Shedding Some Light

So yesterday (Sunday) was our first day of sightseeing here in Germany. Jeff’s aunt and cousin (Jeff works for Doug Hennig) drove us all around the Mosel valley in western Germany. We ate at great places (potato pancakes were fantastic), the weather beautiful (sunny all day), listened to a German band in a beer tent (not the best according to the locals), and the sites were spectacular (drove along the river and toured a castle in Cochem).

On the way home we drove on the Autobahn as we had earlier in the day. I was not driving. Actually I think it will take some time to get use to the style of driving here in Germany. The drivers here make the most aggressive drivers in Michigan look tame. Anyway, as I mentioned someone else was driving, but we hit 210 kilometers per hour (this is 130.4879504 mile/hour (mph) according to OnlineConversion.com). This is definitely the fastest I have ever traveled on the ground in this lifetime. So among other firsts (first time in Europe, first time in Germany, first trans-Atlantic flight, first time I have seen London from the air) on this trip I have a new personal land speed record, and I lived to tell about it. Fun day.

I flew to Germany Friday for German DevCon. This is my very first trip to Europe and so far it has been very enjoyable. I am already adjusted to the new time zone by default of not sleeping on the flight and only a one hour nap yesterday. The flight was fantastic and the view over the British Isles spectacular in the early morning. I will be spending the first half of the trip sightseeing with a couple of friends in western Germany, then heading to Frankfurt next Wednesday for the start of the conference. I am hoping to blog about the conference while I am here, but I just might be a bit busy with my four sessions and plenty more I want to attend. I will defnitely provide a summary upon my return. From what I have heard, this is suppose to be one of the best FoxPro conferences in the world. Have a good week.

Looks like basketball fans in Detroit are in for another good year of Pistons’ basketball . Terrific game to start off the new season. Already underrated by so many alleged experts. We have the rest of the league exactly where we want them. I am predicting a 60 win season if they stay relatively injury free. Sweeeeet.

Like Rick Borup, I am finding myself a bit overwhelmed with the influx of information from all the bloggers and RSS news feeds I am consuming in FeedDemon. Last week I realized my Scobleizer feed had not registered in a couple of weeks. Then I remembered Robert was moving his site.

It dawned on me that a couple weeks went by and I had not really missed this feed. Interesting. Should I remove the feed from my regular pulls? Nah, Robert posts gems once and a while and often points me to new blogs which are valuable. I also enjoy the risks he takes each day poking fun at the company he works for (Microsoft). I often find myself agreeing with the things he thinks they should be doing to better the company.

Today is a fine example: he points me to a blog I might have missed, The Dilbert Blog. Thanks to Scott Adams who adds humor to my life – subscribed!

Podcasters are creating some fantastic material and I really like to listen and learn from it, and to be entertained by it. The one common problem I have found with every single podcast is the sound level. The interviews and the discussion is usually at one level, and then there is the sound/music between segments. It feels like the decibel level jumps from 20 to 120 ( I know I am exaggerating just a little). I swear my eardrums are still hurting after listening to a couple of excellent shows done by Andrew MacNeill (FoxShow – with David Stevenson) and the new OzFoxRocks by Craig Bailey and Scott Scovell in the last couple of hours. It is not just the two Fox Podcasts with this problem, it is other ones I have listened to over the last few months. Today I just found some time to jot a post down on the blog.

This is a little gripe, and definitely not something that stops me from downloading and listening to the shows. I don’t want to discourage you from listening to the recordings. In fact, if you are not listening to these two podcasts you are missing out on great information.

I don’t know how you capture and listen to podcasts, but I download them to my PC using FeedStation (module of FeedDemon), copy them to a SD memory card, and then plug them into my SanDisk MP3 Player. I then listen to them while I drive around to clients or when I am traveling. So when one of these podcasts raises the level of the sound I typically don’t have my hand on the sound wheel, I have them on the steering wheel. So the pain I feel is instant and unavoidable.

So please podcasters, level out the sound level for everyone. It will make listening to your podcast a much better experience. My eardrums and teeth fillings thank you in advance.

I look forward to the 25th hour we get today/tomorrow when we shift back to normal time instead of daylight savings time. I see it as Mother Nature giving me back time it borrowed several months ago. Just wish we could collect interest on the time. I will be spending it watching a movie provided Therese is able to pick one up when she is out tonight (I gave her a short selection I was interested in). I always set my clocks back earlier in the evening so I mentally adjust to the shift.

One thing I learned a couple years ago is working on VFP projects during the time shift is not a good idea. Why? VFP looks at the compile time of the last build and sees the newly saved program as an older file so it does not need to be compiled. I figure it is just easier to read a book or watch a movie than worry about this for one hour every year. One of my favorite 25th hours was a few years ago at WhilFest. It was spent hanging out with the FoxGang.

Over on ProFox, several developers have been debating on the new legislation passed which lengthens the daylight savings time part of the year. Funny how a bunch of lame-brained politicians (I know, redundant) can create unintended hassles in our lives. I would be willing to bet our so called representatives had no thought or clue to the impact on computer users of older, no longer supported operating systems. Some developers are calling this a mini-Y2K. I think this is a bit over dramatic. The hassles this will cause businesses and home users will be trivial to fix, but a pain in the neck. I think the big deal with this is how it can directly impact data. I would hazard a guess that most database applications timestamp data. If one computer is running Windows 98 or even Windows 2000 and others are running Windows XP, some machines will get correctly updated and some will not. This means there potentially could be data corruption. Not a good thing.

I for one like how Windows automatically switches the clock for me. I wish all my clocks worked this way so I could save the 10 minutes it takes me to switch them all twice a year. So how many designers, developers and testers do you think Microsoft, Apple, and the Open Source teams will have on this project to change the code in Windows, OS X and Linux? Then there is all the mainframe operating systems, the Palm OS, and various other platforms. Who is going to beta test the changes? I guess I for one should be cheering this kind of change, after all, it is employing more developers and I see that as a good thing.

The real question is will they be able to get this change done in time for the spring forward of 2006? You would think this is a trivial fix, but what if the daylight savings time module is one of those modules with horrible code no one wants to touch? You know the type of code, we all have it hidden in our applications.

Last week I installed all the new software and upgrades I could in preparation for my German DevCon lockdown. One of the updates I needed to do was moving Acrobat from v7.0.0 to v7.0.5. So being the good user I finally give into the annoying reminder about upgrading when I returned from Southwest Fox.

Acrobat runs fine after the upgrade (which should not be a relief, but lately I have been a little gun shy about updates on any software) . Then this week I notice Acrobat has two shortcuts on the Windows Taskbar when I have two PDFs open – weird because it never did that before. I regularly have multiple PDFs open. So what the heck was the Adobe designers and developers thinking when they added this feature during the upgrade? Probably something like – we are sure all our customers will want to see a shortcut to each and every PDF they have open – so set the default preference on automatically.

No! Noooooo! Nooooooooooo!

You set the preference so the user has the same experience and you make this preference discoverable so the user can turn it on. This is a big deal. I spent quite a bit of time looking through the zillion pages of preference settings inside Acrobat and did not see it. Finally I wizened up and did a search on the Help file and low and behold, there it is on the General preferences. At least it was easy to find in the Help and the tech writers get kudos for doing a good job.

Unchecked the preference and once again all is good in Whoville. But what an aggravation. So if you are experiencing this frustration in Acrobat, on the menu, Edit | Preferences to bring up the Preferences dialog. In the Categories listbox, select General. The last checkbox in the Miscellaneous settings will toggle your preference.

I really hate hardware. Yes, I have said this a million times, and I mean it. I hate recommending it, I hate buying it, I hate shopping for it, and I hate the fact that I need it to so the thing I love doing every day, which is creating software. OK, a million and four times.

My second Epson color printer has died. The first one I owned was a C80 which I purchased based on the great output and experience Steve Sawyer had with his Epson. The big draw was the ink used, the brightness of the color, and the fact that there were separate cartridges for the colors (three different cartridges) and the one black. No more wasting the colors just because one ran out. The first printer lasted just over a year and probably weeks past the warranty it died. To better this experience the printer died just after I bought new cartridges. You know, the same cartridges that cost more than the stoooopid printer!

So I replaced it with the Epson Stylus C84. This printer lasted a little longer, but it too died a premature death (at least premature in my opinion). No kidding, I have a set of fresh cartridges for this as well. Joy.

So I was talking to Steve Bodnar last week and he was telling me how Steve Sawyer just purchased a new Epson Stylus Photo R200 for US$49. So Steve bought his own R200 based on Steve’s recommendation (yes it was absolutely fun having two Steves and business partners {g}). Heck this is cheaper than cartridges. So I go shopping and cannot find the same deal my friends got. Bummer.

So shopping at the local computer store I see Epson has a deal for the Stylus Photo R300 for US$99. It has six different cartridges (naturally none compatible with the set rotting on the shelf in the office) and prints on CDs and DVDs. It also has a card reader slot so I can print pictures direct from the memory card. This is only twenty bucks more than I paid for the old printer and seems to have a bunch of features I never had before.

So what the heck is the deal with “disposable printers”? I hate it. At least the US$300 HP InkJet printer I purchased years ago lasted several years. Maybe this is better though as I get the same life out of my US$300 bucks and get newer and better features each time.

However, I can say one thing to Epson – this is your last shot. Swing and miss and you are out of here. This printer better survive multiple years and better not die just after I purchase a new set of cartridges. I am tired of filling up landfills with inexpensive hardware that breaks. I would rather spend a couple more dollars and have something last. It will save me time and aggravation dealing with procuring new hardware. Didn’t I mention how much I hate doing this?