thomasnguyen.com

Seven Days Without a Phone.

noreply@blogger.com (thomasnguyencom) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 03:37:00 +0000

Two Fridays ago, October 2, I lost my BlackBerry 8900 on the bus. The following Monday I called up METRO to see if anyone turned in...nothing. I waited a few more days and tried again, they found a BlackBerry! I described it to them and even asked them to open the back panel where I put a sticker. They verified and gave me a tag number (365928) and was told to visit the 1220 McCarty office to pick it up on Friday, October 9. I showed up and they pulled out an older BlackBerry 8110 in its holder. It's the wrong phone! There's no way this phone could have the same sticker I had, so popped it open and nothing. I drove all the way out there for nothing due to lazy, incompetent people. ARGH!

Well, not really nothing - Purple Heart was picking up the items no one picked up in the last thirty days and I got a card from them with all the locations. Time to donate all my hoarded stuff!

So for my seven days without a phone I realized I don't really need all the fancy stuff - Internet and email. I do need a phone though. There were many times when my phone book would have helped - no one remembers phone numbers anymore, right?

So for my next phone, I'm thinking about getting another BlackBerry, the next Android, or conform and get an unlocked iPhone. I'll have to do some research and see what's available. Meanwhile, I'll be using my awesome Nokia 2610!

Update Version Number in a File.

noreply@blogger.com (thomasnguyencom) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:42:00 +0000

No, not an AssemblyInfo.cs file, that's really straightforward. C'mon it's a task that does what it says, easy.

Something I was trying to do is update the version number in, for all simple purposes, a text file - something that's not xmlpoke-able. So I have the property ready to go and the file I want to update!

My first thoughts were to use the loadfile to get the file into a property and replace it with the version.

</replacetokens>

</filterchain>

</loadfile>

Awesome, just like the sample and it echos out just fine...so now, how do I save my changes? After some digging around, I looked into the filterchain and read up on the copy task.

Seriously, copying a file now has the ability to modify the internals? Does not compute! Maybe copy, then modify. Anyway, its works now, so I can't really complain anymore besides the hassle of finding the right task to do the job.

</replacetokens>

</filterchain>

</copy>

Now I know why James keeps telling me to get out of the XML HELL. Coding tasks in XML is just ass backwards.

I Started Jogging...Yet Again

noreply@blogger.com (thomasnguyencom) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 02:47:00 +0000

Distance: 1.5 miles
Time: 22 minutes
Listened to: StackOverflow Podcast #64

Let's see how long this commitment to jogging lasts. I only went around my neighborhood once and I can't say I was trying, but I'm still really disappointed in myself. I guess there's ~~some~~ a lot of room for improvement.

I shouldn't have ate after I got home and at the NSMAA meeting with a glass of wine. When I say glass, I mean styrofoam cup. Two dinners before jogging is not good.

As for what listened to, I'm getting really bored of the StackOverflow Podcast and I might start listening to something else while I jog. I'll probably restart the ALT.NET Podcast since Object Databases are foreign to me.

You might wonder why I don't listen to music and the I just can't get my mind off of the jogging with just music. I need something that will distract me from the fact that I'm actually jogging and I find learning something kills two birds with one stone.

Do you have any suggestions on what podcasts to subscribe to? Or, maybe there are some other things out there I can download and listen to. Please let me know!

Security Auditing SP2 Released

noreply@blogger.com (thomasnguyencom) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 02:54:00 +0000

This is a huge milestone for my career as a software developer. Not because I’m finally releasing code for customers to use in production, but I’ve also been able to introduce some new shiny toys to the development team over the past few years. Since the day I started to what we call our “biggest and most complete [release] that we have done to date at Secure Vantage,” we've been introduced to a few tools:

Source control – Subversion
- TortoiseSVN
- VisualSVN/AnkhSVN
Continuous Integration – CCNet
- Build automation
- Test automation
- Package automation
Bug and Feature Tracker – Mantis
- Notified using RSS in Outlook

You might be thinking, shouldn’t every successful software development team already have this in place to start with? Well, we didn’t and I made it a point to get it setup before I got too deep into code. Now, some of you might be wondering what we used before, but I'll leave that to the previous development team to answer that. I joined the team on a green-field development project, most of which is the only C# we have. I was able to introduce new tools in order to help me track my progress and deliver products with confidence. Now, everyone on the development team is onboard with these tools.

As for Subversion since I have a vivid memory of a project in a Software Engineering course: Foozy, Team Foo. The project went very well, it worked during the demo and we had it well documented and even added a CD cover with a picture of everyone on the team. After the demo, we sat down with to discuss our process. I didn’t think of it much at the time, but process, tools, and techniques are king! He asked us what we used for source control and I completely freaked. We passed our code around on a USB stick and in his class we learned about all the source control tools available to us. I pulled the USB stick from my pocket and showed him, this is what we used. He definitely didn’t find it as amusing as I did.

Now, if you don't know, I took a few courses from Venkat Subramanium, a pretty well known polyglot in the software development world, and I learned a lot about software development, best practices, and even picked up a few books just because of him. Who knew we have such a great asset at the University of Houston? GO COOGS! Anyway, I made it a point to use process, tools, and techniques I learned from his classes for the rest of my software development career.

Since then, and even more so while working at Secure Vantage, I've got pretty anal with software development. Especially about doing things the right way versus just getting things done, but it's hard when we as a team have committed to a delivery date. I just follow that cost-quality-time triangle thing (what's that called again?) and guess what always gets dropped first. I think I've been able to counteract that out with the Pareto Principle. On top of that, in the last few weeks I've been able to knock out a lot of those bugs put in the backburner to get where we're at today. =)

So that’s cool, but what’s next for me? I definitely know I’m nowhere near complete. I’m going to have to start figuring out a way to manage the branching strategy, but I'm reading and hearing about so many different things it's so overwhelming. For now, I'm just going to try my best and keep things as simple as possible. This is a new frontier for me, and I hope I'm ready for it. I need to get back to reading blogs, articles, and books again. I've fallen off that boat for far too long.

Oh, and today is my half-birthday!

Quotey Journalism.

noreply@blogger.com (thomasnguyencom) — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 17:59:00 +0000

It seems like journalism is dying in this day and age. Technology is allowing everyone to publish something online: you and me, online news feeds, and even that kid down the street who can kick my ass in Call of Duty or any FPS game on the market nowadays. The ability to publish to the web is really easy all you need is an account with Twitter, Facebook, or a blogger and voila: you're an online author where the Internet is your audience.

I hate to say it, but I don't like it. Not the part where anyone can say anything. Not because I'm tired of seeing a never ending feed of pictures with cats with something whitty in that same font everywhere. Not even the people who feel like they have to Tweet every second of their life...seriously. Everyone should have the option to publish absolutely anything online and it is my responsibility to control what gets fed into my brain.

The part I really hate is that journalism today is that it's a little quotey. They'll quote anyone, seriously...anyone. I mean c'mon, where's the responsible journalism? I don't care what luvangel1987 (I made it up, hehe) has to say about what's going on in the Middle East. I want to know what's going on in the Middle East, so tell report on that, not the opinions and knee-jerk blurbs from random people around the Internet, especially that kid down the street.

I'm not going to cite a billion examples, I'm sure you can find them on the many 24-hour news channels and the quick click-to-publish news websites. I'm just really tired of it. I don't care if you published it before everyone else on the Internet, that's not what I enjoy reading. I don't want my local news, CNN, or (dare I say it) Fox news to tell me who they follow or read and find interesting enough to quote about a story they're covering. I ~~want~~ expect the professional publishers, through any medium, to do it professionally. It's not a first-in-wins mentality, it's quality that will keep me coming back. Yeah, it might have bias, but what isn't? At least you're not reporting your bias on someone else's bias.

I can't say it more clearly, but seriously, just give me the news and stop reporting your favorite items from your "Following" list or your blogroll. Oh yeah, and just because you can use the latest multi-touch screen application during your newscast does not make you cooler, more informative, or make me more interested. That could be an entirely seperate post I won't write about.

What made me tick and barf out this post? On Cy-Fair Homestead Exemptions

Ericka Mellon, you made a really dry article sandwich. The outside bread was pretty good, the kind with sesame seed buns and toasted a little with butter, but you just used five pounds of bad meat cooked too dry with no ketchup or mayonnaise. No vegetables, nothing! Blech!

Aw man, now I made myself hungry, GAH!

Once I Was Blind, Now I See!

noreply@blogger.com (thomasnguyencom) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 16:46:00 +0000

Friday of last week I went into a Lasik Plus in the River Oaks area to get my eyes fixed. Nothing's broken with them, I'm just really tired of putting my contacts every morning and especially going back every year to get my vision checked and return later again to pay for a handful of boxes.

Everyone has asked about how it went and it's really not bad at all, minus the first day. After the really quick procedure and the numbing medicine wore off, it's all pain for about 4-5 hours. The ride home sucked even though I was just a passenger. Two Advils and a long sleep until the next morning fixed everything.

For seven days, four times a day, I put two types of drops: Vigamox (left) and Omnipred (center). I hate the Omnipred. It leaves a really nasty flavor in my mouth. For a month I have to put in the Systane (right)) drops to keep my eyes lubricated and to help the healing process. No nasty flavor, whew!

Today, is the first day I've gone without having to use the Vigamox and Omnipred. That means no more waking up at 6:00 AM (I scheduled to use the drops every noon, midnight, 6:00 AM and 6:00 PM).

It's awesome seeing everything in the morning. I still go to bed thinking I have my contacts in my eyes, it's crazy. So there are a few downsides for Lasik some are known upfront and others are just things that just suck.

No eye rubbing: that's obvious, but this means while showering, drying up after showring, washing your face, everything is a huge pain in the ass.
Feels like an eyelash in my eye: remember, no rubbing!
Halo effect: occurs only at night, but it's supposed to lessen as it heals.

My Kindle 2 Experience.

noreply@blogger.com (thomasnguyencom) — Sun, 10 May 2009 15:21:00 +0000

"Why do I even need to get an ebook reader? I already have a laptop I carry around with me everywhere I go..."

That was me up until about a month ago. I finally decided to get a Kindle 2 over a Sony ebook reader and I'm not even sure if there's anything else out there on the market. It was a shot in the dark and I'm actually really happy about the decision.

Here are a few highlights and demerits from my experience thus far. If it gets boring or you're just completely uninterested about my review, check out this really awesome picture from WWF (no, NOT the World Wrestling Federation).

Highlights

Fits inside my cow book where I take notes or just draw things to keep me from falling asleep
Very easy on the eyes unlike a laptop's screen
Just enough text on screen to read and not lose focus since I have a hard time focusing when reading
No distracting applications like DOSBox+XenonII and Visual Studio
Reading it on a plane - less worry about battery life and the person in front of you leaning back in their seat than a laptop

Demerits

No SD card support
No native PDF support - has to be emailed to a service, downloaded, and then moved to the Kindle 2
It's white. White tends to get dirty quickly and easily. I need a skin or something...

Neutral

No backlighting - Reading in the dark is just pointless for me. I'll pass out after a five or ten minutes.
Text to Speech - I got the thing to read, not read to me. Plus the voice is really monotone and I'd probably zone out.
Web browsing capability - I'm reading, not browsing websites, plus the speed is too painful to deal with.
WiFi magazines, newspapers, book - awesome, but I haven't yet utilized this. I'm still catching up with all the ebooks I already have.

Door to Door Sales.

noreply@blogger.com (thomasnguyencom) — Sat, 02 May 2009 22:42:00 +0000

Privacy is something we cherish out here in the suburbs, but we always seem to get the random door to door salesman knocking. Does it still work? I can't remember the last time I ever actually bought anything besides maybe girlscout cookies; they're so addicting. I was always raised never to talk to strangers and well, they are strangers. I didn't ask them to come to the door. I didn't ask for a service. I even think our HOA decided that our neighborhood is strictly no soliciting. Maybe I should report them; I wonder what would happen.

Last night, I was waiting for my brother to get home so we could head to dinner with our parents. The doorbell rand and I walked out to the door ready to go. It was a salesman. Instead of just saying no thanks, I decided to talk to the guy for a bit about alarm solutions just so I could hear his pitch and see how he sells things.

As I open the door, he's standing in my flower bed (on soil, but WTF?), pulling out my current alarm sign while asking me if I knew how long the sign was there. Wow, really? FAILED SALE. We had a little back and forth about what could give me for free and what he thought I needed over my current alarm provider. All I wanted was a brochure or something to take back and read in order to learn more rather than signing something right then and there.

He then starts to talk about how cool my car is when he realizes I'm really not interested in the products or services. What's the point? I don't understand what my car has to do with what you're trying to sell me. If you're trying to get on my good side, you already stepped in my flowerbed and pulled out my current alarm sign. He finally got the message after I said, "Thanks, but not this time around" about three or four times.

Ben called me as soon as I got back inside and dinner was in ten minutes, yay. Luby's is great by the way. Everyone thinks it's old people food or hospital food, but it's actually really good: Luanne platter is the best bet. After meeting up for dinner with the family, I headed home and got ready to go out.

I started my car, setup my Zune, opened the garage door, and creep out into the dark night. I see a shadow off to my right and slow the car down to let the night walker pass by on the sidewalk. This shadow didn't continue to walk on the sidewalk. Instead, it was the same salesman approaching my driver's side window. Talk about persistence. As he came closer, he motioned for me to roll down the window. I asked if he needed any help since it didn't look like he had a car or a ride. So I thought. He ended up trying to sell me another pitch for a three day free trial at no cost to me.

I was in utter shock and awe. What's this guy doing? He knows I'm not interested, but yet he's still trying to sell me something I don't want while I'm leaving my house, in my car. Maybe I just haven't yet met a salesman who has a better product than girl scout cookies or maybe there's no other salesman that's better than a girl scout. Whatever it is, I don't think door to door sales works anymore.

MMS 2009: Round Two.

noreply@blogger.com (thomasnguyencom) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:35:00 +0000

I had the great opportunity to attend the Microsoft Management Summit this year. Unlike last year, this year I'm staying at the Venetian, rather than the MGM.

My experience with this kind of event comes with much hesitance for me. I'm uncomfortable in an environment with a throng of people. Here's a crazy fact about me: I learned the word "throng" from when I read Scarlet Letter. Many people in this case is about 2,500 people at booths and wandering around trying to sell stuff and ask for advice. It's a sales thing, but the reason I'm going is for the sessions and to challenge my fears. I'm here to soak in all the information about new features as well as upcoming features for System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) and put myself in front of potential clients or just casual inquirers about our product line.

[Saturday]
I woke up in a mad dash to finish up washing clothes and packing. My flight was at 2:35 PM and I'm running around like crazy to get my things ready. After my last round of dried clothes are laid out on my bed, I make sure I have everything again and just in time to leave the house to head to the airport. I hate being a procrastinator.

Any way, I land, grab a little snack and met up with Kevin to wander around the strip. We picked up some drinks and checked out the Mirage's new Volcano show. It's freaking awesome. After little debating, we went to Wolfgang Puck. Everything was just freaking awesome.

[Sunday]

Work day. Enough said. The server room was in the bowels of the Venetian. After finding the command center, we went through a backdoor, downstairs to an elevator. After hopping off, we walked down through what looked like a service hallway. There was a door that required a key and that's where we were, Floor .5. The Server room. Well after setting up our products to monitor the show's network, I was eager to find a television to watch the Rockets play. We went to the AquaKnox and I sat myself directly in view of the game, awesome. it was the 4th quarter and all of the sudden everyone is standing up...NO!!! Well, good thing we just walked next door to some restaurant. We made a pitstop at the circle bar which is our typical meeting spot. Lavo was our last it stop for the night and for good reason. Waking up at 8:30 AM was not exciting. Thanks Coffee and Advil. Thanks a million.

[Monday]

I felt really queasy all day, but manageable. Before the Expo opened, we went to Grand Lux Cafe for small bite to eat. I had a small salad and maybe three spoonfuls of soup. Food wasn't making me happy. The Expo was great, but like I said before this was something completely out of my comfort zone. Talking to wanderers who wanted to know general knowledge was nice, but the most fun was talking to the guys who wanted to know more about the product I actually develop. After the Expo closed, we went off to grab dinner at Pinot Brasserie. I was ready to pass out from hunger. By all means, I took care of the hunger.

[Tuesday]
The best session today was "Common Mistakes When Using Operations Manager and How To Avoid Them." The speaker, Cameron Fuller from Catapult Systems, was very engaging: kudos to him. Tonight was a chill night with the Rockets. Too bad we lost, but its a home game coming up Thursday!

[Wednesday]
Sessions were good, but it seems like some speakers shouldn't be speakers. I know I'd be horrible at it, so I know I'd never do it. Speakers need to learn to vocalize, hell it's the most important thing to keep your audience awake. Good material can be presented in a monotone voice and makes it completely a bore. I also found it a little interesting that the speakers who loved to take in questions mid-sentence and interact with the audience to be the most effective. Other speakers who wanted to keep Q&A at the end seemed to be really focused, maybe a little too focused about what they were presenting rather than how the audience was taking it in. Any way, dinner with the company at David Burke was awesome. Thanks, Secure Vantage for taking care of us!

I finally hit the slots, up $30. Thanks to Wheel of Fortune and some random penny slots game I found interesting.

[Thursday]
NEVER have a cappuccino after dinner, EVER. I barely slept and was up at 4:00 AM for no reason. I tried going back to bed, but no success until around 6:00 AM. Today's session was "Lousy Network Performance: Top 10 reasons the Network is Slow" by Laura Chappell. I'm definitely going to check out the tool she showed off, Wireshark. I'm also going to try it out on our network to see how we perform.

GO ROCKETS! Man, 12 years is a long time...

[Friday]

Last day and flight is at 6:25 PM. There are no shows during the day, so all we did was gamble and watch some sports. I was really glad to finally get out of there before I lost any more money.

Automating x86 and x64 Builds.

noreply@blogger.com (thomasnguyencom) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 05:02:00 +0000

Before attending the ALT.NET Houston Open Spaces Conference, I really didn't know what to expect besides learning something. What did I want to learn? I had absolutely no idea. I just ~~heard~~ read good things about this event from many others at the Austin and Seattle ones. The sessions I went to were totally great and best of all, I bumped into a few familiar faces I totally didn't expect to ever see again, hehe.

Now that I have been refreshed with a completely new eagerness to get caught up with the latest and greatest, I'm hoping to be able to contribute at the next ALT.NET conference. Ben, chop-chop, get on it! =)

Here is my main take away from the conference that I just finished.

Starting Point (x86 only): NAnt that kicks off MSBuild, runs tests, and copies to a package folder.

The problem I was running into is that I didn't fully understand Visual Studio 2008's Configuration Manager and how to integrate/mimic it with NAnt. I had to set the target platforms x86/x64 and it automatically configured the output paths:

[folder] - [configuration]|[platform]

bin/Debug - Debug|Any CPU
bin/Release - Release|Any CPU
bin/x86/Debug - Debug|x86
bin/x86/Release - Release|x86
bin/x64/Debug - Debug|x64
bin/x64/Release - Release|x64

Remember, these are defaults after you add solution configurations and solution platform. When you build, set the proper targets, F5 and you're done. As for NAnt, I also had to target the proper configuration/platform:

/p:Configuration=${project.config} /p:Platform=${project.platform}

The tricky part here for me was to get NAnt to find the x64 Framework by parsing out the x86 path and do a string replace. Unfortunately, I'm using 0.85 and it seems to have a bug when trying to pass in a variable as the input string. Currently, I have to specify the directory, UGLY.

After reorganizing a few targets and adding more to specify x86 and x64 builds, it worked perfectly. The last step I did was to ensure the builds were targeting separate platform output folders.

Now, my next step is to automate the WiX build...

Ruby Update Part 1.

noreply@blogger.com (thomasnguyencom) — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 04:03:00 +0000

I'm walking myself through the Ruby Course, by Brian Schroder, and using SciTE as my temporary IDE. Here are a few things that made me scratch me head.

Single and double quotation marks matter a lot:

puts '#{multi_foo(2)}' #outputs just text
puts "#{multi_foo(2)}" #outputs results of function 'multi_foo(2)'

Stacks and queues can be implemented two ways to get the same behavior, but the container (array) is way different.

Stack as I know it: stack = Array.new() stack.push('a1') stack.push('a2') stack.push('a3') puts stack.pop until stack.empty?	Queue as I know it: queue = Array.new() queue.push('q1') queue.push('q2') queue.push('q3') puts queue.shift until queue.empty?
No-no stack: stack = Array.new() stack.unshift('s1') stack.unshift('s2') stack.unshift('s3') puts stack.shift until stack.empty?	No-no queue: queue = Array.new() queue.unshift('q1') queue.unshift('q2') queue.unshift('q3') puts queue.pop until queue.empty?

I also came across some funky data type, the DEQUE/DEQUEUE" - a double-ended queue. I'm not sure how to use this in real life, can anyone give me a good example? I'm still trying to get me head wrapped around this data structure...

Deque 1:

deque = Array.new()
deque.unshift('unshift1')
deque.unshift('unshift2')
deque.unshift('unshift3')
deque.push('push1')
deque.push('push2')
deque.push('push3')
puts deque.shift until deque.empty?

Deque 2:

deque = Array.new()
deque.unshift('unshift1')
deque.unshift('unshift2')
deque.unshift('unshift3')
deque.push('push1')
deque.push('push2')
deque.push('push3')
puts deque.pop until deque.empty?

Right now, I'm trying to get a good understanding of the hashes, iterators and blocks. It's not new to me, but the syntax hurts. After a few exercises, hopefully I'll get it.

Oh yeah, and Happy Valentine's Day.

Learning Again.

noreply@blogger.com (thomasnguyencom) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 15:57:00 +0000

Do you ever find yourself learning only what you need to learn for work?

About a week ago, I found myself at the point where I'm not learning anything new. Don't get me wrong though: I'm not tired of my job whatsoever. I just want to learn something outside C# and Object Oriented programming like Ruby, Functional Programming, or even learn to play some musical instrument.

Since I'm kind of ADD at times, I need to isolate some time for myself to focus on what I want to learn. So, I'm going to have myself Musical Mondays (piano? guitar hero? haha) and Technical Tuesdays (Ruby).

I spent about an hour to crack open some stuff on Ruby. I tried a few IDEs (RubyMine, Aptana, and directly online), but I wanted to get away from that so I'm using the "fxri" after installing the one-click-installer. I read up on the differences since I come from a C# background. I've already completed the quickstart, yay me!

My brother is back in town this weekend, so he should let me use his keyboard for the musical side of me. He never really uses it, so I ~~might~~ will borrow it from him, set it up in my room. My first task is to learn how to read notes and how they're mapped to the keys. Maybe I'll be able to identify this "middle-C" everyone talks about by the end of the first lesson. Or maybe I'll crank up Guitar Hero what-ever-version-we-have on the PS2.

What If Your Computer Died Right Now?

noreply@blogger.com (thomasnguyencom) — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:56:00 +0000

This is a huge concern for me since I've been screwed over plenty of times, but with those 3.5 inch diskettes to back up on. Yes, the 1.44 MB ones way back in the day! My first "real" backup was a Zip disk with a glorious 100 MB per disk, then came the CDs, DVDs, and giant external hard drives. Now, with a few DVDs and a 300GB external HD, I'm able to backup a significant amount of data and provide somewhat a form of redundancy, but it isn't a real backup system. It's just a safety net to make me feel good.

Currently, I'm using my DreamHost's Subversion to backup general working files (no pictures and videos). I'm extremely happy with it. I can access it anywhere and even better, work on it whenever and where ever I want without worrying about having the latest files. I just have to follow the rules: update, make my changes, commit, whatever I want: BING, BANG, BOOM!

I've talked to James about Mozy to back up my pictures and videos, but I have yet to get it setup. So far, I have only seen the screen shots and setup instructions. It sounds really promising since I have a ton of other things I want to backup. They're currently sitting in an external hard drive on top of my file cabinet waiting for a huge disaster to come along. You know, spilling something on it, power surge, or just tipping over and corrupting data.

Joseph just got the ridiculous unlimited plan from DreamHost and is sucking up all the bandwidth in his area. He's putting all his pictures and videos on his FTP and I've slightly considered this too. Something just sounds icky about it, so I'd like to get some opinions/suggestions about it.

Whatever I back up on, I've got to make sure there's a back of that back up because Murphy's Law is always in effect.

I Just Installed Windows 7 Beta!

noreply@blogger.com (thomasnguyencom) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:59:00 +0000

My first impressions are really, really good:

6:05 - Boot from DVD
6:06 - "Installing Windows..."
6:19 - Rebooted
6:26 - Another reboot
6:28 - Setup (enter in key, username, password, computer name)
6:32 - Windows 7 welcome sound

That's less than thirty minutes from start to finish! Not only that, the background is of a Bet(t)a fish! That tickled me. I had trouble getting the drivers setup for the wireless, but I'm installing it on a Sony Vaio SZ670, so go figure. Below are some start up numbers, enjoy.

Drive C:
-Used Space: 9.06 GB
-Free Space: 132 GB

31 Processes running

I'm going to play around more and see what's new. Hopefully, VS08 and SQL05 install properly.

Arapaho Basin and Back Home Again.

noreply@blogger.com (thomasnguyencom) — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 14:25:00 +0000

[Day 3-4 - Sunday-Monday, 12/21-22/2008] - Arapaho Basin

The two full days of snowboarding is now a complete blur. Of the many times I fell down and couldn't get up again, looking up once in a while at the view was breathtaking. I think if I didn't fall down as much as I did, I wouldn't be able to enjoy the view while resting my thighs. It was a little embarrassing to have kids fly by me right after I fall and eat snow. This trip was the most tiring trip I ever took. The thin air, cold, and physical demand on my body is something I really need to get used to if I go again.

Injuries. Other than the bruised butt and broken confidence, I think I sprained my wrist. I was going down a green run and there was a really wide turn. I was going a little fast and not really good at turning yet. There was a little hill/bump everyone was going around, but since Joseph's teaching skills were really sub-par, I couldn't turn. I made about two feet of air and at first I thought was really cool, but then reality slapped me in the face and I had absolutely no idea how to land. C'mon, I still had trouble getting off the freaking lifts without falling! I kind of landed ok, but ended up falling back, catching myself with my hands, but I hurt my wrist. Maybe it was the thin air that cut off signals to be brain that it was hurting because I didn't notice the pain until I got back in Houston. Anyway, still no broken bones, whoot!

I like food, a lot. We ate at a bunch of places in the Keystone area:
Legends Cafe - Pizza (half pepperoni, half mushroom)
Given the fact that we were hungry as hell, this place is awesome. It sits right at the bottom of the runs and right next to the parking lot. After a good morning of snowboarding, this is the place to go. They have a wide variety of foods,

Marcello's at Town Center in Dillon - Spicy Tomato Basil, Italian Sausage, and Tiramisu
We wanted to drive Frisco, but got really hungry and ended up at Dillon. The food was ridiculously awesome and the spicy tomato basil was the best I have ever had ever in my life. I even told our waiter to compliment the chef on it. The entree was a good follow up and the desserts were great too. Joseph, Vik and I split our desserts so we could try them all, YUM! Highly, highly recommended.

Black Mountain Lodge - Kobe Beef Burger
This is another restaurant at Arapaho Basin and sits at the top of the Exhibition Lift. It has a great view, but the food wasn't as good. The burger was a bit dry and the not as flavorful. I don't recommend the Kobe Beef burger, but there was the Elk Soup or something I wanted to try. Maybe next time.

After all our snowboarding adventures, we got well rested. Surprisingly, I was only sore after the second day. On the last day, I wasn't or tired. YAY!

[Day 5 - Tuesday, 12/23/2008] - Denver, Colorado

The drive back to Denver was much less scary that the trip up the mountain. There wasn't any snow and the weather turned out to be great. We checked back in the Hyatt and walked around Denver again. We had lunch at some sushi place and a bottle of sake, YUM!

We were all looking forward to our reservations at the Rodizio Grill, $32.00 for a Brazilian food fest! It was just like Fogo de Chao, but much cheaper and just as good. We met up with an old Houston acquiantance and his sister. Afterward, we all (six of us) crammed ourselves in a BMW and the guys were dropped off at some bar.

It was our last night in Colorado, so we started the drinking. Vodka+Sprite, three wise men (no so wise to get after all), some crazy ass drink the bartender got us (we had to use two straws and it ended with a coffee aftertaste), and I got a complimentary drink to end the night. We were walking toward the free shuttle that took us back to our hotel. Someone said, "we can walk, it's right there." Our drunk asses listened and walked down about ten cold and windy blocks to get back in the Hyatt. Damn that person whoever said it was "right there." Sohel's sober mind could have knocked some sense into us, but he was "sick" and couldn't think straight. Whatever, damn him too. Hahaha...

Two Advils, bunch of water and I was out for the night.

[Day 6 - Wednesday, 12/24/2008] - Denver, Colorado

Luckily, I drank enough water to wake up with a minimal headache. We got all our stuff together and threw it in the back of the Pacifica. For some reason, Sohel carried his backpack with him. I have absolutely no idea why...

We made our last round hitting all the Denver places we wanted to visit with time as our enemy and Sohel as its ally. Remember how he booked a flight later than us to get to Denver? Well, guess when his flight was to get back to Houston? Two hours earlier than us. It's freaking holiday season and getting to the gate would take longer than normal. We had to drive him up to the airport early to make sure he makes his flight, cutting out two hours of our time in Denver.

After we dropped him off, we return the Pacifica. Sohel left his two-dollar straw hat in the trunk and we have to return it to him. Man, this kid causes so much trouble, haha. We ended up throwing his cowboy hat away since he didn't want to walk 200 yards to pick it up. Lazy. Anyway, we hopped in the plane and got back to Houston and the heat and the humidity.

Lessons learned from the trip:
1) Work out six months before snowboarding, focusing on legs.
2) Everyone should book the same damn flight.
3) NEVER take snowboarding lessons from Joseph.
4) Zicam works as indicated on the bottle.
5) When Vik sleeps, he makes kicks and screams like a spoiled brat.

Houston - Denver - Keystone.

noreply@blogger.com (thomasnguyencom) — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 06:04:00 +0000

[Day 1 - Friday, 12/19/2008] - Houston, Texas to Denver, Colorado

After an awesome sushi dinner with a few old friends and a brief night at Sammy's, I went home to pack. I had flight at 6:30 AM and I had to make sure we (college buddies and I) made it to the airport on time. I almost passed out on the couch when Vikram and Joseph knocked at the door. It was only 3:30 AM or something, but we decided to get to the airport early rather than waiting at my house and potentially passing out. They just had a late night at their company party and I was just out for a random night.

Where is Sohel? As usual, he made it difficult and decided to take a later flight than us. We even gave him all of our flight information way right when we all booked out tickets to make sure we were all on the same flights. Vik, Joseph, and I took the same round-trip Frontier flight, while Sohel took Continental. Not just that, but he also just got back from his three week trip to Mecca. From a barren desert to snow, that is one crazy fool.

After arriving, we get all of our stuff and head over to the rental car place and pick up our four-wheel drive Chrysler Pacifica. By this time, Sohel landed and we had to go back around and pick him up. We tried stopping in the pickup area, but a cop started heading over toward us to make us move. Since we couldn't stop and wait, we had to make a few of rounds around the airport. Joseph was driving and we really slow, ten mph and next thing you know, a cop pulls us over. He was really nice and let us go, but all this could have been avoided if Sohel would have just booked the same flight as all of us in the first place.

We drove in town and found Denver Diner for breakfast and it was damn good! Our hotel wasn't far away, so we checked in and walked around the area. We had no idea where were were going, but we found Larimer Square and this big blue bear. I still don't know why there's a big blue bear in the middle of the city peeking into the civic center, but it is really cool. Larimer Square was fully of independent shops and wired up with lights up and down the entire strip.

The Coors Brewery was the next thing on our agenda, and we took off. It wasn't a far drive and was a really fun thing to do. We all got three free beers and oh yeah, a tour of the brewery. I never knew Molson was part of the Coors family until that day. If you're ever in Denver, I highly recommend this tour. Be sure to bring a polarized lens because everything cool is seen through a glass window. I should have bought one.

For dinner, we took a free shuttle from the hotel area to LODO (Lower Downtown?) to find some good food. Going from restaurant to restaurant, we kept going into these really pretentious places that all required reservations or long waits. We finally ended up at the Wynkoop. Good food, but I ended up with a stomach ache after three beers on an empty stomach from the brewery, BOO!

[Day 2 - Saturday, 12/20/2008] - Denver, Colorado to Keystone, Colorado

Today was the first day for snowboarding and I had no idea what to expect. I've never gone snowboarding or skiing in my entire life. The last time I saw snow before this was in Houston a few weeks ago. The last time it snowed in Houston was a few years ago. I've only encountered real snow in December 2001 when I went to Paris, so I'm totally a fish out of water. The drive through the mountains was crazy scary stuff. There was a point where we couldn't even see the hood our vehicle, much less the road. The temperature hit a whopping negative three degrees Fahrenheit (-19.444 Celcius!).

We dropped off all our stuff at the Inn of Arapaho and went back to the Arapaho Basin. After unpacking our luggage, we did hit the bunny hill back at the Arapaho Basin. No lessons, nothing. Just straight to learning from Joseph, which is by the way NOT a good idea whatsoever. We fell so many times, I lost count. The only thing I did learn is how to fall down softly. I was completely shamed by the kids half my height soaring down the hill avoiding fallen first-timers. After getting back to the hotel to rest and heal, we tried to find the jacuzzi and sauna, but ended with failure. They were missing a part, so it was closed.

We wanted to find a place to eat, so we debated for a while and ended up right across the street at the Goat Tavern where they had $1.00 draught beer and really good barbecue. We played Candyland (my first time ever) and made some rules. If you land on your color, you drink. If you land on someone else's color and they tell you to drink, you drink.

Sohel was sick, so he stayed at the Inn and we brought him some food. What a baby.

While back at the hotel, we were flipping around and found a really interesting news highlight: "Continental Flight 1404 (Denver to Houston) plane skids off runway while taking off." It's good to hear that absolutely no one was killed and only 38 were taken to the hospital.

So another night sleep and we were ready for another day of pain and suffering, but well worth it all.

First Year on the Job.

noreply@blogger.com (thomasnguyencom) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:51:00 +0000

First Week on the Job | First Month on the Job
(If this ever gets to "First Decade on the Job", then WLOWL.)

Anyway, it's been about a year now and things are awesome. I've completely changed both as a developer and an employee since I've started. I'm hoping for another great year with way more on plate. Consider this an "end of the year review" for myself.

Accomplishments both development (yay) and non-development related (sigh)

Audit Collection Admin RC
Audit Collection Data Miner Beta
Audit Collection Syslog Gateway
Subversion migration (with Mantis)
Create MSI Installers (believe me, 32/64bit installers are beasts!)
Email management, developer onboarding, document templating, manage third-party software repositories, website maintenance/updates.

Things I Have Learned

System Center Operations Manager: what it is and how it is used
Subversion: administration rather than just the TortoiseSVN part, still way more to learn on this
Creating test users under the domain and using "runas" helps with testing
32-bit Vista will only recognize 3GB of RAM
Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V is awesome!
Having a laptop dock saves seconds of your life a day
I don't like Silverlight/WPF because of XAML. It's ugly!
NAnt is nice, but MSIs are what the customers want/need
A downed Subversion Server on weekends makes for a really painful commit on Monday
Outlook does not manage emails well nor make support migrating to new machine fun
Sometimes working from home is way more productive
Web and Win development has its own gotchas and fails
Employers who trust trustworthy employees reap ginormous benefits (I think I'm pretty trustworthy)
The grass is ALWAYS greener on the other side of the fence, but you might end up having to landscape it, weed it, edge it. In the end it will become what you make of it.

Things I Would Like (to Learn)

Common Design Patterns
Enterprise Architecture and Design
One experienced C# developer (who enjoys the alt.net initiative) to brain storm and do code reviews.
Someone creates MSI Installers for us (I hate them)
Daily stand-up meetings with myself (yeah, I'm a lone developer)
Subversion Administration (helpful hooks, scripts, and processes)
Broadband wifi card (so I can work on the bus or just anywhere)
I need formal, hands on agile training from JP, not just reading blogs
Remove dependence on a cup of coffee a day

Areas of Improvement end of year reviews always come with this part

Provide training for others on Subversion, Mantis, and knowledge sharing
Ask for more feedback and detailed requirements
Improve on product roadmap knowledge
Understand more about customers' needs and use of products
Attend more User Group meetings to learn from others

Something I need to improve on is quality of life. This startup has a lot potential and a lot of things to do, but I need to find something to do outside of this. I have a huge passion for development, but I need to find something to do off the computer. I mean, even my side projects are web-related and I just recently got the Android SDK so I can start making stuff for my brother's new G1. I'll need to start jogging again to build up some stamina in preparation for our snowboarding trip in December. I CAN'T WAIT!!!

I Casted My Ballot.

noreply@blogger.com (thomasnguyencom) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:19:00 +0000

I wanted to go early, so I left around 6:45 AM to get to the polls. I arrived and the line was crazy long! I figured these were probably the other early birds who wanted to vote before work. I ended up grabbing some coffee and heading back home to get some work done.

So after watching MSNBC's coverage I was expecting a complete madhouse at my polling location all day long. I drove over there after a quick lunch and pulled into the parking lot. HMPH...lots of signs with names and positions everywhere. There was no line and finding a parking spot was so simple, YAY!

I found a table with a sign: "L-R" (L-M-N, hey that's me!). I gave them my driver's license the hunt for the correct NGUYEN begins. The lady almost marked me off for my dad's name just because we had the same address, ARGH! Oh well, I helped turn five pages to get to the right name and signed my name. I got a card with my precinct number on it (518) and I walked over to the next table. I got another little ticket with my access code and the gentleman directed me over to booth #3.

TURN-TURN-TURN. CLICK. DONE.
TURN-TURN-TURN. CLICK. DONE.
...
TURN-TURN-TURN. CLICK. DONE.

I finally casted my ballot and I got the biggest chills I've ever had in a long time. I felt great!

David showed me this...I got the chills again! Call me a sucker, but I VOTED!

Tom, Motorpool: "Thanks, I had Fun!"

noreply@blogger.com (thomasnguyencom) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 19:35:00 +0000

Two weeks ago, Kevin (coworker) let us know that he needed two people to help out at the Wings Over Houston Airshow on Sunday. A couple days later he came back with hats, tickets, and a parking pass. Next thing I know, I'm waking up at 4 AM on Sunday to get ready and head way down to Ellington Field after picking up Cory (another coworker).

I had no idea what to expect, but it was a ton of fun. We got radios! The only thing I've played with are the pair of radios we bought back in the day with maximum range of one end of the house to the other, lol.

Anyway, we got the opportunity to move people from the the parking lots to their tents. These weren't ordinary people, they were the in the Heroes and Legends booth. I even took a Congressman there who went to make an appearance there.

(Sorry for the crappy pictures. I just snapped them from my phone. Next year, I'll take out my RebelXT.)

Weekend: Chopin in Paris

noreply@blogger.com (thomasnguyencom) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 14:01:00 +0000

A while ago, the Housonist posted something that caught my eye: Da Camera of Houston presents Chopin in Paris. I immediately emailed Katie in hopes of grabbing up a pair of tickets. She let me know that they would be at the box office, yay! Jenny and I arrived a little early, picked up the tickets and ended up going to dinner right across the street first. If you haven't been to Mingalone, you should. It's a really nice place for a lunch/dinner before the show. They have a "Curtain Call" section for a quick meals so you can make it to the show on time. It's a bit pricey, but if you got free tickets then the price is offset. THANKS AGAIN, KATIE (Houstonist)!

The show was nice, but I often found it hard to read some of the texts before they disappeared. One part that caught my eye was the "GET DRUNK!" note, but when the French and English mashup/translation/take-turns/whatever voices came on I got really frustrated trying to hear what they were trying to say. Overall, they performance was ok, but maybe it's just my ignorance with that kind of artistic style. I was hoping for an ensemble of the grand piano and imagery, but instead it was separate and the music reflected the mood of poem afterward.

Code Review FUN!

noreply@blogger.com (thomasnguyencom) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:40:00 +0000

Legacy code can be fun!
How many wrongs make a right? The more the merrier?

//VB.NET
Public Function ConvertSDToStringSD(ByVal securityDescriptor() As Byte, ByVal securityInfo As Integer) As String

Dim pStringSD As IntPtr
Dim stringSDLen As Integer
Dim success As Boolean = ConvertSecurityDescriptorToStringSecurityDescriptor(securityDescriptor, 1, securityInfo, pStringSD, stringSDLen)
' The following ensures that the memory allocated to pStringSD by the unmanaged
' Win32 API is freed.
Try

If Not success Then

Throw New System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception(Marshal.GetLastWin32Error)

End If
Return Marshal.PtrToStringAuto(pStringSD, stringSDLen)

Finally

If (pStringSD <> IntPtr.Zero) Then

Marshal.FreeHGlobal(pStringSD)

End If
pStringSD = IntPtr.Zero

End Try

End Function

TOM ANGRY, can you guess why?

Reading Material: Writing Secure Code.

noreply@blogger.com (thomasnguyencom) — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 22:34:00 +0000

Shey asked me today, "how many books have u read in the last 4 months/" and well, I suck. I re-read Catcher in the Rye, but it's not technical. It helps me go to bed, really. I have been glancing at Wrox's C# 2008 as well, but not really reading it in depth like I should.

Today, I also realized that I didn't actually read Writing Secure Code. I thought read it, but in reality, it took me forever to read Code Complete. I thought I read both. C'mon they almost look the SAME!

I'll start reading chapter one from Writing Secure Code tonight and hopefully one chapter a night until I'm done. I'm hoping I can finish before I head over to he Kaizen Conference at the end of this month. I got my official invitation about two weeks ago, WHOOT!

P.S. If anyone knows whether we can recommend a friend to get an invitation, please let me know. I want Garo to go with us...NERD Power Hour FTW!

No Right Click? Use Shift + F10.

noreply@blogger.com (thomasnguyencom) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 18:20:00 +0000

I've been using this Dell Vostro 1700 for almost a year now while working at Secure Vantage. I have absolutely no complaints about the performance of the laptop. Every time I pulled out my laptop at a coffee shop or library, I often get looks. This laptop is a monster and its heavy. I don't mind it's got a 3GHz processor, 2GB ram, and 240GB HD! I only have one complaint: the keyboard. There is just ONE key that is missing and makes me really frustrated: the right-click key. Weird part is that there's an empty space between the right-ctrl key and up arrow key. There SHOULD be a right-click key there!

I've tried using the actual right button on the touchpad, but there's a catch. Context menus have a this little underline thing for keyboard shortcuts. It does NOT appear if you use the mouse's right-click. It only appears if you use the actually keyboard right-click key! I guess it makes sense, but I have times when I'm only on the keyboard, especially when coding.

I also remember my old tablet PC, the Toshiba M200's keyboard layout was annoying too. The right-click key and other stuff were jammed up at the top-right hand side. It was way our of reach of my fingers, but at least it had a right-click key.

Anyway, if you don't have a right-click key or it's out of range of your finger tips, you can also do a Shift+F10. Same effect and best part is its within my finger's reach. Yeah, we developers are lazy.

Hurricane Ike Recovery.

noreply@blogger.com (thomasnguyencom) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 21:11:00 +0000

[Day 1 - Friday]
Just before a round of Wii Mario Kart, we got our flashlights together in a little competition of who has the brightest flashlight in lieu of a some Hurricane named Ike. Around 9:00 PM Friday, we lost power! We all (Ben, Sarah, Jenny and I) rushed outside to check out the neighborhood and found a really eerie sight. The entire neighborhood was lit only by the moonlight that could pass through the thick could passing over us. We walked around, met up with Teresa (she copied us and moved in OUR neighborhood after us, hahaha) and ate her ice cream in the front yard during the blackout. The wind started picking up and we rushed inside their house before we got hit in the face by anything flying around.

The house was lit by a few candles and we hung out in the kitchen. I don't know why, but Ben, Sarah and I spent a good ten or fifteen minutes taking turns trying to ninja-flick the candle flame out. There we a bunch of close calls, but I was the first one to flick it out, GO ME! I think Sarah brought up the fact that there was beer in my refrigerator and so we unanimously decided to hurry back and drink up!

By the time we got back, the house was already a bit warm, so we opened up a few windows to let the breeze cools us off. We played a round of King's Cup (OMG awesome game), Jenga, and Speed-Scrabble. It sucked not having any power the first night. By this time, the wind really picked up and it started to sprinkle. This was Teresa's signal to go get her brother from a neighbor's house since he forgot his phone. As Teresa and Jenny are knock at the door, Ben sneaks up behind a truck. They start returning back to our house and Ben POUNCES on them! Teresa runs off screaming and her brother runs the other way. What a brother...hahaha. Teresa heads home and we end up back at my house to get ready for bed.

[Day 2 - Saturday]
I didn't well sleep all night. I kept one waking up, walking around, checking windows and the yard. Morning came and still no power, HMPH. I took a look around the house and the only damage we had were two of our bottle-brushes were leaning at forty-five degree angles in the backyard from the crazy wind and one panel from our fence was knocked out. Jenny and I took a drive around the neighborhood to check out the damage. There were just a few trees leaning over, nothing really completely uprooted, a bunch of branches in the streets, but still drivable, and shingles everywhere.

After returning, my parents showed up to check up on us since they're only about a twenty minute drive away. We all agreed to crash at our parents' house since they lost no more than thirty minutes of power the entire night! My parents assessed the damage and took off. Ben and Sarah took off afterward while Jenny and I drove to Marie's house to scoop her up. This was when the devastation of Hurricane Ike was more visible. Street lights were hanging from the poles, huge trees knocked over, billboards knocked out, and some flooding. Some streets were impassable due to debris and there was absolutely no power.

When we got to Marie's house, we saw that her fence was knocked over, and TONS of pine needles and branches scattered throughout her yard. They seemed to have it worse than us, but nothing crazy.

[Day 3-7 - Sunday-Thursday]
I don't remember much besides playing Risk, Monopoly, Wii Mario Kart, and getting on the canoe around my parents' lake. At one point, Ben and I returned to our house and cleaned out the refrigerator. This was completely disgusting, but we had to do it. The freezer had blood from the sausage and ground beef we stored up pooled at the bottom. The fridge smelled like an old trash can. Nothing Colorox can't clean up. The same day, my dad came by and we cut off some branches to the tipsy trees and put the upright again. We were on a roll, so we weeded the backyard, trimmed the rest of the trees so we can have a nice walkway without a branching slapping anyone in the head. These were the highlights of the aftermath.

If you're asking about work, well our building lost power and got a little water damage from the windows. Working from kind of sucked, but I did learn to mock a bunch of objects and catch/handle exceptions properly.

That evening, a few of us decided to go to Sammy's despite the curfew. While we were there, I got a text message from a friend that our friend had power (she lives in our neighborhood too). Around midnight, we drove home and sleeping in my own bed in my own house with A/C felt great!

[Day 8-9 - Friday-Saturday]
We spent the Friday morning enjoying the power and then I was off to work. We finally got power there as well. We setup all the servers and cleaned up all the cabling. We left the place ready for a fresh start on Monday!

What good is power without the Internet? Almost absolutely POINTLESS! We just got home today (Saturday) from a dinner at Luby's and returned to my house with Internet. Time to catch up on news, blogs, and everything that I've missed...

CI in SD Conference.

noreply@blogger.com (thomasnguyencom) — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 16:09:00 +0000

Continuous Improvement in Software Development Conference!
Long name for something I've been longing.

I'm at a point in development where I need to start improving not just code, but the also practices as an entire team. There are so many things out there to help product development/quality, but I just don't have enough time to investigate them on my own. What better than to learn from the cream of the crop?

So, where do I learn about these things? From the source! Subscribe to their blogs and you'll get the news before it's anywhere: Ayende Rahien, Chad Myers, and Jeremy Miller.