Here and there - The Journal

Slow Sunday

2009-08-30T16:32:00.003-05:00

What a beautiful day! Slow sunday. Church was a lot of fun.

The sermon was good to hear. It is always amazing to learn new things and enjoy learning things about the Word of God.

Waiting for next Sunday.

Web Services, Web Services, Web Services....

2009-07-25T19:45:00.005-05:00

So have the .NET WCF based Web Services gotten too complicated? I mean they say Web Services, but really they want to say Services. They have Web Servers, Windows Services, Stand Alone services, etc. Services is becoming a generic term to umbrella over any communication service. Hence, Windows Commmunication Services.

I wanted to write a simple Web Service in .NET 4.0 and after fiddling with it for a few minutes, I just gave up. The .NET web.config file are starting to become an art and a skill requiring an explicit mention on the resume. It's a skill in itself to be able to understand the web.config file. To edit it, is another level of skill. One can't just go in a web.config file and change things around. If your projects service didn't get added properly, you don't just go around and try to correct that in the web.config. You hope to delete all service related items and re-add the service.

I added a new service to a project and something wasn't add properly. So, it would not compile. As a result, I removed the service and it left entries in the web.config file. It would still not compile. So I manually deleted all service related nodes. Then the project compiled. Then I added the service again. This time, it would run but wouldn't show me any method on the browse page. It talked about modifying the web.config to allow method display. After a minute, I realized that that is something I don't know.

So while it was easy to write Web Services in 2.0, 3.0 with older compilers, the new WCF based services are something that require some research and reading.

I will spend time reading about the WCF to learn about these. I'll be blogging about those soon.

Another Sunday

2009-07-19T13:32:00.004-05:00

Here we are and it's another Sunday. I was just reading my previous post. It's funny how that post was written when it was rainy and I was wishing for summer. Today it's summer. And it's too hot and you break a sweat just walking to the Church building. And I was wishing thinking after the previous post that it would be nice to have a cool breezy day. Of course, drizzle and real cold temperatures aren't desirable. But slight cool wind at 65-70 is really nice. A little nippy....

Beautiful Sunday

2009-05-03T10:36:00.003-05:00

A new day. A Sunday. Time to go to church! :) Well, getting ready to get out the door.

It's been raining or been rain-like the whole week. Kinda has that gloomy look. We were wondering if London is like this all the time, that would be pretty weird.

Anyway, the next week is forecast for rain again. Hopefully, the rain will go away and it will get sunny and bright and summerlike.

:)

WPF vs. WinForms!

2009-02-26T11:04:00.003-06:00

As I design our groups main product and continue to see issues such as user experience including ADA compliance, I realize that I have to have a better solution than using fixed size images on the screen. So I set about searching for themes and see what the themes allow with Windows Presentation Foundation for dynamic GUI change.

I am hoping that this can translate well over embedding WPF based controls in the browser. Keep in mind that this is not a WPF web-based solution (kind of silverslight solution), but rather a .NET control. This .NET control is done in WPF and used either in thick client scenario or in a web-based embedded scenario.

There might be a better solution as I research more. There might be a way to design an app to be used in thick and thin clients using WPF without having to embed it in the browser, but then again that wouldn't work in my app. My app needs to download and run in the browser and open tcp channel.

Anyway, the following article was well written and has good points on WPF.

http://weblogs.asp.net/bsimser/archive/2008/02/25/wpf-or-winforms-choose-wisely.aspx

ReiserFS guy crazy, depressing.

2008-04-29T10:15:00.001-05:00

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/04/28/no.body.case.ap/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

Reiser, known in programming circles as creator of the ReiserFS computer file system, testified for several days in the six-month trial, often giving rambling answers and getting scolded by the judge for arguing with the prosecutor.

Star Wars according to a 3 year old

2008-02-25T11:33:00.000-06:00

The cutest thing ever!

Working on a new music track

2008-02-12T20:37:00.006-06:00

I've been working on a new trance/techno track.

The computer rebooted. Lost the project file. Can't re-create it. For the most part this is the final mix. But a few thing were needing change. It is shaping up nicely. Once it is fixed , I will post a link to it.

Do you work on any music? Do you make it available online? Is it free?

What a Project Manager!

2008-02-12T18:58:00.000-06:00

So the project manager for my project has been somewhat distant. Sort of asking for things (demanding) when he feels like and simply not realizing that he's a project manager and not the manager. He is responsible for keeping the project schedule not dictating the resource's (individuals) schedule.

Today I included him in the loop about an issue where he woud like to know the progress and this task has been in the works for a little over couple of weeks and I thought he'd like to be involved. Also he might be able to use that PMP certification to some use. Instead of trying to be project manager and trying to get the things that the team needs, he chose to be confrontantional. Insinuating the I'm not doing enough to get this resolved. He starting sending emails CC'ing others asking if this was done or that was done. Whether a certain thing was tried. Little does he know that people in the lower ranks, where work gets done, actually know what they're doing. Otherwise, they would've have been promoted to middle management years ago. In the end the task was done, but a lesson was learnt: never include the project manager unless wasting the time is one's intention.

Yahoo to Microsoft....

2008-02-10T23:14:00.000-06:00

Microsoft is obviously desperate to gain Yahoo audience or else they wouldn't have offered 62% premium on Yahoo stock. This may not necessarily indicate that Microsoft is in desperate need to get into search engine business. They're doing alright, believe it or not. Microsoft may be more interested in acquiring a better ad revenue system.

That's a very interesting concept. Where Yahoo decided to throw exteremely annoying smiling-girl dating commercials in the mailboxes and browsers of their users, Google took a more educated approach. They decided to target the content for the user. In other words, the user is not seeing a dating commercial if they're shopping for memory in a page.

While Yahoo hasn't changed their ad model (well they have probably made the banners bigger), Microsoft may have decided that this is a good time to get the Yahoo userbase and set up a good and profitable ad revenue model. This will be good for Microsoft and the users. And the uses might appreciate the ads a lot more if they're invested in the ad business.

However, Yahoo's response was to act like a big company and refuse. They're asking the Microsoft pay even more! Another 13 billion!

Wow, that's a lot of money! Microsoft has the option to directly take the deal to Yahoo shareholders. Well, Microsoft shouldn't pay the extra money. Already the bid is pretty decent.

Site Layout

2008-02-09T22:20:00.000-06:00

Spent a lot of time finding site layouts. Finally, made this one and like it enough to keep it.

Sending UDP messages in C#

2008-02-06T11:06:00.004-06:00

How to send a UDP message to a UDP server in C#.


string mHost="hostname";
int mPort="1111";
string mMessage="message";

try {
  mClient=new UdpClient();
  IPAddress mIPAddress=Dns.GetHostEntry(mHost).AddressList[0];
  mRemoteEndPoint=new IPEndPoint(mIPAddress, mPort);

  mClient.Connect(mRemoteEndPoint);
}
catch(Exception mEX) {
  MessageBox.Show(mEX.Message);
}

mClient.Send(Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes(mMessage), Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes(mMessage).Length);

Jessica Simpson

2008-02-05T18:21:00.000-06:00

So Jessica Simpsons hasn't made the news lately.

By lately, the meaning is in the last one week. Why was her relationship with Romo so doomed. Why was everyone so upset with them vacationing? I don't understand it. What was the problem with it?

Poor girl has been making the news lately for all these different relationships. Hopefully, she'll make the album and focus on music. She can sing pretty well.

Just reading the news today it dawned on me that Jessica hadn't been mentioned for a while.

Beautiful Monday

2008-02-04T13:30:00.000-06:00

First smell of summer. Well it's still winter but it smells like those fine spring days. The temperature is warmer and the day is dry. No sunshine but it's just fine.

Work is not all that enjoyable in a weather like this. This is an outdoorsy weather. Something to do outdoors would be nice.

Been posting a lot of YouTube vids lately. Will try to post more blogs posts with something fun to read.

Raindrops

2008-02-01T10:39:00.000-06:00

What a cool song. Good to cheer you up!

New mammal species found!

2008-01-31T09:55:00.000-06:00

So a new species is found. That is so cool. People want to explore space and all that and it is fine, but there's an entire planet that hasn't been fully explored yet! That is so amazing that God has made so many different things!

http://news.id.msn.com/topstories/article.aspx?cp-documentid=1217509

In a rare discovery of a new species of mammal, zoologists on Thursday said
they had identified a shrew-like creature called a grey-faced sengi living
in a small community in remote Tanzania.
Sengis -- small, furry, insect-eating mammals that live on forest floors -- are also called elephant-shrews.
Until now, only 15 species of sengis were known, but this one is truly exceptional, the
proud investigators said.

Sweep Picking Fast Solos

2008-01-30T22:51:00.000-06:00

This definitely sounds really cool.

Cute baby eating mango

2008-01-29T23:01:00.001-06:00

Funny Baby!

2008-01-29T17:37:00.000-06:00

The best Database Server

2008-01-28T22:32:00.000-06:00

Moving stuff to Oracle from SQL Server. Well, Oracle certainly has come a long way to nowhere. It is still cumbersome to use and in it's own little world. But at least Oracle would be happy because they think that they are the more robust database.

In today's world where people really don't have mass amounts of data, Oracle's supposed egde doesn't make much of a bargaining chip. SQL Server does more than fine for all the corporate needs. Most companies aren't in business long enough to have a database big enough to really cause problems. Others have backups and rollovers and database syncs and server farms to solve problems. And many really huge ones still use mainframes. So what is the point of Oracle? It has it's place but they're making it hard to let other people use the database system. By making simple things hard, they exclude a big group of people.

The TNS thing alone is a big nuisance. Any client that needs to connect must use TNS names. There's a cases where people have been able to make connections without using the TNS names entries and the oracle client. Mostly, the oracle client needs to be isntalled with all of it's MB (disk space) eating additions. Plus it needs to be configured. In a world where 2000 workstations need to do database stuff, it's not always easy to deploy the Oracle client and configure it remotely. Not to mention updates are not very easy to implement.

On the other hand if you want to hire someone who can write instructions to Oracle in bad english, and use PL/SQL instead of plain SQL or T-SQL then you'd want Oracle. If you want to have snobby DBAs who can hold up everything to their schedule, you really want Oracle.

Fun work day

2008-01-28T22:29:00.000-06:00

What a Monday! Another day full of not much done. Great day to be doing work.

Other than that it was great.

Cold Weather

2008-01-27T17:25:00.000-06:00

The weather has been so cold lately that getting out has not been fun. Normally, one could go out to a restaurant over the weekend or go watching a movie, but this cold has made it hard to want to leave the warm indoors.

This has also taken a toll on other fun activities. On the plus side, it has allowed me to stay home and play some guitar and get some recording done. I was actually able to record some stuff during the day with the amp mic'd instead of being DI'd.

Fun stuff, really. I wonder how cold is it in the bahamas right now. Or the other tropical places. I wonder if many people go this time of year. Maybe holidays but beginning of the year sounds a little hard since most work place would be eager to get to start working. To make money.

Heavy Music

2008-01-25T00:32:00.000-06:00

Been looking at how to play some thrash/power metal styles. Been playing guitar for a while without focusing on any particular genre. Now been wanting to play heavy and realizing that I dont' really know how to play heavy aside from getting the heavy sounding equipment. Sure the guitar sounds like it but the playing does not. So in attempting to learn a little more, been searching proper playing styles. Want to focus more on thrash and power metal. A cool band playing pretty power metal is Skillet.

Skillet has been around for a while and only improving. Check it out http://www.skillet.com/enter.php.

Another day in paradise.

2008-01-24T10:03:00.001-06:00

It's a beautiful day. It's a shame it has to be spent working on some random project. Beautiful day regardless.

Some of us are working form home. Others have to work from the office. With each passing day the number of fellow employees grows smaller. The smiles on the faces turn more political and the words more charged.

Fun Times. Really!

What a day!

2008-01-23T14:32:00.000-06:00

No, there is no need to start singing What a Feeling!

The day is just moving slowly. The oracle issues just don't stop. Somebody should tell oracle to move into the current century with the products.

On the other hand, the good news is that it's not raining. It's cold but not raining. Cold is still but rain is not as enjoyable. Mostly, because running to and from the car to buildings gets you a little wet. If working from home, the rain is actually quite enjoyable.

To quote a whole country: Ciao!