As I mentioned here, I am kind of organizing a trip to see Iron Man during CF.Objective(). I also set up a tee time at the Unniversity of Minnesota - Les Bolstad Golf Course for myself, Dan Wilson, Phill Nacelli and Scott Pinkston. We are playing at 3:00 PM on Thursday May 1st. If anyone else would like to join us on the links, just drop a comment below and call to make a tee time.
CF.Objective() starts in a few weeks on May 1. Coincidentally Iron Man is being released the following day. If you would be interested in seeing the movie with some of your favorite (or maybe not so favorite) ColdFusion geeks, leave a comment here, and be sure to subscribe. I will post details of when and where we will be going to see the movie.
My father-in-law just sent me this and I cannot stop laughing about it so I felt compelled to share.
A while back I launched AllYourFlexAreBelongToUs.com, a Flex blog aggregator. So far, the sire is doing better than I could have hoped. I am now ready to take the next step. I want to offer "I am aggregated by...." buttons for my aggregatees ( I just now made that up) to add to their sites. There is one big problem, my design skills are...how should I say this...pathetic.
If you have design skills that surpass a 4 year-old and are willing/able to help out, it would be much appreciated. The only thing I ask is that the buttons stay true to the color scheme on the site.
What's in it for you? Well, honestly, I don't have much to offer except my never ending gratitude and credit for designing the buttons. But be rest assured your work will be viewed by millions thousands hundreds dozens of people.
If I happen to get more than one submission, I will probably put it to a public vote as to which one will be used.
Thanx in advance!
I apologize for the lack of technical posts here recently. Most, if not all, of my technical posts have done at the Alagad blog. Be forewarned, this is another non-technical post.
In June, I am speaking at Scotch on the Rocks and will need a passport. The last time I had a passport was when I was in high school (a long, long time ago) and because it has been expired for so long, I needed to apply as if I never had a passport. This is where the story begins...
I submitted my passport application in December, along with the required documents, which included my birth certificate. Keep in mind this is the same birth certificate I used for many purposes, such as getting my driver's license, getting my original passport and even more recently, getting clearance from more than one government agency.
About 4-5 weeks later (maybe longer) I received a letter for the Department of State that because I was born in Hudson County, New Jersey, I needed to get a 'new' copy of my birth certificate from the New Jersey Division of Vital Statistics. A phone call to the passport agency revealed that, at some time in the past, there was some 'malfeasance' in the Hudson County Registrar's Office, and any birth certificate issued by that office was no longer acceptable for acquiring a passport.
It seems that in order to obtain your birth certificate from the New Jersey Division of Vital Statistics in a timely manner, they suggest that you order it through a third party named Vital Check. This does not come cheap. it cost me $55.00 for 2 copies of my birth certificate. it also did not come quickly, it took about 3 weeks before I received the copies. I quickly sent one of the copies to the passport office as they requested. Basically, it was the exact same thing I sent earlier, but on different paper.
Fast forward about 2-3 weeks and I get a call from the passport office (which really took me by surprise) letting me know that the new copies were also not acceptable as the date my birth was filed was not legible on the copy. Crap!
So, I ring up the New Jersey Division of Vital Statistics. I was able to speak with someone who was very friendly and appeared to willing and able to help me. They assured me that new birth certificates with all the correct information would be sent to me. Surprisingly, a week later, I received the new copies. Unfortunately, aside from the date they were printed, they were identical to the copy I was already told was not acceptable.
I ring up Vital Statistics again this morning (the office was closed Friday), and after about an hour of trying to actually speak with a human, I get the same person I spoke with last week. Again, very friendly and very eager to help. They explain that the only thing they can do is 'manually type' the birth certificate and send them to me (which is frighteningly similar to what they told me they were going to do last time). They assured me that it would 'go out in the mail' today. So, heres to hoping that is indeed the case.
All this hassle, and stress of possibly missing my trip, because of a small case of 'malfeasance ', God knows how long ago, in Hudson County, NJ. This just reaffirms my belief that New Jersey is a great place to be 'from'.
We moved to West Virginia in May of 2003. In September of 2004, my oldest son started kindergarten. Like most kids, this was a huge change from his routine,and like most parents, we worried about him when he was at school. See, my son has Cerebral Palsy, a result of a stroke he suffered around the time of his birth. He is not profoundly handicapped, but he does have some needs that other kids might not. Having someone outside of our family tend to those needs scared the crap out of us.
He seemed to like it well enough. I think the sense of independence made him feel good. Unfortunately, this did not last long. His personality started to change. He was always very happy and out going and he started to become a bit introverted. He even started to ask if he could stay home from school.
After speaking with our son, we found out that there was a girl in his class who was constantly picking on him and bullying him. The worst incident was a day that my son asked us if he could buy his own lunch at school instead of bring one. We agreed and he took some of his own money so he could buy lunch. At lunch that day, he went and ordered his own lunch and paid for it with his own money. As he walked away from the cashier, the girl who had been bullying him pushed him from behind and caused him to fall and spill his lunch all over the floor. This devastated him, and nearly crushed his desire to go to school.
We decided we needed to discuss the situation with his teacher. Now, I may be old fashioned, but you should get a war and fuzzy feeling form your child's kindergarten teacher. This was not the case with son's teacher, she was like the Ice Queen. She looked angry all the time, and was very abrupt when she answered questions. After discussing this incident and other similar incidents we were basically told, 'Its just kids being kids.' Not something you want to hear when its one of your kids involved.
As is the case with most parents, when we dropped off my son, or picked him up, we would talk with other parents, especially the parents of children in the same class. Thinking maybe we were overreacting, my wife discussed some of the issues we had (such as the way the teacher spoke to the children). Seems we were not the only ones who had these issues. Yet, somehow, the teacher found out that my wife had these discussions and one day was summoned to the principal's office. She was asked not to discuss this teacher with any other parent while on school property. She was being treated like one of the children.
The straw that pretty much broke the camel's back was actually behavior my wife mentioned she observed between the teacher, teacher's aide and another child in the class. There was a bot who befriended my son. It was obvious he came from a family that had a difficult time making ends meet. He is also African-American. I only mention this because I feel it important to the story. One day, around Christmas, the school had one of those little 'stores' set up so kids could buy little gifts. Each class was brought down to the 'store' together, with the help of some 'class moms', of which my wife was one, to buy stuff. This child could not buy anything as he did not have any money. Feeling sorry for him, my wife let him pick something out for himself that she would pay for. While the class was lead back to their classroom, my wife paid for the item the child wanted.
When she returned to the room, the teacher and teacher's aide were yelling at the child because they assumed he stole the item, even though the child and my son both told them my wife paid for it. My wife was mortified, and even after she told the teacher that she did pay for the item, they assumed my wife was trying to cover for the child.
Even before this episode, we had discussed other options, such as requesting he be moved to a different classroom (which the school was reluctant to do), change schools (which the school board was reluctant to do and the closest private school was about 30 miles away) and homeschooling. I have to admit, when my wife first mentioned homeschooling, I was against it. I had know 3 people in my life, to that point, who were homeschooled, and they were all really weird. But, it was still a viable option.
After much debate and discussion we decided to try homeschooling for the rest of the school year and then revisit the issue in the summer. My wife did tons of research on curriculums, and even joined the TORCH group (a home school group at the church) so we would have plenty of resources available to us.
In January of 2005, after the Christmas break, we (more accurately, my wife, began homeschooling our son. Almost immediately, he reverted back to the happy-go-lucky kid we knew and loved. And I think it was more beneficial for my wife than it was for my son. As part of the TORCH group, he went on class trips, and was invited to social gatherings. The little experiment was a success, and we decided that as long as it was a viable option (meaning as long as we thought it was what was best for our kids) we would continue to homeschool them.
My attitude towards homeschooling has changed and I have become somewhat of an advocate for it. it is not perfect, it is difficult and it is not for everyone, but for our children, at this point in their lives, we feel this will benefit them more than going to public school. As a priest, who is a good friend of mine, said, 'During their most impressionable years, you kids will spend all day, every day, in a loving, caring environment. Nothing else will do more for your children's self esteem and confidence than that.'
SitePoint recently published an article of mine about developing Rich Internet Applications with ColdFusion 8.
SitePoint is a repository of tons of tech-related articles. From what I understand, they will be releasing more ColdFusion related articles in the future.
What are you waitng for? Go check it out.
One thing my wife and I are very passionate about, but I rarely, if ever, blog about (I should change that), is that we home school our children. I can get into the why in another blog post, but suffice to say, it has been one of the most fulfilling endeavors of our lives.
I am going to be replacing my laptop and my wife's desktop with Apple products. I want to get a Mac Book Pro, and my wife is leaning towards a Mac Book. While I was looking around at prices today, a friend pointed me to the education section of their site. I was stunned to see this, where Apple offers the same educational discount for home schools as other educational institutions.
It is refreshing to see companies like Apple offering discounts like this. I hope more companied follow their lead.
As I mentioned here, I am speaking at Scotch on the Rocks this year. After the conference, my father, brother and uncle are flying over so we can play golf for a few days. We are going to spend a few days in Edinburgh and a few days in Glasgow.
Here are the places we are playing so far,
I am looking for some suggestions for courses in or near Glasgow. If anyone knows of some quality courses in the Glasgow area, please comment below. We are already trying to get a time at Turnberry, but will not find out if our request will be fulfilled until mid-May.
Thanx in advance!
**Disclaimer**
You are about to get a peak into my brain. This is not for the faint of heart. If you read further, it may permanently alter you view of me (for better or worse).
**End of Disclaimer**
Just today, I noticed a really cool 'side effect' of 'Adobe ColdFusion'. On my development machine, and the few servers I help maintain, I no longer have to scroll down in the services MMC in order to see all my ColdFusion instances. They are all there, sitting right on top thanx to the 'Adobe'.
