Phil's Blog Project

Ten Years

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

Ten years ago we were living in a town house condo... packing our belongings from the previous 6 3/4 years - preparing to move into our new house. We had no children but had two dogs and three parrots. Five out of the eight rooms in our new house would be empty when we moved in.

Today we have no dogs, no parrots, three children and a cat. The house is no longer new our house is full and it is hard to believe that ten years has passed.

Ten years from now we will be rounding a whole new corner in our lives. We will be looking forward to our children going to college, leaving home and preparing for retirement.

Our hope for the future depends on the good old USA bailing out big business to prop up the economy. Goverment bailouts underway for big insurance, mortgage and auto industries. Hey big corporate mismanaged America: anyone else want to hold out your hand for a bailout ? WTF!

My personal experience with the Mailhot Ripper

2008-10-31T22:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went out to lunch with my wife. Entering the restaurant the headline on the front page of the paper caught my eye 'Ripper' tells Mailhot tale. The detective, Edward Lee Jr, that arrested Jeff Mailhot and convinced him to confess to killing and dismembering three women in Woonsocket has co-authored the book 'Ripper' with writer Linda RosenCrance. Jeff Mailhot was an ex co-worker of mine.

Jeff was a likable guy with whom almost everybody enjoyed working with. I trouble shoot machine problems and when I am called over to a machine it is sometimes common for the people operating the machinery to be frustrated, this was not the case in dealing with Jeff, he would be enthusiastic and helpful in reaching a resolution. I recall having a friendly conversation one chilly fall day as I crossed paths with Jeff. He was dressed in his usual attire a short sleeve shirt, jean shorts and boots. I mentioned to Jeff that it was getting a little cold to be wearing shorts for which he replied “I will only resort to wearing pants when it gets really cold later in the winter”.

Imagine my co-workers surprise when on Monday July 19, 2004 we came to work to hear that friendly Jeff had been arrested for killing a woman, it was unbelievable. As the facts came to be known and a search of the local landfills for body parts ensued, reality sunk in... we had worked and been in the presence of a serial killer. The most disturbing thing for me was less than two weeks prior to his arrest Jeff had strangled and dismembered a woman over the fourth of July weekend. A couple of days later, Jeff came to work as if nothing had happened... just business as usual.

Jeffrey's supervisor Al, corresponded with him while he was awaiting trial. Al received a detailed letter from Jeff explaining how and possibly why he had committed the first crime and what had triggered him to commit the subsequent crimes. So yesterday, as I am having lunch, and reading this front page newspaper article I call Al to tell him that a newspaper article and book has been written about our favorite serial killer. "Al" I say "Did they interview you for this newspaper article or book"? Al says "No".

In the weeks and months after Jeffrey Mailhot was arrested, my friends and family would occasionally ask if I heard any new details about the killings. I would jokingly say: I heard Jeff had a few girlfriends but, once he bled them dry they fell to pieces. In truth Jeff cut, sawed and hacked his victims to pieces. I remember hearing that they found saw and hack marks in Jeff’s bathtub from where he chopped up the bodies. Jeff placed the dismembered parts in trash bags and disposed of these bags in dumpsters around the local area.

The world is a better place with Jeffery Mailhot incarcerated. I now know that the most unsuspecting people could be serial killers.

jquery Photo Collage

2008-10-03T19:18:00.000-07:00

I typically post family photos on my website once a month. The work horse for displaying these photos has been a conveyor slide show script. I was creating a photo collage using some free Shutterfly Photo software when I had an epiphany, wouldn't it be neat to have a large center picture surrounded by thumbnail pictures, which when the thumbnails are hovered on would load the selected image into the large center image.

The basis for this jquery collage is to have 28 thumbnail images resized to 106px by 80px and saved into a folder. Also size a version of the images to 640px by 480px and save them into a seperate folder. Set the path of the thumbnail images in the img tags and the path to the 640X480 images in the href portion of the a tags.

Click on this link to see a demonstation jqueryCollage1.html

Disabling Norton 360 Backup

2008-09-07T07:14:00.000-07:00

I use Norton 360 and I like everything it does for me with the exception of its backup feature. All my attempts to schedule a backup are unsuccessful. It appears to have a mind of its own. Every time I log onto my pc it trys to run a backup regardless of the set schedule.

I Googled this problem and came across some complaints that this a common problem and reinstalling Norton 360 may help.

I have an alternative backup solution so all I wanted was to disable the backup from running, simple right? I looked for a way to disable or turn off the backup feature under Tasks & Settings/Change Backup Settings, which is where I set the files to be backed up and the schedule, but there is no disable option there.

The Solution: Click on the round backup restore section of the main Norton 360 window.

Once backup and restore icon is clicked you will find an option to disable backup and restore.

So I give Norton 360 a B+ for protecting my pc from viruses, a F for backing up my files and a D for designing a counter intuitive user interface.

My alternative Backup solution IE the poor mans backup:

Open Notepad and type

XCOPY /E/M/Y "C:\Directory I want to backup" "E:\Directory I want to backup to"

Now choose save as "Backup.bat". Use the double quotes when saving the file. This will save the file as a recognizable bat file.

Now you can schedule this backup to run Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Scheduled Tasks/Add Scheduled Task. Follow the wizard and select your saved bat file and set a schedule for it to run.

The XCOPY command will copy all files and folders in the backup directory. It will also set the archive bit for all of the files it backs up so the next time it runs it will skip any files previously backed up. Pretty slick and simple for something the morons at Norton seem to be unable to figure out.

Orchard Project update

2008-07-12T18:14:00.000-07:00

More than three months after I started my family orchard and it looks promising.

My only casualty appears to be one peach tree.

The strongest growing trees that I planted were the asian pear trees.

The one tree which has been a disapointment, aside from the one casualty, was the potted Home Depot tree. I may have made a mistake in not pruning back the branch growth after planting it. I read that this can produce a stronger tree because when the tree is planted and the roots adjust to their new home, pruning the branch growth back results in a stronger tree as it adjusts to its new permanant home. In either case this reaffirmed my decision to purchse root stock for the majority of my trees.

The japanese beetles were having a field day with my trees.

Home Depot did not have beetle bags and I was going to try Lowes but in the process of re-organizing my basement I found three new beetle bag setups. It has been two years since I used beetle bags to control japanese beetles from destroying my garden. It only now occured to me that part of my lawn grub problem is probably related to japanese beetles. I came across a youtube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY9vuFVc3FU) which demonstrates how to increase the trap capacity of the bag trap through the use of a trash bag. This may be worth a try, saving my trees, saving my lawn from grub damage and save some money eliminating the need to use grub control on the lawn.

New England Fishing Slang

2008-07-01T17:32:00.000-07:00

The term "kiva" is a fishing slang term, which I suspect is a local to the Masachusetts area.

This is commonly used in the context of "You can catch kivas there all day long" Translation: You can catch sunfish over there all day long.

Some Googling of this term came up with little or nothing of this as a slang term for fishing, which leads me to believe that the term kiva is a fishing term unique to our local area.

I am curious if anyone knows the origins of the term kiva and the any areas outside of New England where people use this slang term as we do.

Teaching my children to read

2008-06-15T04:12:00.000-07:00

I am fortunate to have two brilliant children, both of whom have learned to read at the age of five. I am not an expert in early childhood literacy, but I believe that our daily practices have everything to do with our children's propensity to read.

Children need to crawl before they can walk and this holds true for reading. The simple exercise of recognizing upper and lower case letters is a big accomplishment and will lay the groundwork for literacy. Sing the ABCs with your kids. When my girls were between the ages of three and four I started a daily checklist. I listed all the letters in a notebook. Everyday I would ask my girls to identify the letters. This was done in many ways such as asking them to type the letter on a computer keyboard and having the letter appear in a large colorful font in a word editing program. I also used flash cards or used some of their toys which had the alphabet on them. For every letter they identified I placed a check mark next to the letter. A couple of times doing this exercise quickly pointed to the letters they had trouble identifying and we spent extra time on those letter.

The use of a Computer and encouraging children to use the computer is the largest motivation next to books. It amazes me that a large number of parents who will not allow their young children to be online as if they will start their own Facebook or Myspace pages. Set your kids up with their own Limited User Accounts the benefits of this in protecting your pc are beyond the scope of this post to list. Place icons on the desktop so they can access the games that you want them to play.

Let them have a password! The novelty in having a password to get onto the computer and to play game such as Webkinz, is a powerful learning tool. My youngest daughter was four and asked me "why can't I have my own password to sign into the computer". This is a great opportunity to teach them a word. I try to give them the encouragement that they can play on the computer if they can sign themselves in. A simple password such as ball, to get onto the computer, a simple user name and password to sign into an online game such as Webkinz and they are familiar with two or three words and a dozen letters.

Our ability to read is directly related to the ability to phonetically sound out letters. I find our daily practice in this occurs at the dinner table. We have fun discussions such as "what letter does the word cat or kick start with"? Reading the labels on condiment bottles such as Ketchup or Salad Dressing shows that the importance of reading goes beyond reading books and that words and letters are all around us.

Reading with Dick and Jane. I view this as the most powerful tool in my literacy bookcase. Similar to a general holding back his troops before charging into battle, once your children can confidently recognize upper and lowercase letters and simple words introduce them to these books. I found that the simple structure of these books gives children the confidence and fluency to begin reading. Once they gain this confidence and momentum I try to encourage daily reading with wild enthusiasm.

Up until the fourth grade, children learn to read. After that point, children read to learn.
Giving your children a jump start in reading is a gift they will carry with them for the rest of their life.

3 lines of code to make a GridView Row Color Dynamic

2008-04-19T11:13:00.000-07:00

There doesn,t appear to be alot of good references for dynamically evaluating column values on a Gridview and changing the row color based on criteria. I am a big advocate of this .net tutorial: http://asp.net/learn/data-access/tutorial-11-vb.aspx. But this tutorial suggests making a database call on every row that is bound, simply to evaluate if you want to highlight the row. This does not make much sense as the information as everything you need exists in the RowDataBound event. The row can be highlighted using just 3 lines of code on the RowDataBound event:

Protected Sub GridView1_RowDataBound(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Web.UI.WebControls.GridViewRowEventArgs) Handles GridView1.RowDataBound
If Trim(e.Row.Cells(7).Text) <> "MyText" And Trim(e.Row.Cells(7).Text) <> "HeaderText" Then
e.Row.BackColor = Color.Orange
End If
End Sub

New Massachusetts booster seat law

2008-04-13T10:10:00.000-07:00

It has always been a pet peeve of mine when someone says "it's the law". I want to under stand what the law is and I typically go about investigating how the law reads. I read a couple of articles on Boston.com saying there is a new booster seat law for children. Apparently, both in the Boston Globe paper article and the online articles on Boston.com, the reporters don't feel compelled to reference the applicable M.G.L. laws which are being affected. If you want to read up on how this booster seat law presently reads click this link Chapter 90: Section 7AA. If anyone is interested in how laws are made or amended click this link: LAWMAKING IN MASSACHUSETTS.

Are PC Magazine readers being marketed as the next generation of tobacco users?

2008-04-11T16:25:00.000-07:00

I subscribe to several magazines Time,Newsweek, Atlantic and PC Magazine. Two months in a row PC Magazine has a full page ad (front and back) advertising cigarettes. The other magazines, which I subscribe to, have no such ads.

I prefer to avoid rants in my blog but this is one issue on which I find my intelligence insulted. Doesn’t it say something about a person who would appeal to an advertisement, which carries with it, a health warning from the SURGEON GENERAL? Readers and techies of PC Magazine smarten up and do not renew your subscriptions. Find another magazine which better appeals to our demographic.

I'm loosing my marbles

2008-04-06T17:06:00.000-07:00

My girls take piano lessons. As an incentive, their piano instructor has us track how long they practice, for every ten minutes they practice they get a check mark, for every three check marks they get to choose a prize from the teachers prize box. My youngest daughter is five and every week she comes home with a couple of baseball cards from the prize box. I showed her how to identify the valuable cards: rookies, Red Sox and all stars in that order.

As an incentive for both girls, but particularly as an incentive to motivate the five year olds daily reading habits, we started our own prize box. I ventured into the attic to fill a shoebox with some trinkets from my childhood. In went an abundant supply of baseball cards, marbles, a geode, a fossil and some coins given to me by my grandfather from his travels in Europe during WWII.

Now I was hoping that youngest would develop a passion for reading shared with baseball card collecting or possibly open the door to becoming a Numismatist. So what would you guess she would spy on her first pick from the prize box? A Red Sox baseball card or an old european coin? No she wants my marbles.

When I was a child I would scour any collection of marbles for the rare one or two which had nothing cast into the glass. These rare marbles served perfectly well as marbles, but also, were perfect for viewing objects through them as a lens.

So the little one is reading like a fiend, an hour a day, to get my marbles. No flys on the big one, she has the geode and has her eye on the fossil, I see a potential geologist in her.

SQL 2005 Diagram Support Objects

2008-04-06T08:16:00.000-07:00

After moving one of my SQL 2000 databases onto my SQL 2005 development machine I found that I could not use or view the diagrams. After poking around and googling the problem I stumbled across a solution: http://geekswithblogs.net/shahed/archive/2007/11/19/116940.aspx

Orchard Planting Day

2008-04-04T16:41:00.001-07:00

I wanted to give my new trees the best chance for success, so I worked hard to get them planted the day after receiving them. First step was laying out the area.

I had my Partners In Crime (PIC1 and PIC2) available to lend a hand and help with the applying the Feng Shuii gardening practices.

The final tally for the days planting efforts:

5 Macintosh apple trees

2 Asian pear trees

2 Peach trees

1 Golden Delicious apple tree

1 Granny Smith apple tree

1 Crab apple tree

At the end of the day the local turkeys showed up to survey the changes.

Our Orchard Project

2008-04-02T18:03:00.000-07:00

I have a nice sunny area of my yard and it will make for a perfect small orchard.

There are a number of ways I could go about planting this orchard. I could purchase and plant potted trees from a store such as Home Depot. This would result in a more mature orchard in a shorter amount of time but would limit my choices on variety.

Or I could purchase root stock from an orchard supply company, which will widen my selection of varieties.

Based on my desire to plant a dozen trees I opted for the slow and steady approach

The picture is of my shopping spree. The bundle of trees on the right contains 11 trees from http://www.willisorchards.com/. I purchased my other supplies at Home Depot where I bought one apple tree to round out the dozen.

My investment so far is $120 from willisorchards.com and about $80 from Home Depot for stakes and soil, for a grand total of $200.

Another asp.net 2.0 lesson learned

2008-03-29T19:20:00.000-07:00

Recently I started with .net 2.0 (I know I am about 3 years late). I sort of commited myself to following BLL and databinding practices. I favor using database triggers to create history of record changes to table data. With this method in mind I have a field in my table which records the last user who updated a record. The table trigger then grabs the updated row and records the user name who last updated that record.

Now this would appear to be simple, bind every column of a GridView to a parameter in my BLL method. At some point before the BLL update method is executed, write the bound editing GridView column, with the users name to User.Identity.Name.

I tried everything but could only come up with one way to get this to work. Now I know my code has a draw back and I welcome anyones suggestion to point me down a better path.

Protected Sub GridView1_PreRender(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles GridView1.PreRender

If GridView1.EditIndex > 0 Then
Dim mytextbox As TextBox
mytextbox = GridView1.Rows(GridView1.EditIndex).Cells(14).Controls(0)
'Set user name to current user identity
mytextbox.Text = User.Identity.Name
End If

End Sub

I know that I can take control of the update method before I send it to my BLL, where I would have to assign every BLL parameter value to a column cell... But there must be a more graceful solution.

javascript right string function

2007-11-15T18:21:00.001-08:00

A couple of times I have needed to slice the right part of a string based on a delimiting character. I performed a couple of searches looking for a function to place in my toolbox, but came up empty. Below is my creation.

function rightstr(s,c)
{
L = s.lastIndexOf(c);
L=L+1;
return s.slice(L);
}

A couple of examples of how this function can be used:

rightstr('images/ico_note.gif','\')
This will return ico_note.gif

or for grabbing the value of a querystring value at the end of a url:
rightstr('http://tvplanner.comcast.net/?initView=schedule','=')
This will return schedule

Access 2002 DAO Error 1706

2007-10-05T18:20:00.000-07:00

Five years ago I developed an Access database to manage our home budget. At some point, two or three years ago, DAO got corrupted under my wife's profile. When she would open the database she would get a prompt that DAO was installing and then this dialog would come up with "Error 1706 no valid source code could be found for product DAO".

A couple of my stabs at resolving this resulted in failure. Most of the MSDN articles related this error advised to have the installation CD in the CD drive so the installer should be able to find the install file for DAO and properly install the DAO component.

The final resolution turned out to be surprisingly simple. Access 2002 uses a DAO360.dll file for the DAO component. The resolution for this problem is to unregister the dll file and then re-register it.

Command to unregister the file:
regsvr32 /u "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\DAO\dao360.dll"

Command to register the file:
regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\DAO\dao360.dll"

Humorus Telemarking phone call

2007-09-15T17:23:00.000-07:00

I am sure almost everyone has been bothered by a telemarketing call at a bad time. Dinner time or Bed time for the kids is the worst time to receive a telmarketing call. This usually results in a short and possibly rude response on my part in an attempt to dispatch the phone call and focus on whatever I was doing before the phone call.

Telemarketers are ruthless in their phone calls denying me the opportunity to screen the call because they mask their caller id with "private" or "unavailable". The worst telemareting phone calls are the ones that start with "you have been selected to receive a free...Home security system or Satellite TV system". Of course these systems and services are not free and if I was interested in these systems or services I would be contacting these companies directly.

Everyone could use a laugh at the expense of telemarketers so when I came across this recording I had to share it.

glumbert.com - Telemarketer's Nightmare

The passing of Alex the parrot

2007-09-12T15:36:00.000-07:00

Last night I learned that Alex the African Grey parrot passed away at the age of 31. Almost 15 years ago the research conducted by Irene Pepperberg inspired me to purchase our first African Grey Parrot Earl. Although our Earl has never gained the cognitive ability that Alex showed we have never ceased to be amazed that Earl and our other Grey Zoe hold the intelligent capacity of Alex and his peers Griffin and Wart.

In Memory of 911

2007-09-11T17:30:00.000-07:00

Growing up I remember my parents talking about the Kennedy assassination. They described it as an event that they will always remember, where they were, and what they were doing, when it happened. For me 911 is such an event. I will always remember being at work and the disbelief that the World Trade Center towers had been hit by planes and later that the towers had collapsed. I remember calling my wife to ask her if she was watching the news and if it was real.

2,974 people died on September 11 2001. It was a tragic event which undeniably changed the world forever. I question, in the absence of this event, would it have been possible for president Bush to gain congressional support to invade Iraq... I think not.

I don't want people to get the wrong idea. I support our troops. I support making Iraq a safe place. I think that the price that our country is paying in this campaign is worse than the price we paid on September 11 2001.

Starting with Google adsense

2007-09-10T18:16:00.000-07:00

I signed up for a Google adsense account and activated it today. I wanted to display some Google ads on my family site just for grins to see if I would generate any revenue (I only expect to make pennies). I run my family site on the DotNetNuke platform and I added the ads to the top pane. I was exploring the options on the module settings (for the ad module I inserted on the top pane) and I noticed a check box "Display Module On All Pages". I seldom use the top pane on any of my DNN pages so selecting this was a neat way to add ads across the entire site.

I am amazed at how the Adsense script must have some way of scraping the page content and returning ads that are relavent to the page subject.