The release of the "STAR WARS" trilogy on DVD, led me to Best Buy to pick up that and a few other DVD's.
I've always been annoyed by George Lucas's reluctance to release the original films on DVD. I'm not sure what his issues were. He's always been very particular that his films are presented exactly how he wants, and DVD is the perfect medium for this. Lucas released the trilogy on VHS years ago, but as we know now, VHS is no comparison to DVD.
The STAR WARS trilogy did not disappoint. All three movies have been enhanced and the audio especially is impressive. It's important to note that the movies are not the original movies, rather the "Special Edition" movies that were released to theaters a few years ago.
The movies definitely have survived the test of time, as the films are all as enjoyable, if not more, than when I saw them some 25 years ago. My son, who just turned 11, finds them mesmerizing, which speaks volumes for their appeal.
The other DVD I picked up was "RUSH In Rio." I've always been a Rush fan, but no necessarily fanatic. Throughout my high school and college years, a buddy and I would make a point to catch Rush in concert whenever they passed through Kansas City. The DVD was an impulse purchase after seeing it playing one of my favorite songs, "YYZ" on a TV in the store.
The DVD includes 2 discs, a concert disc of the band's final concert of the recent tour in Rio. The second disc, which I haven't seen yet, includes a documentary and enhanced versions of a couple of the songs.
I was excited to pop this one into the DVD player in my home theater to hear it in its 5.1 glory. Boy, was I disappointed.
The audio on the concert DVD is awful. Imagine taking a poor quality recording of a noisey concert, then adding excessive doses of reverberation to it. After 2 or 3 songs, I found myself being annoyed by the sound - so much so, it was quite a relief to turn it off. Typically, a concert recording is made up of direct feeds from the microphones and sounds systems, and crowd noise is added in for ambiance. This DVD sounds like it was made with Radio Shack microphones sitting in the middle of the crowd. The crowd noise is way too loud, and the music is terribly muddy and difficult to hear.
I find it hard to believe that musicians like Rush (and they are the most talented musicians I've ever seen) would allow this travesty to be released.
Monday, September 27, 2004
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Royals and Yanks
I was at the stadium last night for the Royals impressive win over the Yankees. The Royals were able to capitalize on poor pitching and put up 10 runs in the 5th inning (and 5 more in the 7th).
I was at the game with a buddy who knows a Royal Lancer. The Lancers are responsible for selling season tickets. He let us watch the last few innings from the Stadium Club. It was nice. The Club is a restaurant that overlooks the field. Some folks think this is the best way to take in a game. I disagree.
I found that while in the Stadium Club, I really didn't feel like I was at the game. The Club is behind glass windows, so you can't hear the crowd. Or the music. Or the announcer. They do pipe in the radio broadcast, so you can get some idea of what's going on. The view of the field is pretty good. The Club is on the 3rd base side, down the line a little bit.
But I feel like baseball is best experienced up close. I'm very fortunate to have been able to join with a group who purchases season tickets down close. The seats are about 5 rows up from the club seats, right behind the visitor's on deck circle. From there, you can really hear the crack of the bat and the ball hitting the catcher's mitt. I'm very lucky to be able to catch about 10 games a year from these seats.
Football, on the other hand, is best experienced up high. Good thing, since my Chiefs seats are in the upper deck... way up there...
I was at the game with a buddy who knows a Royal Lancer. The Lancers are responsible for selling season tickets. He let us watch the last few innings from the Stadium Club. It was nice. The Club is a restaurant that overlooks the field. Some folks think this is the best way to take in a game. I disagree.
I found that while in the Stadium Club, I really didn't feel like I was at the game. The Club is behind glass windows, so you can't hear the crowd. Or the music. Or the announcer. They do pipe in the radio broadcast, so you can get some idea of what's going on. The view of the field is pretty good. The Club is on the 3rd base side, down the line a little bit.
But I feel like baseball is best experienced up close. I'm very fortunate to have been able to join with a group who purchases season tickets down close. The seats are about 5 rows up from the club seats, right behind the visitor's on deck circle. From there, you can really hear the crack of the bat and the ball hitting the catcher's mitt. I'm very lucky to be able to catch about 10 games a year from these seats.
Football, on the other hand, is best experienced up high. Good thing, since my Chiefs seats are in the upper deck... way up there...
Digital Signatures
It's been a while since I've blogged. I'm working on an InfoPath project and that has consumed my working hours and several of my free time hours as well.
One pretty cool thing we will be using in the project is the Digital Signature capability in InfoPath SP1.
Our form will include several views that are used to populate one large schema with data. The form will not be completely filled out at one sitting. As users fill out the various views, we will allow them to digitally sign the data thus certifying its validity. InfoPath SP1 allows us to sign just certain pieces of the data as we move through the process. Once the data is signed, it will become read-only to prevent tampering, either accidental or intentional.
The above MSDN article give a good background on signing data in InfoPath.
One pretty cool thing we will be using in the project is the Digital Signature capability in InfoPath SP1.
Our form will include several views that are used to populate one large schema with data. The form will not be completely filled out at one sitting. As users fill out the various views, we will allow them to digitally sign the data thus certifying its validity. InfoPath SP1 allows us to sign just certain pieces of the data as we move through the process. Once the data is signed, it will become read-only to prevent tampering, either accidental or intentional.
The above MSDN article give a good background on signing data in InfoPath.
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
My Worst Nightmare
The 2004 Royals.
Okay, now my other worst nightmare. You're making good progress on a project, writing all kinds of kick-butt code. There's one piece you're not quite sure about, so you GOOGLE it. You find a perfect example, but you unexpectedly get pulled away. By the time you return, you're late for your son's baseball practice, so you shut down the laptop and hit the road.
Now, you can't find that piece of code to save your life....
If anybody knows where that InfoPath JScript code is that opens an XML file from the file system and reads elements out of it, please let me know.
In the meantime, check out these valuable InfoPath resources:
InfoPath Team Blog
Greg Collins and Patrick Halstead's InfoPath Site
AH HA! I found it! It was at the InfoPath Team Blog, and it was an item describing how to dynamically update the xsf file. You can find it here.
Okay, now my other worst nightmare. You're making good progress on a project, writing all kinds of kick-butt code. There's one piece you're not quite sure about, so you GOOGLE it. You find a perfect example, but you unexpectedly get pulled away. By the time you return, you're late for your son's baseball practice, so you shut down the laptop and hit the road.
Now, you can't find that piece of code to save your life....
If anybody knows where that InfoPath JScript code is that opens an XML file from the file system and reads elements out of it, please let me know.
In the meantime, check out these valuable InfoPath resources:
InfoPath Team Blog
Greg Collins and Patrick Halstead's InfoPath Site
AH HA! I found it! It was at the InfoPath Team Blog, and it was an item describing how to dynamically update the xsf file. You can find it here.
Thursday, September 02, 2004
Greinke's Night
Well, we finally got a glimpse of what the future may hold last night. Zack Greinke pitched a perfect game into the 6th, and only gave up 2 hits before leaving after the 7th. (BTW, can somebody please tell me why Pena took him out? Under 100 pitches and obviously dominating the Tigers. He gave up two cheap singles but got out of it by inducing a double-play ball).
Greinke's either dumb like a bag of hammers, or a mad genious. When he speaks, it sounds like a tree talking. But on the mound, he playfully toys with hitters. Last night, he decided to drop in a 50 mph curve for a strike. His quote in the paper this morning:
“I told myself,” Greinke said, “don't start laughing out here because you'll make everyone mad at you. You can't go out there and be a clown on the mound.”
Don't start laughing??? I can just see him out there chuckling at his own brilliance. Soren Petro reported on WHB this morning that Greinke was in the tunnels working on a knuckleball. He's 20 and he already knows more pitches than a Kirby vacuum salesman.
If only the rest of the Royals organization wasn't in tatters. It would be fun to see Greinke grow to be the most dominating pitcher in baseball AND to have some guys around him who can score runs for him (lucky he was so good last night, as the Royals could muster just 1 run).
Greinke's either dumb like a bag of hammers, or a mad genious. When he speaks, it sounds like a tree talking. But on the mound, he playfully toys with hitters. Last night, he decided to drop in a 50 mph curve for a strike. His quote in the paper this morning:
“I told myself,” Greinke said, “don't start laughing out here because you'll make everyone mad at you. You can't go out there and be a clown on the mound.”
Don't start laughing??? I can just see him out there chuckling at his own brilliance. Soren Petro reported on WHB this morning that Greinke was in the tunnels working on a knuckleball. He's 20 and he already knows more pitches than a Kirby vacuum salesman.
If only the rest of the Royals organization wasn't in tatters. It would be fun to see Greinke grow to be the most dominating pitcher in baseball AND to have some guys around him who can score runs for him (lucky he was so good last night, as the Royals could muster just 1 run).
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
InfoPath Fun
Just finished a proof of concept with InfoPath. What we wanted was an automated way to convert a completed InfoPath form to TIFF in order to archive it in a document imaging system. Turns out it's possible, but a bit painful.
The first step is to write code in the form to capture it. That can be done by "signing" the form. When designing it, you can specify which pieces of data should be signed. For signing to work, the form must be Fully Trusted. See the InfoPath SDK for more info on fully trusted forms. Once that's done, I can capture the form in the OnSign event like so:
As you can see, the form is being captured and saved as a Base64-encoded PNG file. In my test, I fire this event by using a button that when clicked runs this line of code:
Once the Base64-encoded PNG file is saved, we can use System.Drawing.Imaging to grab that PNG and convert it to TIFF. Of course, it needs to be decoded to binary first. I wrote a little VB.NET Windows app that does this. Here's what it looks like:
Now that my little test is working, I at least know it can be done. Now the real test will be to use this concept in real-world forms. I'll get that chance starting tomorrow when I begin a new project.
The first step is to write code in the form to capture it. That can be done by "signing" the form. When designing it, you can specify which pieces of data should be signed. For signing to work, the form must be Fully Trusted. See the InfoPath SDK for more info on fully trusted forms. Once that's done, I can capture the form in the OnSign event like so:
// The OnSign handler can be customized only in fully trusted form templates.
var Signature = eventObj.SignedDataBlock.Signatures.Create();
var PngNode = Signature.SignatureBlockXmlNode.selectSingleNode(".//sp:ScreenDumpPNG");
var fso = new ActiveXObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject");
var a = fso.CreateTextFile("c:\\TestFormPNG.txt", true);
a.Write(PngNode.text);
a.Close();
eventObj.ReturnStatus = true;
}
As you can see, the form is being captured and saved as a Base64-encoded PNG file. In my test, I fire this event by using a button that when clicked runs this line of code:
XDocument.SignedDataBlocks(0).Sign();
Once the Base64-encoded PNG file is saved, we can use System.Drawing.Imaging to grab that PNG and convert it to TIFF. Of course, it needs to be decoded to binary first. I wrote a little VB.NET Windows app that does this. Here's what it looks like:
Dim inFile As System.IO.StreamReader
Dim base64String As String
Try
Dim base64CharArray() As Char
inFile = New System.IO.StreamReader("C:\TestFormPNG.png", _
System.Text.Encoding.ASCII)
base64CharArray = New Char(inFile.BaseStream.Length) {}
inFile.Read(base64CharArray, 0, inFile.BaseStream.Length)
base64String = New String(base64CharArray, _
0, _
base64CharArray.Length - 1)
Catch exp As System.Exception
' Error creating stream or reading from it.
System.Console.WriteLine("{0}", exp.Message)
Return
End Try
' Convert the Base64 UUEncoded input into binary output.
Dim binaryData() As Byte
Try
binaryData = System.Convert.FromBase64String(base64String)
Catch exp As System.ArgumentNullException
System.Console.WriteLine("Base 64 string is null.")
Return
Catch exp As System.FormatException
System.Console.WriteLine("Base 64 length is not 4 or is " + _
"not an even multiple of 4.")
Return
End Try
'Write out the decoded data.
Dim outStream As New MemoryStream(binaryData)
Dim outImage As New Bitmap(outStream)
Dim TIFImage As Image = outImage
TIFImage.Save("c:\TestFormTIF.tiff", System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat.Tiff)
MessageBox.Show("Image has been converted")
Now that my little test is working, I at least know it can be done. Now the real test will be to use this concept in real-world forms. I'll get that chance starting tomorrow when I begin a new project.
The Races
I was checking the box scores this morning and noticed some interesting races as we head into the final month of the season:
AL Central: The Royals, led by Juan Gonzalez's MVP-like season, are making good on predictions they'd win the Central, leading the Twins by a comfortable 10 games. Oh wait... Sorry, I slipped into Bizarro-World for a second. The reality is that the Royals are the biggest disappointment in baseball this year. They entered 2004 bolstered by their surprising over-.500 season last year, but everthing has gone wrong. Not a single player has played to his ability. When the entire team slumps, that's not good. The Royals are heading for their second 100-loss season in 3 years.
Meanwhile, the Twins are poised to win yet another division title, leading Cleveland by 7 games. But the Indians have not given up, and went over the .500 mark with an impressive 22-0 win over the Yankees last night. If the Indians can hang in there, this could be an interesting race.
AL West: This one is close. The A's lead the Angels by just 3 games. The A's have been on fire, winning 8 straight and going 9-1 in their last 10 games. The Angels are just as hot, however, having won 8 of their last 10 games. A couple of off-nights by either team can cost the pennant.
AL East: On August 16, the Yankees' lead was 10.5 games. Today it's 3.5. The Yankees were embarrassed by the Indians last night and have struggled of late. In their last 10 games, the Yankees are 5-5 while the Red Sox are 9-1. The Sox are getting hot just at the right time while the Yankees are looking vulnerable. The Sox were hoping to get a Wild Card berth, but now are in position to overtake the Yankees for the East crown. This one will be fun to watch.
NL Central: WOW! What are they drinking in St. Louis? The Cards are by far the best team in baseball and have a commanding 15.5 game lead over the Cubs. The opposite of the Royals, all of the Cards' players are having outstanding seasons. This race is over.
NL West: The Giants' reign looks to be over. The Dodgers have a 5.5 game lead over the Giants and 6.0 games over the Padres. The Dodgers offense is still sputtering. They've scored 82 fewer runs than the Giants, but they have gotten it done with their pitching. Gagne has faltered a bit of late, but he is still the most dominating closer in the game. I expect the Dodgers to win the division, but then regress to the Pythagorean mean and fall early in the playoffs.
NL East: It didn't look like it early in the season, but the Braves have pulled it together and are poised to win yet another title. Their lead over Florida is 8.5 games.
AL Wild Card: Boston was hoping for a Wild Card berth, and still lead the WC standings with a 2.5 game lead over the Angels. But it looks entirely possible that the Sox could win the East, and the Yankees would be the Wild Card team. Maybe the Yankees should embrace entering the post-season as a Wild Card, given how the WC teams have done the last two years (The last two World Series winners, Anaheim and Florida, have been WC teams).
NL Wild Card: With St. Louis's magical season, the Cubs' only hope is to get in as a Wild Card. They are currently tied with the Giants in the WC race, with the Padres just a half game back. And Florida and the Astros are in it as well, just 3 games back. This looks to be the most exciting race of the season. After last year's tease, baseball lovers should be rooting for the Cubs to make possible that dream World Series with the Cubs vs. the Red Sox.
Now that the races are heating up, I'm sure I will finally start getting my money's worth out of my MLB Extra Innings package. With the package, I can watch any one of these teams on any night. It should be fun!
AL Central: The Royals, led by Juan Gonzalez's MVP-like season, are making good on predictions they'd win the Central, leading the Twins by a comfortable 10 games. Oh wait... Sorry, I slipped into Bizarro-World for a second. The reality is that the Royals are the biggest disappointment in baseball this year. They entered 2004 bolstered by their surprising over-.500 season last year, but everthing has gone wrong. Not a single player has played to his ability. When the entire team slumps, that's not good. The Royals are heading for their second 100-loss season in 3 years.
Meanwhile, the Twins are poised to win yet another division title, leading Cleveland by 7 games. But the Indians have not given up, and went over the .500 mark with an impressive 22-0 win over the Yankees last night. If the Indians can hang in there, this could be an interesting race.
AL West: This one is close. The A's lead the Angels by just 3 games. The A's have been on fire, winning 8 straight and going 9-1 in their last 10 games. The Angels are just as hot, however, having won 8 of their last 10 games. A couple of off-nights by either team can cost the pennant.
AL East: On August 16, the Yankees' lead was 10.5 games. Today it's 3.5. The Yankees were embarrassed by the Indians last night and have struggled of late. In their last 10 games, the Yankees are 5-5 while the Red Sox are 9-1. The Sox are getting hot just at the right time while the Yankees are looking vulnerable. The Sox were hoping to get a Wild Card berth, but now are in position to overtake the Yankees for the East crown. This one will be fun to watch.
NL Central: WOW! What are they drinking in St. Louis? The Cards are by far the best team in baseball and have a commanding 15.5 game lead over the Cubs. The opposite of the Royals, all of the Cards' players are having outstanding seasons. This race is over.
NL West: The Giants' reign looks to be over. The Dodgers have a 5.5 game lead over the Giants and 6.0 games over the Padres. The Dodgers offense is still sputtering. They've scored 82 fewer runs than the Giants, but they have gotten it done with their pitching. Gagne has faltered a bit of late, but he is still the most dominating closer in the game. I expect the Dodgers to win the division, but then regress to the Pythagorean mean and fall early in the playoffs.
NL East: It didn't look like it early in the season, but the Braves have pulled it together and are poised to win yet another title. Their lead over Florida is 8.5 games.
AL Wild Card: Boston was hoping for a Wild Card berth, and still lead the WC standings with a 2.5 game lead over the Angels. But it looks entirely possible that the Sox could win the East, and the Yankees would be the Wild Card team. Maybe the Yankees should embrace entering the post-season as a Wild Card, given how the WC teams have done the last two years (The last two World Series winners, Anaheim and Florida, have been WC teams).
NL Wild Card: With St. Louis's magical season, the Cubs' only hope is to get in as a Wild Card. They are currently tied with the Giants in the WC race, with the Padres just a half game back. And Florida and the Astros are in it as well, just 3 games back. This looks to be the most exciting race of the season. After last year's tease, baseball lovers should be rooting for the Cubs to make possible that dream World Series with the Cubs vs. the Red Sox.
Now that the races are heating up, I'm sure I will finally start getting my money's worth out of my MLB Extra Innings package. With the package, I can watch any one of these teams on any night. It should be fun!
InfoPath
It looks like I'll be starting a new project soon that involves the creation of about 30 InfoPath Forms.
If you're not familiar with InfoPath, it is a new product that is part of the Microsoft Office Family. InfoPath's main purpose in life is to collect data. It provides an interface to allow developers (or non-developers) to easily create data entry forms. The forms are made up of controls (text boxes, check boxes, etc) and can have all kinds of validation built in to them. What gets created is a template file, that is actually an XML document that defines the form and its data structure.
Users can simply double click the template file to open InfoPath and fill out the form, then the data can be saved as XML, or sumbitted to a database or web service.
While doing a presentation on InfoPath recently, I was asked if, as a developer, I would honestly choose InfoPath over simply writing a quick and dirty Windows Form Application in VB.NET or C#.
That's a good question, since most developers are going to stick with what they are comfortable with. However, I have found that for simple data entry forms, I can build the form in InfoPath much quicker than developing an application. It would have to depend on the situation, of course, but I think InfoPath will find its place as part of larger solutions.
For example, the Office Solution Accelerator for Recruiting combines many technologies. It uses SharePoint and WebParts, web services, and InfoPath together to create a solution for tracking candidates through the interviewing process. InfoPath is actually a small part of the solution, but ties the solution together. Developers need to be able to know when to use which technologies to make a solution work.
For more information on InfoPath, see the excellent InfoPath SDK and check out the InfoPath Team Blog
If you're not familiar with InfoPath, it is a new product that is part of the Microsoft Office Family. InfoPath's main purpose in life is to collect data. It provides an interface to allow developers (or non-developers) to easily create data entry forms. The forms are made up of controls (text boxes, check boxes, etc) and can have all kinds of validation built in to them. What gets created is a template file, that is actually an XML document that defines the form and its data structure.
Users can simply double click the template file to open InfoPath and fill out the form, then the data can be saved as XML, or sumbitted to a database or web service.
While doing a presentation on InfoPath recently, I was asked if, as a developer, I would honestly choose InfoPath over simply writing a quick and dirty Windows Form Application in VB.NET or C#.
That's a good question, since most developers are going to stick with what they are comfortable with. However, I have found that for simple data entry forms, I can build the form in InfoPath much quicker than developing an application. It would have to depend on the situation, of course, but I think InfoPath will find its place as part of larger solutions.
For example, the Office Solution Accelerator for Recruiting combines many technologies. It uses SharePoint and WebParts, web services, and InfoPath together to create a solution for tracking candidates through the interviewing process. InfoPath is actually a small part of the solution, but ties the solution together. Developers need to be able to know when to use which technologies to make a solution work.
For more information on InfoPath, see the excellent InfoPath SDK and check out the InfoPath Team Blog
Thursday, August 26, 2004
Swift Boats
I'm not really following the presidential campaigns very closely yet this year. But the stories I've seen on the news recently led me to wonder about something.
Why is it so awful for this group of veterans to question the record of John Kerry, but it's okay for Michael Moore or MoveOn.org to question the record of George W Bush?
Why is it so awful for this group of veterans to question the record of John Kerry, but it's okay for Michael Moore or MoveOn.org to question the record of George W Bush?
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
More on ghosting SharePoint Pages
I found a pretty informative article on ghosting and using FrontPage to modify SharePoint pages.
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Should the Royals have hired Buck Showalter
Texas Rangers: 69-54
KC Royals: 44-78
The Rangers today find themselves 15 games over .500 while the Royals are 34 games below .500. In May of 2002, Royals GM Allard Baird finally and mercifully fired Tony Muser. The choice for the new manager of the Royals was between Buck Showalter and Tony Pena. Showalter, then an analyst on ESPN, openly lobbied for the KC job. Baird chose Pena.
Showalter's resume looked great. 7 years of managerial experience, having built the Diamondbacks from expansion team to the division championship. Yet Baird, citing chemistry and Pena's ability to motivate young players, chose the unproven, rookie manager (following other unproven rookie managers Bob Boone and Tony Muser). The Royals went on to their first 100 loss season.
In 2003, the Royals jumped out to a great start, winning more games than they should have. After those first few weeks of the season, things evened out and though the Royals finished over .500, they didn't play .500 ball the rest of the season. And of course, we all know what's happened in 2004.
So as we look back, the obvious question is this: Should the Royals have hired Showalter instead of Pena? Obviously, there is no way to definitively answer that question. However, I think it is important to compare how the two have done with similar talent.
Showalter has a reputation for being a tough manager, perhaps one who isn't afraid to openly criticize a player or an organization. In Pena's "We Believe" tenure, nary a negative word has come from his mouth. Did Baird choose a "yes man?" Was Baird afraid of what might happen if he had a strong presence in the manager's job?
Of course, the Royals have been decimated by injuries this year (Sweeney, the last standing non-pitcher from the Opening Day roster, is going on the DL today), so it's hard to say what might have been this year. But it is clear that Pena's managing abilities are not up to par. He loves to bunt away precious outs in early innings. He often yanks pitchers who are doing well, while leaving pitchers who are getting killed out there way too long. The relievers never know what role they have. And too often, utility infielders are playing outfield positions.
So Pena's strength is to motivate young players and stress fundamentals. How do you explain Berroa's lapse that led him from his 2003 Rookie of the Year season to his demotion to AA a couple of weeks ago? How do you explain that the Royals have the most errors in the AL? What exactly has Pena done this year that makes one think that he is definitively the person to lead this team?
Meanwhile, Showalter's Rangers are just a game out of the AL Wild Card spot.
KC Royals: 44-78
The Rangers today find themselves 15 games over .500 while the Royals are 34 games below .500. In May of 2002, Royals GM Allard Baird finally and mercifully fired Tony Muser. The choice for the new manager of the Royals was between Buck Showalter and Tony Pena. Showalter, then an analyst on ESPN, openly lobbied for the KC job. Baird chose Pena.
Showalter's resume looked great. 7 years of managerial experience, having built the Diamondbacks from expansion team to the division championship. Yet Baird, citing chemistry and Pena's ability to motivate young players, chose the unproven, rookie manager (following other unproven rookie managers Bob Boone and Tony Muser). The Royals went on to their first 100 loss season.
In 2003, the Royals jumped out to a great start, winning more games than they should have. After those first few weeks of the season, things evened out and though the Royals finished over .500, they didn't play .500 ball the rest of the season. And of course, we all know what's happened in 2004.
So as we look back, the obvious question is this: Should the Royals have hired Showalter instead of Pena? Obviously, there is no way to definitively answer that question. However, I think it is important to compare how the two have done with similar talent.
Showalter has a reputation for being a tough manager, perhaps one who isn't afraid to openly criticize a player or an organization. In Pena's "We Believe" tenure, nary a negative word has come from his mouth. Did Baird choose a "yes man?" Was Baird afraid of what might happen if he had a strong presence in the manager's job?
Of course, the Royals have been decimated by injuries this year (Sweeney, the last standing non-pitcher from the Opening Day roster, is going on the DL today), so it's hard to say what might have been this year. But it is clear that Pena's managing abilities are not up to par. He loves to bunt away precious outs in early innings. He often yanks pitchers who are doing well, while leaving pitchers who are getting killed out there way too long. The relievers never know what role they have. And too often, utility infielders are playing outfield positions.
So Pena's strength is to motivate young players and stress fundamentals. How do you explain Berroa's lapse that led him from his 2003 Rookie of the Year season to his demotion to AA a couple of weeks ago? How do you explain that the Royals have the most errors in the AL? What exactly has Pena done this year that makes one think that he is definitively the person to lead this team?
Meanwhile, Showalter's Rangers are just a game out of the AL Wild Card spot.
Monday, August 23, 2004
The effect of injuries
Ask anybody about the 2004 Royals, and they will surely point to injuries as a major factor in their disappointing season. And, most folks will say that injuries are the result of bad fortune.
But in looking at the Royals' history with injuries, you have to wonder if there's something more to the story.
Pitchers: Royals pitchers have been plagued with arm problems over the years. It seems like every young promising pitcher ends up with arm trouble before they are able to make a contribution to the club. Going from memory, I can think of a few - Jose Rosado, Kyle Snyder, Runelvys Hernandez, Mike Stodolka. Fortunately, the best pitcher of them all, Zack Greinke, has shown no signs of arm trouble... yet.
Rib Problems: What amazes me is the number of rib or oblique muscle injuries. Last year, Carlos Beltran missed the first couple of weeks with an oblique injury. This year, Ken Harvey, Jeremy Affeldt, Nate Field, and Matt Stairs have all had oblique problems.
Back Injuries This one, I think, has more to do with the player and not the trainers. Some players are just more prone to have back problems. This year, Mike Sweeney has missed games off and on (though has avoided the DL) with back problems. And of course, Juan Gonzalez had the mother of all back spasms which knocked him out for the season.
Injuries like Benito Santiago's broken hand (suffered when hit by a pitch) are understandably unavoidable. But the Royals' continued pattern of similar injuries makes one wonder if the medical and training staff needs a serious evaluation.
But in looking at the Royals' history with injuries, you have to wonder if there's something more to the story.
Pitchers: Royals pitchers have been plagued with arm problems over the years. It seems like every young promising pitcher ends up with arm trouble before they are able to make a contribution to the club. Going from memory, I can think of a few - Jose Rosado, Kyle Snyder, Runelvys Hernandez, Mike Stodolka. Fortunately, the best pitcher of them all, Zack Greinke, has shown no signs of arm trouble... yet.
Rib Problems: What amazes me is the number of rib or oblique muscle injuries. Last year, Carlos Beltran missed the first couple of weeks with an oblique injury. This year, Ken Harvey, Jeremy Affeldt, Nate Field, and Matt Stairs have all had oblique problems.
Back Injuries This one, I think, has more to do with the player and not the trainers. Some players are just more prone to have back problems. This year, Mike Sweeney has missed games off and on (though has avoided the DL) with back problems. And of course, Juan Gonzalez had the mother of all back spasms which knocked him out for the season.
Injuries like Benito Santiago's broken hand (suffered when hit by a pitch) are understandably unavoidable. But the Royals' continued pattern of similar injuries makes one wonder if the medical and training staff needs a serious evaluation.
Pickering
A lot of folks (including Dan) have been asking why Calvin Pickering has not been called up to the Royals. Pickering is a first baseman/designated hitter type of player who's had a great season at AAA Omaha (1157 OPS, 34HR's).
Unfortanately, the Royals' roster is stuffed with first baseman/designated hitter type players (Sweeney, Harvey, Stairs). When Harvey went on the DL, Pickering finally got his chance in yesterday's game. He responded well to his Royals debut.
Pickering went 2 for 3 with 2 HR's and 6 RBI's and 1 walk (one HR was a grand slam). In one game, Pickering provided the kind of offensive fire power the Royals were expecting from guys like Juan Gonzalez this year.
If Pickering continues to hit, it may make sense to trade Harvey when he returns from the DL. He's an "all star" that another team may find valuable.
Unfortanately, the Royals' roster is stuffed with first baseman/designated hitter type players (Sweeney, Harvey, Stairs). When Harvey went on the DL, Pickering finally got his chance in yesterday's game. He responded well to his Royals debut.
Pickering went 2 for 3 with 2 HR's and 6 RBI's and 1 walk (one HR was a grand slam). In one game, Pickering provided the kind of offensive fire power the Royals were expecting from guys like Juan Gonzalez this year.
If Pickering continues to hit, it may make sense to trade Harvey when he returns from the DL. He's an "all star" that another team may find valuable.
Friday, August 20, 2004
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
All Star Baseball
I've read about various table top baseball simulation games like Strat-O-Matic, but I have never played one. I got home from work yesterday and found Cadaco's All Star Baseball, Hall of Fame Edition in my living room. The babysitter who watched my kids this summer bought it for Joey for his birthday. I'm sure she didn't realize that she was buying a true American classic.
Joey and I played it last night, and what a joy it is. The Hall of Fame edition includes player discs for several Hall of Famers (Reggie Jackson, Harmon Killebrew, Willie Stargell, Enos Slaughter, Jim Palmer, and many more). We scored the game using an old baseball scorebook we had laying around.
First, each player selects his team and batting order. You play the game by slipping the player's disc into the spinner and spinning it. The numbers around the edge of the disc represent the outcome of the at-bat. The spacing of the numbers is determined by the player's lifetime statistics. For example, a pitcher might have a large space for strike out while Reggie Jackson would have a wider than average space for home run. If the spin results in a ground ball, fly ball, or single, the defesive player can spin to determine the outcome of the play (runners advance, double play, safe on error, etc). An additional strategy disc is included for hit and run, stealing, etc.
Even with Whitey Ford and Jim Palmer pitching, our game ended with a score of 11-10, with my home team getting one run in the bottom of the 9th to eek out the victory.
We both enjoyed the game, and we look forward to finding (or making) additional player discs for it.
Joey and I played it last night, and what a joy it is. The Hall of Fame edition includes player discs for several Hall of Famers (Reggie Jackson, Harmon Killebrew, Willie Stargell, Enos Slaughter, Jim Palmer, and many more). We scored the game using an old baseball scorebook we had laying around.
First, each player selects his team and batting order. You play the game by slipping the player's disc into the spinner and spinning it. The numbers around the edge of the disc represent the outcome of the at-bat. The spacing of the numbers is determined by the player's lifetime statistics. For example, a pitcher might have a large space for strike out while Reggie Jackson would have a wider than average space for home run. If the spin results in a ground ball, fly ball, or single, the defesive player can spin to determine the outcome of the play (runners advance, double play, safe on error, etc). An additional strategy disc is included for hit and run, stealing, etc.
Even with Whitey Ford and Jim Palmer pitching, our game ended with a score of 11-10, with my home team getting one run in the bottom of the 9th to eek out the victory.
We both enjoyed the game, and we look forward to finding (or making) additional player discs for it.
Tuesday, August 17, 2004
Unearned Runs
Interesting article on unearned runs. In it, Keith Scherer takes the unearned run argument and applies it to the recent Red Sox trade sending Nomar to the Cubs. Baseball Prospectus says that unearned runs should count against the pitcher, since a good pitcher should be able to prevent that runner from getting around to score.
King of the Soldering Iron
About a year ago, we finished our basement to create a home theatre. One of the nice features of our new space is the addition of a couple of arcade games. We have a Theatre of Magic Pinball machine and an old classic PacMan machine.
Little did I know what I was getting into with these machines. I'll start with PacMan.
The screen went dead. The game would play, I know this because I could hear it through the speaker, but the screen was completely dark. I tried picking up another monitor on eBay and installing it, but had the same problem. So I gave in and called a local arcade repair specialist who came out to look at it. Turns out both monitors had blown capacitors. He installed a "cap kit" and it was good as new. A couple of weeks later, I was playing the game when my son accidentally kicked a Nerf ball that hit the cord where it plugged into the wall. The game went completely dead. No lights, no nothing.
I figured it was a blown fuse, so I replaced all the fuses I could see. No luck. I tinkered around with it for a while, and a friend finally lifted a piece of paper to reveal two more fuses that I hadn't seen. $2.00 later, we were back in business. The problem then was a "hum bar." That is where the screen has a wave that floats across it, right to left. It also hums loudly through the speaker. I did some internet research and learned that the wiring harness used to plug into the main board is typically weak and usually fails after a few years. I bought a new plug, and rewired all 52 (or so) wires into the new plug. I plugged everything back in, and we now have a beautiful, perfectly played PacMan machine. Except now, the machine resets every so often (20 minutes or so). So high scores disappear (it can't remember anything after a reboot). Jeez.... what next???
The pinball machine has been a little more steady. The first issue had to do with it becoming confused about how many balls were in play. It would keep kicking balls into the shooting lane even during play. This was simply a loose connector below the playfield. The next problem came when one flipper quit working. In this case, a wire had come loose, so a little solder made it all better.
The biggie was when the lights in the back box (the big display above the playfield) when out. A fuse, I figured - no big deal. I opened up the case to find a white molex plug completely burned through. Wow, black and cripsy. I've since discovered that this is pretty common on Williams/Bally pinballs of that era. The manufacturer didn't use heavy enough pins and wires to run all those light bulbs. Leaving the machine on 24/7 at full brightness will cause this plug to burn out after a while.
I rebuilt the plug, and fired it up to find only half of the lights working. After doing some continuity tests using my multi-meter, I determined that the back of the circuit board had broken contact when the plug burned up. I unplugged the board and pulled it out, and sure enough, the solder on that pin had gotten so hot, it melted and lost contact.
I've never done any kind of soldering on a board before, so I was quite nervous. I've only soldered wires to make connections, and usually I do a pretty poor job of that. I dabbled just a small amount of solder on the back side of the board to restore the connection to the pin. I then tested it with my multi-meter and all looked good. I plugged the board back into the machine and fired it up. YES! All lights are burning brightly!!!
Now, how to avoid that burning problem again... These pinball machines have an extensive menu for controlling all aspects of the machine. I set it to "dim" after 2 minutes of idle time, and I set the "dim" setting to its dimmest. So now, after 2 minutes, the lights all dim which will hopefully pass less current through that plug, preventing the burning problem. I could also replace all of those bulbs will a similar bulb that burns less brightly. At any rate, I was very proud of my soldering skills to fix that bad connection.
Now, back to that PacMan reset problem........
Little did I know what I was getting into with these machines. I'll start with PacMan.
The screen went dead. The game would play, I know this because I could hear it through the speaker, but the screen was completely dark. I tried picking up another monitor on eBay and installing it, but had the same problem. So I gave in and called a local arcade repair specialist who came out to look at it. Turns out both monitors had blown capacitors. He installed a "cap kit" and it was good as new. A couple of weeks later, I was playing the game when my son accidentally kicked a Nerf ball that hit the cord where it plugged into the wall. The game went completely dead. No lights, no nothing.
I figured it was a blown fuse, so I replaced all the fuses I could see. No luck. I tinkered around with it for a while, and a friend finally lifted a piece of paper to reveal two more fuses that I hadn't seen. $2.00 later, we were back in business. The problem then was a "hum bar." That is where the screen has a wave that floats across it, right to left. It also hums loudly through the speaker. I did some internet research and learned that the wiring harness used to plug into the main board is typically weak and usually fails after a few years. I bought a new plug, and rewired all 52 (or so) wires into the new plug. I plugged everything back in, and we now have a beautiful, perfectly played PacMan machine. Except now, the machine resets every so often (20 minutes or so). So high scores disappear (it can't remember anything after a reboot). Jeez.... what next???
The pinball machine has been a little more steady. The first issue had to do with it becoming confused about how many balls were in play. It would keep kicking balls into the shooting lane even during play. This was simply a loose connector below the playfield. The next problem came when one flipper quit working. In this case, a wire had come loose, so a little solder made it all better.
The biggie was when the lights in the back box (the big display above the playfield) when out. A fuse, I figured - no big deal. I opened up the case to find a white molex plug completely burned through. Wow, black and cripsy. I've since discovered that this is pretty common on Williams/Bally pinballs of that era. The manufacturer didn't use heavy enough pins and wires to run all those light bulbs. Leaving the machine on 24/7 at full brightness will cause this plug to burn out after a while.
I rebuilt the plug, and fired it up to find only half of the lights working. After doing some continuity tests using my multi-meter, I determined that the back of the circuit board had broken contact when the plug burned up. I unplugged the board and pulled it out, and sure enough, the solder on that pin had gotten so hot, it melted and lost contact.
I've never done any kind of soldering on a board before, so I was quite nervous. I've only soldered wires to make connections, and usually I do a pretty poor job of that. I dabbled just a small amount of solder on the back side of the board to restore the connection to the pin. I then tested it with my multi-meter and all looked good. I plugged the board back into the machine and fired it up. YES! All lights are burning brightly!!!
Now, how to avoid that burning problem again... These pinball machines have an extensive menu for controlling all aspects of the machine. I set it to "dim" after 2 minutes of idle time, and I set the "dim" setting to its dimmest. So now, after 2 minutes, the lights all dim which will hopefully pass less current through that plug, preventing the burning problem. I could also replace all of those bulbs will a similar bulb that burns less brightly. At any rate, I was very proud of my soldering skills to fix that bad connection.
Now, back to that PacMan reset problem........
I feel like an idiot
Sometimes you can bang your head against a problem for minutes, hours, days, even weeks. And, as it turns out, the solution is really quite simple.
I've been trying to build a custom web part for a client that would simply iterate all areas of a SharePoint Portal and look for items that require Approval (they have a status of Pending). The part would then display these items to the user so they can approve the item in one place, as opposed to navigating all over the portal looking for and approving items.
I was having trouble because there are two types of content that we were interested in - Portal Listings and Document Libraries. With SharePoint, the Portal product and the standard WSS (Windows SharePoint Services) are very closely integrated, yet very different when coding against their object models. Portal Listings are only available when looking at the Portal object Area. Document Libraries are only available when looking at the WSS object Web.
To get to the Portal Listings, I tried getting a reference to the Home Area and looping through its Areas collection. The Areas collection contains Area objects that represent sibling areas. This didn't seem to give me access to all the areas and sub-areas that had been created on our Portal.
I also had to use AllWebs to gain access to all the Web objects in our Portal to get to the Document Libraries. This just didn't seem right to me.
I played around with this for days, and finally had my epiphany. I remembered some code that Jon Box had written for our Atomic.NET class. It showed using recursion to iterate a control tree of an ASPX Page.
Recursion!!!! Jeez! It's such an elementary concept. And I never considered it. So, now my code is much simpler, and it iterates everything area of the portal and looks at every list. It's perfect!
Here's a skeleton example of the code:
Private Sub iterateAllAreas(ByVal thisArea As Area, ByVal output As HtmlTextWriter)
'Display the Portal Listings of this Area
OutputListing(thisArea.Listings, thisArea, output)
'Areas can give you a Web object using its Web property
Dim thisWeb As SPWeb = thisArea.Web
Dim lists As SPListCollection = thisWeb.Lists
lists.ListsForCurrentUser = True
lists.IncludeRootFolder = True
For Each list As SPList In lists
If (list.BaseTemplate = SPListTemplateType.DocumentLibrary) Then
Dim docLib As SPDocumentLibrary = CType(list, SPDocumentLibrary)
'Make sure this list allows for Approvals
'And make sure this user has permissions to approve items in this list
If docLib.EnableModeration And docLib.Permissions.DoesUserHavePermissions(SPRights.ManageLists) Then
OutputDocLibItems(docLib, Replace(thisArea.Path, ":", "/"), output)
End If
End If
Next
'Recursively call this procedure for all areas and sub-areas
For Each subArea As Area In thisArea.Areas
iterateAllAreas(subArea, output)
Next
End Sub
You will notice that when iterating Document Libraries, I am setting the IncludeRootFolder property to true. This is because in the OutputDocLibItems procedure, I am similarly recursively calling that procedure in order to iterate all of the subfolders of the document library. Otherwise, it would ignore all items in any subfolders that the users may have created in the doc lib.
I've been trying to build a custom web part for a client that would simply iterate all areas of a SharePoint Portal and look for items that require Approval (they have a status of Pending). The part would then display these items to the user so they can approve the item in one place, as opposed to navigating all over the portal looking for and approving items.
I was having trouble because there are two types of content that we were interested in - Portal Listings and Document Libraries. With SharePoint, the Portal product and the standard WSS (Windows SharePoint Services) are very closely integrated, yet very different when coding against their object models. Portal Listings are only available when looking at the Portal object Area. Document Libraries are only available when looking at the WSS object Web.
To get to the Portal Listings, I tried getting a reference to the Home Area and looping through its Areas collection. The Areas collection contains Area objects that represent sibling areas. This didn't seem to give me access to all the areas and sub-areas that had been created on our Portal.
I also had to use AllWebs to gain access to all the Web objects in our Portal to get to the Document Libraries. This just didn't seem right to me.
I played around with this for days, and finally had my epiphany. I remembered some code that Jon Box had written for our Atomic.NET class. It showed using recursion to iterate a control tree of an ASPX Page.
Recursion!!!! Jeez! It's such an elementary concept. And I never considered it. So, now my code is much simpler, and it iterates everything area of the portal and looks at every list. It's perfect!
Here's a skeleton example of the code:
Private Sub iterateAllAreas(ByVal thisArea As Area, ByVal output As HtmlTextWriter)
'Display the Portal Listings of this Area
OutputListing(thisArea.Listings, thisArea, output)
'Areas can give you a Web object using its Web property
Dim thisWeb As SPWeb = thisArea.Web
Dim lists As SPListCollection = thisWeb.Lists
lists.ListsForCurrentUser = True
lists.IncludeRootFolder = True
For Each list As SPList In lists
If (list.BaseTemplate = SPListTemplateType.DocumentLibrary) Then
Dim docLib As SPDocumentLibrary = CType(list, SPDocumentLibrary)
'Make sure this list allows for Approvals
'And make sure this user has permissions to approve items in this list
If docLib.EnableModeration And docLib.Permissions.DoesUserHavePermissions(SPRights.ManageLists) Then
OutputDocLibItems(docLib, Replace(thisArea.Path, ":", "/"), output)
End If
End If
Next
'Recursively call this procedure for all areas and sub-areas
For Each subArea As Area In thisArea.Areas
iterateAllAreas(subArea, output)
Next
End Sub
You will notice that when iterating Document Libraries, I am setting the IncludeRootFolder property to true. This is because in the OutputDocLibItems procedure, I am similarly recursively calling that procedure in order to iterate all of the subfolders of the document library. Otherwise, it would ignore all items in any subfolders that the users may have created in the doc lib.
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Royals Report
Great Royals update by Dan Fox.
I agree with Dan on Dee Brown. Earlier, I was all for letting Brown play to show us what he can do. Now, it's obvious that Brown and the Royals need to part ways.
Rob & Rany point out that the manager should be held accountable for this mess. In KC, it's in very poor taste to slam the beloved Tony Pena. After all, this is the manager who brought the Royals back to respectability last year, and whose smiling face is on every billboard, ticket, and program associated with the Royals.
I'm not sure what happened at the beginning of last year, but the Royals got off to a great start and rode that wave through the end of the season. But, since that hot start, the Royals are playing below .500. Did Pena just have a lucky 3 weeks?
Pena will keep his job throughout the end of this season, but any GM with sense would surely evaluate the manager closely this off season. Given Allard Baird's continued loyalty to the awful Tony Muser, I'm sure Pena will be the manager in 2005, but I'm not sure he deserves to be.
I agree with Dan on Dee Brown. Earlier, I was all for letting Brown play to show us what he can do. Now, it's obvious that Brown and the Royals need to part ways.
Rob & Rany point out that the manager should be held accountable for this mess. In KC, it's in very poor taste to slam the beloved Tony Pena. After all, this is the manager who brought the Royals back to respectability last year, and whose smiling face is on every billboard, ticket, and program associated with the Royals.
I'm not sure what happened at the beginning of last year, but the Royals got off to a great start and rode that wave through the end of the season. But, since that hot start, the Royals are playing below .500. Did Pena just have a lucky 3 weeks?
Pena will keep his job throughout the end of this season, but any GM with sense would surely evaluate the manager closely this off season. Given Allard Baird's continued loyalty to the awful Tony Muser, I'm sure Pena will be the manager in 2005, but I'm not sure he deserves to be.
Tuesday, August 10, 2004
Brutal Baseball
It's been no secret that the Royals have been AWFUL this season. Though I never thought it could get worse, it did. The last two nights in a row, the Royals held a lead going into the top of the ninth inning. They then gave both games away on poor defense, poor pitching, errors. It's been absolutely sad.
The team "captain," Mike Sweeney last night finally showed some of his true feelings about the team. Quoted in this morning's KC Star: "“We've definitely hit rock bottom,” Sweeney said. “This is a joke. It's Aug. 9, and we've got 39 wins. It's terrible. We're playing horrible baseball.
“We're not pitching, hitting or playing defense. Nothing. We're not running the bases right. We're playing brutal baseball in all aspects of the game.”"
"“I know we've got some young guys here who are inexperienced,” Sweeney said, “but 39 wins in the middle of August is unacceptable. All aspects of our game are horrible right now.
“It has nothing to do with the manager or the coaches. It has everything to do with us. We're not getting the job done; get us out of here.”"
Strong comments. Given the number of players on the current roster who have made their MLB debut this season, errors and some sloppy play is to be expected. But it hasn't gotten worse since they started playing the kids. Even with a roster full of veterans, the team played terrible baseball.
What started as such a promising season has turned into a nightmare. And I don't see it getting much better for a few years, given the lack of talent in the Royals' farm system.
The team "captain," Mike Sweeney last night finally showed some of his true feelings about the team. Quoted in this morning's KC Star: "“We've definitely hit rock bottom,” Sweeney said. “This is a joke. It's Aug. 9, and we've got 39 wins. It's terrible. We're playing horrible baseball.
“We're not pitching, hitting or playing defense. Nothing. We're not running the bases right. We're playing brutal baseball in all aspects of the game.”"
"“I know we've got some young guys here who are inexperienced,” Sweeney said, “but 39 wins in the middle of August is unacceptable. All aspects of our game are horrible right now.
“It has nothing to do with the manager or the coaches. It has everything to do with us. We're not getting the job done; get us out of here.”"
Strong comments. Given the number of players on the current roster who have made their MLB debut this season, errors and some sloppy play is to be expected. But it hasn't gotten worse since they started playing the kids. Even with a roster full of veterans, the team played terrible baseball.
What started as such a promising season has turned into a nightmare. And I don't see it getting much better for a few years, given the lack of talent in the Royals' farm system.
Iterating SharePoint Portal
The client I'm working with would like to have a place where users can see a list of all items that have been submitted and are awaiting approval. These items could be documents in Document Libraries, or perhaps Area Listings. My thought was to create a web part that a user could place on their "My Site" that could iterate all areas of the Portal, and then iterate all lists within each area looking for items that are pending.
It turns out this is much more difficult than it should be. First, look at Listings, you have to reference each area as a Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.SiteData.Area object. The Area object will give you access to the Listings on the area and you can see items that are Pending. I used code that referenced the Home area, then iterated its Areas collection, like so:
'Get the area GUID for the Home Area
Dim objCurrentAreaGuid As Guid = Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.SiteData.AreaManager.GetSystemAreaGuid(PortalContext.Current, SystemArea.Home)
'Get an area object for Home
Dim objArea As Area = AreaManager.GetArea(PortalContext.Current, objCurrentAreaGuid)
'Iterate all listings on Home and count Pending Items
Dim areaLists As AreaListingCollection = objArea.Listings
For Each areaList As AreaListing In areaLists
'if the item is pending, output it
If areaList.Status = ListingStatus.Pending Then
'Output the List Item info
End If
Next
'Check all other System Portal Areas (Topics, Sites, etc)
For Each objSiblingArea As Area In objArea.Areas
For Each areaList As AreaListing In objSiblingArea.Listings
If areaList.Status = ListingStatus.Pending Then
'Output the List Item info
End If
Next
Next
The problem is that this only works on the "system" areas (News, Site Directory, Topics) and not on user created areas. User created areas are represented as webs, so a separate loop needs to be done to iterate those, like so:
Dim allSites As SPWebCollection = ParentWeb.GetSubwebsForCurrentUser()
For Each subWeb As SPWeb In allSites
Dim lists As SPListCollection = subWeb.Lists
lists.ListsForCurrentUser = True
For Each list As SPList In lists
If (list.BaseTemplate = SPListTemplateType.DocumentLibrary) Then
Dim docLib As SPDocumentLibrary = CType(list, SPDocumentLibrary)
If doclib.EnableModeration And doclib.Permissions.DoesUserHavePermissions(SPRights.ManageLists) Then
For Each doclibitem As SPListItem In docLibItems
If doclibitem.ModerationInformation.Status = SPModerationStatusType.Pending Then
Dim thisFile As SPFile = doclibitem.File
'output info about this item
End If
Next
End If
End If
Next
Now the problem is that the SPWeb object doesn't give access the listings. I can look at the Document Libraries and other types of lists, but not Portal Listings.
The areas to have Portal Listings in them, but they are not (as far as I can find) accessible as a Portal Area object. So how can I look at the listings? I don't know!
One other thing that I found was that using this code:
Dim allSites As SPWebCollection = ParentWeb.AllWebs()
Will not work if the user is not an Administrator. I searched forever and found this:
Dim allSites As SPWebCollection = ParentWeb.GetSubwebsForCurrentUser()
Which works great. I'm "this" close to getting a great web part built, but have hit a road block here....
It turns out this is much more difficult than it should be. First, look at Listings, you have to reference each area as a Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.SiteData.Area object. The Area object will give you access to the Listings on the area and you can see items that are Pending. I used code that referenced the Home area, then iterated its Areas collection, like so:
'Get the area GUID for the Home Area
Dim objCurrentAreaGuid As Guid = Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.SiteData.AreaManager.GetSystemAreaGuid(PortalContext.Current, SystemArea.Home)
'Get an area object for Home
Dim objArea As Area = AreaManager.GetArea(PortalContext.Current, objCurrentAreaGuid)
'Iterate all listings on Home and count Pending Items
Dim areaLists As AreaListingCollection = objArea.Listings
For Each areaList As AreaListing In areaLists
'if the item is pending, output it
If areaList.Status = ListingStatus.Pending Then
'Output the List Item info
End If
Next
'Check all other System Portal Areas (Topics, Sites, etc)
For Each objSiblingArea As Area In objArea.Areas
For Each areaList As AreaListing In objSiblingArea.Listings
If areaList.Status = ListingStatus.Pending Then
'Output the List Item info
End If
Next
Next
The problem is that this only works on the "system" areas (News, Site Directory, Topics) and not on user created areas. User created areas are represented as webs, so a separate loop needs to be done to iterate those, like so:
Dim allSites As SPWebCollection = ParentWeb.GetSubwebsForCurrentUser()
For Each subWeb As SPWeb In allSites
Dim lists As SPListCollection = subWeb.Lists
lists.ListsForCurrentUser = True
For Each list As SPList In lists
If (list.BaseTemplate = SPListTemplateType.DocumentLibrary) Then
Dim docLib As SPDocumentLibrary = CType(list, SPDocumentLibrary)
If doclib.EnableModeration And doclib.Permissions.DoesUserHavePermissions(SPRights.ManageLists) Then
For Each doclibitem As SPListItem In docLibItems
If doclibitem.ModerationInformation.Status = SPModerationStatusType.Pending Then
Dim thisFile As SPFile = doclibitem.File
'output info about this item
End If
Next
End If
End If
Next
Now the problem is that the SPWeb object doesn't give access the listings. I can look at the Document Libraries and other types of lists, but not Portal Listings.
The areas to have Portal Listings in them, but they are not (as far as I can find) accessible as a Portal Area object. So how can I look at the listings? I don't know!
One other thing that I found was that using this code:
Dim allSites As SPWebCollection = ParentWeb.AllWebs()
Will not work if the user is not an Administrator. I searched forever and found this:
Dim allSites As SPWebCollection = ParentWeb.GetSubwebsForCurrentUser()
Which works great. I'm "this" close to getting a great web part built, but have hit a road block here....
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
Arena Tax
For some reason, getting things done in Kansas City is a difficult task. I'm sure it's the same in any other city, but everytime we have a chance to do something that is good for the city, the anti-progress folks come out of the woodwork.
Right now, our mayor has put together a plan for a new, state of the art arena in downtown KC. She already has worked out an agreement with AEG (owners of the Staples Arena in LA, and owners of several NBA, NHL and MLS frachises) to help fund and operate the arena. AEG is also in the process of trying to lure an NBA or NHL team to Kansas City to make its home in the new arena.
Sprint has agreed to pay a naming rights fee for the arena to be called the Sprint Center. A blighted part of downtown has been acquired for the arena.
All the ducks are in a row. The only question now is how to fund the construction. The mayor put together a plan for the cost of the arena to be funded without hitting citizens of Kansas City: usage fees on rental cars and hotels.
The citizens of KC will vote next Tuesday to approve these usage fees. Not surprisingly, the largest rental car company in America, Enterprise, is funding an anti-arena tax movement in KC. Enterprise is based in St. Louis and they are spending close to $1 million on the campaign. That, I can understand.
What I don't understand are the local people who don't think this is a good idea. KC needs a new arena. The current arena, Kemper Arena, is something like 30 years old. It's located in an inconvenient area not within walking distance of any hotels. The NCAA is passing us up for basketball tournament games. The Big 12 is passing us up for its basketball tournament. Major concerts are passing us up. Kemper has done its job for many years, but its time has come.
The anti-arena-tax coalition says the plan is risky. I don't see the risk. AEG has a 35 year agreement to run the arena and will absorb any losses. Since the old Kemper Arena is profitable today, I don't see how a new arena could not be profitable. Even without an NHL or NBA team, the arena is booked with many other events. And, AEG is working on acquiring an NBA or NHL team, and both leagues have expressed interest in KC.
I'll be out voting next week - yes on Question 1. Once we get this arena done, then we can start working on a downtown baseball stadium...
Right now, our mayor has put together a plan for a new, state of the art arena in downtown KC. She already has worked out an agreement with AEG (owners of the Staples Arena in LA, and owners of several NBA, NHL and MLS frachises) to help fund and operate the arena. AEG is also in the process of trying to lure an NBA or NHL team to Kansas City to make its home in the new arena.
Sprint has agreed to pay a naming rights fee for the arena to be called the Sprint Center. A blighted part of downtown has been acquired for the arena.
All the ducks are in a row. The only question now is how to fund the construction. The mayor put together a plan for the cost of the arena to be funded without hitting citizens of Kansas City: usage fees on rental cars and hotels.
The citizens of KC will vote next Tuesday to approve these usage fees. Not surprisingly, the largest rental car company in America, Enterprise, is funding an anti-arena tax movement in KC. Enterprise is based in St. Louis and they are spending close to $1 million on the campaign. That, I can understand.
What I don't understand are the local people who don't think this is a good idea. KC needs a new arena. The current arena, Kemper Arena, is something like 30 years old. It's located in an inconvenient area not within walking distance of any hotels. The NCAA is passing us up for basketball tournament games. The Big 12 is passing us up for its basketball tournament. Major concerts are passing us up. Kemper has done its job for many years, but its time has come.
The anti-arena-tax coalition says the plan is risky. I don't see the risk. AEG has a 35 year agreement to run the arena and will absorb any losses. Since the old Kemper Arena is profitable today, I don't see how a new arena could not be profitable. Even without an NHL or NBA team, the arena is booked with many other events. And, AEG is working on acquiring an NBA or NHL team, and both leagues have expressed interest in KC.
I'll be out voting next week - yes on Question 1. Once we get this arena done, then we can start working on a downtown baseball stadium...
Monday, July 26, 2004
Ball Four
Just finished reading Jim Bouton's Ball Four. The book was written back in 1969 when Bouton pitched for the Seattle Pilots. The book is a journal where Bouton wrote entries every day of the season describing his teammates, coaches, as well as his feelings about his own performance.
When the book was released, it offered the public its first true glimpse inside a major league clubhouse. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn was quite upset. The book exposed the absurdity of life as a major leaguer, where coaches repeat meaningless things and players bide their time trying to look up skirts. Kuhn actually tried to get Bouton to sign a letter stating that he made everything in the book up. Bouton refused.
Bouton openly discussed players using "greenies," or uppers, before they played. He constantly complained about how idiodic coaches can be. When a pitcher walks a guy, the coaches bark "You gotta throw him strikes!" When he hits it out, "You're gettin' too much of the plate!"
The one aspect of Ball Four that I found interesting was reading about Bouton's own feelings about his ability and his team. It makes a major leaguer feel a little more human to read about him daydreaming about getting the last out to win the World Series - even at 30 years old. The passages where he wonders if he's lost it offer rare look at the more insecure side of a ballplayer.
Bouton was traded to the Astros midway through the 1969 season, so we also hear stories about guys like Larry Dierker.
This 20th anniversary edition of the book included an pretty boring epilogue where Bouton updates us on all of his former teammates and his latest endeavors (including inventing the now famous Big League Chew bubble gum). He also hints that he may have been black-balled after writing the book. I find that arument pretty weak considering he was able to make a comeback with the Braves and worked as a tv commentator in baseball.
Ball Four certainly isn't the baseball classic that some have made it out to be, but not a bad read for passing time on an airplane.
Now, I'm re-reading Rob Neyer's Feeding the Green Monster, another daily journal book describing Rob's summer in 2000 when he attended every Red Sox game at Fenway that season.
When the book was released, it offered the public its first true glimpse inside a major league clubhouse. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn was quite upset. The book exposed the absurdity of life as a major leaguer, where coaches repeat meaningless things and players bide their time trying to look up skirts. Kuhn actually tried to get Bouton to sign a letter stating that he made everything in the book up. Bouton refused.
Bouton openly discussed players using "greenies," or uppers, before they played. He constantly complained about how idiodic coaches can be. When a pitcher walks a guy, the coaches bark "You gotta throw him strikes!" When he hits it out, "You're gettin' too much of the plate!"
The one aspect of Ball Four that I found interesting was reading about Bouton's own feelings about his ability and his team. It makes a major leaguer feel a little more human to read about him daydreaming about getting the last out to win the World Series - even at 30 years old. The passages where he wonders if he's lost it offer rare look at the more insecure side of a ballplayer.
Bouton was traded to the Astros midway through the 1969 season, so we also hear stories about guys like Larry Dierker.
This 20th anniversary edition of the book included an pretty boring epilogue where Bouton updates us on all of his former teammates and his latest endeavors (including inventing the now famous Big League Chew bubble gum). He also hints that he may have been black-balled after writing the book. I find that arument pretty weak considering he was able to make a comeback with the Braves and worked as a tv commentator in baseball.
Ball Four certainly isn't the baseball classic that some have made it out to be, but not a bad read for passing time on an airplane.
Now, I'm re-reading Rob Neyer's Feeding the Green Monster, another daily journal book describing Rob's summer in 2000 when he attended every Red Sox game at Fenway that season.
Thursday, July 22, 2004
SharePoint Book
Just received my copy of Microsoft SharePoint: Building Office 2003 Solutions by Scot P. Hillier.
On first glance, this looks like a great book for anybody needing to get up to speed on SharePoint quickly. Hillier breaks all of the various concepts - from configuring SharePoint to doing custom development - into logical chapters. He describes the concepts well, and then provides exercises to demonstrate each concept. This is great for folks like me who are looking to get the functionality up and running in a short time.
Hillier even discusses a few of the Solution Accelerators. He describes and demonstrates the Proposal Accelerator, which Quilogy help build. He also describes and demonstrates the Accelerator for Recruiting which I had the pleasure of helping to build and test for Microsoft.
Overall, a well written and organized book. Highly recommended.
On first glance, this looks like a great book for anybody needing to get up to speed on SharePoint quickly. Hillier breaks all of the various concepts - from configuring SharePoint to doing custom development - into logical chapters. He describes the concepts well, and then provides exercises to demonstrate each concept. This is great for folks like me who are looking to get the functionality up and running in a short time.
Hillier even discusses a few of the Solution Accelerators. He describes and demonstrates the Proposal Accelerator, which Quilogy help build. He also describes and demonstrates the Accelerator for Recruiting which I had the pleasure of helping to build and test for Microsoft.
Overall, a well written and organized book. Highly recommended.
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
MacRae
One other small fact that I forgot about Brian MacRae. He is part owner of Union Broadcasting, the parent company of WHB, the flagship of the Royals. So its easy to understand why he's not willing to criticize...
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
SharePoint Hacks
I've been working with a client in KC to implement SharePoint as an intranet. It's been an interesting experience. I've found that SharePoint is designed to be used a certain way. And while that way is fine for most cases, there are times when organizations might want to work with it a little differently.
A good example came when working with Listing Items in SharePoint Portal Server. Each Area of the Portal can have a listing of items. This listing can be used for announcements, links to documents, news, etc.
There is also a special area within Portal call News. When in the News area, you can click "Add Listing Item" and you will get a screen (spnewlisting.aspx) that allows you to enter information about the new listing, including a start and expiration date. These dates can be used to automatically show and hide the item based on date (for example, this annoucement should be show until 7/31/2004).
However, on any other area (not News), adding a new listing also displays the spnewlisting.aspx page, but without the section with the start and expiration dates. My client wanted to make expiration date required so the system in effect cleans up after itself.
To do this, I had edit each template page (for example, TEMPLATE\1033\SPSTOPIC\Default.aspx) and update the toolbar link for Add Listing. Currently, the link points to spnewlisting.aspx. I changed it to spnewlisting.aspx?Mode=News. This is what the link is in the News area's default.aspx page.
By adding the querystring parameter for Mode=News, spnewlisting.aspx then shows the start and expiration date section. It still saves the listing item correctly.
Next, we wanted to make Expiration date required. I did this by editing the spnewlisting.aspx page, and in the SectionPublishDates section, I added a InputFormRequiredFieldValidator control. The code for the control looks like this:
<spswc:inputformrequiredfieldvalidator
runat="server"
id="ExpirationDate_ReqFieldVal"
ControlToValidate="ExpirationDate"
ErrorMessageLocId="FieldValidation_NotValidDate" />
A good example came when working with Listing Items in SharePoint Portal Server. Each Area of the Portal can have a listing of items. This listing can be used for announcements, links to documents, news, etc.
There is also a special area within Portal call News. When in the News area, you can click "Add Listing Item" and you will get a screen (spnewlisting.aspx) that allows you to enter information about the new listing, including a start and expiration date. These dates can be used to automatically show and hide the item based on date (for example, this annoucement should be show until 7/31/2004).
However, on any other area (not News), adding a new listing also displays the spnewlisting.aspx page, but without the section with the start and expiration dates. My client wanted to make expiration date required so the system in effect cleans up after itself.
To do this, I had edit each template page (for example, TEMPLATE\1033\SPSTOPIC\Default.aspx) and update the toolbar link for Add Listing. Currently, the link points to spnewlisting.aspx. I changed it to spnewlisting.aspx?Mode=News. This is what the link is in the News area's default.aspx page.
By adding the querystring parameter for Mode=News, spnewlisting.aspx then shows the start and expiration date section. It still saves the listing item correctly.
Next, we wanted to make Expiration date required. I did this by editing the spnewlisting.aspx page, and in the SectionPublishDates section, I added a InputFormRequiredFieldValidator control. The code for the control looks like this:
<spswc:inputformrequiredfieldvalidator
runat="server"
id="ExpirationDate_ReqFieldVal"
ControlToValidate="ExpirationDate"
ErrorMessageLocId="FieldValidation_NotValidDate" />
Brian MacRae
Hal MacRae made a name for himself in KC as one of the best DH's in baseball. Later, he managed the Royals to respectability before the strike of '94 killed the season and the Royals decided to fire him (possibly as a result of a profane tirade he had with reporters).
Hal's son Brian played high school ball in the KC area and later became the Royals center fielder. Now, Brian is making a living on TV and radio. He does work for MLB.com, and contributes on the Royals radio and television networks.
Personally, I can't stand him. Without even listening to what he's saying, his delivery is difficult to listen to. He always sounds like he's struggling to find the next word he's going to say. But, more importantly, I've never heard him say anything substantive.
He always sounds like he's trying not to anger anybody. When asked a question about a move that Pena made in a game, he will reply with something like "They are going to do what they do, and we'll just have to see if it's successful." When asked about whether Dee Brown can be a productive player for the Royals, his response was "It's too early to tell. What he does from here on out will determine what he does for this ballclub." Wow. That's some hard hitting analysis.
Other ex-players who contribute to the Royals broadcasts are not afraid to tell it like it is. I've heard Paul Splittorf, Al Fitzmorris, Fred Patek and others openly criticize the Royals when deserved. It'd be nice if someone who gets as much air time as MacRae does do the same.
Hal's son Brian played high school ball in the KC area and later became the Royals center fielder. Now, Brian is making a living on TV and radio. He does work for MLB.com, and contributes on the Royals radio and television networks.
Personally, I can't stand him. Without even listening to what he's saying, his delivery is difficult to listen to. He always sounds like he's struggling to find the next word he's going to say. But, more importantly, I've never heard him say anything substantive.
He always sounds like he's trying not to anger anybody. When asked a question about a move that Pena made in a game, he will reply with something like "They are going to do what they do, and we'll just have to see if it's successful." When asked about whether Dee Brown can be a productive player for the Royals, his response was "It's too early to tell. What he does from here on out will determine what he does for this ballclub." Wow. That's some hard hitting analysis.
Other ex-players who contribute to the Royals broadcasts are not afraid to tell it like it is. I've heard Paul Splittorf, Al Fitzmorris, Fred Patek and others openly criticize the Royals when deserved. It'd be nice if someone who gets as much air time as MacRae does do the same.
Monday, July 19, 2004
Picks or Pride?
I remember back in the 80's when the Chiefs were a terrible football team, the same question kept coming up. Should they lose more games to garner a higher draft pick, or try to win some in the name of pride?
That same question is now being bantered about with this year's Royals. Currently, the Royals have the fourth worst record in all of baseball, and the second worst in the AL. I'm hearing some folks say that since this is a lost season anyway, the Royals should continue to lose at a blistering pace to guarantee a high pick in the draft. And now that the Royals have gotten of to a good start in the second half of the season (they just took 3 of 4 from the Twins), the arguments are really heating up.
Personally, I think they need to win games. Having a high draft pick is nice, but it's not as critical in baseball as it is in other sports. In football, for example, high picks typically to turn into players who can contribute rather quickly. In baseball, it's much more difficult to know whether a pick will become a productive player. Even the best picks are usually at least 2 years away from making the big league club. And some real gems can be found in the lower rounds (see Albert Pujols). Another problem with the Royals in particular is that they typically cannot afford the signing bonus of the big name high draft picks. In fact, it's pretty well known that in the years before the Glass family purchased the team (and they were without an owner), the Royals were drafting based solely on signability - in other words, can we get him cheap?
For the 2004 Royals, I think the team is in position to build for next year, and building should include learning how to win games. I would love to see the Royals play around .500 ball the rest of the way, giving the young players a taste of winning and making them all hungry for a more successful 2005.
That same question is now being bantered about with this year's Royals. Currently, the Royals have the fourth worst record in all of baseball, and the second worst in the AL. I'm hearing some folks say that since this is a lost season anyway, the Royals should continue to lose at a blistering pace to guarantee a high pick in the draft. And now that the Royals have gotten of to a good start in the second half of the season (they just took 3 of 4 from the Twins), the arguments are really heating up.
Personally, I think they need to win games. Having a high draft pick is nice, but it's not as critical in baseball as it is in other sports. In football, for example, high picks typically to turn into players who can contribute rather quickly. In baseball, it's much more difficult to know whether a pick will become a productive player. Even the best picks are usually at least 2 years away from making the big league club. And some real gems can be found in the lower rounds (see Albert Pujols). Another problem with the Royals in particular is that they typically cannot afford the signing bonus of the big name high draft picks. In fact, it's pretty well known that in the years before the Glass family purchased the team (and they were without an owner), the Royals were drafting based solely on signability - in other words, can we get him cheap?
For the 2004 Royals, I think the team is in position to build for next year, and building should include learning how to win games. I would love to see the Royals play around .500 ball the rest of the way, giving the young players a taste of winning and making them all hungry for a more successful 2005.
Friday, July 16, 2004
Viva La Mojito
I discovered a great drink while in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. While hanging out in our favorite bar one day, the waitress Olivia asked me if I would like to try a new drink they just started making. I said sure. She brought me a glass that looked like it had 7-Up with salad in it. I tasted it, and fell in love.
The Mojito originated in Cuba. It is a delicious mixture of rum, mineral water, sugar, lime juice, and fresh mint. To make it, muddle (squash) the fresh mint leaves with some sugar and lime juice until you can really smell the mint. Add some ice, rum and fill the glass with mineral (or sparkling) water.
The drink is delicious. It by no means tastes like an alcoholic drink. The mint leaves in the glass make it a distinct drink. The taste is very refreshing. And since the drink is mostly water, I found that even when I drank 7 or 8 of them in a day (did I say I liked it?), I never got that nasty, drunk, dehydrated feeling. In fact, I never felt any kind of buzz from the drink. Delicious.
After getting home, I decided to try to make a Mojito. I found a recipe at Bacardi Mojito and gave it a try. The result was pretty good. Not excactly the same as my friend Martin in Mexico made, but pretty darn close and delicious none the less.
The Mojito originated in Cuba. It is a delicious mixture of rum, mineral water, sugar, lime juice, and fresh mint. To make it, muddle (squash) the fresh mint leaves with some sugar and lime juice until you can really smell the mint. Add some ice, rum and fill the glass with mineral (or sparkling) water.
The drink is delicious. It by no means tastes like an alcoholic drink. The mint leaves in the glass make it a distinct drink. The taste is very refreshing. And since the drink is mostly water, I found that even when I drank 7 or 8 of them in a day (did I say I liked it?), I never got that nasty, drunk, dehydrated feeling. In fact, I never felt any kind of buzz from the drink. Delicious.
After getting home, I decided to try to make a Mojito. I found a recipe at Bacardi Mojito and gave it a try. The result was pretty good. Not excactly the same as my friend Martin in Mexico made, but pretty darn close and delicious none the less.
Thursday, July 15, 2004
Operator Overloading
Interesting MSDN article on Operator Overloading. This new feature of Visual Basic 2005 allows developers to define custom implementations of operators (+, -, *, Not, Or, And, etc). Cool stuff...
Second Half Begins
Tonight, the Royals resume their season after the All Star Break. The first half has been a disaster, and the Royals hope to salvage their season over the next 2 and a half months.
The story for the Royals this year has been injuries. The Royals currently have 10 players on the DL. A good indication of how snake-bitten this team has been is the strange nature of the injuries. Mike MacDougal had a stomach virus in Spring Training and was weakened so much that he's been ineffective. Aaron Guiel had mysterious blurriness in his left eye. Angel Berroa was out 3 weeks after receiving a spinal tap for headaches. 3 pitchers (Ascencio, Snyder, Hernandez) never even contributed in Spring Training before getting hurt. All 3 are out for the season.
But the Royals cannot use the injuries as an excuse. Forget the injuries. The players have simply not performed. Sweeney has been a disappointment. In the last series before the break, he started to show life at the plate, but until then he wasn't the Sweeney of old. Harvey had a good first half - good enough to earn an All Star berth - but has been slumping since June. Beltran looked greated, when he was here.
Everybody else has been awful. The starting rotation has gotten rocked, and the offense is terrible. In one recent series, the Royals went 3 straigt games without scoring a run.
Here is the lineup the Royals used for their final game of the first half:
Relaford - .196
Graffanino - .261
Sweeney - .279
Stairs - .266
Harvey - .305
Brown - .281
Berroa - .239
DeJesus - .164
Buck - .189
When three of your starting nine are hitting below .200, you can't feel too good about your chances. To compare, the Orioles' lineup on the same date featured 4 players batting above .300.
The only bright spot has been Zack Greinke. The rookie phenom made his debut on May 22. Lack of run support explains his 1-6 record, but his ERA is a very respectable 3.86.
What is baffling is the way the Royals have handled Greinke. He didn't make the team out of Spring Training because GM Allard Baird said he wasn't ready "off the field" yet, though he was ready to perform on the big league level. So instead, the Royals began the season with an all-lefty rotation.
Then, on May 1, injuries forced the Royals to make a callup to make a start in Yankee Stadium. Inexplicably, they Royals chose to call up an unknown pitcher, Eduardo Villacis, from class AA Wichita to make the start. Villacis didn't participate with the big league club in Spring Training. Typically, if a player is a prospect of any kind he participates with the big league club. Of all the pitchers, why would they select Villacis to make a start in Yankeee Stadium? Nobody had ever heard of him. In AAA Omaha, they had Kris Wilson (who's pitched in the big leagues), Jamie Wright (who's pitched in the big leauges), and Zack Grienke. But, Grienke wasn't ready "off the field." The Royals were shelled in that game as Villacis only lasted 3.1 innings. 22 days later, Grienke was called up.
What did Grienke learn in those 22 days that he couldn't have been called up for that Yankees game? The move made it look like the team was giving up. Villacis was subsequently released and is now pitching in the White Sox organization.
Look for the Royals to try to solidify their rotation for next season. Greinke, Wood, and Gobble will get pleny of starts to get experience under their belt. Also look for more trades (Randa, Stairs) as the Royals try to bolster their inventory of prospects.
The story for the Royals this year has been injuries. The Royals currently have 10 players on the DL. A good indication of how snake-bitten this team has been is the strange nature of the injuries. Mike MacDougal had a stomach virus in Spring Training and was weakened so much that he's been ineffective. Aaron Guiel had mysterious blurriness in his left eye. Angel Berroa was out 3 weeks after receiving a spinal tap for headaches. 3 pitchers (Ascencio, Snyder, Hernandez) never even contributed in Spring Training before getting hurt. All 3 are out for the season.
But the Royals cannot use the injuries as an excuse. Forget the injuries. The players have simply not performed. Sweeney has been a disappointment. In the last series before the break, he started to show life at the plate, but until then he wasn't the Sweeney of old. Harvey had a good first half - good enough to earn an All Star berth - but has been slumping since June. Beltran looked greated, when he was here.
Everybody else has been awful. The starting rotation has gotten rocked, and the offense is terrible. In one recent series, the Royals went 3 straigt games without scoring a run.
Here is the lineup the Royals used for their final game of the first half:
Relaford - .196
Graffanino - .261
Sweeney - .279
Stairs - .266
Harvey - .305
Brown - .281
Berroa - .239
DeJesus - .164
Buck - .189
When three of your starting nine are hitting below .200, you can't feel too good about your chances. To compare, the Orioles' lineup on the same date featured 4 players batting above .300.
The only bright spot has been Zack Greinke. The rookie phenom made his debut on May 22. Lack of run support explains his 1-6 record, but his ERA is a very respectable 3.86.
What is baffling is the way the Royals have handled Greinke. He didn't make the team out of Spring Training because GM Allard Baird said he wasn't ready "off the field" yet, though he was ready to perform on the big league level. So instead, the Royals began the season with an all-lefty rotation.
Then, on May 1, injuries forced the Royals to make a callup to make a start in Yankee Stadium. Inexplicably, they Royals chose to call up an unknown pitcher, Eduardo Villacis, from class AA Wichita to make the start. Villacis didn't participate with the big league club in Spring Training. Typically, if a player is a prospect of any kind he participates with the big league club. Of all the pitchers, why would they select Villacis to make a start in Yankeee Stadium? Nobody had ever heard of him. In AAA Omaha, they had Kris Wilson (who's pitched in the big leagues), Jamie Wright (who's pitched in the big leauges), and Zack Grienke. But, Grienke wasn't ready "off the field." The Royals were shelled in that game as Villacis only lasted 3.1 innings. 22 days later, Grienke was called up.
What did Grienke learn in those 22 days that he couldn't have been called up for that Yankees game? The move made it look like the team was giving up. Villacis was subsequently released and is now pitching in the White Sox organization.
Look for the Royals to try to solidify their rotation for next season. Greinke, Wood, and Gobble will get pleny of starts to get experience under their belt. Also look for more trades (Randa, Stairs) as the Royals try to bolster their inventory of prospects.
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
Our Lady of Guadalupe
One of the highlights of our trip to Puerto Vallarta was seeing the famous Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church. The church is one of the more popular destinations for tourists to the city.
The church is one of the most beautiful churches I've seen. The outside features a crown atop the tower, modeled after the tiara of the mistress of the Emporor Maximilian. In a 1995 earthquake, the crown was damaged, and has been replaced with a replica.
One interesting feature of the church is the missing bricks on the exterior. Our tour-guide, Jorge, explained that there is a great battle between the politicians of Mexico and the church. He explained that the government retains the right to take ownership of any church 18 months after it is completed. For this reason, the church has been built with bricks missing on the exterior, so that it is not actually completed. So even after 100 years, the Our Lady of Guadalupe Church is still under construction.
The interior of the church features beautiful hand carved statues. Above the alter are 4 paintings depicting the various eras of the Mexican church. One features the bloody human sacrifices of the early Mayans, while another shows a loving Jesus Christ.
While it was extremely hot and humid, I must say our walk to the church was an enjoyable one, and I was very impressed with this beautiful church.
The church is one of the most beautiful churches I've seen. The outside features a crown atop the tower, modeled after the tiara of the mistress of the Emporor Maximilian. In a 1995 earthquake, the crown was damaged, and has been replaced with a replica.
One interesting feature of the church is the missing bricks on the exterior. Our tour-guide, Jorge, explained that there is a great battle between the politicians of Mexico and the church. He explained that the government retains the right to take ownership of any church 18 months after it is completed. For this reason, the church has been built with bricks missing on the exterior, so that it is not actually completed. So even after 100 years, the Our Lady of Guadalupe Church is still under construction.
The interior of the church features beautiful hand carved statues. Above the alter are 4 paintings depicting the various eras of the Mexican church. One features the bloody human sacrifices of the early Mayans, while another shows a loving Jesus Christ.
While it was extremely hot and humid, I must say our walk to the church was an enjoyable one, and I was very impressed with this beautiful church.
Monday, July 12, 2004
All Star Debate
Of course, arguments abound about the players selected to play in the All Star Game. MLB requires that every team have at least one representative in the game. This year, Ken Harvey will represent the Royals in the game. Did he deserve it? Good Question.
Mike Sweeney has been to the last 4 All Star Games and without argument has been the Royals one "star." The slow start the Royals had this year has affected all players, including Sweeney. As of the All Star Break, here are the stats for Sweeney:
And for Harvey:
So what do those stats tell you? To me, it looks like both players are pretty equal, except Sweeney drives in a lot more runs and doesn't strike out nearly as much. Harvey had a great first half, no doubt. He led the league in average for a couple of days and had a 13 or 14 game hitting streak. Harvey hits for average. He always has, even in college and the minors. A lot of folks also argue that Harvey's a better defensive first baseman. Possibly. But I've seen just as many gaffes by Harvey in the field as I have Sweeney. I think there's a perception problem here. Sweeney misses a short hop throw and the whole city goes crazy because he's so terrible. Harvey does the same, and it was simply a bad trhrow.
I still think the Royals did the right thing by signing Sweeney to a long term contract. He's the best hitter on this team (by far) and is still one of the best hitters in the AL. I don't buy the "he's always hurt" argument. Harvey's played in 3 more games that Sweeney this year. With Harvey's ugly-ass swing, I think Sweeney will be a productive hitter far longer than Harvey will. Sweeney's the star of this team, and the lone player deserving of an All Star appearance.
Mike Sweeney has been to the last 4 All Star Games and without argument has been the Royals one "star." The slow start the Royals had this year has affected all players, including Sweeney. As of the All Star Break, here are the stats for Sweeney:
| G | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | TB | BB | SO | SB | CS | OBP | SLG | AVG | |
| 2004 | 75 | 294 | 43 | 82 | 14 | 0 | 16 | 57 | 144 | 22 | 28 | 2 | 2 | .335 | .490 | .279 |
| Career | 995 | 3600 | 575 | 1096 | 219 | 4 | 155 | 661 | 1788 | 395 | 401 | 44 | 25 | .377 | .497 | .304 |
And for Harvey:
| G | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | TB | BB | SO | SB | CS | OBP | SLG | AVG | |
| 2004 | 78 | 292 | 30 | 89 | 13 | 0 | 10 | 34 | 132 | 19 | 55 | 1 | 0 | .353 | .452 | .305 |
| Career | 217 | 789 | 81 | 221 | 44 | 0 | 23 | 100 | 334 | 48 | 153 | 3 | 4 | .327 | .423 | .280 |
So what do those stats tell you? To me, it looks like both players are pretty equal, except Sweeney drives in a lot more runs and doesn't strike out nearly as much. Harvey had a great first half, no doubt. He led the league in average for a couple of days and had a 13 or 14 game hitting streak. Harvey hits for average. He always has, even in college and the minors. A lot of folks also argue that Harvey's a better defensive first baseman. Possibly. But I've seen just as many gaffes by Harvey in the field as I have Sweeney. I think there's a perception problem here. Sweeney misses a short hop throw and the whole city goes crazy because he's so terrible. Harvey does the same, and it was simply a bad trhrow.
I still think the Royals did the right thing by signing Sweeney to a long term contract. He's the best hitter on this team (by far) and is still one of the best hitters in the AL. I don't buy the "he's always hurt" argument. Harvey's played in 3 more games that Sweeney this year. With Harvey's ugly-ass swing, I think Sweeney will be a productive hitter far longer than Harvey will. Sweeney's the star of this team, and the lone player deserving of an All Star appearance.
Back from Mexico
Just got back from a week's vacation in Puerto Vallarta Mexico. We went with some friends to a charity auction for my wife's high school a few months ago, and together we submitted the winning bid for the trip. Someone who owns a timeshare there had donated their week.
The resort we stayed at was the Mayan Palace. The rooms we stayed in were in an older part of the resort, and badly needed updating. I think we were assigned these rooms because we were guests and not actual owners of the timeshare. The weather was very hot and humid and it rained almost every evening.
Our second day there, we agreed to attend a sales presentation for the time shares. We toured the resort and sat through 90 minutes of high pressure sales tactics before we were finally allowed to go. Throughout the presentation, we were told that they would try to move us to better rooms, and so we continued to listen with this result in mind. Of course, it never happened.
But, other than that, we had a good time. We did find a great little bar that overlooked the beach at the resort. The waitress there, Olivia, was extremely friendly and helpful, and we ended up relaxing there every evening.
I don't imagine I would ever return to Puerto Vallarta. It was nice to visit once, but not nice enough to return or to recommend to my friends as a vacation destination.
It is nice to be home...
The resort we stayed at was the Mayan Palace. The rooms we stayed in were in an older part of the resort, and badly needed updating. I think we were assigned these rooms because we were guests and not actual owners of the timeshare. The weather was very hot and humid and it rained almost every evening.
Our second day there, we agreed to attend a sales presentation for the time shares. We toured the resort and sat through 90 minutes of high pressure sales tactics before we were finally allowed to go. Throughout the presentation, we were told that they would try to move us to better rooms, and so we continued to listen with this result in mind. Of course, it never happened.
But, other than that, we had a good time. We did find a great little bar that overlooked the beach at the resort. The waitress there, Olivia, was extremely friendly and helpful, and we ended up relaxing there every evening.
I don't imagine I would ever return to Puerto Vallarta. It was nice to visit once, but not nice enough to return or to recommend to my friends as a vacation destination.
It is nice to be home...
Friday, July 02, 2004
Dee Brown
Dee Brown was the Royals' first pick in the 1996 June Free Agent Draft. He was regarded as one of the Royals' best prospects for the first few years in the organization. In 1998, he made his major league debut in a September call up.
Since then, the Royals have jerked him around. He's been up and down many times. In 2001, he finally stuck with the Royals long enough to collect 380 AB's. He hit .245 with an OBP of .286 and a SLG of .350.
The in 2002, the yo-yo started spinning again. He played in only 16 games and in 2003, he played in only 50 games.
Dee reported to Spring Training this year knowing his chances were slim to make the team. He didn't and the Royals put him on waivers. He cleared, and then reported to AA Wichita.
Finally in mid June, after Juan Gonzalez and Aaron Guiel went on the DL, he was called up to help the Royals in the outfield.
Then on June 22, Pena started Desi Relaford in left field. Why? Why bring up Dee Brown to the Royals to have him sit the bench? It's time the Royals quit messing with this guy.
Maybe he can play, maybe he can't. It would be nice to just let him play so we can make a determination. He's never up with the Royals long enough to get into a groove. He was a top prospect in the organization, but for some reason, the Royals seem to have something against him.
I met Dee Brown a couple of years ago. The Royals gave a baseball clinic at my son's league complex and Jamie Quirk, Kris Wilson, Dee Brown, and Lamar Johnson were there. Kris Wilson was extremely nice and down to earth. When the clinic was over, Quirk announced to all these 7 and 8 year olds that they couldn't stay to sign autographs and hopped in his car and left.
Dee Brown, stood by his car after Quirk left and signed autographs for a half hour. I was really impressed with him. He was so quiet and shy, but really warmed up to these kids. Not that that has anything to do with his playing ability, but I do have soft spot for Brown after that experience.
Let Brown play. This outfield needs him. Stop playing Stairs in the outfield. He can't cover the ground - especially in the newly expanded Kauffman Stadium outfield. For the rest of 2004 the outfield should consist of Brown, DeJesus and Gettis. And please... Listen to me Tony Pena... Stop playing infielders in the outfield!
Since then, the Royals have jerked him around. He's been up and down many times. In 2001, he finally stuck with the Royals long enough to collect 380 AB's. He hit .245 with an OBP of .286 and a SLG of .350.
The in 2002, the yo-yo started spinning again. He played in only 16 games and in 2003, he played in only 50 games.
Dee reported to Spring Training this year knowing his chances were slim to make the team. He didn't and the Royals put him on waivers. He cleared, and then reported to AA Wichita.
Finally in mid June, after Juan Gonzalez and Aaron Guiel went on the DL, he was called up to help the Royals in the outfield.
Then on June 22, Pena started Desi Relaford in left field. Why? Why bring up Dee Brown to the Royals to have him sit the bench? It's time the Royals quit messing with this guy.
Maybe he can play, maybe he can't. It would be nice to just let him play so we can make a determination. He's never up with the Royals long enough to get into a groove. He was a top prospect in the organization, but for some reason, the Royals seem to have something against him.
I met Dee Brown a couple of years ago. The Royals gave a baseball clinic at my son's league complex and Jamie Quirk, Kris Wilson, Dee Brown, and Lamar Johnson were there. Kris Wilson was extremely nice and down to earth. When the clinic was over, Quirk announced to all these 7 and 8 year olds that they couldn't stay to sign autographs and hopped in his car and left.
Dee Brown, stood by his car after Quirk left and signed autographs for a half hour. I was really impressed with him. He was so quiet and shy, but really warmed up to these kids. Not that that has anything to do with his playing ability, but I do have soft spot for Brown after that experience.
Let Brown play. This outfield needs him. Stop playing Stairs in the outfield. He can't cover the ground - especially in the newly expanded Kauffman Stadium outfield. For the rest of 2004 the outfield should consist of Brown, DeJesus and Gettis. And please... Listen to me Tony Pena... Stop playing infielders in the outfield!
Thursday, July 01, 2004
Visual Web Developer Express 2005
I took a chance and downloaded and installed the new Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express 2005. Basically, this is the new Web Matrix. Express is a version of Visual Studio 2005 that is geared toward hobbyists. It will allow folks to write ASP.NET code without forking over the thousands it takes to purchase Visual Studio.
The install went well, and I fired up the product. It was obvious that in this beta version, optimizations have not yet been completed. It look a good 60 seconds or more for the product to load. I quickly played around with creating a web page that asks the user for some info and displays it back.
All in all, a decent experience. However I did find that installing Framework 2.0 caused my SharePoint installation to fail. So, since I'm getting paid to work on SharePoint, I had to uninstall it.
The good news is that the uninstall process went smoothly, and it did in fact seem to remove it completely as my SharePoint server is now running again...
I will try to set up a virutal PC so that I can take more time to play with the new VS products now that the betas have been released...
The install went well, and I fired up the product. It was obvious that in this beta version, optimizations have not yet been completed. It look a good 60 seconds or more for the product to load. I quickly played around with creating a web page that asks the user for some info and displays it back.
All in all, a decent experience. However I did find that installing Framework 2.0 caused my SharePoint installation to fail. So, since I'm getting paid to work on SharePoint, I had to uninstall it.
The good news is that the uninstall process went smoothly, and it did in fact seem to remove it completely as my SharePoint server is now running again...
I will try to set up a virutal PC so that I can take more time to play with the new VS products now that the betas have been released...
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Bradford Doolittle
Bradford Doolittle's new Kansas City Star articles (entitled Stat Guy are great. He takes a current baseball topic (usually involving the Royals), and puts a sabremetric twist to it. Bradford also has a great blog with his brother where they discuss both Missouri MLB teams.
In the latest Stat Guy, Doolittle compares the recently resurgent Tampa Bay Devil Rays to the struggling Royals. Royals fans have yearned for a Rays-like run all season. Doolittle compares the offense of the two teams. Both are practically equal. He then compares pitching, and finds that it is also pretty much equal. The difference seems to be in the defense.
Both teams put a large number of balls into play. The Devil Rays, however convert a greater number of those into outs. At the beginning of the season, the Royals were touted as a great defensive team. However, the defense (like the pitching and offense) has been disappointing.
Check out the article here.
In the latest Stat Guy, Doolittle compares the recently resurgent Tampa Bay Devil Rays to the struggling Royals. Royals fans have yearned for a Rays-like run all season. Doolittle compares the offense of the two teams. Both are practically equal. He then compares pitching, and finds that it is also pretty much equal. The difference seems to be in the defense.
Both teams put a large number of balls into play. The Devil Rays, however convert a greater number of those into outs. At the beginning of the season, the Royals were touted as a great defensive team. However, the defense (like the pitching and offense) has been disappointing.
Check out the article here.
DevDays - Birmingham
Today, I was pleased to be a part of the Microsoft DevDays Event in Birmingham, AL. Joe Healy did a great job putting together the event and we had a good turnout of about 175 folks. I presented two sessions in the web security track. Fellow Quilogy employees Jon Box and Jerry Dixon also presented.
The highlight of the event was seeing Russ Fustino's presentation. Russ is pretty popular because of his highly entertaining "Russ' Tool Shed" presentations. In it, Russ shows some of the new "tools" coming in the Whidbey version of Visual Studio.NET. By the way, Microsoft today announced the availablility of Beta 1 of Whidbey (now known as Visual Studio 2005). Also announced was the fact that the Beta for the Yukon version of SQL Server is still a few weeks away. But, it's coming...
Tonight, I enjoyed a fabulous dinner of ribs with Jon, Jerry, Russ, Joe Healy and Brandon McMillon at a fabulous rib joint called Dreamland.
My tummy is very satisfied, and I'll sleep well tonight before heading back to KC tomorrow morning.
The highlight of the event was seeing Russ Fustino's presentation. Russ is pretty popular because of his highly entertaining "Russ' Tool Shed" presentations. In it, Russ shows some of the new "tools" coming in the Whidbey version of Visual Studio.NET. By the way, Microsoft today announced the availablility of Beta 1 of Whidbey (now known as Visual Studio 2005). Also announced was the fact that the Beta for the Yukon version of SQL Server is still a few weeks away. But, it's coming...
Tonight, I enjoyed a fabulous dinner of ribs with Jon, Jerry, Russ, Joe Healy and Brandon McMillon at a fabulous rib joint called Dreamland.
My tummy is very satisfied, and I'll sleep well tonight before heading back to KC tomorrow morning.
Monday, June 28, 2004
A New Low
I went out to Kauffman Stadium yesterday to catch the final game of their interleague series against the St. Louis Cardinals. The Royals had already lost the first two games of the series and were trying to salvage one game. It didn't work out too well.
The Royals lost the game,and looked awful doing it. They also learned that closer Jeremy Affeldt tore his oblique muscle and will be out up to 8 weeks. This comes afer trading their best player, Carlos Beltran, away to the Houston Astros.
Is there any reason to feel positive about this team right now? They play in an old stadium, and the voters will probably decline to provide renovation funds. The play on the field this year has been awful. Last year seemed promising, but now you have to wonder if they had one good month just by chance. Since that hot start in April of 2003, they've played sub .500 ball.
I love baseball, and I love my home town team, but it I having a very difficult time finding something to hold my interest.
The Royals lost the game,and looked awful doing it. They also learned that closer Jeremy Affeldt tore his oblique muscle and will be out up to 8 weeks. This comes afer trading their best player, Carlos Beltran, away to the Houston Astros.
Is there any reason to feel positive about this team right now? They play in an old stadium, and the voters will probably decline to provide renovation funds. The play on the field this year has been awful. Last year seemed promising, but now you have to wonder if they had one good month just by chance. Since that hot start in April of 2003, they've played sub .500 ball.
I love baseball, and I love my home town team, but it I having a very difficult time finding something to hold my interest.
Friday, June 25, 2004
Tech Ed Pics
I finally got my pictures back from my trip to Tech Ed in San Diego. Here Jon Box and Matt Warmack yuck it up with me in front of the Quilogy booth.
Thursday, June 24, 2004
SharePoint, Templates, and Ghosts
One of the more frustrating things I've run across when working with SharePoint is dealing with templates to define the look and feel of a Portal.
SharePoint installs various .aspx files on the server which define the default template for all of the different types of pages in the Portal. If you want to change the look and feel of the Portal, one option is to update these .aspx files.
Another option is to open the web in FrontPage and edit the page. What I've run across is that once the page has been saved using FrontPage, changing the .aspx file no longer affects the page.
So for example, I want to change all Portal Areas to have a new header graphic. I can go to the c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\template\spstopics folder and edit the default.aspx file. After I add my graphic to that file, refreshing the area pages in the portal should reflect my change - all of them. Existing areas as well as new areas I create.
However, let's say I open up the web in FrontPage, and I go to the Departments area and I edit the default.aspx page in FrontPage. Once I save those changes, the page becomes "unghosted." That means it is no longer parsed by the ASP.NET engine and does not use the default.aspx file on the file system. Instead, it is parsed by the SharePoint safemode parser using data from the database. The advantage here is that the page is parsed faster and security vulnerabilites of ASP.NET are eliminated (for example, malicious code injection). If all of my department areas are unghosted and I want to change a graphic on the header of the pages, I must edit each one seperately. Changes to the default.aspx file on the file system still will affect new areas when created.
This can be a bit frustrating when you are still working on finalizing the look and feel of a Portal. Once the pages become unghosted, you can't just change the template file and expect all existing pages to reflect the change.
This is what I am dealing with at a current client. We are working on the look and feel for all team sites. Unfortunately, one particular team site has become unghosted, so it does not reflect any changes we've made to the default.aspx template.
I did find a solution for this, though. I found great SharePoint Blog by Maurice Prather. He has created a Web Part Toolkit you can download and that includes a ghostfinder web part. This web part, once installed, will list all pages on the portal that are unghosted. It also allows you to reset the page, so that it then becomes ghosted.
We will use this at the client to ghost that one team site page so that it will reflect the changes to the template file.
Another aspect of ghosted pages is performance. I found the following snippet on TechNet:
"SharePoint Portal Server 2003 stores some of its basic page and template information in the file system on the front-end Web server. These pages, which have not been customized, and metadata are called 'ghosted pages.'
"When a page is modified, it is written to the database and read from there. The performance impact of reading these pages from the database rather than from the disk is approximately 10 percent."
SharePoint installs various .aspx files on the server which define the default template for all of the different types of pages in the Portal. If you want to change the look and feel of the Portal, one option is to update these .aspx files.
Another option is to open the web in FrontPage and edit the page. What I've run across is that once the page has been saved using FrontPage, changing the .aspx file no longer affects the page.
So for example, I want to change all Portal Areas to have a new header graphic. I can go to the c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\template\spstopics folder and edit the default.aspx file. After I add my graphic to that file, refreshing the area pages in the portal should reflect my change - all of them. Existing areas as well as new areas I create.
However, let's say I open up the web in FrontPage, and I go to the Departments area and I edit the default.aspx page in FrontPage. Once I save those changes, the page becomes "unghosted." That means it is no longer parsed by the ASP.NET engine and does not use the default.aspx file on the file system. Instead, it is parsed by the SharePoint safemode parser using data from the database. The advantage here is that the page is parsed faster and security vulnerabilites of ASP.NET are eliminated (for example, malicious code injection). If all of my department areas are unghosted and I want to change a graphic on the header of the pages, I must edit each one seperately. Changes to the default.aspx file on the file system still will affect new areas when created.
This can be a bit frustrating when you are still working on finalizing the look and feel of a Portal. Once the pages become unghosted, you can't just change the template file and expect all existing pages to reflect the change.
This is what I am dealing with at a current client. We are working on the look and feel for all team sites. Unfortunately, one particular team site has become unghosted, so it does not reflect any changes we've made to the default.aspx template.
I did find a solution for this, though. I found great SharePoint Blog by Maurice Prather. He has created a Web Part Toolkit you can download and that includes a ghostfinder web part. This web part, once installed, will list all pages on the portal that are unghosted. It also allows you to reset the page, so that it then becomes ghosted.
We will use this at the client to ghost that one team site page so that it will reflect the changes to the template file.
Another aspect of ghosted pages is performance. I found the following snippet on TechNet:
"SharePoint Portal Server 2003 stores some of its basic page and template information in the file system on the front-end Web server. These pages, which have not been customized, and metadata are called 'ghosted pages.'
"When a page is modified, it is written to the database and read from there. The performance impact of reading these pages from the database rather than from the disk is approximately 10 percent."
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
Life Happens
Conoco's new tag line is "Because life happens between empty and full."
That's not right is it? Doesn't life really happen between full and empty? The only thing that happens between empty and full is the pumping of some gas.
That's not right is it? Doesn't life really happen between full and empty? The only thing that happens between empty and full is the pumping of some gas.
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
Rebuilding Begins
The Royals released relief pitcher Curtis Leskanic last week, prompting a bit of a tirade from Leskanic's buddy Jason Grimsley. Last night, Grimsley was dealt to the Baltimore Orioles for pitching prospect Denny Bautista.
At first glance, this looks like a great trade for the Royals. Grimsley is a good veteran reliever, but doesn't bring anything to the Royals from a rebuilding perspective. Bautista is a power pitcher who the Royals hope will be ready for the starting rotation to start the 2005 season. The Orioles gave up one of their best prospects for a year and a half of bullpen help.
Bautista has had control problems, but the Royals hope they can work with him to repeat his delivery to help his control. He will go to AA Wichita for now.
Look for more moves by the Royals in the next few weeks.
At first glance, this looks like a great trade for the Royals. Grimsley is a good veteran reliever, but doesn't bring anything to the Royals from a rebuilding perspective. Bautista is a power pitcher who the Royals hope will be ready for the starting rotation to start the 2005 season. The Orioles gave up one of their best prospects for a year and a half of bullpen help.
Bautista has had control problems, but the Royals hope they can work with him to repeat his delivery to help his control. He will go to AA Wichita for now.
Look for more moves by the Royals in the next few weeks.
Monday, June 21, 2004
2005 Royals
It's not yet the All Star Break, but with the Royals' poor start it's prudent to look ahead to next year.
Some unknowns exist. CF Carlos Beltran will be gone, probably in a trade this year. 3B Joe Randa may also be traded. The Royals will have some money to play with - potentially as much at $13 million.
Here's a possible lineup:
1B - Harvey/Sweeney
2B - Gotay/Murphy (minors leaguers, or Graffanino if he's signed through 2005)
SS - Berroa
3B - ???
LF - Dee Brown/???
CF - David DeJesus
RF - Aaron Guiel
C - Santiago
The rotation will probably look much different next season. Don't look for Anderson or May to return. Greinke and Gobble are locks. Runelvys Hernandez should return from his Tommy John surgery.
With $13 million, the Royals should target a major league pitcher. Soren Petro is suggesting Barry Zito. I think that would be great. Imagine a rotation of Zito, Greinke, Hernandez and Gobble...
Some unknowns exist. CF Carlos Beltran will be gone, probably in a trade this year. 3B Joe Randa may also be traded. The Royals will have some money to play with - potentially as much at $13 million.
Here's a possible lineup:
1B - Harvey/Sweeney
2B - Gotay/Murphy (minors leaguers, or Graffanino if he's signed through 2005)
SS - Berroa
3B - ???
LF - Dee Brown/???
CF - David DeJesus
RF - Aaron Guiel
C - Santiago
The rotation will probably look much different next season. Don't look for Anderson or May to return. Greinke and Gobble are locks. Runelvys Hernandez should return from his Tommy John surgery.
With $13 million, the Royals should target a major league pitcher. Soren Petro is suggesting Barry Zito. I think that would be great. Imagine a rotation of Zito, Greinke, Hernandez and Gobble...
Baseball Overload
The weekend I saw 7 baseball games. We went on a family trip to Omaha for a baseball tournament that my son's team, the KC Indians, played in. The boys played 6 games, and we also took time out to catch a College World Series game.
The boys had a tough go of it in pool play. All teams are thrown into a pool and play three games. Based on those three games, the teams are then seeded into two brackets. In pool play, we went 0-3. The first game on Friday was against the Reds from Colorado. The boys played well, but ended up letting the game slip away in the cold rain. After a long rain delay, we finally were able to play a second game on Friday against the Pacesetters from Omaha. They were an extremely good team, and it really was no contest for our boys. The next tournament game wasn't scheduled until Saturday evening, so we went over to Rosenblatt Stadium to catch the South Carolina/Cal St. Fullerton game in the NCAA College World Series. We were seated in the outfield bleachers and the sun was out. We were baking. The game was pretty boring for spectators. Very few hits and only 2 runs total as Cal State Fullerton got the 2-0 shutout.
Saturday evening, the KC Indians played the Thunder from the Dallas area. Another tough team. One Thunder kid looked as big as me (these are 10 year olds), and he hit one over the fence for the highlight of the game.
Those three games gave us the seeding for the "consolation" bracket. The bracket play is single elimination - lose and you head home. We played at 8:00 Sunday morning against the Cobras from Des Moines. The boys finally put together a good game and won easily. That set up a rematch against the Reds. Without the rain, the Indians were able to out-play the Reds and reached the consolation championship game against the Gators, also from Des Moines.
There is a little bit of a back story in our matchup against the Gators. There is another team from the KC area called the Blue Springs Indians. The B.S. Indians have been a bit of a rival for us. They are a tryout team (we don't do tryouts, we take kids who are friends, neighbors, etc), and my son's best friend plays on their team. We always look up to them as the team we'd like to beat. In a tournament earlier in the year, we played the B.S. Indians and lost by only 1 run, 4-3.
The Gators played the B.S. Indians to reach the consolation championship game and beat them in a rout. I believe the final score was 12-3. So for us, beating the Gators would be a real feather in our cap.
In the final game, the third game of the day for the boys, the Gators jumped out in front scoring 2 runs in the first. The game was tight throughout, and the Indians were able to strike back and led the game 6-4. The Gators were able to put together some hits and took the lead 8-6. The Indians fought back and brought it to 8-7 and held the Gators with some great defense the last two innings. In the bottom of the 6th, the Indians had one last chance to score one to tie and two to win. Things looked good when my son Joey was able to coax a walk. He's a speedy kid and the Gators hadn't been able to throw out a base stealer all day. But here, Joey took off, and the catcher made a good throw for a very close play at second. Joey was called out, erasing the tie run. A fly out to right then ended the game and the tournament for all.
The boys did play really well, especially once they were seeded with equal competition. We are all very proud that they were able to get to the championship game, and played the Gators so close to only lose by 1 run. And the kids were able to bring home a trophy, which helps to make it feel like it was worth the trip.
Now, I have a 1 day break from ball, until my daughter's softball game Tuesday evening.
The boys had a tough go of it in pool play. All teams are thrown into a pool and play three games. Based on those three games, the teams are then seeded into two brackets. In pool play, we went 0-3. The first game on Friday was against the Reds from Colorado. The boys played well, but ended up letting the game slip away in the cold rain. After a long rain delay, we finally were able to play a second game on Friday against the Pacesetters from Omaha. They were an extremely good team, and it really was no contest for our boys. The next tournament game wasn't scheduled until Saturday evening, so we went over to Rosenblatt Stadium to catch the South Carolina/Cal St. Fullerton game in the NCAA College World Series. We were seated in the outfield bleachers and the sun was out. We were baking. The game was pretty boring for spectators. Very few hits and only 2 runs total as Cal State Fullerton got the 2-0 shutout.
Saturday evening, the KC Indians played the Thunder from the Dallas area. Another tough team. One Thunder kid looked as big as me (these are 10 year olds), and he hit one over the fence for the highlight of the game.
Those three games gave us the seeding for the "consolation" bracket. The bracket play is single elimination - lose and you head home. We played at 8:00 Sunday morning against the Cobras from Des Moines. The boys finally put together a good game and won easily. That set up a rematch against the Reds. Without the rain, the Indians were able to out-play the Reds and reached the consolation championship game against the Gators, also from Des Moines.
There is a little bit of a back story in our matchup against the Gators. There is another team from the KC area called the Blue Springs Indians. The B.S. Indians have been a bit of a rival for us. They are a tryout team (we don't do tryouts, we take kids who are friends, neighbors, etc), and my son's best friend plays on their team. We always look up to them as the team we'd like to beat. In a tournament earlier in the year, we played the B.S. Indians and lost by only 1 run, 4-3.
The Gators played the B.S. Indians to reach the consolation championship game and beat them in a rout. I believe the final score was 12-3. So for us, beating the Gators would be a real feather in our cap.
In the final game, the third game of the day for the boys, the Gators jumped out in front scoring 2 runs in the first. The game was tight throughout, and the Indians were able to strike back and led the game 6-4. The Gators were able to put together some hits and took the lead 8-6. The Indians fought back and brought it to 8-7 and held the Gators with some great defense the last two innings. In the bottom of the 6th, the Indians had one last chance to score one to tie and two to win. Things looked good when my son Joey was able to coax a walk. He's a speedy kid and the Gators hadn't been able to throw out a base stealer all day. But here, Joey took off, and the catcher made a good throw for a very close play at second. Joey was called out, erasing the tie run. A fly out to right then ended the game and the tournament for all.
The boys did play really well, especially once they were seeded with equal competition. We are all very proud that they were able to get to the championship game, and played the Gators so close to only lose by 1 run. And the kids were able to bring home a trophy, which helps to make it feel like it was worth the trip.
Now, I have a 1 day break from ball, until my daughter's softball game Tuesday evening.
Monday, June 14, 2004
Interleague Play
Caught 2 of the 3 Royals games against the Mets over the weekend. I'm still not sure how I like interleague play, but it was kinda nice to see guys like Mike Piazza, Kaz Matsui, and Tom Glavine here in KC.
As far as the Royals go, this team needs to be busted up. I've noticed that they are playing better since Juan Gonzalez went on the DL. But the team still isn't showing much life. GM Allard Baird annouced to the world that he is now ready to start trading players to look toward 2005. I'm in agreement. The team has looked awful all season.
Most folks in KC think the Royals should try to dump Mike Sweeney. I'm not sure I'm ready to give up on him just yet. Everybody cheered when the Royals were able to lock him up and signed him to a long term contract. But now, they think it's wasted money. I still think he can hit, and I don't think he's overpriced. He's struggled this year (even I've complained about the many pop-ups he's hit this season), but I still think he's the right kind of hitter for this team in this stadium. He's not the best defensive first baseman, but I'll give away some defense for his offense. If Baird can get some pitching for Ken Harvey, I say trade him.
As far as the rest of the team, they should try to trade everybody. The only "untouchables" should be Zack Greinke, Jeremey Affeldt, Jimmy Gobble, and Angel Berroa. Of course catcher and third baseman should be priorities since the Royals don't have those positions covered in the minors.
The Royals will open a series in Atlanta tomorrow night. It will be interesting to see what kind of lineup Pena creates.
As far as the Royals go, this team needs to be busted up. I've noticed that they are playing better since Juan Gonzalez went on the DL. But the team still isn't showing much life. GM Allard Baird annouced to the world that he is now ready to start trading players to look toward 2005. I'm in agreement. The team has looked awful all season.
Most folks in KC think the Royals should try to dump Mike Sweeney. I'm not sure I'm ready to give up on him just yet. Everybody cheered when the Royals were able to lock him up and signed him to a long term contract. But now, they think it's wasted money. I still think he can hit, and I don't think he's overpriced. He's struggled this year (even I've complained about the many pop-ups he's hit this season), but I still think he's the right kind of hitter for this team in this stadium. He's not the best defensive first baseman, but I'll give away some defense for his offense. If Baird can get some pitching for Ken Harvey, I say trade him.
As far as the rest of the team, they should try to trade everybody. The only "untouchables" should be Zack Greinke, Jeremey Affeldt, Jimmy Gobble, and Angel Berroa. Of course catcher and third baseman should be priorities since the Royals don't have those positions covered in the minors.
The Royals will open a series in Atlanta tomorrow night. It will be interesting to see what kind of lineup Pena creates.
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
Zack Greinke
Last Friday, I was able to see Zack Greinke pitch in person at Kauffman Stadium. I had a good view from my split-season ticket seats right behind the visitor's on deck circle.
Greinke is an impressive pitcher. Just by watching him, you can see that he has poise and confidence on the mound. He pitched well, giving up only 1 run on 7 hits. The run came on a solo homerun by Mike Cuddyer. I had the feeling that Greinke still was in control of the game even after the homerun. It looked like he was saving pitches the first time through the order. For example, he could have gotten Cuddyer on a slider, but didn't want to show the slider until the next time through the order. Instead, he threw a fastball that was hit out. Greinke said in an interview that the pitch was in the location he wanted, but Cuddyer hit it well.
The next batter was Henry Blanco. Greinke threw a 61 MPH curveball that was barely fouled off for strike 2. The very next pitch was a 91 MPH fast ball that was swung on and missed. Blanco looked silly trying to hit that pitch. That was a case where Greinke reared back and threw 30 MPH faster than the previous pitch. He fastballs were around 88 for the rest of the game.
In the 7th, Greinke got into trouble. Justin Morneau singled and Cuddyer singled. With two men on, Greinke struck out Lew Ford looking on a fastball that caught the outside corner. It was a case where Ford was looking for something different, and Greinke had him guessing. In the post game interview, Greinke said that he was trying to throw a ball there to set up the next pitch, but the pitch caught the outside corner for the strike out. Again, impressive that he thinks several pitches ahead and uses strategy like that out on the mound. It was also refreshing to see a Royals pitcher who's not afraid to work inside on batters.
Greinke will start tonight in Detroit. If you have RSTN, you should try to catch him. He really is a special pitcher.
Last Friday, I was able to see Zack Greinke pitch in person at Kauffman Stadium. I had a good view from my split-season ticket seats right behind the visitor's on deck circle.
Greinke is an impressive pitcher. Just by watching him, you can see that he has poise and confidence on the mound. He pitched well, giving up only 1 run on 7 hits. The run came on a solo homerun by Mike Cuddyer. I had the feeling that Greinke still was in control of the game even after the homerun. It looked like he was saving pitches the first time through the order. For example, he could have gotten Cuddyer on a slider, but didn't want to show the slider until the next time through the order. Instead, he threw a fastball that was hit out. Greinke said in an interview that the pitch was in the location he wanted, but Cuddyer hit it well.
The next batter was Henry Blanco. Greinke threw a 61 MPH curveball that was barely fouled off for strike 2. The very next pitch was a 91 MPH fast ball that was swung on and missed. Blanco looked silly trying to hit that pitch. That was a case where Greinke reared back and threw 30 MPH faster than the previous pitch. He fastballs were around 88 for the rest of the game.
In the 7th, Greinke got into trouble. Justin Morneau singled and Cuddyer singled. With two men on, Greinke struck out Lew Ford looking on a fastball that caught the outside corner. It was a case where Ford was looking for something different, and Greinke had him guessing. In the post game interview, Greinke said that he was trying to throw a ball there to set up the next pitch, but the pitch caught the outside corner for the strike out. Again, impressive that he thinks several pitches ahead and uses strategy like that out on the mound. It was also refreshing to see a Royals pitcher who's not afraid to work inside on batters.
Greinke will start tonight in Detroit. If you have RSTN, you should try to catch him. He really is a special pitcher.
Juan Gone
Juan Gonzalez has been on the DL since May 22, and I was thinking that it seems like the Royals have played better since then. In fact, I haven't really noticed his absence. Not like last year when I couldn't wait for Sweeney to get back into the lineup after his neck injury.
I checked the record, and the Royals are 5-5 since May 22. So they are playing .500 without Juan Gone. I'm not sure how much longer he will be out, but it'd be nice to think that his bat could help enough to get the team playing at a better than .500 clip.
Interleague play is coming up. I'm interested to see how Tony Pena will work the lineup when he won't have a DH. Both Sweeney and Harvey are 1B/DH players, and both are hitting well enough that you'd like to have them both in the lineup. Could one of those two end up in left field for some games?
Juan Gonzalez has been on the DL since May 22, and I was thinking that it seems like the Royals have played better since then. In fact, I haven't really noticed his absence. Not like last year when I couldn't wait for Sweeney to get back into the lineup after his neck injury.
I checked the record, and the Royals are 5-5 since May 22. So they are playing .500 without Juan Gone. I'm not sure how much longer he will be out, but it'd be nice to think that his bat could help enough to get the team playing at a better than .500 clip.
Interleague play is coming up. I'm interested to see how Tony Pena will work the lineup when he won't have a DH. Both Sweeney and Harvey are 1B/DH players, and both are hitting well enough that you'd like to have them both in the lineup. Could one of those two end up in left field for some games?
Thursday, May 27, 2004
CLR Profiler
Have you ever wished you could investigate the managed heap to see what resources are allocated, and what the garbage collector has actually done? The CLR Profiler may be the answer. Learn more at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnpag/html/scalenethowto13.asp
Have you ever wished you could investigate the managed heap to see what resources are allocated, and what the garbage collector has actually done? The CLR Profiler may be the answer. Learn more at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnpag/html/scalenethowto13.asp
Team System
Here's a good overview article on MSDN that discusses Visual Studio 2005 Team System:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnvsent/html/vsts-over.asp
Here's a good overview article on MSDN that discusses Visual Studio 2005 Team System:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnvsent/html/vsts-over.asp
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
PETCO
I skipped out of TechED this afternoon to walk over to PETCO Park. I paid the $9 to take the stadium tour, since the Padres are on a road trip and I couldn't get into the park for a game.
PETCO just opened this year and is a really nice ballpark. It was designed by KC's HOK, famous for designing sports venues around the world. One of the most interesting features is the Western Metal Supply Building. This historic building is located down the left field line. The corner of the building acts as the fair/foul pole. The stadium was built around the building without disturbing it. The inside of the building was refurbished. On street level is the Padres Team Store. The store is spacious and has a nice variety of Padres merchandise. From the store, you can walk out a door and stand right behind the fence down the left field line. I'm not sure if these doors are unlocked during games, but you could really heckle the left fielder from there. On the upper floors of the building are several suites with seats overhanging the field. The warning track runs underneath the lowest set of seats. There are also seats on top of the building ala the new Green Monster seats in Boston. Our tour guide admitted that the Padres stole the idea of incorporating a historic building into the ballpark from Baltimore's Camden Yards.
The tour also included the dugout, the press box and the luxury areas under the stadium. One nice feature is that the seats down the lines are mounted at an angle so they all face home plate. After feeling the soreness in my neck from a game at Kauffman Stadium, I can see the advantage of this.
Overall a nice tour. In comparing it to the Kauffman Stadium tour, the K is definitely a better value. At the K, you can also go into the visitors clubhouse and the batting cages under the stadium, which was absent in the Petco tour. And the K tour (at least last year) is only $5.00.
I skipped out of TechED this afternoon to walk over to PETCO Park. I paid the $9 to take the stadium tour, since the Padres are on a road trip and I couldn't get into the park for a game.
PETCO just opened this year and is a really nice ballpark. It was designed by KC's HOK, famous for designing sports venues around the world. One of the most interesting features is the Western Metal Supply Building. This historic building is located down the left field line. The corner of the building acts as the fair/foul pole. The stadium was built around the building without disturbing it. The inside of the building was refurbished. On street level is the Padres Team Store. The store is spacious and has a nice variety of Padres merchandise. From the store, you can walk out a door and stand right behind the fence down the left field line. I'm not sure if these doors are unlocked during games, but you could really heckle the left fielder from there. On the upper floors of the building are several suites with seats overhanging the field. The warning track runs underneath the lowest set of seats. There are also seats on top of the building ala the new Green Monster seats in Boston. Our tour guide admitted that the Padres stole the idea of incorporating a historic building into the ballpark from Baltimore's Camden Yards.
The tour also included the dugout, the press box and the luxury areas under the stadium. One nice feature is that the seats down the lines are mounted at an angle so they all face home plate. After feeling the soreness in my neck from a game at Kauffman Stadium, I can see the advantage of this.
Overall a nice tour. In comparing it to the Kauffman Stadium tour, the K is definitely a better value. At the K, you can also go into the visitors clubhouse and the batting cages under the stadium, which was absent in the Petco tour. And the K tour (at least last year) is only $5.00.
SharePoint and Exchange InterOp
At Tech Ed today, I attended an interesting session that Scott Jamison of Dell gave. In it, he demonstrated some code that he wrote to provide for integration with Exchange from SharePoint. The things he wanted to accomplish were to aggregate Exchanges Tasks, SharePoint tasks and custom tasks from a home grown system. He used Portal Server's Single Sign On Service to retrieve credentials for the home grown app, and he used WebDAV to retreive tasks from Exchange. He then pulled those tasks together into a DataSet along with SharePoint tasks and displayed them to the user in a web part. Interesting concepts.
He also wanted to provide a way for users to ask for SharePoint Search results via email. This addresses a case where users are offline frequently and don't have easy access to a SharePoint site. He wrote a Windows System app that polls an Exchange Public Folder. Users can send an email to this folder with a search term in the subject. The Windows Service picks up that message, submits a search request to the SharePoint Search.ASMX web service. He the grabs the URL of the returned search items to retrieve the document, and then generates an email that is sent back to the user. The email includes the top 3 documents as attachments.
This was another interesting concept, but the code isn't quite ready for prime time. Security issues abound, for example, what if a spammer sends messages to this folder...
The session didn't necessarily introduce new capabilityes that I hadn't seen before, but did show some new ways of utilizing those capabilities. I'm looking forward to experimenting with some of this code when I get back to KC.
At Tech Ed today, I attended an interesting session that Scott Jamison of Dell gave. In it, he demonstrated some code that he wrote to provide for integration with Exchange from SharePoint. The things he wanted to accomplish were to aggregate Exchanges Tasks, SharePoint tasks and custom tasks from a home grown system. He used Portal Server's Single Sign On Service to retrieve credentials for the home grown app, and he used WebDAV to retreive tasks from Exchange. He then pulled those tasks together into a DataSet along with SharePoint tasks and displayed them to the user in a web part. Interesting concepts.
He also wanted to provide a way for users to ask for SharePoint Search results via email. This addresses a case where users are offline frequently and don't have easy access to a SharePoint site. He wrote a Windows System app that polls an Exchange Public Folder. Users can send an email to this folder with a search term in the subject. The Windows Service picks up that message, submits a search request to the SharePoint Search.ASMX web service. He the grabs the URL of the returned search items to retrieve the document, and then generates an email that is sent back to the user. The email includes the top 3 documents as attachments.
This was another interesting concept, but the code isn't quite ready for prime time. Security issues abound, for example, what if a spammer sends messages to this folder...
The session didn't necessarily introduce new capabilityes that I hadn't seen before, but did show some new ways of utilizing those capabilities. I'm looking forward to experimenting with some of this code when I get back to KC.
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
.NET CF 2.0
Just attended a session on the new version of the .NET Compact Framework. Interesting features being added:
Just attended a session on the new version of the .NET Compact Framework. Interesting features being added:
- upward migration allowed (v1 apps will "just run" on v2)
- can do side by side (v1 AND v2 app on same device - use app config like on desktop)
- Unified JIT for all processors (was just for ARM)
- COM Interop, RCW provide proxies for native COM, RCW support integrated into VS Shell
- Enhanced type marshalling (additional types, embedded arrays, MarshalAs)
- New language features (generics, anonymous methods, iterators, partial types)
- New Windows.Forms Controls (DateTimePicker, MonthCalendar, DocumentList, LinkLabel, Notification Bubble, Help, RichInk, WebBrowser, others)
- Clipboard support
- Better Keyboard support (for devices that include thumbpads)
- SmartPhone features added - SQLServer CE, DataGrid, IME switching enabled (Input Mode), Enabled multiple menu times on left soft key
- Displays and Layouts - AutoScroll, Pixel doubling enabled for high res screens, Docking, Anchoring, changeOrientation, bitmaps, custom pens
Community Lounge
The Community Lounge/Cabana areas at TechEd are great. There is a huge room, and around the perimeter, there are areas set up for various technologies. In these areas, folks can informally meet with various experts to ask questions, and have discussions. In addition, small sessions are being presented. This is a great, comfortable way to meet with people and get questions answered.
I am hanging out around Cabana 5 answering questions on SharePoint.
The Community Lounge/Cabana areas at TechEd are great. There is a huge room, and around the perimeter, there are areas set up for various technologies. In these areas, folks can informally meet with various experts to ask questions, and have discussions. In addition, small sessions are being presented. This is a great, comfortable way to meet with people and get questions answered.
I am hanging out around Cabana 5 answering questions on SharePoint.
Visual Studio 2005 Team System
At TechEd, I am learning about the new Visual Studio 2005 Team System. This is a new set of tools that will allow teams to work together in a unified environment. The tools pull together Infrastructure Architects, System Architects, Developers, and Tester to work together.
This will be an interesting technology. I'll be intersted to see how this works with or replaces Source Safe. The question of teams working on VS projects together often comes up when I meet with clients.
At TechEd, I am learning about the new Visual Studio 2005 Team System. This is a new set of tools that will allow teams to work together in a unified environment. The tools pull together Infrastructure Architects, System Architects, Developers, and Tester to work together.
This will be an interesting technology. I'll be intersted to see how this works with or replaces Source Safe. The question of teams working on VS projects together often comes up when I meet with clients.
Monday, May 24, 2004
At Tech-Ed 2004
I arrived in San Diego last night for Microsoft's Tech-Ed 2004 Conference. I arrived at the Hyatt down the street from the huge San Diego Conference Center and checked in. I decided ot walk down to the conference center to register for the conference. While walking down the street I ran into Jon Box. We met up later for dinner and and I met several of Jon's fellow Regional Directors.
This morning, I arrived at the center for a great breakfast. One thing is for certain, I will definitely get some exercise this week. The conference center has to be 4 city blocks long, and Microsoft has taken over the entire building. There are over 11,000 attendees at the conference. Microsoft seems to have taken over the entire city of San Diego. There are Microsoft banners all over.
The Opening Keynote was delivered by Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. His address was somewhat interesting. In it, he announced WSE 2.0 and the Office Information Bridge. I will try to post more information about these new technologies as I find it. (WSE 2.0 can be found here.)
I also saw a good presentation by Don Box that discussed the Services Oriented architectures. They discussed the future of COM, COM+, SOAP and other interop technologies. Interesting to hear them say that folks should avoid .NET REMOTING in favor of ASMX. Their point is that although performance isn't as good, the model is better and improvements in ASMX performance are coming.
I am currently hanging out in the Community Lounge, near the Cabana area. I'm looking forward to learning more about the upcoming technologies planned.
I arrived in San Diego last night for Microsoft's Tech-Ed 2004 Conference. I arrived at the Hyatt down the street from the huge San Diego Conference Center and checked in. I decided ot walk down to the conference center to register for the conference. While walking down the street I ran into Jon Box. We met up later for dinner and and I met several of Jon's fellow Regional Directors.
This morning, I arrived at the center for a great breakfast. One thing is for certain, I will definitely get some exercise this week. The conference center has to be 4 city blocks long, and Microsoft has taken over the entire building. There are over 11,000 attendees at the conference. Microsoft seems to have taken over the entire city of San Diego. There are Microsoft banners all over.
The Opening Keynote was delivered by Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. His address was somewhat interesting. In it, he announced WSE 2.0 and the Office Information Bridge. I will try to post more information about these new technologies as I find it. (WSE 2.0 can be found here.)
I also saw a good presentation by Don Box that discussed the Services Oriented architectures. They discussed the future of COM, COM+, SOAP and other interop technologies. Interesting to hear them say that folks should avoid .NET REMOTING in favor of ASMX. Their point is that although performance isn't as good, the model is better and improvements in ASMX performance are coming.
I am currently hanging out in the Community Lounge, near the Cabana area. I'm looking forward to learning more about the upcoming technologies planned.
Friday, May 21, 2004
1-2 Punch
One thing that definitely has hurt the Royals this year is the perormance of their 1-2 starters, Brian Anderson and Darrell May.
Anderson is 1-5 with a 6.79 ERA and May is 1-6, 5.76. The Royals are 2-17 in their starts. Both pitchers have been terribly disappointing this season. Last night, May gave up 5 runs in the second inning, after his team gave him a 2 run lead.
Anderson, especially, has again and again killed the Royals by giving up big innings early in the games. May has been guilty of this as well, as shown:
Those are the two best pitchers on the staff??? Something is very wrong here. Both these guys need a kick in the butt. Hopefully, bringing Zack Greinke up will put some pressure on these two. I say send them to the bullpen until they can prove that they can give the team 5 innings without blowing it.
One thing that definitely has hurt the Royals this year is the perormance of their 1-2 starters, Brian Anderson and Darrell May.
Anderson is 1-5 with a 6.79 ERA and May is 1-6, 5.76. The Royals are 2-17 in their starts. Both pitchers have been terribly disappointing this season. Last night, May gave up 5 runs in the second inning, after his team gave him a 2 run lead.
Anderson, especially, has again and again killed the Royals by giving up big innings early in the games. May has been guilty of this as well, as shown:
| Date | Pitcher | Runs | Inning |
| 4/5 | Anderson | 4 | 2 |
| 4/10 | Anderson | 5 | 4 |
| 4/13 | May | 3,4 | 2,5 |
| 4/25 | Anderson | 4 | 3 |
| 5/4 | May | 4 | 2 |
| 5/5 | Anderson | 6 | 2 |
| 5/10 | Anderson | 6 | 1 |
| 5/20 | May | 5 | 2 |
Those are the two best pitchers on the staff??? Something is very wrong here. Both these guys need a kick in the butt. Hopefully, bringing Zack Greinke up will put some pressure on these two. I say send them to the bullpen until they can prove that they can give the team 5 innings without blowing it.
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Tech Ed Next Week!
I was fortunate enough to be asked to work in the Community Lounge at Microsoft Tech Ed (San Diego) this year. The great thing about this is that I didn't have to pay the $1500 entry fee to attend. I'm looking forward to the event as I've never attended Tech Ed before, but I understand that this is the best event for Microsoft Developers.
The Community Lounge will be an area where folks can ask questions of various "experts." (the quotes are for me, I'm sure the other Lounge workers really are experts). I will be hanging out there when I'm not attending sessions of interest for me. I've listed ASP.NET Development and SharePoint development as my areas of expertise. Look me up in the Lounge if you're there.
I was fortunate enough to be asked to work in the Community Lounge at Microsoft Tech Ed (San Diego) this year. The great thing about this is that I didn't have to pay the $1500 entry fee to attend. I'm looking forward to the event as I've never attended Tech Ed before, but I understand that this is the best event for Microsoft Developers.
The Community Lounge will be an area where folks can ask questions of various "experts." (the quotes are for me, I'm sure the other Lounge workers really are experts). I will be hanging out there when I'm not attending sessions of interest for me. I've listed ASP.NET Development and SharePoint development as my areas of expertise. Look me up in the Lounge if you're there.
Scoring
A couple of years ago, I began scoring games. I was regularly attending Royals games, and one night forked over the $1 for a scorecard, and learned to score as I went. Since then, I've scored just about every game I've attended.
I'm not even sure why I do it. I've always discarded the score card after the game, so I wasn't preserving the game for later. I think for me, it is a tool that allows me to remained glued to the game. It enhances my enjoyment of the game.
Earlier today, I was perusing the Baseball Prospectus web site, and found an article by Derek Zumsteg on scoring. I don't have a subscription to the site to read the entire article, but the abstract caught my attention:
If you've scored games for any length of time--no matter if you were in the press box or the cheap seats--you've probably had this happen to you: 1) Someone mocks you for keeping score; 2) Later, the same person asks you for information off your card.
Scoring leaves a personal record of the game. Done well, it's like a familiar photograph that recalls the memories of a vacation. If I ever need to know what happened in some game, I can look up the results, or even the box score. But if I want to know how it felt to watch it, that's when I dig up my score cards. The long innings stretch out on the card, my chess-style notes next to great plays and weird manager decisions to revisit later. The guy who mocks the scorer goes home after the best game he's ever seen, but a week later remembers only what he saw on SportsCenter the next morning. The scorer has a hand-drawn portrait of the game he actually watched; what he experienced.
A couple of years ago, I began scoring games. I was regularly attending Royals games, and one night forked over the $1 for a scorecard, and learned to score as I went. Since then, I've scored just about every game I've attended.
I'm not even sure why I do it. I've always discarded the score card after the game, so I wasn't preserving the game for later. I think for me, it is a tool that allows me to remained glued to the game. It enhances my enjoyment of the game.
Earlier today, I was perusing the Baseball Prospectus web site, and found an article by Derek Zumsteg on scoring. I don't have a subscription to the site to read the entire article, but the abstract caught my attention:
If you've scored games for any length of time--no matter if you were in the press box or the cheap seats--you've probably had this happen to you: 1) Someone mocks you for keeping score; 2) Later, the same person asks you for information off your card.
Scoring leaves a personal record of the game. Done well, it's like a familiar photograph that recalls the memories of a vacation. If I ever need to know what happened in some game, I can look up the results, or even the box score. But if I want to know how it felt to watch it, that's when I dig up my score cards. The long innings stretch out on the card, my chess-style notes next to great plays and weird manager decisions to revisit later. The guy who mocks the scorer goes home after the best game he's ever seen, but a week later remembers only what he saw on SportsCenter the next morning. The scorer has a hand-drawn portrait of the game he actually watched; what he experienced.
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