Steve Dingle's Blog

Happy Thanksgiving!

I've been in England for 6 years now and I have to say that besides good pizza what I miss most is Thanksgiving. By far, the best holiday of the year. All the food and drink of xMas without the hassle of buying presents. Who could ask for anything more!

Started a new job recently and had to take 5 days holiday before Jan 1 so decide to take today and tomorrow off, just like the good 'ol days! On a side note, I do have to say that besides the better beer, Europe is much more civilised when it comes to holidays, that's vacation for you yanks. From the start I get 25 days, 5 weeks. I remember starting jobs in US and only getting a 2 week for the first 3 years.

Anyway, back to Turkey day. Alas no turkey for me today. My partner Anna is at work and I'm just too lazy and incompetent to do it myself. Tried it the first year here and it was a fiasco. So, just enjoying a day away from my 4 hours commute, sitting in my office at home, catching up on some of my personal VFP projects – oh some many bugs to fix ?

On a sadder note, Thanksgiving always does make me miss my dad just a little bit more. He passed away a few years ago and it always seemed to be Thanksgiving when I saw him the most. Living in the center of Manhattan and being in the entertainment industry always contributed to some wild not-so family oriented festivities, often going on well into the weekend. Miss ya dad!

Oh well, that's enough rambling. Hope everyone has a wonderful day/long weekend!!!!

Learn something new every day!

I came across this link and thought I should share it because I think that learning something new can be one of the most satisfying feelings one can experience. The site below is an excellent resource for learning a diverse set subjects and best of all its free! From the web site:

"The OpenLearn website gives free access to course materials from The Open University. The LearningSpace is open to learners anywhere in the world."

Here's the link to the course categories, and there are quite a few, even a couple in the IT industry that are beyond the usual "Internet for Dummies" type courses you find on free training sites.

LearningSpace Subject Categories

What I also find interesting is the subject matter based forums and chat rooms where you can join in conversation with others taking your course. Lastly, they provide free mind mapping software. It's basically the "visual modelling of words, ideas and tasks..." that is being used in classrooms over here more and more. I have tried a few free mind mapping tools before and they were all lacking. Haven't spent much time with the Compendium software but it seems promising.

So get out there and learn something new today!

Toodles and have a great day,
Steve

Observation: Job Interviews

I've been an IT consultant (self-employed) for almost 15 years now and while I've had some ups and downs in terms of contracts it's been a pretty good run. Unfortunately because of circumstances, some beyond my control, I have found myself looking for permanent positions along with trying to get contract work.

One thing I realised after my first interview was that a job interview is nothing like making a sales pitch or a proposal for a new contract. I suppose to some that might seem pretty obvious however silly naive me went into my 1st interview in 15 years full of confidence and totally lacking any preparation (except for knowledge of the company). I mean really, I have been standing in front of potential clients for years pontificating the benefits of hiring me and my company to do their application development.

Where I found myself floundering was when I was asked very basic interview questions.

“Why do you want to work here?”

“What can you bring to the table?”

Always wanted to have a either a packed lunch or plate/knife/fork for this one but haven’t had the guts yet.

“What are your weaknesses?”

“Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”

As you can image I have never been asked these questions while doing a proposal, so found myself humming and hawing. Why was I humming and hawing? Because the responses the interviewer expected where not (IMHO) honest answers to those questions. For instance I don’t think the following would go well to ensuring a 2nd interview:

“Because you had an add in the paper and its only 1 stop on the train from my flat”

“Don’t you know WHO I am?” or “Have you even READ my CV?”

“There something about a woman in a low cut white top, just like the one you’re wearing, that drives me wild and often distracts me from my work”

“Owning and running this company because you obviously don’t have clue what you’re doing”

Instead they want, nay expect, prepared and practised responses to these all too common questions. I can understand how this might ‘weed out’ interviewees who hadn’t prepared or were bad at impromptu blarney, but what does it ‘weed in’.

1.    People who have access to the internet and can Google “Common Interview Questions”
2.    People who have a gift for telling others exactly what they want to hear.

Do these traits make an ideal employee? I don’t know. Maybe, if the position requires it but I wonder how many people who have the skills and experience aren’t even being considered because they didn’t do well on these, often IMHO, inane questions.

SET SOAPBOX ON
Going a little off topic here, but I’m hearing these types of questions more and more especially in media. I don’t know about you, but if I hear one more reporter ask an Olympic medal winner...

“So how does it feel to win a <insert metal here> medal?”

... I'll puke. Wish one of them would have just said “F****** awesome dude!!!”

I won’t even go into those questions repeatedly asked by 90% of reports when speaking to crime victims or their families. Often shocking and always completely insensitive and NO the public does NOT have the right to know.
SET SOAPBOX OFF

Anyway, I think you get the drift of this entry. I have of course Googled the “common interview questions” and made note of the expected responses. As for the BS’ing, well I’ll just have to leave that to others as I just can’t imagine misrepresenting myself. If that means I might have to start working in the world oldest profession, that’s right, hunter-gatherer, then so be it.

In case anyone is interested, I didn’t get that 1st job because I was over qualified, which I knew at the time, but I still would have done the job to the best of my ability and the company would have gotten me at a bargain price. It’s a buyers market out there, at least over here.

I’m hoping my next entry will be of a more technical nature, I have been working on adding multi-window relationship browsing to dsBrowser but have been spending most of my time cramming for SQL Server 2005 certification – got a long way to go but trudging on! Actually enjoying myself as I’m learning aspects of the product I wasn’t exposed to just using it as a backend.

Toodles for now and thanks for reading.

New BROWSE Application

Since the native BROWSE command lacked some of functionality I wanted I created a form for basic browsing. Over the years I have added a lot of functionality and most recently Christian Bonafos's Grid Controller class, that adds many features including saving/restoring column positions based on the file being browsed.

Below is a screen shot of dsBrowser with the Northwind!Employees table open and some of the features available.

• Browse Tables (including SCX, VCX, PJX, DBC), Views, XML Documents (single table only, for now) and Arrays
• Option to auto-create indexes when browsing Views, XML and Arrays.
• Memo fields displayed in edit boxes
• Sort using grid header - if indexes available
• Save/Restore User Preferences like form size, columns widths, columns position based on file browsed
• 'Move To' option on sorted column
• Show/Hide deleted records
• Switch between Edit/Read-only
• Switch between Field Name/Caption, if applicable.
• Copy the currently selected record to Clipboard
• Save/Cancel changes if buffering enabled
• Default buffering mode when opening table
• Generate various types of output including:
  • Table
  • XML Document
  • Excel Spreadsheet
  • CSV
  • STD
• Output options:
  • For table - Structure only and also include Indexes
  • Auto Overwrite - if checked and the file exists it is overwritten without prompting
  • Auto Open - if checked the output file is open in the default application
• Browse inside Visual FoxPro or as stand alone application
• Includes a program example of how to use the dsBrowser inside the Data Explorer.

I know there are probably a few BROWSE replacements out there and I admit there is still quite a bit I need to do with this but I hoped other might find it useful so thought I would share it as freeware.  For now dsBrowser only works with Visual FoxPro 9.0

Download dsBrowser

To use dsBrowser unzip the contents into a folder that is in your Visual FoxPro path and in the command window type:

DO dsBrowser

If there is a table open in the current work area that table is browsed. If not you are prompted for a table. Either select a file to browse or you can just hit escape to get into the form and at this point you will have access to the Help file and all the details on using dsBrowser.

If you have any questions, comments and enhancement requests then please feel free to contact. You will also find a long list of To Do items in the help file and I would appreciate and feedback on the 'order' you would like them implemented

Gotcha: DBGETPROP and Long Table Names

I know this is an old one but since I don't use Long Table Names I hit up it against today when playing around with the tables in the TASTRADE database and thought I would just put a short gotcha here.

If a table has a long table name and you use the table file name with DBGETPROP you will get an error. The problem, in my opinion, is that the error you get is not the expected...

Error#: 1562
Message: Cannot find object in table

which I trap for in my method for returning captions. Instead you get...

Error#: 11
Message: Function argument value, type, or count is invalid

Actually you will get this error if you pass any invalid table name. The resolution is that if you use Long Table Names (I personally hate them for this very reason) you must use them with all  DBGETPROP calls. However, if like me, you don't know if the table has a long table name you can use CURSORGETPROP('SourceName') to get the long table name and use that instead. Below is a very basic example of how this would work.

LOCAL lcFolder as string,;
      lcTable as String,;
      lcField as String,;
      loException as Object,;
      lcCaption as String

*-- Open TasTrade and the orditems table
CLOSE DATABASES ALL
m.lcFolder = ADDBS(HOME())+"SAMPLES\TASTRADE\DATA\"
m.lcTable = "ORDITEMS"
m.lcField = "ORDER_ID"
m.lcCaption = ""
OPEN DATABASE (m.lcFolder+"Tastrade.dbc")
SET DATABASE TO Tastrade
USE (m.lcFolder+m.lcTable)

TRY
   *-- Using the ORDITEMS for the table
   m.lcCaption =DBGETPROP(m.lcTable+"."+m.lcField,"FIELD","Caption")
CATCH TO m.loException

   IF m.loException.ErrorNo = 11
      =MESSAGEBOX("Error occurred trying Long Name")
      m.lcTable = CURSORGETPROP("SourceName")
      *-- Using the Table Long name
      m.lcCaption =DBGETPROP(m.lcTable+"."+m.lcField,"FIELD","Caption")
   ELSE
      =MESSAGEBOX("Error: "+m.loException.Message)
   ENDIF   
ENDTRY
RETURN m.lcCaption

I think situations like this provide a good example of the advantage of wrapping Visual FoxPro commands in methods, functions or programs.  Since I have methods in my Cursor Manager class which are wrappers around the DBGETPROP function (like datCursorMgr.ReturnFieldCaption) I can make changes there and I'm done.

Hello World!

As if that hasn't been used as a 'my first blog entry' before but hey, a little plagiarism never hurt anybody.

For years now I've been reading friends, colleagues and complete stranger's ideas, opinions and  ramblings and finally decided to dive in myself. Prior to 5 years ago I was quite active in numerous on-line communities but after a move from North Carolina to England my participation dropped to nothing, except for some posts on those on-line dating sites (well... I was new in town and country).

So 5 years on this is either the beginning of something wonderful and a completely life changing experience for myself and all who read what I have to say or it will be yet another example of mindless ramblings. Only time will tell! 

Toodles For Now,
Steve