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

I finally received my TI LaunchPad after waiting three months for delivery. I popped onto the TI Wiki after getting the device installed, and then installed Code Composer Studio 4.1.3.0038. Since that point I followed the “LaunchPadSimpleProject.pdf” step-by-step to create my first MP430G2231 application with blinky LEDs. It was all going well until Code Composer Studio decided not to allow debugging.

Unfortunately it seems Code Composer Studio can’t seem to decide whether it is licensed or unlicensed. Working on the code the studio is licensed, but the moment I go to debug It brings up the license dialog. I browse to the license file, and the dialog closes to pop up an error dialog of no feature found for CCS_CONNECTION_ALL. Inspecting the license file there is no definition for the CCS_CONNECTION_ALL, but at the same point in time none of this was specified in the simple project nor license installation.

Until I get a solution for this my launch is aborted.

This week was a very exciting week for me. I had my first interview in going on three years. I had an interview this past Tuesday with a potential client of a consulting company to see if I was a good fit. I sat through about an hour long interview with the client manager going over high-level tech questions, and my background experiences. At the same time I was going through the interview process I was also being observed by the VP of sales for the actual consulting company. It was a two-for-one interview with my having to answer questions for a client, and be graded by my actual consultant employer.

It went very well. There were some aspects of the interview I could have done better. It’s really hard to express a persons background, key applications that were developed, and do so juggling the don’t share to much stigma from past employers day-to-day workings. I’d would like to have thrown out names of companies I’ve worked with, but you really have to be discreet while still displaying a solid background they can feel excited about.

The end result of that first interview is that the client said I’d answered more questions correctly than anyone else they’ve previously interviewed. Talk about an ego booster. That opened up the door for phase two, which would be another interview done by the whole development team I’d be working with. That particular interview took place today, and if I can say I think it went rather well.

Somehow during the process the interview started to take a turn from grilling me with questions to just a room full of like minded individuals (geeks) talking about really neat new technologies and processes. The conversation ranged from projects I’d worked on, tools I’ve used, frameworks I like, and a general overview of my background. I was asked to debate with one of the developers on my take on a nullable boolean data type. Whether I felt it was ever necessary to have a bool value that was anything other than just true or false, or why I felt a three-state supporting bool should ever be used.

During the entire interview the only question I could not answer was what a closure was. I told them I’d probably used one, but I couldn’t at that point in time think of what it was. I came home to find I have in fact used closures, but if you asked me right now I still don’t think I could explain what they are short of similar to anonymous delegates. Yeah, I agree that if you can’t explain it to a seven year old then you probably don’t know what it is yourself.

At the end of the interview one of the developers told me that I was the first person that has ever actually explained correctly the difference between a custom control and a server control. The best part was in my follow-up questions about the development environment a developer simply said that the company was suffering from “premature Ajaxilation.” I think I about laughed myself out of the chair right there. What a fantastic group of developers. I’m sure it won’t all be as nice an experience as this has been, but the journey into independent consulting definitely has been a fun trip so far.

I’m a little late posting about the event, but I attended the 2010 Cincinnati Day of Ruby event. The first half of the day was spent being introduced to Ruby Koans, and the second part of the day was taking a running jump at Ruby on Rails. I can safely say that Ruby Koans is hands down the best way I’ve ever found of learning a new programming language from scratch.

If you’ve never seen the Koans it’s basically a single program consisting of several Ruby files each consisting of testable blocks of code. Within each code file are multiple fill-in-the-blanks unit tests requiring the user to fix in order to move onto the next broken section of code to complete the Koans. You begin at the core aspects of the language, simple data types, exceptions, functions, classes, and so on. It’s really a bottoms-up approach to learning a language where you gradually expand your understanding in a test driven manner.

Ruby on rails I won’t touch with a ten foot pole at the moment. That was a walking disaster for anyone on a Windows machine. Luckily I had the forethought to bring my Ubuntu netbook. Still my only complaint against Ruby in general is not so much with Ruby itself but with Ruby’s other frameworks. The language is neat, and Nil is an object not actually null as we know it. How cool is that? Anyway, I really enjoyed the event, and have a greater understanding of Ruby because of the event. Win win.

Sometimes I think my attention span is consistent as a cat faced with a dot or red light on the carpet. Luckily it often leads to some very cool rabbit holes. I ended up digging into file properties on a whole new level, which are a lot more complicated than I once thought. Long story short I ended up meeting the StgOpenStorageEx function, the IPropertySetStorage, and of course the IPropertyStorage interfaces.

I spent two days of exhausting search referencing through MSDN on structs, enums, and function declarations. Countless C++, .Net code forums, and even a Delphi coding sites looking for working examples of reading file properties. Most were filled with examples that didn’t work, or were postings of unsolved errors. I ran into many errors ranging from “E_INVALIDARG” of the IPropertyStorage.ReadMultiple function to the time spent building the classes required. Turns out PInvoke.net and most other sites all have invalid function declarations in one way or another.

All the trouble could have been saved by simply using the “Microsoft.VisualStudio.OLE.Interop” assembly to get access to the fully flushed out interfaces and required structs. Short of declaring the StgOpenStorageEx extern function the Interop assembly contains all the other required classes. The assembly can be installed with the Visual Studio SDK (2010 in my case) installer located on the Microsoft download page. I wish I had known that two days ago.

Well, I’m reaping the benefits of being self-employed. In the last four weeks I’ve dropped exactly 25 pounds. I only eat when I’m hungry, no snacks (only a box of cookies last week), and I run a minimum of one mile per day. In that time with a reduced diet and daily exercise I’ve dropped a lot of weight. I do miss star bucks frappachinos and a slice of lemon loaf though.

Finally made it through all the holiday weekend and extended weekend. Ended up spending the entire three day weekend with family, and reconfiguring my entire internal network. Somehow packed within this three bedroom house are over 26 internet enabled devices and computers. Some virtual, some net-connected microchips, but all-in-all I found that total rather shocking. Setting up the network took a better part of a day and a half to go through auditing serial numbers, model numbers, locations, mac address filtering, and reassigning static IPs.

Over the past week I’ve made more phone calls than I probably have in the past year. Sadly you could ask friends and family about how infrequently I tend to use the phone. At least I know my main weakness already, but I’m working on it. Anyway, I ended up fielding at least nine solid leads on consulting opportunities that floated across my inbox, and of the nine I have two I’m in talks with. Both are three to four month projects that would take me through to the new year. Typically this period is difficult for consultants to get work due to the holiday landmines that float during October to January. It won’t hurt me to take on a short-term contract, which is why I’ve gravitated towards the 3-4 month range.

I ended up meeting with a co-founder of Gaslight Software on Tuesday for a lunch meeting. Very interesting company dynamic if you can imagine their company as a solar system with many independent consultant companies orbiting around the single name. If I started to go into an explanation of what the company does and how it benefits people I’d be doing a huge disservice to the co-founders who can explain it much better than I. If you’re an independent consultant it’d be worth your time to talk to them yourselves.

On Thursday I think I may have had the best experience to date for being self-employed. I met a man who has long battled a crippling disease that has cost him his ability to work at the young age of 37. After a lengthy battle with social security he’s spent the better part of three years documenting what to do and what not to do in battling the government for justified compensation. All this information is being compiled now into a book format that hopefully will be published in the near future on Amazon.com, or one of many other online publication companies for the benefit of anyone else going through the process. It was a very eye opening experience to say the least, and otherwise would have been missed if I were in another 9-5 position.

I tried to export a virtual machine from my VMWare ESXi server for the first time, and received the error “Failed to Export Virtual Appliance: An item with the same key has already been added.” It didn’t make sense to me at all. Come to find out that you’ll need to open the snapshot manager for the virtual machine, and delete all snapshots taken of the virtual machine. Once you do so you’ll be able to export the virtual machine. Yah, I don’t know why that is required either, but that is the solution.

Belated once more. Yesterday I setup a new HP Proliant server with six new ultra fast hard drives. I spent most of the day reading on proper DMZ setup with virtual servers, virtual switch setup, and configured the server with multiple physical and virtual adapters. I really dig VMWare ESXi by the way. When I was finished I wrapped up, ate some lunch, and got ready to leave for the first LAN party in ten years I’ve been to.

The LAN party was excellent, I should really say system link party, but I still dig LAN as the description. It’s a little more difficult setting up an Xbox party what with the TV requirement and all for all patrons. In this case I’m glad that HDMI caught on with some LCD computer monitors, but somewhat wish the Xbox would just have added a DVI cable port as well.

Considering the difficulty in many days to keep up with posting about self employment that isn’t very interesting at the moment I think I’m going to skip daily posts. I’ll post interesting tidbits I encounter along the way for sure, but not this droll daily drivel. For now I’m off to rack mount the server with its other brothers, and move my database servers to the new server with the larger faster drives for awesome I/O goodness.

A belated post. Yesterday was a mixed bag. My wife was home sick all day so I spent much of my day just popping in to check to see if she was doing better. Since she was home I did more work on her start-up software. I decided to go with ASP.Net MVC 2. Luckily I won an MVC book at the Cincinnati .Net Users Group. The “ASP.Net MVC In Action” book is a very good reference for jumping head first into MVC.

I bought the SSL for the site, spent a few hours working on a theme (still working on it,) and am trying to knock out a rough version. A new problem arises in that my virtual servers are hosted under one IP and I have two SSL’s to use. One for an existing store, and one for the new store site. That means day 4 and now day 5 are being spent mapping the existing network in Visio, and building a new virtual network design. Handling virtual servers on one physical machine with two internet connections sharing multiple IPs is a tricky bag. It’s hard to DMZ one server while allowing the other on the same machine have access to local network resources.

At the point when I started considering leaving my previous employer the first thing I did was setup accounts on Dice.com, enable my Monster.com account, and then setup a Careerbuilder account. Careerbuilder has been the worst mistake I could have made. I get so many job requests from affiliates for positions in nearly every state in the US except the one I live in, and fluff job requests like being a secret shopper or insurance plan sales person with potential to make $150k per year. It’s literally job spam. I do not live in New York, Texas, Indiana, California, or Florida but for some reason people from Careerbuilder think I’d be interested in the positions. I get phone calls from people I can hardly understand about positions in sales for the same jobs I’m spammed with. I don’t think anyone coming from Careerbuilder has actually read my resume, and the ones who have didn’t look at my current location and willingness to travel percentage. Just a friendly note about one persons experience using Careerbuilder. Your results may vary, doubt it though.