iBrasten

I’m sorry!  I hadn’t checked my blog in IE after messing with some CSS.  I was cheating and not using actual CSS comments to comment out properties, and was instead just adding a junk character to properties I no longer wanted.  Firefox and Safari seem to ignore those properties, whereas IE somehow used them, resulting in a mess.  I’ve actually officially removed the unwanted CSS properties now.

Also, I intend to post again soon on more exciting things.  I’ve been running around trying to take care of some things for my upcoming wedding as well as take care of issues related to a my Edmonds condo I’m trying to rent out.  We discovered a mold issue last week.  Anyway, I’ll go into more detail about all of that at a later date.

I will try to get off a couple of good posts before the wedding (March 11th), and hopefully I’ll sneak in a post from Portland (March 13th-17th).

6 months ago I was self-employed and enjoying the life of consulting.  Admittedly it wasn’t much different than being employed, I had a full-time contract with the same organization for 5 straight years (5 consecutive 1-year contracts).  But, it was, nevertheless, consulting, and I was able to work for other clients as well during that time.

Many of you will recall that about 6 months ago I accepted a full-time employment position as Senior Software Developer for a local technology corporation.  While the opportunity was amazing, the position ended up being something very different than what I originally thought.  I believed the position would have a heavy web-development focus, and in the end it did not.  While I believe the company has a very impressive foundation and bright future, the focus of the position did not match my skill set or desires very well.

About the same time I accepted that position I began investigating this technology I kept reading about called Ruby on Rails.   As you all know now, I have fallen in love with Ruby.  For that reason, I decided to leave my job and pursue Ruby on Rails contracts.  Today was officially my last day.

And so, I’m back to being self-employed!


^{PS: If you need any Ruby on Rails work done…  ;)}

Here’s an interesting one.

Scenario:
Web page A opens a popup.  The Popup then uses self.opener to call a function in web page A.  That function in web page A fires off an AJAX call and closes the popup.

Weird behavior:
The AJAX call is correct.  It works.  The problem I’m finding is when the popup closes immediately after the AJAX call is fired, the request object comes back with no data.  However, when the popup is timed to close even 250 milliseconds after the AJAX call, everything works.  Keep in mind the AJAX code is on the MAIN page, not the popup, though the function was called from the popup.

Workaround:
setTimeout(‘closePopup()’, 250);  But I don’t like doing that.

Any ideas?

WARNING:  This post contains spoilers (one, at least) about Friday’s Battlestar Galactica.  If it’s still waiting on the TiVo for you, stop reading.





Okay.  So, basically, an okay episode over all.  And I’m probably the only person who really cares about this, but I really liked the Billy character.  Losing him in last-night’s show was painful.  But, the BG folks have proven time and again that they have no problems killing off characters.  Still, I expected him to be a presidential successor at some point.  Which I suppose makes his death more important.

Stay tuned over the next couple days, as I will be releasing any day now a new web app I’ve been working on.

Currently called SayGrr (although that will likely change), the purpose of the site is to provide "Yahoo! Calendar"-like functionality with Google-like ease-of-use.  The main page that the entire app centers on is called "DayPlanner", and it’s purpose is to give an at-a-glance snapshot of events you have coming up for the next day/week/month.  The other features required for the initial release are: ability to add/edit/delete events on your DayPlanner, inviting people to the event (sends an invitation email), viewing others’ public events, and several minor features.  Almost everything WORKS, and I’m just working out the kinks, and preparing for the next round of features and bug fixes.

Importantly, this initial release will NOT be visually very appealing.  The functionality was entirely developed with unit/functional testing and the UI was added later.  Not that the functionality largely works, I will look into designing a decent front-end.

If you want a sneak-peek, check out SayGrr.com.  Beware!  SayGrr.com is my current development version.  It likely will not work well, and your data will be deleted eventually. :)

SayGrr.com  -  web-based day planner

It’s been kind of fun to watch the traffic patterns on two totally different sites that I run. BrastenSager.com, for example, receives about 3,500 visits a month from 900 unique visitors. DellRumors.com on the other hand receives about 2,500 visits a month, but from 2,000 unique visitors.

So, there you go.

Greetings!  Two interesting developments to keep you informed on, and I’ve gotta get to work so this will be fast:

Portland

I used to make it down to Portland once a month or so…  You all know how much I enjoy Portland!  Well, I’ve finally managed to schedule a couple dates for making it back down….  My next Portland trips will be:  March 13th-17th, and March 31st!

Of course, I’m getting married on March 11th, and we’ve decided to go to Portland for our honeymoon!  I know that sounds a little strange, but it makes perfect sense for us!  We’ve got several things planned already…  I’ll update you more on our plans later.

March 31st:  Seattle Mariners will be playing the San Diego Padres at PGE Park!  Mariners!  Portland!  Can’t beat that!  This trip is highly dependant on actually getting tickets to the game. :)

Ruby

Remember that project I was doing at work in Ruby?  Well, I’m back at it!  Turns out another deadline is forcing us to continue with the demo code instead of rewrite the project in "real" code, so I get to spend the next month or so in Ruby/Rails.  The code I originally wrote for the demo was fairly bad, but I was under tight time contraints and it was just going to be thrown away.  This time the deadline is a little more relaxed, so I’ve begun heavily refactoring the code (and in several cases, completely rewriting it) to be of a much better design.  Also, this time around, testing is being heavily utilized.

Over all, I’m excited to get back into Ruby at my ‘day-job’.

Could it be..?  Apathy?

Something very strange happened today.  My Java IDE of choice, NetBeans, released a fairly significant release…  and I didn’t really care.  Don’t get me wrong, I downloaded it…  but…  I’m not experiencing the same enjoyment in Java-related things that I used it.  Maybe, even though I’m only 5 months in to Ruby, just maybe I don’t feel like Java is my "primary language."   It’s a little strange to me that I’m more interested in WEBrick and Rails than JBoss and EJB3.  More interested in figuring out this "dynamic language stuff" than Java Generics.  More interested in wxRuby than Swing/AWT.

It kind of freaks me out.  Part of me wants to force myself back into Java-land, surround myself with Java technologies and projects….  but…  I won’t.  Because when it comes to Java, at the moment, I’m just too apathetic.

Imagine that.