Why require zip code AND state? Can’t you derive state from the zip code? ugh 😦
Technorati tags: Form Design, Best Buy
Ok, you all knew it was coming. Since I did my “Portland Differences” series, you had to expect I would start a “Madison Differences” series. Well, here is #1.. Parking Meters..
So, in Portland, the parking meters are like high tech. You can put your debit/credit card in, pick some time, it prints a sticker, you put it on your window, all the meters are clearly labeled like 90 minutes, 2 hours, etc. I heard in the near future you will be able to add more money via your cell using TXT message to keep the meter running, just .. wonderful.
Now, Madison. “Capital City” (reminds me of the Simpsons) – you think it would be on the cutting edge? No. Like St. Cloud, its manual feed coin meters. Like everyone carries around coins? Reminds me of the toll roads on the drive to Madison. Pay $1.20 – exact change…WTF? The meters only take 25 cent max, have they ever heard of Sacagawea coins? 🙂
Well, that was the first difference, there are a few more I have up my sleeve, and I am sure there will be more as I go explore the city. One thing I will say though, it is weird now because I hear the Minnesota accent in people when the talk, yaaaaa?
Technorati tags: Portland, Madison Differences, Madison, Wisconsin, Parking Meters, Capital City, Simpsons, Sacagawea Coins
Ok, add this one to the annoying bin. If you are writing SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services) reports of a SSAS (SQL Server Analysis Services) cube, and there is a time dim, you need to format the date parameters in the SSRS report to match the SSAS date format, as a string.
I started out doing this a while ago, like so:
=”[Time].[Calendar Date].&[“& Year(DateAdd(“D”,-1,DateTime.Now())) &”-“& IIf(Len(Month(DateAdd(“D”,-1,DateTime.Now()))) < 2,Month(DateAdd(“D”,-1,DateTime.Now())),”0″&Month(DateAdd(“D”,-1,DateTime.Now()))) &”-“& IIF(Len(Day(DateAdd(“D”,-1,DateTime.Now())).ToString()) < 2,”0″ & Day(DateAdd(“D”,-1,DateTime.Now())).ToString(),Day(DateAdd(“D”,-1,DateTime.Now())).ToString()) &”T00:00:00]”
Wow.. Ugly, hard to read, hard to debug. Just ran into issues, etc.
I decided to finally just write a function to do the same thing and make sure it is correct once and for all..
Function GetSSASDate(ByVal DateToRun As DateTime) As String
Dim result As String = “[Time].[Calendar Date].&[”
result = result & Year(DateToRun).ToString() & “-”
If Month(DateToRun).ToString().Length < 2 Then
result = result & “0”
End If
result = result & Month(DateToRun).ToString() & “-”
If Day(DateToRun).ToString().Length < 2 Then
result = result & “0”
End If
result = result & Day(DateToRun).ToString() & “T00:00:00]”
Return result
End Function
then, I go to my report properties, Custom Code and add that function, then in my parameter I call it like so:
=Code.GetSSASDate(DateAdd(DateInterval.Day,-1,DateTime.Now()))
Much cleaner, easier and just all around good. If I wanted to take this a step further, I would actually just make an assembly with some useful functions and deploy to my SSRS server, but I will save that for a later time.
Technorati tags: SSRS, SSAS, SQL Server Reporting Services, SQL Server Analysis Services, SSAS Dates, Dates, VB.NET, Code
Categories
Finally in Madison!
Categories
Madison Getting Closer…
So, just got back from MN this week, flew into PDX Sunday night. With the time change and the daylight savings time it was like a 3 hour difference, ouch! But now, my apartment is pretty much empty, everything is packed up in the relo-cube and we are riding out the week on the blow up mattress.
Packing up the stuff was good, packed a u-haul and then drove it to the cube terminal, not too many debacles, we survived.
Minnesota was good, saw some old friends, made some new ones, and had a good week in the office. Going up north to the Iron Range was good as well. There are some pictures in my flickr photostream
We are planning on taking off from PDX Friday morning and making it to Madison on or around the 15th, so it should be good. I am going to see how well the Verizon EVDO works throughout the drive..
In other news, I found this awesome album, Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur it’s pretty much all I have been listening to for the past couple of weeks. Various artists covering John Lennon songs. I really like “Watching the Wheels” and “Whatever Gets You Thru The Night” and “Nobody Told Me”. Check it out if you get a chance!
Going to be a hectic next few weeks for me. Started packing up my apartment this week, because I am moving next month, to Madison WI. But, just found out the move in dates and such yesterday, so that set forth in motion the timeline for the rest of the stuff. I am heading back to MN this Friday through Nov 2nd for work and stuff, so that cuts into any packing/planning time. Me and Emily are then coming back to PDX, packing, U-Hauling, Relo-cubing, and then moving to Madison, so that is going to be a busy time. Probably won’t be settled till the 3rd week of November.
Getting back to Minnesota will be good, seeing some old friends drinking buddies (Joe and Spiller – we will see if you guys can handle it!) from college in the Twin Cities, as well as working at the office for the week, and then heading up north to the Iron Range to see my family and eat some Bimbo’s buffalo wings and pizza (don’t forget the banana peppers!)
I really like Portland, really do. Why Madison then? Well, closer to home for one. It is probably the most equivalent city to Portland in that area. Emily and I got a sweet apartment, which I can’t wait to get into, also a little more quieter area than right on Burnside Street :). I guess also, I haven’t seen a flow chart (Keep trying Reena!) that can convince me to stay (hehe). No, seriously, it will be a good move, and I hope to come back to Oregon some day, the Portland area, it is just a great city and state, the values and politics and just way of thinking here is different than pretty much anywhere else. It is just time to move on to the next chapter, which will be a good thing. I do need to get to the Matador a few times before I go though, can’t beat those 2 $ PBR’s and tots!
And now about the move. Seriously – moving companies are scammers! check out http://www.movingscam.com – it is just ridiculous. I boneheadingly submitted a quote to another site before finding that site, and I think I got calls from like 15 moving brokers like non stop for like 2 weeks. There are so many horror stories that you should almost be scared to move. I decided to go with http://www.upack.com but I am not having them bring a cube to me, instead just bringing my stuff to their terminal, and they will drop the cube off at the new apartment once we get there. PODS is the first thing that comes to mind, but they are about 3 times as expensive as upack, and movingscams.com recommends upack. I actually got their free DVD and it is pretty informative, and puts to rest a lot of questions. We will see how it goes, and if it is good or bad, I will blog it 🙂
In the last couple of years, I have been a moving machine. From around August 2005 till now, this is my 5th place, and the new apartment will by my 6th. Hopefully it is for a couple years at least, that is the plan anyways. One good thing about moving now, I keep purging out stuff I don’t need or use anymore. I am actually right now using Handbrake on my Mac to rip my remaining 10 or so DVD’s to the hard drive, and I am going to go sell those, and a few CD’s I have as well. Pretty much after this move, most of my college area nonsense crap will be gone, time to move on to my IKEA phase I guess – yes I know what a duvet is (wow, a moving, and Portland type reference at the same time – see: Fight Club)
So, if anyone wants to track my flights..
Friday Oct 26th – NWA 218 And then on Sunday Nov 4th NWA 597
Also, for this trip I am trying to use the new site TripIt which seems to work well, but I reserved my hotel through like a broker site, so it couldn’t really handle that reservation. I set it up manually though. If you don’t what TripIt is, what you do it email your itineraries and emails from various booking sites and it puts it all in one nice little package for you, you can share it with people, export to calendars, etc. Pretty sweet.
So, wish me luck. If by around Nov 15th if you haven’t heard from me, I probably got lost in New Mexico and am wandering around with amnesia asking for quarters so I can go buy 40’s at the nearest liquor store, but hopefully I will have a few blog posts along the way for the next few weeks…and I am sure there will be some “Madison Differences” blogs coming up, for all those on the edge of their seats (Aaron)
So long PDX, we hardly knew ye! Hello Madison!
Technorati tags: Portland, Oregon, Madison, Wisconsin, Moving, Minnesota, Trip, Upack, movingscams.com, Moving Scam, Track My Flight, TripIt, Relocube, PDX, WI, OR, Burnside Street, PODS, Handbrake, Fight Club
So this weekend I decided to try to get my 1.0.2 FW iPhone to 1.1.1 FW, and unlock it again. Well, Since I unlocked it with the iUnlock method (before it was a GUI app), I knew my baseband was hosed, so I needed to revirginize it.
I followed this method. Your mileage may vary, but it worked for me. I think tried following other tutorials to upgrade, downgrade, upgrade, activate, unlock. I tried multiple methods, and even combined some methods to try to get it all to work. I got pretty far a few times, but missed something or something was screwed up here or there where it didn’t work.
Basically, once you have a “virgin” phone on 1.0.2, this is what I did, (there might be other methods, but this is what I did)
1) bonehead – RESTORED to 1.1.1. Doh! – don’t do this
2) once I was on 1.1.1 I was screwed, so I had to downgrade to 1.0.2 FW (with the update modem still from 1.1.1)
3) UPDATED to 1.1.1
4) Activated, Unlocked
Now that is the simple steps, there are about 1000 different ways to do most of everything. But in the end, I tried independence on my Mac after I was on 1.1.1 locked, and it activated, unlocked, installed apps, etc. So that was my final solution!
Some cool tricks learned…
If your phone is at the “activate now” screen, you can slide to emergency dial, dial *#307# and hit dial, it will call itself. Hit answer, and then hold button. It will call itself again. Decline, and you are on the contacts screen. Add a new contact, any name will do, as the URL for the homepage, put prefs://1F save contact, open url, and you end up getting to the settings screen, you can set up wifi, change settings, etc. Pretty crazy hack.
Some things with 1.1.1 – Installer.app works, SummerBoard works (the new version) – SSH, etc works, but most of the other apps I cant get to work, they just open and close. My guess is they are either not working with 1.1.1 or I need to enable execute on the directories on the phone, oh well, for another day.
I should have documented everything I did, but I didn’t I have a pretty good idea about everything so if you really have a problem you can give me a comment or email and I will give you some advice. Your best bet is to troll the forums, or other places. I have some links I could share as well, but I am not going to post them as some of them contradict each other. You basically just have to take the best stuff out of each one and combine. Not sure if you can get it working on Windows yet, with some luck I am sure..
Proof:
Dang, so in my previous post I said the audio wouldn’t work. Mickey and I figured that it was a 3rd party app causing the issue, so I uninstalled everything but the installer and sources. I uninstalled SummerBoard, etc.
Well, after I solved the audio issue, I wanted to re-install. Thing is, my Installer.app (AppTapp) was updated to the latest version today, v3.0b3 , ok cool. But now SummerBoard wouldn’t install! It says you need Firmware 1.1.1. Woah, big time suckage. AppTapp should read your firmware version and then supply you with the version of an app that supports your firmware.
How do you get around this:
Download the .pxl for an older version of SummerBoard here
you need iBrickr installed, hook up your iPhone and then install manually, and it works! Neat.
Technorati tags: SummerBoard, 1.0.2, Summerboard for 1.0.2, iPhone, iBrickr, AppTapp, Installer.app, pxl
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iPhone: I can't hear anything!
So today my iPhone started going wacky. Couldn’t hear anything when I called or got called and no sounds were coming out, iPod, keyboard clicks, etc. WTF? The headphones worked, the speakerphone worked, just regular calling didn’t work. It would ring when called, and then yes, it dawned on me..it must think the headphones are still plugged in! (The phone still rings when headphones are plugged in).
How to fix this DUMB issue:
1) put headphones in
2) pull out reaaaaaly slow, or really fast.
I tested by starting a track in the iPod, and then pulled out my headphones fast, it started playing.
yeeeeeessssss!
Technorati tags: iPhone, iPhone Audio
In Portland, in some places of the city, you can get free wi-fi through MetroFi or Personal Telco. MetroFi has a free and paid service, as you can see from the screenshot, when you are on the free one, you get a nice iframe ad and basically every link you click there is a 5 second ad in between that and the next site you hit, kind of sucks and it doesn’t cover well, but in a pinch, I suppose it works. Personal Telco on the other hand is just a group of people that are setting up wi-fi nodes all over, free ones, or mapping out the other ones that are free, pretty cool. Definitely pretty easy to get online. Or I suppose you could be like most people in my apartment building and sit on the back stairs on the first floor to pick up the free wi-fi at Wired on Burnside… until they close at 6:30 PM 🙂
Steve Novoselac's Blog 