I should disclose that got this idea from Chris Coyier (http://css-tricks.com/video-screencasts/25-designing-for-wordpress-part-one/) who did something similar to his site (http://chriscoyier.net/).

Starting right now I’m going to rebuild the design of the live site from the ground up. I’ll start with the HTML5 Rest WordPress Theme and build from there.  The site is simple enough that there’s not going to be very much coding so this won’t offer me any coding black holes to run away to for a sense of security, ensuring that I’m focused on the design process and not the coding process. I used Kuler to find a color scheme to start with. I settled on retro blue because I think it offers a wide spectrum of complementary colors to play with. I plan on posting snapshots of the site in the state that it’s in at the time of each post and I’ll try to post frequently throughout the process or at least offer posts with multiple snapshots and summaries of what was going on at each step. This should be fun.

[Updated with photo: Doesn't it look nice. ]

In simple terms, I feel like used to drive a BMW 6 Series(Informix), but now I’m driving a BMW 3 Series(SQL Server) and I’m supposed to like it. I know that SQL Server has a much larger install base than Informix so my potential employment pool is much larger now, but there’s something really nice about being a part of an elite group of talented Informix DBA’s. As a SQL Server DBA I have become highly skilled, but even then there are many really amazing SQL Server DBA’s and there are so many crappy ones too that it’s could take a very long time to differentiate myself from everyone else. I find this to be demotivating, maybe I’m just getting old and lack the drive to make a name for myself. (There’s probably another posts worth of material just in that last sentence.)

Microsoft builds software that doesn’t require a tremendous amount of expertise to run. SQL Server is a great testimony to this, just install it and just start using it. Because of it’s simplicity anyone can call themselves a SQL Server DBA which adds to my concern that there are a lot of people who call themselves SQL Server DBA’s. In reality I’d bet that over half of those “DBA’s” are experts in their field, i.e. people who really understand the engine, how it works, how it doesn’t work and how to eek out the most performance from it. Placing ones self in that elite group of SQL DBA’s is the challenge.

The flip side to Microsofts software that just works is the software it builds that doesn’t work worth a damn. SSIS is a testament to that, I have found more limitations in that piece of shit software than in any other utility program that I’ve ran across. Basically if they didn’t say you can do “X” then you can’t do it or if you manage to find a workaround it’s the most convoluted mess of code you’ve hopefully ever created.

So in a nutshell, I don’t like Microsoft and I don’t like the software it makes. I don’t like that I have to use it on a daily basis and that I don’t get to work with better technologies like Ruby, Rails, Perl or shell scripts. I want to talk about those technologies but struggle to find the time to take deep dives into them because of my day job and requirements as a father, husband and business owner. I think I’d write more if I could spend more time on the technologies that I love. That’s my point.

Many will remember this ad that Anheuser-Busch aired once back in 2001.

But I just realized today that Anheuser-Busch did a remake of that video for the 10 year anniversary of the tragedy that befell our great nation on September 11, 2001. I think it’s a remarkable show of honor to have remade this video that way that they did. You’ll notice that the original was filmed in winter when everything was dead showing respect to the fallen, but in the remake it’s filmed in the spring/summer when everything is green and growing showing respect to the resilience that NYC has shown. Good job AB.

Anyway, as I was driving in to work today I was reflecting on my weekend and what it was like in regards to my kids and I started to feel bad once I realized how I had actually “talked” to my kids. I asked myself if I’d still use that same tone of voice if the person, who had done whatever it was that the child in question had done, wasn’t my child. What if it was a coworker or my spouse (well that’s not fare, I yell at her all the time too ) that I was talking to? Would I approach them the same way or use more tact? Obviously (I say to myself) I’m not socially uncouth so I know that I would have used a more….amiable tactic to try and achieve the same results.

Which quite succinctly brings me to my simple point. Just because my kids are my kids and just because they do stupid kid-like shit and just because they talk all the damn time and get on my every last nerve does not give me any more right to talk down to them or “yell” at them than I might normally have. So I put myself in their shoes for a minute and here’s what I came up with.

What happens when people yell at us or talk down to us?? We get angry. I’d have to imagine that my kids get angry with me too when I don’t control my tongue with them. The Bible tells us to not provoke our children to anger.

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.- Ephesians 6:4

A simple way to obey this is to talk to our kids with respect, always. Even if that means that for a while you have to pretend that they’re a coworker or our spouse, or to put it another way, someone with whom we wish to earn respect. Just treat them like they are people, because ultimately they are their own person, otherwise they wouldn’t use that little mind of theirs to do shit that pisses us off.

In practice following the PB is pretty difficult despite it’s lovely simplicity, especially with two small kids in the house. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming them. I’m completely at fault all on my own, I love Dr Pepper and candy like I love air. I simply mean that it’s difficult to come up with kid friendly snacks and meals that follow the PB when for last 31 years of my life I’ve had bread and other evil goodies to fill the nutrient void that now exists if I don’t get enough fruits, veggies and protein.

I’ve found that using vegetables as the primary focus of a meal is something that is quite difficult to do when your used to veggies being a side dish. Good new though, you get used to it. It’s been a good exercise in cooking since in order to keep things new and fresh your constantly looking for new ways to prepare veggies.

Probably the biggest mental hurdle that I’ve had to overcome while adopting the PB is that eating fat, lots of it by today’s conventional wisdom standard, is not only okay but encouraged as a vital source of nutrients. You see without loads of carbohydrates coursing through your system your body runs out of “quick” fuel real fast. That’s where the fat comes in. Once your body uses up the carbs that you engest it will switch over to fat for fuel.

I guess to give you something to take away from this post here are the three things that I’d say aremost crucial to shedding your fat stores.

1. Eat lots of vegetables
2. Eat good quality protein (look for range fed, hormone and nitrate free everything)
3. Worry more about the carb content than the fat content
   1. Remember if you strip out the carbs and replace them with fats your body will use the fat for energy and then deplete o your fat stores instead of using the leftover carb energy to increase them.

Remember that 90% of weight loss is diet.

As I read the code I realized it would be super easy to implement the same thing in AS3 and save myself the remoting call.

Here’s the C# code:

public string GetRandomString (Random rnd, int length)
{
 string charPool = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890";
 StringBuilder rs = new StringBuilder();

 while (length-- 0)
 rs.Append(charPool[(int)(rnd.NextDouble() * charPool.Length)]);

 return rs.ToString();
}

and now the AS3 code:

public function GenerateRandomAN(maxSize:int):String
{
   var randomAlphaNumeric:String = "";
   // Purposefully omitting 1, I, 0 and O since they look similar
   var charPool:String = "ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZ23456789";
   var randomNumberUnder100:int;

   for (var i:int = 0; i < maxSize; i++)
   {
      randomNumberUnder100 = Math.floor((Math.random() * 100));
      var position:int = randomNumberUnder100 % (charPool.length - 1);
      randomAlphaNumeric += charPool.charAt(position);
   }

   return randomAlphaNumeric;
}