TerriMorton.com

Walk MS

Terri Morton — Sun, 04 May 2008 21:19:10 GMT

Inspired and impressed by my 16 year old daughter's efforts to raise over $100 in sponsorships for her 6-mile walk to benefit the Multiple Sclerosis society (sold $1 paper foot at a time), I decided to participate in the event instead of just dropping her off and picking her up when it was over. I wrote out a check for $25, the minimum donation required to participate, and joined her and her high school team in the walk.

It was a great day for walking. The temperature was in the low to mid 60's, mostly cloudy with the clouds clearing and the sun shining by the end of the walk. Given my impromptu decision, I was not really prepared for the walk, having gotten insufficient sleep (thanks to a very late night out with my husband) and improper hydration. Nevertheless, I was determined and actually wound up finishing 11 minutes earlier than my daughter and her friends. I walked 6 miles in 2 hours, which is a 20-minute mile pace. That's not especially great, but I was happy with it given my mostly sedentary lifestyle.

I also had really no idea just how much support these events have, with the large turnout and the number of teams in "team" t-shirts. We were provided water, snacks, and lunch, which was somewhat unexpected and great. Subway sponsored lunch, so I had a turkey sub and not just a hot dog. :-) Thank you, Subway! There was also music provided by a live band at the finish line, which was fun.

The walk reminded me of how much I enjoy being outdoors, and of how much I love walking in the woods. It also reminded me that I do not do enough charitable work, which I am going to remedy. I'll let you know how I make out there in a future blog post. :-)

I will certainly participate in the event next year, and will be soliciting sponsorships. What a great time for a worthy cause!

How to Add a 4 GB Memory Card to a Samsung SCH-i760

Terri Morton — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 05:10:00 GMT

Last month I purchased a 4 GB microSD memory card for my Samsung SCH-i760. After struggling to get the card out of its packaging, and promptly losing the SD adapter, I inserted the card into my phone and thought I was good to go.

This past weekend, my phone told me it didn't have enough space to allow me to take a photo. Declaring the phone to be stupid, I went into Settings - System - Memory, clicked on the Storage Card tab, and was surprised to see "Total storage card memory: Not installed". Scratching my head, I did some research and discovered that the Samsung SCH-i760 will only recognize 2 GB cards. To use a 4 GB card would require a hack.

Armed with the hack I found here: Samsung SCH-i760 > 4GB microSD HC, these are the steps I took to enable the card (sorry for spelling this out in nitty-gritty detail, but maybe it will help someone like me who isn't completely up-to-speed on how these things work):

Placed the .cab file into the SCH-i760 My Documents folder on my laptop
Plugged the Data Link Cable into the phone and the USB port on my laptop
ActiveSync automatically started, bringing the .cab file down to my phone
Used File Explorer on the phone to locate the .cab file
Clicked on it which made it run
Gave me a security warning, and I opted to proceed

When done, it told me the device needed to restart to complete the installation, and I said OK. The device restarted itself, and when it came back, I again checked the memory settings and lo and behold, it told me "Total storage card memory: 3878.50 MB". Woohoo!

I'm Only as Smart as Google Allows Me to Be

Terri Morton — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 03:35:00 GMT

One of my fellow Telligenti (Michael Kelley) had this as his Windows Live Messenger tagline for the past few days: "I'm only as smart as Google." Each time I looked at my contact list in WLM I stopped and reflected on that tagline. For me, it holds many truths. People who know me tease me about my propensity for Googling anything and everything. I admit it: I am a Google addict.

A few months ago I signed up for Google Web History, just out of curiosity, since I am such an avid Google user. Taking a look at my trends, over the past 7 days I've performed 178 Google searches. Over the past 30 days I've performed 654 searches. Wow, that's a lot of searching. The Top Sites I've landed on in the past 30 days?

en.wikipedia.org
www.microsoft.com
www.amazon.com
weboggle.shackworks.com
blogs.msdn.com
www.ratebeer.com
msdn2.microsoft.com
msdn.microsoft.com
www.digitalcamerainfo.com
weblogs.asp.net

Google has helped me with decisions regarding the care of my children, purchase of a cell phone, interview preparation, cooking, programming questions, telephone numbers, slang translation, urban myth identification, vacation planning, my website theme, lyrics of songs stuck in my head, and a million other things. It's settled arguments, generated arguments, and provided information.

Just last week my son participated in his Cub Scout pack's Pinewood Derby. While there my husband and I were speaking with another parent about car designs, and we mentioned that the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile would be a fun design to do. The other parent said something along the lines of "yeah, but the trouble is finding out exactly what it's supposed to look like". Wha?? My friend Google can tell me within 10 seconds what the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile should look like. It can also show me what some previous Wienermobile entries in the Pinewood Derby looked like. (Oh, and as an aside, as I was Googling to find out the correct spelling of "wiener", I came across this advertisement blast from the past: "My bologna has a first name, it's O-S-C-A-R.")

Obviously with an average of over 20 Google searches per day, Google is a big part of my life. I can't imagine not having knowledge at literally my fingertips. What did they do in the olden days? People trekked to the local public library for information. I remember in grade school learning about the file of periodical and newspaper clippings that the librarians kept, where you could try to look up information about recent events and topics. This was a literal file of scissor-clipped articles from newspapers and magazines. OK, perhaps I am showing my age here, but this was in the 70's. Can you even imagine that now? With Google News I have instant access to over 4500 news sources.

It's amazing to me that I get all of this for free. Don't tell them, but I'd be willing to pay for the service. I get way more out of it than my YMCA membership.

Yes, I'm only as smart as Google allows me to be. And that's pretty damned smart. :-)

Live on Graffiti CMS Beta 2

Terri Morton — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 04:51:00 GMT

Tonight I decided to update my site to the Graffiti CMS Beta 2 bits (from the Beta 1 bits). It took exactly one hour to update the site, from the time the thought crossed my mind to being completely done.

Rather than leave unneeded files lying about, I decided to do a clean install. I also decided to keep running the site with Access as my database rather than convert it to VistaDB or move it to SQL Server.

The steps I followed were:

Downloaded my graffiti.mdb file locally
Downloaded the contents of my files/media folder, which contained the images I had uploaded to insert into posts.
Downloaded my site theme, which I had tweaked on the live site and no longer had a current local version. I did this by using the Share option on the theme on the admin screen.
Downloaded the Beta 2 bits from GraffitCMS.com.
Extracted the Beta 2 bits onto my local machine.
Copied the graffiti.mdb that came with Beta 2 from \Graffiti\Data\Utility\Migrations to \Graffiti\Web\App_Data.
Ran the \Graffiti\Data\Utility\Migrations\DataMover.exe utility against my downloaded graffiti.mdb file, with a destination of \Graffiti\Web\App_Data\graffiti.mdb.
Copied the downloaded files\media folder contents into \Graffiti\Web\files\media.
Fired up Graffiti locally, went into the admin screen, and under Site Options - Utilities I ran Rebuild Pages.
Deleted all folders and directories on my live website.
Uploaded the entire \Graffiti\Web folder, subfolders, and files up to my live website.

And it all just worked!

A Mini Rant: Logging Off of Windows Server 2008

Terri Morton — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 03:42:18 GMT

As a Program Manager, I am a Jack of many trades, a Renaissance woman of sorts. One of the things I find myself doing is remotely connecting to servers to check error logs, look at files, review IIS settings, and various other things.

With Windows Server 2003, logging off was always a bit uncomfortable, as the Shut Down and Log Off options were right next to each other:

A few of the sites I am responsible for are now running on Windows Server 2008 RC1, and much to my amazement, Microsoft has actually made the logging off situation WORSE!

Note that the Shut Down button in Windows Server 2008 is now in essentially the same place that the Log Off button was located in Windows Server 2003. Note also that in order to log off, you need to first click the right arrow, then choose Log Off from the flyout menu.

Excuse me, but, isn't this a *SERVER*, and isn't this 2008? Wouldn't the most likely server scenario be that a user or administrator logs in and out of the server many times per week, but that a shut down is much less frequent, more on the order of a few times per year? I simply don't understand this decision. The buttons were already difficult to navigate, and now they are even more difficult, and it's even more likely that the Shut Down button will be pressed accidentally. What were they thinking?

Deciding Between an iPhone and a Samsung SCH-i760

Terri Morton — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 06:00:00 GMT

Boy was I excited when I won an Apple iPhone at the Telligent Christmas party! On the stage to claim my prize, I proudly announced "Now I can be part of the club!". Several of my coworkers, including but not limited to Rob Howard, Scott Watermasysk, and Jose Lema have iPhones and love them. At Dave and Buster's during the CSDC weekend in October I watched Jose interact with his iPhone, dragging and scrolling with his fingers, along with taking photos of Scott enjoying his fruity drink. At the time I had a 2+ year old lower-end LG phone, one which did not even have a camera, and I had some serious phone envy.

My position as Program Manager, responsible for some Microsoft developer sites such as www.asp.net, keeps me busy with email, and with such a large and popular site, there are occasionally issues that come up during non-business hours which need to be addressed. So I have long lusted after a Blackberry or some other SmartPhone which would allow me to stay connected yet not quite chained to the desk. When I started using my old LG more in the house, I realized that I had intermittent reception problems; occasionally there would be periods where I could not hear the person on the other end of the phone, yet they could still hear me.

Growing tired of the reception issues, and in need of a smarter phone, I started researching what was on the market. The phone that really appealed to me was the Nokia N95, yet unfortunately this is not a phone which carrier's in the US are offering; it'd be up to me to buy it at a premium price, unlock it, and do whatever needed to be done to get it working. Another phone which appealed to me was the AT&T Tilt, but after examining the total cost of ownership, and not being thrilled about jumping ship from Verizon, I decided that was out. That left me with Verizon's phones. My husband ultimately decided that an LG Voyager would serve his needs well, and I found that phone easy and fun to use. But I eventually decided on a Samsung SCH-i760.

The Samsung worked fairly well, although I had never used Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional and needed to become familiar with it. When I won the iPhone, I had to decide yet again. These factors weighed into my decision between the iPhone and the Samsung:

Didn’t relish the thought of having to send out the iPhone for a battery replacement (and I relish the thought of soldering myself even less)
Not sure that I’d use the iPhone’s mp3 player much.
iPhone doesn’t take expansion cards (although at 8 GB it exceeds my 4 GB MicroSD card for the Samsung).
iPhone only works on the EDGE network currently, and I am used to EVDO speed
iPhone does not have a hardware keyboard, voice dialing, or video recording
Neither the iPhone nor the Samsung have GPS. If the iPhone had it I would have leaned more in that direction. I am notorious for making wrong turns.
This Samsung is my first experience with Windows Mobile, and WM6 Pro is pretty decent. I like how it syncs email, contacts, appointments.
Unsure of what AT&T is like, afraid of being stuck for 2 years
Rest of family would be remaining with Verizon - can't afford to terminate contracts and pay connection fees for 4 phones.
iPhone should be coming out with a phone that will work on the Verizon network this year

After I made the final decision on my own, I found these reviews on the PhoneArena.com website, which confirmed for me that I made the right choice based on my needs and habits:

Now, the iPhone wins in the sexiness category, hands-down. And its web browser and email reader are much nicer than what comes with Windows Mobile. But I mostly use my cell for business calls, business email, and SMS messages, so I decided to keep the Samsung SCH-i760 (until the next-gen iPhone comes out, at least).

Anyone want to buy a never-used, still-shrinkwrapped iPhone? :-)

2008 Microsoft MVP Award

Terri Morton — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 00:14:00 GMT

Much to my surprise, I have received the 2008 Microsoft MVP Award for my efforts in the Visual Developer - ASP/ASP.NET technical community. This is my fourth consecutive year, with awards in 2005, 2006, 2007, and now 2008. Thank you to Microsoft and the community for the recognition!

New Graffiti CMS Theme for TerriMorton.com

Terri Morton — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:28:00 GMT

Since Graffiti is so new, there are not a lot of themes out there in the wild, yet. My graphic design skills are non-existent, so I decided to hunt down a Wordpress theme that I liked, then convert it to Graffiti CMS.

My friend Google came to the rescue in finding different sites containing Wordpress themes, and I finally settled in on Listio.com to narrow down my search. What I was looking for was something bold, 2 columns with a right-hand sidebar, non-fussy appearance, and rounded corners. My preferred color scheme was red and black, but soon decided that was too limiting. Other things on the nice-to-have list were: day planner "feel" dates on the posts, nice blockquotes, sidebar items that wrapped well, and nice-looking unordered lists.

These 3 themes in particular appealed to me:

Ultimately I decided on Yellow Hell.

Karthik wrote a great blog post explaining how he adapted a Wordpress theme for use in Graffiti: Converting a Wordpress theme to Grafffiti. While I did look at that, I wound up taking something of a different approach, to keep it simpler for my first attempt at theming.

First I copied down the live data to my local machine so that I'd have real data to work with and could easily compare how my work-in-progress theme was presenting the data vs what the Default theme was doing. This involved:

Copying down my Graffiti.mdb file from my live site to my local machine.
Copying down the /blog folder and all of its subfolders and files to my local machine.

From there, I worked from my local machine. From within the Graffiti admin screen I chose the Presentation>Themes> Create New Theme option. I removed the ie6.css and ie7.css files. Using these pages as a reference, I went ahead and updated the layout.view, index.view, and finally post.view files (in that order) to match the theme:

What can I do with Macros?
View source on the Test run of Yellow Hell

There was no style for the tag cloud, so I had to make that up myself. When I had it all more or less working locally, I chose the Share option on the theme, which created an XML file. Then I went back to my live site and clicked the Presentation>Themes> Upload Theme link. And voila, there was my YellowHell theme. I clicked on it to select it as the theme for my site, and it just worked.

There are still a few bumps to work out that I am aware of:

IE6 is not happy with the post view page when comments are still open. Looks like something silly I need to hunt down.
There is no RSS icon, although there is a Link tag for it in the page header, so it's discoverable.
The posting comments experience needs to be improved, as I've not yet applied the style.
I'd like my own comments to appear differently than those of the other people who have commented.
I want the year to appear on the posts in addition to the month and day.

And actually, now that I've gone to the trouble of making this theme, I am deciding I'm not as crazy about it as I was when I started. It's a bit "much". I may go ahead and work on Finestripes 1.0 next. :-)

Backing up Files with WD Backup to a My Book

Terri Morton — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 06:18:00 GMT

Many months ago I purchased a Western Digital 320GB USB/FireWire My Book external hard drive.

Isn't it cute?

Unfortunately, my Dell Inspiron 9300 has a 4-pin FireWire, but the My Book is a 6-pin. Since I do not have an adapter, I was left to use the slower USB connection.

My intent was to offload a bunch of photos and whatnot from my laptop's 50 GB hard drive to free up some space. I also wanted somewhere to perform some badly-needed backups and a defrag.

Finally this past weekend I moved over 13 GB of photos to the My Book, and set about to performing my first-ever backup on this laptop. Yes, I am embarrassed to say that I have had the laptop since August 2005 and had never performed a backup. Lacking any sort of backup software, I decided to use the WD Backup application that had come with the hard drive. It is super-simple to use, and my needs were similarly simple: Back up everything in the My Documents folder, except for one folder which contains a read-only subversion checkout.

I tried many times, but could not get it to work. Each time I started with the Advanced Backup option, chose my folders, performed the backup, it churned for a while, and seemed to finish. Files were written to the My Book. But when I looked at the Restore option, there was nothing there to restore. After researching, I discovered this was because, inexplicably, no project file (with a .ndz extension) was written to disk.

I finally decided to try the Schedule Backup option, and this worked flawlessly. I scheduled my backup, chose the folders, and then chose Back up Now instead of waiting for the scheduled time. This time files were written to the My Book, and the needed project file was also written out to disk. This allowed the Restore option to recognize that the backup was on the disk.

After the backup was complete, I also performed my first-ever defrag, as well as an overdue Windows Update. 34 updates and an hour or two later, I was all up-to-date.

Now I am well on my way to performing safe computing!

Adding a FeedBurner Feed to a Graffiti CMS Website

Terri Morton — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 17:14:00 GMT

I am now using FeedBurner to deliver my RSS feed, so that I can better understand my readership. FeedBurner offers a free as well as a professional level of service. I opted for the free service.

Adding FeedBurner to a Graffiti CMS site is as easy as adding Google Analytics. Here are the steps:

Sign up for a FeedBurner account at http://www.feedburner.com. Please use the Register option at the top of the screen, and *then* follow their "Start FeedBurning Now" wizard. While the wizard includes the ability to register, I could not get this to work with FireFox 2.0 for whatever reason; registering separately worked for me.
Step through the "Start FeedBurning Now" wizard process at FeedBurner. In the final step they provide a URL for your FeedBurner RSS feed. Save this to your clipboard.
Log in to your Graffiti CMS site, go to the admin screens, and navigate to Site Options - Settings. In the FeedBurner URL box, paste in the URL saved in step 2, then press Update Settings.

That's it! Now clicking on the RSS icon on your home page will lead the site visitor to your FeedBurner feed and not the built-in Graffiti RSS feed.