Monthly Archives: July 2008

07.30.08
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My MGB is running again!

I have a 1967 MGB which while not in very good shape, runs pretty well most of the time.  However, it has a spot on the fly wheel where it is missing a tooth and every once in a while, the fly wheel stops right where the missing tooth lines up with the starter motor.  When this happens, the starter motor gets stuck in the fly wheel and the car won’t start.

Fixing this problem is usually as simple as putting a 7/16 inch wrench on the square not on the end of the starter motor and giving it a nudge.  The starter motor will release and the car will usually start right away.  There have only been a few times where it really got stuck where it took me a while to get it unstuck.

A few months ago I had some work done on it and had the starter replaced and now when this happens, getting it unstuck is a little harder.  The two times it has happened, I have had to get under the car to get enough leverage on the starter bolt.  The last time it happened, I didn’t have time to fix it so I let it sit.  It ended up sitting about 2 months!  We did some work int he garage last weekend and threw a lot of stuff away.  If my car doesn’t move for a while, it becomes a place to set things down so after a couple months, all kinds of stuff was piled on top it.

Once we did some cleaning and most of the stuff was off the car,  I decided to crawl under it and get it running.  Once I got the start freed from the fly wheel it started right up.  It is a fun car to drive, now that it is running, I will start using to run errands again.

07.29.08
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Standard Event functionality completed

This afternoon I committed a bunch of changes which complete (I hope) the standard event functionality.  Standard Events are the events a team would typically run at every meet.  I envision them being set up for a team’s home pool so the course should be set to match the home pool but it is up to the end user.  Once defined, the meets can be reordered to match the typical order of events.

The next phase will allow creating of meet specific meets and the standard events can be used to initialize the events for a meet.  When creating meet events, the the course for the pool is different than the standard events, the meet events will be adjusted acordingly.  This will allow a team with a home pool in meters to easily set up a meet at yards pool – if the same events are used in the same order, it will be a simple task.

Once the events are created for meet, the order can be changed on a per meet basis and other events can be added or deleted.

07.28.08
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Started Adding Event Functionality

In order to keep a history of swim times (aka results), the events the times are associated with need to be defined.  I guess technically that isn’t true, a simple time history could be kept but as long as I am going to import times and keep them as a history, might as well associate them with a meet too.

To do this I started working on defining the events for each meet.  Since most teams swim the same events in the same order at most of their meets, I have established a “default” set of events.  I have this new functionality working now.  What is left to do is to elegantly re-order the events (since re-ordering them is inevitable) and to use them as a basis for populating the events for an actual meet.

This functionality is also the basis of Opt-in/Opt-out because I have decided to let swimmers opt in or out of individual events and as well as entire meets.  This is a need for the MacDolphins because we many of our swimmers are in year round school and since our league swims on Tuesday nigths, for some portion of our team, it is a school night.  We have a fair number of swimmers who opt out of the later events because of it being a school night.

07.25.08
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Demo Site

I have had a couple ask recently about a demo site for wp-SwimTeam so I think I am going to set one up that people can play with.  The plugin is current live on the MacDolphins web site but since that is a real team and real data, it isn’t a suitable sandbox for people to explore.

If I can set up another instance of WordPress underneath this one to demonstrate the plugin, I will make it available for play with.  I am not sure how to assign new users the necessary permission to admin the demo site since that would provide them a fair amount of control over the actual WordPress install itself.  Hmmm … need to think that through before I turn it on!

07.25.08
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Short Code improvement and other minor changes

Last night I committed a bunch of changes to clean up the Meet Schedule Short Code.  Previously it only worked for the current season, the optional seasonid argument was ignored.  It is now working – if the seasonid argument is not included in the short code then the active season will be used.

I also added a column for the Id in the Admin view of the seasons, swim clubs, and meets since the Id is used in the short codes.  By putting the Id in the list, there isn’t a need to drill down into the item detail to see what the Id is in order to use it in a short code.

07.24.08
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A frustrating 49 this morning

I got in 9 holes this morning with one of my friends before he had to be at the dentist and I had to be at a meeting at Sony-Ericsson at 10 AM.  We played in about 90 minutes which is great but we were dancing with the maintenance crew almost the entire way.  It is hard to get in a rhythm when you are playing with people on the green or in the bunkers.  It was frustrating.

I shot 49 which really isn’t very good.  I was however, decent, although shorter than usual, off the tee with only one really bad drive (#9).  My wedge play was weak today and cost me quite a few strokes (at least 5).  Putted pretty well and left two right on the lip.  I’d like to play 18 tomorrow but I don’t think that is going to happen.

07.24.08
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Xbox360 is back but …

Our Xbox360 arrived from RRoD repair center yesterday.  Definitely not the same console which is no surprise.  I haven’t tried it out yet – maybe this evening.  Now I need to decide what to do.  I think I am going to keep the Elite at home as our main console which means I need to move all of my downloadable content to it.  I will either take the repaired console to the beach or I’ll set t up down in the basement once I get the LEGO stuff put away.

As part of the downloadable content license transfer process, I decided to “register” both of my consoles on Xbox.com.  This failed and I ended up spending a bunch of time on the phone with Microsoft last night without any resolution.  From their end they can see two consoles registered to me but it doesn’t show up on the web site when I login.  After dealing with people on the phone for almost an hour, they gave up and asked me to wait 24 hours to see if the information would propagate through their systems (it hasn’t yet).

07.21.08
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Xbox 360 on its way back already

Last Tuesday I shipped our Xbox back to Microsoft for repair (RRoD).  On Saturday morning I got an e-mail that it had been received and not two hours later I got another e-mail stating it had been shipped.  The turn around is pretty impressive and I am sure they have a pile of refurbished Xbox 360s ready to ship out to customers.

It doesn’t really matter to me, I didn’t expect them to repair the unit I sent but I also expected it to take 2-3 weeks.  The last time I sent one in it took about a month so they have really improved their response time.  I guess they have had a fair amount of practice!  🙂

07.21.08
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SQL issue solved

My Access SQL problem is solved.  Access can’t do what I wanted to do but the folks at WinSwim modified their custom SQL query report to allow for error supression which solves the problem.  I just can’t say enough about the excellent support from WinSwim.

I don’t know how most swim teams manage their swimmers but ours revolves around age groups.  Everything is organized by age group, coordianted by age group, reported by age group, etc.  I have been creating Win Swim Reports using Crystal Reports to present the data in the database in a format our team is used to seeing it it.

Working on these reports is the primary reason I haven’t made much progress on the plugin lately.  Swim team is winding down, our last meet is tomorrow night and once the season is over I expect to be able to work on the plugin again.  There are a number of things I’d like to implement while the experience is still fresh in my memory.  If I wait I’ll probably forget why I thought something was a good idea!  🙂