Pats may rest their players. This may be a game for the ages.

Happy Holidays

2007-12-25T23:35:00.000-08:00

One of the downsides to this time of year is that I don't have the opportunity to personally wish all of my friends and associates good tidings for the season.

I am terrible at keeping track of phone numbers and addresses. Just terrible. I don't send out cards because I know for every address I have right there are a gazillion I have lost or overlooked and I don't want to be unfair to those folks.

I can't honestly think of anyone in my past 25 years that I would not shake hands with or give a hug to for the holiday season. I am sure that there are those who would not return the feeling...heh.

To all of you, Happy Holidays and a prosperous New Year.

Next year, dammit, I will send cards and make calls. Help me out by emailing me at john.koziol@datamaxx.com with your current contact information. I'd love to hear from you all.

John

Led Zeppelin

2007-12-03T22:33:00.000-08:00

Anyone know why the fadeout music for almost all MNF fadeouts tonight were LZ song clips?

VFP9 SP2

2007-10-22T23:31:00.000-07:00

Initial reports on this SP were scary so I pounded the crap out of it last weekend. Honestly, I didn't run anything under Vista because I wanted to test the core stability of the bit and I had no Vista machine handy anyway.

My conclusion is that this service pack is fine to run with. The fixes the dev team made to issues far exceed my expectations insofar as some of these issues have been around for a long time.

Good job to the devs at MS!

Express Lines

2007-10-17T11:37:00.000-07:00

A quandry:

I was in the Express Line (10 Items or Less) at the store yesterday. I had 12 items but 2 were from "buy one, get one free" offers, so technically, I was buying 10 items.

Was I OK or breaking the item limit? Hmmmmmm

I Need to Report a Kidnapping

2007-10-13T12:32:00.001-07:00

Somebody kidnapped the Miami Hurricanes football team and replaced them with imposters. That must be it.

The Modular PC

2007-10-11T14:35:00.001-07:00

An idea I've been kicking around my head for at least 10 years is the modular PC. What's that?

Imagine a bricksized casing, slightly longer and thinner, with high-speed ports on all sides. Each brick would hold a part of the overall PC and would attach to other brings by stacking, being placed side-by-side, whatever - the ports would connect and link the components.

Individual bricks would hold the CPU, RAM, DVD, HD, and networking components. Other bricks could hold peripheral cards such as graphics and sound cards. Another could hold USB ports.

The brick housings themselves would be low-cost.

The big advantage of this architecture would be that you could swap out or add bricks as required over time to update your system. You might never need again to replace an entire computer.

Need another hard drive? Buy a hard drive brick and snap it onto the stack.

Now there may be a need for a bus controller brick but that's not a big deal I would think.

If upgrades were reduced to simple plug-ins then I would think the peripheral and upgrade market would explode as it would be cheaper and easier for the technically inept to pull off. The bricks would be plug-and-play.

What do you think?

UPDATE

Looks like someone's already done it to a degree, but not to the extent I was contemplating.

FoxPro Advisor is No More

2007-10-11T12:02:00.000-07:00

Just spotted this on the Wiki: http://fox.wikis.com/wc.dll?Wiki~FoxProAdvisor

Sign...yet FP another institution gone.

Testing 101

2007-09-29T22:25:00.001-07:00

I peeked into the cube of our intern the other day and found him running a report where the font was too small to comfortably read. "Hey, good find", I told him. Where's the bug? I looked and the status was "Open".

"Why are you testing that?" I asked.
"I wanted to see if it worked", he replied.
"Is the bug open?"
"Yes"
"If you hit your hand with a hammer and haven't seen the doctor, is it still broken?", I said.
"Yes", in a small voice.

Testing truly is a structured and disciplined endeavor. We learn that everytime we let newbies loose.

Why I was a No-Show at FoxForward

2007-09-13T09:27:00.000-07:00

To put it simply, I'm on a very aggressive release schedule of a product for some law enforcement agencies. All vacation requests have been cancelled.

I had alerted management to FF months ago so, technically, I suppose I could have forced the issue but that would have been a bad signal to my workmates who are busting ass on this project. Also, my prepared topic was skirting client confidentiality since my firm had just rolled out a related product for acceptance testing.

I missed seeing Ed, Kevin, Garrett, and the rest, though.

Perhaps next year if Kevin is gracious enough to allow me to submit.

Death of a Peripheral

2007-08-15T00:35:00.000-07:00

Lately my old and trusty VIAO began to lock up during large file saves. When I say lock up, I mean total machine catatonia and nothing but a ten second finger on the power button works. And that just powers down.

So, I have a problem. First things first, go to the Event log. Nope, nothing there. Second: Run troubleshooting for suspect devices (like the controller) from Control Panel and see what it says. It says everything is A-OK.

Finally, run hardware diagnostics from BIOS on bootstrap. Nothing there either.

I strongly suspect that a peripheral, maybe controller, maybe graphics card, is eating it during one or more function calls. But I have no way on knowing because it appears that whatever mean piece of silicon is doing this doesn't have the common courtesy to exit gracefully from an error.

Grrrr.

Moore's Law in Reverse

2007-07-06T23:58:00.000-07:00

For those that don't know, Moore's Law is that the number of ICs on a given sized board (and, presumably computing power) will double at the same cost every 24 months. Considering Mr. Moore predicted this in 1965 I'd say he's been remarkably prescient.

I say this writing on a computer purchased in early 2002 with only minor RAM and hard disk upgrades since.

I bought my machine, a Sony VAIO, sometime in January 2002. It came with a 1.8 GHz P4 CPU, 128 MB of RAM, and Windows ME. The video card had 64 MB of RAM and it had 80 GB of hard disk space.

WinME was killed immediately in favor of XP. The hard disk developed a weird hiccup in early 2004 and I substituted a WD 160 GB drive for the main drive. Shortly thereafter I updated the RAM, RAMBUS and expensive, to 512 MB. Bought and installed a new video card in early 2005 with 256 MB video RAM. Total cost to upgrade about $500, mainly due to the expensive, and weird, RAM.

So now I sit with a fully capable machine with no real inclination to replace. And I see nothing, except for some nifty games, to compel me to upgrade in the next 12-24 months. When I do finally get a new machine this baby will probably be 7+ years old.

WTF? Is the technology now so mature that we can take our time to upgrade, secure in the knowledge that we won't be obsolete anytime soon? Seems that way. So, what does all the new 64-bit and dual core technology buy us? I'm not sure. I'm running Vista and VS 2005 without complaint.

This must be freaking out the marketing boys at Intel and AMD.

John's Law used to be replace your machine every 18 months or you're so far behind the tech curve you're in trouble. Hard to see an argument that it still applies.

Of course, my VFP friends know that VFP 9 happily percolates on any machine running Win2K (actually Win95 if you overlook some UI issues). Which translates to a base of a 60 Mhz Pentium and about 96 MB of RAM.

Amazing.

The Future is Cloudy

2007-06-20T18:38:00.000-07:00

Andrew MacNeill, a good guy, has been commenting on my World of Tomorrow posts. He brings up some legitimate points but I'm not sure he understands where I'm coming from. Or maybe he does. Andrew, if you see this, please comment?

The ambiguity may be my fault because with my recent promotion to QA Architect (new responsibilities) and my hectic homelife, I don't always flesh out my positions well. Being borderline crazy doesn't help either (heh).

I am fully aware of what's in CodePlex and I have availed myself of some of those cool tools. There are some great, great resources there and other sites that are free to use. Still, though, no framework or tool is going to completely insulate you from the .Net Framework and some of the (to a Fox guy) weirdnesses to be found there.

We need to take a step back here; most VFP developers of my age or older - the majority - came into the profession from others. There were (and are) no schools teaching Visual FoxPro in the US, although I have heard it's used in some Indian high schools. A lot of VFP developers became VFP developers because they had a burning need to solve a business issue and bootstrapped themselves into becoming developers.

This is probably why, it seems, the intersection of C++ and VFP developers is in my experience small. C++ developers started out wanting to be developers and it requires a good grasp of professional development skills to accomplish things in C++. They are further down the abstraction ladder from concept to end-user than VFP developers. They think differently.

Now, consider the planning that goes into a VFP line-of-business application as opposed to the same planning if one were to write a line-of-business app in C++. VFP does so many things for you that you can focus mainly on the functionality. With a C++ app, you have to spend a large percentage of your time thinking about housekeeping, memory management, database connectivity and concurrency...it boggles the average VFPers mind. And in my experience, it sometimes boggles the C++ developers mind as well.

I mean, nothing against Craig Boyd, but why in the hell does one want to mix XAML and VFP in the real world? Sure, it's a great intellectual exercise, but if XAML is where you want to go why involve VFP whatsoever? And why XAML? The builders are not there yet so there's a lot of hand-tooling...something VFPers generally detest.

Why not Adobe Flex and FlexBuilder? You have the simple object model and a great builder tool. Something VFPers like and can work with and, since it's RIA, a good foundation for the future.

On the opposite end of the equation, why not use FileMaker for Win apps? Simple, built-in DML...perfect for solving small or medium business issues.

My point here is that .Net architecture just doesn't work the way most VFP developers are comfortable with. There's too many moving parts. Simple issues become consumed by the sheer complexities of the platform. VS 2008 will solve some of these issues, ie LINQ, but not all of them.

.Net can do things that VFP developers have a very hard time with. But the opposite is certainly true as well. So why the push to move VFPers to the .Net platform unless it's a mainly marketing exercise?

Let me return to my last "WOT" post: RIA. Adobe Flex and MS Sharepoint and Sharepoint add-ons represent means to create rich-content business apps by making available a variety of canned widgets to simplify meeting business needs without complex coding. This is really all that a monolithic VFP developer looking to migrate his app to a future-oriented platform may ever need.

But there's also the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" school. If your VFP app rocks, you're happy, your clients are happy, and you don't see difficulties ahead with Vista - ROCK ON! Sell those apps, keep the world happy, and don't embark on switching tools if you don't have to. Introducing risk out of fear and not need is a cargo cult-ish anti-pattern. Can you count the number of disasters you've seen because some bozo decided they had to use the newest and greatest for a project when they didn't have to and, subsequently, damaged or killed the project? I have seen my fill of those.

The World of Tomorrow, Part Five

2007-06-18T23:26:00.000-07:00

So as I last left you I mentioned two current buzzwords making the rounds: RIA and SaaS.

Upfront, I am going to ignore a lot of the theory and CIO-gibberish both of these areas and focus on what's important to the VFP developer.

First off, RIA. In plainspeak, RIA is an attempt to make browser based apps look and feel like rich client apps. Those of you who have paid attention to the last few years of VFP soundbites (which I helped write) will note that rich client apps were a selling point of VFP.

RIA is, potentially, a great direction for VFP developers to go towards. The tools insulate the developer from the background mechanics and allow the developer to focus on the business process. I go back to a previous analogy - do we want to build bricks? Hell, no, we want to build houses.

I'm time curtailed tonight....read up on RIA and think about it. More later.

Oracle, Unchained

2007-06-10T22:14:00.000-07:00

I was at a presentation recently where Oracle's chairman was quoted as a fount of knowledge in an emeging technology.

Ellison? Doesn't anyone remember that everything Oracle has ever touted outside of databases has been shit?

I dread the moment that Oracle might wish to move to Atlanta and merge with Computer Associates. The merger of those two would create a state of negative energy in the universe and flip us into the true vacuum state where the universe would restructure itself to the lower energy level and destroy us all.

But before that happened there would probably be time for workers to put the new sign of the merged company on the side of the headquarters building:

SUCK Incorporated.

The World of Tomorrow, Part Four

2007-06-10T11:17:00.000-07:00

Funny enough, it was Visual FoxPro that was labelled difficult to learn and master. A Fawcette Technical Publications review of Visual FoxPro 6.0 in 1998 referred, tongue-in-cheek, to it's "simple, 5 year learning curve".

Yet, is it really that difficult? It can be, depending on what you need to do or on the standards expected by your client. For simple applications, though, it isn't very hard at all.

Contrast this with .Net. While the Designers are similar to the VFP Designers, the code behind the pretty pictures is daunting. Yes it's elegant and flexible, yes it's powerful but it's very difficult to do simple stuff that's not drag-and-drop from a toolbox.

Many of the VFP developers I have known really love the cool things you can do in VFP ... but usually don't have to. They'd much rather tweak their class and function libraries to do the grunt work and concentrate on the business task.

VFP developers, for the most part, freely give away their secrets and that overcomes a lot of the language difficulties. Those that charge for their wares do so because of their huge investment of time in their work and no one would expect less. VFP developers do not have to invent the brick to build their houses....unless they want to.

Not so in the .Net world. You may not want to invent the brick but few are going to give it to you. There sure are a lot of brick assemblies for sale, though. Good thing, because it would take you a long, long time to build that brick and you better have a good grasp of chemistry and engineering to do so.

In the last 18 months, I have led or managed small and medium sized development teams on monster .Net based projects, using ASP, C#, web forms, win forms, secure sockets, etc etc etc. The developers I work with are very talented folks. But I have had to really lower my expectations on the quantity of deliverables and the robustness of the initial builds. It is so, so easy to "blow up" Visual Studio apps because the amount of things the developers have to account for sometimes overwhelms them. A small behavioral tweak may cause 2 or 3 developers days to complete.

I can't even begin to describe how hard it is to get a robust, blind installer in place for these applications.

Upper management gets frustrated, understandably. They can't fathom at the gut level why it takes so long to deliver functionality that used to be delivered in a fraction of the time.

There are those in the VFP world who have transitioned to the .Net world and I say God bless 'em. If that's the tool that meets their needs, all power to them.

But I think the backlash "for the rest of us" is coming. Two acronyms: RIA and SaaS.

RIA (Rich Internet Applications) tools make it easy to put robust line-of-business applications up on the web quickly and with a minimum of fuss. SaaS stands for Software as a Service and is defined as centralizing data and code and selling business software subscriptions. There are several maturity levels of SaaS but, in the end, it deals with removing local, complex software and managing changes and customizations by scripting and configuration management.

Where does the VFP world fit in and what are the advantages for VFP developers looking for their next platform?

For that you have to wait for Part Five. Gotta go buy summer school clothes for my daughter.

The World of Tomorrow, Part Three

2007-06-09T22:49:00.000-07:00

First off, I apologize for letting this drag on. I have been very busy with the 9-5 stuff.

In plain English: The fear amongst Fox-ers is not the language. An experienced FoxPro developer has no problems with VB or C# when it comes to the language. The fear is the .Net Framework itself.

And it's not just old Foxheads. I was involved in a discussion the other day with C# developers where nobody could figure out how to make a label transparent to it's container. Trivial stuff in the Fox world, but apparently in the Framework world it demands an intricate knowledge of dithering and other shit unless you want to hard-wire the color. Which runs counter to the OOP abstractions Fox-ers have been preaching and living by for 10+ years.

This is a big problem.

Alan Cooper once said, and I'm paraphrasing, that Microsoft gave you the periodic table and you had to make a broccoli. But this was in the early 90's when VB developers were just as removed from the intricacies of the OS and OS theory as the VFP folks are now.

Unless you have an in-depth appreciation of the way everything should work in the world of Windows or IE based net apps - which a lot of line-of-business Fox folks don't - you are screwed.

I think it also explains the massive drop-off of VB 6 hobbyists from the fold. Things that were simple are now inordinately complicated.

The World of Tomorrow Part Two

2007-05-24T21:17:00.000-07:00

I wasn't really fair in my last post; I left too much information out of the equation. Here's the premise:

I am convinced that the Fox world's fearful and grudging adoption of .Net has nothing to do with coding. The "World of Tomorrow" referred to a scenario where 30's serials posited great leaps forward in technology and, implicitly, everyone's ability to understand and adapt that understanding. Billy builds his raygun.

Back to our real world. Billy builds his website and plops it on his Win2K3 web server. It fails. Why?

More in Part Three.

Sedna and The World of Tomorrow!

2007-05-22T22:26:00.000-07:00

A play on words, yes? Think about it, though, "World of Tomorrow" stuff from the early 20th century was all about extrapolating trends towards the future following an idealistic evolution of existing techs.

What really happened was so much different. Why?

Think about it.

Welcome to Jiffy Tech

2007-05-12T05:47:00.000-07:00

This is sort of a banner year for me. June marks my 30th anniversary writing code; September is my 25th anniversary of landing my first professional data-processing job.

I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine over beers back in the mid-80's. He was trying to understand exactly what it was I did and why it paid so well. I thought for a moment and replied that we were the "priests in the temples in the Dark Ages". We were elite because we knew how to read in an illiterate world. But one day, as technology spread, we'd be the new auto mechanics.

That conversation has stuck in the back of my mind for years and I sometimes look at industry and career trends and hold them against that half-joking prediction.

Now why auto mechanics?

I see a correlation between the automotive industry and information technology.

As to cars, from the late 1800's to the introduction of the Ford Model-T, very few people knew automotive technology. Those that did were well-schooled in every aspect of the cars and were paid well for their arcane knowledge. Operating a car required a far more in-depth understanding of mechanics than today. Pioneers in automotives founded large companies to make cars more understandable, cheaper, and more accessible to the masses - the survivors are Ford, Diamler-Benz, General Motors, and others. Studebaker, Willys, and others were competitive for a time but are now long-gone.

Experienced, independent mechanics today are paid reasonably well but a minimum wage high school kid can do most regular service on a car. However, cars are much more complex mechanically under the hood so, paradoxically, mechanics have to be superior troubleshooters than decades ago, before electronics, ABS, fuel injection, et al.

Looking at personal computer-based IT, from the late 70's to the mid-90's we have a parallel. For about a 15 year period, few people grasped the big picture in how to craft a computer application. Those that were successful at it commanded large sums of money. People not in the industry were scared to death of them. The early experts put together companies to sell cheaper computers or more understandable operating systems or languages. The survivors are Microsoft, Apple, Sun, Compaq, and others. Gone, but important in industry history, are Digital Research (CPM), Commodore, Ashton-Tate, and others.

Experienced, independent developers on average are being contracted at hourly rates we would have laughed at 15 years ago. Contract rates for developing in day-to-day businesses seems to be in the $20 - 40 an hour. This is for doing essentially the same work as commanded $50 -150 an hour 20 years ago. Factoring in inflation and other costs, contract developers are being paid probably a fifth of what they were 20 years ago.

And, like the automotive industry, the product has become easier for the consumer but much more difficult to engineer and troubleshoot.

When a network application of mine puked under FoxPro for DOS, it was either because of my lousy coding, a FoxPro bug, or a network error. 95% of the time I knew within seconds which it was.

When the code in an ASP.NET application pukes, if it's not a coding error you are sometimes in for a long, long troubleshooting session. Is it browser settings? Permissions? Database connectivity? Security policy? Much more difficult to assess. And I get paid a hell of a lot less to figure it out.

On the other hand, my teenage son can easily install an operating system and if was hired to do so by a local computer shop I imagine he wouldn't be paid much more than minimum wage.

Maybe it wasn't a joke after all.

I'd Like To, But....

2007-05-03T22:55:00.000-07:00

I got Markus's postcard in the mail this week. Very clever marketing, a personal message about how he could help with converting to .Net. Some people need that help.

There are a lot of folks not happy with aggressive abandonment of Visual FoxPro; folks who I will not name out of respect. But I will say that I am wholeheartedly one of them.

Don't get me wrong, the VS suite is ...err... sweet. Once you have a grip on the framework, .Net apps are almost as simple to clob together as our trusty old VFP apps.

But not quite.

Managed code applications are a real bear to deploy. The amount of times I have heard "it works on my machine" from a developer versus the supposed worry-free builds I have been given that bombed or required special handling has skyrocketed. Simply put, .Net apps don't deploy well in an "install and forget" environment.

VFP apps won't run devices; neither will they work best in a widely distributive environment. But they work great for desktop database apps and nothing, nothing in the .Net world comes close to meeting that.

Perhaps if MS had stuck with WinFS and put local data storage integral to the operating system with programking support I couldn't make these claims. But they didn't.

The Eschatology of Visual FoxPro

2007-03-14T10:01:00.000-07:00

So Alan made it official at the MVP Summit this week - no VFP 10 and no more Fox Team.

It shouldn't surprise anyone. I can't speak for YAG, Ken, Stew, or the others, but Randy and I have been pretty open about this for the last few years and those who have kept there eyes wide open since 2004 or so could see this coming.

In fact, the transition of the Fox Team to other endeavors started a few years back. Team meetings had begun to peter out even before I left in July 2005. As it were, we were under pretty stringent time and resource constraints just to get 9 out the door.

That was a small part of my decision to leave MS and I think it's what prompted Randy Brown's retirement.

Once VFP 9 was released, the Team went into a sort-of caretaker mode with Ken enlisting some community members to support Sedna.

It's each customers own decision how much or how little they continue to develop and support VFP applications. But there is a robust and experienced VFP community that will always be supportive and informative so this announcement shouldn't be a death sentence.

Rather, I agree with YAG that this will be a good thing in the medium to long term as the former Fox Team developers are tasked with taking great features and ideas from VFP and getting them into VS with the help of some very astute PMs. LINQ is a prime example.

And, anyone who keeps up with the online world knows how active Calvin Hsia and Aleksey Tsingauz have been in blogs and support forums, respectively. I don't see that changing.

My question is, will there continue to be support and naming of VFP MVPs? I hope so, especially as Sedna goes open source with the Sedna bits.

The Return of Fox Forward

2007-03-07T10:03:00.000-08:00

The FoxForward conference, which premiered last September, is returning for September of this year. I'd encourage all VFP aficionados to attend as some very interesting presentations are in store.

For more information, see this link

The Things You Find

2007-02-28T22:36:00.000-08:00

An interview with me from March 1993:

RIDING OUT THE STORM
John Koziol, president of Nexgen Computer Corporation, a computer programming group, sent his family away while he rode out Hurricane Andrew in his home in Cutler Ridge, Florida. He expected some winds and possible flooding from a storm surge. "I was 10 feet above sea level, and I have a two-story house," he says. "My logic was that my equipment was on the first floor, and I couldn't possibly waterproof things. I thought if I stayed, I could react as things developed. Boy, was I wrong."
Koziol got stranded upstairs, isolated from the equipment he had stayed to protect, when the hurricane whipped into his neighborhood. It came on so suddenly and so fiercely that the doors blew off their hinges and knocked him down twice. He survived by using a mattress to create a cave in a closet. Only afterward did he notice that the sheetrock on his bedroom walls had disintegrated into powder.
Koziol and three employees had worked from his and his father's homes before Hurricane Andrew. "We knew our bases of operation were gone [his father's house was also destroyed] and weren't going to be livable ever, or for quite some time. We had a little bit of cash saved up, so we decided either we had to fold the company or take our reserves and take our chances," says Koziol.
He moved the company into an office building. "The way we were set up, with the home offices and everything distributed, worked to our advantage," says Koziol. "We were probably back on our feet much, much faster than anyone else in that area--in less than a month. And our revenues and staff more than doubled within three months. I preferred the home office, but I knew that we would eventually evolve out of it. The hurricane jump-started that evolution."

FoxBase?

2007-02-28T22:22:00.000-08:00

Does anyone know of a running FoxBase application these days? I know there was one running a few years ago using FoxBase/UNIX but haven't heard anything more.

The Death of ActiveDocument in VFP

2007-02-25T23:28:00.000-08:00

The short version: We turned it off.

As I recall we were alerted to a security issue with ActiveDocument early on in the testing for VFP8 that couldn't be easily resolved. So development stubbed it out (meaning it did nothing) and we waited for the complaints.

None ever came.

Great technology

The Darwin Award Poems

2007-02-02T12:04:00.000-08:00

Poems as odes to the Darwin Awards.... some are based on real, some could be.

Hey, look, my old pistol I'd lost three years back
(Crime was up when I got it, I feared an attack)
It looks pretty dirty - does it still work?
To set safety off requires a hard jerk.
Surely it's unloaded, as near as I figure;
so lemme look down the barrel and jiggle the trigger.

----------------------------------------

My engine sounds funny when the car's put in gear
When in Park or Neutral, there's nothing to hear.
C'mon Tommy, old buddy, let's see what's the deal -
you rev the engine; I'll check under the wheel.
OK, pal, see, this car's really cursed.
Try goosing the engine, then put it in first.

----------------------------------------

Sailing! Sailing!
Meandering through the sky!
Bought myself some weather balloons,
ya know I gotta try!

----------------------------------------

Updated: I guess there are more in me....

I know the wings will hold me, they're made of balsa wood.
My arms are strong, my aim is high - I've always known I could
The cliff is high and wind is strong and they say I can't fly.
I launch and hear close snapping sounds - uh oh, I'm gonna die.

----------------------------------------

Stole some jet packs from my air force base, they make the planes go fast.
I've been working on my Mustang I, you know they're build to last.
I weld these JATOs to the frame to make a mark that way
I'll set the record for Mustang speed on this very day
I light the flame, the car leaps forward; the controls are rather stiff
Aw shit the car has left the ground, aw shit here comes a cliff.

----------------------------------------

Watchmaker

2007-01-31T21:35:00.000-08:00

I had a dream last night that was unresolved when I woke up but was deeply philosophical in implications. This was one of those sorts of dreams where you are an observer but not a participant yet you know more than you should.

In the dream I was watching a near-future TV show where God and religion were being ridiculed in a "comedy roast" sort of way. The backdrop to the dream was that - somehow - God was scientically proven to exist as was the survival of the soul after death.

Important to note, though, that God was proven to be a presence yet take no active role in the Universe and that there was no ethical component to soul survival - Hitler is just as existing as Mother Theresa.

So, in effect, the structure of religious beliefs is proven yet the ethical underpinnings are removed. The "watchmaker" God.

How would society react to these proofs? I'm still trying to work out the implications. Ideas?

Some Things Never Change - Copperheads

2007-01-27T05:52:00.000-08:00

I'm a student of history, especially Civil War history. While reading up on the New York City Draft Riots of 1863 I came across a reference to Copperhead, or Peace, Democrats. I looked at that group a bit more closely and I came across this definition...look at the very last part:

"...A majority of Peace Democrats supported war to save the Union, but a strong and active minority asserted that the Republicans had provoked the South into secession; that the Republicans were waging the war in order to establish their own domination, suppress civil and states rights, and impose "racial equality"; and that military means had failed and would never restore the Union..."

Wow.

Update:

Apparently, I'm nowhere near the 1st to draw a comparison between the Democrats of the 1860's and now. Fred Barnes does an outstanding job of it here:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/028ydfmp.asp

Graph...ox

2007-01-24T20:56:00.000-08:00

Why is VFP so slow when rendering graphics, anyway? I should know this but I've always focused on text stuff and have only recently played around with pics and stuff.

Also, is it possible to host a Flash app in a VFP form?

The Katrina Entanglement

2007-01-24T14:49:00.000-08:00

I was reading today that the governor of Louisiana is upset that Bush did not mention Hurricane Katrina in his SOTU address. Boo hoo.

I am going to write something very politically incorrect: I don't want to hear about these whiny assholes who were hit by Katrina anymore. They have already received far more aid and entitlements than any other natural disaster victims in this country's history and - apparently - that's still not enough. Taken together with the fraud and victimology being practiced far and wide in that area, it's disturbing how much people don't take responsiblity for their own welfare.

People died, yes, and people lost everything they owned. It happens, especially when you live in a coastal area of the Gulf. It is sad but it doesn't entitle you to the kind of aid that's being dispensed like candy. What is also very shameful is that, since the freaking incompetent government bureaucracy is running the show, people are probably getting things they don't need while others do without.

I speak from a position of personal and family experience.

In 1992 my home was 95% destroyed and most of my belongings lost in Hurricane Andrew in South Florida. Andrew was a far more powerful storm than Katrina. When my brother and I drove through Louisiana in December of 2005 we were struck by how much less windstorm damage there was than with Andrew. Yes, I know the majority of the problem with Katrina was the levies breaking but the hurricane itself seemed moderate in scope.

But I had, gasp!, insurance to protect my home and belongings. And I also had a job. Even if I hadn't had insurance I would have eventually restored by standard of living. As it was, it was over a year of headache before we were anywhere near restored.

The amount of help I received from the government: ZERO. To be sure, low cost loans and grants were available but they paled in significance to what Katrina victims were and are offered. I didn't want to be a victim and I never even considered taking a government handout. My family and my wife and I's hard work were our help.

In 1926 my grandmother and her family were farmers in Miami when the Big One hit. Thousands of people were killed. My grandfather rebuilt with his own two hands and with the help of his neighbors. Nothing I went through can compare to the '26 storm.

So if you were a New Orleans welfare bum before Katrina and now are a "victim" who wants to be a welfare bum with more handouts now, to hell with you. If not, you're probably already back on your feet and embarrassed by the whining and crying of your mayor and governor.

I've been Tagged

2007-01-23T14:07:00.000-08:00

OK, I see this is where you list 5 things no one knows about you and then "tag" 5 other people. I kind of already replied in Garretts blog but here goes again:

1. I have a 4th child somewhere in Toronto who is 27 whom I have never met and probably never will. I was a stupid teenager - 'nuff said.

2. I love West Side Story and get all emotional when Tony dies.

3. Briefly shook hands with Richard Nixon when he was on a quick trip to see a friend in the Keys in 1973.

4. Drove a 1974 Pinto for 3 years that had no floor! It had rotted out.

5. I actually relayed orders to nuclear bombers to launch and attack while in the USAF due to a computer glitch. 30 seconds later more or less the recall order came. Whoops.

Hmmm...what 5 folks could I tag. Well, there are several that have been absent from the VFP world (or at least my small corner of it) for a while and I'm not sure they'll even see this so here goes nothing:

Tom Cooper
Mike Stewart
Barry Lee
Jim Booth
Roi Ledford

DefCon

2007-01-09T21:07:00.000-08:00

I recently downloaded a demo version of a game called "DefCon". How could you not be intrigued by a game that where the subtitle is "Everybody Dies"?

Before I go further, here's the link: http://www.everybody-dies.com/

Anyhow, the premise is loosely based on the 1983 film "WarGames" insofar as it's a game of thermonuclear war. And the graphics look a lot the same.

But the game itself is simple but wonderful in the same way that chess has simple rules but complex strategy. A timer inexorably countsdown to DefCon 1 while you madly try to get your forces ready for both offense and defense.

Winning a Strangelovian....your megadeaths versus my megadeaths. Not for the faint of heart.

Concluding: It's a cool game that takes only minutes to play and has some great strategy elements as well as fulfilling the atavistic urge to crush, crumble, and destroy.

12 Months (Pretty Much) Med Free!

2007-01-01T00:26:00.000-08:00

Today I celebrate, being unclear if that's the right word, 12 months of being pretty much clear of psychotropic medications. When my daily prescriptions expired in late '05, I chose not to renew them. Admittedly, there was a financial component to this but, primarily, I have a hard time accepting that I am disfunctional without them.

To those unfamiliar with my travails, in mid-2004 I suffered a severe panic attack although it was not seen as such at the time. After numerous tests, it was found that I have a somewhat serious bipolar disorder.

The results of no meds? Well.....not bad. I go through swings where I am a bastard and insufferable but my family and key co-workers know where it's coming from and know what to do and say. I get through it. Lately - since about Thanksgiving - I appear to be in a depressive cycle and it's gotten pretty severe at times. I am working through it.

No strong mania since July / August that I am aware of. The evil thing with mania, unlike depression, is that you're not innately aware of it so who knows? I don't feel like the smartest guy in the world and I'm not hyperproductive lately so I'm pretty sure the hypomania ain't there.

OTOH, I'll kick anyone's ass in trivia

It's been hard. I feel like a character in the classic "Harrison Bergeron" (look it up) where I have been saddled with something I can't openly fight. But drugs aren't the answer because they make me slower than I am normally and God knows I was penalized for that at Microsoft.

I'm gonna stay drug-free no matter what that entails. But I do worry about what happens if I bounce too far in one direction or other.

Barbecue Tips from The Master

2006-12-20T21:56:00.000-08:00

OK, being somewhat ostentatious. I take grilling pretty seriously, though, and I don't have many complaining customers....so here are the tips:

Ribs take 2-3 hours of indirect heat to properly cook. Douse with sauce every 30 minutes. Forget the packaging and a lot of cookbooks that say an hour or less. They are full of crap.
The best chicken parts to cook are the breasts. Start them meat side down for 5 minutes over medium coals, then flip them and close the grill with medium vents for 45 minutes more. Marinate on the flip.
If you're looking, it ain't cooking. Do not open a closed grill in time increments any less than 30 minutes.
Shellfish, ie shrimp, seem to love flame. Put them on while there's still flame in the coals - two minutes. Take them off, wait 10 minutes, and finsih them with 2 more minutes on a more relaxed fire.
Never ever ever use Wal-Mart large (60% larger!) coals. These coals SUCK. They flare up and then suicide with ash and you won't get more than 30-45 minutes good heat out of them.
Sauce secret: Go to an Asian market and buy some Srirasha - a Thai chili garlic sauce. Also have on hand some molasses. Mix about a cup of KC Masterpiece with 2 TBS of Thai and about 4 TBS of molasses. Use that as your sauce. Ooooo.....baby!

Get Well, Senator Tim Johnson

2006-12-15T00:04:00.000-08:00

I don't know you from Adam, but I pray for your speedy recovery. We really don't need the kind of political crap that would happen should you become permanently disabled.

Hang in there, Tim.

Things I Would Love to See (Or Not)

2006-12-09T01:13:00.001-08:00

Ever see politicians argue over something and were left screaming at the TV (or net) because they all got it wrong? Yeah, me too. Here's my list of issues that they all have wrong. I, of course, could be wrong too. YMMV.

Abortion. It's an individuals right to determine whether abortion is OK with them or not. There shouldn't be laws for or against it at the Federal level as that violates the Constitution. The Constitution clearly states that if it's not specifically enumerated as something deserving Federal oversight, it devolves to the States or the people.
Talking points. I think I heard Pelosi say "culture of corruption", literally, a gaxillion times from 2004 to now. I can't think of the GOP equivalent now but I know I've heard it. Can't these fuckwads think for themselves?
Gay Marriage. Since when is it reasonable to even consider a Constitutional amendment against gay marriage? That's incredibly stupid. It would give the Federal government the power to regulate peoples personal lives and that's never good. Until fairly recently, the government has no role in marriage: you either got married in a church or were deemed common law after an amount of time of co-habitation. My solution: All civil unions are just that - cilvil unions. Man to woman, man to man, whatever. Marriage is a sacred institution rendered by a church but the legal and civil rights conferred by the state are conferred equally to all.

There are more later.

Things I Would Love to See (Or Not)

2006-12-09T01:13:00.000-08:00

Abortion. It's an individuals right to determine whether abortion is OK with them or not. There shouldn't be laws for or against it at the Federal level as that violates the Constitution. The Constitution clearly states that if it's not specifically enumerated as something deserving Federal oversight, it devolves to the States or the people.
Talking points. I think I heard Pelosi say "culture of corruption", literally, a gaxillion times from 2004 to now. I can't think of the GOP equivalent now but I know I've heard it. Can't these fuckwads think for themselves?
Gay Marriage. Since when is it reasonable to even consider a Constitutional amendment against gay marriage? That's incredibly stupid. It would give the Federal government the power to regulate peoples personal lives and that's never good. Until fairly recently, the government has no role in marriage: you either got married in a church or were deemed common law after an amount of time of co-habitation. My solution: All civil unions are just that - cilvil unions. Man to woman, man to man, whatever. Marriage is a sacred institution rendered by a church but the legal and civil rights conferred by the state are conferred equally to all.

There are more but mainly minor.

NASA Creates Tenure

2006-12-05T20:45:00.000-08:00

Today NASA announced plans to establish a permanent base at the Moon's South Pole. Here's the news story: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16042651/

According to the article, this is supposed to occur by 2024.

OK, great, but I'm 46 now and I'll be 64 then. When I was freaking 9 years old we had guys tramping around the moon and were promised that by 1980 we'd have guys at Mars....and moving sidewalks by 1985.

From 1973 through today we have done doo-diddly-squat as far as manned exploration. I got an A on a paper I wrote in college on the death of manned space exploration...in 1983!

Instead, we've focused on a Space Ford Excursion (the Shuttle) since the 1970's. Sure, can haul a lot but gets lousy gas mileage. To top this off we decided that the Space Excursion needed a garage in orbit and hence came the low orbit, underused, overbudget ISS.

The ISS and Shuttle consume mass quantities of NASA budget for a dubious return in science. What does the ISS prove that Mir didn't? Nothing. What science to we get from the Shuttle? Occasional Earth studies and repair trips to Hubble. Bah!

Meanwhile, the rest of NASA has to contend with relatively low budget robotic missions to the other planets where the real action is.

And, God bless 'em, they do great! The Spirit and Opportunity rovers are still tooling around Mars far after the expected design specs. Cassini is doing great as did the little Huygens probe (thanks, ESA!) carried. The Pluto Express is on it's way.

In 2001, these audacious bastards even tried to land an asteroid orbiter on an asteroid when it was low on fuel...and succeeded!

So why don't we do away with the low-orbit shenanigans and marry the astronauts and budget with the visionaries and top engineers carrying out planetary missions? Fuck the moon, I want to see Dave Bowman orbiting Jupiter before I die.

Just tell him to ignore HAL's complaints about the AE-35.

The Feline Frightener

2006-12-05T15:30:00.000-08:00

We have a cat who is the most peaceful, serene animal I have ever had. He's actually my daughter's pet and he'll come running the minute she calls. He always sleeps in her bed and nuzzles her on demand.

Actually, he likes everyone to a degree. What's funny is that he isn't terribly loving with anyone if my daughter is in the room - my theory is that he's afraid of making her jealous.

Like all cats, though, he does some irritating things. In his case, it's scratching at the fringes of carpets. We yell "No" and he stops doing it but shortly after forgets it's a bad thing and does it again.

If this was any other animal I'd swat his with a rolled up newspaper while yelling, "No!" and this would get his attention. But he's so sweet I'd hate to do anything that could affect his disposition.

So I have an idea....

Cats are startled by sudden loud noises. They don't like them one bit. Most cats will immediately drop what they're doing and haul ass at a sudden loud noise. What is needed is a good loud noise that is untraceable.

If I took an aluminum beer can and put a couple of dozen BBs into it, it would be loud when shaken or thrown. If I seal the can and then wrap it in light foam it's still loud but now soft.

If I have this can, (I dub thee "Feline Frightener") I can throw it close to the cat when he's misbehaving and he'll freak and stop what he's doing. There are advantages to this approach.

If I accidently hit the cat he's unlikely to be hurt because it'll be very light.
He won't know where the Frightener came from so he can't trace it back to me. As far as he knows, the Cat God is smiting him for his transgressions.
Since the BBs randomly rattle in the can, the noise will be slightly different each time so it'll seem like an animate threat.
If I throw it from a different spot each time he'll be even more afraid of it.
He will begin to associate the Frightener with any bad behavior and I can use it at any time for any badness.

I base my bulletpoints on the fact that cats are stupid. No, really. They look at you with eyes slitted because they don't have the mental energy to keep them wide open unless directly focused on a straightforward task such as catching squirrels. Which they rarely do because even squirrels are smarter than them. Some cats are good at rats and birds but rats and birds are even stupider than cats.

Some cats are both stupid and deranged. I have known cats that attack strangers without warning; cats that howled for no reason, obsessive-compulsive cats (no shit - one of mine was), and cats that wiped out all of a homes drapes and blinds because the owner was gone overnight.

But I digress.

The Frightener would not work for dogs because when you want to stop a dog from doing wrong things, you can train them either with reward or punishment. This is for three reasons: You want them to respect and obey you so a loud can from the Dog Gods is impersonal - they need to see that You Are Personally Unhappy. A dog would likely be curious about the can and not run so far, killing off the startle value after the first few uses. Finally, dogs are clearly not as stupid as cats and would likely try to retrieve the Evil Can to bring to you as a fetch toy.

If I ever get up the gumption to actually make the Frightener, I'll let you all know if it works. I think it will.

A Scene to Love as a Foxhead

2006-11-28T22:36:00.000-08:00

So a co-worker came to me all in a panic about munging a huge table to convert "x" to "y" uising some arcane formula.

"No sweat", I said, and wrote a 9 line VFP program to do it in about 1/2 hour. Apparently, three .Net dweebs had been debating the approach for two weeks.

Visual FoxPro....there is no substitute.

Same as the Old Boss....

2006-11-27T21:34:00.000-08:00

Say what you will of me and my political persuasions, but the Democrats seem to be going out of their way to prove they are even more corrupt and ideologues than the guys they are replacing. Cases in point:

Pelosi supports Murtha for a chair. Murtha??? This is the guy who escaped Abscam by the skin of his teeth. Not a message to send if you are against corruption.

Pelosi supports Hastings for chair on Select Committee on Intelligence. Again, are you kidding me? This is one of the most corrupt elected officials in America. My God, he was only one of a handful of Federal judges ever impeached by Congress. The ranking Democratic member, Harman, apparently pissed off Pelosi at some point so is being passed over. This is seen as a sop to the Congressional Black Caucus.

So. the Dems get into power and then totally blow off the principles of "culture of corruption" that they have espoused nigh on 2 years. Pelosi makes her chair decisions on personal vendettas and power-brokering.

There is nothing you left-wingers can say to alleviate the truth of what's going on. It's as obvious as a cheap suit.

Have fun for the next 2 years....cause I think it'll be the last you have for a long, long time.

Job Opportunities

2006-11-17T13:01:00.000-08:00

My current employer is looking for software engineers and quality assurance professionals. It's a good company to work for and a great town (Tallahassee, FL) to live in...some of the best schools in the country are here.

If anyone is interested, drop me an email and resume at john.koziol@datamaxx.com and I'll pass it on.

Be Careful What You Wish For

2006-11-16T20:32:00.000-08:00

I've been watching the post-election bruhaha with some amusement.

I have to get this out: A lot of my friends and associates for some reason think I'm a Republican because I don't hate Bush and am generally contemptuous of liberal politics. Actually, I'm libertarian which means I'm a true small government and fiscal conservative but I don't give a damn about how people conduct their personal lives.

Just so you know where I'm coming from.

Anyway, what's striking to me in the last week is that Democrats seem to have no idea how and why they swept elections. It's evident in what has been going on the last few days.

Pelosi and the leftist Democrats think that they've been given a mandate to lead from the left as evidenced by her support of Murtha and Alcee Hastings for committee chair choices. The Blue Dog centrist/conservative Democrats believe that America remains in the middle and just simply wanted change on the Iraq issue.

My opinion? The Blue Dogs have it right. This election was the Perfect Storm of two trends....the growing dissatisfaction with Iraq and the historical loss in Congress of a 6-year President. This was not an endorsement, by far, of leftist ideography. Witness how Murtha crashed and burned in the secret ballot and we shall see what happens with Hastings.

Will the Federal minimum wage be raised? Probably. Although I have to admit that the concept bothers me as it seems to me a an issue best raised at the State or local level...it's certainly not in the Constitution which should automatically devolve it to the States.

Will Medicare be able to negotiate prices directly with the pharmaceutical companies? This seems to me so common sense that I feel like there must be a snake in the grass somewhere. Why would the GOP be so against this on principle? And, yes, I know my leftist friends will claim that it's because they're money-grubbing bastards in the pockets of Big Drug but that's too simplistic...

Bush tax cuts? That's the third rail. Say all you want about "tax cuts for the rich" but I ain't rich and the cuts have saved me $2k or more each year. That's money I could not do without. Take the cuts away and you will not be popular and you'll probably damage the economy as well.

Iraq? God, who knows? No opinion here. There are good arguments for all points of view.

So who won the election? All Americans. Why? Because the right extremists can't dictate and the left extremists can't legislate without compromise. So we're either going to have some very common sense government over the next 2 years or total pig-headed gridlock.

2008 will prove interesting.

.Net vs. Fox for the Rest of Us

2006-10-18T20:38:00.000-07:00

Recently I had a .Net application dumped in my lap; that is, I was forced to understand it, the server on which it resides, and the code it is comprised of.

I was petrified. A good part of being a good tester is understanding completely every nut and bolt that goes into what you are testing. How else can you set expectations? There can be no ambiguity.

What I found after a week or so is that my fears were (largely) unfounded. Once you get past some basic issues on web hosting and syntax issues it's pretty simple.

How do I put this? Hmmm. Once you put your Fox-brain aside and truly evaluate non-Fox project architecture and syntax you will realize just how clueless 90+% of these folks are. Once I understood the mechanics enough to assess the underpinnings I was struck by the realization that the average .Net developer may be much more addled on delivering a "best practices" solution than your average VFP developer.

This goes back to my assertions 5 years ago on the UT and elsewhere that the VFP community has (had?) a tremendous opportunity as architects to embrace the .Net way of life and kick-ass. I am more convinced as ever of this after the stuff I've had to go through the past few weeks.

Some of y'all know and embrace this already. Strahl and McNeish come to mind...

Forget translating apples to oranges and applying VFP architecture to .Net and the Web. Just look at what .Net and the framework has to offer and how you would approach a client solution at a high level.

The light will come on. And you'll be thinking, "Holy shit, why did I ever think this was hard?" Sure, sure you'll still be thinking (as I do) that there are far easier ways to do x, y, and z in VFP (and that's true) but if you get off of trying to decode every line of code you'll see it.

Go forth my VFP brethren and kick the .Net coders, who have far less experience in the real world as you do, in the teeth.

Speaking....

2006-10-17T20:54:00.000-07:00

...in Chicago at the invitation of Randy Bosma. I have no idea what value they think I can bring .

Be Careful Who You Bless

2006-09-28T22:26:00.000-07:00

Weird title, huh?

For many years, I was a closeted Fox guru not really interested in global attention or acknowledgement. I had my hands full with my local market. Honestly, I didn't really think I was all that good at what I did until I discovered the online community and began to contribute. Shortly thereafter I was an MVP and writing articles and, by a weird chain of circumstances, a major contributor to the VFP 6 MCP and MCSD tests. By another strange turn of events I found myself offered a position at Microsoft and sojourned there for over 4 years.

The minute I joined MS things changed. Suddenly I was a member of the illustrious Fox Team and that conferred stature and power in the community. Power insofar as promoting individuals and ideas into the community. The bully pulpit.

Really, I didn't want it. I had a ton of support when I joined MS from folks who had gotten to know me and felt that "one of theirs" was joining the Borg Collective. In the 4 years I was there I tried very hard to stay true to my developer roots and, I believe for the most part, succeeded.

But while there it became easy to see who was "in it" to help others and who was "in it" to promote themselves and community benefit was a side benefit.

I won't name names of the latter, but I can in good faith name plenty of names of the former: folks who gave and gave and gave to the community far beyond whatever direct recompense might come. Hey, there's nothing wrong with making a buck but don't be dishonest about why you're doing something supposedly altruistic when it's not.

So here is the Gonzo Hall of Fame of people who did great things for the right reasons and deserve the respect and consideration of the VFP community as a whole. If a name is not on this list it's not necessarily because they don't belong; it's more likely a sign of early Alzheimer's on my part.

Tamar Granor ....I'll never forget how she organized ad-hoc sessions in SD in 2001 for those trapped by 9/11. Class act.
Ed Leafe ..... No one pays him for ProFox and it seems that MS doesn't even give a shit about it as far as MVP is concerned.
Garrett Fitzgerald ... the guy spent so much time helping folks outside of the normal PSS box it cost him his job. I'm very thankful to have been his supervisor for two stints as a contract tester at MS as his heart was always in the right place.
Doug Hennig ... I know for a fact that the stuff he does when under contract for MS is far more taxing than what he is paid. But he does it anyway.
David Stevenson ... You think being editor of FoxTalk 2.0 was easy? A thankless job which he stuck to for quite a while.
Ken Levy ... This guy deserves much more credit than I've ever seen him get promoting the product above and beyond his job title.
Carl Warner ...Spends a lot of time keeping VFUG running with no help and he doesn't charge fees.
Calvin Hsia ... Same as Ken....goes above and beyond as witnessed by his blog posts.
Rainer Becker ... Goes out on a limb many, many times to promote VFP and, sometimes, at great personal risk. Wholly responsible for German help files.

....and many others.

Support these folks. They support you.