Shedding Some Light

I really like to watch/listen to the Winter Olympic coverage while I do some coding or pay bills (things I did yesterday), cut invoices (this morning’s task). I find it hard to believe the NBC coverage here in the States does not have anything to broadcast live. Fortunately our neighbors to the south (yes, Windsor, Ontario is south of Detroit) have CBC doing some excellent coverage of the live events. In fact, I prefer watching the Canadian coverage because they show us all the excellent athletes from all around the world, not just snippets of the Americans and the other winners.

The impressive feats so far are the Canadian women hockey teams complete dominance of their competition, the ski jumper who fell on the landing and returned later for a second attempt, Zhao Hongbo (Chinese Pairs Figure Skater) who is doing jumps and throws with his partner after a serious injury to his left Achilles tendon six months ago, and anyone who can speedskate for 5000 Meters.

I guess I should be thankful for NBC and their various networks because I know I can watch replays later this evening if I get too intense in my coding and miss something important.

I was happy to see Detroit put on a great Super Bowl XL and I have some hope the world will see our fair city in a different light. I did watch some of the game as I coded and it was better than the commercials in my opinion.

My favorites:
1) FedEx Caveman (especially the end where he stomps out of the cave and gets crushed by a dinosaur)
2) CareerBuilder.com “Monkeys/Jackass” (created a sensation of “I’ve been there before”)
3) MasterCard McGuyver
4) Stunt City (unfortunately I don’t recall the company name so how good was it?)
5) Bud Light’s Roof Problem Fixers (especially using the vent as a cooker)
6) Rock Financial’s – Chauncey Billups, Ben Wallace, and David Hall (from Rock) watching the Super Bowl on the Palace Vision screen (this was a local commercial not shown to the national audience)

Worst commercials:
1) Burger King Whopperettes (by a landslide, the PR firm should be publicly humiliated)
2) Cadillac Models coming out of the water
3) Dove’s female self-esteem movement (I agree with the fundamental concept, but why spend 2.5 million for 30 seconds?)

I am not even mentioning the flat out boring ones. So much wasted money. I guess I question most companies choice of spending 5 million a minute, but I figure I could easily set up a foundation on 2 minutes worth of spending. So many homeless people could be sheltered and feed. So many sick kids could be healed. So many disadvantaged people could be educated. Oh well, don’t expect ever to see a White Light Computing ad during a future Super Bowl.

For the record, it was a productive year on the coding front. {g}

I was also happy to see Jerome Bettis and Bill Cowher walk off the field a champion. I also proved once again that I cannot pick a winner in this game. If the Lions ever make it to the Super Bowl in my lifetime I will root for the other team.

Yes – we get snow in February and it is no big deal. The weather has been so warm (as in just above freezing) most of it melted as it hit the ground. We have about three inches of the wet stuff here north of the city, but it probably snowed enough to measure six to eight inches, and this was after it rained hard for a while.

So all week the media have been covering the celebrity sightings and the big parties. Bright lights, lots of music, dog sleds, ice skating, surfing and sledding, and tons of spectacular food spreads. Finally, today they remembered there is some football game being played at Ford Field. The first time two professional teams will be playing in this stadium all season. You see we have this minor league team called the Lions who play here eight times a season, but they are not even remotely professional. I think we have some high school teams who could kick their behinds.

I will be following my Super Bowl tradition – coding during the game and watching the commercials. Last year the game was good and the commercials stunk. I am hoping both are outstanding this time around.

I am picking the underdog Seahawks to win the game. The only reason is a simple one – the Steelers were in the news a lot this week attending all the parties and getting in front of the cameras all week. The media went overboard on The Bus (as in number 36 from Pittsburg). The Seahawks just came into town and went about the business of preparing for the game. They also come from a city where a lot of geeks live, so this is not surprising. I also like the Seattle coach and was hoping he would get hired by the Lions, but that is not going to happen.

So go Seahawks!

Kevin Cully has been blogging about it, threatening to do it, and is finally announcing he is officially putting on the Fox Forward conference in Hot-lanta in September. This will be a “code camp” weekend type of conference from the information I read on the Web site.

Sounds like Craig Berntson is skeptical/negative/grumpy before all the details are flushed out, but I have taken part of “code camp” style of conferences and they work. In fact, they work well. I don’t see this as substitute for a great Fox regional conference like Southwest Fox (or what Essential Fox, DevTeach, or the old GLGDW was), but it can be a great supplemental way to expand your knowledge.

I see this as an experiment in the Fox Community. It will be interesting to watch to see how things develop, to see the topics bubble up, and how the loose details are tightened down.

I am disappointed on the timing of the conference because it means there are four conferences in a ten week period (Advisor, Fox Forward, Southwest Fox, and German DevCon – and possibly a fifth with OzFox). I expressed this to Kevin in an email this evening. I wish the conference organizers could get together and spread these out through the year. Maybe it will be better in 2007. I know it is tough, but this schedule makes it difficult for development shops to send some of their people to all the conferences when the money is being spent all at once.

So what conference are you going this year?

You may have already read on Ken Levy’s blog how he is planning on taking a new position inside of Microsoft. Congratulations Ken, and godspeed on your new project.

I suspect many people in the Fox Community will find this news a bit disheartening. The last nail in the Visual FoxPro coffin.

This should not come as a surprise to anyone, I don’t. I see it as a chance for fresh ideas and perspective from a new leader. I believe intelligent people need change in their careers. Especially in our business. Ken’s announcement confirms what I suspected for quite some time. I told Ken when I heard about his decision is I thought it was going to happen earlier last year. The only thing I am surprised about is the project where he is landing. I thought he was going to head over to Channel 9 and become the second Scoble. Guess the crystal ball was foggy on that one. {g}

How many of you have been in the same job, doing the same project for more than a few years? I am not talking about the same company, but literally doing the same thing for more than three years? Same code, same support calls, same status reports, same bosses, same development tool, same technology? I suspect there are a couple, but most of you are not raising your hands. Someone who is as smart as Ken is needs to do something different, and now is the right time to do so. I applaud his decision and his choice in jobs. Something totally different. I applaud someone willing to take risks.

I also know Alan Griver (yag) and Milind will not disappoint. They understand our needs because the Fox Community is not shy about telling them. I have known yag for years and he is as energetic today as he was when I first met him. I met Milind at the MVP Summit and at Southwest Fox and he really gets what our community is all about. They both understand what we like about VFP and how it really rocks when it comes to solving problems for our customers. Why do you think they want to enhance Visual Studio to incorporate Fox like data features?

I suspect you can put the Ken into Windows Live, but you cannot take the Fox out of him. It sounds like he is planning on attending Southwest Fox and other VFP events throughout the year. Knowing Ken and his relationship with the VS Data team, I even suspect he will still influence from afar.

In my personal career as a corporate developer I have found things flow in three year cycles. The first year everything is new, fresh and exciting. The second year is like putting on comfortable tennis shoes since you are up to speed and can solve most problems. The third year things get a little stagnant and boring, which ushers in the need for change. This was part of the reason I decided to move on to be an independent developer 5 years ago. I like things fresh and challenging and I get that with each new project and each new customer. So from that perspective, I really understand Ken’s decision.

So Ken, good luck with Windows Live. Thanks for your service to the Fox Community and to helping guide FoxPro to what it is today. VFP rocks!

Each year I try to visit as many Fox User Groups as I can fit into my schedule and still bill enough work to pay the bills. White Light Computing has a corporate directive to share knowledge with other developers and one of the ways we do this is by going on the road and speaking through the user group presentations and developer conferences. Last year I was on the road for six man weeks. This exceeded the corporate goals and made me look good to the boss (always looking for ways to win back brownie points so I can push for a raise during my next review).

I am starting to plan out my tour dates for 2006. This year I am calling it the “Real World Fox 2006 World Tour.”

So far I have firm dates for the Grand Rapids Area Fox User Group and Detroit Area Fox User Group here in Michigan. A couple of other groups already have asked, but I want to make the offer open to all groups who are interested. So if you are the geek in charge of schedule meeting presenters, send me an email (it can be found on the contacts page on the White Light Computing Web site) and I will see what I can do to make it happen.

Your first purchasing decision with respect to the Great Lakes Great Database Workshop (GLGDW) is rapidly approaching. Whil is hosting a completely different conference April 21-24, 2006 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. If you want to reserve one of the limited seats at GLGDW and for the least amount of cash, you need to react before the end of the day on Monday, January 30th.

Your Next Ten Years as a Visual FoxPro Developer Strategies, Tactics and Best Practices for the Long Run

My session Best Practices for Error Handling and Reporting is one of 14 best practice sessions filled with wisdom needed to develop Visual FoxPro applications for the next decade and beyond.

I think we all have moments in life we will never forget. Time that is frozen. Time where you recall exactly what we were doing when something earth shattering interrupted that moment.

Twenty years ago I was debugging a COBOL module I was working on when my then future sister-in-law came into my office and told me she just heard the Challenger exploded on launch. My wife just told me she was in a Chemistry class. We did not have the Internet back then so I scrambled to find a radio station with the news. How could this happen? How could I miss this launch?

I am a space geek so I took the rest of the day off and went home and watched the extensive news coverage. It did not take me long to see what happened. I did not know it was an o-ring failure, but it was clear to me the solid rocket booster failed and ignited the fuel stored in the external tank.

I will never forget the sacrifice of Challenger’s STS-51L crew: commander Francis ““Dick”” Scobee, pilot Michael Smith, mission specialists Judith Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, Ronald McNair, payload specialist Gregory Jarvis, and teacher/civilian Christa McAuliffe.

It is hard to believe it is really twenty years ago. So much has happened since the disaster, but it is literally a half a lifetime ago for me so I guess I should not be surprised. Reflecting on this event each year is a gentle reminder how short life is, and why it is so important to live each day doing something to better ourselves and helping others do the same.