Wednesday, August 19, 2009

65 Must-Know CSS Strategies and Tutorials

Adding details and advanced CSS techniques to projects when unasked can increase the value of yourself as a designer, so learning new things is practical as both a personal and business move. I encourage everyone to try out at least a few of these techniques you are unaware of. Even if it’s hard to imagine a practical use for them right now, it can be incredibly useful in future projects, or you may come up with a revolutionary idea based on these strategies.

Either way — try them out. Put them into practice, and brainstorm ways to include them in your current design process. It can do any designer or developer a lot of good. Constantly learning new techniques is the key to becoming a successful designer or developer. READ MORE

Twelve Tips for Techies Trying to Resist Recessions

To me things seem very bad right now, but on some level what’s going on isn’t quite as bad for the tech sector as things were during the dot.com crash. Now this isn’t to say that folks aren’t hurting, but that last crash seemed very specific to the tech sector while this crash seems to be hitting everyone everywhere. My gut feeling is that the worst may not be over, so with this in mind here are my tips (both small and large) from what I’ve learned:
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Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Why So Serious? Obama/Joker Poster Draws 'Outrage'

Read the full story here
If there's one thing about liberals, it's that they're predictably predictable. In their eyes, it is more than acceptable to mock Sarah Palin and her family, using descriptions that range from rude to crude. When President Bush was in office, he was the focus of daily ridicule from left-wing journalists and bloggers.

However, no one better make fun of Barack Obama or the thought police will express "outrage" and brand you a racist. That's exactly what is happening now as a poster of Obama in "Joker" makeup is popping up on walls and city streets. My question to the lefties: Why so serious?

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Frustrations...

I absolutely hate those stupid Kroger commercials they have. People talking about how much fresher their fruit is than everybody else's? How do they know? Most folks I know have one store they like going to. So unless you have some independent "mystery" shopper going out or an investigative reporter going and checking out fruit at every store and comparing them, I would say that these comments are crap.

I heard a commercial this morning talking about the meats. Now I understand that meat quality can differ from store to store, but there is a baseline that has to be met and that should be well over anyone's expectations. This one woman was talking about how Kroger's meat specifically was tender and juicy. OK, unless this lady eats meat raw, isn't that subject to the way it is cooked? You're going to tell me you can't go buy meat anywhere else and after you cook it to the same specifications it is not tender and juicy?

Hey - Guess what folks, the name of the store is Kroger - K-R-O-G-E-R - go look at the front of the building. There is no "S" on the end. It is not on their grocery bags, their carts or their sales flyers. And I am not talking about people that use it in the possessive sense like "Kroger's meat is magically better and grants my wishes when I rub it like a lamp" or in the plural sense like "Of all the Krogers in the metro Atlanta area, mine is the best." I am specifically talking about folks that think the name of the store is Krogers - like "My local Krogers store carries Unicorn steaks."

OK, rant over...

Monday, June 15, 2009



Really looking forward to the new Dream Theater Release!

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Qik on the Blackberry Storm

I have fooled around with this app for the last few days and it has the potential to be really good. It is not true live streaming on the Blackberry Storm. It may say it is live, but it doesn't actually start uploading until after you stop the recording on the device (which is not truly live).

The version I had was 0.1.4 and I played around with some of the settings - it only gave me a choice of CDMA or to do nothing in the upload options. I decided to check and see if there was a newer version. I downloaded again and it was 0.1.8 - this gave me the 3G option finally. However, the speed of upload did not improve at all - still extremely slow in my opinion. Also, I had a couple of fewer choices in the menu and the application would not close at all. I have to do a battery pull each time I open the app even if I don't record a video.

Without a doubt it could be the OS I am running - it is a Hybrid 4.7.0.114 - still the app would shut down properly before the upgrade, so that has me baffled. Finally, if you are lacking in device memory, it is nearly impossible to run this app because it brings the entire phone to a screeching halt if you try to navigate with it open (thus the constant battery pull).
I wrote about this on the Crackberry.com Comments section for the announcement of the release of a Storm version.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

I Love This Skit...


I have probably watched this 20 times, but I think it is one of the funniest things I have ever seen...

Monday, April 13, 2009

Crazy Monday

So far this morning it has taken almost 2 hours for my e-mail to get settled, although I still don't think it is working correctly. Normally, Mondays are pretty wild anyway, but when you add a week of Spring Break on top of major Thunderstorms, all you-know-what breaks loose. Now that my e-mail seems to be straightened out, it is extremely slow. We have about 10 schools that have either lost power completely or have no network connectivity nor phones. Plus, if all of this stuff wasn't enough, people are having trouble logging into Active Directory based authentication applications not realizing that it is all related (and therefore my phone is ringing off the hook). Not to mention that the lights keep flickering making the battery backups click and beep each time it happens. Perhaps I will be able to get something done by lunch time today?!?!

Monday, March 30, 2009

Dishwasher Blues...

It has been crazy the last couple of days with our dishwasher. There was a pool of water at the bottom of the unit right below the heating element as if the pump wasn't draining all of he water out. After everything I had read online, we had determined that the pump in question was at least $150.00. My thought was that it would be easier to go ahead and purchase a brand new dishwasher. This one is nearly 10 years old, and it has served us well.

So I started taking the thing apart - flipped the breaker, popped the kick plate, unscrewed the brackets and slid it out as far as I could. I unscrewed the power box, removed the wire nuts and the ground screw. I loosened the drain tube and got ready to remove the water source. I went through every tool I have in my storage containers - not the first adjustable wrench in the entire house...

I got really frustrated and got what dishes were in the sink ready to wash by hand. At this point I figured out that the drain was clogged. I read somewhere that this could be an issue, even if the tube from the dishwasher to the drain isn't clogged. I took a plunger to the sink and cleared out the mess. I put everything back together and tested the unit - it drained just like it was supposed to this time! So I have put everything back and we are good.to.go. Hopefully this resolved the issue and we won't have to spend ANY money for a while on a major appliance.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Letter shock for grieving parents...



Letter shock for grieving parents - News - Manchester Evening News

The parents of a British teen, who died suddenly two months ago, received a disturbing letter from the girl's high school saying she needs to improve her attendance or can't go to the prom, the Manchester Evening News reported.

Posted using ShareThis

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

FOR and NET FILE

I was presented with the task of figuring out how to kick users off of a server who did not properly log off at the end of their work day. These folks would unknowingly hang on to a file that pretty well kinked up the entire schedule. The solution to this seems easy enough, right? Problem is, most of the scripts that are out there are an all-or-nothing solution. Most of our users utilize a terminal server to get to the app that we want to disable when our nightly processes are to begin. Those users that are directly connecting through a mapped drive would not be included in a NET SESSION /DELETE command. Also, that could potentially knock off someone that may be connected to that server for another purpose that didn't include the application in question.

In my search for other possibilities in the NET suite of commands, I found NET FILE. This lists all of the open files on the machine the command is executed on with the ID, File path and name, user id and 1 or 0 for locked file indicator. Since I didn't want to knock out the main user id that connects up the middle-ware, I had to find a way to tell it to kick out all users except for one and only those that have locked files. This is where I found that the FOR command was helpful. I was able to get it to pull the three fields I needed into variable, use IF condition to test for the values I wanted and, if it found them, it passed the ID into the NET FILE ID /CLOSE command.

We tested it last night as a batch file in a scheduled task and it worked great! I am excited that I have discovered this (although it has been around forever) and the potential that it has to make a lot of tasks run more smoothly or even be completely automated!

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Georgians help needed...


To find a spell checker...

Schönes Jubiläum!

8 years ago today my wife and I began our life together as one. It has not been the smoothest of roads, but I wouldn't give anything for it! Just like anyone else, we've had our ups and downs, but we got throught it... together. There have been many mileposts along the way - home ownership, vehicle ownership, many churches, many jobs, but I would say the best thing that has happened to us has been our boys. Our two little men are growing up fast. I can't thank my wife enough for giving me such magnificent gifts - her hand in marriage, her trust and belief in me and those two little miracles that sleep in the next room every night. I hope to one day be able to show her how much the three of them mean to me, but I don't know if words will ever be able to express the depth, height, width and length of its measure. All I can offer is I Love You!!!

Monday, March 23, 2009

I'm Baaaaaaaack...

Don't know why I have not posted in so long. I promise I will try to do better.

We had a rough night with the boys last night. With the addition of the bunk beds I think the baby is out of his comfort zone. Needless to say, big brother has a hard time sleeping with full on crying going on in the bed below. So the little one came and slept with us last night. He moves constantly - I don't know that any of us slept much at all. It will be interesting to see what happens this evening...