hyper/logos

I’ve been working at home 3 days a week for about a month now and It’s going pretty good.

Pro:

• My wife works at home, too, so I get to see her more
• Quiet
• I can listen to my music as loud as I want to (read: as loud as my wife will let me)
• Much more productive, as there aren’t the interruptions at work
• Facilities are closer (if you know what I mean!)

Con:

• Lonely - when my wife is gone
• Collaboration is a bit problematic. We manage, but the immediacy is lacking.

Really, that’s pretty much it.

It’s working well and I’m more than happy to let it continue as long as the company is willing to let me.

I had an issue where some .chm files that I downloaded would not work properly. I could see the structure in the folder view on the left, but the content pane had an error that said “This page cannot be displayed”

Curious (read “UGH!”), I did some poking (read “I Googled it”) and found an article on Neeraj Agrawal’s blog that explained several options for fixing this.

Using the registry edit fixed my problem, so kudos to Neeraj for the post.

Well, I think the title of this post may be longer than the post itself!

Anyway, I was tearing my hair out over an issue I was having with parameters that was being used to launch an InfoPath form. The parameter was simple, of the form managerID=5 (or some other number.

No matter what I did, my code did not find the parameter. So, I did some Googlin’.

And here’s what I discovered: http://www.infopathdev.com/blogs/hilary/default.aspx?PageIndex=2

Read it. Then read it again.

LOWERCASE!!!

All my parameter keys and associated values magically transform to LOWERCASE on the way to the form.

(see what I did there?)

My forehead hurts. I hope my desk is okay…

Today was all about getting ready for mama to come home. Jenn had been at AWP since Wednesday and both girl and I were anticpitating het return with barely concealed excitement.

Girl and I woke up and had breakfast. Got some light cleaning in and got her ready.

Took off for the airport with a quick stop at New Season’s for juice for girl and then to PDX.

Mama’s flight was early, so we met at baggage claim. And there was much rejoicing.

Home, we ALL took a quick nap, I made dinner, and now, about to get girl into the tub for her bath.

Then, I’ll have to iron clothes for tomorrow. After that - BED!

Don’t you just love these work-a-day posts?

Niters!

-m-

Wish me luck. I’m thinking of creating my own avatar for second life (i.e., skins, clothes, shape…)

I might even finish it this decade.

p.s. If you’re in-world, contact me - Gideon Barrabus

For this post, I might even go with, “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.”

Task: The Helpdesk needed a series of forms created that would allow managers and employees to make requests for things like new employee accounts, employee moves, teeminations, etc.

The approach: Since the New Employee Request incorporates most of the other requests, I decided that I would create a single form. You would select the request type from a drop-down control and the appropriate sections would appear. So, I got to work. Now, it’s done - except for one minor detail: workflows.

Each content type in a library can only have one workflow, it seems, so I will have to code workflows for the various forms. Rather a pain, one would think. And one would be correct, both in regards to coding and maintaining the coded workflows.

Reality rears its ugly head: in retrospect, not the best way to go. After some discussion with my coworker and a weekend of thinking about it, here’s what I’m going to do: finish the existing form so that /something/ is available. Then, I’m going to recreate the forms individually and assign them all to a library as different content types. This will allow me several things: 1. Centralized storage 2. Multiple content types means multiple workflows 3. Only one document library to maintain

Yeah, that sounds much better. I’ll follow up with what I do. Stay tuned!

…and I’m still alive.

Actually, it wasn’t all that bad. I spent most of the week working on an InfoPath solution for the Helpdesk that I’m still not sure was done the best way. But it’s mostly done. The last bit is to do the routings. I will do that after the Helpdesk team reviews the form and comments on it.

Thursday was our big “Welcome to IBM” event. Since it covered both Salem and Beaverton, there were a number of people there that I didn’t know by face. I caught a couple of name tags and recognized them that way, but that was only a few.

There were a few IBMers in attendance, mostly those involved in the transition. A few of the presenters were from Sequent, which IBM acquired almost 10 years ago.

I checked out the podium - I liked.

Dear dad,

I’m sorry that I haven’t spoken to you in so long, even sorrier that I haven’t come to visit. I’ve even been in El Paso more than a few times, and didn’t come to visit. I know, it’ll be 12 years, come the end of August, but the pain is still fresh and it’s been hard to work through.

Even so, I need to thank you for raising me to be the man I am today.

You taught me what a man is.

It’s not the physical traits, it’s who one is on the inside that makes the man. There were times when duty called you away, but even then you were providing for us, protecting us. Your time in Korea was tough on everyone, and on Mom most of all. We all sat on the bed and cried for missing you, James and me comforting Mom.

What you taught me was not to speak unless I had something to say and then to not shy away from saying it.

You taught me discipline. And duty. And responsibility. Those were lessons I took with me when my path followed yours into the military.

You taught me that family comes first, no matter what.

You taught me to stand up for myself, and for others who could not stand up for themselves.

You taught me to laugh; you taught me how to make puns to make grown men groan, even as they smiled.

You taught me to persevere through adversity: they said you’d never use your hand again. You proved them wrong.

You taught me to take pride in myself.

You taught me to think of others in things that I do: too bad the Medal of Honor is only awarded in wartime, not in peace.

I am the man that I am today because of the foundation you helped build when I was young and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I will visit you next time I’m in El Paso to thank you in person. I promise.

I miss you, Dad.

Love,

Mike

June 14, 2009

Written to my father John Edward Luevane, CW4, US Army Jan. 10, 1929 - Aug. 27, 1997

1. Write, perform, and record my own album (doesn’t have to be under any label)
2. Own a house for my family Bought a house in October
3. Tour Europe on a EuroRail pass
4. Visit Iceland
5. Learn to program for the iPhone
6. Write, produce, and direct a movie
7. Write a book
8. Get my tattoo finished (long story) and get the other two tattoos that I want
9. Build a wearable computer
10. Get a Master’s degree

Hm. I think I better get started…

Updated 2/6/09: 1 down, 9 to go…

If
Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master,
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

We had a thin client (Wyse 1200) that had very poor network connectivity. We could not get it to connect to the Citrix server to log in - we would only get a gray background screen.

Swapped network cables, no fix. Ditto for swapping the thin client with a spare. Had the infrastructure guy helping me, and he swung the TC to a different segment. No good there, either.

There was another TC I’m an unused cube that I had tested and was found to have good connectivity. So, swapped that one. That one worked. Just for a test, we put the TC that wasn’t working into the empty cube. Worked fine. So we went from one good/one bad TC to two good TCs.

Fluke? Did we nuff contacts on cables to improve the connection? A test run of self-healing hardware/firmware conducted by Skynet in anticipation of a global takeover and subsequent eradication of the human population?

The only one who knows is the thin client, and it ain’t talkin’…