I haven't written much lately because I have been so busy. I am graduating this May from college. Have a new job and will be moving to Phoenix, AZ. Its a different world for me out here. Big. Anyways, I need to leave, partly because of job growth and opportunity and partly because of a girl. She didn't have the same feelings I had have for her. (As you can see, I'm not over her yet.) Anyways, too much here reminds me of her. I need to meet someone. I'm hoping that there is more opportunity for that over in Phoenix. If only I could get over my own shyness. Confidence is sexy too (her words). Apparently I don't have enough, even though if I was given a chance to prove that I was...but I digress. I miss her, and I need to stop missing her. I'm lonely and I need to stop being lonely. I'm empty and I need to stop being empty. I need to meet someone.

Following this ordeal with Gateway I sent my computer back again. Guess what they did this time. Not only did they not fix the problem, by reformatting it, the DVD drive now doesn't work. It worked fine when I sent it in. Essentially my computer came back in worse condition than it was sent. Sweet.

I have worked on the NMSU Phonebook. The Phonebook has three sections to it, and each section offers something that I have yet to see at any other university.

First is the person lookup page. Clicking on the A (which is all last names beginning with A) brings up a list of people. First, this offers the ability to use it as a directory, just like any phonebook. You can do searches as well. The information is presented in a pleasant manner with nice colors and in a zebra table so the names are easily distinguished from one another. But the one unique feature that I have not seen at other universities is the Rolodex. You can at a glance see the person's name, email address (if on campus, otherwise an email form), and their phone number. Now, with most traditional phonebooks you click on the person's name which takes you to a new page to learn more information about that person. That's so 1995. With the help of Rico we can accomplish this in a much nicer way without displaying a whole new page. Click on a person's name and it unfolds to show more information, including work and/or personal information. It looks like a business card. Now, how do we get this information into Outlook or other email program. The old way is typing in the details to save a new contact, the new way is by clicking on the icon to download the person's vCard. Now the information is automagically added to your email program.

The second section is the department lookup list. This is where we use AJAX. You can do a search for the departments in a traditional way, but doing an AJAX call is so much faster. It might be a little overkill, but the speed is just awesome. It also includes links to an Google Maps implementation of campus that I and my co-workers worked on (future post).

Finally, we have the hierarchy page. I have not even seen this page at any other university. I think it is totally cool. It is basically a hierarchy of departments. So you know who is on the food chain.

Of course all of these link together. Click on a person in the hierarchy and it takes you to the person lookup. Click on a department on the person lookup or department lookup page and it takes you to that department in the hierarchy. In my opinion, very cool.

Well, hot on the heals of getting screwed over by Creative, I now got screwed over by Gateway. You may remember that I had to send my laptop in for repair.

The reason I sent it in was because there was a gap between the plastic and the LCD screen that was shipped from the factory like that. Dust gets in there and behind the screen. The second and more important reason was because it would constantly crash and I would get strange graphic corruption on the screen.

Well, I finally received it yesterday and I am extremely disappointed in them. They didn't fix the screen and all they did was reformat the drive and put Windows XP Tablet Edition on it, like it came from the factory. The computer was labeled as Vista Compatible and I was reassured that Vista would work on it without problems. To make sure that it isn't software I reformatted the drive and installed Vista. While I was in the Vista set-up screen I noticed several pixels flickering on and off on the screen. It didn't do that the first time I installed Vista. After it was installed the Windows Sidebar started flickering and when I went to connect to my wireless network the entire screen went to a black and white pattern and the computer locked up. This was before I installed any software or anything, it was just a fresh install of Vista.

I'm sending it back, again, maybe this time they will fix it.

I wrote Creative regarding their horrible Vista support for my Creative Labs PCMCIA Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Notebook card.

I purchased a Creative Audigy 2 ZS Notebook card. I purchased it for a Windows Vista laptop. The information displayed on the creative website said this would be compatible with Vista. However, the support is terrible. The last driver released for this card was March 16, 2007. That is totally unacceptable. When will this card's drivers be updated to be more compatible with Vista. You are starting to lose a loyal Creative Customer.

The card causes blue screens. Also, in Vista's Control Panel, there is an option to hear the output out of all 5.1 speakers. I only hear output out of the front two. The drivers just do not play well with Vista.

Their response:

Dear Curtis

Thank you for contacting Creative email support. I appreciate the opportunity to help you.

Regarding your last email. We are not aware a new update for this product will be released. They only release if one is need. We have modems that have not been updated for several years. Until what is listed online it obsolete and I new one is needed there probably will not be anymore. Also remember that ANY Email Creative advisors are not forewarned or told about future releases. When they hit the Creative Web page they are ready.

I apologize for any inconvenience this issue may have caused you.

Here is a link to the Creative savings center.

http://us.creative.com/shop/

Thank you for choosing Creative!

The bad grammer is theirs. Basically I was just told to buy a newer product. Goodbye creative. Anyone try Sondigo's Callisto Home Theatre Adapter?

I have to send my computer in to the manufacturer for repair. Bummer.

However, I bought myself a Smartphone. (Technically a Pocket PC, but I like the term Smartphone better.) I love this thing. It is an HTC Touch. I bought the CDMA Version since Sprint is my carrier.

I love this phone. I don't know how I ever got around without it. Email, IM, the Web, its all there. I have also been loading it down with games so I can entertain myself during boring times like in waiting areas or driving.

Next semester I have only one class to take and then I will graduate with my Computer Science degree. Yay! So hopefully it will be pretty chill.

I was denied yesterday. There I was walking down the hall in my office building. I paused in front of the Vending Machine. There was a Big Texas Cinnamon Roll. It was in such a precarious situation. I would of received two for the price of one. It was barely hanging on. They were calling to me, "Curtis...Curtis...eat us..."

I pulled out my wallet, one dollar. Nice. I stuck it in, it gave it back to me. Denied. I stuck it in again, it gave it back to me. Denied. Shoot. Reached for some pocket change, I had none. Denied. So I found someone to donate some change to the cause. I would get two, I can split it. Put the coin in, nothing. It didn't drop through all the way. Put another in, nothing. Darn. I put the final quarter in, maybe it will knock them loose, it didn't. It ate all the quarters. Denied. Thats when I noticed the return change button was stuck. Thats why my dollar was getting rejected. The quarters were long gone, but I still have my dollar. I put it in, it took it. Sweet. F-8. "Please make another selection." Denied again.

I was enabling VCard downloads on the NMSU phonebook when I noticed that it wasn't working in IE. "Internet Explorer was not able to open this Internet site. The requested site is either unavailable or cannot be found. Please try again later." Of course it worked fine in FF, Opera, Safari, Camino, and just about any other browser available.

Well thats what you get for not testing on all browser you say? Actually it worked fine in IE on our development server. Same code two different boxes. It was driving me nuts, what could be the problem? Is it something to do with the headers that the page is sending? Using FF and the FireBug extension I ruled out that possibility. Both servers were sending identical headers. The only difference is the producation server had SSL while the development did not.

It didn't make sense.

Then, thanks to Google, I stumbled upon the answer:

In order for Internet Explorer to open documents in Office (or any out-of-process, ActiveX document server), Internet Explorer must save the file to the local cache directory and ask the associated application to load the file by using IPersistFile::Load. If the file is not stored to disk, this operation fails.

When Internet Explorer communicates with a secure Web site through SSL, Internet Explorer enforces any no-cache request. If the header or headers are present, Internet Explorer does not cache the file. Consequently, Office cannot open the file.

Oh, that makes sense.

When Outlook tried to open the VCard file, it couldn't find it because it was not stored on the disk.

Has anybody ever had days like this? I have.

Absolutely brilliant! Good fun to Simpsonize (potentially former) friends, family, and colleagues - And create your very own unreal-life Simpsons episode... A tip - it kept falling over when I tried to download the picture, and just failed for eternity. So, take a screen capture (press the "Prn Scrn" key), and then ctrl+V into photoshop.

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