Asa Jay's weblog

Last night, was my first time back in school for almost three years.  This time, instead of taking simple courses related to my current project or job, I am starting my path toward an actual four-year degree.  I’m starting out, with a basic course in Research and Writing.

This is a good way for me to get back into school.  As the course of study I have chosen will require a lot of writing, this class is going to be a good primer for me.  The focus will be on writing a total of four assigned papers.  The progression of the class will concentrate on the process of turning an idea, into a polished paper; progressing through first draft, revision, second draft/revision/repeat, to final draft.  Our instructor, giving us some insight into what usually happens without discipline, told us that most people will write a first draft, and then move right on to a final draft, without considering much in the way of revision.  We will be focusing on that most difficult step, revision.

I can certainly see the value in revising written works until the ideas of a paper are clearly presented in a concise and easy to read manner.  I know that many times I myself have struggled with this concept.  I’m sure some of my entries here on my blog have been a mish-mash of random thoughts and ramblings.  Of course, that’s more what this medium is really for, though I many times read later, what I have written, and end up making corrections.  For the next six weeks however, I will need to concentrate more on polishing my prose than just letting the words leak out of my head.

Our first paper is to be about ourself.  We are to write something autobiographical.  Being in my forties, I have a vast amount of experiences to draw upon, but we’re not supposed to write a book.  What I will have to do is narrow my focus into one area, about myself, that I think could provide a quick insight to who I am.  I’ve not considered it much as yet, but I’ll certainly have to start thinking hard about this over the weekend.  Only meeting once a week for class seems like a long time, but from my present perspective, it’s only about five more days away.  I have to get started.

What ever shall I write about, that tells people who I am?

Asa Jay

. . . or “How I upgraded WebCalendar from 0.9.4, to 1.0.2”

For those who are paying attention, (as if anyone is really reading this), I have just finished an upgrade to my WebCalendar.  This serves two purposes.  Mainly, so I can get to my schedule no matter where I am, and second, to let others who would like to know my goings-about, to know what I am up to.  I spent a good deal of time yesterday, making the upgrade.

The author of WebCalendar keeps a homepage here, where you can find out the latest news, get information on the product, download, etc.  The product is also linked from Sourceforge.net with an immediate re-direct at the moment.  It was here that I found updated versions available, and the documentation I needed to get it installed and working properly.  Of course, nothing comes cheap, as they say.  It was not without some pain and frustration that I finally got it to work.

Upgrade summary:

– Export calendar in iCal format, to local drive
– Use phpMyAdmin to remove all tables from the database
– Delete all old files in the webcalendar directory (note: I had no specially modified pages)
– Install new webcalendar files in old top-level directory (to preserve proper database paths)
– Use phpMyAdmin to execute SQL Query using provided tables-mysql.sql file (this builds the new tables)
– Delete all cookies for WebCalendar (this is a necessary step as authentication has changed)
– Goto the WebCalendar page in a browser
– Configure the administrative options
– Test
– Import iCal file from local hard drive
– Done

The cookies thing was a killer, and actually delayed my success by at least an hour or more.  It wasn’t until the next day that I really found out it was all about the cookie, because all I knew, was that after the install, I kept getting a “login” error message, but everything seemed to be fine and checked out.  Once I finally closed my browser and re-opened it, all went well.  I documented my frustrations and my progress on the Help/Troubleshooting forums at Sourceforge.  Not knowing why it worked after closing my browser, I checked the next day and someone had posted a note about cookies.  Ah, it all started to make sense.

The rest was pretty straight-forward.  You might note, if you are upgrading from a previous version, the upgrade notes suggest you take each version a step at a time.  This might be a good idea if you have a huge database and don’t wish to simply download your calendar into an iCal file.  Every other upgrade has instructions on performing a bunch of sql table commands, which I would rather just bypass.  So I figured I would.

The only information that I really needed to keep, was the actual data in the database for all my appointments.  This was easy enough to extract using the export utility in WebCalendar.  Once I had the data out, it was simply a matter of using phpMyAdmin to delete all the tables in the database, without actually deleting the database.  I had to delete all the old tables because at first, I tried to do the tables-sql query, but got an error about duplicate table entries.  Thus, I just deleted the old, then ran the query and the new tables built just fine.  From my perspective, this saved a lot of headache trying to perform each table modification, for each release.

Later, after entering the database information in the admin page that first comes up, all I had to do was import the iCal file and everything was restored.  Now I had the latest stable release of code, a much sharper looking interface, more options, and I was about to install an RSS feed.  Then I hit the cookie problem, but I’ve covered that already.

One of the reasons I had started down the upgrade path, was so that I could use the new RSS Feed feature.  Well, as it turns out, the latest stable release does not contain the RSS feed code yet; the beta of 1.1 does.  Not wishing to play with an unkown quantity (the unreleased version), I decided to at least move up to the latest stable version.  I also found they had perfected an RSS php script that would be integrated to the next release.  Well, there it was.

I downloaded and installed the rss.php file to the root of my WebCalendar.  I changed the default user from __public__ to my username, and then had to enable public access in the administration panel, and in my personal settings panel.  I also enabled the header file, and edited it to include the RSS feed code.  Once that was all accomplished, the RSS feed appeared in the address bar of Firefox.  I was able to successfully add it to my bookmarks, and it displays the next 10 events.  It looks like it works as advertised.  I’m very pleased.

In summary, I now have an upgraded WebCalendar, with RSS feed.  Very cool.

Asa Jay

. . . I don’t write enough.

I’ve had this blog up for months now; somewhere around seven months I think. I guess part of the problem with just the blogging part, is that I was just changing jobs, or rather, I was switching from working with one company, to working with another. The transition took a lot of my time, and energy. Then, things got brutal at work.

My manager ended up quitting, probably because he started to see he might be fired. Our lead RF engineer left, and most recently, our Lead Software Architect left. Bummers all. I had wished to start mentoring under someone new, but it didn’t work out. Oh well.

I am again on my own, with no mentor. Not that I’m struggling; there is simply -no- leadership in our office. Partly that’s not a bad thing, as we all do our part as a team. The problem is that our Project Manager and other lead people are in an office all the way across the country. We are mushrooms.

But I digress. I think too much, I don’t write enough. I used to. In fact, I used to write more than I read. I have some stuff on line here at asajay.com. I’ve put up some of the poems I wrote long ago. I have many short stories as well. I only tried to get published once or twice. You see, I know I’m not -that- good. I used to write for my own enjoyment. It was like playing with LEGO.

With Lego, in the early days, you were presented with bricks. The imagination had to create, and using the bricks helped you bring the imagination into reality or least “play reality”. Eventually, through High School, I started writing as new way to bring my imagination to life. I would write, read, re-write, read, put on a shelf. I still have most everything I ever wrote in High School, and College. Oh, to me it was good, but again, not worth publishing. I’ve not really written in years though.

I was writing just as personal computers got started. I worked with a TRS-80 Model I, in Algebra class at first. Later, as a teachers aid, I moved up to a TRS-80 Model II which only certain teachers (and teachers aids) could use. I eventually talked my parents into buying a Tandy 1000EX. I thought using a computer would help me write.

I took a typing class as part of my senior year. I thought I would need to learn how to type, and perhaps how to type quickly, if I was ever to satisfy this urge to write. I passed second in my class at well over 40 words a minute. Today, on a good day, I can clear almost 80 words a minute. Pretty cool; not the fastest, but pretty darn good.

The fastest typist I ever knew, was one of the admins at our high school. She could type upwards of 200 words a minute. Using an IBM Selectric II, it sounded like automatic weapons fire when you passed by the office.

So I figured computers were going to allow me to type all my stories, poems and what-not. The sad reality was, the more I worked to get into computers, the less I wrote. Eventually, I forgot about writing atogether. It would only come in small spurts, like every 10 years. Not cool.

Today, I don’t seem to have the same imagination that I used to. Today, I get my imagination “fix” by watching other peoples imaginations come alive on TV. Blah. Movies, TV shows and books influenced my early writing; sparing my imagination to new ideas. Now though, it’s not the same. I feel tired, and I shouldn’t. It’s almost like I’ve lost that fire. I almost feel as if all the great stories have been told; anything new is just a re-hash of something old. The themes are the same, but the names, time, and places have changed.

Over the past 10 years, I’ve thought more about PC Game storylines, rather than books or short stories. Myst got me started. Then, I became facinated with history, and mystery. I’ve had some decent ideas for computer games, but again, I’ve never writting much down, and wouldn’t even know where to pitch.

At some point, I needed to make money, to live. Having a title published was not a big goal, but now, as I’m older, I realize that if I take time out of my life to write something, I should be paid to do it. Since I already understand I’m not good enough to publish, I know it’s not going to put food on my table. So I don’t write much. I sure think a lot though.

There was the one time I had a killer multi-million dollar idea. Oh it was good, I remember that much. I thought out so much, I thought it all through, design, manufacture, sales, everything. But I was tired, it was late, I went to bed and never wrote a stickin’ thing down. To this day, I regret it; t othis day, I still can’t remember what the idea was.

I’ve had at least three separate adventure game ideas. I wrote down a little, but that’s as far as it got. Oh, I’ve thought plenty of things through, but just haven’t written any of it down.

I lost a girlfriend once, because I think too much. I analyzed too much, I read too much into things. I just couldn’t leave things be. Too much of a “thinker”, and it lost a great woman.

I think a lot, I just don’t write things down.

I think too much.

Asa Jay