Robba's Thoughts

Birthday Jump

Robba — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 02:18:00 GMT

Well, yesterday I got to do it. I took the freefall class last Saturday, but the winds were to heavy and I couldn’t jump, but yesterday we got up really early and went out to Skydive Dallas and I was able to do my freefall jump.

It was a blast!!! It is amazing how fast it all happens, but at the same time how it feels like everything takes forever. Definitely an adrenaline rush. Here is the link to the photos and I’ll embed the video below.

My instructor was named Jeff, and he was great. As a former scuba instructor I could tell that he was completely comfortable and knowledgeable about his subject. He presented a great class and helped me have an excellent experience. I’d highly recommend asking for him if you decide to give it a try.

Wally the Whale

Robba — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 02:07:00 GMT

I’m not much of a story teller, but today Emily asked me to tell her a story. We were driving to the grocery store and for some reason I was able to rattle off three stories pretty quickly about Larry the Lion, he was a cable guy, Henry the Hippo and Ricky the Rino, who went to the store then have a tofu BBQ and one more that I don’t remember. Then on the way home I told the story of Wally the Whale.

Now this one I borrowed from the Bible, and I wanted to share it here.

There once was a whale named Wally. He was swimming along, minding his own business one day when all of the sudden the water started getting rough. He swooshed this way and that. He went up and down. Once, while he was near the surface to get a breath this hairy thing fell in the water in front of him, so he ate it.

After that he started to not feel well. His stomach hurt. It felt like there was something crawling around inside his stomach. After three days he still wasn’t feeling any better, so he thought he should be near land just in case he needed to rest. As he got near the shore he threw up and that big hairy thing went flying up on the shore. Boy did he feel better after that and he headed back out to sea.

Now of course, you and I know that the big hairy thing was Jonah. And now we have the moral of the story: Sometimes we have no idea how God is using us. Sometimes it may not make us feel too good at all. He just needs us to do our part and He will make sure that His plan is accomplished. Wally didn’t know how or why he was being used by God, but he was being used for God’s greater purposes.

After that I also told the story of Chomp the Shark who ate this guy named Darwin while he was swimming off the Galapagos Islands. ;)

What is God Calling You to do?

Robba — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 02:05:00 GMT

Are you listening?

Are you willing to obey?

Will you listen to His voice and hurl yourself off of the proverbial cliff with no safety net except Him?

Skydiving for my birthday

Robba — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:00:00 GMT

About 2 years ago I read the book Wild at Heart by John Eldridge. It is a life changing book that I highly recommend all guys read. As a matter of a fact I also recommend that after guys read it that their wives read it as well. It really challenges men to be a hero, a warrior and to live a life of adventure and risk.

So on that note, it’s been too many years since I jumped out of an airplane and I’ve always wanted to skydive, so I’m going to do it on Aug 15. I’m going to take the Accelerated Freefall Solo course from Skydive Dallas. I’d like to invite anyone that is in the DFW area that has been wanting to give it a try to join me on that day.

Converting MSSQL DateTime to Unix Epoch Format

Robba — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 17:47:00 GMT

I have a customer that is migrating from a custom built ASP/MSSQL environment to a new PHP/MySQL store. This store is a purchased product so we don’t want to make changes to the way it works, but rather need to import the existing store data into the new DB in the new formats.

Everything was working wonderfully until I saw the DateTime problem. The dates in the MySQL DB are an INT and the dates in the MSSQL DB are in DateTime format. After much questioning of various resources it was pointed out to me that the MySQL dates are based on the Unix Epoch. I was then able to do a search on converting DateTime to Unix Epoch and found the answer here at the EpochConverter. With just a little more info from MSDN since I’m no SQL guru I was able to solve my problem and convert all of the existing dates to the Unix Epoch format.

My SQL query ended up looking like this:

SELECT DATEDIFF(s, '1970-01-01 00:00:00', yourtimefield)

This outputs a varchar number that is the difference in seconds '”s” from the beginning of Unix Epoch time which is “1970-01-01 00:00:00” and “yourtimefield” which is the DateTime column in your MSSQL DB.

Thanks to the various people that worked with me to solve the problem.

Hope that helps.

Use AppCmd to create update script for IIS websites from Subversion

Robba — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:08:00 GMT

Just a quick update here from my original post about two years ago. I’m using publishing directly from Subversion now, so I thought I’d recycle this script. I recommend downloading the CollabNet command line SVN client.

echo off

Set /P Dest=[new folder date]
Set /P Prev=[old folder date]

cd "C:\Program Files\CollabNet Subversion Client"

svn co https://svn.yourdomain.com:8443/repository/%dest% C:\WebSite\%dest%

"c:\windows\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe" set vdir site1/ -physicalpath:c:\WebSite\%dest%

copy /y "C:\WebSite\%prev%\web.config" "C:\WebSite\%dest%\web.config"

Echo "Site Update Complete"

Just put this in a batch file and run it when you need to update your site on IIS7.

IIS 6.0 website update script using Adsutil.vbs from Subversion

Robba — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:59:00 GMT

A little over 2 years ago I put out a post for the original version of this script. At the time I FTP’d the files in a compressed format. Now I am pulling the files directly from Subversion, so I thought I’d recycle the script and update it. I recommend downloading the CollabNet command line SVN client. So here we are:

echo off

Set /P Dest=[new folder date]
Set /P Prev=[old folder date]

cd "C:\Program Files\CollabNet Subversion Client"

svn co https://svn.yourdomain.com:8443/repository/%dest% C:\WebSite\%dest%

cscript.exe c:\inetpub\adminscripts\adsutil.vbs set w3svc/1/root/path "C:\WebSite\%dest%"

copy /y "C:\WebSite\%prev%\web.config" "C:\WebSite\%dest%\web.config"

Echo "Site Update Complete"

Just save this as a batch file and run it when you need to update your website from SVN.

US Supreme Court, Constructionism vs. Liberalism

Robba — Fri, 01 May 2009 19:06:29 GMT

On April 29th, 2009 the United States Supreme Court released its opinion on the case of Dean v. United States. I have to say that I am proud of the ruling that the court handed down. They basically said that even if you don’t intend to fire a weapon in the process of a crime you are still breaking the law by firing the weapon. Here is a link to the actual opinion. I have to say I love what constructionist Chief Justice Roberts says:

“An individual who brings a loaded weapon to commit a crime runs the risk that the gun will discharge accidentally. A gunshot in such circumstances—whether accidental or intended—increases the risk that others will be injured, that people will panic, or that violence (with its own danger to those nearby) will be used in response. Those criminals wishing to avoid the penalty for an inadvertent discharge can lock or unload the firearm, handle it with care during the underlying violent or drug trafficking crime, leave the gun at home, or—best yet—avoid committing the felony in the first place.”

WOAH!!! What a concept!! Don’t commit the felony in the first place!!!

Now let’s look at what the dissenting opinion from liberal Justice Stevens has to say.

“Accidents happen, but they seldom give rise to criminal liability. Indeed, if they cause no harm they seldom give rise to any liability. The Court today nevertheless holds that petitioner is subject to a mandatory additional sentence—a species of criminal liability—for an accident that caused no harm.”

So, I guess it is just fine if a guy “accidently” fires off a full 30 round burst, as long as he “didn’t mean to do it”!!! This just drives me batty. These are the same people that think we don’t have a right to keep and bare arms in the first place, but now they want to say it is ok, as long as he didn’t “intend” to do it. That is all these guys care about, intent, not about what really happens. It's all ok as long as you meant to do good or you didn’t intend to do bad. It doesn’t matter what the real outcome is.

Now let’s top this off with Justice Souter retiring. He was appointed by George Bush and thereafter showed considerable liberal leanings, however he could sometimes be counted on to rule in favor of the Constitution. With his retirement, President Obama gets to appoint a radical, socialist ideolog to fill the vacancy. This along with the probable retirement of Justice Ginsburg during the Obama presidency will point our Supreme Court in a far left leaning direction that will not be righted for YEARS.

Our country and the world are now paying and will be paying for a long time for the way the general US population voted in the November 2008 election.

“Change we can believe in” How are you believing this stuff?

Robba — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:06:10 GMT

100 days down and how is your hope level? Are you happy with the change we’ve made?

RSS feeds vs. reading websites

Robba — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:58:00 GMT

I’m noticing lately that I almost don’t need to use my web browser except for looking up new information. All the websites except one that I visit on a regular basis whether they are blogs or standard sites have an RSS feed. I’ve subscribed to those feeds and now I am able to follow the updates to the sites even easier than reading the actual site because I get the RSS update more often than I would actually visit the website.

So what does this mean? Am I “normal”, are other people reading more RSS feeds than websites? If this is the way things are moving then it leads me to wonder about site layout and design.

As an application portal, we here at SalesBook are looking at the various methods where we can allow our users to set up RSS feeds of their profiles as well as other features that they will have access to soon.

For those of you that read the blog, I’d love to know your thoughts on RSS and how it has affected your consumption of information from the web.

Technorati Tags: RSS,Technical