Nov 2008
Thanksgiving
Nov 29 2008 10:53 AM Filed in: Personal
I stayed in town for Thanksgiving, my mother is in
Virginia picking up my grandmother to bring her down
to Columbus for the week. I am heading down to
Columbus for the weekend to visit them.
Paige and I had a nice little Thanksgiving. We had dinner at a restaurant called ‘The Palm’. The Palm is located in Buckhead in the Westin hotel. We made a night of it and got a room at the hotel. It was nice to have a night away and still be in town. The dinner was good, except for the lobster bisque, which had a fishy taste. We both ate too much, didn’t have room to have a couple after dinner drinks.
The Westin is next door to Lenox Square mall. We walked over and watched a little of the Macy’s tree lighting ceremony, headed back to the hotel for dinner, then walked back over to look at the tree, hoping we could walk off the full feeling, but that didn’t work. The tree isn’t all that great looking either, shame such a big tree had to give its life for that. The next morning we walked over to the mall and did some people watching. There weren’t as many people out shopping on Black Friday as we thought there would be, but there were still a good bunch out there. That’s the first time I’ve ever ventured out to a store on Black Friday, I try to stay away from stores this time of year.
Overall it was an enjoyable Thanksgiving.
Paige and I had a nice little Thanksgiving. We had dinner at a restaurant called ‘The Palm’. The Palm is located in Buckhead in the Westin hotel. We made a night of it and got a room at the hotel. It was nice to have a night away and still be in town. The dinner was good, except for the lobster bisque, which had a fishy taste. We both ate too much, didn’t have room to have a couple after dinner drinks.
The Westin is next door to Lenox Square mall. We walked over and watched a little of the Macy’s tree lighting ceremony, headed back to the hotel for dinner, then walked back over to look at the tree, hoping we could walk off the full feeling, but that didn’t work. The tree isn’t all that great looking either, shame such a big tree had to give its life for that. The next morning we walked over to the mall and did some people watching. There weren’t as many people out shopping on Black Friday as we thought there would be, but there were still a good bunch out there. That’s the first time I’ve ever ventured out to a store on Black Friday, I try to stay away from stores this time of year.
Overall it was an enjoyable Thanksgiving.
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Vacation photos slowly being uploaded
Nov 25 2008 09:21 PM Filed in: Personal
I have uploaded the photos I like from the vacation
Paige and I took to the Southwest. I still have to go
through my photos from Sedona, which is taking a
while, because we were there for 4 days and went to a
lot of different places.
You can find the latest photos over in the photo section of my site.
You can find the latest photos over in the photo section of my site.
Wii Ware: World of Goo
Nov 22 2008 11:44 AM Filed in: Video Games
In todays world of video games that have a budget of
millions of dollars, you wouldn’t think the little
indie developer would stand a chance, but they do.
While the big companies are spending all sorts of
money on creating games with huge story lines, super
realistic graphics and celebrity voice overs, the
indie developers are out there creating games that
are simple and fun to play. You can see this on all
of the gaming sites that have cropped up where you
can play a game in your browser using Flash. You can
also see it on the iPhone app store, where you can
purchase a game for a couple dollars that provides
hours of entertainment. Now you can see it on your
Nintendo Wii, through their launch of Wii Ware. When
you go to the Wii Shop Channel, you can purchase
games that are made by indie gaming companies on
their Wii Ware platform. There’s a pretty good
selection of games at the moment that cover all sorts
of categories. I purchased one the other day called
World of Goo, and I am
having a blast with it. It’s a simple premise,
you link together balls of goo to build a
platform to reach the exit of the level. While
it sounds simple, luckily it isn’t, because
where’s the fun in that. You have to make it to
the end of the level with a requested number of
unused goo balls. This causes you to have to
think about how you build your platform in the
most efficient way possible. The graphics and
sound are great, the controls are simple and
perfect, and the gameplay is spectacular. I
recommend this title as your introduction to Wii
Ware.
VSTS 2008 Power Tools
Nov 20 2008 10:50 PM Filed in: .NET
If there is one category of software developed by
Microsoft that I have never been a fan of, it’s the
source control applications. Visual Source Safe was
just awful, and their newer one, Team System, isn’t
all that much better.
When I first started at Turner, we were using Source Safe on my team. From there we moved over to Star Team, which actually made Source Safe look good. We eventually left Star Team for CVS, which rocked. I like CVS because it is simple to use, and it just works. My favorite feature is using an application like Tortoise CVS, which allows you to do all of your source control from within Windows Explorer. We moved to Subversion from CVS, which is a better version of CVS, so I liked it even more. Once I loaded Tortoise SVN I could use it from Windows Explorer too.
When I started on this Agile project, we moved over to Team System. It’s pretty much like Source Safe, but has some extra features. The main reason we moved over was for its SCRUM and shelving capabilities, two features we never use. It integrates with Visual Studio, but it isn’t the greatest integration. If you have multiple machines you work on, it screws up its whole ‘workspace’ concept. Worst of all, to edit a file you had to fire up Visual Studio and go into the Team Explorer interface and check it out for edit. This sucks when you want to make a simple configuration change. This is where CVS and SVN rocked, you just opened the file in whatever editor you like and edit it. Since it monitors the directory, it picks up the change. Right-click on the file and choose Check-In. It’s that simple.
Well, you can finally do this with Team System, if you go and download their VSTS 2008 Power Tools. The shell integration isn’t installed by default, you have to do a custom install to enable it. After a log-out-log-in you now have VSTS capabilities from within Explorer.
When I first started at Turner, we were using Source Safe on my team. From there we moved over to Star Team, which actually made Source Safe look good. We eventually left Star Team for CVS, which rocked. I like CVS because it is simple to use, and it just works. My favorite feature is using an application like Tortoise CVS, which allows you to do all of your source control from within Windows Explorer. We moved to Subversion from CVS, which is a better version of CVS, so I liked it even more. Once I loaded Tortoise SVN I could use it from Windows Explorer too.
When I started on this Agile project, we moved over to Team System. It’s pretty much like Source Safe, but has some extra features. The main reason we moved over was for its SCRUM and shelving capabilities, two features we never use. It integrates with Visual Studio, but it isn’t the greatest integration. If you have multiple machines you work on, it screws up its whole ‘workspace’ concept. Worst of all, to edit a file you had to fire up Visual Studio and go into the Team Explorer interface and check it out for edit. This sucks when you want to make a simple configuration change. This is where CVS and SVN rocked, you just opened the file in whatever editor you like and edit it. Since it monitors the directory, it picks up the change. Right-click on the file and choose Check-In. It’s that simple.
Well, you can finally do this with Team System, if you go and download their VSTS 2008 Power Tools. The shell integration isn’t installed by default, you have to do a custom install to enable it. After a log-out-log-in you now have VSTS capabilities from within Explorer.
Just Voted
Nov 04 2008 10:13 AM Filed in: Personal
After hearing all of the horror stories about the
long waits and issues with early voting, I was
preparing for the worst today, but it never happened.
My polling place is an Elementary school within
walking distance of my house. I left my house at
9:15, was back home by 9:45. Voting took a total of
probably 10 minutes. Lovely!
On a side note, this is the first time I’ve voted in a while where I voted for someone because I really felt strongly about them. Usually voting comes down to which person do you hate the least, the lesser of two evils.
On a side note, this is the first time I’ve voted in a while where I voted for someone because I really felt strongly about them. Usually voting comes down to which person do you hate the least, the lesser of two evils.
Couple new games: Guitar Hero World Tour and Lego Batman
Nov 02 2008 01:19 PM Filed in: Personal
| Video Games
After finishing Lego Indiana Jones I went out looking
for a new game to play. I enjoyed the Lego game so
much that I purchased the Lego Batman game. I’ve
played the first level so far and it’s just as fun as
the Indiana Jones game.
I also found that Guitar Hero World Tour is now out. I purchased the game itself, instead of going for the whole kit at the moment, just didn’t feel like spending that much. If you purchase the whole kit you get a drum set, guitar, and microphone. This new guitar hero is competing with Rock Band. The game is fun, and I may end up purchasing the drum set at a later date, because there are some good drum songs on it; but I will hold off for now.
I also found that Guitar Hero World Tour is now out. I purchased the game itself, instead of going for the whole kit at the moment, just didn’t feel like spending that much. If you purchase the whole kit you get a drum set, guitar, and microphone. This new guitar hero is competing with Rock Band. The game is fun, and I may end up purchasing the drum set at a later date, because there are some good drum songs on it; but I will hold off for now.
NHibernate Class Level Filtering
Nov 02 2008 01:09 PM Filed in: .NET
While this information is available in the NHibernate
documentation, it’s easy to overlook. If you
have a filter you apply to all of your queries
through a ‘Where’ clause in NHibernate, you can
place that ‘Where’ clause in your HBM file at
the class level.
For example, we don’t delete data where I work, we need it for historical reporting and for searching. Instead of deleting we usually have an active indicator. What this causes is all of our queries always have “WHERE ACTIVE_IND = ‘Y’” tacked onto the end. Instead of doing that we can just place this in our HBM and it will automatically be applied to any query.
<class name=”className” table=”tableName” where=”ACTIVE_IND = ‘Y’”>
...
</class>
I want to thank my co-worker Kevin Brill for pointing this out.
For example, we don’t delete data where I work, we need it for historical reporting and for searching. Instead of deleting we usually have an active indicator. What this causes is all of our queries always have “WHERE ACTIVE_IND = ‘Y’” tacked onto the end. Instead of doing that we can just place this in our HBM and it will automatically be applied to any query.
<class name=”className” table=”tableName” where=”ACTIVE_IND = ‘Y’”>
...
</class>
I want to thank my co-worker Kevin Brill for pointing this out.