09.26.08
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Camera Phones take lousy pictures

I don’t understand the attraction of cameras in mobile phones.  They take lousy pictures.  I have yet to use a mobile phone that takes a decent picture.  Maybe its me and my hand just isn’t steady enough.  This morning as I was coming into the office I found this little guy sitting in the driveway.  Unfortunately the picture isn’t very good because I took it with a camera phone!

It has been raining for the last day or so but I was still a bit surprised to see a salamander in the parking lot.  I am not sure what kind it is but I thought it was pretty cool looking so I took a picture of it.  After I took his picture I picked him and put him in one of the gardens so he wouldn’t get mushed by a car.

09.23.08
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My Pantech Duo is back!

This morning I received a package and in it was new repaired Pantech Duo.  I popped my SIMM card in and the battery and it powered up and seems to work just fine.  Unfortunately I left the USB cable at home, at least I think I did because it isn’t here at work, so I can’t sync it with my laptop which means it doesn’t have all of my contacts and calendar on it but I am happy to have it back.

09.22.08
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Better Solution for Event Ordering

I haven’t made much progress over the last few weeks as I have been working on a project at work which was taking a lot of my free cycles.  Fortunately the project at work also uses phpHtmlLib so some of the work I did for the work project will roll out to this project as well.

Even though I haven’t put a lot of active cycles into wp-SwimTeam, I have been looking for some ideas on how to deal with event ordering better.  Event ordering was one of the last things I checked in and I went back and used it and it is clunky.

I have concluded that Event Ordering and ultimately heat sheet management needs to be AJAX based so drag and drop can be implemented.  I want to implement something similar to this jQuery Portlet demo.  Since I have never done anything with AJAX (other than a Google Maps implementation), this is new ground for me.

09.19.08
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Shot 92 today

I played MDCC this morning and played ok, shooting 92.  I putted well today unlike the last time I was out, I think I only had one 3 putt (I can’t find my card) but my long iron and hybrid shots weren’t very good today.  I didn’t lose a ball but I was in the woods on at least 3 holes and on 2 of them, it took me 2 shots to get out.  I did have 2 birdies – #4, and #10.  On #10 I had a good tee shot, a great 3 wood and a so-so wedge which left me just short of the green with.  There was a significant bump in my line so instead of putting it or using my wedge, I used my 4 hybrid and with a putting stroke, knocked it in the hole!  Certainly the highlight of my round.  Looking back on my round, I can easily identify 3-4 shots that I should never have had to hit but those mental lapses continue to keep me from breaking 90.

09.19.08
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Picked up RockBand 2

I picked up RockBand 2 the other day and had a chance to play a little bit over the last two days.  My initial impression is positive, I still love the  game adn RB2 adds more to what was already a good game.  No issue migrating the RB1 songs nor any of the content I had purchased over XBL Marketplace.

I had hoped that the game would recognize your progress from the first game but it doesn’t so I am starting all over again.  I still can’t play very consistently on hard but I am usually able to get through a song without failing, at least on Bass which is easier than guitar.

I think there needs to be a level between medium and hard.  Between the speed up and adding the orange note, I really struggle with hard.  I need Medium-Hard where it is at the pace of Medium but adds the orange note.

09.15.08
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How's my golf game?

I haven’t posted much about my golf game in a while, I have been out twice in the last month and both times played pretty well.  I shot 91 at MDCC and 90 at The Preserve.  In both instances it was my putting which kept me from breaking 90, particularly at The Preserve where I 3 putted at least 5 times.

I was a little disappointed in The Preserve, the greens were not in that great of shape.  I had heard about the course over the years so it was surprising to see the greens so marked up.  We played the day the remnants of Hanna started to roll through so it wasn’t very busy and we cruised through the front nine in about 1:45.  It slowed up at the turn and we picked up another player which also slowed us down a bit but it was nice to get out.

I am hoping to play MDCC this Friday – hopefully I can keep the solid progress up.

09.15.08
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Hotels That Don't Suck update

I was in Europe last week and visited Finland and Sweden.  Although I have been to Sweden upwards of 15 times, I have never stayed at a hotel at the airport.  I had a 7:00 AM departure to London and a co-worker I was with had an earlier flight so I suggested we stay at the airport and save the 40 minute cab ride from Kista where our office is.

We ended up at the Radisson SAS Sky City which is right in the airport.  I have added this hotel to my Hotels that Don’t Such list.  It is a nice  hotel and being right in the terminal save a ton of time in the morning.  It may cost a little more but taking some of the risk out of early morning connections in Europe is well worth the risk.

09.15.08
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Sending the AT&T Tilt back

After almost two weeks of use, I am sending the AT&T Tilt back to our AT&T Account Rep who I had borrowed it from.  Much to my surprise, I really didn’t like the phone.  While I really like the slide out keyboard and even though the phone is on the heavy side, ultimately it was Windows Mobile Pro that turned me off.  I also could not get my Jawbone headset to pair with it, not sure why that was an issue since I haven’t had a problem with it pairing with two or three other phones.

IMNSHO Window Mobile Pro really is a PDA first, mobile phone second usage model.  It is simply too hard to use with one hand to make it a viable solution for me.  I actually have reverted back to my old standby AudioVox SMT5600 which, while an ancient phone, simply works.  It is showing it’s age though, some of the buttons are getting a little stickly.  I hope the Touch Flow interface which HTC has on their newer phones addresses this problem.

One of the features which I really like about Windows Mobile Standard is the ability to quickly find a contact simply by starting to enter a name or phone number.  The possible choices are quickly narrowed down and it is easy to dial the default contact number or show all of the numbers and select one.  This same usage model is a PITA with Windows Mobile Pro and with the Tilt, really requires using the stylus unless you have a long fingernail to use instead.

It seems like most of the new Windows Mobile phones are based on the Pro version instead of the Standard version.  I’d love a phone like the HTC S740 but it doesn’t appear that AT&T will offer it.  I am trying to keep my options open by getting my Pantech Duo repaired but it has been several weeks since I sent it to RMS Logistics and I haven’t heard a peep out of the repair center.  Guess I ought to check into that.

09.03.08
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Test Driving an AT&T Tilt (HTC TyYN II)

For the past 4-5 days I have been playing with an AT&T 8925 Tilt (AT&T’s version of the HTC’s TyYN II).  I am a big fan of Windows Mobile phones, I have been using one for years and I love the way Windows Mobile simply syncs to Outlook.  My life is in Outlook so getting a phone to sync with Outlook is very important to me.  Windows Mobile does it very well.

There are two versions of Windows Mobile right now – Standard and Pro which are also known as the Touchscreen and non-Touchscreen versions.  This Tilt has WinMoPro 6 on it – I haven’t upgraded it to 6.1 because it isn’t mine, I need to return it.  It belongs to the AT&T rep who calls on my employer.  I had asked her if it was ok if I updated it to 6.1 and yesterday she sent me an e-mail telling me to go ahead so I will probably do that later today.

The Touchscreen version is much different than the non-Touchscreen version and I don’t think it is better.  Years ago I had an iPAQ and the Tilt feels much more like an PDA first, phone second where as devices running the non-Touchscreen version feel like phones first, PDAs second.  While it is much easier to work with the calendar and contacts, it is much harder to use as a phone.  In fact, it is clunky.  It would be nice to try the TouchFlo interface HTC is known for but it isn’t included on the AT&T version of the phone so no luck there.

I have actually sent my Pantech Duo in for repair after using this phone – the Pantech Duo runs WinMoStd (non-Touchscreen) and it just much easier to use.  AT&T’s WindowsMobile roadmap doesn’t seem to have much on it although a guy at the local store told me they were getting a new HTC device in November.

I could get an iPhone through work but after playing with a co-workers, I am not sold on it.  The iPhone has the same issue I have with the Tilt – I don’t like using the touchscreen.  On an I phone I probably hit the delete key once for every two letters I type.  If an iPhone had a slide out keyboard like the Tilt has, I’d be all over that.

I am taking the Tilt to Europe with me next week – using it for a few days while traveling will be a real test.  After that it goes back to our AT&T rep and hopefully my Pantech Duo will be back by then.  I am kicking myself for not sending it in earlier.  Not sure why it didn’t occur to me to look into a repair.  I was hoping new phones, in particular the Sony-Ericsson Xperia X1, would be out by now but there isn’t anything, at least from AT&T, on the near horizon I am excited about.

09.02.08
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Code Cleanup in progress

It is interesting to go back and revisit code which I wrote early in this project.  When  I go back and look at it, I ask myself why I implemented things the way I did.   The change to the  tabbed menu bar has required me to go back and visit almost every page which is presented as a menu to a user of the system.

Some of the early functionality like Age Groups and Seasons had a clunky implementation of the decision tree logic and resulted in processing the same variables to make decisions repeatedly.  I have migrated the code I developed latter on for things like the Roster and Events pages and implemented “Guidance” for all pages as well.

Now that I have all of the code cleaned up, at least I think I have it all done, I need to return to the Events functionality.  I need the ability to add events to a meet and then re-order them.  The standard events can be used to seed the events for a meet and reordering works although it is clunky.  This should probably be done with AJAX so events can be dragged and dropped into the desired order.