I have returned from NYC and have settled back into work.
But THIS weekend I am doing WEB work for myself and my husbands business. I have spent all morning taking pictures of the items he sells and then I upgraded the store on his website. This included: Updating prices, creating categories, changing the pictures, updating the shipping fees and tax PLUS the return policy and shipping information. I had thought about giving the site a new theme but I did not find one I liked or one that was close which in the long run would have required me to do some tweaking (HTML and CSS) so I decided that since we really do like what the website looks like, it is better for me, to just leave it alone. So, that is all done now. He will be shocked when he gets the bill though ;=) Then I did some maintenance on his computer. That alone was a few, more hours. He will get a seperate bill for that, too. NOW, I can work on my stuff. Such as this blog post and work on The Adventurous Silversmith. Then I can relax for the rest of the day. I normally have weired dreams.
I don't normally get scared or very upset in them. Many of my dreams are like installments in a story, they are in the same place and are a subject I have dreamed about before. Some of my dreams are "LUCID" - I know I am dreaming, in the dream but I just go with it. A few weeks ago I dreamed that I had woken up (from a dream) and that most of my hair had fallen out. I was not upset with this, while in the dream, I knew that I could own the look so I decided to just get the rest shaved off and move on. Then when I really woke up, I was still OK with it and the dream had not scared me or made me upset. When I told some friends, they said that they would have been upset and could not understand why I had been fine with it - "But it's your hair!?!?". Last night, I had a disturbing dream. It was the first disturbing dream I have had in years; I really can't remember the last time I had one and considering that the dream about me losing all my hair did not bother me, this makes me wonder what is really important in my life. So here it is.. I dreamed that I was at the weaving barn and I went to my (assigned loom). It was not there, in its spot where it had been for the past 3 years and the entire barn had been rearranged. I then started to wander the barn and I found a table where the other weavers were ironing scarves and towels. While talking to them I realized this was my loom, it had been partly disassembled and turned into this table, I knew this because I could see the wood plaque with the name "Hermione" on it (yes, my loom has a name, which is also on the bench that goes with it). At this point I realized, where is the rest of the loom? I found the back beam with all the warp on it leaning against the wall, in a corner; I found the castle with the heddles next to it and YES, the warp had be removed from all the heddles and from the reed. I never did find the reed but I then went around, trying to control my temper, as to WHERE WAS THE WEAVING THAT HAD BEEN ON THE FRONT BEAM, DAMN IT!!! No one knew where it was. Then I really started to yell that they should get their stuff off the table that was my loom "look it has the name of the loom on it so it must be mine" and THEY were going to have to reassemble the loom, cause I was not going to do it. And oh, by the way - someone else can rethread the almost 400 heddles so I could start weaving again. Somehow, during this rant I found the 8 placemats that were still connected; they had been rolled up and put on another table. I then told everyone that I was going to take them home and hem them but knowing in my mind that I would not be back. I then woke up and thought - "Whew, it was only a dream". I am relieved. My sweetie-pi is a away for the weekend and so I had big plans to keep myself busy...
Weave Clean the Studio Finish the next metals project on the list Bond with Boots Chat with Elisa of Scotland... I have been doing the bonding with Boots but being woken at 2am to be let out is not part of that deal, but it must be done. I also spoke to Elisa this morn and we chatted for over an hour, always a good sign. I did go to the barn to do some weaving this morning and I think I left my brain here at home because I could not get into a groove, so I came home after 3 hours. I thought that now that I am home, I would clean up the studio from the metal work I have done over the past three weeks but NAHHHHH, I can do that later Right now, I am off to watch some TV and knit, cause that is what this single girl w I have been on a personal high for the past 2.5 days because I was able to loudly, at work, do a rather big Woooooooo-Hoooooooo!!! On Thursday afternoon I completed a major milestone for the project I am working on.
I have been building a custom membership and role provider for our department and it had to meet all sorts of requirements:
First I had to build the Database to hold Users, Applications, Roles for application, Users rights to Applications and assigned roles in the application. After that it was building the libraries to handle all the interaction between the backend database and the front end which was getting the basic login with UserName/Password to work and after that the basic rules about the password. Then it was on to the User Profile page and the Edit Profile pages adding the change password when a user logs in and from the profile page. The last big task was the security certificate and I gave myself 2 weeks to do this. Initially I had some issue with setting up certs on the web server (1.5 days of work) but once that was done, it really only took me 4 days to do the rest of the coding. And all of this was done with C# using MVC (Model-View-Controller), EF (Entity Framework), Ajax, and JQuery which are new to me. And on Thursday afternoon at 3:00 pm I was done with the coding. I still had a complete test cycle to go through to find any new bugs that I had introduced.. but that could be done Friday and next week. Coincidentally the guys and I had planned on going out to a new micro-brew that had opened near work and so I was now looking forward to a relaxing evening and we even went out for dinner. This is what has been consuming my brain for the past month. I would go to bed with code swirling around in my head; I woke up early (sometimes at 4 am) and would be in at work by 7am; I would work through lunch and not leave until 6pm. I would have code in my head during the 45+min drive home and then I would email myself the things I had thought of on the drive home hoping that since I had sent myself a note my head would clear. Friday morning I woke with a sense of calm I had not had for quite a while. It was a great feeling of satisfaction that I had done this all by myself. Next week I can start the management application for:
As we start September much has happened.
We closed on the second house (in Texas) and now to rent it out. We snagged an extra empty lot next to the new house and that will close in the next week or two. Does this make me a land baron or baroness? No, I have not done much weaving, again BUT I am ready to start a new design on my rep weave placemats as the first 4 are done. I have also really thrown myself into my new projects and work and have found that it is suddenly 6 pm and past the time to go home. Then when I get home, I still have code whirling around in my head which at times does not stop even when I go to bed; and it is there still when I wake up and then the cycle repeats. To resolve this I have finally installed a development environment on my computer at home. Wait - how come she has not done that already being a software engineer?? The reason is that I use a MAC at home and at work we use PC's with Visual Studio, SQLServer and lot's of other PC software that won't run on a Macintosh. BUT not any more. A while ago I found out about Mono Develop a IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for Mac's, Linux, and PC's that will allow you to write C# code for Mac's, Linux's PC's, and Smart Phones (iOS, Android, etc). I played with it when I was experimenting with Android development. Then I set it aside. Recently Xamarin released a new version and I thought, let's give it a try so I could do some development for myself, at home. Saturday morning I installed Mono plus GIT (source control) and SourceTree because I use BitBucket for source control. And Git works very nice with Mono/Xamarin. I started this all around 7am and had a development environment up and running by 10 am. Then I proceeded to write some code (I was at it for almost 4 hours) and learn more about the design architecture and I am now using at work: Model-View-Controller. Along with that I am getting up to speed on jQuery and Entity Framework. Now I don't have code in my head and I can enjoy the rest of my weekend, what's left of it. Since returning from THE TEXAS ROAD TRIP I been very busy both at work and at home.
In the arena of software development technologies I have been a bit behind the curve in keeping up and that is partly due the projects I was on at work - the were so big and so complex that as technology moved forward the project did not adopt is because it would have taken too much money and too much time to go back and re-architect and re-write the whole thing. I am also to blame as I could have also been learning it on my own but with all the other hobbies I do something had to give and that was it. Now that I am on a new project at work, I am getting back up to speed on the tech track. I am now learning MVC (Model-View-Controller) and before my trip I was able to spend a good solid month learning the basics and work on the new project at the same time. This past week we had an on-site training class in MVC for developers on base who are now using it or WILL BE using it. Out of 15 students one has been into MVC for about 6 months, then there is me and my one month and two other developers who have just started; everyone else was a newbie. After 4 days of MVC training my head felt like it would burst and I this week, will probably redo a good portion of my code so far; and I am guessing the other students were just overloaded. At home I have been beating on business accounting and inventory software. You can read about it over at The Adventurous Silversmith. Let's just say it has been a slog! HOPEFULLY next week I will be back at weaving and Sunday it is Repousse and Repartee with Diane from the Palomar Gem & Mineral Club. Last week I said I was going to weave at the barn this Saturday but I did not.
There were several factors:
So get there some time after 1o am, spend some time catching up with friends, start weaving at 11, then leave at 3pm results in less than 4 hours of weaving, and so I decided to stay home and work on another metals project. At work, I started my new project this week. This project is even in a new department so I spent most of the week moving my office stuff to a new cubical in a different building. Then I had to do all sorts of paper work to move my developer account to the new computer; fill out more paperwork to get another computer for testing which I don't know when I will get; do some training for access to certain data; and then load gobs of software onto my regular development computer; and write a small requirements document for the first task. Hopefully next week I can actually write some code cause this week the total was a fat ZERO. For your delight, here is a picture of my new do. Sorry but no weaving was done this weekend or last weekend.
Last weekend I was setting up my display at the fair and this weekend I was at another metals class. NEXT weekend I will be back at the barn weaving more placemats. Ah, it is that time of the year when Sprummerall has arrived.
What - you don't know what Sprummerall is?? Why it is that time of year, in Southern California when it can be very Spring like one day (cool and around 70F) and the next it will be high Summer and very hot (100+F) and then cool off so much it is like Fall (temperatures in the mid-60's F). Add these three seasons together: SPRing - sUMMER - fALL and viola, you have SPRUMMERALL. Now, if it would only Snow ;=) So far I am liking the app. I had an iPad last year and I used the Weebly iPhone app for a bit but dropped it when it would not scale for the iPad and I could not add photo's to my blog post.NOT SO with the Android app. The app not only works (so far) with my phone, but you can upload photo's. Right now I am using my Android tablet in landscape mode with a keyboard. Unfortunatly, the app does not autorotate in landscape mode BUT it does scale, really nicely. I have sent this comment back to Weebly so let's see what they can do about landscape mode. The one good thing is that when I have started this blog post, the blog editor IS in landscape so I am not typing at a funny 90 degrees!To prove the picture attachement, here is a new picture of Boots
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About LaurieLaurie lives in central Texas with Erich, a.k.a. "the shop elf", her hubby of 35+ years and Cowboy Boots, the cat; her metals studio including 100+ hammers and 300+ chasing tools; her sewing studio which has a sewing machine, a closet filled with fabric, hundreds of skeins of embroidery floss and perle cotton, silk and other materials, and Mrs. King the dress dummy; two weaving looms, assorted knitting needles, tubs of yarn; lots of books; plus a plethora of geeky tech gadgets, computers, and more. Archives
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