https://bphogan.com/2006/Recent content in 2006 on Brian P. HoganHugo -- gohugo.ioen-usMon, 25 Dec 2006 14:55:25 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/12/25/merry-christmas-to-all/Mon, 25 Dec 2006 14:55:25 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/12/25/merry-christmas-to-all/Best wishes to you and your families. may you have a wonderful holiday and a blessed New Year! This really is the best time of the year!https://bphogan.com/2006/11/29/judge-make-bills-recognizable-to-blind/Wed, 29 Nov 2006 15:04:42 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/11/29/judge-make-bills-recognizable-to-blind/The government discriminates against blind people by printing money that all looks and feels the same, a federal judge said Tuesday in a ruling that could change the face of American currency. U.S. District Judge James Robertson ordered the Treasury Department to come up with ways for the blind to tell bills apart. He said he wouldn’t tell officials how to fix the problem, but he ordered them to begin working on it.https://bphogan.com/2006/11/06/halloween/Mon, 06 Nov 2006 21:59:47 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/11/06/halloween/Ana had a good candy run. It was very very cold but she had a really good time. She looked very cute.https://bphogan.com/2006/10/26/highedwebdev-home/Thu, 26 Oct 2006 05:15:29 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/10/26/highedwebdev-home/We made it home. I’m going to crash for a few days.https://bphogan.com/2006/10/25/highedwebdev-still-hate-planes/Thu, 26 Oct 2006 01:28:21 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/10/25/highedwebdev-still-hate-planes/We just landed in St. Paul about thirty minutes ago. The flight from Detroit was the longest flight I’ve ever been on. We spent at least twenty minutes in the plane before takeoff and it was getting quite warm. The flight itself was quite uneventful. I can’t say the same for the landing. We landed hard and then the pilot slammed on the brakes. Everyone lurched forward in their seats and you could hear the bags in the overhead compartment shift toward the front of the plane.https://bphogan.com/2006/10/25/highedwebdev-going-home/Wed, 25 Oct 2006 20:25:57 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/10/25/highedwebdev-going-home/Well, I’m sitting in the Rochester museum uploading pictures to Flickr and waiting for my plane. Security was no problem this time and the TSA screeners were really friendly and helpful. Everything went smoothly and it took literally 2 minutes for me to get cleared through. Maybe things aren’t so bad after all.https://bphogan.com/2006/10/25/highedwebdev-best-of-track/Wed, 25 Oct 2006 13:00:57 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/10/25/highedwebdev-best-of-track/Our Ruby on Rails presentation won best of track! We present twice more in a few minutes, and then we’re going home!https://bphogan.com/2006/10/25/highedwebdev-museum-excursion/Wed, 25 Oct 2006 12:00:11 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/10/25/highedwebdev-museum-excursion/The planetarium and science museum trip was awesome. After the day’s events were done, we were picked up by school buses and taken to the museum. Each floor of the three-story museum featured tables with food and an open bar, and we had the whole museum to ourselves. There were some incredible exhibits and I did take pictures but I’m still uploading them to Flickr. I also have a pretty cool video clip of the dinosaur robots.https://bphogan.com/2006/10/24/highedwebdev-day-two-continued/Tue, 24 Oct 2006 19:47:04 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/10/24/highedwebdev-day-two-continued/This conference is awesome. The presentations on Fair Use and application security were well worth my time. Dale Grady, presenter for the application security presentation, has developed a great code scanner that can pinpoint possible vulnerabilities in code so that it won’t be deployed. I’m really interested in developing something like this for UW-Eau Claire so if anyone wants to collaborate with me, I’d love the help. We’re getting ready to head out to the science museum and planetarium, I’ll take lots of pictures although I don’t know how well that would work out.https://bphogan.com/2006/10/24/highedwebdev-day-two/Tue, 24 Oct 2006 14:43:01 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/10/24/highedwebdev-day-two/I’m writing this on my WordPress blog while sitting in a great presentation about WordPress. I started out the morning watching a really well-done presentation on optimizing pages for search engines. The presenter made some excellent points and I’ll be changing how I do some of my optimization from now on. This presentation is great. It has confirmed the things I already knew and has taught me some things as well, such as the search engine on this site is only good for searching posts and not pages.https://bphogan.com/2006/10/24/highedwebdev-day-one/Tue, 24 Oct 2006 13:11:38 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/10/24/highedwebdev-day-one/The first day was great. Some of the big things of the day were Shooting and producing videos using Vegas Video and Flash Our Ruby on Rails presenation Giving effective presentations A great presentation on the FieldSet Really good presentation about Apache configuration. After the conference, several of us traveled to Dinosaur BBQ and had a ton of food. We had to wait about 90 minutes for a table but in the end it was well worth the wait.https://bphogan.com/2006/10/23/highedwebdev-2/Mon, 23 Oct 2006 18:05:29 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/10/23/highedwebdev-2/Our presentation went very well. We had a packed room of over 50 people. I’ve been getting lots of interesting questions and i’ve been doing my best to answer as many as possible. I’m not sure how much I’ll get to write during the conference but I’ll try to keep up because there are lots of neat things going on.https://bphogan.com/2006/10/23/highedwebdev-fieldset/Mon, 23 Oct 2006 08:30:10 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/10/23/highedwebdev-fieldset/Just saw a great presentation about using Fieldsets to semantically mark up web forms. The examples I saw were so much nicer than table-based or list-based forms. I’d recommend looking into this further. I know I will.https://bphogan.com/2006/10/21/awful-flying-experience/Sun, 22 Oct 2006 04:11:40 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/10/21/awful-flying-experience/I hate flying. The trip started off with a long wait at the Chippewa Valley Regional Airport where I checked my luggage and waited for security. Our plane came in and I immediately noticed that it was one of those propeller-driven planes from the 60s which had been demoted to a shuttle. That didn’t give me a good feeling. I felt even worse at security. I removed my shoes, laptop, cell phone, and PDA, only to have the metal clip from my leather PDA case set off the metal detector.https://bphogan.com/2006/10/19/highedwebdev/Thu, 19 Oct 2006 12:47:17 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/10/19/highedwebdev/Lillian and I are presenting at HighEdWebDev this year about Ruby on Rails and how developers can use it to be more productive. I’m hoping for a good turnout so I can generate more interest. It’s neat to see how far the community has come in the last year. There are well over 200 unofficial plugins for the framework that people can use. There are tons of new books coming out, and I am seeing developers do some really amazing <a target="_blank href=“http://www.https://bphogan.com/2006/10/19/book-progress/Thu, 19 Oct 2006 12:39:46 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/10/19/book-progress/I’ve been busy working on the book. I’ve got about four chapters done and the rest all mapped out. It’s a really interesting process that will take longer than I had expected. Pragmatic Bookshelf has a really neat production system; I get to see how my book will look as I write it. The most difficult part of this whole process is just finding the time to write. I’m hoping to make some progress over the next two weeks.https://bphogan.com/2006/09/13/it-jobs/Wed, 13 Sep 2006 17:37:30 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/09/13/it-jobs/Getting a job in the IT field can be really difficult unless you know people or know how to market yourself. It’s not enough just to know your stuff. The people who get the jobs are the ones who either know someone who can get them a gig or are really good at promoting themselves. You might think that promoting yourself means being a big egomaniac and bullshitting people into hiring you.https://bphogan.com/2006/08/28/festival-in-the-pines/Mon, 28 Aug 2006 06:29:07 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/08/28/festival-in-the-pines/We went to the Festival in the Pines on Sunday with Dad. There were over 250 craft booths there with people selling all sorts of things from music CDs to jewelery to wooden furnture. I saw quite a bit of things that I would have loved to buy but I had no way to get them home safely. It was hard to do that festival without Mom though. For years, even when I was very little, we’d all go together and look at the exhibits, enjoy the food, and roast in the unbearable hot temperatures.https://bphogan.com/2006/08/28/book/Mon, 28 Aug 2006 06:23:50 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/08/28/book/I signed the contract for my new book. It’ll be around 250 pages and I hope to have it done by January. The book will show programmers how to make things look pretty. I’m hoping to make it as easy to follow as possible for people who don’t have a formal design background so this process will be pretty interesting. I’ve got a pretty large outline done and I’ve started working on the excercises for the tutorial sections of the book.https://bphogan.com/2006/08/10/rails-problems/Thu, 10 Aug 2006 16:27:31 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/08/10/rails-problems/I spend a lot of time working with the Ruby programming language and the Rails framework. There was a huge security vulnerability announced today and we were all told to apply the patch. Unfortunately we weren’t told exactly why, or what the vulnerability is. Many of us have looked at the source code and figured it out. Looks like the storm is over. The core team has patched the holes and most people are safe.https://bphogan.com/2006/07/22/josh-and-kristis-wedding-the-first-sign-of-trouble-2/Sat, 22 Jul 2006 13:14:51 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/07/22/josh-and-kristis-wedding-the-first-sign-of-trouble-2/The plan was that Erich, Josh, and Carissa were going to all get up early and go decorate the reception hall at the golf course while I stayed back with the kids. Everything was going according to plan until Erich’s car got a flat tire. This just keeps getting better. Did I mention the part about the ring? He left her ring in his car at the hotel, so that’s one more stop that needs to be made.https://bphogan.com/2006/07/22/josh-and-kristis-wedding-the-first-sign-of-trouble/Sat, 22 Jul 2006 13:12:02 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/07/22/josh-and-kristis-wedding-the-first-sign-of-trouble/Josh’s car broke down right before the rehearsal so he hasn’t gotten his tux yet. Mine fit but his dad’s pants needed alteration. Erich picked his up but he may need some modifications to his jacket. We didn’t get the rehearsal started until about a half-hour later and we were an hour late for the reservation at the restaurant. At least they didn’t give away our tables!https://bphogan.com/2006/07/22/josh-and-kristis-wedding-golf-outing/Sat, 22 Jul 2006 13:09:00 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/07/22/josh-and-kristis-wedding-golf-outing/Josh organized a golf outing yesterday for anyone who was interested. We went to Wild Ridge and had a decent time despite some rather rude behavior by a certain member of the staff. I didn’t golf but I did zoom around all day in the cart. That was kinda fun, and it gave Josh a chance to relax a bit. Pictures are in the gallery.https://bphogan.com/2006/06/19/fathers-day/Tue, 20 Jun 2006 02:08:54 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/06/19/fathers-day/Carissa and I went up to visit Dad yesterday. He’s doing a lot better these days. I spent a bit of time there helping him hook up some AV components so he could watch DVDs without having to jump through a lot of hoops. We then installed some more memory into his computer. Then we did some sorting of Mom’s things. That was pretty hard on everyone. We did find some cool things though, such as my baby book and my mom’s kaleidoscope.https://bphogan.com/2006/06/18/rails-day-2/Sun, 18 Jun 2006 05:57:11 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/06/18/rails-day-2/We made it through the contest! Mike, Adam, and I submitted our final change to our program after running into some nasty last minute problems. There’s always so much to fix. I’m truly amazed at what this programming framework can do. We accomplished more in 24 hours than many people hope to accomplish in a month’s time. The three of us hammered out a fairly nice event and expense tracker. Adam and Mike would like to see it go somewhere.https://bphogan.com/2006/06/17/rails-day-update-2/Sat, 17 Jun 2006 21:32:13 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/06/17/rails-day-update-2/We’re still going… although we’re getting slower. We’ve hit a lot of snags today because we want to implement a cool feature in our program that we really struggled with. Mike just managed to figure it out though so we’re going to hook it up.https://bphogan.com/2006/06/17/rails-day-update/Sat, 17 Jun 2006 16:47:06 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/06/17/rails-day-update/We’re kickin’ along with only about 2 hours of sleep. We just hit a snag when our power went out for some reason. Probably too much computer stuff going on in one room. We’re making some good progress after getting caught up earlier this morning.https://bphogan.com/2006/06/17/rails-day/Sat, 17 Jun 2006 07:17:28 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/06/17/rails-day/We’re into our third hour of Rails Day. So far we’ve hit a few snags and had to write some things over, but we’re making decent progress. It’s a lot of fun. There’s a lot of excitement going on in the community right now. Everyone seems to be having a great time. We also settled on a name…. ActionTracker. Check our status out at http://spectate.railsday2006.com/changesets/teams/26/https://bphogan.com/2006/06/15/i-am-contributing-to-a-book/Thu, 15 Jun 2006 18:38:41 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/06/15/i-am-contributing-to-a-book/I’ve been asked by the talented Ezra Zygmuntowicz to write a chapter for his upcoming book for Pragmatic Programmers. The book is all about deploying Rails applications on Windows servers. It’s going to be pretty boring unless youre a system administrator or a software programmer, so most of you who read this won’t care. It’s still pretty neat to be able to contribute. I have submitted my outline and am going to take a day off of work tomorrow to do some writing.https://bphogan.com/2006/06/15/congratulations-to-aimee/Thu, 15 Jun 2006 18:33:06 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/06/15/congratulations-to-aimee/Aimee had her baby this morning. The baby is healthy and well and weighs 6lbs 1 oz. Thanks to Anita for the update! The little one doesn’t have a name yet but when she gets one, I’ll update the post. Congratulations Aimee Sue! Your journey is just beginning! Update: The baby’s name is Zoe Jean!https://bphogan.com/2006/06/06/rails-day-2006/Tue, 06 Jun 2006 20:27:59 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/06/06/rails-day-2006/Adam, Mike and I are participating in Rails Day 2006, a 24 hour coding marathon where the object is to develop an application in a single day, from start to finish. There are lots of great prizes to win and lots to learn. All of the submitted code will be opened to the public so even if you don’t participate there’s still something to gain. Our team name is “Those Guys that Write Code“.https://bphogan.com/2006/05/30/memorial-day/Tue, 30 May 2006 14:09:26 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/05/30/memorial-day/What a great day. It was a lot of fun to spend the day with friends and family. We did some grilling and I played crouquet with Ana (she did really well!) The weather was really nice but as soon as we all sat down to eat, everyone started to get pretty warm. People slowly moved into the house to cool off. It was nice to see everyone. I did miss Mom a lot though.https://bphogan.com/2006/05/25/difficult-month/Thu, 25 May 2006 17:39:34 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/05/25/difficult-month/May is a difficult month. Mothers’ day and Mom’s birthday are both this month. I felt pretty crappy all day on Mothers’ day. Carissa’s birthday was the 16th and we had a small cookout to celebrate. Mom’s birthday came and went; it was easier than I thought. I think that Christmas will be harder.https://bphogan.com/2006/05/11/more-fame/Thu, 11 May 2006 15:42:02 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/05/11/more-fame/I just made the Ruby on Rails weblog’s main page. Here’s a permalink to the posting.https://bphogan.com/2006/04/15/punks-stealin-my-st/Sat, 15 Apr 2006 14:08:29 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/04/15/punks-stealin-my-st/We woke up this morning to find out that somebody (I’m thinking at least two people) broke into our car last night and stole our stereo. I’ll say that again. Our $150 stereo was stolen from our locked car in front of our house last night. Thankfully they didn’t do too much damage to the car. They did bend up the passenger-side door a bit. The lesson learned though is that possessions are fleeting and it really doesn’t matter what you have, it’s who you have.https://bphogan.com/2006/04/13/extended-holiday-weekend/Fri, 14 Apr 2006 02:18:14 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/04/13/extended-holiday-weekend/I’m going to take some time off from work (both University and otherwise) and relax for the next few days. I plan to do as little work as possible and instead spend my time playing video games, doing some music stuff, playing with Ana, and just wasting time. I haven’t done that in a while. I’ve managed to make it through to the end of Lent with only two accidental incidents with chocolate!https://bphogan.com/2006/04/07/battlefield-band/Fri, 07 Apr 2006 12:48:15 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/04/07/battlefield-band/Dad and I went out to the Battlefield Band concert last night. He’d been wanting to see them for quite a while and I figured I would go. It was a chance for us to get some quality time in, and I figured that I would enjoy the show even though I’d never heard of them. I was right. It was a great show. They were very tight and extremely talented.https://bphogan.com/2006/04/06/home-again/Thu, 06 Apr 2006 11:43:00 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/04/06/home-again/Training was rough. I sat through three days of pretty intense stuff and I’ll be lucky if I can even remember a quarter of it. We did learn some really interesting things and I hope that there’s a way for us to use some of that at work. One thing I know for sure…. I am so glad to be home. Staying by myself in a hotel room away from my family is not something I enjoyed at all.https://bphogan.com/2006/04/02/training-again/Mon, 03 Apr 2006 02:02:42 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/04/02/training-again/I’m back in Madison again. This hotel sucks. It has nice rooms and its very well-kept, but it doesn’t have anything nearby. No close restaurants, no stores, nothing. When you don’t have a car, it’s a bit rough. Im here for Oracle security training. I am excited to learn something new but I would much rather be home with my family. At least I can get some quiet time to get some projects done.https://bphogan.com/2006/03/29/buzzwords-defining-enterprise-applications/Wed, 29 Mar 2006 15:15:56 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/03/29/buzzwords-defining-enterprise-applications/Vital enterprise applications are for proactive organizations leveraging collective synergy to think outside the box and formulate their key objectives into a win-win game plan with a quality-driven approach that focuses on empowering key players to drive-up their core competencies and increase expectations with an all-around initiative to drive up the bottom-line.https://bphogan.com/2006/03/29/dads-adventure/Wed, 29 Mar 2006 15:14:48 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/03/29/dads-adventure/I talked with Dad a few days ago. He sure had an interesting few days. As he was driving north on the highway towards home, his van was rear-ended. Dad was going the speed limit, and so the guy that hit him must have been going considerably faster than that. That’s pretty scary. Dad said he probably would have lost control of the vehicle if he had been driving the Saturn instead of the van.https://bphogan.com/2006/03/06/i-dont-like-to-relax/Tue, 07 Mar 2006 04:40:29 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/03/06/i-dont-like-to-relax/I’ve always known this, but it’s really been noticeable lately. I can’t really sit down on the couch and zone out anymore. My brain keeps moving so fast, thinking of the projects I’m working on or music I want to play. I can’t sit still. Perhaps I’m addicted to work? I’ve got three projects going on right now, and that doesn’t include my day job. That, and I think I’ve decided to write a book.https://bphogan.com/2006/02/10/pay-attention/Fri, 10 Feb 2006 15:53:07 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/02/10/pay-attention/Adult ADD Strengths » Top 10 Advantages of ADD in a High Tech Career I found this today and it made me laugh. I notice nine of these ten items in my work.https://bphogan.com/2006/02/06/my-favorite-commercials-from-the-super-bowl/Mon, 06 Feb 2006 14:46:02 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/02/06/my-favorite-commercials-from-the-super-bowl/ Mastercard: MacGyver Diet Pepsi – Jackie Chan Bud Light: Cleaning the Gutters Sieraa Mist – Airporthttps://bphogan.com/2006/01/27/mickey-burner-crazy-drum-skills/Fri, 27 Jan 2006 22:45:47 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/01/27/mickey-burner-crazy-drum-skills/Mickey20Burmer20-20200420-20I26E20Snare20Solo20-20Google20Videohttps://bphogan.com/2006/01/18/getting-started-again/Wed, 18 Jan 2006 18:37:39 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/01/18/getting-started-again/The memorial service was held on Monday in New Auburn, and it was the most difficult thing I’ve ever faced. It was so hard seeing all those people coming in to give their condolences. Thank you to everyone who paid their respects. For those that didn’t, we understand. We held up pretty well and it was all over before we knew it. Dad and I were both emotionally and physically drained by the end of the day.https://bphogan.com/2006/01/09/linora-hogan/Mon, 09 Jan 2006 06:08:38 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/01/09/linora-hogan/https://bphogan.com/2006/01/08/the-first-day-of-the-rest-orf-my-life/Sun, 08 Jan 2006 23:40:26 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/01/08/the-first-day-of-the-rest-orf-my-life/I didn’t get to sleep until four this morning, and that’s just guessing. They came and took Mom away and then we just all sat around talking for quite some time before the tiredness took over. It took me quite a while to fall asleep and I didn’t wake up until Ana came downstairs at about 8:00 this morning. Ana took the news well, having been previously prepared for this by me, my dad, and my aunt.https://bphogan.com/2006/01/08/peace/Sun, 08 Jan 2006 06:55:26 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/01/08/peace/My mom passed away this morning at around 12:30 am after a long battle with cancer. The last few days have been very hard on her and she has finally found peace. She waited for me. We were here for the last few days and she actually seemed to get better. Carissa was getting sick with a cold and I made the decision to take my family home. We got a call at 11:00 pm saying that it was time so we packed everyone up and went back to New Auburn.https://bphogan.com/2006/01/04/a-day-maybe/Wed, 04 Jan 2006 22:39:14 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/01/04/a-day-maybe/The lady from the hospice came today and told us that there’s only about a day left. Dad and I are to the point where we think we’re ready. Mom was so happy to see Ana today, but Ana is having a hard time dealing with this; she’s afraid to go and see her. Stay tuned.https://bphogan.com/2006/01/03/leave/Tue, 03 Jan 2006 23:41:56 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/01/03/leave/I’m taking a few days off of work to go up to New Auburn to see my parents. I think it’s important to be with my dad at this time and I need to be with my mom. Thanks to everyone for their support and concern. I am truly blessed to know all of you.https://bphogan.com/2006/01/02/from-patrick/Mon, 02 Jan 2006 18:45:29 +0000https://bphogan.com/2006/01/02/from-patrick/Linora is nearing the end of her time with us. The hospice nurse visited her today and thinks that Linora will be with us for a couple of days to maybe a week. We had a wonderful holiday season. Linora’s mom and Earl, along with Brian , Carissa, and Ana spent Christmas day with us. Mary Kay, Ben, and Sharon joined Brian and his family and Mom and Earl on New Years day.