Life from a Technical Perspective

My SRT Track Experience

2009-07-18T20:38:00.004-04:00

This week I went to VIR (Virginia International Raceway) and participated in the SRT Track Experience. The day consisted of four different driving events including the full throttle challenge, performance drive, Challenger challenge, autocross, and a ride along with an instructor driver in one of the SRT vehicles. All the vehicles we drove in were the SRT models of the Charger, 300, Jeep Grand Cherokee, Challenger, and Caliber. Instructors from the Richard Petty Driving Experience host the event and each event has a brief to set the expectations and limits for the event.

The full throttle challenge was a drag racing event where two drivers competed for 1/8 of a mile. I did not do as well as I wanted to at this event but I did get better by the third time out. Each driver got four times out in this event.

The performance drive gave drivers the opportunity to drive along the VIR tack with an instructor driving lead with two drivers riding behind in either the Challenger, 300, or Charger. I drove in both the Charger and Challenger at speeds in excess of 120 mph on the one main straightaway. Each driver got four times out in this event as well.

The Challenger challenge was a road course where cones were placed on the track and the objective was to make the best time without knocking down any cones, this was one of two events that I did better than I had expected. Each driver got four times out in this event.

The autocross was much like the Challenger challenge but we drove the Caliber, which surprisingly was a fast and maneuverable little car. Then for the last time on the autocross course, we drove the Jeep Grand Cherokee, which was much more maneuverable than I had expected for a vehicle of its size. Each driver got two times out in the Caliber and one time out in the Jeep.

For the last event, each driver and their guest had a chance to ride along with an instructor in one of the SRT vehicles. Twenty percent of the drivers were selected at random to ride in the Viper SRT 10. I was one of the lucky drivers that had the chance to ride in the Viper and we reached speeds of 160 mph on the main straightaway. Each person got one ride along with an instructor and this was the last event of the day.

This event cost $500 per driver and $60 per guest but people who buy a SRT vehicle get to go to the event free. I bought a Dodge Charger SRT 8 and the dealer I bought my car from told me about the event but I did not think that I would actually go, but I am glad that I did. The experience overall was positive and I recommend it to anyone who has bought an SRT vehicle or wants to experience what a SRT vehicle can do on a raceway.

Here is a video from the day's events:

Great C# Book for Beginners

2008-07-05T15:03:00.001-04:00

I found that this book was extremely helpful in learning the key basics of the C# language. I am a novice programmer and trying to learn C# in order to become a developer and eventually take the MCPD (Microsoft Certified Professional Developer) exam. I am currently in college and have taken a class on C but this book with the examples provided the basics I need to continue forward. The author only shows examples of console application but from a beginner’s standpoint I think this is a great place to start. The language throughout the book was easy to understand and having examples to support what the author was trying to teach was helpful. The book has tutorials, examples, and drills that helped me to better understand what I was studying.

I would recommend this book to anyone that has some basic programming skills and wants to learn about the C# language.

Applied Knowledge Group YouTube Video

2008-05-30T23:35:00.003-04:00

The company I work for (Applied Knowledge Group) posted a YouTube video showing people how not to collaborate. It is a funny video that I recommend viewing at least once.

Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Review

2008-04-13T17:31:00.001-04:00

I had Windows XP Professional on my computer and thought it was about time for me to upgrade. My computer is Dell XPS Dimension Gen 3 and this could have been a terrible experience if I had not read that I need to run the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor, which is a free download from Microsoft that will tell you what possible problems you will have when you upgrade. The upgrade advisor found 5 software problems and 3 hardware problems on my machine. The 5 software problems were problems with Norton’s Anti-Virus, Ghost, and products from the System Works family. Most of these products were over 2 years old and not often used so uninstalling the programs was not a problem. I did a full backup of my machine, using Norton Ghost 9, then used the “upgrade” option to migrate to Vista. The upgrade took about 2.5 hours, in which the machine rebooted 3 times. Then I discovered driver problems with my printer, which the upgrade advisor had warned about, so I downloaded new drivers and the problems were fixed. I had to buy a new version of antivirus that was compatible with Vista, and uninstall some games that don’t work on Vista. I turned off the highly annoying “User Account Control” so that it no longer brings up a popup notification every time I try to run a program. Overall I’d give the install experience 4.5 out of 5. Getting used to the new interface and features has been easy, and if I don’t like them I can make the interface look like XP again. I love the new “search” in the start button area. Overall I give Vista with service pack one 4 out of 5 stars because the operating system is not radically different from XP.

Seven Random Things

2007-06-29T14:23:00.000-04:00

I saw the post on Lynellen's blogs and had to respond. Here are my seven random things from left field:

1. I like movies (SciFi is my favorite).

2. I like NCIS.

3. I like to play Guild Wars to the wee hours of the night.

4. I like the technology I work with (most of the time).

5. I like to do a job right the first time.

6. I am not normal and do almost everything differently than most of the people I know (including my wife).

7. I like Stargate (yes the series is over but the movies are coming).

Direct TV from Hell

2006-07-14T18:05:00.000-04:00

I though I would start blogging again, and blog about all the great things I've been doing with SharePoint. Instead I thought I would write a warning to the electronic wasteland about why I will NEVER recommend Direct TV to anyone I like (maybe to someone I don't like). My wife received a call from Verizon about how they had this deal if you ordered Direct TV and Verizon DSL together. She called me and told me about the deal and I thought well since we are finishing our basement and we planned to have a media room where our 55" TV will be with our new 'theater seating' that this was good timing. I couldn't be more wrong. I must have had the worse installer in my area, he was in a hurry and put the dish under my deck mounted to one the beams. The signal wasn't working in my bedroom so he went into the crawl space under the roof and pulled one the cable and broke it. He did connect one receiver to my HDTV and then said “just wait 30 minutes and the channels will be displayed automatically.” I waited 30 minutes…nothing, waited an hour…nothing. I started changing channels and the error said ‘call ext. 744’, great but what’s the phone number?! After I figured out what phone number to call they said “oh ya your account has not been activated, didn’t the installer tell you to call us?” I then told them that the installer hadn’t finished the job and the person I was talking to was more interested in selling me on a better ‘package’ that was a special price and when I told him no he got upset. He finally guided me through the setup for the HD receiver and I got an error, he said “oh the disk must not be in the right direction to receive the correct signal from 3 different satellites.” He then went on to say “we can send the installer back out to fix the problem.” That’s when I go mad, I didn’t lose my temper I just stated plainly “this is just too difficult and I want to cancel my service” and he hung up on me. Great was my account active or not? I called back and talked to a different person and she told me that my account was not put into the system and that they would call me back in 24 hours….right. I called them back the next morning and talked to a nice lady who was very apologetic and said that if I gave them another chance that she would take $10 of my bill for the next year add Showtime for 3 months free, have someone come out this Saturday (2 days later) and that it would be a supervisor. I decided ok one last chance, she set everything up and said that the local installer would give me a call. Well the installer called while I was at work so I call them back once I got home. I waited on-hold for 30 minutes and when the person finally got on the phone they said it would be 2 weeks from now, not 2 days before they could come out and do the install. Last straw, I said I want someone to come and get the junk out of my house, she said “oh you have to call Direct TV for that.” I called Direct TV again waiting on- for who knows how long and then being transferred to three different people I finally talk to the person who can cancel my account. She tried to sweeten the pot by offering more free channels if I would wait two weeks for the install, but once bitten twice shy, I said no thanks. I asked her what had to be done to cancel my service and get rid of this equipment. She said that I would have to send the equipment back to Direct TV. I asked her “so what about the dish?” and she said on you can keep the dish we only want the receivers back and that they would send some pre-paid boxes Fed-Ex to me. So after all this, this is what I have:

No cable in my bedroom, since the cable is broken.
A worthless Direct TV dish mounted to my back porch.
A DSL modem waiting for a connection date.
Last but not least two receivers gather dust waiting to be shipped out.

Direct TV directly hosed me.

From Left Field: A SciFi Quiz

2006-01-27T22:50:00.000-05:00

You scored as Moya (Farscape).
You are surrounded by muppets.
But that is okay because they are your friends and have shown many times
that they can be trusted.
Now if only you could stop being bothered about wormholes.

SG-1 (Stargate)

100%

Moya (Farscape)

100%

Millennium Falcon (Star Wars)

81%

Serenity (Firefly)

75%

Enterprise D (Star Trek)

75%

Deep Space Nine (Star Trek)

63%

Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda)

56%

Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica)

56%

FBI's X-Files Division (The X-Files)

56%

Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix)

50%

Babylon 5 (Babylon 5)

50%

Bebop (Cowboy Bebop)

44%

Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile II: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? (pics)
created with QuizFarm.com

Passed! - Microsoft Exam 74-132

2006-01-23T15:55:00.000-05:00

Today I took the Microsoft Exam 74-132 (Designing a Portal Solution with Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies) and Passed!

The 5 areas on the test were:

1) Analyzing the business requirements for the portal solution
2) Deciding which appropriate Microsoft Integrated Portal Technologies to include in a portal solution
3) Designing the physical structure for a portal solution
4) Designing the security for a portal solution
5) Designing the application strategy for a portal solution

From the descriptions of the areas on the test one might assume that the test was only on SharePoint, when in fact it is not. The test had the following other products and technologies included in it as well:

1) Microsoft Content Management Server
2) Microsoft Commerce Server
3) Microsoft Solution for Internet Business
4) Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 Connector for SharePoint
5) Microsoft BizTalk Server

You do not need to know how each of these products work, but you do need to know what their capabilities are.
For Microsoft Content Management Server I read the following book: Microsoft Content Management Server 2002: A Complete Guide.
For Microsoft Commerce Server I read the following book: Building Solutions with Microsoft Commerce Server 2002.
I went to the following site to learn more about the Microsoft Solution for Internet Business.
I read the basic overview for BizTalk Server on the BizTalk Server’s product’s site page to understand the basics of what BizTalk’s capabilities are.

In order to pass you must also have an understanding of the differences between SharePoint Portal 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services.

This is all I can tell you about the exam for now; if anyone else has taken and passed the exam please let me know what you did to study for the test so I may pass it along to others.

SharePoint User's Guide

2006-01-20T22:30:00.000-05:00

Have you ever try to write a user's guide for a client when the product doesn't have a user's guide? Actually I did find a user's guide at a book store last week but it's not for beginners, it’s more geared to advanced users. That was my main focus for the week, writing a SharePoint user's guide for a client or should I say I was rewriting the user's guide. Someone did put one together, but it was six months old and it contained screen shots from some else's SharePoint portal. The information was at the core correct, but it's been a Service Pack and who knows how many gorram security patches. This has changed some of the functionality of Internet Explorer as well as SharePoint, which in turn has changed some of the screen shots and instructions. As I am writing the user's guide I follow the instructions and see if what I say is going to happen, actually happens. I know that this is a new concept for most people. I finally finished the user's guide today and nearly tripled its contents. Also I made it so that the client could relate to the user's guide by seeing screen shots of their portal. Now the client can learn about the parts of SharePoint they think are valuable and not all the other things that others outside of their business think are important.

SharePoint Document Management

2006-01-11T17:39:00.000-05:00

I have a customer that needs to tell users how they are going to move their documents from a networked shared drive into SharePoint document libraries. I had an immediate answer for the customer but waited to give them an answer until I did some research on the web. You know what I found on Microsoft's web site? A whole lot of nothing. Best practices on how users should move files? More nothing. The best insight came from people like me who blog about their experiences. Most of the blogs stated that document libraries in SharePoint are not replacements for network drives or storage repositories (NAS or SANs). They say as well that document libraries should not have a deep folder structure because of the URL limitation in WSS of 260 characters including the name of the document. More about this can be found about this subject here. I have not found anywhere on the web that deals with this subject directly but I am still looking.

Using SharePoint Central Administration Pages Remotely

2006-01-05T17:47:00.000-05:00

I have always wanted to use the SPP central administration pages from a remote computer but never knew how. I asked one of my co-workers and he said that he had done it before but did not describe how. So one day I VNC'ed into the SPP server to do other tasks and wondered what would I need to do to make this work. I went to the IIS manager and looked at the virtual web site and checked the properties and discovered that the IP address was "All Unassigned". I changed this to the IP address that the SPP virtual web site was using and it worked. I could then type in the SPP site name with the central administration server's site port (example: http://myportalsitename:9734) and see the SPP central administration pages. Just thought I would share this with anyone who ever wondered how to do this.

Microsoft Content Management Server 2002

2006-01-03T17:21:00.000-05:00

So, here is the reason why I was installing Microsoft’s Content Management Server 2002 over the New Year. The company I work for is trying to become a Microsoft Gold partner (currently they are a Certified Partner) and they need two people out of the company to take one of three test, one of them being the Microsoft Exam 74-132: Designing a Portal Solution with Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies (including Microsoft Content Management Server) . The problem is no one has a study guide on this exam because it was designed as an exam that Microsoft partners take and not as a "normal" MCP exam. One person from the company stepped up to the plate and took the test just to see what was on it. He didn't pass the test but he had some valuable information to pass along to the rest of the people in the company that wanted to take the test. He stated that the test had questions on three of Microsoft's products: SharePoint Portal 2003, Content Management Server 2002 and Commerce Server 2002. After hearing what my co-worker had to say about the test I went search for anything I could find about this test and came up with the same results every time. There is no study guide. Then everyone said the same thing about what was on the test as my co-worker. So now I armed with what I need to study in order to take (not necessarily pass) the exam. I march not so blindly forward in the hopes of passing this exam.

Wireless Networks and MCMS 2002

2006-01-02T13:51:00.000-05:00

I have found that using wireless networks is at best, good and at worst, annoying. I consider myself a somewhat technical person (hence the title of my blog), but Windows and Intel do things with wireless that can confuse the most technical savvy person. Example: two icons that sit in the system tray, one for Intel and one for Windows. Why two, and why can I disable the Intel icon and not the Windows icon? I have come to the conclusion that wireless networks are not for the meek. Anyone can use wireless network, but owning and maintaining one should be left to the more technical savvy user.

Another rant...I am trying to use Microsoft Content Management Server 2002. The reason I am trying to do this I will explain some day but for now, I have one word of advice; when reading and using the installation instructions for MCMS 2002 do EXACTLY what they say no more, no less ("I want a New Your Strip Steak a half inch thick, no more no less" from So I Married an Axe Murderer). I did more trying to set things up the way I thought things would be in a real world environment and it cost me a couple of hours of grief (I was lucky I didn't have to start from scratch), because the entire installation (including the prerequisites which included VS.Net 2003)took about 14 hours.
Now for the really fun part, "what am I suppose to use the application for again?"

My first post!

2006-01-01T21:52:00.000-05:00

This is my first post on my new blog. Now I ambecoming like everyone else. Just another cow in the herd...mooo...