# Thursday, 13 November 2003

Boy did Mark get me reminiscing. As I blogged on Chis Anderson's entry:

Oh yes. I remember the Apple ][. I remember going to "The Computer Store" in Eugene, Oregon - I was probably 14 or 15 years old - to select the system.

I got the computer itself, two floppy drives (big bucks), the SilentWrite (I think) thermal printer, and a word processing program. All for around $3,200. Have we come a long way or what?

This thing had a whole 48K of memory! And you must note that there was no hard drive. Back then, those things cost more than the comptuer for just five or ten megabytes of storage. There was no way for me to get one of those.

Also, I opted to use an old color TV for my monitor. Not the greatest picture, but at least it wasn't that green letter stuff. It's probably because of that experience that I can stand to look at 1600 x 1200 on my 19" monitor.

I did learn how to program in AppleBasic, but I really started having fun in the assembly language (was that a 6502 processor?). I made a little program that allowed me to program a course for a spaceship to follow. It worked much like the old Big Trak (here, also) truck: go forward '5', turn 'left', go forward '3', etc. This provided an early exposure to algorithms (not that I knew that at the time) in the way the image was painted on screen. The 'second' row in the video memory was like the seventh row on screen. Then, once you reached the bottom, the second screen row was painted. I don't remember the details, but it took a while to figure out how to move one pixel up or down from any spot on screen.

This 'addiction' that I was fulfilling started at my junior high school, though. We had the OTIS terminals (Oregon Technology something or other) that provided a select group of nerds access to an amazing new world. These were paper feed terminals - not those cool green CRTs. There were games and the ability to program. We tore apart the code to the games and learned how to rewrite them for added features.

Of course, the school got the cool new Commodore Pets and had a computer class the year I went to high school. I doubt that I would have learned as much in a class, though.

After ninth grade, I decided to take a class at the community college titled: Structured Programming in Basic. That is where I became enamored with the TRaSh-80s and their wonderful cassette tape storage system. I knew that I wanted to be a programmer at that point.

Unfortunately, when I reached college age, I went astray and tried my hand at 'business' studies. Here I am twenty years later, back in the fold and trying to recapture my youthful knowledge.

Most of that knowledge that I gained in youth left me in the intervening years. The last three years of school (Software Engineering) have only had scattered moments of recollection to those days. It sure is fun, though!

Thursday, 13 November 2003 13:09:03 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [1]
# Wednesday, 12 November 2003

Bless the stars for governement holidays. Thanks to there being no school last evening, I was finally able to attend the Portland Nerd Dinner at the Lloyd Center. I knew that this would be a fun time, but boy, was I ever pleased.

For those of you that just don't understand the appeal, let me try to explain: You're twelve. You love playing in your little league baseball team. On this special day, you get to play and hang-out with your favorite Major League team. This is what it was like.

Now, I don't plan to go around all star-struck and such, but it was great to listen in to the Q&A in this group.

Thanks for the great time Jim, Chris, Rory, Kori, Richard, John, John, and Rick (including Janine (sp?) and Traci). I hope that I can make this a regular event.

And, BTW, when you visit Rory's entry on this, you will note that I was one of the Wiffle club people... I mean come on, I'm still in school for this stuff.

Wednesday, 12 November 2003 15:15:57 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Monday, 03 November 2003

It finally happened. After months of keeping their distance form one and the other, our cats, Baby and Ninja finally were caught in a 'compromising' position.

It's great to see them finally getting close. Mind you, this picture didn't last too long. But it shows real progress!

Baby, our older cat, is sitting with Ninja, the younger one, lying in front of her.

Monday, 03 November 2003 16:00:18 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Friday, 31 October 2003

I posted this link before I changed to dasBlog and wanted to repost because it is so cool.

I believe it was my sophmore year of high school that I took a typing class. I was pretty good at it and so was my friend Doug. Since we were always done early, the instructor would give us little picture drawing/typing projects (type 3 x 'i', then 5 x '-', etc.).

Well, that idea is back in a big way: Ascii Movies  

Friday, 31 October 2003 13:51:39 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Tuesday, 28 October 2003

What a pleasant surprise! I had heard that we MSDN subscribers would get a copy of the Longhorn and Whidbey distros from PDC, but the info suggested that it would be December before they were available.

I called in to place my order (per instructions at the PDC site) and they tell me it will probably arrive within two weeks! As if I need the distraction, but I am very excited.

I'm especially enthused to try out the Whidbey preview. That is where my heart truly lies.

Tuesday, 28 October 2003 15:49:26 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Saturday, 25 October 2003

Thursday was the monthly meeting of the Portland Area .NET User Group (PADNUG). The speaker this month was Andrew Brust (his company site) talking about ADO.NET and XML.

Seeing as this is a subject relevant to my Señor project and I haven't fully explored the possibilities, I came right home and tried out some of the pieces that he demonstrated. Other than a small issue with Norton Internet Security telling me that I was being attacked from IP address 127.0.0.1, it all went off with out a serious hitch.

I am beginning to realize how much I would like to be using a Tablet PC at events such as this, though. There are only two months until Christmas - I wonder if Santa might win the $190 Million (Powerball) tonight?

Saturday, 25 October 2003 11:21:53 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Tuesday, 21 October 2003

All of a sudden, the blogsphere is bursting with the study showing how much more productive having multiple monitors is. I started using this over five years ago and can't imagine going back.

I have to agree with ScottH that nVidia's drivers seem to be especially good for this task.

I've had a 1600x1280 and an 1152x864 running for a long time. I just added a new LCD monitor for 1280x1024 and expect to add the smaller 1152 back into the mix after building up a new system.

In my setup, I will have the hi-res right in front of me, the LCD to the left and the lo-res above, center for 'monitoring' apps - IM, ActiveSync, Process Explorer, etc. Outlook 2003 is in front of me with browsers to the left. While developing, VS goes in front and extras on the left (Snippet Compiler, nUnit, debugging apps, etc.)

With the price of video cards as low as they are and monitors getting cheaper all the time (even the LCDs), it's time for you to give it a try.

Tuesday, 21 October 2003 02:16:42 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [1]
# Sunday, 19 October 2003

I attended a wedding reception last evening. A young lady that my wife and I have known for probably six or seven years was marrying her beau of several years. It was wonderful to see them take the step.

As I was moving around the crowd of mostly strangers, I suddenly noticed a face that I knew. Charlynn, whom I had worked with for some time at InFocus, and her fella were there. In all the time that we had worked together, we had never realized that we had mutual friends. This just struck me with such fascination. I couldn’t believe that I actually knew someone so well at this event.

I suppose that it also reminds me of what a small world it is. It was great seeing Charlynn.

Sunday, 19 October 2003 09:08:12 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Saturday, 11 October 2003

I'm about two-thirds through one of my favorite activities - rearranging my office. Ok, that was sarcastic, but the benefits to my personal productivity should be substantial, so I had to go through with it.

My home office space has been laid out pretty much the same for about three years - the time that I have been attending school again. I finally have reached a point of frustration over many of the inconveniences and had to rearrange. I’ve got my cable modem, router, and WAP hooked up so that I can get online with my laptop, but it’s going to be a little while before I have the big PCs connected.

As a bonus with this move, I have all of the makings of a new PC. Of course, until I’m done, I won’t have room to assemble it. But then, I will get to build up the new one, repave my previous to be a Win2003 server, and build up a new Linux only box. My former server will probably end up in a closet or donation pile. The old PII 400 just hasn’t got all that much oomph.

I formerly sat next to the window and could easily glance out to enjoy the day. Problem is that I didn’t have a wall next to me to post a whiteboard. As electronic as I like to be, I still enjoy getting down and dirty on the old whiteboard. This was the biggest driving force for the change.

Well, hopefully, by later today I will be wired back up. Then I can place the rest of the room’s furniture and start bringing all of the books back into the room. My wife will be glad to get them off the upstairs landing J!

Saturday, 11 October 2003 10:41:02 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Wednesday, 08 October 2003

I didn't even know this one was in production... how exciting!

The Mootrix

Wednesday, 08 October 2003 23:58:12 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [1]

We took a look at both enhanced requirements and Use Cases last evening.

Requirements need to be correct, specific, verifiable, and traceable. Some examples of BAD requirements would be:

  1. A useable system
  2. Lots of features
  3. The fastest performance
  • I'm not traceable

Requirements and Use Cases are not the same thing. A requirement is that correct, specific, verifiable, and traceable item in the list. A Use Case is more like a story of use. For example:

Use Case 1

The user chooses to add a new movie to a list. The system prompts the user for a movie title. After the user provides the movie title, the system searches its own db for the movie. If it is not in the local db, it requests the movies information from the "web service". Once the movie is found, the system prompts the user to verify the movie selection. The user then verifies and accepts the movie. Finally, the system adds the movie to the list.

Alternate Courses

  1. The movie is not found locally or through the web service.
  2. The web service is not available.
  3. The user does not accept the found movie as the correct one.

By no means is this a complete Use Case for the design that we are intending to do, but it provides some sense of how it should flow.

I was very pleased to see that the <<includes>> and <<extends>> concepts made it into the discussion. These can be invaluable in reducing the volume of information and the ability to comprehend the set of Use Cases in the system.

Wednesday, 08 October 2003 19:21:35 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Tuesday, 07 October 2003

Here will lie my notebook for my Señor Project.

The project (currently) is a movie information source. I enjoy using the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), but find there are features that I would like to add to it. Also, it just doesn't work all that well in a disconnected manner.

In an effort to resolve these shortcomings, I will build a system that includes:

  • A web service that will acquire information from sites like IMDb, Amazon, YMDb, or others about movies and make that information available to clients.
  • A client that can connect to the web service and download that information into a local repository and provide features that I have not been able to find available through other means.
  • Possibly, allow the posting back of information to IMDb so that ones list of movies is available without the client.

There are many details to iron out over the next three months, but most seem quite achievable.

Tuesday, 07 October 2003 00:19:52 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [1]