Ramblings

There have actually been several interesting things to note about the book of late.

The first interesting thing to note is that you can now purchase the book from REAL Software when you go to renew or purchase a license for REALbasic. w00t!

Also, you are now able to order Ramblings on REALbasic through the store if you live in Canada or Mexico! The shipping cost will be 11$ to anywhere in those two countries. Sorry, but still no solution for shipping internationally in a more generic fashion.

Which brings me to my final note of interest. I've done away with the ability to ship the book via FedEx express saver. You might think this is sad news -- but wait for the punchline. ;-) I've decided to use USPS Priority Flate Rate for all domestic shipping. This is awesome news for anyone purchasing the book through the store. Media mail (the previous option) would usually arrive within 2-3 weeks. But for the same price at the post office, I can send the book to you in 2-3 (business) days. So this is actually pretty awesome news!

Phew, the last few weeks have been a whirlwind!

I had the ARBP chat a while ago, and it went really well. Over 20 people showed up, and the hour long Q & A ended up lasting over two hours. I'm always happy to talk shop though, so it was a blast. Heck, some people even stayed up until the wee hours of the morning, coming all the way from Africa just to chat!

The book has been going really well. Amazon has been a bit... different... to work with, but as I get more used to dealing with them, I think things will go better. The book was listed as out of stock for ages because of a shipping snafu that we're still trying to rectify. But at least they got the new shipment of books and it's back in stock!

I went deer hunting last weekend with my dad. When I live in the area, I try to go with him every year -- but I've not actually carried a gun since I was about 15. This year I decided to try actually hunting again, and it's been fun. Unfortunately, it's also been exasperating since we're not seeing any deer. In fact, thus far the only deer either of us has seen was the one that strolled through the driveway while our guns were 10 yards away from both of us! We were outside, eating lunch and BSing -- not even remotely trying to be quiet. And a doe walked right in front of us... go figure! I told dad that I may hunt from the comfort of the cabin since that appears to be the only place we're seeing em! ;-P I'll be going up again this weekend, and really hope one of us gets a deer. I love venison. ;-)

Elissa and I ended up having to buy a new car this past week. Her 95 Escort needs a new heater core and we're not interested in putting that kind of labor into the car. So we got a 2007 Pontiac Vibe, and love it. We wanted another station wagon because they're so handy, and this one worked out perfect. 35 mpg, tons of cargo room, and I got it for a steal! And then the truck died. It's in the shop, being worked on for the past week... but it's looking like it's going to be a pretty spendy repair bill for it. Don't you love how car troubles seem to come in twos? I sure don't. But the truck is still in good enough shape where repairing it makes sense, so repair it I shall. The exhaust manifold's actuator rod broke and the PCM died. I was actually pretty lucky the vehicle was still in a drivable state when I got it in to the shop.

Life at 4D is going well. I've been switching gears off of my previous project, and starting to work on something I find a bit more exciting. I'm not certain how much of either project I can talk about at this point though. But I may babble on about it now and then regardless. :-P

If anyone is interested in having a chat about Ramblings, REALbasic, the weather, etc -- you should stop on by the ARBP chat room at 8pm EDT tomorrow (Wed, the 28th). We're going to be having a get together, and it should be a lot of fun. Alas, but due to the diversity of locations, I can't buy the first round of drinks. ;-(

If you aren't able to make it, but still have a question you'd like to see asked, feel free to email it to me or Paul Lefebvre before 8pm EDT. Since this is an online chat, I am told there will be transcripts available afterward.

Hope to see you there tomorrow!

Huttah! The books have arrived from the printer and the first batch of orders went out today. I'm very excited that things are finally starting to roll with actually getting the book into reader's hands. I worked on the thing for so long, I was starting to wonder if I'd ever finish it!

And to make matters more exciting, I've been invited by ARBP to speak about Ramblings on REALbasic next Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 8pm EST. So if you'd like to chat about the book or REALbasic, then please join me! I watched the chat with Geoff last month, and it's actually a pretty fun little setting. Should be a blast!

If you've not gotten your copy of Ramblings on REALbasic, you should order your copy today!

So I came down with a mystery illness at the beginning of last week. It started out feeling like a small tickle in the back of my throat. The following day it was a 100+ degree fever. After a few days of feeling like crap, the fever broke and I thought I was on the mend. Little did I know, round two was still in store. My mystery illness turned into a sinus infection over the weekend, and now I'm in more pain than I was when I had the fever. Blech!

I'm starting a new project at work, which has me considerably more excited. Since it's pre-release, I can't talk about it too much though. But once it starts getting into the public's hands, I can spout off about it a bit more.

I started playing Fallout 3 last week. I got the "game of the year" edition, which has all the downloadable content. So far it's been a fun game. Just like Oblivion, the world is very expansive. I've gotten reasonably far into the game (I finished the main storyline), but still feel like I've only scratched the surface of the content. The game should be a nice distraction in the evenings.

The book is going well -- it just got off the printing press last week and is being shipped to distributors currently. This means order fulfillment should be happening pretty quickly!

Since people like to say things like "Just Google it", and "I googled for that yesterday", I had an interesting thought last night. What if you use Bing as your search engine? "Just Bing it" is natural enough, but what about the past tense? Does one Bang? "I banged that yesterday" seems like something which should be spoken outside of polite company.

Thoughts to ponder, for sure...

As you may have already heard (thank you Amazon), I am proud to announce my forthcoming book Ramblings on REALbasic. This book is an edited and updated compilation of over 200 of my best blog entries, including new content that's never been seen before. In it you will find tips & tricks for REALbasic that are not available in any other source. Weighing in at around 550 pages, Ramblings on REALbasic covers topics such as the REALbasic language, design patterns, user experience and Windows-specific technologies.

Hear what others are saying about Ramblings on REALbasic:

"Ramblings (the blog) was one of the most useful resources I ever found for getting stuff done in REALbasic. But what I liked best about it was that almost every time a new entry came out, I could be sure of a really good read."
-- Steve Garman

"I've been reading Aaron's Ramblings blog for a few years and have always picked up some pearls on REALbasic programming, as well as programming in general. Aaron has an in-depth knowledge of compilers, language construction and language usage plus the rare knack for communicating clearly and definitively to both beginners and experts. If you want to be a better REALbasic programmer, read everything Aaron's got to say!"
-- Dr. Scott Steinman

I would like to extend a heartfelt "thank you" to Brandon Warlick and the folks at Sunbelt Business Graphics, Inc. Their help, dedication, and experience in the printing industry made this book possible.

First, the soreness. Elissa and I are getting around to doing our fall tree planting. Every year, we try to add a few trees to the yard. Our goal is to have a fully wooded lot by the time our grandchildren inherit the house. ;-P We both love seeing trees, and that's the one downside to the area we built the house in. It used to be a corn field, so there's very little structure around.

This is the first time in my life I've actually bought a tree. I usually go out to the woods and dig them up. A lot less expensive, and a lot more work. But the survival rate of the transplants are usually about 50%. So this year, we decided would be our one year to get "real" trees, and we can go back to transplants next year. So we bought a weeping willow for the low spot in the yard (I suspect that willow will become sentient within a year, that's how fast it will grow). We also got a 2.5" autumn blaze maple tree, and a 6' blue spruce tree.

So I've been digging holes most of the week, and that's why I am sore. We have a vein of clay that runs under our yard in various spots, and where I dug the hole for the willow was dead-on. It took me almost 2.5 hours to dig that hole. The hole for the pine tree took forever because I had to move a sprinkler head about 15 feet, as well as dig a monster-sized hole. The maple tree was the only hole that wasn't horrible to dig.

The reason I'm so excited is because Fall is here! This is my favorite time of year, and the chief reason I wanted to move back to MN in the first place. Fall here is absolutely stunning, with all the trees changing colors, the farm harvests, the weather getting colder and winter just around the corner. Football season is starting up (please don't suck this year Vikes!), and baseball season is winding down (go Twins, go!) with hockey coming up quickly (wahoo Wild!).

So life around here is going pretty well!

So the internet broke up with me today. Thankfully, it was only a short divorce. It got about as far as Fargo, then turned around and came back to me. We've reconciled our differences and will be resuming our happy marriage with fervor. However, during our brief hiatus, I caught a glimpse of what life is like without the internet. Here's a sample:

I was in the middle of composing a fairly involved email to a coworker of mine when I lost connectivity. My email is actually an Outlook account which requires a VPN connection to hit the server -- so when the network goes down, I get these lovely modal dialogs that say "cannot connect to blah blah blah." Since the net appeared to be gone forever, and I was tired of seeing these stupid dialogs, I wanted to close my email client down. However, I didn't want to lose my long email. So I tried to save a draft.

And then I found out that for my case, drafts are saved on the server and only on the server. Not locally.

I can understand saving drafts on the server. It's kind of handy to be able to write a draft at home on the desktop, then go to the airport and continue the draft from the laptop. However, what I can't understand is Thunderbird's incredibly stupid behavior when there's no connection to the Outlook server. Not everyone has stable network connections, and failing to save data when the internet is down is a horrible user experience. To a normal user (aka, not a computer geek like myself), the two don't even correlate!

Hopefully, since the net and I have resolved our differences, I won't ever have to run into this situation again. But it'd be nicer still if I never ran into it because Mozilla implemented a fall-back mechanism for saving drafts.

Life has been both busy and bucolic as of late. Work keeps the majority of my time quite busy. Most things I do at work I can't really talk about in public because they've not been released yet. But once that changes, I'll be able to start babbling about work-related geek topics again. But in the meantime, I mostly just get to say "work is busy." :-P

When I'm not working, that's when all the crazy stuff happens. Take yesterday as an example. I was out gardening, trimming the irises back for the winter. And I almost cut my pinky finger off with the pruning shears. I wasn't watching very carefully, and I managed to do some pretty neat damage to my finger. So far, it's looking like I won't require stitches -- but just barely. And had I been paying even less attention than the little I was, I'd be fingerless because those shears are sharp!

In other crazy news, we had a party last weekend to celebrate our moving back to MN. It went really well. About 15-20 people showed up, and we played games (beanbag toss, badminton, boccie ball), drank beers and caught up. I had friends from college come up from the cities, cousins come up from Mankato, as well as friends local to the St Cloud area show up. It was awesome! Makes me want to have more parties. :-D

My work trip to France went alright, up until I got the flu. Let me tell you, international travel sucks to begin with. But it sucks harder when not feeling well!

So that's the past few weeks. What's on the horizon?

I've started doing some programming for fun again. I started a little side project this week to make a small video game. Once it gets a bit further along, I'll probably talk about it more. Right now there's not much to discuss as I've been working on the game engine, but not really the display functionality. I don't want to bore you unless I'm actually going to finish the game. :-P

Both Elissa and I are super excited the Fall is approaching. It's always been my favorite time of year, and I've talked it up to Lis so much during our relationship, I think my excitement has caught on. Her dad is coming up in a week or so to visit, and they're going up north to view the colors. It should be a blast, but I won't be able to join them -- saving up my vacation time for around Christmas.