Across the Finish Line

Well it was a long haul but my wife finally did it - she passed her ANCC exam this morning to become an 'advanced practice registered nurse in adult psychiatric and mental health'! You have to admire someone who returns to school and gets their BSN and MSN to achieve the goal of opening their own practice - especially when you commit to that journey in your fifty's. I know that her ability to provide effective treatment honed from experience, training, and natural talent will make her a success. If you want to know more drop by the website to learn more about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and her office in Towson that will be open for business very soon!

Actually I Do Care If I Ever Get Back

Take me out to the ball game,
Take me out with the crowd.
Buy me some peanuts and cracker jack,
I don't care if I never get back!

Last evening David took me to the Oriole's game against the Indians as my Father's Day gift. It was a great idea and I was looking forward to it since we don't go to many games (partly the cost of a game nowadays, partly the fact that they're 20+ games out). We decided that it made sense to use the Lutherville Park & Ride for the light rail to get us down and back.

As we approached the ticket kiosk David asked if I had anything smaller than a $20 - not from a desire to escape paying for the fare but more out of the desire not to be toting around 14 Sagawagea coins as change dispensed from the machine. He needn't have worried - I fed the machine a $5 bill and we got back $1.80 in nickles and dimes. I guess this is a prelude to slots coming to Maryland - get you accustomed to hear the clink! clink! clunk! sounds of coins hitting the tray.

When he originally said he'd come by to get me at 5:15 for a 7 p.m. game I thought "this is his mother's doing - allowing 3x as much time as needed to get someplace." Ahh, but I was wrong. We boarded the first southbound train only to be unceremoniously ejected at North Avenue (that was the end of the line for that train), where we waited another 30 minutes for another train to take us the remaining way to Camden Yards. But no harm, no foul - we were in our seats at 6:58 p.m.

The game was fun, even though the O's lost to the Indians and we had to suffer through ~90 minute rain delay. Like getting a bushell of steamed crabs there is something quintessential about taking in a ball game with friends or loved ones - the way that it's as much about the social aspects than the supposed objective of eating crabs or riveting on a game. We opted to leave at the top of the 9^th and headed back to the light rail platform.

Once there we waited...and waited. Watched two trains pull up heading southbound, while we continued to peer down the track for the headlights of a northbound train. One inebriated gentleman proclaimed with certainty that there were no more northbound trains for the evening. But I figured that was improbable given that it was now after midnight, the game had ended, and we now had amassed about 70 people at the stop. Finally a train arrives - ominously displaying "North Avenue" as its destination. Assuming safety in numbers we figured we'd board it anyway, anticipating another wait for yet another train.

Sure enough, at North Avenue the driver tells everyone to get off. At this point Dave is having a severe case of deja vu since last Christmas he was stranded at this same stop at 2 a.m. in a business suit following their office party - despite assurances that the trains would be running. I run to the front of the train to ask the driver what the prospects of getting to the Lutherville Park & Ride are. You'd think he'd know the train schedule, or be able to call in to get, or in some way help resolve the fact that we have close to 100 people abandoned here. But you'd be wrong. You came here with your 5 year old grandson to catch a game? That's your problem grandpa - I'm off duty.

At this point a couple of officers appear on the scene - not sure whether it was in response to a distraught parent calling for assistance or just serendipidy. I guess they knew whom to call to deal with this as they soon announced that yes indeed, they had been able to summon a train to take us nothward - it just might take a while. Well dear reader, to cut to the chase on this odyssey, I finally arrived back home at 1:30 a.m., some two hours after leaving our stadium seats to begin the trek back home.

And just imagine - national health care being handled by the same sort of folks who provided this experience.

Learning LINQ

Well last evening was the season opener of CMAP's "Hands On" group, a session designed to take an interesting IT Development topic and explore it as a group. Christopher Steen is heading up the effort and had located some exercises designed to acquaint us with LINQ, and we had a pretty good turnout down at TEK Systems by BWI airport.

LINQ, which stands for Language Integrated Query, is one of those technologies that at first you may tend to place on the "down the road" list since it requires the .NET 3.5 framework and (I believe) C# 3.0 at a minimum. And for a lot of developers we are just now getting that platform go ahead from our workplaces. However, after last evening's review I am definitely looking to take this off of my roundtuit list and adding it to the ASAP list! A big plus is the ease with which it allows you to work with your objects, lists, and XML documents in addition to database objects. It allows you to retrieve the data in many ways, readily applying filters and sorting. It simply is one of those technologies that comes along and you get a nerd high because it's so cool!

And if that were not enough there is also a great (free!) tool to help demonstrate LINQ examples. LINQPad by Joseph Albahari is a compact utility that allows you to explore (and execute) sample LINQ syntax against his sample database or one of your own choosing. And what better way to learn a new language syntax than by examples?

If the next Hands On meeting is anything like this it's not going to be long before it'll be SRO at these gatherings!

Dude! You're gettin' a Dud!

Ever wonder where the "Dell Dude" went? I suspect he's on the factory assembly line as evidenced by my sister & brother-in-law's recent experience with Dell.

Flashback to March of this year. My nephew orders a new Dell laptop for his mom and dad, knowing the convenience that a laptop and wireless connection can afford. I happened to be there when it arrived and so, being the family "tech" guy, offered to help get things up and running. One small problem though - it was dead as a doornail right out of the box.

Should'a taken that as a bad sign right there. But being the optimists and having a reasonably good experience in contacting them (not a lot of waiting or run around) the decision was made to ship it back for a replacement.

Fast-forward to October. The Dell goes dead again, refusing to boot up. Calls ensue and a local technician comes by to render a verdict that it's a goner - the motherboard is kaput. At this point my brother-in-law contacts Dell looking for a replacement - as in a new laptop. And considering it didn't quite go six months I think he's got a pretty strong argument - after all he's now faced with the aggravation of having lost whatever content was on the laptop plus being without one again for a period of time. However, Dell felt that things would be just fine with a refurbished laptop and proceeded to quote chapter and verse from their fine print.

You know, if you're thinking of buying a Dell as a holiday gift I'd suggest that instead of contacting the company simply go online to one of the "dented and scratched" retailers and pick one up there. At least that way you'll end up with a refurbished computer that you didn't pay full retail price for...

Cleaning the Studio

If you use Visual Studio you know the "Start" page has a listing of your most recently accessed projects/solutions. While it's not a major issue I find at times that I'd like to remove some of these items. For example, if I've been creating some scratch type projects to try out some ideas, or if I created a solution and added in several existing projects as part of the solution, then you end up with a ton of clutter making the MRU list a little less effective.

While it's possible to manipulate the registry to adjust what appears in the list, there is a sweet piece of free code by Bobby DeRosa that is an add-in to VS 2005/2008 that makes this a breeze. You get a "Clear Recent Projects" item from the File menu in VS, which provides a simple interface listing the MRU objects with checkboxes adjacent to them. You simply check the ones you want remove and click the Clear button and - viola! - your list now contains only what you want!

Some Sacrifices

So did you see the second debate last evening? Were you able to lip-synch the responses almost as well as being at a showing of Rocky Horror? But had less fun?

The questions were from the audience and Internet, and one in particular caught my attention. In essence it was along the lines of what sort of sacrifices do you think will be necessary from the American people given our current economic crisis. We got well scripted responses from both candidates, but I think there was a missed opportunity to really speak directly and honestly about some changes in behavior that we have to make. Like...

• You'll need to start saving and stop living on credit. That means working on getting comfortable with delayed gratification.
• You'll need to take education seriously. If you're a student you'll need to study; if you're a parent you'll need to be involved, not autopilot; and if you're a teacher you're going to need to be comfortable with competiton.
• You'll need to start being a wise consumer of health care services and taking care of yourself.
• If you don't speak English you need to learn
• And most of all, you have to start to demand more of your elected representatives - civility, statesmanship, and integrity

Silverlight Persistence

No, this post isn't about creating objects and saving their state. What I'm curious about is whether anyone else is tired of swatting down that ubiquitous MS pop-up letting you know that you can download Silverlight. I know, I know - if having to dismiss that little pop-up a couple of times a day is my worse problem then I've truly had a great day.

It's just that they're getting as annoying as Verizon FIOS sales pitches - every time I turn around I get this solicitation. Maybe I don't want it because I'm on my company laptop and it's against policy to download untested software (even from MicroSoft). Maybe my hard drive is already bloated with .NET versions 1, 1.1, 2.0, and 3.5 and I don't want to chew up the disk space. Whatever my rational please accept it - stop the "push" delivery method.

Com'on MS - if I want Silverlight I know where to download it!