Done With Deathly Hallows (No Spoilers)

Well, I was able to finish Deathly Hallows in just about one sitting. It took me about 15 hours to read (with breaks for food and sanity) and I have to say that I'm as unsettled by the book as much as I was by Order of the Phoenix and Half-blood Prince. That more than likely means that I'll be more OK with it as I read it again. The only thing I have to say about the book at this point is that it is DEFINITELY NOT a kids book anymore. If you're reading it now or waiting to read it, it's a good book and it is a much more "realistic" experience if you consider that Voldemort was supposed to be the most powerful and feared dark wizard. You really get a sense at how true that is in this book.

Deathly Hallows Already On Its Way?

Updated Update - Well, Blaise confirmed it when he went home early. The book is not there. This means that Amazon/UPS have created a situation where the false positive deliveries will more than likely anger a lot of excitable people (like me). I believe that the delivery means that it was successfully delivered to the distribution trucks in Columbia and I'll still be receiving it sometime tomorrow. I can't confirm this as I don't want to do any searches that might result in me stumbling upon a spoiler. Ah...obsession.

Update - Constant vigilance pays off!

What in the blue blazes!? I thought it wasn't supposed to be delivered until tomorrow night? Well, after checking the tracking number on UPS.com I guess UPS has a different status for when it's on the truck.

According to Amazon...


According to UPS...

CF Developer Positions

Just a note to anyone who reads this and is, or knows, a CF developer that wants to work in the Baltimore area at JHU. There are 2 temp to perm CF positions and one 3-4 month temp CF/AJAX position all of which would be on location. If you're interested or know someone who might be, please contact me.

Eureka is right

The SciFi channel would have earned my attention and respect if the only thing they had done was to play repeats of Firefly. They topped that by bringing back and updating a classic in Battlestar Galactica. Now I've gotten hooked on a new SciFi original, Eureka.

...With the help of Albert Einstein and other trusted advisors, President Harry S. Truman commissioned a top-secret residential development in a remote area of the Pacific Northwest, one that would serve to protect and nurture America's most valuable intellectual resources. There our nation's greatest thinkers, the über-geniuses working on the next era of scientific achievement, would be able to live and work in a supportive environment.

The best architects and planners were commissioned to design a welcoming place for these superlative geniuses to reside, an area that would offer the best education for their children, the best healthcare, the best amenities and quality of life. A community was created to rival the most idyllic of America's small towns — with one major difference: this town would never appear on any maps. At least, none that haven't been classified "eyes only" by the Pentagon.

Thus, the town of Eureka was born. But for all its familiar, small-town trappings, things in this secret hamlet are anything but ordinary. The stereotype of the absent-minded professor exists for a reason, and most of the quantum leaps in science and technology during the past 50 years were produced by Eureka's elite researchers. Unfortunately, scientific exploration is rarely what one expects, and years of experiments gone awry have yielded some peculiar by-products...

[SciFi.com]

Best Replacement iPod Earbuds

I am extremely satisfied with my Gumy Earbuds as a replacement for the ones that came with my iPod (it's an old model but I haven't had to upgrade it...yet). They have a nice mix of treble and bass and don't sounds tinny like some of the other pairs that I've bought to replace my iPod earbuds which have apparently started to break down with use.

The Gumy material isn't necessarily any softer on your ear than the smooth iPod earbuds, but the Gumy material has a bit better grip on the inside of your ear. Feel free to quote me on that.

It's a Safari out there

It's likely not surprising news to you, but a beta Safari browser has been released for Windows. Finally developers can (crosses fingers) test cross-browser functionality for Mac users who use Safari. But before I can get to that point, my OCD (not really, but kinda) forced me to notice that the extra buttons on my trackball optical don't allow me to navigate back and forward in the browser history. That's because the default of ctrl-left arrow and ctrl-right arrow don't work in Safari. Instead you have to application specifically map your mouse to ctrl-[ and ctrl-].

So far I like the Safari browser, but I don't think I've fallen for the trap that Apple laid.

Javascript setInterval() and setTimeout() argument passing

Update: I've modified the post in order to rant about IE not supporting anything after the 2nd argument. Also, I've fixed the example to remind myself of the cross-browser supported syntax.

Just a quick posting to remind myself...

setInterval( function() { fxn(arg[,args]...)} , TimeBetweenIntervals)
setTimeout( function() { fxn(arg[,args]...)} , DelayTimeBeforeTrigger)

If you have a function that doesn't need to reference elements in the DOM (IE it's not a generic function that isn't hardcoded to reference DOM elements or variables) then you can pass in text as a string.

Ex.) myInterval = window.setInterval("displayTime()",1000);

If however, you need to pass variables into an interval or timout that could vary, then use the following:

Ex.) myTimeout = window.setTimeout( function() {displayTime(document.getElementById('clockDiv'))},1000);

Your displayTime() function would accept a DOM element that it would target in order to swap out the time value. This DOM element can then vary between distinct instances of intervals. For instance, you could have a page that is timing different processes and displays the run time for each process in a different div - all of which are using the same displayTime() method to change the HTML.

TinyMCE WYSIWYG Control

Update: And then there's FCKEditor which seems surprisingly like TinyMCE but which has been picked up by Adobe and will be embedded in the next version of ColdFusion. It might not be a bad time to adopt FCKEditor as a standard HTML control if, like me, you'll more than likely still be doing ColdFusion in a few years. Ah, the main difference between the two is that FCKEditor requires that you pay money to license it.

I have a client whose site is built using classic ASP and their content management pieces use an older version of the ActivEdit software. When my client upgraded to IE7, the ActivEdit became extremely unpredictable and I recommended that we switch to a different utility. After 30-45 minutes of research I landed on TinyMCE.

TinyMCE is a platform independent web based Javascript HTML WYSIWYG editor control released as Open Source under LGPL by Moxiecode Systems AB. It has the ability to convert HTML TEXTAREA fields or other HTML elements to editor instances. TinyMCE is very easy to integrate into other Content Management Systems.

[TinyMCE]

If you aren't able to use FreeTextBox for ASP.NET and you don't want to pay for a WYSIWYG control for your PHP, ColdFusion or Classic ASP, then you must check this out.

Dynamically Appended Form Elements in Firefox

Today I spent about 30 minutes trying to figure out why my dynamically appended form elements were no longer being passed to my receiving page in FireFox when they were clearly there in IE. The problem started happening when I implemented an old trick to hide the form padding by nesting it inside of a table tag improperly. It's really simple to modify the padding of a form tag with style sheets, but old (and lame) habits are hard to break.

Of course, I did this before leaving for the night and didn't remember that edit when I resumed my development this morning. However, once I did a little research I quickly cursed myself, implemented the style sheet fix, returned my form tags to their proper (and W3C approved positions) position and shazaam!

FIOS Hosed

Two nights ago I was doing side work with the screen door closed and the sounds of the neighboorhood drifting in through the door. Sounds like kids playing, cars passing by, dogs barking and someone mowing their lawn. Suddenly my laptop lost it's connection to the internet. Hrmm...

After checking the laptop and the rebooting the router twice, I decided on a whim to check the FIOS cable that the Verizon install team left exposed and running behind my house to the terminal. Shortly after I got to the grassy strip behind my house, I discovered it. A gash in the line that was more than likely caused by that lawnmower I heard.

Well, if you have FIOS running your internet AND your phone, you're really screwed when you try to contact Verizon to have them come and fix your service in the middle of the night. So I called them on my cell phone and had to schedule to leave work early the next day in order to meet the repair technician. He pointed out that it looked as thought the contractor that was paid to bury the FIOS cable had done the work, but never connected it to the house as there was a coil of fiber cable poking it's way out of the ground beneath the external housing.

So now that I'm back up and running at home and I have a buried fiber line, I think I'll be dropping Comcast and put all of my eggs in the Verizon basket by picking up FIOS TV. It'll even save me a few bucks per month and the best part is that I won't have to deal with their crappy DVR UI again.