Joseph DeVore's Blog

SVN Snippet to copy trunk to tagged version

2010-07-05T03:38:00-07:00

svn copy cp -rf trunk tags/1.0
svn commit -m " create a first tagged version"

Using ColdFusion and ODBC sockets on 64-bit Windows 2008 connecting to SQL Server 2008

2010-05-13T16:33:00-07:00

If you're trying to connect an ODBC socket to a SQL Server 2008 box and you run into an SSL issue - you can create a trusted connection with ODBC sockets and Windows ODBC manager. Just remember that if this is a 64-bit box... you have to create the same datasource twice. Once in the 32-bit and once in the 64-bit apps:
1. c:\Windows\system32\odbcad32.exe
2. c:\Windows\SYSWOW64\odbcad32.exe

Rapid Response Data Mart - ARRA Reporting XML Automation

2010-03-25T19:27:00-07:00

I'll be presenting on April 18th, 2010 in New York with my coworker Rachel. Our topic of discussion is the tool that we built that allows the University of Washington to report to Recovery.gov on time, receive millions in ARRA funding and continue to receive this stimulus money, in part due to the fact that we're reporting on time and successfully. The application that we wrote reduced the manual labor by at least 99%, but my boss says 98% so I'll agree with him. I wrote all of non-data related code using ColdFusion 9, SQL, XML, 32 different XSDs, HTTP and SFTP. The other team members were Rachel Gatlin, she built the data mart, Greg Maass, he built the SharePoint sites and David Uhlar, he built some front-end data collection forms. Then there's about 200 more people involved it seems: http://www.washington.edu/research/gca/recovery/ This is my biggest accomplishment thus far for the University of Washington. It has the biggest impact as well as the most visibility. It was and is a complete success. For these first two quarters so far, we were one of three agencies in the entire United States to report using the Federal Reporting API (automated method) vs. manual MS Excel spreadsheets and the federalreporting.gov website. Here's a bit more about the work and our up coming presentation: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) introduced stringent new reporting standards for research and projects funded by stimulus funds. The pressures of ARRA's timelines and requirements threw out normal planning practices and required a rapid response. In under four months the UW developed an incredibly successful data mart based system for reporting that reduced the required human effort by over 98% compared to a proposed manual solution by combining data from our central DW with transactional data from areas not yet incorporated into the central DW and then building application and reporting interfaces. Presentation will include design, challenges and decisions made in the creation of the ARRA Mart, the outcomes (foreseen and unforeseen), the nature of the collaborative effort across business and technical units that had not previously worked together, and the new opportunities to improve our transaction systems, our business processes and the build out of our central DW including improvements to an area currently in the process of building out in our central DW. Our "Rapid Response Data Mart" for ARRA demonstrates the value of using all available information to enable agility and efficiency in a time of increasing regulation and decreasing funding.

Headed to NY to present our ARRA project that continues to bring UW millions in federal funding!

2010-02-26T12:01:00-07:00

I'm pretty excited to speak at, The Higher Education Data Warehousing Forum (HEDW) about our team's "Rapid Response Data Mart" - a set of tools that we use to meet the University of Washington's federal reporting requirements. Being one of three entities in America to accomplish ARRA Federal Reporting using automated XML vs. Excel Spreadsheets or through the federalreporting.gov website. Looking forward to doing this presentation with Rachel Gatlin. It should be fun and stressful ;-) HEDW is a network of higher education colleagues dedicated to promoting the sharing of knowledge and best practices regarding knowledge management in colleges and universities, including building data warehouses, developing institutional reporting strategies, and providing decision support. The Forum meets once a year and sponsors a series of listservs to promote communication among technical developers and administrators of data access and reporting systems, data custodians, institutional researchers, and consumers of data representing a variety of internal university audiences. There are approximately 780+ active members in HEDW, representing professionals from 390+ institutions found in 20+ different countries and 43+ different states.

I just started selling my old fabrics...

2010-02-26T11:47:00-07:00

At one point in my life, I was an inspiring designer. I mostly focused on bag design, like backpacks, wallets, purses, stash bags, snowboarding clothes, etc. Since the early 90's I've been lugging around my fabrics, findings, zippers, buckles, patterns, you name it! As well as all of the industrial sewing machines and tables... I've recently decided to sell a lot of my fabrics and foam. I started up a new Etsy site so that I can offer this stuff to other DIY'ers. Check out my stuff at: http://urbanlanguage.etsy.com There isn't much there yet, but there soon will be~ -JD

Best Amazon Review Ever

2009-12-28T22:11:00-07:00

1.0 out of 5 stars I try to make for friend of all the chicken heads. My name is called Klakpoo and I am born from Oro Province in New Guinea. I am doing college student at Tennessee College University for work in hospital. Many many nights I enjoy the dancing clubs with rooms for lights and music. I take money for women and ... See Morefriends at the drinking. I see the booth man playing hard many musics and think "Klakpoo likes that". Booth man look to have many women and party toward everyone with his bouncing head. I ask my friend whose name is called Kerry how booth man do. He give me this and say "Klakpoo! This is Jay Z music mixing maker from New York! You too can be like 50 Cents!" I not have to look like Connie West to be full of women too! We take it to party house of friends. There are many brizzles of them there. I turn on operating, it hum not loud. I push disc to make musics, it squeak and go "Bonk! Bonk!". Ears cant music dance! I touch buttons many lights of "Bleeep!" No hoe comes to me with skins. It sound no good for party of people look for dance. It is whack. I not end up being flies, but being mad buns!! December 20 at 1:09am

New Phone Service for Urban Language

2009-11-25T02:54:00-07:00

I've been using this new phone service and I love it so far. I figured I'd share it with the world.

Your 30-day free trial includes access to all features, including up to 500 minutes of US/Canada calling. International calling requires full service activation. You can upgrade to full service anytime.

Here are the features that you will get when you sign up for a trial Toktumi 800 number and hopefully you'll love it and convert to a customer for just $14.95/mo:

A dedicated number that finds you on any phone. Get a local number, an 800 number, or transfer an existing number.*
Powerful office phone features including call waiting, call transfer, caller ID, call forwarding, and more.
A second number for your cell phone that allows you to place and receive calls on your cell phone from your Toktumi number.
Now you can keep your personal cell number private without having to carry two cell phones.
Auto Attendant ("Press 1 for&") that's like a 24/7 receptionist - managing and routing incoming calls to the right person or department automatically.
Instant conference calls for up to 20 people -- you can even record your conference calls for future reference (windows only).
Voicemail by e-mail that simplifies your communications and helps you easily manage your important messages.
Virtual Assistant that screens and announces calls and provides different greetings for business and personal callers.
PC-based calling for conducting calls and conferences from your PC anywhere worldwide.
You can even dial numbers by name or keyword (windows only).
Unlimited calling, call forwarding, and conferencing to U.S. and Canadian numbers as well as other Toktumi users worldwide.
Ultra-low rates for international calls, e.g. $.02 per minute for calls to China, Italy, and the U.K. See rates here.
No surprises - No hidden fees, no contracts, no equipment required.
One low monthly price gets you everything.

Click here and Get it all for just $14.95 per month!

We use the service and we love it!

* number transfer requires a one-time $25.00 fee.

Toktumi Trial

ColdFusion 9 Verified Bugs

2009-08-03T19:30:00-07:00

Although every one of the bugs that I found in the newest version of ColdFusion (Centaur/CF 9) were pretty lame - I am proud to say that I had NINE (9) verified bugs this version! Almost all of them have been marked as fixed and will appear in the final product, first release because they were all minor. I feel like I did my part this release to make a better product and my journey continues. ColdFusion 9 rocks. Just the Solr piece alone is so lovely, let alone the fact that you can CFSCRIPT nearly everything which is totally my preference for writing CFML. Scripting just feels more natural to me. Great job on this one CF engineers/beta community!

Joe's Killer Bread! - Useful development resources for myself and whomever finds them

2009-06-28T23:14:00-07:00

Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Events Specification
The Document Object Model Events Level 3, a generic platform- and language-neutral event system which allows registration of event handlers, describes event flow through a tree structure, and provides basic contextual information for each event. The Document Object Model Events Level 3 builds on the Document Object Model Events Level 2 [DOM Level 2 Events].

Programming ActionScript 3.0
A foundation for developing applications in ActionScript 3.0.

Flex 2 API Diagram

Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 revision 1 CSS 2.1 Specification
Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 revision 1 (CSS 2.1).
CSS 2.1 is a style sheet language that allows authors and users to attach style (e.g., fonts and spacing) to structured documents (e.g., HTML documents and XML applications). By separating the presentation style of documents from the content of documents, CSS 2.1 simplifies Web authoring and site maintenance.

Since Google indexed this page and I have the top spot for Joe's Killer Bread, I figure I'll give the link to the real bread maker, http://www.daveskillerbread.com/

2008 Tax Deductions List

2009-01-28T21:27:00-07:00

So I'm thinkin... I just had a child in 2008, there's gotta be a tax deduction for that. I live in Washington State so there's a Sales Tax Deduction that I know of... There's a Recovery Rebate Credit, and who knows what else I'll find digging through this IRS website. I hate t-a-x-e-s as much as the next guy so I would love to find more of these gems. If you live in Washington state and know of any others, feel free to post them to my comments section! Thanks

Hosting - I finally moved my site to one of my new servers...

2009-01-11T07:46:00-07:00

I can't believe it's taken me this long to move my site to one of my new servers. I can now finally take advantage of not only the new datacenter, server and OS - but the best of all - ColdFusion 8! It's amazing how much better and faster my new servers are and data center is. Yahoo! If you need hosting, feel free to contact me. Submit a sales ticket at http://support.ul3c.com -JD

Windows Password Reset

2008-12-22T12:44:00-07:00

I've been locked out of a Windows VM on several occasions because of one reason or another - most of the time it's because I set the password, use the VM for a while and then I don't log in for long enough to totally forget what the password was. Since I've done this soooo many times, I figured OK, it's time I find a reliable utility to reset the SAM data for Windows users. In VMWare Fusion on my Mac I just downloaded this ISO file and set it as the CD ISO. When the VM starts up, I hit ESC and it offers me the list of boot devices. I choose the CD ROM and then viola, my password resetting utility loads up. I follow the prompts, reset the locked out status, change the password to blank and then I restart the VM instance. Once Windows loads up, my password is blank and the account isn't locked out any longer so it loads without me having to log in. Worked like a charm!! Now if only I had found this updated ISO before I deleted my Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista Premium VMs due to my old utility not writing back to the SAM. Anyhow, in short, this tool rocks the rocking horse. Enjoy~ -JD

Master page debugging when branding SharePoint sites

2008-10-27T22:49:00-07:00

I've been doing a lot of SharePoint master page customization lately and OOTB, SharePoint traps any exceptions by default. If you have a syntax error or are missing a required ContentPlaceHolder, you'll receive a friendly error message and have no idea of why your new master page won't work. If you want to save yourself some time and some hair - just turn off Friendly Errors! On the web server, navigate to the site directory for your SP site: c:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\[site] Open: Web.config in Notepad. Search for: CallStack and change the CallStack status to: true. Search for: CustomErrors and change the mode to: off. Save and close the file. Now when you receive an error, you'll get the .NET debugging information.

Pandora for your iPhone is finally here!

2008-07-15T17:22:00-07:00

Pandora Radio is your own FREE personalized radio now available to stream music on your iPhone. Just start with the name of one of your favorite artists, songs or classical composers and Pandora will create a "station" that plays their music and more music like it. Get Pandora for your iPhone man, I can't wait to check it out... downloading the iPhone update right now to get this sucker rocking.

Wow! Making the Flash file format (SWF) a first-class citizen in searchable web content...

2008-07-04T17:19:00-07:00

"Google and Yahoo! now have optimized Adobe Flash Player technology to enhance search engine indexing of SWF files. Best of all, developers don't have to do anything to their published SWFs for them to be indexed." - Holy crap! Adobe has provided Flash Player technology to Google and Yahoo! that allows their search spiders to navigate through a live SWF application as if they were virtual users. The Flash Player technology, optimized for search spiders, runs a SWF file similarly to how the file would run in Adobe Flash Player in the browser, yet it returns all of the text and links that occur at any state of the application back to the search spider, which then appears in search results to the end user. This has been a problem for a long time. Great to hear that Adobe is working with these search giants to make this happen - exciting times for RIA developers! SWF searchability...