Interestingly enough...this doesn't suprise me.

With all the rain we've had lately, it was decided to run the river..speed style. Not speed speed...just as fast as Jeremy and I can paddle a tandum yak.  Jeremy made the call last week about a <2hr econ run(*What!!*), that obviously meant NO fishing :(

Well..almost no fishing. In a moment of brilliance, I decided to tie a top water soft bait to the back of the kayak with some 14lb line. It bobbed along behind for about a quarter of the trip when a branch snagged and popped the line. Can't blame me for trying.

Anyway, we managed a good pace, with no portages and clocked an impressive 1hr 55min econ river trip. The normal milage on the river is 8.2 miles from SR419 launch to the Snow Hill rd bridge. This trip, due to the flood stage of the river, and a few short cuts, was 7.43 miles.

Next time..maybe more fishing, less paddling. Beat that!

As President, John McCain would exercise the veto pen to restore fiscal responsibility to our federal government. Play the game to help John McCain in his tireless fight against wasteful spending.

Funny game, not so funny pork pet projects of special interests.

My at&t wireless Blackjack II was not bundled with Internet Connection Sharing which is a part of the standard Windows Mobile 6 application set.  For those of us on the go and traveling this is a must have program to connect our laptops to the Internet while sitting in the airport or other locations outside of  the office.  Why it was left off I am not sure.  A few Googles later and I had found out there was already a hack to provide the application.  To setup Internet Connection Sharing for the Blackjack II I followed these steps (paraphased from the Howard forums). 

Step1: Make sure your device is app unlocked!!; run secpolicies.cab first if unsure or the certs won't take!! **run this cab and reboot; http://sems.org/content/download/secpolicies.cab. Use Activesync to move this file to your 'My Documents'. You have to use 'File Explorer' to install these cab's from the device.

Step2: REBOOT (means turn off/on) THE DEVICE!

Step3: Install the BJ.WM6.ICS.Enable cab file (it might ask you to reboot)

Step4: navigate to \My Documents and click on the certs.cab file

Step5: REBOOT

Step6: Changed settings/connections/gprs/AT&T IMS/Access Point from isp.cingular to wap.cingular. After looking at my data acees on my att bill all internet access(phone or tethered) is logged as to/from as wap.cingular.

Step7: go to Start / Applications and run 'Internet Sharing'. You phone will indicate that it's making a connection, once connected the display will show 'Connected'. At this point you can surf the web, email , etc. You may need to disable Activesync while Internet Sharing. Also, incoming calls will break your connection. I'm connected to my laptop with the USB cable and haven't tried using Bluetooth, which should work as well.

Downloads:
BJ.WM6.ICS.Enable cab file is temporarily hosted at:
http://www.mdots.net/misc/BJ.WM6.ICS.Enable.cab

http://sems.org/content/download/secpolicies.cab
 
References:
I found this example on the the following board:
http://howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=1290859&page=2&pp=15

Also found on the at&t wireless support forums:
http://forums.wireless.att.com/cng/board/message?board.id=samsung&thread.id=45502&view=by_date_ascending&page=4

Disclaimer: Don't hack your phone if you don't know what you're doing.  I provide these instructions UNSUPPORTED. So don't get upset if I don't reply to requests for help...all though I may ;)

Recently I needed to create a Google map driven solution that required geocoded addresses. After poking around the Google Maps API and looking at other solutions I decided that I'd batch geocode the address I needed and store the coordinates in the database with the address data. This would prevent numerous geocode call to the API and should make things run a bit faster. While looking for examples of Coldfusion and Google maps I really didn't find anything that met my needs so I started from scratch. Here's what I did:

 First thing that you'll need is a Google maps key. Get one here.

<cfset ghostKey = "yourKeyGoesHere">

Next make the http call to Google. You pass in three parameters: q='address to geocode' output='xml' key='hostkey'. So your request is formatted as:

I chose xml as output and was easy to work with. You can choose XML, KML or JSON. Look at the Google API for more info.

You can view the http results here: results.xml

Cool, two lines of code so far and we have a result. As you can see the XML is well formatted and easy to parse at this point. There are a view 'gotcha's' as well. First check to see if XML was returned.

If so, xmlParse it:

Next you want to make sure you're getting a response code of 200, walk the XML to find Status.code:

Great! we can proceed. If you look at the result.xml file you'll see an node for Accuracy. For my application I needed an accuracy of 8.

Now I can grab the Longitude and Latitude to update the database:

Pretty straight forward. But, if you remember I had a cfif that wanted an accuracy of 8, if not try Yahoo. No problem...just as easy as Googles...pretty much, just different. You guess it! you'll need a Yahoo API key too.

Do the neccesary check for good reponse Yahoo's XML Result:

Yahoo deosn't have a 'Accruacy node, they have precision and the best 'precision' you can have is address level. Any way, walk the XML grab the coords and off you go.

That's it. simple geocoding using Coldfusion and/or Yahoo! I don't blog much, but hope to get a post on how to create dynamic Google maps using Coldfusion.

I worked as much as I could today...decided to go kayak fishing with Jr on the Econ river. We left around 1:30pm from the SR419 launch site in Oviedo. The river was at a nice level as we only had one portage on the day. It was an exciting day for alligator viewing. Lots of big 'ol gators sunning themselves on small white sandy beaches along the river.

First stop was a geocache named 'Snake Alley'. We found it pretty quickly and were back on the river within 10 minutes. There are about 20 other geocaches hidden along the river.

As for fishing we lost a couple of lures, one Senko 4" and a $1.00 Walmart spinner, snagged on submerged dead wood. I still had the drag set from breaking the line from one of those lures when I got a BIG hit, fish starting heading towards us and when it saw the kayak, it took off breaking the line, as the drag was set toooo tight. Was exciting...but no fish in the boat. Next we came up to the 'Honey' hole. I'm caught nice bass here almost every outing. First there's a gator that hangs out here and is starting to become less and less afraid when we approach. May need to make buzzard bait of him one day. Anyway...dropped a Senko right next to some nice structure and let it sink....BAM big fish on. This bass jumped about three times splashing Jr and me...was very exciting. Finally got him in the boat, ~6-8lbs. Photo by Jr.

In August 2007 I was riding  my mountain bike  in the  Little Big Econ state forest.  Was enjoying some quick single track, the sugar sand was beaten down pretty good from some recent rains, so...quicker than normal. All is good...until. Came up to the part of the trail that runs along the river to the right of the bridge, coming from Jacobs trail. There is a section that splits, high road to the right, low narrow to the left, correct, I went left. The trail is about a foot across with a wall of dirt/sand on your right and a nice drop into the river on the left. Then the trail gets steep, about 12 foot climb (I know, not real steep, whatever)..anyway, I get to the top and the recent rains has eroded the top of the climb into a nice 2 foot wall. I hopped my front tire up, no problem. Then my momentum stops... I unclip my right foot and of course I start leaning to the left. I'm falling and there's nothing to grab on to. My left hand is clawing at the dirt but the bike and my weight are quickly succumbing to gravities affects. Next thing I know I'm in the river sitting on the back tire of the bike. About a 18 foot drop from the top. I hop up quickly, as I have seen BIG gators in these waters and start heading towards a  spot I can climb out. Dragging my bike behind me I step into a hole and sink up to my chest in water...I start walking quicker now. Climbed out and started to laugh, what else could I do? My friend Mike circled back as heard the commotion. He confirmed that I didn't make any 'girlie' noise/screams...was all grunts and manly sounds *whew*. Finally get my composure and mount the bike to continue and the rear tire said, no go. I had a nice S curve in the wheel from landing on it. I released the rear brake and it spun free. So I rode out with no rear brake..not fun.

Days later I get the bike to the shop (Orange Cycle) and tell the story...laughs for everyone. All in all, New tire, new rear wheel, new rear cassette, new chain, new bottom bracket, new rear swing arm bearings, front shock cleaned and lubed. ~$300

Bruises lasted for at least a month.

Still riding the trail, thought about selling the bike for a few days, but got over it.

Many days later:

I finished the race in fine shape...in fact I was the first to complete the 35(actually 35.9) mile ride. Well actually the first that was riding just the 35 mile leg. There were other riders ahead of me...they were heading across the state to Ceder Key (145 miles). Anyway...three cheers for me :)

***The Ceremony***

There were about 6 different color guards from various agencies present. They marched to the starting line and then Taps was played from a bugle. Next each of the officers name were read by the Lake county Sheriff's daughter. Next a bell was rung for each officer..it was very quite and solemn moment. Amazing Grace was played by the bag pipers and the race began.

***The Ride***

I left the starting line at 6:30am with the first bunch to leave and was trying to figure out which rider to hook up with...then I went over railroad tracks and clunk...my GPS fell off my bike. I was think...how much did that thing cost...so I turned around and picked it up;) I caught up with about 12 riders that were going all the way to Cedar Key, which was to other ride co-starting with ours. These guys/gals were fast, so I tuck in behind them and pedaled like crazy, we managed around 20-25 mph for the whole trip. Yes, I felt like I was going to throw up a few times, especially my turn at the front which last about 10 seconds.

I meet a few of the riders and got the chance to tell them why I was riding, which was to honor the Callins and Michaels memory. I pointed out the Callins house on Lake Mills where Mike grew up, and spoke about Mike's character. I also heard some great stories about other fallen officers.

Well after about a hour and half I reached the finish, there was an aid station set up with beverages and food...but no finish line. Guess what, I beat the finish line set-up. Now that's fast! ;)

Afterwards I had to ride home...another 12 miles. So my mileage for the day was actually 48 miles. Whew

Me putting on my socks

That's me in the yellow

I finally got brave enough to publish some functionality utilizing cfdoument tags. Guess what? IE 6 and it's freaking Eolas patent patch starts breaking my delivered pdfs. I was getting a dialog box promting my to 'open''save''canel' the *.cfm file that was generating the pdf. You could save the pdf...I mean .cfm file then change it to a .pdf, poof file opens as expected.

The CFMX 7.0.2 updater fixes this issue. It's not documented well if this is actually what fixed my issue...anyway, it fixed it.

My dev environment was 7.0.2 so I didn't notice issues until it was published to prod. I guess I just felt like ranting a bit. I still love CF! Microsoft....not so much.