Reality Me

Category: Daily Life

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

  • Mummified

    Have you ever looked at someone and wanted to shout, "Cut down on the botox!" and maybe as an after thought, "and drink some water." I saw this piece of leather in the car beside me today and couldn’t fight back a brief tribute to Joe DeRita. Yeeaaa ahhhh. Nyuck Nyuck Nyuck Nyuck Nyuck. I guess people from the beach are retiring in Knoxville.

  • From the mouths of babes

    Yesterday the neighbor caught me in the driveway as I started to take Noah to karate.

    Neighbor: "Doug is Noah home? Beth (a first grader) is over an hour late."
    Dad: "Noah is in the car."
    Neighbor: "Noah, did Lisa (Beth’s mother) pickup Beth?"
    Noah, 10 years: "No."
    Dad: "Did Beth ride the bus home with you?"
    Noah: "Yes."
    Dad: "Did she walk home with you?"
    Noah: "Yes."
    Dad: "Do you know where she is?"
    Noah: "No, her mom took her somewhere."

  • Omen

    You know it is going to be an interesting day when you wake up and all the digits on the clock read the same thing.

  • Work Complete!

    I just finished a fun piece of code for a client. In addition to web server logs, they have a prioprietary advertising campaign tracker. They needed data aggregated and queries optimized which was phase 1 and included some MS SQL stored procedure magic, queries of queries (ColdFusion), and manually creating query result sets.

    Phase II was to minimize the amount of text presented, show results in graphs, and create a way for an advertising client to view only their data. Fortunately, ColdFusion comes through with a fancy tag called CFChart and after the server configuration was debugged, graphs appeared. Then text on the screen was hidden using CSS (and I’m really starting to use and enjoy the cascading aspect of css) and made to appear through JavaScript.

    Since some charts show way too much data, a form was added to filter the data and only show lines on the graphs that are relevant to the end user’s needs.

  • The most horrible sound

    I hate hearding the 4 year old start repeated over and over "I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry." while hearing the 1 year old gasp for air and cry.

  • How do you prevent carpal tunnel?

    Two Paws enforces ergonomics

    I use a wrist wrest!

  • Tears hurt

    Amy wants to play outside right now. We spent a few minutes then came back inside. I want to play outside all day with her but I have to work. So much is at stake right now. Dollar amounts in the thousands. But none of that costs me as much as watching her slow, silent tears drip down her cheeks.

  • From the mouths of babes

    Amy: "You know Dad. Lucy died."

    We talk.

    Amy: "It makes me sad."

    What a big girl!

  • Forgetfulness

    Kristy's list

    I really irks me when I forget to do something. There is only so much that can fit into one day.

    Kristy makes a list.

  • The Hanso Foundation has been updated!

    Peter Thompson profile updated.

    Born in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1959, Peter Thompson earned degrees from Loyola University and The University of Chicago Law School before embarking on a successful career as a corporate attorney – until a lifetime of smoking left Thompson with an impossible prognosis: inoperable lung and pancreatic cancer.

  • CFChart problem solved!

    I changed multiple variables at once so all of this may not be necessary. The final solution to the CFChart doesn’t work / won’t display / is blank problem is to add a virtual directory in IIS under the website wanting to use CFChart for "CFIDE" and another virtual directory for "JRunScripts". The last post in this thread helped me realize that having virtual directories for CFIDE and JRunScripts in the webroot was not sufficient.

    Allan – CFUG Spain 5 Dec 2004 21:16:55 [ permanent link ]
    What you have do is:

    1. Create the file GraphData.cfm in the CFIDE directory. (As a file can’t be empty stick a comment in there )
    2. Make sure the IIS website entry has a virtual directory to CFIDE (C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\CFIDE)
    3. Make sure the IIS website entry has a virtual directory to JRunScripts (C:\CFusionMX\runtime\lib\wsconfig\1)

    Then restart CFMX server and Bob should be your uncle.

    Allan

    Update: Insult to injury. 6.5 hours ago, someone online recommended I confirm my mappings for CFIDE and scripts. I misinterpretted their question and blew it! Time to self-deprecate.

  • Time to regroup – CFChart or not CFChart

    So I’ve spent most of the day working on this issue. To recount, I’m trying to use CFChart to plot some data but the webpage returns blank. What we know:

    The zero byte file reference was interesting. For people having trouble with CFChart or RDS you may need to know:

    Some ColdFusion Administrator functions, as well as RDS and cfchart functionality, rely on two ColdFusion templates. However, these templates do not exist by default. You will need to create the following zero-byte files, since IIS will check for them during processing.

    1. Open Windows Explorer.
    2. Navigate to the web_root/CFIDE directory, typically located at \inetpub\wwwroot\CFIDE.
    3. Create a blank file named GraphData.cfm.
    4. Create a directory called main.
    5. Navigate to the new directory at web_root/CFIDE/main.
    6. Create a blank file titled ide.cfm.
    7. Repeat steps B-F for any additional instances of web_root/CFIDE.

    At this point I’m running out of time. Can I do this with a different solution?

  • Simple is never simple

    So I take on two quickie low cost, fast turn around projects and they are eating me alive!

    The first is a ColdFusion reporting project that is simply supposed to take the existing statistics report and produce a chart using CFChart. Works fine on my CFMX6.1 development server but apparently IIS6 and CF7.1 don’t play nice when it comes to CFChart. The problem is with IIS but Adobmedillare has been kind enough to release a hot fix that doesn’t work. "This hot fix explicitly generates HTTP headers before the chart data."

    The second simple project is a PHP COTS shopping system (x-cart) that needs some customization. Only, it’s not using PHP per se. The customizations are all done using SMARTY. The challenge with programming, particularly web application programming, is constantly having to learn new languages/frameworks/methodoligies and being able to turn work like its old hack.

    Using this simple CFChart example works in CF6.1 and fails in CF7.01 even after the hot fix.

    <cfchart>
       <cfchartseries type="pie">
          <cfchartdata item="New car sales" value="50000">
          <cfchartdata item="Used car sales" value="25000">
          <cfchartdata item="Leasing" value="30000">
          <cfchartdata item="Service" value="40000">
       </cfchartseries>
    </cfchart>

    Anyone have extra tickets for CFUnited? I’d love to go this year but can’t justify the cost of the event.

    UPDATE: Just tried the ColdFusion MX 7.0.1 Cumulative Hot Fix 2 with no luck. Note the hot fix advises:

    Any individual hot fixes previously installed that are now contained in this cumulative hot fix should be removed.
    …
    we recommend always using the latest version of the cumulative hot fix

    In short, remove any previous *.jars and only install the latest fix.

  • The cute things they do that we don’t talk about

    So parents have to go to the bathroom too. You find an activity that may occupy the child just long enough but at one year old they move fast. Pretty soon this knee high, nearly bald bundle of cuteness has snuck up behind you, grabbed one knee with both hands with a squeeze that would make you think the floor was about to fall out beneath him, then from his hidding place behind your leg he slowly peers around your knee looking up at you with these wide round eyes as if to say " Whatcha doing? Oh Daad! Don’t you know you are supposed to do that in your diaper?!"

    Not yet son.

  • Storms cometh

    The rolling thunder sounds awesome!