Coffee and Code

Happy New Year! May 2007 be easy on you.

Here's a quick status for those who need to know:

1. Phone line is still on the fritz. It started working this morning, and then promptly stopped again.

2. Milestone: I completed all my Christmas shopping this evening. And it's not even February yet! I set a new record for myself.

3. The new job is great. I love everything about it except for the small issue of my first project being converting a Filemaker app to SQL Server.... said FileMaker app has 1 table with - brace yourself - 759 columns. That's right: Seven Hundred and Fifty-Nine columns. My head hurts.

4. Still working on my new blogger. It's progressing well, so it shouldn't be too much longer until you see it in action on this website.

Shout out to my peeps. Out.

It's Saturday morning here in Santa Fe, and I feel unusually energetic. My girlfriend had a class this morning, so I'm killing time by playing some loud music and drinking plenty of black coffee. (By the time she gets out, I will be so caffeinated that I will be able to taste the air around my face.) This afternoon, we've got loose plans to do something that involves not being at the house. That's about as far as our little planning session went this morning. I'm thinking about lunch at our favorite sushi bar, and possibly a trip to Best Buy to gaze longingly at gadgets that I'd like to buy for myself, but won't, due to guilt over not buying any Christmas presents yet.

I just finished a week at my new job, and although I might be speaking too soon, I think I made a really good move. The new position is much more focused: I will write web applications in ASP.Net (C#, of course) and SQL Server and that is pretty much it. Big change from the last job where I pretty much did anything that had anything to do with the internet. I kinda miss the extra responsibility, but I needed an environment where I could focus on programming. It doesn't hurt that the other programmers at my new job are a lot more experienced than I am - having Yoda-like mentors nearby is always a good thing. It also doesn' t hurt that the new job pays a lot more! Hell yes.

It is now the 9th of December, and I've yet to do one single bit of Christmas shopping. I am so BAD at Christmas. I tend to hide out in my house and pretend that there IS no holiday season. I wish I could just hibernate from October 30th through January 1st (yes, I hate Halloween, Thanksgiving AND Christmas AND New Year's Eve). Wake me up when Christmas is over, man! Seriously.

My apologies to all my friends and family who will probably receive their Christmas presents in February... but hey, by now, veryone should be used to it! Bah Humbug!

Wow. It's been some time since I updated this blog (and the rest of the website... well, I won't go there!)

Lately, I've been working on a small app for the PIO's office at work: basically it's an upload/metadata utility for Window Media files. We're running Windows Media Services at work, and we have a collection of videos available for on-demand streaming. So basically, this application I'm building is to manage and categorize the available media files.

In the process of building the application, I've learned a couple of useful tricks:

1: The WM Plug-in has an extensive Javascript API. Covers everything from playback controls to management/creation of playlists.

2: It's possible (and cool) to create dynamic WM playlists using ASP.Net (they're basically XML files, so....)

The next thing I'm going to try to do (today) is manipulate a .WMV file server-side to extract a thumnail image of the video. Should be fun - but then, I'm a glutton for punishment!

I got a wild idea on Sunday to do a Flash version of my portfolio. It's not done yet, but take a look. I think it's got potential.

Other than that, t's been quiet on the home front, and busy at work . Finished this online survey thingie, then churned out yet another conference registration website... now it's on to another big project.

. . . L A T E R . . .

Just finished a kick-ass steak with homemade potato salad, and now I'm going to eat some mint chocolate chip ice cream and have a shot of whiskey.... Happy Friday!

I agreed to help a buddy out with a house-sit in Galisteo this week, starting tomorrow and ending on Easter Sunday. Not so bad, except I found out that I was signed up for a Crystal Reports class in Albuquerque this coming week as well... the class starts at 8:00 AM - which basically means that I will be getting up at the butt-crack of dawn every day, hauling ass to ABQ, and then not getting back out to Galisteo until 7:00 PM. Bummer.

Then, for the last week of April, I'm going down to Las Cruces to help out at the Transportation Engineering Conference... so I'm not going to have much time for web design. Bleh! I spit on April! The stars have aligned in an attempt to delay the timely delivery of my design, but I will prevail. Be sure to check back after May 1st... things WILL be different.