Livin

Last PingPoet Blog Post

Luc — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 03:04:14 GMT

This is my last blog post as VBGuru. I've switched to blogger now. If you are still interested in what I have to say from time to time, please update your feed readers: http://hardbarger.blogspot.com

PingPoet has been good to me (thanks Scott). I'm just consolidating, that's all. :)

CodeMash... I'll be there!

Luc — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 21:22:47 GMT

CodeMash is coming next month (January 18th & 19th) and I'll be there. Data Dynamics is actually sponsoring the event. We were trying to get a spot to speak at the event, but there were lots of other speakers with a hell of a lot more clout that myself (ie. Scott Guthrie, Bill Wagner, Josh Holmes, etc...). As it turns out, we'll simply be exhibiting at the event, but I do hope to attend 1 or 2 sessions if possible.

If you are able to attend, please stop by our booth. We have a whole new line of products and many people don't even know about them yet. We've demoed the products at TechEd, Tulsa TechFest , and DevConnections so far, but it's been pretty hush-hush outside of those events. We haven't made mention of this new line of products on our website or even in our marketing campaigns. When we do... you'll know though. Once the "cat is out of the bag" I (personally) plan to do a lot of blogging about them with tips, tricks, and all that good stuff. We've even talked about a Data Dynamics Community Blog to allow us to interact more with our customers, but it's just an idea right now. Feel free to send me an email if you are interested in finding out more information about these products or think a Data Dynamics community blog would be a good idea (lucas at datadynamics dot com). Otherwise, if you do come to CodeMash, stop by the Data Dynamics booth and talk to me "mono e mono" or "chicka e mono"... I'd love to give you a personalized demo of what we've been (secretly) working on. ;)

The coolest part about this whole "CodeMash thing" (for me anyway) is that I'm taking the family up with me. I can't wait!! The event is being held at the Kalahari Resort in Sandusky, Ohio... it's an indoor water park. Anybody with kids knows that this easily qualifies me for a "Dad of the Year" award with my girls. We are going up a day before the event and plan to stay a couple of extra days after the event. The goal is to relax and kick back for a couple of days with time off of the farm to not worry about anything.

Jen and I have some friends up around this area too, so if we run out of things to do at Kalahari, we could always go visit our friends from college. It's a shame that CedarPoint won't be open; that place kicks butt. The only times I've ever been to Sandusky are to go to CedarPoint... I didn't even know that there were other things to do in Sandusky to be honest. :)

Lastly, I gotta throw out some marketing stuff because it will give me a chance to win a Zune (details). Here goes:

CodeMash

Horrible IIS Bug

Luc — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 05:12:06 GMT

Today I was trying to run an ASP.NET 2.0 application. And (as we all know) IIS requires us to change our 'Default Web Site' to point to the "Local Path" directory where localhost will run (my rants on this useless process might be found in a future blog post). :) Anyway, once I remapped my local directory to it's new location, I tried to hit the site: http://localhost/lucscoolproject and, after ASP.NET 2.0 finished compiling whatever it is ASP.NET 2.0 compiles, I got this "extremely descriptive and helpful" error message:

App_GlobalResources/' maps to a directory outside this application

WHAT!? I did my famous Google search using the entire string and found the answer right away. IIS bombs when the 'Local Path' on the "Home Directory Tab" has a trailing \.

I was using:

c:\dev\testprojects\web\

and changed it to:

c:\dev\testprojects\web <--- notice no trailing \ character

Vioala! It worked!

How could a simple trailing "\" at the end of my Local path warrant such a nasty error message? C'mon Team! :)

White and Nerdy

Luc — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:54:25 GMT

This is my new theme song!!

.NET Rocks!

Luc — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 05:42:45 GMT

Today was a good day. Ok, today was a GREAT day! You'll have to excuse me if I'm start rambling on about hmump traughwre phla vie chee shafla chum chum. About 20 minutes ago I was interviewed by Carl Franklin and Richard Cambell!!! Yes, that's right, the one and only .NET Rocks! hosts!! I'm still on cloud 9 about the whole ordeal.

Needless to say, I'm an avid listener to the show and love hearing about all the cool things in the nerd-world. It's so cool to hear then say "Data Dynamics" when they shout out to their sponsors because I know that so many people listen to the podcast. We have lots of people come up to our booth and say they've heard of us on .NET Rocks! and thank us for sponsoring them. I can't wait until Monday's episode and hear Carl introduce ME!! Wow! So cool...

Every now and then Carl will come up to our booth at a tech show and catch up with us on what's new. It has always been on a "nerd to nerd" basis and very informal. He talks up our products and I talk up his show. I had never imagined I would be getting interviewed on his show. Well tonight James and I were leaving the VIP dinner after TechFest and as we were walking out, Richard came up to us and asked if they could interview us... I was floored!

Update: The pictures are in and blog has been updated. Thanks for the "camera phone proof" James! :)

Update: I looked on .NET Rocks! site and see that the TechFest episode won't be available for download until November 21st. All this waiting is killing me!

Google Reader

Luc — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 09:45:56 GMT

For all of those of you that use BlogLines, FeedDemon, RSSBandit, GreatNews, Sage, or any other blog reader, I have to say that you might give google Reader a chance now. Today they released a major usability enhanced version that (I feel) will be very hard to compete with.

See for yourself: http://reader.google.com

I have quickly switched back to google Reader as of... now.

1.) I started into my blogging experience using some Outlook Add-in that treated blog posts like "Newsgroup Threads". It might have been some early versions of NewsGator, I dont' recall exactly.
2.) Then I used RSS Bandit for a long time
3.) About a year or two ago, I switched to FeedDemon and used it for a while. I really liked FeedDemon, but it had some usability issues. FeedDemon was a hassle for me because I blog on my laptop and on my home pc and the read/unread settings are stored locally. When I travelled or had a big day of catching up on one of the pc's, I had to manually sync my settings.
4.) Once google released their online blog reader, I rejoiced and quickly began using it because I could keep all my RSS feeds updated in one place... online. There were some major usability issues. There was no "newspaper" view, no way to update a group of feeds as "read" without going through them one by one, and some other minor usability issues here and there.
5.) Issam uses GreatNews and I decided to switch a few weeks ago and try to get used to it. He told me about it almost a year ago and I installed it tried it out, but didn't notice anything too impressive. It reminded me a lot of FeedDemon only it had "Labels". I didn't think it was cool enough to swtich from my licensed FeedDemon (which I was using at the time). Well, since he has been so loyal to the app all this time, I basically decided to see past it's "local storage" problem and give it another try... google Readers' usability was getting a bit old and they hadn't made any significant updates yet. I was contetemplating an idea to just write a script to sync my read/unread posts. I was just starting to get used to it's interface and keyboard shortcuts... Until...
6.) google Reader fixed their usability problems. I've switched back. :)

Thanks google Gods!

How do you measure success?

Luc — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 03:39:23 GMT

I was catching up on my blog role and came across a very simple image described the 'definition' of success.

I couldn't agree more. After seeing that image and thinking about my life, I feel very successful.

b. young designs

Luc — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 07:21:52 GMT

Bonnie Young is a very talented artist and a very close friend. She now has a 'working' website that displays all of her work and it is just a fraction of what she is capable of. Jennifer and I asked her to paint our girls bedroom this summer and it turned out amazing! If you think I'm kidding, look for yourself:

and

What blew me away about this room is that Jennifer and I stood around and talk to her while she was painting and she just kept conversation with us as she was painting it. It was really incredible to see her work, it is just so easy for her.

Anyway, the reason for this blog post is to inform the world that her site is up and running. I actually placed my first order a couple of days ago. Of course, we got the 'Daizy Card Set' so that we can send out cards when Daizianna is born (any day now). Her site was a long time in the making; Corey (her husband, and my good friend) gave it a full overhaul and got it looking very nice. He added a shopping cart and posted pictures of some of the amazing work that she can do. The site probably only shows about 20% of her full portfolio (I'm assuming). I've seen her portfolio and was blown away.

Bonnie has done work Crate and Barrel and Longaberger just to name a few of her bigger clients. She has been an art teacher for our local school district (Licking Valley) and she is just a great person. If you are into crafty things and appreciate raw talent, I definitely encourage you to check out byoungdesigns.com.

Blue Screen of Death

Luc — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 05:37:30 GMT

I'm in pieces again... I turned on my computer yesterday and was presented with the "blue screen of death". I hate the feeling that I get in my stomach when things don't work like they should, especially when it comes to my computer. Here is how it all went down:

The night before last, I installed a "CareBears" game for the girls so that they could play "vee oh games". They played that game for almost an hour, and of course I supervised the whole event to make sure that things didn't get out of hand (apple juice in the keyboard, crayons on the lcd, etc...). When they were done playing, I simply closed the app, ejected the CD and locked my computer. After that, I went upstairs for a while and didn't get back down to the computer until after putting the girls to bed. I went back downstairs after a couple of hours to put my pc in hibernate mode.

Yesterday morning, I turned on my computer to get started for the day and this is when my problems started happening. I saw the 'Resuming Windows' progress bar and then boom... Blue Screen of Death. Unfortunately, I don't remember what it said specifically. To get it to turn off, I had to hold in on the power button for 5 seconds. After I did that, I gave it a minute and tried to turn it back on... Nothing. No clicks. No beeps. No lights... Nothing.

Panic set in and I told myself to take a deep breath. I decided there was no time for that, so I unplugged all my cords and took my computer upstairs to begin surgery immediately. I took out all my add ons, hard drives, and memory. My computer had to be in 100 separate parts (or so it looked). I consulted with some computer nerd buddies and got lots of tips (thanks John, thanks James, thanks Corey). James actually helped me determine that it was not my power supply by using some cool hack to hot wire my fans with a paperclip.

Using the hack I knew that it had to either be my motherboard or my battery. Apparently the battery is a critical piece on a MAC, but I'm not sure that it is that big of a deal on a PC. Anyway, I think that the problem is another fried motherboard. Remember that I had a fried motherboard less than 5 months ago. I emailed MBX support already and I'm sending in my tower tomorrow in hopes of getting it back with "the quickness". That is where I'm at now... Waiting for morning so I can visit FedEx... CRAP!!

Hardbarger Spell Check

Luc — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 08:29:56 GMT

The funny-side of having such a cool last name. :)
I thought this little prompt was 'blog worthy'... Another cool one was 'headbanger'... that one almost got the 'Replace' button.