Backup, Balance, and Cross Apply

My goodness, the weeks have flown. I haven’t had the time to properly devote to any one geeky project.. but there’s been a bunch of smaller things going on. I’ll try to sort them from Geeky-est to Meta.

I used Cross Apply for the first time

Its hard to do better than Stack Overflow, so here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1139160/when-should-i-use-cross-apply-over-inner-join

My use case was pretty simple:

I had a sproc which would return inventory of stocks held.
Anybody who had more than 100 stocks, I was trying to create an option from those stocks (100 stocks = 1 option) (for scale testing purposes)
However, to create an option, I needed a valid combination of symbol, expiration date, and strike price (so that web service lookups against the market would return valid data)

The lookup of what is valid is something like SELECT TOP 1 EXPIRATION, STRIKEPRICE from <stuff we already know about> where SYMBOL=@symbol

The cross apply becomes something like this:

INSERT INTO (new thing) 
SELECT (bunch of old things from S, LOOKUP.EXPIRATION, LOOKUP.STRIKEPRICE) 
FROM inventory of stock S
CROSS APPLY (  select top 1 ... ) AS LOOKUP

I had to reformat my W7 box at home

Something went haywire, and the computer would freeze every time a video played on a web page. Even ads. I tried all kinds of stuff around uninstalling and reinstalling drivers… SAFE mode worked ok, but coming out of safe mode = kaboom.

So I decided to restore my machine to a previous known good version, thanks to Windows Home Server.

But I forgot that my machine had a RealTek integrated network adaptor, which the WHS restore CD doesn’t know about.. so no connection for restore! I tried looking for the drivers CD, couldn’t find it in 5 minutes

So I reinstalled Windows 7 from scratch. And still no Network driver. I had to go get the drivers on a different machine, and bring ’em over by sneakernet. At this point, i was committed, so I continued the reformat.

I currently have a robocopy going from my WHS backup to my new working directory. My incredibly awesome nomenclature is: “c:\2013“. That’s where I put my stuff. If a project spans years, it gets copied from one year to the other. One folder per project.

Life Balance

Family Reunion Road Trip
2nd swim time with Father in Law.. I’m getting better at this treading water stuff.
Not much running.. 5 miles here, 0.6 there, 2 more squeezed in
Fourth of July = dogs went crazy while we were not home = broke through drywall to get out of basement and tear through the house
Dryer motor getting repaired, thanks to a shoe. And a dryer vent, thanks to a dog (it was next to the drywall above)
Crazy dogs led to walking the dogs in the morning. I am not a morning person.
Today is door replacement day, thank you Lowes
Back deck is done! Thank you Steve Ader. He does good work.
3 birthday parties … ages: 30, 33, 1.. and an upcoming 86.

Looking forward

I’m hoping to get my Android + OBDII set back up again. I want to see how much gasoline I’m spending over a 2D map.
I could write about tracking down some performance problems in EF .. mostly around context.Attach() .. and how I replaced it with a single update statement.
I could write about my current project, the “feel” of it, as it went from “we don’t trust the system” to “hey, this is working pretty good”.
I need a different home backup solution. If I upgrade one more hard drive, my WHS will be at reasonable-capacity, and honestly I just use it as a NAS. I have a 1 year old off-site backup, which is not automated enough for me. I have only used WHS’s restore the way it was meant ONCE – when my laptop got unstable, and i restored it to itself — and that was a beautiful thing — but once in 6 years? Compared to 7 or 8 reformat’s (changing OS’s usually, or new owner for a machine)? … contemplation is needed.

peace out.

Meta: Spread too thin, like a little butter, over too much bread

Derek Sivers wrote a blog post – “Seeking Inspiration?” – which talks about the ratio of consuming to creating. My interpretation — Some people consume a lot, don’t create, and end up constipated. I think what he was actually saying is, the moment of their inspiration is lost, because they don’t turn it into action.

I’ve been looking at my life lately, and best I can figure: I’ve been creating too much – in areas of my life that, while they are important (mostly, videos and songs), they don’t apply to my work (security) – and as thus, I’ve had less “bank” available for creating at my day job.

So, while I have a list of projects that I would love to work on:

Cam’s last baseball game of the season .. I have some awesome footage!!!
The Color Run 5k – I had a front and back camera through the race. I suspect people were being goofy behind my back. I have not reviewed the footage yet.
Song for family member #1 – definitely high energy – June 19th
Song for family member #2 – them requested is “Motown” – June 21st
Song for family member #3 – theme as yet undecided – early July (5th?)
Find, and hook up, and create, some DVD’s that have been requested since January
Old Family Photos from the 1950’s thru 80’s – interview and create adjoining commentary – create family video

I also have some other things that are important for me to do:

Visit mom next weekend
Start swimming. To build core muscles. I have a weekly date with my father in law and his pool that we need to start taking action on.
Get back to being regular on nutrition
Get back to being regular on working out & running (superset of #2)

And then there’s the thing that (I feel) has been lost:

Be creative and awesome at work, rather than just reacting.

There’s some things that I really don’t need to spend any time on, other than as brain-rechargers:

Play Firefall the Game – this usually takes up more time than I intend to allot to it.

So, I have to put my non-work creative efforts on hold, and do maintenance actions for a while. At least a week, maybe two. Then phase them back in, one at a time.

Firefall– I am enjoying this game!

In the realm of geeky, one of the things I am doing that I have not talked about here is .. playing the closed beta of Firefall.

Last night my wife gave me permission to upgrade to “Commander” level in my investment – which gives me a lot of in-game currency to buy the “pay-for” builds, and a Motorcycle to get around the map faster with. (they call them LGV’s) On a $/hr enjoyed ratio, I’ve already enjoyed this game enough to justify that investment.

Last night, after the purchase, I started to get serious. I’m building a spreadsheet of what kinds of resources I need to keep my eye out for, in order to build the “better” gear.

My goal: to have decent Tier-II gear so I can solo a Light Personal Thumper.

A quick crash course to frame this goal better:

There are 5 major resources, with 3 sub-species each. (See Xls Screenshot above)
When you mine them, they come in different qualities.
When you build components, the quality of the material you put in affects the stats of the item you build. So if I want more damage from my Heavy Turret II, I need to use a better quality Conductive Metal.
If I’m short on Conductive Metals, I could use another metal. However, a high quality Computational Metal used instead of a Conductive Metal would yield a lower quality.
To get resources, mostly you “mine” them using a “Thumper”
- You run around the map, scanning the ground with something called a “Scan Hammer”. It tells you what the concentrations of stuff are at the spot you’re standing. Concentrations shift over time.
- Pick a spot, and call down a specific size of thumper.
- The thumpers supposedly annoy the surrounding fauna and they come attack the thumper. Your job is to defend the thumper so it doesn’t get down to integrity=0 and blow up.
- The resources mined are shared amongst the people who helped defend it in some manner.
- The smallest thumper (Stock Personal) is easy to solo. I can send it back at Integrity = 80% or so.
- The next size up is the Light Personal Thumper, and I cannot solo that. I can’t kill them fast enough.

There’s other stuff to do around the game as well:

There’s an overall story line of an alien invasion (“Chosen”) with a different atmosphere (“Melding?”) with zombies (“Tortured Souls”) and they occasionally try to take over human territory (“Drop Ships, Incursions”) which makes it quite annoying to try to mine an area. If they take over an area for too long, they convert the atmosphere there and its effectively “lost”. (I don’t know if it can ever be taken back – probably not yet, but maybe in the future)
You can fly around the map using a glider. Gliders do exactly that: let you glide from a high elevation to a lower elevation – the higher off you start, the longer you can glide. There are achievements to unlock here (distances, sight seeing, death from above, etc)
There are roads that can be used to ride your motorcycle (“Light Ground Vehicle”) between places at high speed (which is quite fun).
There is PVP that can be queued for (not my cup of tea)
There’s something called a “Melding Tornado” which involves some dimensional shifting monster spawing blah blah dropping resource blah blah stuff.

A lot of the stuff (Chosen, Tornado) is pretty difficult to solo, however, the population is pretty quick to respond if you ask.. once you get two or three people working on it, most of the tasks are doable.

Things I like about this game:

I like that the difference between a newbie (stock armor, no enhancements) and a veteran (T2 armor and above) is in the same order of magnitude – unlike most other games. The monsters are the same for both – the veterans can handle more of them at a time.
Amazing sound. Explode a grenade and listen to the echo from the walls.
Good Graphics
FPS Shoot’em’up adrenaline
Jumpjets are fun
Good people playing the game. That will change when it goes public, but right now its awesome.
The battleframes are different enough in styles of play – each one has its own fun.

Okay, so done. This is what I’ve been playing for the last month or so … it replaced “European Truck Driving Simulator” as my go-to game. I hope I’ll be playing it for at least another month or two.

Almost all the images in this post are borrowed from other resources, which I have linked them to. This last one is me using GiantManiac’s thumper as a photo shoot.

I work at an awesome company!

I signed up for Short Term Disability & Discombobulation today. No big deal, one might say, but the manner in which it happened is what was different.

Previous experiences with companies: “Hi, we’re the really large Human Resources Department, and we have your best interests in mind, and thus here is the voodoo that you can choose from.” I know they do their jobs and I have to trust them on that, but I definitely did not feel like I had any participation or representation in the choices available to me.

This experience: “We’re thinking about maybe making some of this stuff available, if we sign up as a company we get a 40% discount over straight individual rates, lets meet with them and find out what our interest level is, we need 4 people to make it a go-ahead”. We got 8. I participated. Very informed decision.

(We referred to our Aflac sales team as Mr. and Mrs. Aflac; they are married.)

Freakin Awesome Software: Greenshot

Maybe I’m late to the party, and everybody already knows about this. I was introduced to it by Michael Thornberry

Why I use it:

Hotkey to take a screen capture => easy to start
Once screen capture is taken, THEN I get to choose what to do with it, including “just save it as a !#!# file NOW” and “I need to touch it up a bit”
In the editor:

My most recently N used colors are remembered!!!! (I use a LOT of color)
I can re-edit annotations after I’ve made them, making it closer to Visio than to Paint.Net in its flexibility
Built-in obsuffofusticate. (stupendulous!)
When I’m done editing, I can re-enter the pipleline of “what do I want to do with this image”

I suspect I’ve donated to them twice now. They are that awesome.

About the only thing I can’t do with them (yet) is to take captures of multiple little areas and put them together to tell a story. As soon as sourceforge lets me, I’m going to search for that feature request and upvote it.

Why I Have This Blog: #2/N

Derek Sivers put it beautifully, here: http://sivers.org/io

This is my expiration.

Thank you Derek. Some day, I would like to buy you a coffee, and listen to how your week has been, in person.

Boston

I don’t even know anybody who was running. My wife does. Yet I have been so freaked out?

I think I’m grieving the loss of innocence. Certainly not in me.. but maybe about this sport, Running, that I’ve just started doing. I don’t know what it is, but my heart is heavy. And my emotions have been coming out sideways… like really weird, wavy, driving, slamming the salt shaker down harder than normal, etc.

Denial – Is this really happening? Look at every news source, scrutinize, analyze, not satisfied with the words till I saw the carnage they described. I did find pictures of the carnage. It became real. I needed to know how real it was.
Bargaining – Is there something, anything I can do? Can I even write about it? If I were in Boston…
Anger – I usually stuff this one. I also usually go through this last. Hey, the salt shaker. Its there.
Depression – My wife asked, Honey, why are you so down? I’m just down.
Acceptance – Not quite there yet.

I had a different blog post in mind, something about a race I ran over the weekend. That can wait for later this week.

Geeky Side Notes:

#HelpBoston – thank you God for there being beauty in humanity.
http://live.abc15.com/Event/Boston_Marathon_Explosion_April_15_2013 – powered by http://www.scribblelive.com/. They became my main feed during the afternoon – well culled, well moderated, not a lot of hype, lots of facts, lots of helpful things, not a lot of speculation. I don’t know if it was @abc15 (Arizona) that was doing the culling, or if it was some other agency (ABC overall?) but Very Good Job Done. Thank you.
General thoughts of how my instinct is no longer to go to a news channel, but to find things that are more organic, more connected, more immediate – real people reporting what they are seeing, feeling, not a news organization regurgitating that which some PR person put together somehow.
My coworker Dan had the idea of listening in to the EMS radio channels on the ground.

Enough for today. Will try to focus back to work tomorrow.

Sunny’s Crash Course on FL-Studio

a. I have been very impressed by the “Crash Course” channel on YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/user/crashcourse

b. When I first started using FL-Studio, most videos were either too slow, too vulgar, or not broad enough. So, once I learned to use the system, I felt the need to make my own crash course video on the subject.

c. After two takes and a lot of editing, I think its “good enough”.

d. If I could make my living at making instructional things fro people who wanted to learn them, wow, sign me up.

Here it is:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoGCbciUQ0c&w=560&h=315]

I did learn while doing this:

1. Its better to talk and demo at the same time, rather than reading off a script and then trying to match the demo to the script later.

2. Youtube “links” to things can only go to other Youtube or Google things. So, I couldn’t link to a wikipedia article, for example.

3. I’m an engineer, not an artist.

On the Trail of Writing a Rap Song

This year, I’m volunteering to write songs for each of my extended family’s birthday’s. There’s a lot of them. It started off with a remake of Taylor Swift’s 22 for a 13 year old, and then a Surfin USA remake for my spouses’ dad. And then my ten year old nephew has asked for… Thriftshop. By Macklemore.

Not a problem.

Two days later, I’ve gotten a very rough draft of what the first two verses might be like, and it was time to look at the music. I’ve taken to downloading MIDI files, removing tracks, and then recording over with a live guitar and singing. *I do not sing well.

The free version of Thriftshop MIDI was dysmal. So I found: GeerDes Midi Music. And their version was phenomenal.

However, opening up the file in MusicStudio on my iPad yielded a problem. They were using a C#7 drum note, but the drums in Music Studio only went up to I think C6, which got substituded, which was a very awful sound. Editing those notes in the iPad was possible, but I thought hey maybe I can do something on the desktop computer with this. (actually, I left my iPad at work, so I was using the iPhone, and hence the desire to edit elsewhere – that screen can be tiny)

So I downloaded Anvil Studio, and found it .. meh, actually harder to use than MusicStudio. And it sounded horrible – the General Midi Synth in Windows is very meh. But it did have support for VSTi’s

Which lead me to (not linked here) various VSTi downloads, which turns out there are several that will play “.sf2” soundfonts, so I downloaded one, but it was a .sfark, so I had to get the decompressor for it, but then the VSTi ended up only playing a single instrument rather than multiple, and so I abandoned that..

But in the mean time I did a search for “Best DAW Midi”, which lead me to FL Studio, which I downloaded the trial for, and OMG! it installs polyphonic VSTi! and it edits MIDI! And layers audio! And there’s a wicked DJ looking thing that I COULD NOT FIGURE OUT! And its so frickin complex that my head hurts! And it might even be affordable! Which lead me to…

Lynda.com, my favorite video learning website covers Adobe products pretty well, but not FL Studio. But Groove3 does. for $15. I might do that. 4.5 hours. The reviews are not great, but there’s nothing else out there…

Then again, I could just wipe out that one line of notes with MusicStudio and move on.

But my curiosity is definitely up around FL-Studio. Its much more geared towards music creation than Adobe Audition 1.0, which is what I’ve used for the last 8(!) years for audio editing work. It might be time to upgrade my toolset.

Some day, I might even do voice lessons.

The Purpose Of This Blog (and deriving posting patterns)

When I started this blog, I wasn’t sure exactly what or why I was doing it. Maybe, I wanted to be famous like Hanselman. Maybe, I wanted to derive some ego from it. Maybe, I wanted to feel that my geekiness could be appreciated by some.

It is clearer now. Today, there are several components:

I hope my peers read it, and get it. And thus, get to know me a little bit better. I am a social being, and I have a need to be known. And unfortunately, I don’t game, I’m married, with a teenager who makes our lives interesting, and I don’t work out a lot, so there seems to be little overlap with my peers. But yeah, this is all a part of me.
When I run into somebody at CodePaLousa or the .Net Meetup Group, I’d love to hand them a card with the blog’s URL on it, just so that I have a “brand” that I could be identified by. I no longer want to be the Anonymous Software Developer who seeks to Prove Himself to You via Resume. That is so.. un-networked. (And no, I’m not looking, thank you very much)
Building on the previous point – I hope that in the future, if somebody is interested in hiring me – they’re hiring ME, not just my skills. ME the person. I’m hoping that I’ll have the this blog to document myself – my intent, my sparkle, my love of people, love of process, love of teamwork, love of Geeky STUFF. This is a gamble – that WHO I AM is a valuable asset, much more than whatever skills I am currently current at.

This decision, realization, understanding yields some side effects:

How Often Will I Update

I tried to be the “constant content creator.” One post a week, on Fridays. When I had a lot of stuff happen AND documented, I tried to stretch the posts out into the future, to have a series. It felt like I was lying – withholding myself to increase market share or some silly thing. Way too full of myself. I’m not going to do that again.

Today: I had the time, I had the keys, and I think this is my Third Post of the Day. (W00T!) Then there might not be anything for a while, till the buffer fills up again. And I get time to dump it out into a post.

Does this Blog Really Represent Me, or is it just a big Advertisement

Pretty much everything that goes on here is 100% indicative of me. (Although the inverse is not true: I am NOT 100% this blog, I am much more than this.. at least 3 circles more, which are off-topic here). [But, if this was an advertisement, could I say this and be lying… ? *ouch my brain hurts*]

If you know me in person, you will pretty quickly figure out: I am incapable of subterfuge, of keeping up a pretense, of keeping a poker face, of being fake. This yields some interesting awkward moments. But it also keeps my life simple. I like simple. I tried complicated, that disintegrated under its own gravity into nothingness.

What do I seek

I don’t think I’m going to discover something big, or write the most awesome anything (anymore (I used to)). Nor do I seek to make people think really hard about abstract ideas. Pretty much, I’m trying to figure out:

How can I make sense of things
How can I make things better
How can I be of service

At least, that’s what I *think* this blog is about. 8 months after starting it. Maybe another year will bring something different, but I doubt it.

What now?

I have no clue. I think with this, my buffer is clean. Tomorrow is going to be all about family stuff.. 6 of us going to a WWE event! Maybe next weekend.. who knows what will be brewing in me by then.

Enjoy!