Category: Daily Life

Ramblings, often stream of conscious, journaling the events of my life.

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Of Being Dad

I jumped on the trampoline with Amy today. We had a blast! My poor head and body didn’t handle it that well. We become sedentary and our bodies uncomfortable with such motions. I’ll have to do it more often! We then went exploring the property and discovered a hole in the ground that we guess must be where a raccoon or skunk lives. We walked down into the dry creek for an inspection. Amy has never done that before and was very amused! While I was inspecting the largest tree on our property, I disturbed a nest of ants and got bit by something. I think they are carpenter ants. Looks like I need to call the Agriculture Extension Agent for a recommendation on a tree doctor. I’d hate to lose that tree! I think I’d cry then sell the house.

Amy and I had a great time outside and she cheerfully requested another exploration and "hike" tomorrow.

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WARNING ON BLOGRUSH!

I was reading 99 Ways to Promote Your Blog for Free and liking the suggestions. Perhaps it would be fun to promote a little extra traffic to the site. I despise watching websites get overloaded with Javascript widgets and gizmos. However, I am guilty of doing that to Reality Me. It is bogged down with useless, behind the scenes Javascript. My list of round tuits includes cleaning up Reality Me and Domestic Psychology. Things like RobotReplay and PhpMyVisites are no longer of use to me but they remain behind the scenes slowing the site down. The Twitter widget and the MyBlogLog widget I find enhancing to the functionality of the site. I see Google Analytics as a necessary evil and I still debate the value of Adsense on a blog such as Reality Me (although apparent it protects – Can someone help me find that citation? I think Michael Silence carried it a while back. Some law was passed saying that if you run ads on your website you are protected the same was as traditional journalists.).

When I read 99 Ways to Promote Your Blog for Free, BlogRush was in the number one or two position. I should have taken a warning when I noticed the author was not using a referral link. Today I noticed that the Javascript code I put in my sidebar to validate Reality Me with Blogrush had changed from a box of links to other sites to become a Google Adsense box. Now, I have Google ads that run on Reality Me (when the ad isn’t encouraging you to buy the shirt off Cathy’s back) so I think Blogrush put me in danger of being in violation of my TOS with Google. Granted, I was supposed to read the Blogrush TOS and I’m sure they revealed that putting ads on my site is part of the agreement. But I do not agree with that! So I will be parting company with Blogrush. I wonder what is in the #3 position on 99 Ways to Promote Your Blog for Free?

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Yesterday’s Butt Kicking Continues

Yesterday’s morning R&D centered around trouble shooting an SMTP problem with a Windows2003 server and ASP. Basically, I don’t get the error on my development server, which is still a Windows2000 machine. That means it could be code or server setup. The problem manifests itself when an attempt is made to send an email after a form is submitted.

CDO.Message.1 error ‘80040220’

The “SendUsing” configuration value is invalid.

This error message is all over Google (see also) (remember to use Blingo – aff link!).

I solve this in the next 2 hours!

Update: Why does Google continue to index www.experts-exchange.com?! Never click anything that is a link to www.experts-exchange.com! They obviously understand SEO really well.

Update: Troubleshooting thus far.

Title: The “SendUsing” configuration value is invalid in Windows 2003
Name: Scott Forsyth
Date: 3/27/2006 10:10:04 AM
Comment:
Hi Monde,

On Windows Server 2003, if you don’t specify the default smtp server, it needs to obtain that from the IIS metabase. That isn’t allowed by default in IIS6, but you can add it with metaacl.vbs. Google and download a copy of metaacl.vbs and the run the following:

cscript metaacl.vbs “IIS://Localhost/smtpsvc” IIS_WPG RE
cscript metaacl.vbs “IIS://Localhost/smtpsvc/1” IIS_WPG RE

This will give the IIS_WPG group read permissions to the smtpsrv node so that you’ll be able to obtain the default SMTP server without specifically setting it in code. This will often resolve the error that you have run into.

[Source]

Now, all of that said, only hurdle one has been jumped. My error message of "The "SendUsing" configuration value is invalid." is gone but mail is getting stuck in //Inetpub/mailroot/Queue. At least it is not going to the Badmail folder. Brief break then onto hurdle two.

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What do I do?

Yesterday I typed frantically for 20.5 hours straight. I am only going to count 12 hours of those since I broke for lunch and 3:30am to noon did include a lot of R&D. Let’s assume I type 60 words a minute. So 12 hours times 60 minutes equals 720 minutes. 720 minutes times 60 words = 43200 words.

The average length of a novel is 60000-100000 words. [Source]
65000+ [Source]
12,500; 15,000; 62,500; or 75,000 [Source]

So even if we cut my 43,200 words in half for 21,600 words it looks like I am well on my way to writing a novel in a day or two. Of course, we could add in the other 8.5 hours of typing for another 30,600 words plus the 43,200 totaling 73,800! A novel in a day! What does Stephen King make per book?

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Happy Birthday Dean!

My younger brother celebrated another year today! Happy Birthday! I remember in my early teens going to a shoe store and having our feet measured. The shoe salesman spoke the sizes and said the larger number went with my younger brother’s foot! Absurd! I corrected and told him he got the sizes backwards to which he explained he didn’t. I finally came to terms with my brother’s foot being bigger than mine and when he grew taller than me I could accept that too. I’ve just never understood how my younger brother got to be older than me!

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Oh! That’s why I hurt.

Evan and Amy watch their dad, Doug the Juggler

My forearms have had a fairly constant burning pain the past couple of days. I assumed it was to over typing. They feel like the muscle wants to pull from the bone. It suddenly dawned on me today why! I have formed a habit of juggling in the parking lots while waiting at the schools for the students to dismiss from their activities. Specifically, I’ve started putting 15 minutes of juggling in everyday while waiting to pick Amy up from kindergarten. The juggling relaxes me and I feel my control really coming back strong! I’ll be juggling 6 or 7 bean bags in a few weeks.

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Developer Tip of the Day

If you have two servers with the same directory structure and you are ftp’d and remote desktop’d into one of these servers, when you ftp a file if it doesn’t immediately appear in the directory in the remote desktop, then you are probably ftp’d into the wrong server.

To non-developers, I acknowledge that as you read that you probably hear Charlie Brown’s adult wah wahs in your head. For that, I apologize!

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What is Monday?

Project 1 says be done now!
Project 2 says be done now!
Project 3 says be done now!
Project 4 says be done now!
Project 5 says be done now!
Project 6 says be done now!
Bank says be done with all projects now!
Dryer says make me your project now!
PTO says be done now!
Scouts say be done now!

I feel finished.

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High School Football Idn’t Bad!

As a teen, I went to two high schools. Only going to one wasn’t challenging enough. Okay, maybe that’s not it. I went to 9th and 10th grade at Lenape High School in Medford, New Jersey. I went to 11th and 12th grade at Germantown High School in Germantown, Tennessee. In the 9th grade I was on the track team doing pole vault, high jump, hurdles, and the 400 meter relay. That was fun! I gave it up because I learned that if you work for someone they give you money. I started washing buses for $3 per hour under the table. That was the end of my high school extracurricular activity. What a mistake! Between working and being absorbed with computers, I never went to a high school football game.

Since my daughter Sarah is now on the flag team at her high school, we are going to the games as good band parents should, to support the school. I have to say I have enjoyed the games very much (despite what Cathy’s pictures would have you believe)! I like bumping into friends, and the teams play really well! I’ll be going to many more.

Farragut vs Bearden was a loud game! We showed up earlier than last time and thought we’d missed kickoff. From the parking lot the stadium could be seen as packed and it roared with activity. I won’t review the game because there are more qualified people to do that. I’ll just say it was not boring. The Bearden band did not know their routine so the half-time show had no marching and no flags. That was a bit of a let down. I was tickled to see Brian Hornback on the field during Scott Moore’s presentation of a $500 contribution to each school! Cathy knew he’d be there because Brian doesn’t miss Farragut football games but we really didn’t expect to see him much less on the field! During half-time a woman in the Farragut bleachers passed out and several paramedics and police carried her out. I fear it was heart attack. I’d certainly like to know that she’s okay. They almost drove an ambulance into the stadium to get her. The game went into overtime and the teams played ferociously but Bearden ended up losing to Farragut 35 to 28. Despite their great playing, the high schoolers were distraught, some to the point of tears. Frankly, Bearden won the can drive and played an exceptional game. I know its easy to say but they should be proud! Get ’em next time!

Here’s the schools I attended:

  1. Pre-school, St John’s Episcopal Church, Wilmington, NC
  2. Kindergarten+2weeks 1st grade: Forest Hills Elementary School, Wilmington, NC
  3. 1st-3rd: Cary Elementary School, Cary, North Carolina
  4. 4th and 5th: Not Audubon? (have to look that one up)
  5. 6th and 7th: Theodore Roosevelt Middle School, Kenner, Louisiana
  6. 8th: Medford Middle School, Medford, New Jersey
  7. 9th and 10th: Lenape High School, New Jersey
  8. 11th and 12th: Germantown High School, Germantown, TN
  9. 1988-1993: University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee
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Excited to See Tommy Grow Up

I am participating in a transition fair at West High School today. It is good to see so many familiar faces! Tommy’s teachers are there. Old friends are there. I like chatting with the parents of Tommy’s peers, the professionals, and people we have gotten to know over the years. The social opportunity, chance to catch up, and sharing of information is almost more valuable than the actual workshops. We talked our way half way through the first session!

This fair is exciting because Tommy has done so well for himself. I am excited at the prospect of Tommy going off on his own to further his education and then move onto be self-sufficient with a career. So unbelievable to consider either possibility since earlier in Tommy’s life we had assumed he would always live at home or otherwise under someone’s wings.