Wing Day
Friday is Wing Day at the Colemans Deli counter!
$5 for 10 wings at the Caribou Rd, Humber Rd or Humber Gardens locations.
My co-worker Troy is a bad influence, blame him.
They have plain, sweet & spicy, BBQ, and 1st degree. If you ask they will give you 3rd degree sauce on the side, for free I should add.
It's Friday, have a break and try something sinfully good 
Samsung Galaxy S Sync Issue
I've had this problem for ages but it hasn't been a big enough issue for me to spend time on.
Every time I connected my Galaxy to my laptop device driver installation failed and the initializing screen would continuously refresh until I hit the home key or unplugged the USB.
I got around this issue by moving files to and from my phone using the external SD card. Painful!
Looking for a quick solution, I was very close to factory resetting my phone but I was concerned about messing up the carrier configuration.
THE SOLUTION:
After a quick backup of my music and pictures to the external SD card one last time, I unmounted and formatted the internal SD. Immediate response when I plugged the phone back into my laptop!
Steps to format internal SD.
Click Settings
SD card and phone storage
Scroll down to Internal SD card
Unmount SD card
Format SD card
You're done!
PS. I'm running 32 bit Windows 7. I understand there are some issues related to 64 bit but there is an updated driver for that.
Steakway to Heaven
New sandwich shop on Broadway! Just across the intersection from Subway we now have The BunWay. I have yet to catch this place open. I must assume they are hoping to cater to the late night crowd. No hours of business are posted.
One thing is certain. They enjoy living on the edge of copyright infringement. The tongue in cheek references to the other "Way" across the way and to "Stairway" aside, the symbols on the signage are right off the inner sleeve of Zeppelin IV. Of course you knew that already...
The apparent good taste of the owners in music is marred somewhat by the classy statement in the sign below:
Still, that is straight to the point. After a long night of patronizing the local beverage establishments, at least 5 in easy walking distance, "A Whole Lotta Meat" may seem very appealing. Zero available seating will still likely make Subway the sandwich shop of choice until the spring kicks in just the same.
Good eating!
UPDATE: Can't believe I missed the other Zeppelin reference. "Whole Lotta Meat"! I'm sure for some carnivores Meat = Love. Even the font is similar...
Here's a shot of the sign on the other side of the building.
SQL Last Friday’s Date
When you have a system that runs data on a weekly basis you often need to find the date of a specific weekday, past or present.
I've no doubt there are several ways to do this but the following is my solution:
--get most recent Friday's date
Declare @fridayDate date
SET DATEFIRST 6
SELECT @fridayDate = DATEADD(d,0-DATEPART(dw,GETDATE()),GETDATE())
print @fridayDate
In your procedure you can change the Datefirst to reflect the day of the week you are looking for, in my case I need Friday. Change the 0 to a 7 if you need the upcoming Friday. And finally, change the GetDate() calls to a variable if you want to pass in a date instead of using today.
If this is something you need often, toss it into a function.
Hope you find it useful!
Rogers Bandwidth Limits Uncertain
Bandwidth caps are a hot topic in Canada the last few weeks. Caps have already been downgraded severely in Quebec and Ontario with the rest of the provinces to follow soon. The CRTC's recent decision to back up ISP bandwidth limits has been widely petitioned against and is now up for review.
Interestingly, Wikipedia seems to have the most updated list of caps for Rogers customers.
I've been holding back this post for a while waiting on an update from Rogers themselves.
As of Jan 31, 2011 the bandwidth restrictions on their website showed some major discrepancies when compared to the recent announcements:
Ultra lite has 60 GB limit! Right...
I'm happy (?) to report that as of this morning the site has been updated:
Rogers Hi-Speed Ultra-Lite provides a monthly usage limit of 2 GB (2,048 Megabytes)*
I mentioned the issue to @rogershelps on Twitter in late January and they were on the ball enough to get back to me via @RogersElise on Jan 31.
It only took 5 weeks for the site to be updated. Considering the size of the company the turn around time is decent. Especially since they never were liable due to the joy of small print.
FYI - I've been with Aliant since I moved back to Newfoundland. No hard set bandwidth limits at all at the time of this post. to quote their site, "As a guideline, in our experience typical residential bandwidth usage tends to be well within the range of 250GB per month". Hard to argue for Rogers in the face of those differences.
Marvel Mouseketeers
Big news from the Twittersphere today: Disney is acquiring Marvel entertainment.
Spider-Mouseketeer
The main concern among Marvel fans appears to be the potential softening of some of Marvel's beloved but rough around the edges characters. My fav quote on the subject this morning:
OH: First Narnia's war was bloodless, now Qtips will pop out of Wolverine's hands (Re: Disney buying Marvel) - AdeleMcAlear
On the Disney side, talk about broadening your audience! The Marvel fan base is huge and they come out in droves to Marvel themed films, even if a large percentage pan the results. The $4 billion acquisition will instantly add over 5000 new characters to the Disney cadre.
Personally, I can't wait for the first Disney Main Street Parade after Marvel is fully integrated.
What impact do you think this acquisition will have on the Marvel universe?
Information VS Decision
Just saw this stat from Did You Know 3.0 on YouTube:
"It is estimated that a week's worth of the New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century"
The New York Times is only one of thousands of newspapers viewable online. In fact, USA Today is even available on iTunes for free.
With this content and billions of other pages on the Internet individuals have more information available than they could ever hope to process. Financial tickers, how to guides, webinars, and tutorials on any conceivable subject, it's not hard to see how Google went from a noun to a verb in such a short time. Then add the social media phenomenon to the mix - Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Plurk, Ning, LinkedIn, Bebo, DeviantArt,.... ok this isn't a contest, I'll stop. Big list here.
What Do You Do With It?
In short, there is no shortage of information available. The question becomes, "What do we do with it"?
- You're hungry, Google for restaurant picks.
- Want to pick a movie, IMDB.com for reviews.
- Want an opinion, toss out a TwitPoll.
- Have a report to write?
- You get the idea.
How much information do you need to actually make a decision? Is it easier now with 50,000 articles, 2000 Facebook friends, and 2 Wikipedia articles giving you expert insight? Is it faster?
Don't misunderstand me. I love the great array of choices I have when I want to know something. It's even fun to kick back and get a good overview of a subject from someone like Ethan Bloch at WSYK .
New sources are invented every minute! Plus mobile devices like the iPhone give us ubiquitous access. But what's the next step?
Filter Me!
IMHO ("in my humble opinion" for newbies), filters are the inevitable and very much needed next breakthrough. Aggregate and rate the data for me Internet, please! Put all these sources together and tell me what actually makes the most sense. NOT what's the most popular, but what's the most relevant and hopefully TRUE.
A fun step in the right direction: TweetNews: "this service boosts Yahoo’s freshest news search results (which typically don’t have much relevance since they are ordered by timestamp and that’s it) based on how similar they are to the emerging topics found on Twitter for the same query". Thanks Vik Singh
A development I foresee is a news reader that searches for all my favorite topics, weighs in some factors determined by my habits or predefined rules, and gives me the most relevant data. The best version wouldn't need a lot of setup by me, instead it would save my most popular search topics. Even better it would have a work/productivity mode and a browse mode for fun topics.
Any fabulous innovators or startups want to chime in? Show me the product that addresses this and I'm first in line, cash in hand.
Warning: Don't wait too long, some of my closest friends "code quick"
March Mayhem in Moncton
Spring officially sprung March 20th. After a longish cold snap the gradual increase in daylight and temperature was most welcome.
The Magnetic Hill Zoo took advantage of the amazing Spring to raise money for their tiger fund.
You know what they say in the Maritimes: "If don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes".
-
- Alpaca Maxing at Zoo
-
- Monday, sigh…
It wasn't cold Monday but the roads were treacherous. C'est la vie. I went for coffee with no jacket so I'm still calling it Spring!
Are You as Hip as the Dalai Lama?
The Hippest Lama There Is
The Dalai Lama. Source of inspiration, font of patience, and according to tradition a manifestation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion and patron saint of Tibet.
"Bodhisattvas are enlightened beings who have postponed their own nirvana and chosen to take rebirth in order to serve humanity." - http://www.dalailama.com
A maven, certainly, but a social media maven? Apparently so. His holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, or more accurately, his office and representatives are now on Twitter.
Yep, that's right check out - http://twitter.com/OHHDL. According to a tweet from earlier today:
"His Holiness thought it was prudent to make his office open and assessable to a more youth and technologically advancing audience."
Presuming it's not a fake account, I say well done. Forward thinking attempt to engage with a wider audience. I'm interested to see how it pans out. Just starting following @OHHDL, I wonder if they will actually engage their followers or just firehose tweets.
Battle of the Conferences: Gartner VS SXSW
A new year and a new batch of conferences.
VS
Conferences can be exciting, informative, and excellent opportunities to network. So far on the hot list:
RailsConf May 4-7
SXSW Interactive March 13-17
Gartner Portal Summit March 16-18
HOW Design Conference June 24-27
Introp May 17-21
Oracle OpenWorld Oct 11-15
I had a huge debate with several of my colleagues on the relative value of two of these as the dates overlap.
Gartner Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit
If you're doing anything in the Enterprise Portal space it's easy to see why you need to be at this conference. Just look at the top 5 topics of interest:
- Apply Web 2.0 concepts and technologies to improve interactions with customers and partners and internal operations
- Reduce operational costs/improve ROI
- Drive innovation and creativity with workplace technologies
- Improve organizational effectiveness
- Portal design best practices
If you have a Portal in your organization or if you service Portals for your clients like me, this is the kind of thing you eat, sleep, and breathe. You don't find people who are able, or willing, to talk in depth on these subjects every day.
The end value for clients is immense. Not everyone has access to the aggregated research data Gartner collects.
SXSW
Ok, this is a big one. Probably the coolest conference in the IT field today. Some of the biggest names and greatest names on the web will be here. Just check out the list of panels.
I have no doubt that there is enormous value to be taken from this conference. The breadth and depth of talent here is staggering. Not to mention examination of the incredible culture of the companies in attendance. To get decent coverage you would need a team in attendence.
The Big Question
Which one to attend?! There are points in favor of both of these conferences but the dates make it impossible to attend both.
On one hand, for my company's Enterprise level client's the most immediate value would seem to be realized from the Gartner conference. On the other, isn't the Enterprise interested in what's up and coming too?
Post your opinion. Given the option, where would you be in March?
If I missed an incredible conference in my list, throw that out there too.
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