No Internet

I dropped my Internet connection at home, so I'm off line for most of the time. I have Internet at work, but I haven't set any time to post anything worthwhile. My wife and I have been talking about some things. If it pans out like I think it might I will let you know.

Audioscrobbler ???

I just realize that Audioscrobbler hadn't been updating what I listen to while at work. That was odd, nothing changed. There was an update for the plugin, once I did that it started working again. Go figure. Back to coding.

So much for summer

Well summer is over since the kids are back at school. This summer was so defeating for me, nothing I set out to do got accomplished. At some point yesterday I was wondering if it would be better for me to teach english in China then try to get these projects done. I'm glad to be moving back into fall. That seems to be my highlight season, if that makes any sense.

A groundhog in my back yard ate all my lettuce, the voles ate my potatoes, and the heat/drought killed my lima beans and black eye peas. If I had a free weekend I would plant again to get some produce for the fall.

A friend recommend the book called Omnivore's Dilemma so once I finish my book I'm reading now, I'll try to start that one.

The pressure is on

Well one of the projects that was charged to me this summer was roll-out SharePoint with having students and classes and teachers all flowing together in some type of coding magic. Well to do that I need to learn how to make Webparts, to make webparts I need to learn ASP.NET, to learn ASP.NET, I need to learn to program with Visual Studio 2005. So I have been on a crash course learning all I can knowing that my project will most likely not be completed in a few weeks. Well I sit around and think of all that I must learn to do that I get all stressed out. So hopefully I can focus on what needs to be done and do it in the right order so I can actually present something by the end of summer that will appeased the my superiors.

New Vacuum

Well our old vacuum was wearing out, it was a cheapy that we had for five years. Well we pooled some money and bought one of those fancy Dyson vacuum-cleaner. So tonight I assemble it and started to vacuum. Wow! I was able to see how much cat hair my old vacuum couldn't get. I vacuumed the whole house, it was some what rewarding to see all the junk getting suck up. So I can officially give the Dyson a thumbs up.

Playing with Virb

Set myself up an account on Virb. Since I hate Myspace, I'm willing to play around with Virb. My page is here. When I get a free moment I'll play with the layout and create my own custom style. But for now I'm all about learning ASP.NET 2.0 so I can work with custom web parts in Sharepoint. It is funny how I had been heading down the path of a web developer only to spend my time learning to program. I just hope that I can figure this stuff out, soon.

Battles

I was killing time looking through music blogs and came across a band called Battles. I watch the video for Atlas, and the drums really drew me in. Surprisingly the drummer is John Stanier from Helmet, which I have always loved. So now I can't get enough of the band. It took me a while to let the vocals pass through me. But the continuing driving repetitious aspect of the song is so intriguing to my preference. There has only been two other songs that I could describe as a similar feeling.
David Crowder Band on their Illuminate album track number 13 called Coming Toward. Put in on repeat and let yourself go. Also Porno for Pyros song called "Thick Of It All" on Good God's Urge.

It will definitely go on my running mix this weekend.

Let the running resume

I feel that my ankle is good enough for more torture. I ran a mile on Thursday and my ankle held, though I did baby it a bit. So tomorrow after work I'm testing it on my 3.3 mile jaunt. I uploaded some new music to my iRiver, so that will throw me a bit. I'm the type of person that likes to listen to the same thing day in and day out. I had a Dave Matthews mix which I had memorize where I was suppose to be in my run depending on the song. I could tell if I was ahead or behind if a certain lyrics was playing at the moment I passed a certain tree. (Crazy I know.) Now I threw in all kinds of crazy songs to spicing up my life.

• Nick Lachey - Resolution


• Coldplay - Clocks


• My Chemical Romance - I'm Not Okay
  
• Black Eye Peas - Let's Get Retarded


• Bon Jovi - Wanted Dead or Alive


• Kelly Clarkson - Because of You


• Bush - Everything is Zen


• Coldplay - Speed of Sound


• Stone Temple Pilots - Wicked Garden


• Cake - Going the Distance


• Vietnam - Priest, Poet, and the Pig


• Coldplay - The Scientist

Other than Coldplay, STP, Cake, and Vietnam, I typically don't listen to that music. But have Dave sing to me every run was getting old. So I might come back after the run and rip most of that Pop40 crap off. Before Dave it was old Metallica, Danzig, and Queens of the Stone Ages. Which by the way Queens has a new album, might need to go pick that up.

Pictures from Apple Orchard Falls

Here are some pics I took while at Apple Orchard Falls on Sunday.

Running injury

Well I have off today, so I decided to go running on a trail to break up the routine a bit. I ran on Black Water Creek Trail (Beaver Trail), I am thinking I ran just over 4 miles. Since I was able to push myself 3 songs pass what I typically run when I run my route of 3.3 miles. But since I was on a trail and not the road I twisted my ankle twice, I was still able to run through it. But later when I was at the pool I noticed it twinged a bit when I rotated my ankle around. Then this afternoon I was dumping some corn on the compost pile and I twisted my ankle again (just standing there) and that really hurt. So now I'm hobbling around the house with a bum ankle. I hope it heals soon, I don't think it is bad. We shall see tomorrow when I wake up.

Got SharePoint Installed

Alright I was at the point of getting ready to punt again. I was actually looking on Google for instructions on a step by step guide to install for SharePoint in x64 OS, when I came across a note from someone stating that you need to run your IIS in 32-bit emulation mode. So I googled that to figure out how to do that. When I found a whole another article with Microsoft about installing SharePoint Services on Windows 2003 R2 x64. Followed the instructions and boom, I'm done. Now I need to figure out how to configure it. So more reading for me.

Had to punt today

Had to restart the whole process over with installing SharePoint. I couldn't get the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard to connect to the other server running SQL. I made so many minor changes that I was afraid that even if I figured it what to do, that SharePoint would be quirky. So I punted. Started over, and I'm glad I did. I found this great step by step article (with pictures) for installing MOSS 2007 on a Vitrual PC. So now I'm on step 7 of 20 and waiting for SQL SP2 to finished before I move on. Well it is done, gotta go.

Playing with big boys

Well got in two new servers this week. I'm really stoke about setting them up. They are both HP ProLiant DL380 G5, but are slightly configured differently.

Server 1: Obiwan (Web Front End)
Quad Core 2.3Ghz with 4 GB of RAM, RAID 5 of 136GB.

Server 2: Kenobi (SQL Back End)
Dual Quad Core 2.3Ghz with 10 GB of RAM, RAID 5 of 956GB.
(Considered RAID 6 for brief moment, but stuck with tradition until I get burned otherwise.)

There are few first for me this week. Setting up a server with 1TB of storage and 10Gigs of RAM, using Windows server x64, and installing Sharepoint as a farm (instead of stand alone).

Well back to work

Web Conference

Went to my first web conference today. Drove 4 hours north and met with people that do what I do around the area. Finally had someone explained to me why Microformats is cool thing. It was neat to see how web developers come from all kinda of backgrounds. Some where not IT "alpha geeks" at all, background in Communications and had difficultly working with the IT group. Just so foreign to me to think that Web Development would be done outside of IT.
All in all the conference was nice and I would like to do it again next year. Now I need some sleep.

The route

1. Starting walking warm up
2. Start running down Sandusky
3. Cross road at top of hill, watch for speeders
4. Get off Sandusky (0.8 miles thus far)
5. Turn on Hayes
6. Top slight hill, starting to get tired
Run down Mohawk...my poor knees
7. Rhonda Dr. - One big stinking hill
8. Turn on Chinook (recovering from last hill)
9. Cut through school parking lot
10. Turn on to Pawnee Dr, gotta watch for speeders
11. Cross pass Long Meadows
12. Home stretch, walk up hill for cool down. (3.3 miles)

Ran a new distance

Well I have been continuing my running to keep in shape. Typically run on Mondays and Wednesdays if it isn't raining. The distance of the running part was just over two miles, which I was doing okay. I wanted to step up the distance up enough where I could run 5k without stopping. So I had been planning a route through my neighborhood that would give me 3.1 miles.

Well yesterday I ran that new route and ran the whole thing. (minus the top of the hill of Rhonda St., if you saw the hill you would stop too!). The new route is 3.3 miles so I'm really excited that I ran the whole thing and my body isn't sore today. I'll run the old route on Monday to keep my shins from hurting but will try it again on the following Wednesday.

I'll post a running map soon.

Excel Tip - Removing characters from a cell

Since I have remove characters off cells every so often in Excel, I always forget. I always have to Google my answer.

In Excel my cell contains data like this in cell A1
marker lat="37.5002273543" lng="-79.1252303123" found="-79.12523031234741" left="37.500227354254726"

But I don't need the duplicate longitude and latitude coordinates. So I write a formula that can do this.
=LEFT(A1, LEN(A1)-48)
That will chop off the last 48 characters. You can also do the right side and chop off the first set of characters. And I'm sure some can write a formula that can count from the left and chop off anything after that. But that is my method (madness I tell ya)

Google API done

Well I finally finished putting out code to make our attendance zones work. You can see my efforts www.amherst.k12.va.us and click on Attendance Zones. The code is sloppy and mainly borrowed from here and Greybox, but it took me a good two days to make everything work the way I wanted it. Now it time to rethink the design of the county's website. Inspiration coming from this site, [http://www.quatuor.be/]

Google API

Spent most of the week creating a polygon overlay to a Google map using their API. Most of my time was spent trying to get Internet Explorer to work. You can see my first attempt here. The purpose of this page is to have the ability for people to search our Google map to see which school their child should go to. It is a really neat idea that is practical. Once I get the finish product up I'll shoot a post. As for now must learn Sharepoint 2007.

Back Posting

I'm back posting. I'm sure your all glad. Anyway Jan/Feb/Mar time was a busy time this year. With my son walking and becoming more attention demanded type of person, I must put down the laptop and play with him. (Don't read as complaining). I also just finished building my garden boxes for this year. Constructed out of 2x10's with wire mess on the bottoms, (damn the voles).
I'm planning on planting the follow

• 4 types of loose leaf lettuce
• carrots
• onions
• spinach
• 2 types of potatoes
• broccoli
• cowpeas (black eye peas)
• beans (stringless & lima)
• herbs

So I have been planning what needs to be down and when for the garden.

Work has been busy and rewarding. We just finished physically moving our server room. Had to move the fiber lines 20 feet through ceiling trestles about 17 feet in the air. Stuck ends in a small Gatoraid bottle and taped a cable running pole to them. Also we just started playing with SharePoint to see if can do what we want for the future of ACPS. (Might post that later)

But anyway I have been neglecting my blog long enough. So I'm back and working on some new topics to discuss.

Dirt, Wood, and Vietnam

I have been figuring out how to get dirt for my garden this spring. I have built three of my six garden boxes to grow additional vegetables, but I need to get dirt to put in them. I was wanting to mix in 2 cubits of Peat Moss, 2 cubits of organic compost, and 4 cubits of organic topsoil per box. Unfortunately that will cost 23 dollars per box (126 total for all). I don't have that kind of money laying around. So I'm kinda bum about altering my plan for good dirt. I might be able to save some money if I can get a truck load of dirt, just need to borrow a truck.

I have spent most of my free (daylight time) after work chopping wood that I got. I only have a hatchet right now so splitting the wood is not quick work. And I heard a great song today from a group called Vietnam. Their song Priest, Poet and the Pig is awesome, reminds me of Pink Floyd, but builds of some punk aggression.