Mr. .NET

I just finished posting the press release to the Data Dynamics website, Data Dynamics has been acquired by GrapeCity.

The name probably isn’t very familiar to those in the US; however, GrapeCity has been our partner for a while now.  They have been responsible for localizing the entire ActiveReports product for consumption in Japan, translating not only the strings in the control but creating documentation, advertisements, and even putting the product on store shelves!  Visual Studio Magazine wrote an article on GrapeCity in Feb. 2006 that discusses some of the unique aspects about the company.

For our current and future users, this acquisition won’t change things much.  The website will be getting an update, but the products will remain the same.

ActiveReports will still be the #1 report writer available for .NET developers, and we’re still going to release ActiveReports 6 sometime in the first half of next year.

My team is still hard at work on Data Dynamics Reports 2.0, though we may change the name to match the new owner.  We’re continually working on improving Data Dynamics Analysis based on the feedback we’ve gotten so far.  And we’ve also got a brand new product in the works that I can’t wait to tell everyone about, but that’s for a future post.

Personally, I’m excited to see what the future holds for us.

Notice: This post contains absolutely no technical value; and is fairly large.  Once I started writing I didn’t stop until the last period.  The end result is a little chaotic; but I thought it was decent enough to hit the “Publish” button.

A big snow storm blew through Michigan and Northern Ohio yesterday, and more crap was dropped again today.  Today was also the day I came back to Columbus from my parent’s house in the middle of Michigan.  Its typically a 4.5 hour drive with no stops along the way, I expect to be slowed down a little bit due to the weather and make it in 5 hours.

The trip started out great, very little snow fall and the roads were clear with no blowing; I was traveling the speed limit for a long time.  A few miles before the Michigan/Ohio border, conditions changed drastically.  The snow was coming down thicker,  it was blowing across the road, and it’d gotten 6 degrees colder.  It wasn’t too much longer before a cop was parked along the side of the road with his lights on, alerting everyone to the presence of ice in the area.  I increased the amount of distance between myself and the car ahead of me.

Before the cop was completely out of sight in my rear-view mirror I came across the first of what would be about a dozen accidents along the freeway.   Then another, this one vehicle had spun around at least 180 degrees and was now facing the wrong direction, fortunately not in the road.   The traffic in front of me began to slow down, I dropped back a little bit, but the icy conditions triggered the ABS and I couldn’t drop back anymore.  Two vehicles ahead of me had the same problem and I was gaining on them quickly, I was able to change to the left lane but so did they; so I took the only option left; the median.  *CRASH*

“#$@#$”

Once I came to a rest I got out my phone and started to call my dad, I see the girl in the red car that hit me is already on the phone as well.

“hey…..yeah….I just got in an accident…..I don’t know, I’m checking now”

“I’m so sorry!  Are you okay?” she asks.

“It’s alright, I’m fine; are you okay?  Holy crap, I didn’t get hit!   Do you have any damage?”

“I’m okay. Yeah, I hit the back of their truck.”

I leave my car where its at and proceed up the embankment and wait for the traffic to clear before crossing the road.   The couple in the truck asks if I’m fine; I tell them that I’m alright and actually came through unscathed.  I’ll stick around for a police report, and then find out whether I need a tow truck to get out of the median.   The girl in the red car is talking to her parents now, she breaks down crying.  We all tell her it isn’t her fault; black ice is a bitch.

A few minutes later a tow truck driver shows up, none of us called him; later on I realize he was sent out to help get everyone’s vehicles along the right side of the road so its a little safer for the passing traffic.   Once he passes on that information he heads out to the next accident down the road on the northbound side.  A fire truck is on the scene at the accident previous to ours, so I head to my car to see if I can get it up the embankment without a tow truck.  The girl in the red car has already moved hers over to the right side of the road.  I make it up most of the way before my tires give and start spinning.  I try backing out and going forward again to no avail.

A fireman is walking up to my car so I put the car in park and get out.  Before I spin around he’s already got his hands on the back pushing.  I apologize for putting it in park on him.  With his help I’m up the embankment and on the side of the road.  He asks me if I was involved in this accident, I tell him yes; but I’m okay and my vehicle didn’t suffer any damage; I was waiting to see if I would be needed as a witness.  He tells me to wait in the car and he’ll find out if they need me there.  Not 10 seconds later he comes back and tells me to go ahead and leave, but be careful starting out; the whole road is a sheet of ice.  A few minutes later the passing traffic stops and I make my way out.

I’m home now, 6.5 hours later.   The roads sucked pretty much all the way home from there.  Out of this experience one thing really sticks out in my mind

“Man, its weird to walk across a freeway.”

I’ve never been big into making new year’s resolutions; partly because if I’m not going to resolve to do something unique I’d rather just not mention it.  This year, I have at least a unique perspective on what I want to accomplish.

So, in 2008 I resolve to (in no particular order):

• Give Google Reader another chance, it seems everyone is using it and the bloglines beta is busted for me.
• Educate developers, product managers, and business analysts about great data visualization techniques and know the difference between marketing pizazz and what really makes a great looking chart.  This is a goal I have at work, but I want to carry that goal to this blog as well.
• Be more active, 3 years ago I hit 300 pounds and I’ve hovered right around there until last month when I put on 10 pounds.  Time to stop the trend from continuing.
• Be smarter about my money.  I need to do better budgeting and pay off my debts if I ever want to quit renting and buy a house.

Okay, so except for one curve ball in there its a pretty normal list.

Not my health anyway.  I’m up in Michigan for Christmas/New Year’s and I’ve been trying to sneak some work in while I’m here, using the dining room table as my makeshift desk.  Wednesday afternoon I got up to do something in another room.  When I came back to the dining room a few minutes later, I found one of my parent’s cats on top of it; proud that he knocked my glass of sprite all over my ipod, my new phone, and next to my laptop.

I lucked out for the most part.

My laptop came out okay.  Unlike other laptops I’ve owned, the MacBook Pro doesn’t have a ton of openings on the bottom of it, basically there is a battery compartment and a few screw holes.  The ports on the side seemed to be above the water level as well.  So aside from the panic, quick/forced shutdown, and disconnection of everything, there was nothing to worry about.

My phone also came out okay.  Despite sitting in the middle of a pool of soda, the worst it suffered was a streaky exterior after wiping it dry.

The ipod; however, bit the dust.  It refused to turn on for a while, then I noticed some liquid in the dock connector so I took some alcohol to it to dry it out.  It turned on right after that and appeared to be fine.  10 minutes later it was displaying its extremely low power display and has since refused to turn on, even after charging over night.  I suspect some liquid did get inside even though it seems to be sealed up pretty tight.  I’m tempted to give it a bath in alcohol to see if I can get anything out of it; but part of me just wants to get a replacement and be done with it.

So if anyone at work is wondering why I suddenly disappeared on Wednesday, now you know

Earlier today I realized how much more connected I am by reading RSS/Atom feeds.  Of course it took a friend/co-worker’s blog post for me to realize it.

Congrats Scott!  Oksana: Поздравляю вас!

[I hope that is right, babelfish didn't have have a translation for congratulations so I had to google that up ]

Last night Luc hosted his not-quite annual bonfire, many of our friends from Data Dynamics showed up as well as some of Luc’s friends and family and we all had a good time.  It was great to meet up with Phil and Chapel again, and  its always nice to meet the DD crew outside of the office.  The evening started off with a light misting and progressed to a light rain, however the fire dried us off and kept us warm.  Later in the night the clouds disappeared and I was able to catch a glimpse of Comet Holmes.  Of course, knowing that Luc lives way out in the country I had my star chart, red light, and binoculars with me.

The Bad Astronomer took a picture of the comet, and my view through the binoculars looked similar though much smaller of course.  I was also able to point out the comet to several friends at the bonfire and give them a taste of whats really up there    Luckily the comet and several of the stars in Perseus made a nice asterism and Capella gave me a great starting point.

Its the only explanation.  I’ve blogged in the past about my problems with traveling: missed, delayed, and canceled flights.  Overnight stays in the airport, the left wing of the aircraft suddenly dropping out of the sky.

Earlier today I blogged about the flight from chicago being delayed.  And it was.  When Luc and I finally got on the plane and situated the captain informs us that due to the strong winds in chicago we will be sitting on the runway for about 45 minutes to get in line with the other flights coming in.  After a bit the pilot informs us it’ll be an additional 25 minutes.

Once we finally get off the ground the flight is rather uneventful until we begin to land, then we see why all the flights were delayed.  Lots of turbulence had the cabin bouncing around quite a bit.  We safely land and find out the flight to Tulsa from Chicago had also been delayed.  Upon landing in Tulsa Luc and I head down to baggage claim so I can pick up the bag I checked.  The conveyor spins around and around, until it finally turns off….no bag.  After checking with United I find out that because my flight came in so late they did not have an opportunity to unload and load it back onto the flight to Tulsa.  But it is in Chicago and should make it on the next flight down tonight.

Do I want to come and get it tonight or should they drop it off at the Lodge?

After getting to the room I bring out my laptop and start doing searches to find out where this flight is at, but the only info on it is that it arrived yesterday.  Some searches at United’s site shows that the flight was canceled.  Joy!

I’m scared to think of what tomorrow will bring.

After talking with Nish for more than 5 years and his wife for probably 3 years, yesterday was finally the day that I got to meet him and Smitha

I wanted to plan a bit more to do; but I still don’t know Columbus well enough to know where interesting things are located. I guess now they’ll have a reason to come back again.

Plans were for lunch then just hang out for a few hours. Not on the plans was me dripping sauce over my nice white shirt…of course we didn’t take any pictures until after lunch; so all of them have me crossing my arms to hide it. I didn’t think of bringing my camera with me, mainly because my hands shake so much that I don’t use it often. Unfortunately I forgot about the camera on my phone which somehow comes out much fewer shaking problems than anything i’ve taken with my comparitively expensive digital camera.

Next time I won’t forget….I think

While I haven’t looked extremely hard for it, I have finally found a copy of Extending MFC Applications with the .NET Framework in a store, MicroCenter of all places. The first thing I did was take a picture of page xxvi.

I put the book back on the shelf, then my dad asked me if I wasn’t going to buy it. Not at full price! Especially when Amazon has it for $35. When he pointed out that it was 30% off, I reconsidered and now own a copy of my first massively produced acknowledgment

I took a trip back to Michigan to pick up my desk and some of my books (a night stand was on that list, but I ran out of room). I left shortly after 5pm on Friday and got back to Columbus around 2pm today (Sunday)…the next 7 hours were spent unloading, exchanging my dad’s cell phone, and getting lost because some genius didn’t build a bridge to continue a major road. I guess I wasn’t totally lost, I knew the direction I had to go but the map I had didn’t show any road names for that area of town.

Now that I’m back home I’ve put up my wallscrolls, put my books in the bookcase, set up my desk, and now await my next challenge…getting to work at a decent time because I’ve only had 6 hours of sleep.