Code and Coffee in Canton set for Friday June 18th at 7am at the Canton Arabica.  Check out Darrell's post on getting started with Ruby Koans if you're interested in working through it with us.  Hope to see you there.

We have another Code and Coffee scheduled for tomorrow (6/5) at the Canton Arabica on Dressler.  We'll be there around 7 staying for about an hour or so.  Darrell, Eric and I have been working through Ruby Koans and are working through the array's section.  Please feel free to join us, you can start from the beginning and catch up to us or work on something else if you're so inclined.  If nothing else, drop by have a coffee and say hello.

Three of us made it for Code and Coffee in Canton this morning.  Always good to see Darrell and Eric.  We're starting to work through Ruby Koans to learn the Ruby language.  Very cool stuff and a very neat way to learn a language.  Would be a good idea to see something like this for C#, VB.net or any other language for that matter.  If I had time, maybe I'd work on something for C#.

Anyway, our next get together is schedule for Friday June 5th.  Same place, same time.  We'll probably continue to work through Koans (we were working through about_arrays when we called it quits this morning).  Feel free to come jump in and join us or if there is something else you'd rater work on that's cool too.

We're meeting for code and coffee again at Canton Arabica on Dressler in Belden at 7:00 am Friday, May 22.  Four of us there last week (Darrell Mozingo, Eric Schliffka, Josh Clark and myself).   Last time we decided we're all interested in doing some Rails.  That's way out of my comfort zone so should be fun.  I'm looking forward to this week to see what we get started.  Come out and join us!

A few weeks back I read about the Code and Coffee meetup in the Columbus Ohio area that Jeff Blankenburg mentioned.  Sounded like a great idea to put together for those of located in the Stark County region in Northeast Ohio.  Darrell Mozingo expressed an interest in at as well and helped to get this first one organized.

What is the purpose of this?  To get together for some great coffee (or other preferred morning beverage) and do some pairing in the hopes of pushing the comfort zone and learning some new stuff.  Our hopes are to keep this very informal and casual with really no agenda, just working on some things that are interesting and helping us all grow.  Idea is to pair, so no need to bring laptop if you don't have one, just come and we'll all hopefully learn something.

First meetup for the Stark County Code and Coffee will be Friday May 15th at the Canton Arabica on Dressler in Belden.  We'll be there at 7am and try to get the old brain functioning that early.  Since everyone is busy, we'll try to keep this to about an hour so most anyone can be back to work by 8:30.  I'm an independent so there is a great possibility that I may stick around longer, so if you can too, we'll keep on working. 

Unless we come up with something better, we'll probably keep this first one to more of a meet and greet to see where everyone's interest lies.  But we'll pretty much play it by ear and just wing it.

If you're interested or have any more questions, contact either myself or Darrell.  Otherwise, we hope to see you there!

I don't blog much, but I do try and do a recap of my past year and set my goals for the following year.  Here we are on the 13th of January (happy 11th birthday to my daughter) already and it's high time I get to work on this post.

Recap of 2008
As always, first a few highlights from 2008.

• While I'm still human and falter like anyone, my faith in Jesus Christ has grown stronger throughout the year.
• Secondly, another awesome year with my wife and best friend of 16 years.
• Thirdly, the joy that my four children bring me.  Aged 13 through 3, they keep us moving, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
• While business wasn't quite as good as 2007, I'm still very thankful that 2008 was a success and I still am amazed that I have my own business doing something I truly love each and every day.
• While I seemed to have more health issues this past year (I seemed to be suffering from a constant cold or something all year long and the doctor put me on blood pressure meds), I did manage to lose around 30 pounds over the last year, going from 230 to hovering around 200 now.  This came about from being sick, but also from eating healthier and doing a bit of excercise.

Looking forward to 2009
Looking forward to 2009, my goals are not much different from last year.

• Once again I strive to become more like Christ each and every day and by doing so become a much better husband and father.
• I refuse to participate in any recession and intend to work smarter this year.  I believe I can grow my business this year and I fully intend to do so.  I believe there is opportunity in any economic environment and believe that it is I (or any individual), not the government, that will bring the economy out of this down cycle.
• Develop more tools and products that I can either offer up for download or perhaps sell.
• I tend to read around 20-30 books a year (reviews blogged at www.wordsforwords.com).  This year I want to push that to 30-40.
• Blog more here and in my other blogs (Words For Words and Lautz of Thoughts)
• Assist my wife in getting a business idea that we have for her off the ground and moving to being profitable.
• Continue to work on getting in shape.  Last year I started with 100 pushups program and began training for marathon (as described here).  The marathon thing fell by the wayside as winter set in, but this spring I intend to get back to it.  I may never run a marathon, but I want to work towards that goal.
• In general, I want to just enjoy life each day and live each day to it's fullest. 

 

If you are working with Sql Server Management Studio 2008 and trying to manage a database on a hosted server, you probably have run into this error when opening the Databases node in Object Explorer.

Error 916 - Server principal "userx" is not able to access the db "dbwhatever" under current security context

Searching around we see it's a known issue but no real workaround. The only clue I had of what was going on was that the reason this was happening was because of the Object Explorer Details view of the databases which gives a ton of information on each database.  Unfortunately, in a shared environment, you don't have permissions to gather this data from most databases.  The error isn't handled cleanly and I think it has something to do with a setting for the Auto_Shutdown...but regardless, the bug exists and seemingly no fix for us using shared servers.

However, I've found a workaround!!  After the error comes up, click ok through the error.  You will still get access to the system tables.  This allows you to click on the Databases node to bring up the Object Explorer Details screen.  From there you can right-click on the header to change the viewable columns.  Deselect everything except for the name field.  Refresh the view and all the tables will come up.  In a shared environment, I could care less about just about everything but the name, so I'm not really losing anything. 

Problem solved, error worked around and we don't have to wait on and hope that MS does something about the error.

I'm a little late to the party, but a tweep, Michael Eaton, posted some questions on how he got started in programming.  So I thought I'd finally provide my own answers.

How old were you when you started programming?  I was probably around 13 or so when I started coding.  I had gotten a second-hand Vic20 that I practically lived on.   After a year or so of that I had saved up some money and purchased a Commodore 64 with disk drive and was in absolute heaven.   About age 18 or 19 I purchased an Amiga 500 with some college loan money (I justified it to my parents since I was going into computer science).  Then at age 23 or so (around 1993 / 1994) purchased my first PC a screaming 486 66 and I paid the extra money to get the CDRom addon.

How did you get started in programming? When I had the Vic20, I loved the old Scott Adams adventures games that you purchased on cartridge.  My coding interest grew really out of a desire to hack those old adventures and write some of my own.  This grew into getting the programming magazines of the day (Compute and Compute Gazette being a few that I recall) and typing the code in from the magazine.  I grew beyond that to start writing my own games (back when you could still develop games in your garage or familiy room as was my case).  I continued in that direction with the Amiga and really wanted to develop games for a living, but I never had the artistic background and got a bit discouraged that I couldn't create the nice looking games I saw on the Amiga.

What was your first language?  I started off with Commodore Basic on the Vic20 and Commodore64 along with learning some 6052 assembly language.  Once I moved to the Amiga I learned C and went on from there.   In fact at one point I wrote C compiler/interpreter for the Commodore 64 in its Basic language....that was fun.

What was the first real program you wrote? I think the first real program I wrote was a few text adventure games on the Commodore 64.  Also I wrote a pacman clone on the Amiga as my first real C program.   One game I started writing with a buddy of mine was called Time Train and was a text adventure with some minimal graphics.  We never got really far as that was about the time girls started looking more interesting to me than computers, but I remember we spent a lot of time on the title screen (animated graphics and such) and on the first few rooms of the game.  I've thought a few times of reviving that concept, rewrite it in Inform (Infocom based development language) and submitting it to the Interactive Fiction competition.

What languages have you used since you started programming? I've used a ton of different languages over the years (some just in college so not sure if that really counts) but of course many version of Basic, from Commodore Basic to QuickBasic, AMOS on the Amiga, and to VB3, 4, 5, 6 and VB.NET.  I've used C, C++ and now practically live in C# (I think I talk to my wife and kids in a C# dialect at times).  I've touched Fortran, Lisp, Pascal, assembly mostly in college.  REXX on the amiga and now starting to use some Powershell scripting.    I'm sure I've forgotten a few obscure languages I played with at one time or another, but those are the major ones.

What was your first professional programming gig?  I got a job straight out of college in 1994 working for a place called Synergy Data Systems, then known as Nationwide Interchange Systems and then Top Echelon.  I met some great people there (Goody being one) and have kept intouch with some people since.  We worked on desktop applications, web sites, and server procesess and I did learn a ton there.  I left in 2001 to work for a local consulting firm (basically an independent who decided to hire an employee) and left there in early 2002 to start my own consulting firm which I've been working hard at ever since.

If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming? I probably would have as it is a great career.  My only regret is that I've discovered as I get older and my children get older that I really don't like being stuck behind a computer all day.  Consulting has helped in that regard some, but still a lot of time spent at the keyboard.

If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be? I'm going to have to say don't get stuck in a cubicle your whole career.  Also as Michael said in his answers, communication is key.  It is easy to hide behind the screen and not communicate with anyone.  I'll just say it can be very lonely there at times.  Consulting has enabled me to interact with people on a regular basis and that has got to be one of the great benefits of what I do now.

What's the most fun you've ever had ... programming? I can't really nail it down to just one moment.  But I really enjoy working with other developers, especially in the early design stages of a project when ideas are flowing freely and there is just a general excitement about the project as a whole and everyone is just itching to get started.