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Date Range: 3/1/2003 - 3/31/2003
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Friday, March 28, 2003

Satisfaction and stuff

Over 24 hours later, my craving is getting satisfied... :-)

The extension I was working on is now in beta. Danilo's trying hard to add features but I'm not budging until I get more votes. ;-)

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Thursday, March 27, 2003

Cravings...

I'm really <craving fault="Dan's">wasabi</craving> right now. Gotta get some California rolls (sans cucumber <blech />), or maybe some salmon...

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Saturday, March 22, 2003

MSN

38 Dreamweaver newsgroup users listed in my MSN Buddy list... no wonder I get so little done lately! So I've buckled down. I've moved that MSN over to my 2k machine so that I'll only chat when I'm checking email. Its been a couple days now, and I'm feeling a bit more productive already. I'm sure productivity will increase significantly once I get back into the groove. (Still recovering a little from MXNorth.) So if you were one of the 38, don't take it personal; you're not blocked. :-)

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Friday, March 21, 2003

Galleries

I've added a new link to the navigation, Galleries. Right now all the personal stuff is mixed in with Dreamweaver stuff. I may change that eventually... My pictures, and some Dan took are up in the MXNorth 2003 category if you're interested. My camera was acting up so I didn't get many this time unfortunately. However, Jim Babbage took some great pictures at the conference. He's got the only picture of me wearing my glasses on the web.

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Wednesday, March 19, 2003

Politics

I hate politics... I just wish I could hop on a shuttle to another planet.

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Tuesday, March 18, 2003

Back from Canada

I'm back home from MXNorth now and just trying to catch up on things today. So many emails! I meant to post here while I was away but I didn't get online much. It was actually kind of nice being so disconnected. I'm too tired to get into much detail, but I'll give some of the highlights:

Thursday night Dan and I went for my first time eating (raw) sushi. The first two bites were alright but the third one had some wasabi on it... WOW! That's some good stuff! I tried salmon as well and it was okay too, but I didn't care for the octopus since it was rather chewy.

Friday just flew by me.Roughly 220 in attendance this time. I met Brad Halstead and Derren Whiteman for the first time, both sweethearts just like in their emails/chats. I did some book signing at the afternoon break for Dreamweaver MX Magic with Dan, Massimo, and Brad. Dinner was at a little place called Adega across the street from the hotel. We were there for I'd say about 3 hours, so we were late to movie night. When we got to the hotel, they were showing My Big Fat Greek Wedding. They even had a popcorn machine in there I was told... but since I've seen the movie 5 times and have the DVD I skipped it. Instead I hung out with Dan and worked on DWfaq.

Saturday I gave my Dreamweaver MX Killer Tips session with Joe Lowery. The session went well, but we didn't get to do everything we hoped for. Lucky for conference goers, the whole session is up until tomorrow for them to review and pick up extra tips we didn't get too. I prefer to overplan than to be left standing there with nothing left to say... All in all I was pleased with how the session went. Saturday night we went to a trendy little night club for a party for all attendees. The whole place was reserved for us thankfully, since it was very much a "How you doin'" kind of bar.

Sunday I slept in and missed the keynote. I was late to Joe's JavaScript session but the half I was there for, I picked up a bunch of great info. A bunch of people took off before I had the chance to say goodbye, which is always a bummer... Ray, Laurie, Manuella, Massimo, Dan and I went back to Fune for sushi. This time Dan got pictures! I'll share at least one here soon... Afterwards we went to a place called Just Desserts for drinks and desserts. I had a yummy chocolate cheescake with strawberries... After that, Dan, Massimo and I hung out for awhile. They were speaking advanced geek and I couldn't keep up so I fell asleep! Lucky for me Dan didn't have his camera with him then or I'd be busted. After my nice little nap Dan and I worked some more on DWfaq. A lot of stripping out tables from the code was done, but we have a long way to go still.

I'll be posting photos soon as I get Dan's from him. My camera was acting up so I didn't get many pictures at all. :-( Darn camera goes from a full battery to empty after only one shot! I think it needs a new battery (yes it is a proprietary one)... That's about all I have to say about the trip really. I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone in Vegas in just a couple of months. It is going to be a really great time.

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Wednesday, March 12, 2003

Evil system search...

I'm not having a good day... My laptop has been doing weird things to me. Earlier I did a system search for .dwr files (those are saved queries). No results! @#$% was my reaction...I need them for my presentation at MXNorth. They were there yesterday but gone from my desktop. 9 hours later they turned up in a folder that's on the desktop after I already remade a bunch of regular expressions.

Then I fought the age old battle of changing a site from root relative to document relative paths. MAJOR PAIN... All this because Dreamweaver would need me to have IIS to preview locally. That's something I'm just not prepared to deal with less than 10 hours before leaving. You're thinking I should have built it document relative from the start. Well, the site that this is going on had a template already so I thought I'd use that and save time. It was a 30 minute headache, but a headache nonetheless.

I had some software installation problems too. A few other things went wrong but I'd rather not talk about it :-)

I'll be on my way soon, and I'll feel much better once I'm there I'm sure. Hope to meet a lot of new people and spend time with old friends. I'll try to post while I'm there, but no promises!

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Tuesday, March 11, 2003

Blog ranting

Blogs are known to be a place where one can rant about things, but up until now I'm not sure I have ranted about anything. Times a changin'!

I went shopping tonight at the mall. I needed a garment in another size so I asked the salesperson if they had more in the back in my size. She explained that they don't keep stock in back but that she could call another store for me. So far, so good.

If you've ever worked in retail, you'll know that when you call the tenendcy is to say that whatever it is they're asked for is out of stock. I've worked retail and seen my co-workers do it but I am proud to say I've NEVER done that to a customer. I told the gal she could call for me if she got the person's name who answers the phone so that if they say the item is out of stock and I go there, I can complain. I probably wouldn't have complained, but I figured it'd be a good way to get the worker to really check. I've been told no before, asked for a name, then told "wait hold on one sec... Oh yes we do have it". (You may want to try that trick next time you're told no.)

The salesperson asks me, "What if the person gives a fake name?" I basically told her that I'd have her to vouch for me that someone by that name answerred the phone and lied to me. She told me that in retail (generally speaking) lying to callers is a problem but assured me that she's not one to say yes or no if she doesn't know for certain. I thought she was cool, being polite and honest. I then asked her if it was the policy to not get a name and phone number to call back if they are too busy to check. That way I would know if it were worth going there if the answer was no. If it wasn't the policy to call back, then lying is more likely. (This story is going to take an unexpected twist soon... hang in there.) She said they prefer you don't do that and on occasion when she's gotten a phone number she's forgotten to call back and not realized until she got home. She said she felt bad when that happened and would call the next day. Wow, I'm liking her attitude... good worker!

I decided to try on the garment once more before calling, and figured that it fit alright so I'd just buy it and hope I don't gain weight! (Twist still coming...)

I continued shopping nearby the register. A lady walks up to the counter frantic; looking at her I thought something must be wrong. She was trembling and told the man at the counter that her car wouldn't start and asked nicely if she could use the phone. The man tells her that the phones don't dial out, so she couldn't.

What?! The girl earlier mentioned to me that she's able to call customers back. I was stunned. I offered the lady my cell phone and called AAA Roadside Assistance.

The girl I'd spoken to was nowhere in sight unfortunately. I told the lady with car trouble, Shelley, that I'd wait until they came since if they get lost they'd be calling my cell phone. She went to wait in the car and I shopped about 5 minutes more.

On my way out the man who denied her use of the phone tells me goodnight and says that it was nice of me to let her use the phone since they can't dial out. I told him, "Funny, I was talking with a salesperson earlier about how if she's too busy when someone calls for a stock check, she will take their number and call them back." Well he made a really interesting expression that was a mixture of fear and surprise, then he turned away and I walked out.

I saw another worker and asked if the phones can dial out. They don't, but there are phones that some of the floor workers (the ones who walk around and help people) carry cellphones that dial out. He also told me that the guy was the manager who denied her the use of the phone. What an aweful manager he is! He could have offered to help this obviously upset woman by directing her to a payphone at the very least. He didn't care whatsoever. I won't complain to the store; I'll leave it to Shelley, but I'm sure she won't either... but one of us should!

What bothers me is that this isn't the first time I've witnessed this happen and won't be the last. If you can help someone, help them. Go out of your way for them. Be kind to them. What if it were someone in your family that needed help? Would you want this to happen to them? Would you want it to happen to you? I believe in the old saying "What goes around, comes around."

If you're still reading this, thanks for listening :-) I'll try not to rant too often.

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Monday, March 10, 2003

Cleanup

Just thought I should mention that I'm doing a bit of cleanup throughout the site and some links to files on the DWmommy domain - especially those to images - may not function for awhile. Would you believe there were about 1200 files on DWmommy? And here you thought all there is only a home page, archive page and a few random files :-). Okay so most of it was book stuff under a subdomain, but still...

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Sunday, March 9, 2003

MX North prep

So much to do, so little time! I'm getting things ready for my trip to MXNorth over the next couple of days. I'm anxious to break free and relax with friends while being a geek around people who'll understand! This is certainly going to be a new experience for me. A) I'm not used to snow or cold weather. I'm very Californian like that :-) B)Dan and I are going to have sushi at a little Japanese place called Fune that's close to the hotel. It'll be my first sushi experience, and I'm scared!

Meanwhile I have too much to get done. Thankfully I'm done with the Free Image Gallery extension for nCubed. I'll announce that here when it goes public. It's pretty darn cool if I do say so myself. I'll be adding a sample gallery to the site with it soon too. Back to work for me...

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Thursday, March 6, 2003

Crapulous

Today's word of the day is crapulous, pronounced \KRAP-yuh-luss\. I'm not making this up, I swear. Don't believe me? Visit Merriam Webster's Word of the Day page.

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