Well, I have been using Notepad++, but I am going to try UltraEdit for this book. I then might switch back to trying out e.

(I followed this script on adding RoR support for UltraEdit. I'll see how it works)

Well, I have officially started on my Ruby On Rails (RoR) learning experience. I downloaded a free RoR PDF from sitepoint and am working my way through it.

So far, I have set up MySql (after going through too much figuring out that the password for root was somehow set to sa), installed rails, and I have now done the following stuff in the ruby console:

• Create a Stories table in MySql (used the mysql console for this)
• Created a Story class definition in ruby, subclassing ActiveRecord::Base
• Put the following line of code:
  story = Story.new
  story.save

and, voila, it showed up in the database. Sweet! I'm going to try to keep blogging my thoughts as I go through it.

I recorded and watched the episode of Nova about the Dover, PA, creationism in high school case. I watched it on Thursday, and I highly recommend it to everyone.

[Update: It is now available to view online]

Nova is airing a show on the Dover, PA, ID case on intelligent design in the classroom. Nova generally does good shows, so this will be one to tape. Here's a link to the local listings for your area.

Fraser Cain mentions that the Rosetta spacecraft is going to be making a close encounter with Earth on November 13, 2007. It is doing a fly-by to pick up some speed on the way to Comet 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Fraser writes a good explanation of gravity assist and why Rosetta is flying back by Earth if the comet is out in space. If you don't know how spaceships can use gravity to speed up, go read it. After that, say hello to Rosetta on November 13.

The Bad Astronomy blog has a cool link to a picture from Earth Science Picture of the Day that shows the paths of solar eclipses over the last two thousand years.

 You can click on the picture to get a larger view; it is much more impressive big, so do it!

Also, he mentions that the next total solar eclipse is August 1st, 2008 and starts in the far north of Canada. The Agile 2008 conference is in Toronto and starts on August 4th. Hmmmm... Wouldn't that be a sweet trip: go see the beginnings of the solar eclipse in way northern Canada, then travel down to Toronto for the conference. Probably won't happen for me, but still a cool dream.

Sarah Rainsberger sent me a link to a great picture from the Agile 2007 conference that is posted on Willem van den Ende's blog. I'll admit that I don't know Willem, although his picture sure does look familiar (I must have met him at the conference).

I remember exactly when the picture was taken (although I don't remember the actual camera). I was sitting on the couch, doing some stuff in Ruby that I wasn't totally sure how to do, and, as happens at the Agile conferences, it only took about 2-3 minutes before someone comes over (in this case, it was Joe Rainsberger) and says, "hey, what are you working on?" He knows Ruby better than I do (I'm very much at the "still a beginner" stage), so he sat and we started looking at what I wanted to do. Next thing I knew, we had a few people looking at it. Good times.

At the Denver conference in 2005, when Joe won the Gordon Pask award, he said that the Agile conference had become for him a sort of family reunion. Since then, I've quoted him often when talking about the feeling that I get during the week. I love the first day, before the sessions have started, when everyone sees each other again (a lot of people only see each other this one time a year) and gets caught up. For example, I distinctly remember standing in the lobby of the hotel this year (I actually have a picture in my mind of exactly where I was standing), when up walked the other Agile Cor(e)y (he doesn't have an e). I hadn't really spoken to him since the previous year, so it was great to catch up in person. I actually don't spend a tremendous amount of time in the sessions at the conference, as I get a lot more out of the side conversations, where I can share experiences with people.

A friend of mine grew up going to camp every summer, and she speaks about it very fondly; it really does seem like it is a huge part of her life. I've mentioned to her that the Agile conference is like my camp. I proudly have said to people that it is one of the personal and professional highlights of my year. I go to my share of other conferences, such as Codemash, SDTConf and XPDay, but I do love the Agile conference for the opportunity to spend a week with a fantastic group of people.

I'm surprised I don't see more people having this on their wall. After all, there are so many who do believe that the bible contains absolute truth. Perhaps the answers in genesis people can start selling these.

Mary makes a great decepticon, eh?

Wow! I sure make a great autobot!

It used to be so good.

Well, my media center went down hard yesterday. I have a Dell Dimension 1505, and I've generally been happy with it. For a while last year, I was having some issues where XP would blue screen, and I would have to reset my CMOS (through a jumper of all ways) to get it back. That went on for a little while, but it doesn't happen anymore (I don't totally remember what I did to fix it). Well, since then, I've upgraded to Vista home premium (which I love), and I've been good for a while.

Last night, Mary sent me a text message that the media center wouldn't reboot. I guess it rebooted once with a BIOS message (she didn't write it down), then it wouldn't boot again; it powers up, beeps, then sits there frozen with the 1 2 3 lights on. No video, no nothing. Time to get troubleshooting.

First, the manual that I downloaded from the Dell site says the following for these lights:

"Another failure has occurred.

• Ensure that the cables are properly connected to the system board from the hard drive, CD drive, and DVD drive."
• (other statements that imply that the system actually makes it partially through the boot sequence, which mine doesn't)

So, I open it up, reconnect the cables for the hard drive and DVD drive, still nothing. I fooled around with the cables a bit and at least got what appeared to be a bit farther in the initial diagnostic lights sequence; it appeared to settle on 2 3 for a while, then jumped to 1 2 3. 2 3 is a hard drive failure, and it says to reseat the cables, etc. Great.

I do all that, even try connecting an old drive up to the SATA cable, and it still doesn't work; it just sits there at 1 2 3.

Let's call Dell. I usually tell people that I'm very happy with Dell's phone support. The online chat sucks something fierce, as the people on the other end are clearly sitting in India with a script that they follow and most of the times I've been on there, they absolutely will not veer from their scripted steps to troubleshoot. Bad news. So, I skipped the online chat and went straight to the phone.

Well, I'm now about 3 hours into my joyous hold experience. I sat on hold initially for long enough to drain the battery on my phone (I'm betting it was around an hour of continuous use), then I had to plug it in and call back. After another hour, I got to a person. She read through her script, got some information (a couple bits of information was asked for a couple times), then said that she couldn't help me, but she would transfer me to the support line. "It might be a couple minutes," she told me. Well, I sat on that for another hour, at least. I sat and played my guitar (working on My, My, Hey, Hey) while the hold music came and went. Every so often, the line would go dead, and I'd yell out "hello," hoping that someone was on the line. No luck. So, I sat and sat, played my guitar, played my guitar, yawn.

It is now 1.40pm, and I finally got a technician (native english speaker), and had had me hook up a monitor (I have this connected to my television). As these things go, hooking up the monitor fixed everything, so I booted up and everything was fine. Talk about egg on my face. In any case, I don't try to sound like I know anything when I'm talking to the support people, so it isn't like I was an arrogant "I know what I'm doing" person. Oh well, things are working again.

However, the point of this is the fact that Dell support has gone WAY downhill. I literally waited more than three hours to hear a voice that could help me. UGH!

Well, ever since I won the Zune at CodeMash 2007, I have been listening to a lot more music in my car. Well, when I had the 6-hour drive to Washington, D.C., in August to go to the Agile Conference, I thought I might enter the 90's (or is it the 80's) and start listening to books on tape. Well, after searching around the internet for a good source (read: lots of selection and cheap), and I was astounded. What is up with charging $20 for a downloaded book. UGH! Deciding to make lemonade, I started searching for podcasts to start listening to. There were, of course, the standard ones like Hanselminutes and .Net Rocks (which I don't listen to as much anymore), but I found two other really great ones:

Astronomy Cast

After seeing Lawrence Krauss in August, my interest in astronomy was re-kindled. So, I went looking for something to listen to. What a stroke of luck that I stumbled upon AstronomyCast. The hosts are Pamela Gay, a physics professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, and Fraser Cain, the publisher of Universe Today. I love how they describe the show as a "fact-based journey through the universe." They strive to not just explain what we know, but also HOW we know it. This is important, as they discuss topics such as The Big Bang, Dark Matter and Dark Energy. It is very educational for me to understand what the lines of evidence there are for these. Of course, everything seems to always point back to the Cosmic Background Radiation, which is pretty cool. Also, as an added bonus, Pamela Gay has one of the sexiest voices I've ever heard.

My History Can Beat Up Your Politics

Bruce Carlson does a great job of taking current political issues and topics and presents them in light of 200+ years of history of the American government. I like his direct approach to giving the facts, as well as linking the probably cause and effects over time. I love early American government history, and it is great to have a source for understanding some of the historical reasons for where we are today.