Rampidbyter Rampid byter: A byte of my .Net developing life.

Better days. I feel a little better today I had my moment yesterday where I’m starting to welcome closure. I’ll have the whole rest of the week for time to find solace in the current situation. It was a bit much yesterday sitting in my room reading over a few books thinking about everything I needed to accomplish before surgery. I then get an IM, walk over to the PC, and see a friend of mine left me a note that Matt was found. The last part where it was his body just threw me because there is always a moment of hope, and it was quickly crushed. I’m happy, in a strange way that it’s over. I still remember the day it happened pretty vividly and leaving work when news broke that he was aired on TV. I remember sitting with his mom and dad talking about the crap shoot of the situation, and how his dad had hope he’d back soon after the tape aired.

Cut scene to four years later I’ve done my narrow minded short lived attempts at feeling sorry for myself for the situation. I’ve sat there and blamed myself over and over for my part in the play that was Matts life. When disaster struck its one of those situations where over and over in your mind you locate and recall those moments you were around or with them. Then you start to wonder about associations with the current events and how you played the cause and effect game. It just doesn’t work. You can’t just sit there and think, man, what if. It will kill you, and definitely not in the short term. It’s a long drawn out painful process that nobody should go through.

Matt was a good guy be it also a goofy, nonchalant, and funny guy. Matt has the body of a body builder, but had no game when it came to the ladies. There were a few girlfriends come and go, but only one that he really seemed to want. She ended up Dear Johning him, and then comes to the Matt functions bawling her head off playing the girlfriend part. I could say more about Amy, but I’ll restrain. They both still owe me a Chinese dinner, but it looks like Matt’s off the hook on that one now.

Good times. I have my giant old truck in the garage that is painted multiple colors, and the dog poo one Matt sat out in the hot summer sun helping me paint on with a brush. In return I helped him paint his windshield wipers on his 80’s model Nova. Man he hated that car, but it got him around town.

Just crazy small little world we live in. I think too, that it seems they didn’t torture Matt, and during the video taping said he’d be treated as a captive soldier. They said they executed him, and in that situation all a person can really ask for is a quick painless death. One to the back of my head, while not welcomed, would be a far better alternative than what happened to others who were beheaded.

I suppose I’m rambling at the moment. Just trying to make sense of this world, I suppose you have to live each day like they’re the last. Spend the time you can with those you love, and do what it is that makes you happy. Somewhere out there is another person who never got that chance, and you should live yours for them as well.

I’ve still been kind of haphazardly going about my diet routine. I’ve started weight lifting again, not to extremes, but on the diet front I’ve decided to moderate it as little as possible. I have surgery soon, and I thought the ramifications of throwing my body into new patterns wouldn’t be a great idea. So I’ve tried to mitigate eating too much food and have concentrated on just eating enough to make due. So I’ve actually managed to lose five pounds in the last week as a result. The high cholesterol still weighs on my mind as I only eat meats, cheeses, and variations of potatoes.

Well I heard some news, some fucking awful news. They found Matt’s body, at least from what I’ve heard, and honestly I don’t care about posting it here without asking if it’s ok. I don’t think enough people read this for it even to cause a ripple in the pool that is life.

It’s kind of ironic that it was that fateful Easter I heard he was missing in Iraq, and drove like an insane man to his moms house where everyone was meeting. I sat there on matt’s old bed fixing his computer, it had a virus, and everyone was trying to shake off the initial shock. It wasn’t but a few strange surreal days later, my dad was in the hospital recovering from the removal of his kidney due to cancer, and on the news is matt’s face surrounded by Islamic militants holding high powered rifles. I still play that video every now and again to remind myself of the reality of it all.

In the last four years I’ve been absolutely obsessed with checking the news sites, drudge, cnn, wkrc, wxix, and any other news source I can think of to keep abreast of the latest news. I started the day after matt went missing, and I’ve become completely neurotic about checking the news every ten minutes to an hour to make sure I know what is going on. It was particularly painful when the news came out about matt possibly being executed. I saw the image of the back of what appeared to be matt in the grainy dessert photograph, and I kept thinking what a shit shoot.

I never really talked to anyone about it, because nobody really thinks about it, but I guess now is ok. Matt was damn near blind, hell without his glasses he couldn’t see the sun in the sky, and even failed his first entrance test in the army without getting permission from an optometrist to join. Frankly they didn’t know if they could make BCG glasses for the poor guy. So every time I watch the video of matt sitting there I’m always thinking to myself, he’s not wearing his glasses, and contacts need to be changed every day. I can’t help but think how matt had to be blind after the first night, totally screwed visually after the first week, and I can’t imagine what that must have been like. Blind, being held captive by people you don’t understand, language wise, in a foreign country, on your first mission, AFTER getting dumped by a Dear John letter. My god, what that must have been like, and I keep thinking that I may have been there if my shit ass heart/nerve wasn’t screwed up.

I’m not lucky, but I live with regret. I think I always will, I tried drowning it with alcohol once in my life, and all that ended up doing was piss my friends and family off. I am numb to this whole situation after so many years of living with the thought of, did I, or didn’t I have an effect on his decision to join. Hell I still remember laying on the couch messaging matt back and forth while he mentioned he was looking on the army website and was considering joining. I told him flat out if he joined that I’d join to be his battle buddy. Two days laters we’re heading up to join the army.

I’ll probably post more on this subject later I’m just initially in that shock and awe phase.

Been thinking about it. I am going to set a new challenge for myself to keep myself motivated to finish up the certification processes I started back in December. Taking into account my current work and rehabilitation period I’m going to set a goal that on June 1^st, my birthday as well, that I’m going to take three Microsoft certification exams. I’m either going to take the MCAD upgrade to MCPD Web, MCAD upgrade to MCPD Desktop, MCTS SQL Server 2005, or the final exam in line to finish getting my MCSD. I failed the MCSD architecture exam by 99 points, and it was a horrible smack in the face. Considering that I’ve been using 2.0 Framework for the past few years I still think I did pretty well considering all the questions mainly related to 1.1 Framework.

Anyway, in a few days, when June schedules are available, I’m going to register for three exams in one day. Extreme maybe but I want to make sure that I’m working towards something. I’ve been doing so much more learning for this upcoming robot project, am planning to re-accustom myself to Auto-cad to allow myself the ability to model 3-d projects. I used to be able to do the same with I-deas, but I haven’t been able to use that software since Windows 2000 went out of style.

I’m also hatching a plan to spend one hour a day hanging around at the local library. I figure I’ll pick up a book and read more books through the months. Going to the library seems like a good idea, and I haven’t been to the library in some time. I just need to kick out of these stale habitual routines that have been sitting on my life. I don’t so much want to go out and do more things, but I’d like to get more done. I do not feel like I accomplish many of the goals I’ve been setting forth to accomplish. Kind of like I’m one of those people that only gets half done. You know the type, thinks big, starts strong, and then doesn’t carry through. I’m starting to feel that on several projects. I need to double my efforts to not concentrate on so many things at once, and really drill down to get done what’s important.

Friday was a good day. I started writing the procedure document for the software I’ve been monitoring the past few weeks at work. It’s a pretty big document thus far, and there is still much to put into it so they can do without me for a week.

After I left work I met up with my step brother for what we call gay man night out because when we’re seen in public apparently women think we’re a couple. As he’s said before it probably doesn’t help that when we order desert we share it asking for two spoons. I guess that sends strange signals, and in today’s strange world people just assume.

Anyway, it started off really nice, went out to Mt. Adams, and spent the next twenty minutes just finding a dang place to park. It’s freaking impossible I tell you. We ended up parking about two blocks down the hill, and had to walk up to the Mt. Adams bar and grill. While there we ordered some sandwhiches, sat waiting for about ten minutes, and the waiter wanders back over to inform us that he’s forgotten our order. First time that’s ever happened to me at a restraint before.

So after telling him again we waited around longer, and finally get the appetizers we ordered the first time.  Something called ‘Bangers’, which is sausage wrapped in a butter roll. They weren’t too bad, really spicy, and again our waiter neglected to fill our drinks after eating the hot stuff. So needless to say we weren’t exactly thrilled with the service there, but who cares it was nice to be at the beginning of the weekend. I was looking forward to going to the play house in the park.

After scarfing down a bbq sandwich, some bangers, and about two mt dews it was time to head out to the play. It was only a couple of minutes in the opposite direction back up the hill, and we pulled around back to park. Walking into the place was an eclectic group of people, some seemingly wealthy, and some seemingly common. A few women rolled up in full length fur coats and some looked plain trashy. I still don’t understand the fur coat thing. I like animal pelts but honestly they’re not very aesthetically pleasing. Leather coats are nice, but those massive fur pelts strapped to an overweight lady just does them no justice.

Walking into the play an older man took a spill onto the stage. The poor man laid there after smashing face first into the hardwood, and hit so hard his shoe actually went flying. Everyone just kind of stood/sat there stunned. Many went to the aid of the man, who at this point has to be extremely embarrassed, and tried to help him. I uttered something like, man that looks like something that’d happen to me, and my step brother agreed.

With that out of the way the play started off with a women counting sheep. It went something like 1, 2, … 20. There would then be the sound of time advancing, the moon displaying on the wall changed shape, and then more counting. 400, 401, … and it went on. Again the sounds of rushing time, the moon changed shape once more, 13,001, 13,002 … 13,008 fucking sheep, and that’s when the f-bomb was dropped. It wouldn’t be the last time the f-bomb was dropped let me tell you.

The play was about a woman who suffers from extreme insomnia, to the point where she’s on the brink of suicide, and is told by her therapist turn friend that she’s got familiar familia insomnia a terminal disease. This leads her on a trip to Italy to confirm whether she’s directly related to a single Italian family who is the only genetically inflicted people in the world. Long story short, she doesn’t have the disease, and the whole reason for the insomnia is a sub-conscious delusion that she’s going to fail in marriage again. She leaves Italy headed home to be with her fiancé whom she dumped before she left, and they reunite.

Unfortunately during this time my knee again started to burn, and half way during the performance I had to stand up in order to pop it. It worked for about ten minutes and again I had to ask my step brother to move a seat over so I could stretch my leg out. It detracted from the whole experience being pulled out of the moment, and I know it had to annoy my step brother. The play was fantastic though, and the cast couldn’t have been better. They did spit a lot while giving their dialog, but really bravo.

Tonight is big ambiguously gay outing with my step brother tonight, and tonight’s venue will be a nice play at the playhouse in the park. It’s a lot of fun going out with my ex-step brother because every time, and I mean every time we go out people think we’re gay. We went to the movies, and then to a really nice Italian restraint the waitress thought we were ‘together’. It didn’t help there was an actual gay couple behind us, and that I still look strikingly like I’m 17.

So we play around with peoples minds when they start to think that. My ex-step brother, whose back on the market, will play with the waitresses saying he’s not gay, and then I’ll thwart his attempt to make them believe otherwise by acting offended that he’s ashamed of me. It’s fantastic fun, but still kind of disheartening to think that I’m instantly pegged as being gay. I need to start keeping my fiancé around when I go out so people don’t get the wrong impression, but again who really cares? I enjoy hanging out with my ex-step brother and becoming more cultured.

Tonight the play is about a woman who becomes so sleep deprived she risks it all by traveling to Venice in search of a world renowned sleep therapist, and the adventures along the way. I’m anxiously looking forward to it. Plays are interesting, they get you out of your house, and you get to watch adults pretend to be other people. I imagine this, during the renaissance period, was very similar to going into a chat-room in today’s age pretending to be someone else.

Anyway, it’s still rainy as hell outside. I left my coat in my fiancés car when I went out for her birthday dinner, so needless to say I’ve been getting soaked going into work every morning. Unfortunately, it’s seemed to have caught up to me as I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather.

In interesting news I got an email from my long time estranged ex-fiancé, who is going through a divorce, and started to ask me about my life once more. The sad thing was she also mentioned she’s been giving elusions to the movie with Julia Roberts called ‘My best friends wedding’, and I’m assuming this can only mean she is trying to come back in her own weird way. She’s now a mother of three, from two different men, and now a divorcée who is pregnant with her fourth child. No thanks. I’ve only recently started to manage a normal life and I really am not interested in going back to an emotionally chaotic relationship with someone whose loyalty is only as strong as the inverse ration to her own libido. Not to mention someone who’s vindictive, manipulating, and did I mention the kids? I’ve got nothing against her now, but really have a hard time believing I lived in Las Vegas near her for all that hassle. I had to rant about it.

Today is another interesting day because here at my client site two long term IT professionals have decided to leave. They’ve been working here upwards of eighteen years and are leaving the company. There is a lot of that going on around here with layoffs, early retirements, and the influx of new contractors. They’re in a state of turmoil with the industry going south, economy, and the general lack of stability in the company as a whole. I wish everyone here luck. I can easily say this is the most fantastic group of people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. I feel like I’ve been here a long time, and almost feel at home among everyone who works here.

On another front I have surgery in t-minus four days. We’ll see how that turns out.

After the last few releases of applications I’ve been creating for my client it became apparent that we were in need of a more automated process that could guarantee that each employee using the software was aware of, and was made to upgrade to the latest version. This came after a relatively small change to the program to pull more data from a database than trying to dynamically determine the information from disconnected data. The systems around here are a bit on the rustic side of the technology spectrum.

Anyway, we’re using Framework 1.1 and desktop deployments are not as user friendly as the ClickOnce of Framework 2.0. There are still the manual processes, and the limitations of not having proper system/network access being a lowly consultant. So, I decided I would write an auto-updating plug-in for the applications, but first I’d check to see what others have done in order to save myself time.

That’s when I came across an article by Peter A. Bromber, Ph.D., that addressed building a Framework 1.1 Automatic Application MSI Updater. Pretty swanky, so I decided I’d take a look at his code as obviously he’s run into problems similar to my own. After digesting everything that he had to offer my mouth was left with an unsatisfying flavor of, well, I could do better to say for short.

Article for reference: http://www.eggheadcafe.com/articles/20060213.asp

Seeing that I could not use a webservice, since I’m not allowed to access the main servers, I was left with a less dynamic alternative. I would just have to use the App.Config file to point my application to an Access database, don’t ask. The access database I’d model similar to Dr. Brombers, but with better column names.

I then crafted my own implementation of his code, I noticed early on his recursive lookup for the assembly version was pointless, and also decided to create a typed dataset to return my data values. So I present to you my own implementation, in the works, of the Framework 1.1 Auto-Updater. Of course it’s still in the works as I’m not particularly fond of the fact that while the new installer is running, if you’re installing into the same file directory the running application can not complete until the old application is closed. You are forced to hit the ‘continue’ button twice in order to force the installer to overwrite the running application who spawned the installer via a new process. Anyway, here is my updated code:

using System;
using System.Configuration;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.OleDb;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Reflection;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using ClientName;

namespace ClientName
{

///<summary>
///
///</summary>
publicclass AutoUpdater
{
privatestatic OleDbConnection connUpgrade;

///<summary>
/// Opens the Upgrade databases OLE DB connection.
///</summary>
privatestaticvoid OpenDbConnection()
{
string connString = string.Empty;

try
{
connString = "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=" + ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings.Get("UpgradeDbPath");
connUpgrade = new OleDbConnection(connString);
connUpgrade.Open();
}
catch(Exception err)
{
CloseDbConnection();
}
}

///<summary>
/// Closes the Upgrade databases OLE DB connection.
///</summary>
privatestaticvoid CloseDbConnection()
{
if(connUpgrade != null)
{
if(connUpgrade.State != ConnectionState.Closed)
{
connUpgrade.Close();
connUpgrade.Dispose();
connUpgrade = null;
}
}
}

///<summary>
///
///</summary>
///<returns></returns>
publicstaticbool CheckForUpdate()
{
bool result = false;
string appName = string.Empty;
string lastVersion = string.Empty;
string currentVersion = string.Empty;
string appExeName = string.Empty;
UpdateDataset.AppVersionsRow appRow = null;

try
{
// Get the current assemblies Product Name
appName = Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().GetName().Name;
appRow = GetAppVersionInfo(appName);

if(appRow != null)
{
lastVersion = Application.ProductVersion;

if (appRow.CurrentVersion != lastVersion)
{
UpdateForm frmUpdate = new UpdateForm();
frmUpdate.BringToFront();
frmUpdate.StartPosition = FormStartPosition.CenterScreen;
DialogResult dlgResult = frmUpdate.ShowDialog();

if (frmUpdate.UserAccept == true)
{
Process proc = new Process();
proc.StartInfo.FileName = appRow.AppExeName;
proc.StartInfo.WorkingDirectory = appRow.InstallerPath;
proc.Start();
proc.WaitForExit();
Process.Start(Application.ExecutablePath);
Environment.Exit(0);
}
elseif (dlgResult == DialogResult.Cancel)
{
result = false;
}
}
}
}
catch(Exception err)
{
Environment.Exit(0);
}

return result;
}

///<summary>
/// Gets the Application Version record for the supplied
/// application product name.
///</summary>
///<param name="appName"></param>
///<returns></returns>
privatestatic UpdateDataset.AppVersionsRow GetAppVersionInfo(string appName)
{
string sqlSelect = string.Empty;
UpdateDataset dsUpdate = null;
OleDbDataAdapter adapter = null;
OleDbParameter param = null;
UpdateDataset.AppVersionsRow appRow = null;

try
{
dsUpdate = new UpdateDataset();

sqlSelect = @"SELECT AppName, AppExeName, InstallerPath, CurrentVersion FROM AppVersions WHERE AppName = @appName";

OpenDbConnection();

adapter = new OleDbDataAdapter(sqlSelect, connUpgrade);

param = new OleDbParameter("@appName", OleDbType.VarChar);
param.Value = appName;

adapter.SelectCommand.Parameters.Add(param);
adapter.Fill(dsUpdate.AppVersions);

CloseDbConnection();

appRow = dsUpdate.AppVersions.FindByAppName(appName);
}
catch(Exception err)
{
string message = err.Message;
}
finally
{
CloseDbConnection();
}

return appRow;
}
}
}

Man, I’m starting to get nervous about the upcoming surgery. It’s always at times like this when you’re made aware of the frailty of the human form. Loss of blood pressure, bad heart, too much anestishia, staff infections, and thoughts of your own mortality start to drift through your mind. This week has been going amazingly fast, and on Tuesday morning I’ll have my knee sliced open to be repaired. I always think about the other guys I talked with, one of whom got a staph infection, and the other who still wears a knee brace when doing physical exercise. I always think, have I started to live the life I want, and what will happen if I die. It happens, my aunt is a VP of a Hospital, and my cousin’s wife is a nurse. I hear the stories, and I hear about how people just puff and die. I’m not overly concerned about these things, but I like to take a moment to hold them fresh in my mind, like swirling the last sip of pop around your mouth to lap up the taste. It’s a bitter taste to face your own mortality.

I always think back to the morning I shipped out for boot camp. It was 4am, were on the bus bright and early after having stayed up all night watching movies with my temporary roommate. Both of us were anxious to start our training, and neither of us could sleep. We watched old 40’s war movies for hours, up until we went to breakfast, and then to when we shipped out. It was a long plane ride, two connections, and I met the three guys I’d spend the next few months living with. They were nice guys, one young, the other were slightly older. I remember the plane ride, I remember being lined up at the airport and made to stand at attention, and I remember being marched out to the gray hounds waiting outside. By this time it’s getting pretty late into the evening, I’d say about 9pm. We get to the base in Georgia about 10pm, and start the beginning of the rest of our training. After sitting through a few hours of introduction to our new home, last minute offers of leniency for lying about medical conditions, and made to turn in our smuggled in electronics we finally were able to get to sleep. They gave us our blankets, and pointed us to the almost overflowing barracks. At this point it was 2am, and we finally were able to lay down to rest. I guess if you consider by the time we made our bunks, laid in them, we had about ten minutes before the wake up buzzer sounded. So much for sleep those three days. Turns out you wake up at 3:30am to start your day in boot camp. Man, I for one can sleep 10 hours standing on my head, but each night we got maybe four if you didn’t have laundry to do. Sucked balls.

Anyway, I think about these things, and I think about where I’ve been in my life. I’ve had an eventful, but unfulfilling life thus far. I have a lot more I’d like to do, and it’s always in the back of your mind. Will I wake up? What if I don’t? Have I lived a spiritual enough life? Will God accept or reject me? Is there a god? What if God is Jewish? What if I’m in front of God and I’m so nervous I fart? Can you fart when you’re dead? I tell you the list of things I think about goes on and on.

I’m having a fantastic morning already. I’m not really in that great of a mood but the major upgrade that was performed to the applications I’ve been working on took place last night. There was a lot riding on it. I previously was using a disconnected dataset to perform lookups and matching to load order specific comments into another dataset that held parts dynamically allocated to specific orders. This added an overhead of about four minutes to the load time of the application to individually do this for each application when it first started.

I knew right away something had to be done about this. I’ve batched everything else into processes that are fired off during the initial parts pegging application, and this seemed like another need area. SO after identifying all the possible solutions to this problem on paper I went about trying each. Finally I found the solution. Create a new field in the database where the parts were stored to, and then fill in the comments each morning. The programs would run as they normally do with the user totally oblivious to where the comments were stored. At the end of the night the batch processes would run, wipe out the part list, regenerate the part list, and while doing so would do the dynamic lookup of previously issued comments using the new part criterion.

Last night it was made apparent this was needed to be pushed out into production. Everything was relying on this program, and thankfully it worked like a charm. However, it wasn’t all roses and chocolates. The program’s normal run time has been steadily increasing, due to the MS Access connection limitations, and due to the networked file share location of the database. The program has to update the database by copying over 15,000 parts, 35,000 build dates, updating the initial 50,000 parts looped through, and maintaining data on about 45,000 PO and WO combinations. Needless to say each one takes a few milliseconds to complete, but the sheer amount of data bogs down Access to where it takes several hours to update all this information.

So my task today, while keeping mind on the other applications I’m still working on is to speed up this process even more. It’s kind of hard using the outdated technology that I’m using, the older .Net framework, and the limitation to using MS Access. So we’ll see what I can cook up. Either way the new process worked on its first time in the sandbox. Hopefully we can make it peppy now. Stability and reliability come first right?

I saw that the article was released this past Friday that I was pro-actively made aware of by my company. I’m sitting here and really have to try to understand how this really affects me. I don’t really think it does, it just seems that the article was created as kind of a summary of the previous golden child in the area facing turbulent water. Something the company was already aware of, and was already taking pro-active measures to head off.

The article, from what I was able to read, doesn’t really seem to go to the degree I thought it would. I don’t see any negative things that were said by ex-employees, or anything I’d consider possibly traumatic to the reputation. I would just call it fluff at this point, and really the only thing new I wasn’t aware of was the reason behind hiring the consultant to come in. I guess they’re doing some internal cleaning, and the simple fact I’m still at the clients must mean I’m in the clear.

I tell you talk about getting my anticipation up for nothing. I was expecting to hear dirt beyond my imagination, like my CEO kicks puppies, or my managers are sacrificing interns to the god of productivity or something like that. Frankly, who cares what the writer wrote, and honestly must be a slow news day? For someone to think that my company alone is the only company in the Cincinnati area that is facing troubles making the money it did a few years ago is absurdity. The economy is not doing the greatest, our company is still making money, but I’ll give them that there has been a lot of people leave. I don’t think it’s necessarily from firings, and most whom I’ve chatted with have left of their own accord. So who knows? We’ll see what happens in the next year.