So I should post something.  Right.  Because we’re all here for the digits yo.  Even if they be singles.

So, what’s going on lately?

Well, right now I’m annoyed that there isn’t an RSAT tool for Windows 7 RC, only RTM (how am I supposed to test it then, HUH?).  But this will pass.

I’m also annoyed that I can’t avoid the Kanye West BS.  MTV is crying tears of gold over that crap, seriously.  I bet they sent him a check afterward.  It will drive the netplays and such of their idiotic, still on the air, non-reality based “music” awards show through the middle of the room.  But still – who cares really?

Here’s what I don’t get – since when do people take the MTV awards seriously?  I mean.  Kanye – was it really that important?  Really?  Doesn’t Beyonce have enough shiny shit already?  Can’t you see that MTV is just trying to woo an audience they’ve traditionally not had any access to in a desperate grab for some marketshare as they plod blindly into obsolescence?   Oh, and WHEN WERE THE MTV (ANYTHING) AWARDS EVER ABOUT QUALITY? K?  So shut the hell up, please.  Seriously, it’s goddamn MTV people.  MTV.  M. T. V.  This is like, oh, I don’t know, whichever kid from 7th Heaven turns out to be gay crying about an ABC Family award a decade from now.  OK, not really.  But kind of.

My wife continues to be lovely, my marriage continues to grow.  It’s only been 6 years, but it feels like so much less and so much more at the same time.

My children continue to amaze me daily.  I’ll refrain from gushing, because you can fill in the blanks if you have kids.  And if you don’t you won’t care to listen.

We’re trying to buy a mini van.  A decent one.   And trade in our current car – which is worth half what we owe on it!  We’ll make it work, somehow.  Yes, I’m actually excited about getting a mini-van.  Maybe more than I should be – but I’m big, and squeezing into the back of our car in between two car seats and Shiva knows how much kid crap is painful, yet needs to be done.  Among other things that necessitate a desire for spacious driving.  Like a road trip.  Or several.

My beta readers are taking forever to finish my book, but I understand this.  Reading stuff on a computer sucks, and I’m too cheap to print & mail hundreds of pages.  They’ll finish eventually, then I’m sure I’ll be wishing they hadn’t, because I’ll have a shitload of editing to do OR I’ll just have to abandon the book (and by extension the 6-7 book series I’ve already plotted).

I DO have an idea for a new book/series finally.  I apparently can’t come up with a stand alone book plot.  Everything leads to something else.   I was raised on epic fantasy and sci-fi – what do you expect?

Heroes starts up again next week.  Yeah, I’m going to watch it.  *said sheepishly*  Maybe it will be above average, or maybe bad enough to drive me away forever.  Who knows?  My bet is on just middle of the road to keep me  watching it while doing something else more interesting on another screen.

It was running Feisty I think…version 6.something.  I just recently found out you could actually update entire OS versions from inside the OS – which I think is the boss shit.  I found the instructions here.

Anyway, it worked almost perfectly.

634 pm start
825 pm: omg linux wants to reboot?
830 pm we are back up in gutsy gibbon/7.10
836 start
1006 restart #2
1010 up with 8.04/heron

Wow, you can barely install ONE version of Windows in 3.5 hours, that’s pretty freakin’ sweet.

It’s a great OS for web browsing and other basic functions, and that was my plan for it…

Unfortunately, now my wireless card won’t connect, and it’s a royal pain in the ass to troubleshoot linux.  No worries though – like I said I never use the thing!

Maybe my next project will be fixing the wireless.  Or trying to rather.

When you’re doing a giant file copy, and there are several files mixed in that have attributes that set off the “are you sure you want to copy this?” pop-up.   And you hit “Yes to all” that first time, assuming it will be the only time you have to hit a button.  But lo, and behold my children, for that “yes to all” apparently only applies to the current folder you are copying, or something (I never bothered to figure out the specifics) not the entire file copy, like it should.  So you wind up hitting “yes to all” once for every sub-directory (or whatever) that contains a trigger file.

That really annoys me.

So, over the last year or two I’ve taught myself a good deal about Access, and database stuff in general.  No classes, all just muddled through of course (although I did finally get a class on Oracle reports recently!), but I do well enough.

Well, anyway, I was building my first system up from scratch for one of our departments, and after a bit of time and a few meetings I get all the schematics and layout hammered out, and get to work on it.  A month or few goes by and it’s all “done”, and running, and I’ve got a few users testing it and I’m making changes to it based on their suggestions as we go along.

Then – we hit a snag, they want to change one of the data items. BUT, it was one of the items that the whole database was based around – different tables (like spreadsheets full of data) have to be linked together in one way or another, and basically everything was built around this one set of numbers.   So if everything is built off of those numbers why would you ever want to change them?  That was my original thinking. DUMB!  Users want to change anything and everything at some point.

So the solution is to use another set of numbers, hidden from the users (called a primary key, or just key, or whatever)…which I did for several of the tables, but not for one of the main ones, because it was just a list of those numbers, which were unique (and I thought unchangeable), and so I had used them for the keys.  So yeah, long story short, I have to do a good amount of work to incorporate keys in now that my queries & forms & relationships have been built.  This will take the software offline for a week or so, and when it goes back on, it will look exactly the same to the users even though quite different under the hood.  Fun huh!?  But still, I much prefer programming & database building to other kinds of tedious computer tasks I could be doing, and I learn all kinds of stuff along the way, so it’s in no way a waste.

Just pointing out the lesson learned.

And knowing is half the battle!
What, Snake Eyes, what are you doing here? I  thought you were mute?  What the hell is going on here!