AnonyDomBlog

What's the news???? - finalized!!!!

2005-11-21T23:23:00.000-05:00

How could I keep you in the dark for that long...

Alright, as I mentioned last week, I do have some exciting news...

Chris Miller has been gracious enough to allow me to setup a blog on his server at Connectria.

And so, I have created the very beginnings of a new blog (finally using Notes/Domino - Steve's Dominoblog template of course) at PhilRandolph.com

It's a work in progress as I'm still learning the ins and outs of the dominoblog template, so it will take a while to flesh it out fully...and I may ask for advise, ideas, etc. as I go along.

Note - at this time, I'm still trying to get the new domain pointed at the new blog database, for now, please use this
I'll come back to this blog for the last time and change the link to new domain when it's ready.

I've changed all of the links to the new blog to "http://philrandolph.com", as that now seems to work correctly. That wraps it up for this blog...thanks for your readership here...and come on over!

Listening to - "All His Children" - Bing Crosby
Reading - "Stargazer - Enigma" - Michael Jan Friedman

A Change is Coming

2005-11-14T08:37:00.000-05:00

Something exciting (at least it's exciting to me) should be occuring in the next few days, and I think only one of you out there know about it.

Be watching this space for an announcement in the coming days... :)

Listening to - "Rhapsody In Blue" - Glen Miller and the Army Air Force Band
Reading - "Star Trek - Tales of the Dominion War" - edited by Keith R. A. DeCandido

Happy Birthday hon!

2005-11-08T08:33:00.000-05:00

My wife of more than nine years is celebrating her birthday today!

She's an amazing woman and I am lucky to be her husband! She means so much to our family and is the most able manager of our sometimes crazy household. I love you so much Kath!

Please join me in wishing her a happy birthday!

Listening to - Nothing Yet
Reading - Just finished "Serenity" - need to get to the library today!

Disappointing Loss, Gratifying Win!

2005-11-07T08:36:00.000-05:00

I don't know what to say about Saturday night's debacle, but it was very disappointing to lose a second game in a row, especially at the Joe. Phoenix just dominated and we were just messy and sloppy. Also the 24 minutes in penalties to Chelios not to mention losing one of our defensemen really hurt us and got the rest of the D much more tired and lethargic than necessary. I do have to say though, Cujo was great in net, he really did a good job.

Fortunately, we did a 180 last night and stomped all over the Blues, which I figured we would but was a bit leary about after Saturday's drubbing. I was worried that once again the "D" would be too tired after so many minutes (I believe over 30 for Lidstrom) taking up Cheli's slack. The Wings came out much better and never looked back last night, and Lalime was lackluster at best.

Holmstom is really kicking butt too. He still is camping out in the goal area, but as some have noted, he's not having to pay as high of a price for holding that position any more, and in turn, he's got 5 goals in the last 3 games. Way to go Holmer!

Listening to - Nothing Yet
Reading - "Serenity" - Keith R. A. DeCandido

Can't Win 'Em All

2005-11-04T10:25:00.000-05:00

Even though we'd like them to... The Wings lost last night in overtime to the Oilers 4-3 in a hard fought game. At least they did get a point for an overtime loss - which gives them 25 points in 14 games which ties several other teams in NHL history. They now stand at 12-1-1. Ozzie played well and made some really great saves, the guys were just giving too many close in chances to Edmonton, and Chris Pronger (previously of St. Louis) was just killing us from back at the blue line.

Now we can look forward to Phoenix on Saturday night then our good friends (to beat up on - I hope) the St. Louis Blues Sunday night. A nice weekend of hockey it will be!

Listening to - "The Right To Bare Arms" - Larry The Cable Guy
Reading - "Serenity" - Keith R. A. DeCandido

Wings win to go 12-1! Manny is Player of Month!

2005-11-02T08:54:00.000-05:00

Another great win for the Wings against the Blackhawks last night, although a couple of downsides - Manny got hurt in the first period after making 8 saves, although from somewhere else I read - it looks like it was probably just a minor injury and he'll be ready to play on Thursday against the Oilers. The second downside was that it was televised on OLN - which I am having huge problems with. One of the guys at the desk with Clement called Brendan Shanahan - "Bret", and they missed the 2nd period faceoff entirely, they hardly ever give the name for a person getting the penalty or what the actual penalty was, especially after coming back from a commercial - apparently Fisher had gotten a 5 minute fighting penalty last night, and I didn't know about it until I read it this morning.

The second thing I want to highlight is that not only did Manny get "Defensive Player of the Week" from the middle of October - as I blogged about here, but he also has been named "Defensive Player of October"

Wow - Manny your rock - I hope you are really ok after last night's leg issue - but Ozzie's got your back - what a tandem we've got!
Listening to - "Summer Nights" - Grease Soundtrack
Reading - "Articles of the Federation" - Keith R. A. DeCandido

It's installed - and it ROCKED!

2005-10-28T09:33:00.000-04:00

Full props to WOW!

As I mentioned on Tuesday, we decided to splurg and obstensively for my wife's upcoming birthday and as part of my Christmas allotment we've decided to upgrade to digital cable and get the NHL Center Ice package so we can get Wings games the way they were meant to be...regardless of the fact we live out of range of FSN Detroit.

They were all set with the two new digital cable receiver boxes before I got home from work, and the only thing I needed to tweak on one setup was the channel that the VCR/DVD combo was set on. I tried out taping from both new setups and all went well. I'm very pleased with their quick service and setup and all that. It'll be fun to see what all that new fancy remote will do.

And as for the game - that went great for our guys, 5-2 over the Blackhawks who we'll be playing again 2 more times in a row Saturday and Tuesday.

Listening to - "Still Ranting After All These Years" - Dennis Miller
Reading - "Articles of the Federation" - Keith R. A. DeCandido

Oh, why not, everyone else is...(Simon+Wash)

2005-10-26T12:47:00.000-04:00

As I expected before I started this test, I seem to be a bit like a mix of Simon and Wash, but I wish I'd gotten a little bit more on the "like Mal" scale too... 0% on Jayne...thank God!

You scored as Simon, the Doctor. Simon Tam,
a former well-to-do young surgeon and bachelor
extraordinaire. You gave up everything to help
your sister, which I respect. However, you are also
pompous and talk too much, which I also respect.

Simon, the Doctor

88%

Wash, the Pilot

50%

Inara, the "Companion"

44%

Shepherd Book

44%

Captain Malcolm Reynolds

38%

First Mate Zoe

38%

Kaylee, the Mechanic

31%

RiVER

25%

Jayne Cobb, resident bad-ass

FiREFLY QUIZ
created with QuizFarm.com

Listening to - "Something Like This:" - The Bob Newhart Anthology
Reading - "Articles of the Federation" - Keith R. A. DeCandido

Center Ice - How to get it on my provider

2005-10-25T08:38:00.000-04:00

Believe it or not, my darling wife has really been pushing me to check into whether we can get NHL Center Ice through our current cable provider - WOW (Wide Open West). Now as I've told you we do enjoy listening to the streaming audio from the Wings radio guys, but she's really having withdrawal from not SEEING what's going on with the games, and with the babysitting she's been doing for the last several months, it appears that the cost of getting the service would fall within our budget. So far I've been having trouble trying to find a way to determine if it's possible with WOW. Does anyone out there have it with WOW, or know of how it's done? I'm going to dig a bit more today and maybe even call them, but just wondered if anyone's already done the work and can tell me. Thanks!

Update @ 1:30pm -
Well, we done did it. I called the WOW guy at the call center and after a bit of time with him trying to figure out the package costs to get us upgraded to Digital Cable so that we could get NHL Center Ice, we've got an install time for 2 digital cable converters and activation of Center Ice of 2-6pm on Thursday. (Just in time for the Wings vs. Blackhawks game at 7:30) After all is said and done, besides the $129 cost of the package for the season, my monthly service only bumped up about $13-$14. And that's for 200+ channels and digital now. I'll comment on the whole process after the install in an entry on Friday most likely. Hope it ends up being a positive one!

Listening to - Still Nothing
Reading - "Star Trek Titan - The Red King" - Andy Mangels and Michael A. Martin

9 Wins, 1 Loss - Awesome! Props to Manny

2005-10-25T08:32:00.000-04:00

Finally got to "SEE" a Wings game tonight as they whacked the Columbus Blue Jackets for the second straight game 6-2. This brings them to an awesome 9-1 record for a total of 18 points. Now, unfortunately, the game was televised on OLN so I'm sure alot of you out there didn't get it, and that might not be a horrible thing, as the sound and camera work and what have you, was not good as has been reported other times by many other people. But, at least it's televised Wings hockey that I can see from northeast Ohio, so enough of my complaints.

Another cool thing is that Manny Legace, our longer suffering backup, who has finally broken out of others' shadows has rocked the net this opening month and played every game for our boys, well, he got honored as the defensive player of the week for last week. He went 3-0 with a shutout and a 1.30 goals against average. He also has been doing all 3 of my fantasy hockey teams proud so far this season - that's important too!

Listening to - Nothing
Reading - "Star Trek Titan - The Red King" - Andy Mangels and Michael A. Martin

Reason for quiet next few days

2005-10-20T14:31:00.000-04:00

My section of our department is being moved to a different floor in our building tomorrow, so I've been packing and consolidating and pitching and so forth. I'm also only working a half day tomorrow which coincides nicely with the move. I won't be taking my laptop with me when we travel this weekend, but if I get lucky I may be able to hop on someone elses ISP...but if not...

Listening to - "Sun Valley Jump" - Army Air Force Overseas Orchestra
Reading - "Star Trek Titan - The Red King" - Andy Mangels and Michael A. Martin

Who's reading this via RSS?

2005-10-19T12:05:00.000-04:00

As far as I know (and I admit that I have a limited knowledge in this area), there isn't a way to get a counter to acknowledge readers of your blog and its entries via RSS. If there is anyway to do it at all, please let me know, as I'd love to have this information. I lieu of that, would anyone who does currently get to me via RSS drop me a quick comment? Thanks! :)

Listening to - "The Lumberjack Song" - Monty Python
Reading - "Star Trek Titan - The Red King" - Andy Mangels and Michael A. Martin

Trying out Tracksy

2005-10-18T12:49:00.000-04:00

After a suggestion left in a comment by Chris I decided to take a look at what the weblog statistics service Tracksy had to offer. It is currently hidden on this site until I have a chance to see what kind of flexibility I have for showing the counter, and setting the starting number, etc...but I thought I'd compare Tracksy and StatCounter to see which I like the best...and of course MapStats is still revving up too! What do you think of the visitor location list on the right?

Listening to - "You've Got Me Where You Want Me" - Bing Crosby
Reading - "Star Trek Titan - The Red King" - Andy Mangels and Michael A. Martin

Trying out a new visitor mapping service

2005-10-17T12:50:00.000-04:00

Got contacted by a new blog visitor mapping service and after checking it out, I decided to see what it would be like, especially after my recent loss of some gVisit functionality. It's called MapStats

It has only been doing stats since this morning I think, so it'll take it a while to get going, but it seems like it should do alright. It's on the right panel where the header reads "Recent Visitors Here Were From:"

I don't think the stats part of it will rival what I get from StatCounter which handles my visit counter and other behind the scenes stats, but I do like being able to see visitors on a world map and zoom on in to see where they are from.

Listening to - Nothing
Reading - Star Trek Titan - The Red King" - Andy Mangels and Michael A. Martin

Finally got to Serenity!

2005-10-17T12:30:00.000-04:00

My wife surprised me on Friday evening by getting a babysitter for our kids and getting us out of the house finally by ourselves and to the movie we'd been wanting to see since we heard it was being made - SERENITY

It was very intense, all the way through and very true to the tv series it came from - Firefly, which was unfortunately never handled correctly from the beginning on Fox a few years ago and then was cancelled without completing their first season. Now the original aired episodes and some that never got shown are being broadcast on the Sci-Fi Channel at 7pm eastern on Friday nights.

I'd love to discuss it further off-blog with anyone who is interested, but don't want to spoil it for anyone who's not seen it yet.

Thanks for getting us to the show hon!

Listening to - "Magnum P.I." - TV Themes
Reading - "Star Trek Titan - The Red King" - Andy Mangels and Michael A. Martin

Where'd my gVisit go?

2005-10-14T09:54:00.000-04:00

My recently added gVisit "recent visitor locations" functionality seems to have disappeared...not sure what's going on there...it's still in the template - a javascript call to a PHP.

Is there anyone else who is having this same problem? If so, let me know what you did, or are trying to do to fix it. Perhaps they are just down right now????

Update @ 10:00am
Looks like they might have yanked the functionality to show the list of visitor locations in a little table, so I put the original link to my gVisit page for this blog back in it's place...we'll see if the visitor list appears again, or they tell us what happened.

Listening to - "Sonny Boy" - Al Jolson
Reading - "Star Trek Titan - Taking Wing" - Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels

Latest Wall Strategy

2005-10-13T10:48:00.000-04:00

You may all be getting tired of this somewhat pedestrian subject, but it feels good to get my frustations with it out and also to celebrate milestones in its progress...so bear with me if you will.

So, we gave up on doing the extra drywall compound patching on all the line, and now going directly to a coat or two of Killz2 primer on the previously bare (likely unpainted) drywall that was behind the boards that were removed, then another coat of primer on the entire wall, then begin with the new color. If we still see alot of splotchiness (did I coin a new word here?) all over from my nail, accident patches, then we're going to do a sponging technique which should do a fairly good job of hiding the blemishes.

We ripped up the rest of the carpet in the room last night also, and put some furniture back into a usable if not very aesthetic configuration so our kids can be using that room again, we feel like they've been trapped upstairs on the main floor for the last week or two with the dusty sanding and painting stuff going on down there.

She is seeing an end in sight, and so am I, and that's a good thing!

Thanks for letting me vent! :)

Listening to - "All The Way" - James Darren (This One's From the Heart)
Reading - "Star Trek Titan - Taking Wing" - Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels

Chris' blog's new look

2005-10-13T08:27:00.000-04:00

One of my most frequent commenters/readers Chris Whisonant blogged about a change he had made to his template. He also included a link which may be useful to me or other users of the "Blogger" system - http://blogtemplates.noipo.org/ Thanks Chris!

Listening to - TV Show/Cartoon Themes
Reading - "Star Trek Titan - Taking Wing" - Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels

Slight addedum to the blog description

2005-10-12T09:57:00.000-04:00

With the obvious new slant to some (ok most) of the entries on this blog as of late, I decided to add the words "Red Wings Hockey" after "Domino Development" in the description of what should appear here. I will try to balance things a bit better in the coming weeks and months, but during hockey season the games and the action keep happening and theres almost always something to comment or rant about...so, at least I'll be a bit more active. You never know, I might even start to get a hockey blog reading following too!

Listening to - "Les Miserables" (Soundtrack)
Reading - "Star Trek Titan - Taking Wing" - Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels

Captain to be back in lineup on Thursday

2005-10-12T09:50:00.000-04:00

It appears that Stevie Y will be back out leading the team Thursday night against the LA Kings. Hope we can get back to our winning ways after last game's letdown vs. Vancouver. Too bad it will be starting at 10:30 eastern...of course like I told my wife, we could bring the wi-fi enabled laptop upstairs when we go to bed so we can fall asleep listening to the game! Not sure how well that idea went over, she really didn't respond.

Listening to - "Les Miserables" (Soundtrack)
Reading - "Star Trek Titan - Taking Wing" - Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels

Ongoing Wall Saga

2005-10-11T09:19:00.000-04:00

Ok, so the latest is that we are going to leave the ceiling boards on the ceiling and just prime them (going from a dark brown) to the color we are going to use for the molding in the room, some kind of antique white or creamish color. If she ends up hating that, then we'll take them down and repair the ceiling at that point. I'm fine with this, less work right now, and perhaps not have to do anything with it at all.

Now what's really kicking our butts, is the Xs that were on the walls, and the little grooves or ridges of 30+ year of paint or slight indentation of board on wall. I've been putting a thin layer of drywall mud compound of these grooves/ridges and then sanding them down as best as I can to get a smooth surface for painting, but on the small section of wall we have been experimenting with it still looks horribly blotchy and you can tell exactly where the X used to be, this is even after a couple of coats of primer and a coat of the new wall color (a soft light yellow - God knows what the actual name is). I'm going to try to sand a bit further down and see if I can get a smoother surface tonight. We want to completely cut our teeth on this one wall so we can determine the best strategy for the rest of them...

Wish me luck and I'm open to any suggestions if you have any on what else might work well in this case...it's a stumper!

Listening to - "Break On Through (To The Other Side)" - The Doors
Reading - "Star Trek Titan - Taking Wing" - Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels

Cruiser fix update - not quite as cheap as I'd hoped

2005-10-11T09:07:00.000-04:00

Well, it didn't end up being horribly cheap, but it is at least taken care of...

It turns out I had a bad power steering pressure switch, which I of course have never heard of before, let alone know what it does, but that's what set off the engine light (I guess a multitude of things set off that particular icon on the dash) So, I am happy that is was at least nothing horribly wrong.

I do have to hand it to mt local ProCare, they are very professional and quick, and they do keep coming in under their estimate, I'll keep taking my business there, I just don't want to be there all the time...

Listening to - "For What It's Worth" - Buffalo Springfield (Forrest Gump Soundtrack)
Reading - "Star Trek Titan - Taking Wing" - Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels

In other news

2005-10-07T13:09:00.000-04:00

Following up on other fronts..

Making further progress with the family room remodeling. I've got all the wood ceiling and floor moldings and Xs (cris-crossed molding boards) off all of the vertical surfaces, and depending on my wife's decision, I'll be taking a crack at getting the ceiling board pieces down tonight. Then it's just a bunch of further drywall patching/spackling everywhere over the nail holes and the aforementioned crowbar mishaps. I'd like her to be able to start painting before the end of next week.

Thanks to Chris for his pointers to me on my earlier post about the contact document updating main document thing. I've tried a couple of strategies based on what he was taking about, but haven't yet hit on something that I like that works correctly yet. But I'm still plugging away at it. The latest one only updates the main document after you've saved the contact document twice...can't quite figure that one out...oh well...fun times.

Checking out the engine light thing on the Cruiser tomorrow morning at ProCare, they think it's likely just a computer sensor glitch as I'm not noticing any problem with the car's performance. Hopefully they let me off cheap!

Listening to - "Flat Foot Floogee" - Benny Goodman (Swing Kids Soundtrack)
Reading - "Star Trek Titan - Taking Wing" - Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels

Another win, but not so easy this time

2005-10-07T12:58:00.000-04:00

Wings 4, Blues 3......whew.

Sitting in our kitchen playing rummy (which my wife totally trashed me at by the way), listening to the Wings/Blues game on WXYT's internet stream, we thought we had it made for an easy win going into the 3rd period with a "surely insurmountable" 4-1 lead.

But in the new NHL and it's new style of play and penalty calling, things can change quickly. The boys did pull it out and Legace made a bunch of saves on the flurry of shots he faced as time was winding down.

Hoping to see the Captain back for Sunday's game vs. Calgary, but I'd rather him be fully healed up instead of potentially causing more damage to his groin, and being out even longer.

Listening to - "Swingtime in the Rockies" - Benny Goodman (Swing Kids Soundtrack)
Reading - "Star Trek Titan - Taking Wing" - Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels

Who-hoo! Wings down Blues 5-1 to open the campaign

2005-10-06T15:40:00.000-04:00

Wow, what a great opening game at the Joe last night...with a 5-1 route of the visiting Blues, and even better, we get to play them again tonight!

Datsuk, Lang, Schneider, Lebda (new guy), Samuelsson (ROOKIE new guy) all got goals and lots of other guys got some great assists. They even sent Lalime the Blues starting goalkeeper to the bench just a bit past the halfway mark of the 2nd period.

Hope to be seeing more of the same tonight (or at least hearning it, not in FSN Detroit range with our cable, so we listen to games on WXYT internet radio feed, nothing like the sound of Detroit's radio play-by-play guys!

Don't worry, I won't be commenting on every game...but had to give the guys their props... :)

--------------------
Update 10/11 - Ok, my bad, Samuelsson is not a rookie, he's just new to us...he was actually drafted by San Jose in the 1998 Entry draft and has played for SJ, NY Rangers, Pittsburgh and most recently Florida. He then played in the Swedish Elite League last year during the NHL lockout.

He's also on fire - 4 goals in 4 games...rock on!

Listening to - Nothing at the moment
Reading - "Star Trek Vanguard - Harbinger" - David Mack

Anyone done this?

2005-10-05T10:52:00.000-04:00

I've got a challenge I've not been able to figure out a solution to..

I've got a main document which has fields computed and set after selecting a contact document from an @Picklist and then various @DbLookups to grab necessary fields. This works well. I also have a button named "modify", which uses script to figure out which contact is selected (values in the computed fields), then does a GetDocumentByKey, then a ws.EditDocument to open the contact document you want to modify. The user makes the change and saves the contact document.

Everything is cool to this point, but what has to be done now, for the computed fields from that contact to be changed in the main form, the user needs to re-select that contact using my original select (@Picklist) button. What I'd like to happen is for the fields in the main document to automatically detect the change in the contact document field(s) and update accordingly, and this is all while the main document is open and in edit mode...

This seems like it should be able to be done, but I can't quite get my head around it...Any thoughts?

Listening to - "WKRP in Cincinnati"
Reading - "Star Trek Vanguard - Harbinger" - David Mack

Using Bloglines

2005-10-04T14:57:00.000-04:00

I've been using Bloglines for several months to get a handle on the multitude of blogs that I read. I really like it, and it is fairly easy to add new blogs with RSS feeds available, as well as lots of the other webzines, comic strips, newspapers, sports sites, etc...

I've now noticed that one can build a blogroll for their blog from their feed list either by folder(s) or the entire list. Have others done this yet successfully in their blogs and had it work correctly? Am I missing the boat by not using some other aggregator? Please give me your advise and expertise.

Listening to - "Linus and Lucy", from 'Peanuts'
Reading - "Star Trek Vanguard - Harbinger" - David Mack

Once again, my profound appologies...

2005-10-04T09:33:00.000-04:00

Can it really be more than a month since I last blogged? I hate having these huge lulls of blog silence, but I guess life happens in between.

Here's what's been happening lately as a poor excuse for my lack of blog diligence

Z is in kindergarten now, and enjoying every minute of it, having a great time riding the bus and making new friends, although he can hardly ever remember their names, even when he wants mommy to write a note to their mommy to ask if they can get together to play.

K is in preschool at the same school Z attended and with the same teacher that Z had when he was in the 3 year old class. She's having a lot of fun too and enjoys being with her friend who is Z's best friend's little sister - small preschool world eh?

We've begun remodeling our family room, which entails taking 1x6 boards in large X and square/rectangle patterns off all the walls (they've been there for 35+ years) and then patching of nail holes and crowbar vs. drywall mishaps (there's been a few). I also built two pieces of Sauder furniture (one of them being a new computer armoire - which took 4+ hours Saturday night). Our goal is to have that room done and all by Thanksgiving - wish us luck!

We bought a used 2001 PT Cruiser (pictures may be posted later) in the middle of August to replace my 92 Cavalier which I felt might not make it through the winter. It's a fun little car and the kids really enjoy it, and so do I, but my wife covets her time to be able to use it too, instead of the mini-van with car seats and kiddie toys galore. The cruiser does have quite a few miles on it - 70,000+ which was why we got a good price on it, and does need some upkeep, so that will be fun. Actually the engine light came on for my wife last night so I may have to get it in to ProCare tonight if we can swing it - hope it's just a glitch.

Z's soccer team which I have been assistant coach for (yeah, I know, I didn't follow throught with keeping you up to speed on that) went undefeated (10 - 0) this season so he and I were really happy about that, and he got his first soccer trophy which he asks everyone to come see in his room when they come over.

The 05-06 NHL season starts tomorrow, and I have 3 fantasy hockey teams to keep track of, one of which I am the league commissioner for, so that'll keep me hopping. I probably overcompensated a bit from last year's non-season, but I'm so excited that hockey's back! GO WINGS!

Lastly, I have a new project at work given to me in mid September with a deadline in early December, requiring testing to begin in mid November, so I've been devoting just about all my time to that for that last few weeks, with no end in sight.

I think that about sums it up for now, but I promise, promise, promise to be a good little blogger and make my entries more regularly. And to help me out, I've spruced up a bit by changing the old template for the site, to motivate me a bit. What do ya think? Those reading by RSS won't notice of course, but I needed a change.

All for now - see ya!

Listening to - "Final Frontier", from 'Mad About You'
Reading - "Star Trek Vanguard - Harbinger" - David Mack

GVisit visitor mapping added

2005-08-25T10:15:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

Following the lead of several other bloggers I read regularly, I've added the GVisit visitor mapping capability to my blog. So I'm hoping to have those red arrowy things popping up all over the world.

Of course to have visitors, this blog would have to actually have fairly recent postings, and something people would actually find interesting...hmm, have to work on that a bit more don't I? Sorry about the recent dry spell, I've had my head down a bit and then vacations and getting the boychild ready for Kindergarten and the girlchild ready for pre-school, kinda saps the time.

Listening to - "We Built This City" - Starship

Fantasy Hockey

2005-08-19T15:27:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

I'm so excited that the NHL got everything fixed up and ready to go for a full season this year...

I've setup a league on Yahoo! Fantasy Hockey and have 7 of 16 teams so far... if anyone is interested, here's the details about the league and a link to go to for sign-up!

It'd be fun to see if there are any DominoDeveloper/Hockey fans out there besides me!

Fantasy Hockey Sign-up

League ID#: 3637
League Name: Old Time Hockey at the Joe
Password: captain19
Draft Type: Autopick Draft
Max Teams: 16
Scoring Type: Head-to-Head
Max Moves: No maximum
Max Trades: No maximum
Trade Reject Time: 2
Trade End Date: March 23, 2006
Waiver Time: 2 days
Can't Cut List Provider: Yahoo! Sports
Trade Review: League Votes
Min Games Played: 4
Weekly Deadline: Daily - Tomorrow
Start Scoring on: Week 1
Roster Positions: C, C, LW, LW, RW, RW, F, F, D, D, D, D, D, Util, Util, G, G, G, BN, BN, BN, BN, IR, IR
Stat Categories: G, A, +/-, PIM, PPG, SHG, GWG, SOG, FW, W, GAA, SV, SV%, SHO

Listening to - "Venus" - Bananarama

Game ON!

2005-07-22T08:00:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

NHLPA ratifies new CBA

Apparently over 90% of the players voted in favor of the new deal.

Let's Go Wings!

Listening to - "Happy Days Theme Song"

God Speed Scotty

2005-07-20T13:34:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

James Doohan - Scotty of Star Trek fame, died today at age 85.

Here's the article on Trek Today

Listening to - "In The Mood" - Glenn Miller Orchestra

DXL Dabbling

2005-07-08T15:30:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

As I thought more about the last post I made, I was thinking about stuff I'd seen done in DXL before. I've never touched it before outside of seeing it in a seminar and probably and exercise in a training class.

Would I be able to pull the design of a form and/or view and based on parameters in a config or profile type document, be able to change field labels (plain text on the form) or column headers in views, or tabbed table captions or things like that to make the database even more tightly configurable and customizable?

Anyone much more proficient in things of this nature who could point me in the right direction or provide an example of something even remotely similar would be greatly appreciated!

Listening to - "Urgent" - Foreigner

Captions on Tabbed Tables

2005-07-01T08:58:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

Trying to do some work with tabbed tables, and was hoping to be able to do some changes of the tab captions/labels programatically. I came across this workaround on LDD from a few years ago - RE: Caption of Tabbed Table which uses layers, which is something I have never worked with before. The thing that Hynek mentioned in the post was that it would only work in edit mode...

I'm wondering if anyone has ever come up with a way to use this strategy, or something like it, in all modes, or whether anyone has a different solution for programatic tab captions/labels.

In the meantime, I may experiment with the layers thing myself, just to get an idea of how they work.

Listening to - "When I See You Smile" - Bad English

75 years old on Saturday

2005-06-30T13:35:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

My Dad will be turning 75 on July 2nd.

Wow...3/4 of a century!

My parents will be coming to our place this weekend to celebrate his day and then the July 4th festivities.

Hoping to take tomorrow afternoon off if its not raining and hit the links with him.
Haven't done that with just the two of us in I don't know how long, which I really miss, as it used to be one of the best times to have some real open and meaningful conversations with him.

Hoping to have another 25 years of conversations with him, and make it a 3 generation golf outing sometime in the next 10 - 15 years, when Z is old enough!

Listening to - "Time After Time" - Cyndi Lauper

Bravo Duffbert!

2005-06-30T13:30:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

I've been following along on Duffbert's "other blog" - Less Duffbert ever since he announced it, and I have to say, I'm very impressed and happy for you Tom! Keep at it!

Over 10lbs off in the first 2 weeks? Awesome...We won't be able to find you or recognize you at the 'Sphere this coming January.

Also fun to see a normally domino based blogger using the same blogging system I am.

Listening to - "Just What I Needed" - The Cars

Breaking Silence

2005-06-30T13:24:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

I and my blog been very quiet lately, not sure why, just have had my head down alot I guess...but here come a barage of posts regarding stuff I've noticed or am thinking about currently.

Listening to - "Take On Me" - A-ha

Pics from Last Night's Baseball

2005-06-07T08:46:00.000-04:00

Soccer 4 and 0 on the season - Baseball tonight

2005-06-06T10:44:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

Yup, Z's team won again on Saturday. This time, they were down 2-0 and 3-1 early n the first quarter, but then they got rolling and stimied the other team the rest of the way, ending up with a 10-3 win. Z had 2 goals again, and just missed a 3rd... I was all ready to throw my hat up for the hat-trick. So now we're on summer hiatus (they split the league into a 1st and 2nd half, on in the spring, and the other when school starts up again in the late summer, early fall.

Good thing too, because tonight, Z starts baseball. Guess I'm gonna be in the same boat as Andy, but I'm going to do my best NOT to volunteer to be a coach or helper to the extent I am with soccer. I'm not sure what to expect from this, as I don't know if it'll be tee-ball, coach-pitch baseball, teams competing against each other, just instructional/fundamentals kind of stuff, just choosing up sides between a larger groups of kids???? But I should have a better idea after tonight. He's very excited, and every chance he gets, he either wants to be throwing with me - getting used to his glove, or hitting the wiffleball around with his fat bat.

If I get a chance, I'll snap some pictures from tonight's festivities and put them up tomorrow.

Listening to - Nothing at the moment

Autograph and Fireworks

2005-06-01T11:30:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

Z and my in-laws and I went to the baseball game after the move-in on Saturday night...
He got his new baseball glove autographed (his first ever) - extra points if you can identify the player.
After the game, which our team won, we enjoyed a spectacular fireworks display, then spent at least 45 minutes to an hour waiting to get out of the parking garage... But, a good time was had by all.

Here's some pics from the camera phone..

Listening to - "The Five Pennies" - Danny Kaye

Happy June!

2005-06-01T09:49:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

A new month is upon us...
Our move of our furniture and boxes into our new place from the storage units was completed Saturday, and by Monday afternoon I was parking the 2nd car in the garage...mission accomplished. Now we spend the next few days (not weeks hopefully) unpacking boxes and getting everything where it needs to go.

Also...
Some new blogs I've been reading, now adding to the every increasing blog roll...
Brian Levine
Rory Wohl
Stan Rogers

Listening to - "The Five Pennies" - Danny Kaye

Soccer Blowout and 1st Dance Recital

2005-05-24T13:22:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

This past Saturday was a very full day.

Z had his 3rd soccer game of the year, this time a 16-0 (but who's counting) rout. One shot was put on our goal, and that one didn't get past the goal box and our goalie at the time threw it right back out. Only one shot...I felt bad for the other team and their coaches who couldn't do anything to get the ball into our end more than a couple of times. Z was excited, as he scored 2 goals, one of them from halfway in between the two goal boxes that got up a foot or two in the air...he was really excited about that one.

K (the newly minted 3 year old) had a dress rehearsal for her dance recital directly following Z's soccer game, and then her performance later that evening. She and her little friends did a pretty good job and watched their dance teacher very well in my opinion, and being so little and cute in their matching pink dresses with sparkly flowers and ribbons in their hair, they were a crowd favorite. Be watching the flickr pics on the right column of the blog in the coming weeks for pictures from the recital.

Listening to - "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat"

Data passing issues - between domains

2005-05-19T08:52:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

Ran into this yesterday...

Another programmer group has a contact database and a query written in a page to grab email addresses based on certain criteria. I've got an app which mimics the mail document in the browser, and sends to a To, CC, and BCC field. What we are trying to do is call my form, and onLoad, go grab a hidden textarea field's values from their page (the page that called my form), and pop that text into my BCC field.

When my form comes up, it gets an "Access is denied" error in javascript. Its happening on the line in my onLoad when I'm trying to put the value from the window.opener.document (their page) in my field...

I've been all over the LDD forums regarding this issue, and have found some hints, and strategies but it comes down to - My problem is that their page, and my Notes server are in different domains.

I've tried having them do a document.domain javascript line to the same 2nd level domain as my notes server... and it seems to have no effect...
I've tried to set my document.domain in the JSHeader of my form to their domain...
None of this has seemed to work.

Has anyone ever come up against this, and found a workaround?

Am I missing some very simple way of doing this value passing differently? (I'm trying to avoid passing the text via the URL line, as I think it will run into a text size problem)

Any help would be appreciated.

Listening to - Nothin.

Sorry K, daddy should've blogged this on Saturday

2005-05-17T15:00:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

Belatedly, I want to wish my daughter a happy 3rd birthday, 4 days after daddy's 31st!
When I get home and have time to snap off a shot, I'll add in a picture of her new two-wheeler with training wheels, and if my wife has one, a shot of her princess cake from this weekend.

7:25am 5/18 - Got the bike pic last night...

Listening to - Turned off the music for the day

USB DCU-11 cable + camera phone = blogable pics!

2005-05-17T14:53:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

After renewing our Cingular service a few weeks back and purchasing new SE z500a phones for my wife and I, I started looking for the cable and software needed to get photos/ringtone/themes/etc.. back and for between phones and our pcs... I found an ebay seller last week, and received the USB DCU-11 kit yesterday. With the capability of this new cable and software I've finally been able to make good on my promise made way back and uploaded a pic of our new Durango swingset to Flickr and now here!

And here's a couple of my munchkins playing on it this weekend...

Many many more to come I'm sure!
Now I gotta get playing with those ringtones...

Listening to - "I Got You" - Split Enz

Using Java Rich Text Applet

2005-05-17T14:21:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

So, I've needed to attempt the use of the rich text applet in a client+web app. I'm modifying. I was fighting with the NotesRichTextItem not getting any value as I'm not doing a save before sending a mail via a script agent. What I came upon in LDD was this call in javascript before the submit - _getEditAppletData().

Whatever it does (and I haven't dug very hard into it as it works at this point), it does give me a decent, but not perfect representation of the rich text that I put into the rich text field via the applet. Fonts are proportional to each other, bolding, italics and underline are good, but colors get lost completely, its always giving me black text.

Anyone else done anything with this, or am I missing something much better or easier for what I'm trying to accomplish?

Oh, also wondering if there is anything that will bring in attachments or things like a banner/header for a stationery kind of idea, short of doing upload control(s). Haven't delved into all 6.5.x has to offer in the rich text for web arena, just looking for pointers or shoves in the right direction.

Listening to - "Vacation" - The Go-Go's

Another Win!

2005-05-17T14:09:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

Believe it or not, with ME as their head coach this last Saturday, Z's soccer team won impressively again, 9-0. The other team was again bogged down in their own end for a majority of the game, and if I recall correctly, amid the frantic player rotations (we had 13 boys again) and shouting out directions to our team, they only got two shots on goal that our goalies didn't get their hands or other body parts on. One of them hit the post really hard and bounced out of the primary goal box, and another just skimmed the outside of the post.

One of our more experienced guys had another 4 goal game, and Z ran down alot of guys coming toward our end and got the ball turned around and back up field.

I did try to get all of our players sufficient playing time, and based on feedback from the parents after the game, I was successful... Also, now that I've had a bit more time to get to know the boys, I can even identify them by name (regardless of how many have the same name :-) ).

Listening to - "One Way or Another" - Blondie

Congrats Uchenna and Joyce!

2005-05-11T08:40:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

What an awesome finish! The Agus - Uchenna and Joyce won Amazing Race 7 and the $1 Million.

It was nice to see the fair players win, without all the conniving and scheming. I hope their wishes to have a child of their own or adopt come to fruition.

I guess Rob and Amber get one more TV "hurrah" with their wedding on CBS in a couple of weeks.

Listening to - "Don't Forget Me (When I'm Gone)" - Glass Tiger

Happy B-Day Volker and Me!

2005-05-10T08:42:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

Was planning on just putting a quick entry up noting that today's my birthday...then I happen on to Volker's entry for today...I was floored...what a small blogosphere!

Anyway, I'm 31 today and the start to the day was not very auspicious, started very early with helping my wife with my sick daughter at about 3am, and I likely have a long meeting this afternoon which appears to be scheduled past my normal departure and catch-my-bus time. Oh well, what's a 31st birthday anyway?!?

Listening to - "Just What I Needed" - The Cars

Sametime/Awareness Questions

2005-05-09T13:32:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

So, we've finally got everyone over on the 6.5.x client and servers and therefore can begin writing apps with sametime awareness capabilities integrated into them. So taking my first jaunt into this, I start working on enabling a view column with "show online status" property. Then I go into the view and try to do my normal double click to start a chat with said online person, and get...the document opening. :( I'm thinking, what did I forget to do, is something not enabled...then I think, oh yeah, a double click in the view opens the document, duh.... How do I chat with this online name? After a few minutes staring, I remember about right clicking, and of course that works...I don't like it, but it works. Then I do figure out creating an action button to start a chat based on the online name column/field in the selected document. I guess I'm so used to using my trusty old sametime connect client, that I expected there to be a double click functionality in an online aware notes app too. I then ran into the same stuff inside a document and sametime enabling a field.

Anyone have a better or more elegant way to do some of this stuff? Now this is notes client only.

As far as web sametime enablement, there is this STLinks stuff, and I'm getting ready to explore that, but I can conceive of what to do in a form/document sort of area. However, what about a view, how does a column/field in a web view get the online name enablement? I've looked quite a bit on LDD and not seen much of anything regarding this... Just looking for some pointers, or gentle nudges, so I'm not failing around helplessly for too long...this is going to be very important in several major apps coming down the pike.

Listening to - Still nothing...need to concentrate ;-)

Did I score a goal daddy?

2005-05-09T13:16:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

So, after 2 weeks of rainouts, we finally were able to play my son's 4&5 year old team's first soccer game of the year. They won 9 - 1, which is just about right, as I'd say we were probably in the opponent's end of the field about 90% of the game. We have some pretty fast guys, and most of our guys knew which direction to be going (which is a problem sometimes, as a guy goes full force towards his own goal even though most of the spectators are yelling for them to go the other way).

The play and the officiating (if you want to call it that) was pretty loose, and so when my son got a pass near the opponent's goal and kicked it over the goal line (which I could see from my position by our goal), the ref never blew the whistle because the other goalie did stop it with their hands (a couple feet into their goal). The goalie then threw it out and play proceeded.

I could tell that my boy was confused, so when we put him in goal in the 4th quarter, and he was down at the goal with me he said "Did I score a goal daddy?" I told him that, yes, he did, but that they wanted to keep the game continuing, and that we had scored alot of goals already and that the other goalie did catch or stop the ball, so the referee decided to let things keep going on. I thought that had satisfied him, and he was able to focus on making his one stop on the one shot that the other team put on goal in the 4th quarter.

So, now, we're getting the drink pouches and snack bags passed out to the little guys after the game and telling them all what a great job they did, and Z (my boy - we'll call him Z) goes to the head coach..."did I score a goal?" "Yes Z, you kicked the ball over the line, you scored...." Then he goes into the same explanation I gave him...

Guess he needed a bit more re-assurance, as this was his first ever goal in a real game, including last year. For me, I wish it had been acknowledged like a normal goal, and maybe that's a bit selfish, but he deserves his dues.

Next week should be a fun time, we have team pictures before the game, and I'll be the HEAD COACH next week, as the regular head coach will be out of town on business...so I'll have to corral and coordinate 14 - 17 little boys most with duplicate names (joy joy joy). At least they have one game under their belt!

Listening to - Nothing...for once...

Additions to ever-growing blogroll

2005-05-03T11:05:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

Some blogs I've found lately that have piqued (that's spelled right isn't it?) my interest:

Phigment Said What? (Sean Burgess) - I like the quotes of the day, especially today's from The Breakfast Club
Good Thinking (Scott Good) - Thanks for the info on Bill Ernest
Lord Lotus (Michael Sobczak) - Looks like this guy is from near where I grew up, suburbs of Detroit

Listening to - "Sara" - Starship

Sony Ericsson Z500a

2005-05-02T08:56:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

Hey All...sorry I've not posted for a whole week now, it's been a bit crazy at work and home, so just haven't been able to find the time.

Anyway, my wife and I renewed our contract with Cingular last week, and each got the new Sony Ericsson Z500a phone. We're kinda excited as they are camera phones and we've not taken the plunge into the digital camera arena yet, so they should be fun.

Does anyone else in the domino blogging community have this phone, and if so, what do you think of it?

We've been snapping a few pictures here and there this weekend. It's cool how small of a size in Kb each one is, even on the highest resolution for the phone. I estimate we should be able to take several hundred without any problem, the trick will be keeping track of them.

Which brings me to this...I know that the phone companies want you to be sending photo messages or emails (at a cost per message) from the phone to others to get your pictures off of them, or whatever, but I do know that they have a capability of using a special USB cable and software to pull them down to your pc and do whatever else with them. I've been surfing to find a good price for this kind of kit and was again wondering if anyone has used this setup...I'd love to have an easy way to get the pictures off, so I can upload them to Flickr and have a more dynamic set of pictures in there.

Listening to - "The Power" - Snap!

Text Field Size Limit - Averted

2005-04-25T14:54:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

Two posts ago, I was mentioning my issues with an email addressing query that was returning too many results to a text field in a dialog box - which would subsequently be @Uniqued and then sent back to the calling form/document and put into the TO field.

Well, I came across script libraries in a sandbox submission from a few years ago by Rocky Oliver and Andre Guirard in which they re-did some @functions in lotusscript. I grabbed an 'atUnique' function, and I'm now running that on my original result set array, resulting in an already uniqued array, which tends to be much smaller than the original result set due to many duplications in the email addresses in my source (that's another problem, but one I can't address at this point).

Now, I still have to check to make sure that this unique array is not too large to fit in my text field being returned to the calling document, so I do a for loop:

Dim lenUList As Long
Dim w As Integer
lenUList = 0

For w = 0 To Ubound(UniqueList)
lenUList = lenUList + Len(UniqueList(w))
Next

If lenUList > 32000 Then
doc.ToList = "Query generated too much data, please reduce the size of your result set by adding more criteria to your query, or breaking it into smaller queries."
doc.TooMuchData = "Query generated too much data, please reduce the size of your result set by adding more criteria to your query, or breaking it into smaller queries."
Else
doc.ToList = UniqueList
End If

This should take care of the user being unaware of the limit being reached and then being returned no data to the original doc's TO field.

I'm sure I could be a bit more elegant, but nothing is coming to mind right now. Comments, ideas welcome! :)

Listening to - "So Alive" - Love and Rockets

Thought I might as well try it too...

2005-04-22T10:23:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

Your Linguistic Profile:

85% General American English

10% Upper Midwestern

5% Midwestern

0% Dixie

0% Yankee

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Listening to - "Rosanna" - Toto

Problems hitting text field size limit - I think

2005-04-20T15:32:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

I'm running a query on documents in a database, returning those into a results array only when they have something in an email address field. I'm then putting these resulting email addresses (@Unique'd) into a TO field (or CC or BCC), regardless, it's a dialog list/text field.

I think I'm hitting the TO field's 32K limit, because when I run a larger query returning (un-uniqued) 1500+ addresses, it puts nothing in the field (but also no error).

Is there a way to throw an error, basically detecting this 32K limit problem, and warn the user before they lose the query return values?

Listening to - People talking all around me...lots of conference calls and discussions.

Backyard Makeover - Swingset Edition

2005-04-18T09:14:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

We've had our eye on a couple of different wooden swingsets for our new backyard (we've recently bought my in-laws house) and finally settled on the Durango swingset available at Wal-Mart.

Here's the promotional picture:

For approx. $400 I think this is a very nice set. I spent a couple of hours on Saturday evening, and then about 7 hours (until darkness fell) last night trying to get it together and ready for play today. I've got the entire tower section built, and in place, and I was connecting the monkey bars side ladder together as it got too dark to see my tools let alone the bolts and washers or even the holes in the material. I'm hoping a few hours of work tonight will get it finished, as the kids are clammering for it, and it will be nice to just send them out back to play on it now that the weather is getting nice. I'll try to get some kind of actual picture of OUR set in OUR backyard sometime in the next few weeks uploaded here.

Listening to - "California, Here I Come" - Al Jolson

Head First Java

2005-04-13T15:05:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

I'm reading the above titled book by Kathy Sierra & Bert Bates which I won at this year's Lotusphere (I believe during Team-TSG's Java jumpstart on Sunday - thanks guys!)

Now, I've been to various sun java classes and java primers at those multi-day Web Coding Bootcamp seminars by The VIEW, but the way that things are presented in this book, and the strategies they use to repeat and reinforce the information, I think anyone (even non-technically minded) could learn and fully understand what is covered in this book. I would thoroughly recommend this to anyone thinking about doing programming in Java, or just wanting to know what it is all about.

Listening to - "The Reflex" - Duran Duran

Happy Birthday Mom...glad we didn't quite forget

2005-04-12T10:08:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

So my wife calls me yesterday morning, and says, "Do you know what today is?"
Earlier in the morning, when I first looked at my watch to get the date to put on something I was signing, I had noticed that it was April 11th, my Mom's birthday. I wasn't too worried about the fact that I hadn't done anything regarding sending a card and/or selecting a present, as my wife normally keeps up to date on upcoming birthdays and such and does all of that stuff. I just usually get the card put in front of me to sign and maybe help decide what can be purchased out of a few choices. This time, I didn't remember any of that happening, so after she started off the phone call like that, I was like uh-oh... So, I said "yeah, Mom's birthday", and she said, yup, and that her mother was the one that mentioned it to her...
So, she asked me if I wouldn't mind calling my Dad and seeing if he could go to the florist and pick out something for Mom. I agreed, and then called...of course I got my MOM first, so I wished her a happy birthday, and chatted for a few moments about regular family stuff and such, then asked to talk to Dad by himself, as their usual thing is to both get on a separate phone at their house so they can both talk at once. Dad agreed to see what he could do, and apparently did a good job, since when we called later yesterday evening so we could all talk to them, she seemed to be happy with what she got. Thanks for the help Dad!

Oh, and Mom won't be reading this, as she only has email via juno, and no regular internet access with that account, so I think I'm safe telling the whole story.

Listening to - "The Final Rip-Off - Disc 1" - Monty Python

New week, new challenges

2005-04-11T13:28:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

Hope this week finds everyone well.

I've got some new items on my plate here, and this time I've had little or no experience with this part of Notes/Domino development, so I may be asking for some guidance from the experts (you know who you are!)

I've inherited a db using field/document level encryption (which I've not dealt with before, never even researched it), and it's a few years old, so nobody actually knows how or for what reason it was structured the way it was (not even the users/owner of the app - FUN FUN! ; - )
Plan to take advantage of the some of the 6.5.x view features, especially on-the-fly view criteria manipulation, which should help cut down on the pre-canned views that used to be built.
Building XML files via Lotusscript scheduled agents (I'm actually pretty far along on that one, and to me it's as simple as generating a text file)

See, I told you that I would actually start blogging about something "notes development" related at some point...

Listening to - "Obsession" - Animotion

Practice went well, thankfully :)

2005-04-08T08:43:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

To our collective suprise, our practice actually went quite well. It turns out that we did get a veteran (can you really call a 5 year old a veteran?) from a different team last year assigned to our team, so that's now 4 second year players. This new kid is really fast and handles that ball quite well, he was focused on it and driving up field through lots of the other kids, and didn't have a problem when I asked him to take the goalkeeper position for a few minutes near the end of the semi-game we were having. The rest of the team seems to be a bit more with it than the group we had last year too, which is encouraging...

More on this stuff as the weeks and months go by...

Listening to - "Once Bitten, Twice Shy" - Great White

Wish me (us) luck!

2005-04-07T15:45:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

Like I said before, I'm the assistant coach for my son's 3-5 year old soccer team, and tonight is the first practice. The head coach called last night and told me we have 16 boys this year, up from 13 last year, and again, only 3 are returning, and two of those are our own sons... I wish I had a digital camera so I could start matching up the little guys' faces with their names...I'm sure it'll take at least 1/4 to 1/2 of the season to get them all straight.

You can probably count on a recap of tonights' festivities tomorrow, that is as long as it doesn't keep raining like it's been doing most of the day...hmm, maybe that would be a blessing, but on the other hand, it's only a week or two until the actual games start...oh boy!

Listening to - "Kokomo" - The Beach Boys

Kindred Bloggers

2005-04-07T09:43:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

Found a couple of domino related blogs while walking down another blogger's blogroll, Andy Donaldson and Chris Whisonant. These guys apparently decided to go the same route I did and built up a Blogger site, and apparently have been at it for some time now. Seems I share interests with both of them too...looks like Andy is into sci-fi (especially Battlestar Galactica) and Chris is into Christian music. Hope I can continue to maintain a presense in the blogging community at large and the domino blogging community specifically as they have been. They'll be added to my blogroll here in a couple of minutes.

By the way, I hope to have something to blog about specifically related to domino/notes development here at some point...but there are so many other guys with such good information that it's hard to feel like I'd make a worthwhile contribution. We'll see what comes up.

Listening to - "Here I Go Again" - Whitesnake

Amazing Race 7

2005-04-06T15:17:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

Can't believe these two got booted...and how crazy was it that they decided to change into their swim trunks and arctic gear in preparation for all of their other stuff being taken away if they were allowed to continue (a non-emlimination stage)!

If you haven't seen the first half of this season, a recap compilation episode is on tonight on CBS at 8pm EST.

I'll be watching West Wing at 9pm (season finale) and taping Alias also at 9pm, so I can watch it at 10.

Listening to - "Who Can It Be Now?" - Men At Work

So, who is this guy?

2005-04-05T13:15:00.000-04:00

Location - My Desk

First of all, thanks to everyone who's stopped by to take a look so far, and especially those leaving comments...you're motivating me!

Alright now, as I said I'm going to try to stay fairly vague about details...but...

I've been married for over 8 years to a wonderful and beautiful woman, and we have two children, one 5+ (boy) and one nearly 3 (girl).

I've been involved with Notes and Domino in various capacities since 1997, and developing in it for approximately 6 years.

To answer a comment by Spanky - yes, you did meet me at the 'Sphere this year, at the ESPN party on Saturday. (I was the guy hanging out with the bloggers that didn't have a blog) - seem to be remedying that now, don't I?

I'm an assistant coach for the second year with my son's soccer team, 3-5 year olds...and that's going to start up this week with a practice where we'll meet all the new little guys and get them acquainted to our returning 3 - my son, the head coach's son and one other boy...everyone else either moved or aged out...should be interesting! Because of this, you may get some post-game reports regarding our Saturday morning exploits :)

Sports I like to participate in - tennis, bowling, golf, touch football, soccer, whiffle ball (with the boy)
Sports I like to watch - hockey, baseball (to a point), football (NFL and Arena)
Favorite current tv shows - West Wing, Amazing Race, Extreme Makeover - Home Edition, Battlestar Galactica, Enterprise
Favorite old tv shows/movies (perhaps in the ole' dvd collection??) - Buck Rogers (currently watching on bus to/from work), SeaQuest, Cannonball Run (1&2), Transformers (really it's for the kids...right!)

Paints an interesting picture eh???

Listening to - "Come On Eileen" - Dexy's Midnight Runners

Feed setup? Let me know

2005-04-05T11:05:00.000-04:00

I think I've managed to establish a feed that can be read by various RSS feed and other types of readers via a tool called FeedBurner. Please let me know if it really does work for you.

Building the blogroll

2005-04-04T12:01:00.000-04:00

Well, lets see if I can learn some of the syntax that this tool uses for it's page formatting, I'm hoping to have a full list of the blogs that I read in place before the end of the day today, and for it too look good too!

Hopefully some of you (who I've met before - at a location in the Southern US in the past few months...hint hint) will be able to find me at some point soon...especially as I start commenting (which I've seldom done yet) on your blogs, and linking to your entries when the need or inspiration arrises.

Update - @ 2pm, I've got about 60% of the blogs I read entered, although I do need to do some major work on name modification and ordering to make this look more than a haphazzard list of stuff.

Update #2 - @ 3:30pm DONE!

Initial Post - away we go...

2005-04-04T10:10:00.000-04:00

Hello Blogging community!

I'm taking a shot at this blogging thing...we'll see how it goes.

I'd planned on doing a blog based on the Domino Blog template by
Steve Castledine, but at this point do not have the resources nor the cashflow to build the infrastructure (even minimally) to get going with that.

I did try out DominoDeveloper.net briefly, and liked the idea, however at my company, I have very little (ok, NO) control or ability to influence what ports are open through the firewall, so during the day posting would be impossible...

Well, at least I can put whatever content I want to here, and this seems pretty configurable, so we'll see how it goes.

This blog will hopefully contain quite a bit about domino development, perhaps some items about some of my interests and hobbies, definitely a little about my family and goings on in our lives, but no direct references to my place of employment or projects I'm working on there.

At this point I'm going to remain fairly anonymous as well, (hence, the profile name and the blog name alluding to this fact), as I don't want this to become a problem for me in the future on the job front...and who knows how long this will last anyway - the blog I mean :)

The more comments and feedback, I get though, the more I'll be encouraged to keep things rolling here!