The Story Behind My Pseudo Arrest
OK, so the story behind getting arrested was that I had a ticket for letting my cars registration expire that I got right before my chemo started. Well the day before I got arrested I got a notice in the mail saying that there is a warrant for my arrest and to clear it up go to the local police station. So naturally I head right over and clear it up, the police woman that helped me said to make sure that I held onto the paperwork for a week. As she pointed out and I would soon learn it can take a while for a warrant to clear the system.
So when I was driving home from work with my carpool yesterday a police officer randomly ran my plate like they often do when they pull up behind you and BAM he sees the warrant and stops me. I got cuffed and put in the back of the car before I had time to even realize what was happening. While I was sitting in the car I was able to explain things to the police officer (who was for the record a really nice guy about the whole thing) about what had happened and directed him to the paperwork that the stated I had cleared up the warrant. At that point the tone of the whole thing changed and the two officers and I started joking around about the whole thing.
Grand total time arrested was about 5 minutes before the police officer jokingly said "OK Matt, I am officially unarresting you now".
Speaking at the 1st New England Business Intelligence Code Camp
This Saturday May 22nd I will be presenting three sessions at the New England Business Intelligence Code Camp.
My sessions will be:
- Intro to SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 - 100 Level session designed to show people some of the basic concepts in SSRS 2008.
- SSRS Interactive Reports - Walk through of how to use SSRS to make interactive reports that empower the report's consumers.
- Visualize you data with Silverlight. - High level walk through of Silverlight as a data visualization platform.
Long Time no Post
So if anyone has been checking in recently you might have noticed that I haven't posed here for quite a while. I recently had some rather serious medical problems and on top of the left Iverson Gaming Systems, Inc. and am now employed as a Consultant in the services division of Infragistics.
Both of these events came together to make a perfect storm of no free time to post on this blog. I have however been out and about speaking. I have also been doing some awesome work at Infragistics. I will be doing several upcoming posts on my Infragistics blog in the near future so check it out here.
SQL Saturday 37 – Philadelphia
So I aperently forgot to post about this but I will be presenting three sessions at SQL Saturday 37 right here in Philly tomorrow! You can check out the schedule here. Aperently all the tickets are gone so if you don't have one yet... Sorry your probably not gonna get in.
Speaking at NYC Code Camp 4
So Last night I found out that I will be speaking at the Code Camp in NYC on March 6th. I will be speaking about how to use Lambda expressions to get more done with less code. Come by and check it out if your in the city then.
Server Change
Up till today my site was hosted on the Grid Hosting plan over at Godaddy cause I wanted to try it out and see what it was all about. Well it ran quite slow for me so I have switched over to a good old fashioned VPS from Godaddy. Please feel free to enjoy the extra speed!
PivotMaker API Released
I got a message on codeplex from "Computer Guy" telling me about how he has made an API as well. He went the more traditional way and generated classes from the XSD file provided for Pivot.
Guys API allows you to modify and read collection files which the API that I produced currently does not. His API also does not make use of reflection and attributes to build collections from existing classes. Instead favors using a typed approach where there is a Item,Facet, and Collection class and you instantiate the collection then add items to it. Each item you create you can add facets with a Add method.
This methodology is much easier to follow if your not familiar with the use of generics or attributes as my entire API relies on an understanding of both concepts.
Currently Guy has yet to release his API but hopefully he will share that soon. From what I have seen it seems like it's defiantly worth checking out. I am hopeful that the two of us can work together to build a really useful tool to help promote this great new tool from Microsoft!
Thanks for sharing Guy!
An Obsession With Rings – Book Recommendation
This site is not intended to be just another collection of posts about programming and assorted "geeky stuff". The site is “Anything They Can Do (Why Can't You?)”. My goal here is not only to build interesting things, but to spark new ideas and new ways of thinking about the things you may do already. At times, I will try to spotlight people who have had experienced a "Hey, why can't I do that?" moment.
The owner of the company I work for is actually one of these people (as well as a programmer since the days of punch cards). Her name is Joanne Iverson, and she has written a book about the struggle she lead to make women's rowing an Olympic sport. When asked what part of that journey has stayed fresh in her mind after all these years, Joanne said the following:
“That I got to go to the Olympics. Granted, I only went as the team manager, but I did get there. As I say in the book, I wanted to go to the Olympics. When I said “go” I meant I wanted to compete in the Olympics. Since there were no rowing events for women, I spent 17 years working toward that goal but because in 1976 I was considered too old to compete, I never really got the opportunity (note: that she worked to create). Going as a manager and seeing the rowing events for women completed me, and my obsession was satisfied.”
She has just released a book, "An Obsession with Rings" (available now direct from the author or on amazon.com) that tells the story of how she made it happen.
Review
Travelocity.com Error Message
Home Page
Looks like travelocity.com was not working today around 2:40 when our accountant asked to see the receipt for my recent trip. Even their error messages are comical. Good work roaming gnome.
Application Name in .net Connection Strings
Ever want to check to see how data got into your database? I know that at times I will fire up SQL Managment Studio and make some changes when I need to we all do it. Here is a nice little trick that you can put in a trigger on sensitive tables to record what application told the database to update/insert. the below will yield you what ever value you put in the Application Name parameter in the connection string. I got in the habit of auto appending this to the connection strings stored in my app.config and web.config files in compiled code so that if I need to I can see what program is connecting and with what credentials.
Go ahead load up SQL Server Managment Studio and run that query you should get "Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio - Query"
Twitter: phpn00b
- #infragistics new office building is totally epic!!!
- @SQLDiva I'm in
- I finally turned off the #LightSwitch for the day and am heading out for some much needed beer
- Want to build plugins for #LightSwitch? What tools in the SDK for developers http://bit.ly/9HvM9d #Infragistics
- Hope you enjoyed the custom #LightSwitch shell that #Infragistics built. I'll be blogging about developing for LS soon.
- @blendtec so many tweets about #wp7 but no on is asking the important question on everyone's mind does it blend?