Inside Josh DeLong's Mind

Day 2–Dynamic Effort Upper Body

2013-03-05T22:42:00.001-06:00

Second day of programming. Pretty sore in the glutes and quads with the hamstrings being really tight. Below is the workout for today:

9 x 3 Close Grip Bench Press @ ~50%

30 to 60 second rest

Accessories:

3 x 12 Rear DB Deltoid Raises (shoulder)
3 x 12 Knelling Cable Rope Pulls (tris)
3 x 12 Wide Grip Pull Downs (lats)
3 x 12 Cable Rows (back)
3 x 10 Floor Presses (chest)

Worked out with my buddy Mark Brewer. I definitely perform a lot better when I work out with a partner.
I also got the pleasure of trying out a Sling Shot today. Put my raw 1 rep max of 225# on the bar. Performed the bench press with the sling shot for a double and could have done more. Was very impressed with how much the sling shot helps launch the weight out of the bottom, which is my weak spot.

Day 1 - Max Effort Lower Body

2013-03-04T13:12:00.000-06:00

Today is the first day of writing my own programming so we'll see how it goes. Below is today's workout:

1 Rep Max Sumo Deadlift (Approximately 5 sets)

3 to 5 minute rest between sets

Accessories:

3 x 12 DB Weighted Lunges (Glutes)
3 x 12 Leg Press (Quads)

Slow down (1 to 2 seconds), explode on the way up!

3 x 15 Heavy Ab Sit-ups
3 x 12 Cable Pull Thrus (Hips)
3 x 12 Good Mornings (Back and Hamstrings)

Update: By the end I was toasted. The good mornings I cut short to 3 sets of 8 reps. I should have dropped the weight more but I was ready to get out of there after being at the gym for an hour.

Josh’s Paleo Banana Nut Bread Recipe

2013-01-13T16:36:00.000-06:00

This is based on a Paleo banana bread recipe I came across when I started eating a Paleo diet a couple years ago. I’ve modified it and tweaked it for my liking. Everybody in my family loves this. Even when I made other popular banana bread recipes, they still pick mine over the others.

Ingredients:

3 eggs
5 tbsp honey, tip: Honey is a mess when you try to measure it so either measure it by weight or squeeze it in the bowl and count 1-1000, 2-1000, 3-1000, 4-1000, 5-1000 (85g carbs)
4 tbsp olive oil
3 to 3 1/2 brown spotted bananas mashed, tip: Don’t use green or bright yellow bananas. Wait till they've sat on the counter for a few days. (72g usable carbs)
1 tsp vanilla extract (1g carbs)
1 tsp baking powder, dual acting aluminum free (1g carbs)
2 cups of pre-packaged almond flour or 2 1/4 cups of freshly ground almonds, The reason we use an extra 1/4 cup when making your own almond meal is because you get multiple textures from the food processor. (18g usable carbs)

Directions:

Preheat over to 350F.
Add all the ingredients into a large mixing bowl. Ensure you mash the bananas in a plate first with a fork or a masher.
Mix the ingredients in the bowl with a mixer till thoroughly mixed together.
Coat the inside of loaf pan with coconut or olive oil so the bread doesn’t stick to the inside of the pan.
Pour the banana mixture into the loaf pan.
Place in oven on the middle rack and cook for 1 hour to 1 hour and 15 minutes.

I prefer to use a silicone loaf pan. A silicone loaf pan makes it easier to get the bread out if you by chance forget to grease the inside of the pan. Now just enjoy your banana bread.

UPDATE: After posting this recipe I was wondering how many carbohydrates were in a single loaf. From my calculations of all ingredients the total usable carbohydrate count is 177 grams. Because of the carbohydrate count, I recommend eating this over an extended period of time. I'm going to play with the recipe in the future to find an alternative to the honey.

Perfect Gluten Free Pancakes Recipe

2012-08-26T10:33:00.001-05:00

Finally, after many mess ups and flat pancakes I’ve come up with the perfect recipe for gluten free pancakes.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups of Bob's Red Mill All Purpose GF Baking Flour

3 1/2 teaspoons of double acting baking powder

1 teaspoon salt or sea salt

1 tablespoon organic white sugar

1 cup of Organic Whole Milk (You can substitute Almond Milk)

1 Organic Free Range Egg

3 tablespoons of Organic Unsalted Butter, melted

Directions:

Put all the ingredients except for the milk and butter into a mixing bowl. Melt the butter in a microwave safe measuring cup and then pour it into the mixing bowl. DO NOT rinse out the measuring cup the butter was just in. Now pour the milk into measuring cup the butter was just in and pour that into the mixing bowl. Finally mix up everything in the mixing bowl with a mixer. We have an electric hand mixer that I usually use and this is where the kids like to help.

Now just cook the mixture in a griddle or pan like you normally cook pancakes.

Enjoy!

This is a modification for this recipe on AllRecipes.com my family has used for years.

17 January Sprint WOD

2012-01-17T21:31:00.000-06:00

20 meter Sprint @ 100%
20 Chest to Ground Push-ups

20 meter Sprint
20 Kettle Bell Swings 45#/35#

20 meter Sprint
20 Burpees

50 meter Sprint
50 Sit-ups

50 meter Sprint
50 Air Squats

100 meter Sprint

All sprints should be accomplished at 100%. I performed this WOD on a track and used the markings to determine the distance. For the 20 meter sprints I would run 20 meters and then slow down for 20 meters covering a total distance of about 40 meters. The burpees I performed at the middle of the first turn and then walked around the turn to the line to start the 50 meter sprint. You want to walk a few steps after the burpees and the air squats to loosen your hip flexors back up before you just start sprinting.

Enjoy!

I finished in 14:19. Not very fast.

Presenting the "I-50 Homewrecker"

2011-12-18T17:12:00.002-06:00

Came up with a WOD to do in my living room today because I was feeling lazy about going to the park and workout. I'm calling it the "I-50 Homewrecker".

Here's what the name means.
"I" because you are doing it by yourself.
"50" reps of each exercise.
"Homewrecker" because you can do it in your own home and it will leave you wrecked at the end.

5 Rounds for Time
10 Air Squats
10 Sit-ups
10 Push-up Burpees (That means you do a strict chest to ground push-up and then finish like a normal burpee)

This is a scaled workout. If you wanted more of an Rx type of workout then I would do 15 reps of each exercise calling it the "I-75 Homewrecker".

My time was somewhere around 7 or 8 minutes. I just looked at the clock on the wall and realized the time.

Enjoy!

VS2010: Tired of form designer always opening

2011-12-05T14:44:00.001-06:00

Are you always tired of the forms designer opening everytime you double click on a form to open so now to view the code you have to right click on the file for the context menu and select "View Code".

Here's how to defaultly have forms open in the CSharp Editor and then to view the form in the designer you'll have to right click the file for the context menu and select "View Designer".

Open up a project that has a form in it. Right click on the file for the context menu and select "Open With..." as shown in the image.

Now select "CSharp Editor" from the listbox and select the "Set as Default" button. Press "OK" and your done.

Enjoy!

Josh's "15" Workout Out of the Day

2011-09-06T11:59:00.001-05:00

Yesterday my normal CrossFit gym was closed for Labor Day so I visited the local military base gym to make up a quick workout. Here's what I can up with and I call it the "15".

AMRAP in 15 minutes of:
15 Burpees
15 Kettebells 35#
15 Handstand Push-ups

Was tiring real quick.

Glimpse for Asp.NET Developers

2011-05-24T15:49:00.000-05:00

Last week I watched Scott Hanselman demo a add-on to Asp.NET named Glimpse. If you are familiar with Firebug in Firefox then Glimpse will look very similar. Glimpse allows you to look at all the information of your website while you are debugging to really find out what information is being transferred. You can watch a small demo video of Glimpse on the Glimpse website.

If you are an Asp.NET developer then I suggest you check it out.
http://getglimpse.com/

Cloud based Windows Domain Server

2011-05-22T12:57:00.001-05:00

The problem I have today is really needing a domain server in my home but what I'd really like is a cloud based domain server for home. With having numerous devices in the home and needing to manage permissions and passwords I really just need a domain. When user's change their password on one computer and not the others it messes up the Windows Home Server backups. Plus the people in the house have to remember which password works with which computer.

I've seen where some one was able to do it with Amazon Web Services for a significant price but then it was a hack of DNS forwarding. I wonder if Microsoft has any plans to offer a similar better integrated solution with Windows Azure cloud services. This way I could manage the domain from anywhere and it would be on a very secure and manage network.

I just came back from MS Tech-ed NA 2011 and saw a lot of the capabilities that Azure could do for businesses but I'm wondering how they can help the home power user.

Anybody got any idea's where I could get a Windows Domain in the cloud or is it just a really bad idea?

The pin drop heard around the world

2010-05-04T21:40:00.001-05:00

Tomorrow is the big drop. The day the world will stand still similar to that feeling in the movie Armageddon when they hear it was too late. Our whole lives stand in hands of some of the most skilled men and women from across the world. This problem isn't just BP's problem or a gulf coast problem. This problem is for everyone on the face of the Earth. There will be a time tomorrow when the cap is lowered almost into place that for once we'll have world peace. Maybe only for a few seconds or possibly a few minutes but in that time you will see people from every country crossing their fingers that the cap works. Total silence. People will hold their breath, teachers will stop teaching, traffic will stop almost if someone pressed mute for just a few seconds as the cap is lowered into place. As old saying has it, you could hear a pin drop. It will be that way tomorrow. Will it work? Can it hold the pressure? Nobody knows. But one thing I know, people from all over the world will for once come together as a whole, in peace, to save the fate of all our futures. Below is a quote from the movie Independence Day that I feel has good meaning for what will happen tomorrow.

"Mankind." That word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps it's fate that today is the Fourth of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom... Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution... but from annihilation. We are fighting for our right to live. To exist. And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day the world declared in one voice: "We will not go quietly into the night!" We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day!

Can you copyright, trademark, or patent a sequence of numbers?

2010-01-04T21:33:00.000-06:00

Here's a question that popped in my head straight from the thinking room today and spark a lot of discussion when I brought it up at work. Can you copyright, trademark, or patent a sequence of numbers? I say no. Numbers are public domain.

You may ask why I ask this...Well everything that is digital is just a sequence of numbers. My stake is that once something is transfered into a digital media, the information in digital media is now public domain. If the media completely stays in a analog means then the information is copyrightable. This now brings the scare that all medical records and cell phone conversations that are on digital media are now public domain. This doesn't mean you can't encrypt the data so that it is easily unreadable but the information belongs to the public because it's made up of just a sequence of numbers.

My thinking behind this is based on my fight against the DMCA. What I've figured out from copyright and trademark laws is that only the single group who the information is associated with benefits and the rest of the human race suffers because this information can't be used without paying an exorbitant amount of money to use the idea. So these laws really don't benefit anyone. Once a movie is released in a digital media like a DVD then that information is now public domain and can not be copyrighted in it's digital form.

I'm not a lawyer so I want to hear what other people have to say. What do you think about this? How do feel about public laws protecting digital media? Feel free to spout out.

August Cox Email

2009-08-26T00:11:00.003-05:00

I got my monthly email from Cox Communications again. Been getting these emails since about 2001. Blah...

Dear Customer,

This message is to advise that Cox Communications has received a notice claiming that you are using your Cox High Speed Internet service to post or transmit material in violation of U.S. Copyright law. We have included a copy of the complaint, which identifies the party raising it and the material claimed to be infringing.

We ask that you review the complaint and, if it is valid, promptly remove or disable access to the infringing material. If you disagree with the claims in the notice, you should contact the sender, and not Cox, to resolve the matter.

As an Internet Service Provider, Cox is responsible, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"), to advise when we receive a notice asserting infringement by you. We are also required to take appropriate action if further claims are received that you do not resolve.
The material that you post or share online is your responsibility. Cox encourages responsible Internet use, but we do not monitor nor control the information you share. We have a duty, however, to take progressive steps when we received complaints of infringement.

If we continue to receive infringement claims such as this one, concerning your use of our service, we will suspend your account and disable your Internet connection until you confirm you have removed the infringing material.

To learn more about your responsibilities concerning copyrighted material, please refer to our help article at:
http://support.cox.com/sdccommon/asp/contentredirect.asp?sprt_cid=c2a30ae8-d706-4f6e-beb9-618ea54d1791

http://www.respectcopyrights.org/

Sincerely,

Cox Customer Security

--- Original Message ---

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Notice ID: 131-14041770
Notice Date: 25 Aug 2009 16:46:19 GMT

Cox Communications

Dear Sir or Madam:

BayTSP, Inc. ("BayTSP") swears under penalty of perjury Lionsgate Films has authorized BayTSP to act as its non-exclusive agent for copyright infringement notification. BayTSP's search of the protocol listed below has detected infringements of Lionsgate Films copyright interests on your IP addresses as detailed in the below report.

BayTSP has reasonable good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of in the below report is not authorized by Lionsgate Films, its agents, or the law. The information provided herein is accurate to the best of our knowledge. Therefore, this letter is an official notification to effect removal of the detected infringement listed in the below report. The below documentation specifies the exact location of the infringement.

We hereby request that you immediately remove or block access to the infringing material, as specified in the copyright laws, and insure the user refrains from using or sharing with others unauthorized Lionsgate Films materials in the future (see, 17 U.S.C. 512).

Further, we believe that the entire Internet community benefits when these matters are resolved cooperatively. We urge you to take immediate action to stop this infringing activity and inform us of the results of your actions. We appreciate your efforts toward this common goal.

Please respond indicating the actions you have taken to resolve this matter. The provided link has been assigned to this matter. http://webreply.baytsp.com/webreply/webreply.jsp?customerid=131&commhash=e61ac1437faf20356c38a6838f6b76dc

For email correspondence, please reference the above Notice ID in the subject line. mailto:lions_gate@copyright-compliance.com?subject=RE%3A%
20Notice%20ID%3A%20131%2D14041770%20Notice%20of%20Unauthorized%20Use%20of%20Lionsgate%20Films%20Property

Nothing in this letter shall serve as a waiver of any rights or remedies of Lionsgate Films with respect to the alleged infringement, all of which are expressly reserved. Should you need to contact me, I may be reached at the below address.

Regards,

Mark Ishikawa
CEO
BayTSP.com Inc. - as an Authorized Agent of Lionsgate Films
PO Box 1314 - Los Gatos, CA 95031
Phone:: 408-341-2305 fax:: 408-341-2399
lions_gate@copyright-compliance.com

*pgp public key is available on the key server at http://pgp.mit.edu

Note: The information transmitted in this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, reproduction, retransmission, dissemination or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon, this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from all computers.

This infringement notice contains an XML tag that can be used to automate the processing of this data. If you would like more information on how to use this tag please contact BayTSP.

Evidentiary Information:
Notice ID: 131-14041770
Initial Infringement Timestamp: 15 Aug 2009 00:21:24 GMT
Recent Infringement Timestamp: 25 Aug 2009 00:04:47 GMT
Infringers IP Address: 72.205.223.179
Protocol: BitTorrent
Infringed Work: Crank: High Voltage
Infringing File Name: Crank High Voltage [2009]DVDRip[Xvid]AC3 5.1[Eng]-RoCK&BlueLadyRG.avi
Infringing File Size: 1572481024
Bay ID: 5b6ae2c051d0e9e9f1f188e378c6bcc6df949e4c|1572481024
Port ID: 23990
Infringer's DNS Name: ip72-205-223-179.pn.at.cox.net
Infringer's User Name:

- ---Start ACNS XML

http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://mpto.unistudios.com/xml/Infringement_schema.xsd">

14041770
Open

BayTSP on behalf of Lions Gate Films
Mark Ishikawa, CEO

P.O. Box 1314, Los Gatos, California 95031

(408) 341-2300,(408) 341-2399
lions_gate@copyright-compliance.com

Cox Communications

abuse@cox.net

2009-08-25T00:04:47.000Z
72.205.223.179IP_Address>
23990
ip72-205-223-179.pn.at.cox.net
BitTorrent

1
No

Crank: High Voltage
Crank High Voltage [2009]DVDRip[Xvid]AC3 5.1[Eng]-RoCK&BlueLadyRG.avi
1572481024FileSize>
http://www.genesis-sp.org:2710/announce

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When aggravation reaches an all time level

2009-06-23T23:06:00.006-05:00

So the team I work with has inherited a project that seems to never end. The aggravation level of everyone and having to touch this code is at an all-time level because nothing is simple when working with it. I constantly ask myself WTF, and Why? I know the people who wrote the code are pretty good programmers so I wonder why it became this way. I later reflect that maybe they took all the bad code that was written in VB6 and just slapped it into a class in VB.Net and made all the code COM visible so the legacy code could use it.

I read in a magazine one time about why we call code "legacy code". What's the difference between code written today and "legacy code"? Well, "legacy code" is code nobody wants to touch anymore either because it's too complex, lack of documentation, or lack of unit tests to support old ideas. Below are some metrics of this code using Reflector. I was shocked when I saw them!

Type metrics showing complexity per class type. Complexity should be around 15 or less to be considered quality maintainable code.

Type metrics showing the number of lines of code. That's a lot!

Now the good stuff. Metrics by method showing the method complexity. Again should be around 10 to 15 for good quality code.

Lines of code per method. You can see that's a lot of code for a single method. You could probably split the first one into about 15 to 20 classes.

I saved the best for last. Metrics by module which is a single file. I only included the dlls and did not include any of the exe files. 9 million lines of code in a single dll. Windows 3.1 had between 4 and 5 million lines of code and that was a whole operating system. Total in all, the files they wrote, probably equal the same number of lines of code as it took to write Windows 2000.
Now as a developer, where do you start? Do you just say screw it and start over? Do you just keep putting Band-Aides on it and hope you can make something better in the mean time?

Right now I'm thinking 85 to 90% of the code isn't even used. Now I need to figure out how to isolate the code that isn't used between various .Net and vb6 projects and then loading all the sub-projects into source control correctly using branches and trunks so when a user checks in a small change it doesn't destroy everything.

WARNING! Aggravation level is extremely high!

Coining some vb terms

2009-06-23T20:37:00.002-05:00

So yesterday or the day before I came with an idea to classify vb code into a term people like saying. It seems that if a language doesn't have .net or .blah on it then people think it's old or eclectic. There are about 4 different forms of vb and I use them all weekly so I've coined some terms to separate them all so that people always understand what form of the vb language I am talking about.

VB 4/5/6 - VB.Classic or VB#
VBScript - VB.Script
VBA - VB.App or VB.Applications
VB.Net - VB.Net or VB.Net #.#

Illegal Aliens get Social Security

2009-06-13T14:22:00.002-05:00

So today I received an email from one of my family members asking to sign an email petition list against the bill being approved. Below is an cut of the email and of course I had to reply all to the email but I wanted to see if I could get more peoples comments by blogging on the same subject.

SOCIAL SECURITY CHANGES

It does not matter if you personally like or dislike Obama. You need to sign this petition and flood his e-mail box with e-mails that tell him that, even if the House passes this bill, he needs to veto it. It is already impossible to live on Social Security alone. If the government gives benefits to 'illegal' aliens who have never contributed, where does that leave those of us who have paid into Social Security all our working lives?

As stated below, the Senate voted this week to allow 'illegal' aliens access to Social Security benefits.
Attached is an opportunity to sign a petition that requires citizenship for eligibility to that social service.

Instructions are below. If you don't forward the petition and just stop it, we will lose all these names.

If you do not want to sign it, please just forward it to everyone you know.

Thank you!

To add your name, click on 'forward'. Address it to all of your email correspondents, add your name to the list and send it on.

When the petition hits 1,000, send it to comment@whitehouse.gov

PETITION for President Obama:

Dear Mr. President:
We, the undersigned, protest the bill that the Senate voted on recently which would allow illegal aliens to access our Social Security. We demand that you and all Congressional representatives require citizenship as a pre-requisite for social services in the United States .

We further demand that there not be any amnesty give n to illegal aliens, NO free services, no funding, no payments to and for illegal immigrants " href="mailto:comment@whitehouse.gov%3E%3E" target="_blank">gov%3E>

And now for my comments.

This is a good thing if you think about it. First off illegal aliens now aren't paying taxes at all so our money is going outside the US. To be eligible for social security you have to pay taxes and you have to have worked at least 40 quarters full-time in your life. Then if you finally meet the age cutoff you can receive social security funds.

Consider it this way. The government is giving social security money away as an incentive for illegal aliens to pay taxes. I don't like anymore than any other American that illegal aliens are taking our jobs but if they are going to I want them to pay taxes just like I do. So to put it in a nutshell the government is giving away 5 dollars to make 10 or 15 dollars.

Until SBI Net, built by Boeing, comes online fully operational to prevent illegal aliens from crossing the border, let them pay taxes and for their courtesy we'll give them social security.

Here's a link to my blog. I'm going to post this same message up there but remove the names.

Enjoy,
Josh

So everybody post up their comments. I'd like to hear what everyone has to say.

Sleep Depervation Part 1

2009-05-06T21:32:00.005-05:00

To start this blog post out I think I need to feel everybody in who doesn't personally know me. Well I've had problems with sleeping since I was a little kid. Probably since about age 8. That's about the time when my friends use to complain that I snored like a bulldozer when I spent the night at their house. I've always woken up in the morning with headaches and I was finally diagnosed with sleep apnea about 2 and half years ago. Ever since I was diagnosed and I got a CPAP machine my quality of life has been better.

In October of 2007 I had surgery on my nose to try and open up the airway more. It helped a little bit and helped out mostly during the day when I didn't have the CPAP machine on. In October of 2008 I proceeded to have the second half my surgery to have a U3P procedure done. Basically they just roto-rooter everything in your throat cutting out as much tissue as possible. The second surgery was painful but was still worth it.

So now that's the past. Let's get on with the real story. Today my total sleep count for the past 4 consecutive days adds up to about 17 hours. This morning I woke up about 3:30 AM with a painful headache right behind and above my left eye. Tapping on my fore head with my finger seem to not indicate a sinus problem but that doesn't rule allergies so I go down stairs and down 3 Motrin, a Claritin, some shots of Nasonex in each nostril, and a tall glass of OJ. Of course my head doesn't start to go away till around 5:45 AM and by now I'm awake so I grab the remote to start channel surfing.

Today around lunch time I started to getting over active hearing. I could have sworn I was hearing voices. I'm not a person who normally gets the mid-afternoon crash since I usually don't load up on sugar for breakfast or lunch so I'm tired when 5 or 6 o'clock rolls around. My coherentness has become sub-par. Probably at the same level a normal person would have after maybe 2 beers. Driving to work this morning time seemed to skip. Like I may look down a side road and then I would blink while turning my head back to the front and time would seem to have past for maybe a micro second. I think this is called microsleep. Another symptom I've noticed today is that I've been extremely thirsty. I haven't been hungry for calories and carbs since I try to eat more protein and fiber to slow down digestion.

Now that it's after 10 o'clock PM and I'm starting to wind down I think about the list of things I've accomplished today and what I still need to do tonight. College homework is just going to have to take a side-step for another night as I don't have the concentration to make educated
decisions about "Computer Hardware Architecture" although I just had a two conversation to IT today about the same subject today. My final symptom today that's just started since I've been typing this is numbness in my extremities and muscle cramps in my shoulders and neck. I feel like I'm blinking more to keep my contacts wet.

Sleep deprivation is nothing new to me and I guess it would scare a lot of people. I know of it all too well and I like documenting the stages I go through as each time seems to be a little different.

Over the years I've looked at alternate sleep patterns trying to find ways to push the human body to the limit. Time awake means more time to learn but how much will you retain. I've read stories about some of my mentors in life like Albert Einstein, Nichola Tesla, and daVinci all practiced polyphasic sleep patterns.

Anyway, off to dream land I go soon and hope for more than 5 hours of sleep tonight.

4th Grade Math Stumper

2009-04-15T19:45:00.002-05:00

Helping my son with his math homework and he has one problem left that has stumped me. Maybe I'm just thinking in to it to much but here's the question and see how you fare. I've came up with 3 designs but they only use 24 tiles. Using 25 tiles makes the design not a square anymore.

Katrina made a square design with 25 tiles. She used 9 red tiles for the diagonals, 12 yellow tiles to complete the outside border, and 4 blue tiles to complete the center. Show what Katrina’s design looked like.

Another Depressing Christmas

2008-12-22T21:09:00.006-06:00

I never have liked Christmas.... Really what is the modern day meaning. I know what the true meaning is and nobody really celebrates that. So your next culmination may be fellowship. OK I could buy that for $200 Chuck. But really what does the modern day family see in Christmas. Is it the shopping, the tree, the lights...nope. It's the dream to buy something that may make someones life a little brighter by going in to debt so you can spend the next 12 months paying off the $37 scarf they needed for one time. You say why do I look at it this way. I think gifts should be made by hand. Christmas tree's should decorated by ornaments made by your family. Not some ornament you buy in the store so you have to store it up for another year to in the hope's it won't break while you shove it through a hole in to the attic that you can barely fit in.

I look back on the posts I made last year and even though the posts sound depressing, I still feel the same. I hate the holidays! I wish we could just go from October to January but then we wouldn't have a reason to make New Year's lies to ourselves about losing the 20 pounds you just put on in two months or paying off the thousands of dollars you spent trying to make you kids happy.

Kids are happy if you buy them something or nothing. I see it all the time. Buy a kid a twenty dollar toy and they'll play with the box it came in. So why do I think the holidays are depressing? Christmas never really had a meaning to me. Why rush around and be nice to someone once a year. Why not be nice to them all year long..... There's an idea. Now I'm starting to sound like George Carlin.

Anyway I don't like to see people exchanging gifts. It has a sense of boasting. What if the gift you got me cost more than the gift I got you. Then you pissed because you spent more than you had to. When I was younger I think I liked it a little more but I think people go way overboard. Come on does anyone celebrate Columbus Day? No, but damn sure like the day off from work right. So back on task as I ramble away. I have a lot to say in the winter so get use to it. Let's break this down element by element and undermine the value.

UPDATE: I started to add them all in here but I figured I could make multiple blog posts and keep this going for a few days.....so enjoy.

First Walgreens Deal

2008-06-07T23:51:00.002-05:00

OK so I'm not a virgin to the drug store deals but I later realized I screwed it up. After seeing my wife do the CVSing for a couple weeks and even helping her once or twice has got me on the let's stretch every penny we have kick. I don't go as extreme as my wife does on the deals but this is my first. Right now I'm trying to only stick to deals that we use but it doesn't hurt to have a small stock of products. Especially living in hurricane prone Florida. My granny always told me when I first moved to Florida that I should have a hurricane preparedness bin so this is my way of thanking Walgreens and CVS for helping me do that. So here's what I got in my deal.

4 x 12pk Dr. Pepper cans = $11 with $3 RR
- $2 Dr.Pepper.com coupons ($1 off 2 12pk)

2 x 7oz Gillette Series shave gel = $4
- $2 Walgreens June coupons

1 x 7oz Gillette Satin Care shave gel = $2
- $1 Walgreens June coupons
- $.55 P&G coupon 6/1 newspaper

1 x 24pk Walgreens Cold Multi-Symptom = $3.99
@ - $3.99 rebate at end of June

Total: $20.99
Coupons: $5.55
OOP(+ Tax): 16.46

Rewards: $3.00
Rebates: $3.99

Where did I screw up you ask? We'll I thought the $5 RR was for any sale over $20 but it was $20 in Gillette products. Since it is Saturday I need to look at next weeks ad. If they have the same sale next week I may return the shave gels and then make a sale for 10 cans to total $20 so I can get the $5 in rewards. I know will forfeit my .55 coupon but getting 10 cans of shave gel for almost a quarter of the normal price will be worth it. I need to find somebody who sale newspapers so I can get the left over ads from the papers they do not sale on Sunday. That would help a lot. I like the way Walgreens puts out a coupon book every month and you don't have to clip the coupon. It's also nice that one coupon applies for each item in the sale.

Procrastination - the story of my life

2008-05-26T00:18:00.005-05:00

I must be the biggest procrastonator in the world. I hate to do homework. Yes I said homework. I am in college and have been off and on since 2002. I've taken my fair share of breaks over the years. I usually can only take about a year of it then I need a six month break. I still haven't seen the point of a degree. It seems to only be worth the paper it's printed on.

What I mean is who can really be a programmer on the leading edge of specific development languages by going to school. I have friends who have Bachelors in Computer Science and couldn't program "Hello world" but here I am with no college degree and have been programming professionally for about 2 years now. I say professionally for two years because I really hadn't proved myself till then. I had made some small things here and there but until I took on a couple projects that other more well known programmers had failed at is when I really proved myself to my peers. I also made a name for myself when I just took on a development team for an ASP.Net website and took off making leaps and bounds for customers.

So this brings me to where I am today ranting and raving about a stinkin' degree. I've been developing this website we'll call as "BIAS". At the beginning I stayed up many nights trying to finish the core to really prove what I could do to make it a product we wanted to stay with. Well I not only did that, I fed their thirst and they wanted more. Everybody within my team loved it. Now Friday I just finished up the administration section and then threw in a curve ball with a nice report that wasn't expected. I think I have a couple things in the admin section to go back and complete like the user's profile upload image page but that won't be used for awhile and was really just a way out there feature. I need to code the IFrame to make it work correctly.

Tuesday I begin working on the configuration section and that's where the controversy will start. What I haven't told you is there are two other programs, one legacy program with many years of following and a new high cost development team project that are basically trying to do the same things I am doing. The only key there is I can make changes in a day what takes them weeks after all the red tape. One thing I learned early on is make the change and ask for forgiveness later. It always works out in the end especially when the customer is happier.

So back to my weekend procrastination fest. Here I am on a earlllllyyyyy Monday morning doing homework again not getting anywhere. Sometimes I wonder if I have ADHD or am just lazy. I think I will take my Provigil tomorrow and see what happens. I always seem to be able to focus better when I take it. Anyway the class is Human Biology and what I think is useless unless you are going to become a doctor or chemist. Really what do I care about how the liver and kidneys filter blood except how it filters my beer out of my blood. So now I know how to get drunk and stay drunk longer by saturating the liver down.

On a good note I got a new cell phone on Friday after the first one died that I received Monday. Now for the story. Well the Friday before I broke my other cell phone, a Motorola L2, which was a piece of junk. After using it for over two years I had began to become fed up with it. So Saturday I order myself a refurbished AT&T Tilt from their premier website. Paid for the over night shipping so I would get it Monday. My wife was at home at the time so she opens the box and the back cover has a tab broken off. No biggy, I'll deal with it and call them this week to send me a new cover. Well Thursday afternoon I had to take my wife to the ER and while me and the kids were in the waiting room the damn screen goes white like all washed out. I tried a soft reset, a full hard reset to no luck. Well when we got home later that night I called up AT&T, same number on the box, so after being passed around about 4 times and working with 3 or 4 different sales people they go me a new phone sent out. Guy on the phone told me three to five days delivery. I'm like great. I got a nice three day weekend here to deal with a broken phone. Well Friday my new phone shows up out of the blue. It even looked different when I opened the box. Like all shiny and new.

I've been playing with my new phone this weekend customising it to my likings along with my wife liking the Palringo IM I installed on it. Now I've just got a few more items I would like for it then I think I will be happy.

Who needs a stairmaster when you have stairs

2008-03-02T22:00:00.003-06:00

I lay here in the floor on Sunday night about ready to go to bed and begin my week of ass pounding on the keyboard until my fingers are sore.

The weekend was very eventful in my house. Friday my wife and I decided we needed to do some rearranging of the furniture in the house. We first started with our bedroom and the loft outside the door of our bedroom. Our plans are to make a small bedroom out of the loft for our daughter. This also included moving the computer closet from the upstairs closet down to the closet under the stairs. This took almost all of Saturday and I still haven't finished hooking up everything. Sometime this week I've got to call Cox to unlock the cable box for me to run a new cable line to the under stairs closet. This closet was were I planned to setup everything from the start but we initially had all the computer equipment upstairs on the loft so that's were I originally setup the shelving and wiring.

Anyway we got most of our bedroom cleaned up and a good part of the loft. Mostly what's left is putting clothes away in the closets and then we can begin setting the bed up for my daughter. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have time to go to Lowe's to get some coax cable and a waterproof exterior box for the new cable line. You may ask why I need a exterior box to run a cable line. The box is for me moving all my cable and telephone lines to so I don't have to call the cable company every time I want to do something with my cable.

The closet under the stairs is pretty much wired up other than me having problems with my server over heating because I have it vertical instead of horizontal. For some reason I am having problems with my new motherboards north bridge overheating. I emailed Gigabyte today but I won't here anything from them for a couple days to week if they even respond at all. I should get my DVD drive back from NewEgg this week that I had to RMA.

Off to dreamland I go......

Long awaited update

2008-02-29T22:42:00.002-06:00

It's been a pretty long time since I've made any type of post to my blog and I hope to do it more often. I been trying to get my server at home straightened out. I originally planned to make it my full web server and get rid of the paid server I have now but my 512kb upload speed just wasn't enough to support the needed bandwidth. So in regards to my server I've been working on getting my pictures online with another host. I finally decided on using Flickr for my pictures because of the price and the unlimited storage. I currently have about 18 gigs of pics on my server to share.

Another piece of software in question was my current blog. I found that I liked Wordpress alot better but they didn't offer domain mapping for free. The only way I could get it to work the way I wanted was on my home server and again it couldn't handle the load even with IIS compression turned on. A day or two later I found that Blogger offered free domain mapping so I decided to stay with Blogger. You can now find my blog at http://blog.thedelongfamily.com

A third piece I've been working on is integrating my domain with Google Apps. I've gotten the email, docs, and calendar setup. The Google Apps is pretty cool but I'm not too sure how or if my family is even going to use it.

Right now I have a lot going through my head with work and at home. I'd like to write a really good photo website similar to 4images using Asp.Net and MSSQL Server 2005.

Anyway off to working on my server and network some more.

A New Year

2008-01-01T19:34:00.001-06:00

I guess it's been a few weeks of me posting to my blog and it's time I get back into it. The post will be a followup from the last post.

First the setting: It's a cold winter night here in Florida and I am sitting in a chair on my back patio with a small fire going in my fire pit wishing I had some firewood. Luckily had one starter log and branches.

Now the rest:
The past few weeks have been very hectic at work and at home. First at work I have been slammed with new projects and along with fellow teammate taking their own time off to spend with family. As for my family it has been busy with go go go....shopping, fellowship, and anything else my mother-in-law or wife can find for me to do.

We ended up doing Christmas at our house Christmas eve and then Christmas morning. Christmas Eve we opened all the presents that we from our family and then Christmas morning the kids opened all the presents from Santa. Yes my kids still believe in Santa. The site on both my kids faces this year was what made it the best Christmas of all.

After opening presents Christmas morning we all bathed and hurried over to my mother-in-laws to open presents there along with eat breakfast. Of course my mother-in-law did no have all the ingredients necessary for breakfast so she was waiting on us to bring the shredded cheese. We did find out that my mother-in-law's sausage biscuits were much better without cheese and everybody agreed. My family showed up late as usual plus we had to stop at Walgreen's to get a gift for dirty Santa going on later that night. Everybody opened presents at my mother-in-laws to include my wife's brother's family. Everyone got nice gifts just maybe something they may not need or want.

After my mother-in-laws we headed across town to my brother-in-law's wife's families house for more fellowship. This is where the game dirty Santa commenced to be played on a group of 17 people. The rules were that no one could spend over eight dollars on a gift. Each person drew a number and the when it was your turn you had the choice of stealing a gift that was already opened or opening one from the pile. At the end whoever had number one got to decide if they wanted to swap gifts with someone or keep the gift they ended up with. Of course my daughter had not slept most of the day so she was being a pill to deal with until she finally fell asleep in my arms in the recliner. I think everybody was happy when she finally went to sleep. We also ate dunch (lunch and dinner) there and played my son's new monopoly game that uses cards instead of money.

Well I've almost made it through Christmas week when the baby sitter calls Thursday morning while I'm at work to say my daughter is running a fever. The is the first pickle my wife and I have been in since my wife went back to work. I decided to take off of work and take my daughter to the doctor as I wanted my wife to feel I was supporting her going back to work. We went to the doctor and my daughter has a virus which there's nothing they can do except make sure she gets enough fluid and sleep then take Motrin for the fever. My daughter is already a daddy's girl but Thursday she was all curled up in my arms most of the day. I did finally get her to lay down for a little while and I was able to log into work and get a few things done before she woke up again. Friday was pretty much more of Thursday, I ended up staying home with my daughter again so she didn't spread her virus to anyone else. I gave her some more Motrin after eating something for breakfast and her fever went away. She of course went back to being a kid except you could tell she was tired. We played and cleaned house till about 12 when she finally laid down and I had a meeting starting at 12. My wife brought me something for lunch about 12:30 from Burger King. My meeting dragged on till about 2:30 and my daughter ended up waking up soon after that.

This past weekend was more of go go go stuff and then we both went back to work Monday. Monday wasn't too hectic at work but for some reason I didn't get much done. Later that after noon I started feeling bad but I stuck it out as I wanted to go out and do something with my wife for New Year's Eve. We took my daughter over to the mother-in-laws and headed out to Destin to eat at Outback. We ended up getting a table in the bar section as soon as we got there and everything was cooked good. The forgot to cook my green beans for my meal and you could tell the manager and waiter were panicing. I had no problem as I've worked in the restaurant business before and I understand mistakes happen. On the way home we stopped by Target for more shopping. We ended up with a lot of stuff for the amount we paid. Really lots of dollar items and 75% off Christmas stuff. We picked up my daughter about 10:30 and headed home to see the ball drop. We waited up till it was New Year's here in central time zone and then my wife went to bed. I stayed up for a little while fighting my cold and sleep until I feel a sleep on the couch watch Jeff Dunham. I love Achmed the dead terrorist.

Today has been a decent day. I stayed in bed till 12:30 until my wife woke me up to get out of bed. I headed downstairs to gargle with some Listerine and eat a orange. My daughter wasn't up long after I got up before she went down for a nap. My wife left to go shopping and I laid on the couch for a while until I finally got up to clean house a little before my wife got home. My daughter woke up about 20 minutes before my wife got home and I had taken a few pills so I was beginning to feel a little better. My wife later cooked us some chicken fettuccine alfredo for dinner. So now we've caught up with the past few weeks and here we are with me sitting on laying in the floor inside because it was too damn cold outside to finish typing this out there. I've got to get some firewood before I try that again.

Well looking ahead and talking about some of the stuff going on in my head I am looking to do something with my server. I've got 24 days left on my evaluation version of Windows Home Server and I don't really want to drop $160 for an operating system. I really like linuxmce but its still in its infancy and so I'm looking at maybe switching over to FreeNAS. I currently have a server setup as a web server or I could stay with my web host and continue to pay the 11.90 every three months for it.

I've got a feeling this year is going to be a good year for my family and me I hope anyway.

End of the Week

2007-12-15T10:11:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was a typical Friday closing up a very eventful week. Everything went pretty smooth. I showed up for work on time and we had our typical bi-weekly team meeting to get everybody in the team on the same page. I prefer not to discuss details of that meeting here as some of the information is considered business strategies that could be detrimental to our future projects. Gladly I'd say our meeting went well.

The rest of the day I spent trying to prioritize the couple of hundred projects I am working along with find solutions to some of the problems one of our customers complained about the day before in our meeting with them. I was happy that I found this export button that nobody really knew about in one of our tools so all I had to do was write and import function for that data to solve a large problem of having to fat finger data into our tool. The was the highlight of my day that didn't happen till the last 10 minutes of me being at work.

After getting home from work I was pretty damn tired. I needed a recharge from the whole week. My wife wanted Subway for dinner since I had a coupon for some free subs that I won from the radio station. The sub way good but Subway just doesn't put enough meat on their subs compared to Quiznos or Lennys. After dinner had went to take a nap for one hour but nobody came to wake me up for two hours but that nap was much needed. The rest of the night went as normal with no big events other than my wife cleaning out a cabinet in the kitchen.