I know that I can be passionate about programming (judging by the stack of books I have in my possession). I probably just haven’t found the right fit for me in that world yet and the improved skills could come in handy if I can find an entry-level/intermediate-level programming job.

I have an interview tomorrow for a web/e-marketing specialist position that I’m VERY excited for!

On the agenda today: post my resume to a few of the Andrew Hudson job listings, Monster, and Craigslist.  After that: I’m going to finish writing my Twitter eBook and focus on Head First C#.

If I finish with that, Head First Ajax.  Once I’m done with those, I’ll jump in on Pro Silverlight and Head First JavaScript.

In between, I’m going to record “No, Really…” – a fake news podcast and see if I can get the old Two Chicks and Nick recordings turned into podcasts.  Gotta make my added value apparent!

The wind was howling, random raindrops spattered anything unsheltered like tiny shotgun pellets… and inside the office, Visual Studio 2008 would not create a Silverlight application with an MVC site to host it.

These sorts of things happen a lot.  Some miscellaneous installation or setting or patch gets installed and somehow breaks an otherwise well-tuned system.  As a developer, you just come to expect that working with new technology, one or two days out of each month will be lost to technical difficulties.

New developers tend to get frustrated when confronted with random, weird errors.  Enough to start uninstalling anything and everything like they’re paid by the byte.  I take a more pragmatic approach: why perform an appendectomy with a sledgehammer when a scalpel is indicated?

A brief aside here: my best friend, at the slightest hint of computer rebellion/slowing/impending gnome invasion by any of his computers, instigates what I like to call the “scorched rogaine” policy (he doesn’t have a lot of hair) and re-formats his computer.  It’s something that has always bugged me and at least once every 6 months reminds me of difference between a sledgehammer and a scalpel.

It didn’t help that my Silverlight SDK installation was so rocky; I was surprised Visual Studio allowed me to create any Silverlight applications at all.

I went through at least 5 installation cycles, each one having removed a separate component that I suspected was causing the problem… each time getting “FATAL ERROR DURING INSTALLATION” errors… with no description.

As it turns out, if you’re having problems installing the Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio, you have to go to Add/Remove Programs, and remove anything that references Silverlight – even the plug-in.

The installer is just not smart enough to uninstall everything on its own or patch the necessary components on top of an existing installation (even if that installation was just the browser components).

That was problem one, solved as of Friday.  Then began problem two – this morning.  While attempting to create a new Silverlight app (using the latest SDK from Silverlight.net) with an MVC shell, I received an error:

“could not be found. (Exception from HRESULT: 0×80030002 (STG_E_FILENOTFOUND))”

Followed by:

“Project Unavailable.”

Nice error, right? A Google search revealed… nothing.

After contemplating a complete re-install of Visual Studio and a re-install of each component in line to test functionality… I decided to be stubbornly pragmatic.  The whole VS2008 re-install would take up about 4 hours of productivity that I didn’t want to waste.

First I uninstalled and re-installed anything Silverlight, rebooted, and started again.

No luck.

Sticking with the stubborn, I decided that maybe MVC 1.0 RC2 (the version I was using) might be the culprit – even if RC1 and BETA were both working with Silverlight just fine.  It was off to the Microsoft MVC site to download the 1.0 release.  I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when it refused to install because I already had the MVC 1.0 RC2 installed…

A quick trip back to Add/Remove programs fixed that – MVC 1.0 installed right on top.

Right about then, the clouds started to clear, and I was greeted with a surprising, but somewhat rare friend: success.

Pragmatism won out again, my best friend still didn’t have much hair, and the scalpel made some quick work and allowed me to skip over the massive patching of holes that a total uninstall of VS2008 would have led me to.

Keep in mind that I had previously spent about 12 hours shredding papers about two months ago and just never finished until now.  I’d say that I cut down the clutter by about half that time, so what remained was the last vestiges of every contract I’d made, a ton of bills, all my old employment info, and every doctor visit.

I started with my bag-o-manuals.  This contained every manual to every product I’d ever purchased and considered worth keeping.  Needless to say, there were a lot of friggin’ manuals.  I ended up just throwing these out – but I did find the manuals to three microwaves, two phone systems, two toasters, and something which I could not identify because the manual was printed through-and-through in Chinese and had no pictures or branding.

I did manage to find something pretty good, though: the manual to my shredder.

At one point, even Yoda got in on the action.

The worst part was going through the cable bin – I found six AC adapters to objects that I do not own.  I found two RCA cables for VCRs that I no longer have.  I found FOUR motorola chargers with that annoying little mini-usb connector.  I found two bluetooth headsets (which I never use), cables to my unused GPS which I never knew I had in the first place, a print server, and a 5 port ethernet switch.

Somehow, there was also a flat elastic band, 3 meters in length.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say I was up to some serious shit.  Just think of all the crazy ninja crap you could do with a 5-port ethernet switch, a 3-meter elastic band and four motorola chargers.

The end result was four trash bags worth of shredded documents and miscellaneous office junk (adding the three other bags from 2 months ago makes a grand total of seven).

All in all, I would call this a very productive Saturday.  Woke up at 6AM to see Leslie off to Wyoming and then slept in until 11:30 AM and now going to bed at 5AM Sunday.

I will say one thing, though: it feels really good to be free of the nightmare of paperwork I thought was important.  I don’t know why I thought having utility records for every place I’ve ever lived was important… or cell phone usage data for every carrier… or employment, rent, leasing, and payment information for any contract I’d ever signed.

I kept the important stuff: only the most recent lease.  Only the most recent insurance contract.  Only really-relevant health information.  Only bills I hadn’t paid yet.  Contracts and service plans that still had some life in them (or that I might need to remember to renew).  All in all, I only kept what I feel I can really use.

I’ve still got a bit more to do.  I need to get rid of my old Xbox, my old TV, old books, and old laptop.  The Garmin Nuvi, bluetooth headsets, print server, 5-port ethernet switch, and an LCD monitor went up on Craigslist for some quick cash.  I have a closet full of old boxes, miscellaneous clutter, a lamp I don’t use, and these Star Trek: The Next Generation tapes, that – as much as I love TNG – take up a horrendous amount of space.

Tomorrow – I’m gonna try to do my taxes, finish the WTF Marketing website, and write some Star Trek: Dimensions.  If I’m able to focus, I’ll also try and get through The Consise Guide to Dojo (an AJAX framework).  It looks like a lot of fun from the demos on their site and I’m excited to play with it.  I’d also like to finish my Head First Ajax and C# books, if only to prep better for my new position!  And… I’m kindof excited to get to the next chapter of that C# book… the exercise is building a fun-looking game with some collision detection!

G’night everybody!

First – the Technology Student Association (TSA) conference on Friday.  I judged three events (Music Production, Leadership Challenge, and Prepared Speech).  I’m very impressed by the students who participated and I’m confident that there’s some good kids coming out of Colorado schools.  I took a picture of the Castle Ballistics competition: on the right was a PVC ballista built by high schoolers (I think from Ponderosa).  On the left is a trebuchet (the top arm is folded down).

During the banquet dinner, one of the student officer candidates had plants in the audience, tailored his speech to revolve around the “audience interaction” and ended up getting a lot of votes… which I think was dirty pool, but an easy way to get attention.  Even if it’s in the short-term.

I ended up driving back to Fort Collins in a complete blizzard, which was fun… it’s much less stressful driving in the Jetta rather than the F-150.  There was a lot less sliding and skidding; the only scary driving moment came on Saturday morning when a crazy lady jumped in front of my car and made me stop a lot faster than I wanted to.  I missed hitting her bumper by about a micron.  But, one scary moment out of two round-trips to Denver from FoCo is a pretty good ratio.

Later Friday night, we took Darcy out to the Sundance for her 21st birthday party.  Her roomie, who has no class whatsoever, spent the entire night trying to get Darcy to puke and had her idiot friends spinning her, dancing too rough, and “gifting” two Prarie Fire shots – and you’d better believe they let her take those alone.  It takes a lot of nerve to try and ruin someone’s birthday.  In any case, Darcy took it like a champ, downing two Prarie Fires but smiling the whole time.

Then Saturday morning I got up early to go to the Rocky Mountain Tech Trifecta (pictured above at lunch outside the conference room) – it was a great event and I learned a lot.  Mostly about MVC and LINQ.  The shocker: besides ONE demo in VB, every code example was written in C#.  I tried to talk to a few of the Microsoft experts – I think they were put off by my directness.  These are the guys and gals who write the Wrox books… their pictures are on the covers.  They’re big-wigs.  It wasn’t really awe-inspiring though so much as awkward.  The three or so I talked to clammed up pretty fast.

I did have two awesome moments though:

1. Asked the Microsoft Product Evangelist if IE8 would finally support DOM Level 2 or if they still intended to pave their path to the web with the bones and blood of their developers.
   • Every slide said, “DOM Compliance Improvements” rather than “DOM Level 2 Compliance”.
   • The MPE did NOT have an answer to my question, and said I should speak to him after the presentation so we could figure it out.
2. Asked the Geomapping expert if there was a way to track Z-Index (height), trajectory, speed, angle, or any native way to track a moving object as it changes elevation.
   • Turns out, there is no native functionality in Microsoft’s Geomapping tools.

Then, after the conference was out, it was time for Leslie’s mom’s birthday celebration.  We went to Pasquinis Pizza for dinner, and it took them an hour and thirty minutes to seat our group of 7.  The worst part was watching smaller parties get seated, snipe tables, and otherwise act like jackasses.  Some lady sat down at a table for four, next to another empty table for four, which kept us from putting the two tables together.  We could stand upstairs at the bar, which was fine – but it quickly became crowded and they were moving incredibly slow.

When we finally got to sit down, they’d run out of grenadine.  The food was good, but it took a long time to get it.  Add to the fact that there was absolutely -no- parking and crossing the street was about as close as you can get to real-life Frogger…well, it was definitely not a restaurant I’d like to go back to.

The play, however… Defending the Caveman – that was funny as hell!  Definitely go while you can, it’s not here much longer, I think.  It was about 90 minute monologue played by a CSU grad.  Here’s what the set looked like:

We drove back to FoCo that night, and I was running on about 6 hours of sleep over the last two nights… so today was mostly sleeping and a treat – getting a massage!  Last time I went, they thought I’d asked for a deep tissue massage, but since I don’t like being turned into a pretzel, I ended up not enjoying it every much.  This time was much better!

I’ve got tomorrow off and plan on putting some work into WTF Marketing and Psychotic Resumes and clearing off my RTM List.  I’d also like to write a good first draft of Star Trek: Dimensions, record two or three Psychotic Resumes podcasts, work on the edit of the Sci-Fi Sound Off podcast, and get The Trek Project some new content pre-written.

Wish me luck!

There are a ton of methodologies, but the general idea of Agile Software Development is to quickly develop complex software projects by breaking them up into smaller projects and breaking those projects into tasks.  All the while, you’re increasing teamwork and communication to minimize roadblocks.

I started to look into the Scrum methodology (because who doesn’t like rugby!) and I discovered that a lot of the principles that programmers use to implement agile development could also be applied to any complex project.

Here’s how:

• Organize Your Project
  • Create a 2-week to 4-week goal (this is called a SPRINT).
  • Organize your tasks to be no more than 5-hour chunks of work.
    • Break down tasks that take more than 5 hours into smaller chunks.
  • Itemize a list of “wants” and “needs”.
  • Prioritize based on Return on Investment (ROI).  “Needs” that take less time than “Wants” have a higher return on investment.
• Create Realistic Expectations
  • If two projects will collectively take 40 hours, and you have 8 hours a day to give, but only 3 days, only one project will be completed.
  • You only have so many hours to burn, so maximizing ROI is key.
• Minimize Distraction and Increase Efficiency for Update Meetings
  • Allow only key players to hold the floor, but allow anyone interested to attend.
  • Limit the overall meeting time to 15 minutes.
  • Keep the discussion flowing – stay within the confines of these topics:
    • What have we done so far?
    • Where do we need to go?
    • What do we need to get there?
  • Stay standing – it energizes the participants and keeps the meeting short.
• Increase Communication
  • Real advocates of SCRUM meet for 15 minutes each day, but depending on the scope of your project, once or twice a week would be enough.
  • Nobody is penalized for bringing up problems – no problem is hidden.

This is by no means all-inclusive, but hopefully it gets you started.  Did I miss something?  Add a comment!

I’m crazy like Gary Busey when it comes to tracking bugs – I know exactly what changes I made, when I made them, and which files were affected.  Since WordPress doesn’t really have a client version control system (particularly for plugins) you have to track for yourself.

The first thing I did was ask for help.  I know this might seem like I started in reverse, but I like to have as many eyes as possible looking with me for a possible problem.  I got some very good recommendations on possible problems – including taking a closer look at the headers, making the site XHTML 1.0 – strict compliant, and so on.

After testing out the site in a few different browsers (all DOM Level 2 browsers were fine, IE8 was fine) I determined that there were multiple problems.

1. Facebook Connect needs the widget to be present on the page to work.  You can’t just install it and not add the widget, because it sends an asynchronous request to Facebook.  The request object comes back… and FBC looks for the widget to display the information.  If the widget isn’t there, FBC thinks that something was wrong with the data, so it asks Facebook for the info again.  This creates an infinite request loop (in IE7).  This might be because I was still using the beta version of FBC… so, who knows.  This fix allowed the website to show up in IE8.
2. I downloaded HttpWatch to load my header information in IE7… just to see where the page stopped loading.  Note: the full retail version of this program costs $400… but I wasn’t that desperate.  The program was giving me inconsistent results – twice it would load two parts of the page and then stop, then five more tests revealed that it would load 5-8 items and then stop.  This told me that a plug-in was the likely culprit, but I needed to eliminate other sources of errors before I could narrow it down for sure.
3. XHTML Validation – I used the W3C XHTML validator and discovered that I had incorrectly coded a small portion of the “print” plug-in, causing a mismatch in opening and closing elements.  This ended up being a minor problem – and in some areas where I need centered graphics and advertisements, I’m not sure how to get around the <center> tag.  So, I got it down to 5 errors rather than the 33 that I started with.
4. iTouchTheme plugin (to make your site easy to use for iPhones and iTouches) was using conditional formatting and was operating incorrectly.  I have a sinking suspicion that this was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  As soon as I patched this plugin to the next version, the site began to show up in IE7.
5. As a side project, I had a hell of a time trying to get the menu to appear in the same place in IE browsers and DOM Level 2 browsers… but as it turns out, the Margin property of a Div is handled differently when it is contained within a parent Div element… (in Freshy – the header div contains the menu div).  I eliminated the offending tag and now the menu displays properly (and in the right spot!) in all of my test browsers.

It was definitely aggrivating to keep on hearing, “Hey dude, your link is dead,” but the debugging experience was pretty cool, and I solved some issues on my website that I wouldn’t have otherwise thought about.  The total time invested was about 5 hours.

The culmination of ONE amp energy drink, 2 hours of continuous work, a 30 minute break and then another 8 hours of continuous work… I’m pretty proud of this one.  I think it turned out very well.  We’ll see how Deloris likes it tomorrow, but I have a feeling she’ll like this a lot better than the old version… which I would have taken a picture of, but since I designed THAT too, I’ll let it die in obscurity.  Bwahaha.

It’s definitely been a fun project and it’s only about 90% completed, but the heavy lifting in the design work is almost completely done.  Barring any bugs that may crop up, I’m satisfied that this design will last for a good long while.

- 1.6 GHz
- 60 GB (4200 RPM) HD
- 1 GB DDR2 SDRAM
- XP3 (I have my puppylinux usb drive ready to go if needed)
- Webcam
- 2x USB ports
- 10.2 ” Diagonal 1024×600 display (which looks amazing)
- Integrated B/G Wireless
- Integrated Intel 950 Graphics
- SD card slot
- 3-cell Li-Poly battery

The only downside is that it doesn’t have a CD/DVD drive… so I can’t just load VS2008 on there like I’d planned.  Instead I have to download the iso tonight, put it onto my handy 8GB USB drive, and then install it from there.

I didn’t want an out-of-control crazy machine.  I wanted one that could do three things: run VS 2008, podcast, and do video chat on skype.  That’s it.

I’m going to play around with this for a while, and I will most likely upgrade to a 2GB memory chip… then I’ll see about upgrading the harddrive (currently at 60 GB, with Office 2007, VS 2008, and SQL Server, it will probably get down to 30 GB) although I might just carry around my 320 Western Digital Passport – it matches nicely with the finish and wouldn’t take up too much additional footprint or add too much weight to a proper case.

Anyway, that’s all for now – I’ll update again on how well it runs VS 2008 – I’m excited to get it working!!!

-Nick