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!  🙂

07.21.08
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Rock Band Disc Repaired!

Last week I posted about our Rock Band disc getting scratched.  Not surprisingly I was unsuccessful getting EA to replace the disc which was a little surprising given that they replace the instruments with little pushback.  I was expecting to have to buy a new disc but asked my son to see if he could track down a used one first.

It turns out the PlayNTrade near us has a disc polisher and for $3.20, they will attempt to repair your scratched disc.  For $3, this is a no brainer as opposed to spending $35 (used) to $60 (new) for another disc.  So we wandered on up to PlayNTrade to see if our disc could be fixed.  After a couple spins in the polisher our disc looked  pretty good.  We took it home and SUCCESS, it works and we were able to play Rock Band all evening.

My nephew also brought along a scratched copy of Forza 2 he had and it too was polished and successfully plays now.  As I stated above, for $3 it is a no brainer when you have a scratched disk.

07.18.08
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Struggling with MS Access

While it isn’t really relevant to the wp-swimteam plugin, it is related to swim team.  Our team is using WinSwim for meet management which relies on Crystal Reports for generating reports.  I have been customizing reports for our team and am working on one which requires me to really poke into Access.

I have done quite a bit of work with MySQL so it is frustrating to encounter SQL constructs which Access doen’t support.  Right now I am struggling with how to determine if a table in Access already exists and if it does, I want to drop it.  What a PITA.  Access doesn’t support the DROP TABLE IF EXISTS construct which MySQL (and others) support.

If you know how to do this, please tell me how in the comments!  🙂

07.17.08
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Tracking my progress

This morning I played 18 by myself and decided to track some stats after seeing another friend of mine do it recently.  It was interesting to see where I gave a lot of strokes away.  I played pretty well, better than I have the last couple times out.  I shot 92, 45/47.

Other than #10 and #11, particularly #10, I was pretty happy with my round.  I feel like I am getting closer.  I only 2 real bad wedge shots and I putted reasonably well.
As you can see below, I am not hitting many greens in regulation which means I don’t give myself a lot of chances at par or better.  If I could get off the tee a little farther I think having shorter irons into the green would help improve my GIR.

2008-07-17 Score Card

2008-07-17 Score Card