The Design and Implementation of laffer1

I've been using the new Grid in Dojo 1.2 for a project.  I've come across some missing features that I feel are a requirement for a Grid.  First, the component doesn't seem to have a way to handle multiline data such as that in a textarea.  I need this for a project.  Dojo also doesn't document the expected input to the grid components.  So when developing JSON output, you have to either write a lot of custom formatters which require research or try to figure out what it's expecting. 

To a certain extend, it should make your life easier and be adaptive not the other way around. At the very least, they could document it properly.  I did find this

Many components are missing from that that i see in 1.2.3 dojo's files. 

While driving back from the cafe, I heard a piece on NPR about President Lincoln.  According to someone on NPR, Lincoln had hoped the freed slaves would leave the United States.  It does bring some questions into image many have of Lincoln. 

Wow, I just read an article on MSN about Suze Orman. It's interesting to see a Microsoft site bash a CNBC employee as they have a partnership.

I actually agree with many of the points brought up in this article.  If she only has 3% of her own money in the stock market, it does put doubt on her advice about investing. 

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/02/11/missing.florida.girl/index.html 

Anyone who's been in a mobile home knows the rear door is a joke.  Most of them can be easily opened depending on the weather without signs of "forced entry".  However, I would be suspect of the girlfriend if she didn't want the daughter in "their" life.   Without knowing the situation, it's hard to say.  

When I was living in one of those tin cans, I had a friend who snuck in a few times using the rear door during the summer.  If you held the knob a certain way, you could literally open the door without any serious trouble.  

I've been fighting with Dojo for the last 24 hours over a very stupid bug.  The TextArea widget doesn't appear to work properly with data from an ItemFileReadStore. So setValue didn't give an error, but it didn't put anything in the box either.  Very odd. Here is an excert from the code.  This version works because of the ' ' + .  When that is removed from setValue, the call appears to do nothing.

    function projselect(id)
    {
        var myurl = "admin_invoices_json.php?id=" + dijit.byId('project').valueNode.value;
        //var value = document.forms.frmNewInvoice.project.options[id].value;
        var store = new dojo.data.ItemFileReadStore({url: myurl });
        var newValue = store.fetch(
        {
            query: {project_id: "*"} ,
            onComplete: function(items, request) {                      
                dijit.byId('billingaddress').setValue(' ' + items[0].billing_address);
                dijit.byId('billingperson').setValue(items[0].billing_person);          
            }
        });
    }

<tr>
<td class="formlabel" width="200">Billing Person</td>
<td><input name="billingperson" type="text" id="billingperson" size="45" maxlength="45" value="" dojoType="dijit.form.ValidationTextBox" trim="true" required="true" /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="formlabel" valign="top">Billing Address</td>
<td><textarea id="billingaddress" name="billingaddress" cols="50" rows="10" dojoType="dijit.form.Textarea"></textarea></td>
</tr>

The JSON

{ identifier: 'project_id', label: 'project_id', items:[{"project_id":"74","billing_person":"Billing Guy","billing_address":"1111 Test St Test County, MI 48108"}]}

I spent the weekend researching cognos, ajax libraries, and methods to do charting.  I may have an upcoming project to create a dashboard.  I've always been a fan of dojo, but I know so many people that like jquery.  I haven't been impressed with it.  As an experiment, I created a pie chart with dojo for just journal's public/private/friends posts statistics.  It doesn't look too bad.  I don't think it makes sense to have that on the front page, but that's another issue.  

I created a linkedin profile today.  I've been putting it off for awhile, but it seems like a good idea.  I haven't taken the time to get it all together yet. 

I've been working for a company called PRIME research since December.  It was initially a part time position through the 20th.  However, it appears I've got an extension through July and possibly a full time gig.  

I'm working with AMP (PHP, MySQL, Apache) for the projects.   

Posting from Midnightbsd using javajj. This is going well.

I'm testing the java jjclient

 I just noticed a weird am/pm bug with JJ.  I think the date picker and mysql date format are not getting converted properly.  Hmm...

12:58 == pm and 00:58 == am in the date picker js, but maybe not in the other code.

 There is a video of commencement highlights on EMU's website.  

I've been playing around with egroupware.  It's a kitchen sink PHP app that does everything but blogging.  Aside from insane php.ini customization, a ridiculous PEAR dependancy list, and a 35 Euro manual, it's just so so.  Actually, the manual is the biggest problem.  I'm all for open source projects making money on detailed books, but paying 35 Euro for a PDF install manual is silly.  I figured out the installation myself, but developing a simple module is another matter.  Without proper documentation, it's a matter of looking at existing modules and determining the minimum to get one running.  After some mailing lists posts, and viewing code, I got a simple module loading without templates and SQL access.  The ACL table is particularly vague.  What's the difference between -1 and 6?  Way to use meaningful constants.  I don't see how someone could use egroupware and other PHP apps on the same server without a jail environment.  The php.ini settings conflict with phpMyAdmin and Squirrelmail.  While one can argue the latter is not needed with it, the former is quite handy.  

I could see the app as a useful environment for some folks with integrated authentication (LDAP, mysql, AD, etc) and wiki + email client.  

Yesterday, I participated in commencement at Eastern Michigan University.  My parents, aunt nicki, and cousin sean attended along with Caryn.  It was an interesting experience.  An actor from Law and Order SVU was the guest speaker.  He went to EMU for a few years and then went to NYC to act 35 years ago.  My aunt's car had some battery trouble after the event.  We got it jumped and she was able to get it repaired for a safe journey home.  My parents joined Caryn and I downtime.  We went to Seva for dinner.  Then I had to complete an online final (history 103?)  and then get some sleep for a final in the morning in COSC314 (Computational Discrete Structs).  That was my last final.

I'll still be helping out at the CS department for a bit while they transition into my replacement;  That involves some web application development and a little server administration.   Kirk has been a good boss.  

I'm also working on a project for my new job.  It's PHP work.  I probably shouldn't get into too much detail.  

My father gave me a nice watch for graduation.  

So after cleaning my windshield off and driving, some snow falls on my windshield from the roof.  It gets logged under my windshield wiper.  Well what does my saturn do?  It decides to fuck up the windshield wiper because it hit heavy snow.  Now only one speed works (really fast).  

I guess I'm going to saturn tomorrow.

 I woke up early with the inability to get back to sleep.  Caryn is traveling right now and I'm stuck with nothing to do, very tired, and deciding how to spend my day.

I read this article about the lack of profits at Microsoft in terms of their online division.  I don't believe Microsoft can turn things around with their "do everything" mentality.  They need one good product to attract users to their other properties.  Sadly, hotmail is their best weapon now.  I think they could be competative with search provided they expand their search results and stop optimizing for their own partners (and their own) products.  Nothing is more annoying that to search for linux or bsd and get a Windows ad.  The BSD results are a joke.  Searching for data on integrating windows and mac os is even bad.  It's clear they are either filtering or have a very small index of the web.  It's also possible that they manually add entries and their own stuff comes first.

I think there is too much competition online.  Most of the novelty of the web has worn off for people.  It's become a shopping and news source and less of a peer to peer communication medium.  I think this is in part to the younger generation shunning the internet in favor of proprietary cell phone messaging.  Why have something for free when you can pay per message.  Microsoft will never be amazon.com and they already partnered with NBC.  Perhaps they need to get a better arrangement with NBC.  The other big pull these days is social networking and sharing pictures.  I think picture sharing sites are somewhat a fad.  It takes energy to share photos and eventually apple and microsoft will automate the process with their own software.  That is an angle for them I guess.  Make a .Mac (mobile me) style photo gallery service for free built into windows live properties + a local client.  Social networking is interesting, but I think long term that blogging and sites like facebook will die out.  Facebook will be replaced by something else just as myspace has lost momentum.  It will happen eventually.  I give credit to facebook for innovating in many ways, but as they change the site users will leave.  It's a catch-22.  Essentially sites like google have not changed in years.  They only add services.  Facebook needs to follow that model not to alienate users. 

In my opinion, microsoft should give up on an online revenue directly and instead partner with other companies in to integration with windows.  They still have a monopoly lock on their OS and office suites that can be leveraged for a few years yet.  

From an open source perspective, we need to de-thrown Microsoft Office and make an idiot proof desktop.  I'm not interested in working on office suites.  

This is most unfortunte. Time Machine didn't backup all of my files apparently. I lost some music in iTunes that I know was there. I'm quite pissed.

Between coding, I've been playing WoW some this weekend. I've finally got a level 36 character. I've been stuck in the 20s for a long time. Of course I gave up leveling for awhile, but blizzard made it easier.

I printed out my programming assignment only to find a bug in the transtitive test at the last minute. So I spent another hour rewriting the test and cleaning up the transitive_closure function as well. I'm too tired to verify all the output at this point, but at least I dont' see obvious flaws. It's due tomorrow morning.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/14/news/economy/retail_sales/index.htm

I don't understand CNN sometimes. Gas prices fell but most companies kept their higher rates on things like food, shipping (UPS/FedEx), etc due to the decline in purchasing. This means people can't afford $5 for a coffee.

 I've been working on MidnightBSD today.  I've fixed at least ten different problems in src today.  At the moment, it's building again.  We'll see what happens.

This is the first day I've taken "off" from homework in awhile.  I have an assignment due on monday, but i really don't feel like working on it right now.