Feral Code Monkies

I’ve learned an important lesson; ALWAYS back up your posts, pages, and any other dynamic data before trying to do any updates to your site.  I was testing some ASP.NET Web Service stuff with my site, and lost a bunch of posts, which is why it looks like I haven’t posted since March of last year.  Sigh.  Oh well.  As I said, lesson learned.

Also, due to furiously large amounts of spam, I’ve had to turn comment moderation on, so if you post legitimately to my blog, give it a day or two to show up.  I hated having to do it, but until I find a way to prevent these f’ers from spamming my site, it’s necessary.  Also, please post with an actual name, not the name of a company or such, or I’ll assume the comment is spam, and delete it.

When are they going to make spamming a capitol crime?  ;)

I love the intelligence of the drivers here in the beautiful Northwest state of Oregon.  Especially when it comes to that magical little stick that every car, truck, van, or otherwise has on the left side of the steering wheel column.

Ladies and gentleman, let me introduce you to it’s greatness.  It is called… a “Blinker”.  Why?  Well, this handy-dandy thingamajig lets the other drivers on the road know that you’re going to, how do you say, turn.  Really amazing!  And the best part is that it takes less energy to turn it on than it does to lift your morning latte to your mouth, or your cell phone to your ear.  How cool is that?!?!

And you know what else?  It’s not only cool, but it’s the law!  You heard it hear, folks.  The law!  You MUST use it.  Not a choice.  If you’re caught not using your blinker, and you turn, you get a ticket!  Simply amazing!  But wait, there’s more!  The drivers behind you will appreciate that you’ve given them advance warning about your intentions.  Damn!  It is indeed a fantastic world having such inventions.

So what do you think?  Let’s all start using this wonderful invention, and making driving safer, and less prone to expensive, inconvenient tickets!  Oh, and if the guy behind you honks at you for suddenly turning with no blinker or other warning, you do not get to be surprised, angry, or flipping the bird at him.  You’ve earned that honk.  Good job.

Damn, but it’s been a long week.  Granted, I’m 33 years old, but it’s Saturday night, 10:16 at the exact moment I started typing this, and I’m SO ready for bed.  It’s possible that the Peppermint Patty I’m drinking has something to do with it, but who knows?  By the way, for the uninitiated, a Peppermint Patty is an adult beverage, consisting of hot cocoa, peppermint schnapps, whipped cream, and Cream de Minthe.  Very good! 

I’ve been working my tail end off at work on an old ASP classic application, that shall remain nameless to protect the innocent (specifically, me), and am SO ready to have 5 minutes in a ring with their lead developer.  I’ll even let the guy wear a Hogu (Taekwondo chest protector).  Never would I have thought, except maybe when I was first beginning my journey as a developer, that it’d take 3 damn days to get a drop down working on a web page!  No kidding!  Not because I’m lacking in skills.  As humbly as I can say it, I’m not lacking for knowledge when it comes to being a developer.  No, it’s the fact that you have to sort through many layers of ASP, XML, VBI, and XSL files to find what you’re looking for.  And when you DO find it, they’ve got so much custom junk in the way that’s it’s ridiculous.

Case and point.  Part of the application is a form that has its controls generated dynamically based on settings in a database.  The user can specify what data type the field should contain, whether it’s a dropdown, a text box, or whatever, and so forth.  Now, they offer the developer very little in the way of customization on the screen, so if a custom need arises that the designer doesn’t support (more often than not, sadly), we have to resort to javascript.  Not too big an issue, normally, except that it’s not as simple as it should be.

The form uses dropdowns, just like any other form might.  So what happens when I try to use my friend jQuery to find the dropdown?  I get back zilch!  Nada.  Nothing.  I used the right ID, so why aren’t I getting anything.  Oh, hey, I bet it’s because all I can see in the DOM at runtime for the dropdown is a DIV element with an IMG element in it.  That’s it.  No SELECT element to be found. Yet one is being drawn!  AAAAAAAARGH!!!  I’m still waiting for a decent response from the parent company about how to deal with it.  So far, their response, literally, was “we don’t know how to do what you need”…    I say again.  Please, just 5 minutes in a ring.  That’s all I want…

I’ve also been busy hammering away at a jQuery Brownbag that I’m leading on Friday.  Our company recently added it to the list of things they support, and as the company expert on it so far, the task has fallen on me to make sure everyone comes up to speed on it.  I’m looking forward to doing this, as I love this library, and really wonder how I ever got on without it.  Oh yeah, I remember.  I wrote lot’s and lot’s of code that eventually found their way in to libraries.

So, as I said, I’m exhausted, and can’t wait for beautiful, beautiful sleep to take me… 

OK, I think I've finally settled on the theme that I really like.  It's called iTheme, and as of today, is the theme shown on the site.  I want to make it a bit wider, and will most likely be uploading a new version in the next couple days, but for now, I really like how it looks.  I also intend to get some monkey images up at some point as well.  Why?  Well, think about the name of the site...

In other news, I've managed to find 3 pretty substantial bugs in a version 6 production application that we use at work.  Apparently, some people have never heard of Q & A.  Sad, really.  It took me all of 2 seconds to fix each, once I'd found the cause (in an application that has an ASP file, a JS file, a VBI file, and possibly and XML file to edit to correct one stupid thing, they take a while to find).  Why anybody would continue to release NEW products in ASP is beyond me.  Microsoft is getting ready to soon relase .NET 4.0.  Come on, guys!  Get on the friggen ASP.NET bandwagon already... 

The company I work for recently purchased an application that we lowly developers are of course required to support.  The problem lies in the fact that it's implemented in Classic ASP.  In and of itself, this isn't a bad thing.  A little archaic with it's wonderful jumble of spaghetti code (dammit, now I want spaghetti), but certainly maintainable.  No, this particular product doesn't stop there.  Almost all of it's configuration is in large XML files, all of which have to be cached when the web application first loads.  After a 5 minute wait, you're up and running.  If the session didn't time out first, of course. If you make a small change to a javascript file, you get to wait another 5 minutes to reload it in to the cache.

Adding controls to a form is fun.  You have to change the database to store the new value(s), alter about 5 different settings in a designer that takes at least 30 seconds to change each setting, then publish, which takes another 5 minutes.  So, to add a control to a form, you're looking at a good half hour of work.  Minimum.  For one field.  Another half hour for the 2nd field, and so forth. 

Ah, the wonderful life of a developer.