Developers Block

So, I'm stuck. Usually I try for two posts a week, but I can't accomplish anything tonight. I can't write, and I can't get any work done. I'm sure this has happened to you. What do you do?

I'm going to walk away from my machine and watch some James Bond (best movie I could find onDemand). I would love to hear about what you do when you find yourself here.

Hey Folks - Update

So, the official final deal is that the project is still in the works, and in the meantime I will be working on some other projects likely for the company I am with. I know it sounds cryptic but that's the story and I'm sticking to it. I'm not going to lie, the whole thing really took a toll on me with the stress and not knowing. However, I've had time to do some "me" things which is nice... kind of. All in all it's been a rough two weeks and that's why you haven't seen that much of me.

I'm resting, I'm revamping, and I will be back to my rank as reigning princess of bloated opinions around these parts shortly.

THE SEXIEST DEVELOPER CONTEST ENTRIES ARE DUE BY SUNDAY 2/27. Remember - a bio, a picture, and the reason you are sexy needed to apply. We have some

great candidates.

The WAN Parties on Weds night have been really fun thus far. It's nice to talk nerd for one night a week. They are Weds at 7:30pm... shoot me an email for details. All are invited.

Thanks for sticking around, and as always happy developing.

//TODO: #2

So, here is my fogbugz list of tickets. EDIT: How about ACTUALLY posting the list? As an aside, I'm considering switching to Base Camp  just for the price. Base Camp is $49, where FogBugz, due to the number of users, is $125. This is annoying though since FogBugz has my data. Curses!!! Has anyone used both? How do you like Base Camp?

Actually the biggest monkey on my back is this data import. Now, this FMP database is 3gig, which is completely insane for 633 records, however, it's not normalized so there is all kinds of crazy stuff in there duplicated. There are columns with +120kb of data which is too much for sql sserver. That's the point I'm at, getting rid of those huge entries, or at least cutting them down.

The existing pages are being re-skinned or wired up, the nav is evolving and it's doing great. There was a diagreement in the group on the format, and ultimately what came of it is a super awesome solution. We are doing a vertical as well as a horizontal navigation.

So, so far so good. Our launch date has been moved to 2/12. So far we are on track to meet that goal. I've been putting in a lot of extra hours, though, in order to make sure there is a little padding. .

Today was my neice Lilia's first birthday party!!! She's adorable, don't you agree?

 

Dev and Dev, maybe some more Dev...

Haven't been around for a few days, been kind of  in hibernation getting some things done. Got the first few pages out and tested and about to have a few more. After Nov 1st and before Dec 1st my goals are the following:

-Implement the payment gateway (between the pages and the security)

-Get the forums up and going, I think I'm going to be using  Community Server.

-Complete user logic

-Url Rewriting

-Ad rotation

-S3 Image upload from the browser (fileserver to S3) ... having trouble finding .NET support for this

-Choosing a production server, I'm leaning towards Rackspace?

I guess the point is it wont be a lot of development. Which is a bummer but it means I will be done by then (hurrah!!)

For those of us NOT at PDC, some MVP's and ASPInsiders are putting together a group #NotatPDC. For information on giving a talk or how to partcipate here is the email associated.

I DID catch up on a lot of TV over the weekend. SNL was pretty good last night, however, there was a lot of Mad Men references. I'm a little paranoid now that I've been warned that Mad Men is due to jump the shark soon because of it's publicity. The Mad Men finale was good, as you can imagine I love me some Peggy, but come on, she deserves better than that, no. (look ma, no spoiler!) Dexter is becoming less relatable. I feel like he is letting his guard down in an unrealistic manner.

Does anyone watch the show Life? There were two great shows that NBC came out with last year. One was Journey Man and the other was Life. Journey Man was awesome, and it was SUCH a bummer it got canned (why do I feel like I've talked about this before) but Life is still on Friday nights. It's a cop drama, but it has a better underlying plot then most, I feel. The lead character was wrongfully imprisoned for years and then given his job back as a cop after he got out. He spends his life finding Zen for himself and trying to find "the real killers." I really admire people like this in real life who go through something terrible and are determined to face life with passion and not feel sorry for themselves, like this guy.

Oh, and of course every self-respecting nerd has to like Fringe. There is a Mulder shaped hole in my heart and I'm trying to let Fringe fill it. It's hard, but I'm sure it's like riding a bike.

Searching for wisdom... Dev diary 9/18

Five weeks left. Flipping? Who's flipping? Kidding, I mean I'm as calm as one can be in this situation. Anyone would be stressed with this much time left in their first big project. Controls are being completed, pages are coming together, consultants are doing their thing. Am I concerned about everything getting done? November 1^st is the day we're scheduled to go alpha, I'm not saying when we're going into prod. Because I'm not even letting MYSELF think about it. As far as I'm concerned production is November 1^st. Don't even think that I'm not going to be asking some of you to help me test, lol, because I will be.

 

Right now I'm wiring up some of the xhtml, I'm going to be just plowing through things (hopefully) the next few weeks. This post is going to be short, tonight a girlfriend and I are getting together and having a bottle of wine and I'm taking a night off. However, I have one question for all of you. I know that a lot of people that read my page have been here before, is there any kind of advice, or wisdom you can pass on to someone that's in this spot of the life cycle for their first time? I'd love to be prepared for a major hiccup, though I”m sure there will be others.

 

Good night all, here's to the four day work week! (seriously, ever since I heard that's what they do at 37 signals, my boss is now the oracle)

Dev Diary - 8/13

Soooo, the communication with the payment gateway is complete, which is awesome. That's great, right now I'm mapping imports. Going to be pulling a nightly import from a Apple program from "FileMaker Pro" it's a bit tedious to work with because the imports/exports are not easy to work with. However, the current business runs off it and instead of re-inventing the wheel I'm just adding some rubber and rims to the current one. There are container fields that contain images, now, SQL can hold images, no? I'm pretty sure I remember hearing this and that would be conveinient. 

Otherwise I can just store paths to images in the database, which will give me a chance to use LINQ for objects, that will be fun. 

Ok, I have a question, I really hope someone out there can help me with this becuase it's something I haven't worked with before. I am working with NHibernate which relies heavily on session. Now, for each data object there is work with the current session. Where should I open -> close that session? On the page level? On the method level? On the application level? If on the application level where would I configure that? web config? app config? how?

I'm getting a realization of exactly how much needs to be done in how much time, I'll be outsourcing some stuff I believe. I have a good friend that does these things.... time for a motivational meeting tomorrow I think. 

Happy coding. 

Troubleshooting Issue - Help?

Hey guys, I could use your help. One of the things I'm doing before departing Project Awesome is transferring it to the .NET 2.0 post SP1 compilation model. I have been sucessful thus far moving the projects over to the new solution. I, however, am having trouble with the webservices.

Now, the origional developer created a local webservice to get around the issues the compilation model created. There is also another webservice that communicates with a local 3rd party tool. After I publish the site when I open it in IE the page loads (the actual website) however, when it tries to hit the webservice (the one he places his BO in)  I am getting an exception that says ""No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it 127.0.0.1:2438" My first instinct was to check permissions on the folders, everything looks good. Then, I checked IIS, everything looks good there. In the event viewer I'm getting the same exception I get on the page. When I step through it's obvious that it conks out as soon as it tries to talk to the web service. I did a netstat command in cmd prompt and there is nothing running on the 2438 port. Is it possible the port has changed? What is the best way to see what the new port number is?

All help is greatly appreciated. I hope I explained my problem in detail enough. Sorry this post isn't more entertaining.

In more important news I have blue hair, pictures to follow.

UPDATE - This has been fixed, partially because of the issue with the ports (thank you for your help) and partially because of the deployment of the project. I appreciate it guys, this wonjt be the last time. :) 

So my news...

Well, I am moving off of Project Awesome onto another project, we are going to call it Project 007 Top Secret. I'm really excited about this and NERVOUS. The thing I love about this is that it's going to be homeade, by Sara, from scratch. There is a LOT that needs to be done, but when it is finished it will be awesome. I've seen how things should be done correctly, and that's very important to me to not come up with a hunk of crap. Beauty and agility is most important. Everyone thinks they have the next big thing, but trust me, this is the next big thing. There are some great minds on this project and it's going to be hella exciting.

There is a lot racing through my mind right now. I can't get it all down tonight. Just wanted to give everyone the heads up. I a lot of questions. First off, I need someone to do a few pages for me. Professionals that can do table-less HTML and CSS. I need to get my master page done and a detail page or two. I need quick loading standards complient HTML, I have comps, just need to find the best company to do it at a good price. 

My first few weeks will be spent designing the schema and BI.  I'm sure you can imagine it's halfway done in my mind.

I will be asking for a lot of help from my mentors, I picked them because they are the best :).

Dev Diary 06/04

So, we are getting another developer on the project. Today at lunch we discussed how I feel there are things that really need to be done to the application that will make it easier to make improvements and add new features and support in the future. Here is my list:

 

1.       Update the compilation model to true 2.0 format (I’m going to pull for 3.5 because if we are doing it anyway….)

2.       Eliminate the internal webservice that is used for objects due to the bad model, therefore:

a.       Make a new project for objects

b.      Eliminate unnecessary interfaces (personal preference and easier to manage)

c.       Create new objects I feel are necessary and refactor

3.       Take all the unneeded controls and put them back in the page (there are multiple pages that are just one control that is never used again).

4.       Make the webapp external via ssl so you don’t have to be ON the prod server to use it

5.       Update the 3rd party apps to latest versions

6.       Implement build software (optional)

7.       Take the redundant controls and eliminate them using admin pages and xml so they can be created dynamically (rather than having to manually create a new control that is a little different based on configuration just have one control generated on the fly based on data in an xml column)

8.       Get rid of the multiple folders containing a single object

 

Tonight I installed Launchy, I had heard of it before but not installed it. I’m a huge fan of keyboard shortcuts so this seemed awesome. Though, I hadn’t heard it from a credible source that it was good. I was also concerned about performance. Well, I caught it in an article on reddit tonight and decided to try it. I will let you know how it works but already I freaking love it. My mission is to never have to touch my mouse it wastes so much of my time.

I am trying a free web task tracking service called pingme. I like it because I can communicate with it easily in few words, I can also reschedule and add things via my cell which makes life more convenient in general. 

Some notes:

*Looking for a few good girls to collaborate with for girl developers.com needed: humor, skill, and glam… if you know some please refer them to me. This will be a fun project.

*Endy Chavez is a clutch player, I don’t care about his batting average, when the game is on the line you want him in the lineup.

 

 

Dev Diary 05/25

So, it's Saturday night and it's a weekend and I'm home. I was going to go out tonight but my best friend was hung over so we are going out tomorrow. So, for fun I am dealing with "External Component has thrown an Exception" (While watching Black Snake Moan)

So there are these user controls that are set up to make a template that can be edited per section. You can add images to sections and delete them. Most of the templates have 7 or 8 sections. I need to add one that has nine. The names of the sections (or numbers, rather) are stored in the database. So, when the page is loaded the control is populated according to how it is stored. I have set up this control just like the others, yet I'm getting the above error. I threw on profiler and it's not even gettting to the query, so it has something to do with the control coming up on the page. I suspect it may not like the fact that there is an extra section, so I am commenting out section nine and seeing if it loads then.

Tomorrow I think I am going to the beach, so I ought to get in some sleep soon. However, I want to test this one last thing. This all needs to be good to go by Tuesday so I'd rather fix it now then later, there are other things that need fixing as well.

Have a happy holiday.

Dev Diary 5/20

So, I finally got over a hump in the application today with some help from a friend. I was going nuts because I'm used to many projects under one application easily communicating within and without with a few references and that's it. Well this app has a few projects and two separate web sites. I wasn't able to reference the user controls that existed in the same website, something I am not used to. There were circular references from control to control, and it was really frustrating to not be able to just reference them anywhere I wanted. Ended up having to extract the class that was being referenced to the App_Code folder.

 The structure that is being used right now is indigenous to the first release of VS 2005. Apparently, the way it is compiled it is put into multiple assemblies, so even though its one project, it can't refrence itself easily. Really frustrating, I hope to reconstruct the app into a more normail (something I am used to) construction, if for only the reason that it will be a faster way to get things done. Hopefully after a bunch of bug fixes I will have time to make changes like this.

 In other news, my dev office is done! I will post pictures later tonight. It's looking awesome.

In even other news this website is posessed by the devil, it keeps eating my posts. This was much more interesting before, take my word for it.

DD Kinda cool...

So, I am still running with my little bug/dev items list. Learning about the application. Basically it takes a dataset with paths to different images and puts them on a PDF by coordinates and a program called SwiftView. The SwiftView program then takes the files and converts them into .pcl files to be printed.

I can imagine that being a difficult engine to write. Also, the comments in the code are very helpful, however there are some things that seem well intentioned but don't make sense. Like the fact that each class has an interface (that only refrences that class) in the same assembly. Maybe one of you can tell me what design method that is, but I can't think of a rational reason to do that. This is in a web service,  that only gets referenced by a local application. Some of it is designed in this manner to be scalable. Some of it because the requirements kept changing. However, some things I just don't get.

There is a balance between bug fixes and dev items. I have often seen this in larger IT departments. I will find this balance for myself. I have also seen it stress out managers.

Still truckin! Project Desk is coming along well too.

Good birthday weekend this weekend. Tell me I don't have some beautiful friends, no???

Dang Dev Diary

So, I have hit the point of real frustration with this project. I always say that “life isn’t about how you act when times are good, it’s about what you accomplish when times are bad.” Does the same apply to programming? Ok, so this isn’t the worst application ever. It CAN do what needs to be done (kind of). However, I have come to realize it’s only half finished, and never was completely functional. It’s a little unnerving because I was excited about making a great application greater, it looks like I have to make a sub par application… par? I have to say this isn’t a knock to the original developer. I know he tried and get done what needed to be done in the time allotted to him.

I really need some serious time to get this project together. I am looking at something called Dev Track for bug tracking? I don’ t have a lot of free time for this stuff because I am quick and dirty hacking it up to get everything operational by the 20^th. So any improvements I’m making on the environment are slow and steady. I have been learning a lot, but it’s hard learning because once I figure one thing out something else is broken.

I’m trying to take a step back and just get whatever progress I can done right now. Once the deadline of the 20^th is past we are meeting to get a list of priorities as far as what comes first. The hard part is that not only are there bug fixes but a backlog of development items. I may need someone else on this besides myself. Debating talking to my boss about that, I know he has the assets and there is this developer that I’ve been working on with short term stuff that seems good at what he does. I have a feeling that with him and I together we can get this thing back on its feet.  

On a different note, Monday was my birthday. I spent a really nice night with a friend and it made me almost not hate getting a year older. Let’s just say I’m getting to the age that “So, are you planning on having kids?” Is a customary question.  As if it takes SKILL to birth children. Me and the ladies are going out tomorrow, I have a killer dress. I will post pictures on Monday.

Have a good weekend!!!

Dev Diary 5/06

Well, its been a few days since I have written anything. I have a lot on my plate the past few days, but thanks to a big break from the original developer being able to identify what was going on with a bug I have a little downtime. YAY TEAM.

I am setting up a rockin home office. I bought a desk and a 22” monitor and an awesome leather chair and speakers and wireless keyboard/mouse. Right now it looks like this:

 

why you ask? Well, I buy this desk from Staples and had it delivered. I don’t know why I expected them to deliver it all put together, but it would have been nice of them. So anyway, I get this big cardboard box delivered into my livingroom, I open it up and there are 2349873247890 pieces and all different types of screws/fasteners/glue/scotch tape/twine….  There was also a 26 page document (that not an exaggeration, there are literally 26 pages) detailing the steps you need to take in putting this together. So, since I don’t have my doctorate in Mechanical Desk Engineering I called my dad who is an architect, therefore more inclined to be good at these things. He came over tonight and spent two hours on it and got it MAYBE a third of the way done. So, hopefully sometime this century it will be finished.

In development news, I was given a list of development items that need to be done in the next week, the PM is very good at organizing these things which is good because of my object oriented cluttered thinking process. They are just small adjustments to the existing model that will allow me to better understand the application. The production and staging servers are still in the process of being created as we have to wait for technicalities and purchase orders to clear. We decided to go with a virtual server for staging. All our work is now being done on the VPCs so with no dev environment and no source control it’s an adventure in creativity keeping things together. This will be remedied soon, though.

As soon as staging gets up I’m throwing the RAM in this baby and making the Vista switch. VS 2008, maybe even SQL Server 2008 if I’m feeling courageous. I’m waiting for staging to be up just in case I’m without an environment for a while. I wonder how hard it is to bring an application from 2.0 to 3.5?

Actually, the biggest challenge I’ve run into has nothing to do with development at all. The biggest challenge for me is the big company tedium of documentation, and detailed emails, and status reports. I’m used to sending emails that say things like “Hey, douchebag, check in your project file” (startups - acctually I think it's more accurate that I may have received that email) . I come from wearing ponte pants, tee shirts, and sneakers to the office. MAYBE showering. Now there are collared shirts and PC humor and Dockers. I really can’t get my mind around how someone decided that your development skill can be determined by the type of pants you wear. However, I guess development skill isn’t what’s important here. “Corporate Image” is. Now, I’m not complaining. I work from home most of the time anyway, it’s a great gig. I was talking with a former co-worker the other day and we were discussing just this. He said that a stipulation he made before accepting his current job was to never have to document, or gussy up, or be forced to do any of these things. I am a bit jealous, I would actually rather just be a code monkey, but I suppose a little structure in my life wont kill me…. I don’t think.  Are these things important for a good career? I don't want to limit myself by not developing that part of my skill set. However, I also don't want to end up as a manager who fills out paperwork and never develops.  

 Anyway, so that’s that. Cat update: his little jaw is healing well. LEETLE JAW. He is wired on the bottom, and the wires come out in 6 weeks. He is being a champ and we make daily trips to the vet for his antibiotic shot.

 

 

 

Dev Diary - 04/27

Ok, so, I am veto-ing putting NANT on the staging server. Even though its good practice for Agile development to have daily builds, there is only one developer (me). It makes it a little overzealous. While it would be best to get that done at some point, time is a factor now and there are more important things than NANT on the horizon.

 

Looking for a good cheap bug tracker. I LOVE fogbugz. Also worked with unfuddle which is good. Both can be pricey based on what you are using them for.

 

I have started making little changes to the app of Project:Awesome just to get things working. Looking at this application recently I have discovered the following things:

·         Weird security for an internal app. I don’t really understand the necessity? Maybe to make it scalable (which brings me back to my original point).

·         UI is pretty raw. Orig developer even admitted he kind of threw it together. Looking forward to gutting it.

·         Bad variable naming. I don’t like non descriptive variables, and there are a whole bunch. Along with digits on the end of them. Annoying. Also did prefixes for stored procs like SEL and DEL I really don’t like that and plan to sp_rename the crap out of them.

I mean the app works (mostly), but the structure is pretty wild and difficult to get a grasp of. Lot of third part apps. From what I can understand it takes text and turns it into .pdf then into another printable format and sends it to a printer. I really don’t understand the need for the pdf conversion. Its nothing that can’t be done with just html.

Also learned that the original dev is an ISTJ. Which pretty much means he (inaccurately) thinks I’m an idiot. Really can’t rely on him to help me without speaking badly about me. Been there. So, I’ve been trying to ask him as little as possible. Update -This actually isn't true. I was thinking of my interaction with a INFJ, I got the two confused. This is good to know. Basically it means that I think he has a lot to learn. I don't know this to be true because I haven't really spent time with him.... but it does make me trust him a bit more. In the future I wont be as cautious asking him for help.  There is another dev I am working with, I met him last week. Seems pretty smart and will be a big help. He is not on Project:Awesome but he’s on my team.

Pretty much have my PM pegged as an ISTP. Which means he doesn’t really “get” me. Thinks I’m a little unconventional, but is open to my style as long as it brings results. Also means he’s a hard worker, honest, and enterprising. I think we will work together well.

Think my boss is a male ESFJ (rare). Which means he’s warm, kind, likes people, and works HARD. A lot of my friends are ESFJs, also means he respects my brilliance. Which is always good in a boss. 

 

For those of you wondering what I am talking about look here: http://www.personalitypathways.com/type_inventory.html

So, now that the vpc is set up and the app is running. We are going to be moving on to the other development items. That’s exciting.

On a lighter note me and Erika went out this weekend and had a fun time. We went to a club and found this guy on the dance floor. I asked him for the specs to the flux capacitor. He took it in stride, lol.

Welcome!

INAUGERAL POST let the fun begin! So, right now I am working on my Visio model of what will be the environment for my newest project. Let’s call it “Project Awesome.” Anyway, so, I’m working with things I am familiar with. Dev to Staging to Prod, using Nant for builds and SVN for source control. These are all things I know, however, I haven’t ever implemented them myself,. The thing I am most scared about is Nant, I remember a much more experienced developer than I setting it up the last time I worked with it and he ran into some road blocks. However, that’s part of the adventure, no? I have finished downloading all the exe and iso ‘s so heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere we go.

Visio is an awesome tool. Haven’t worked with this before and it makes life so easy. As with any programmer worth his salt I hate doing documentation (I’m just making that up, but it is now a fact. Do you like it? So there. ) This whole WYSWYG thing is awesome. Drag -> drop -> done. Rockstar.

We put together a vpc that held the development environment (in project Awesome “we” refers to me and a project manager). Apparently the company we are doing this for only had the app on one server, no backups. Bitchin. So, the PM decided that step one was putting a vpc together so we could deploy it on any PC. I thought this was redundant, and wanted to just put together production (or staging) for that matter and copy the image. Set up backups and builds and the like. However, I was veto’d. I would have fought more if I understood the app better. Down the road I wont back down so easily.

This has been an adventure, there are multiple third party tool involved and the structure is a bit foreign to me. Far as I can tell there is a webservice that is internal to the app on the local machine. After looking into this I was told this is for an external interface, but I don’t think there is one. Once I sit with it for a while longer I’m sure I will understand more. The good thing about it is if I don’t like how it’s being done I can change it.