Catching Up

It's been a while since I've done some blogging so here's bunch of things all wrapped up in one post.

Southwest Fox
The Southwest Fox 2008 conference did not disappoint. I learned lots of new stuff, met lots of new people, and got to hang out with old friends. The sessions were great! The giveaways to the attendees were out of this world! The social networking was unmatched. If you've never attended a conference, I can't stress enough how much value you get out of going. Online forums are nice, but they don't match the face-to-face personal connections you make at a conference.

GoKart Racing
If you haven't been following this story, in 2006 several of us went racing at F1 Race Factory during the conference. The rules say whoever has the fastest lap, wins. I had the fastest lap, Rick Schummer was behind me by .03 seconds, and Doug Hennig was right behind him. Rick, however, likes to tout that he had the fastest average lap, therefore, he declared himself the winner (at least in his own mind).

Of course, I was very gracious with my win in 2006 ... NOT! I rubbed it in their faces every chance I got. It was fun and the smack that went back and forth was pretty intense. In 2007, we all went back for a rematch. Unfortunately, they were too busy and we weren't able to race. That was fine by me. One more year to continue declaring myself the winner over Rick and Doug.

For 2008 we made reservations ahead of time assuring that we would have a chance to win. Unfortunately for me, it was not good. Both Rick and Doug beat me ... twice! Doug was the winner in our race, Rick was second, and I was a distant 5th. When we take into account some of the other races, Rick Strahl was the overall winner. He kicked our butts! Ironically, Rick Schummer once again had the fastest average lap, so he once again, is touting victory.

I guess I'll have to put up with a year of getting my nose rubbed in my loss!!

Blame It On Rick
Ever needed to shift the blame to someone else? Well, now you can. Just visit www.blameitonrick.com, make a post, and relieve yourself of all blame. Rick Schummer is graciously accepting the blame for anything you want to send his way. Check out this fun website if you have a chance.

VFPx
At Southwest Fox, the VFPx project on CodePlex was heavily talked about. It is considered the future of FoxPro. It's a place where us, the FoxPro Community, can share utilities and FoxPro source code with others. In fact, all the FoxPro xbased source code has been posted on VFPx and is available for the community to maintain and move into the future. The "Call To Action" throughout the conference was to encourage people get involved. Consider downloading some projects and doing some testing. Offer your help as a developer on some projects. Consider submitting new projects. Anything to help the FoxPro Community!

FoxTabs
The VFPx project on CodePlex has a new utility called FoxTabs. I've been using it for a week now and it's pretty useful. It lets you quickly jump between windows within your FoxPro development environment. It's still in beta, but it's worth checking out.

Foxit Reader
I recently learned about a new free PDF reader called Foxit Reader. It appears to be faster than the standard Adobe reader. I've been using it for about a week so far and I like it. There's a free version with the basics or you can upgrade to a "pay" version to get more features. Check it out and see if you like it.

eWallet
If you're like me, you have a gazillion logins and passwords to remember for various websites. Several months ago I started using a product called eWallet by Ilium Software to help me keep my head on straight. It lets me organize logins and passwords and so much more. I can track my credit cards, my insurance cards, membership information, etc. The software lets me quickly launch a website and it automatically enters my login and password for me. It's a real time saver!

Blogs
I've added a few people to my Blogroll so check it out when you get a chance.

Cool Tool: Beyond Compare + Addon by Frank Perez

Beyond Compare is a great little utility that can be used to compare files. It's from Scooter Software and is only $30. What makes this utility even cooler is an addon written by Frank Perez (which is $FREE.) He wrote a utility that lets us compare FoxPro files ... like classes, forms, reports, and such. This is awesome ... I can't tell you how many times I have wanted to compare two different reports to see what is different!

Way to go Frank!!!

Read all about this on Frank's blog at http://www.pfsolutions-mi.com/blog/2008/03/08/BeyondCompare.aspx. I have added links in my Cool Tools section to Beyond Compare and to Frank's site for downloading the addon.

Enjoy!

Cool Tool: SlickRun by Bayden

This is the first post in a series I'm calling "Cool Tool". As a developer, I spend the majority of my day in front of a computer and I'm all for anything that helps me be more efficient. Whenever I run across a tool or utility that does just that, I'll blog about it and spread the word.

SlickRun by Bayden Systems is one such tool. Rick Strahl pointed me to this tool recently and it quickly became one of my favorites. It's a free floating command line utility for Windows and I couldn't live without it now that I have it. It's kinda like batch files on steroids. In fact, now that I have this installed, I have removed most of the icons from my desktop and I use SlickRun to launch almost everything.

Here are some examples of what I use it for:

• I defined "Mail" to launch Outlook and open up my email


• I defined "Music" to launch Yahoo's radio so I can
  listen to my favorite R&B station.


• I defined "MBS" to launch remote desktop and log into
  work.


• I defined "Time" to launch Excel and open the spreadsheet I use to track time on projects.


• I defined "UT" to launch Explorer and open up the
  Universal Thread.


• I defined "Word" to launch Microsoft Word.


• I defined "Newsgroup" to launch my newsgroup reader.

You basically define a word and then tell it what to launch. And what is even cooler is that you can define one word that launches several other words. For example, I have "morning" defined to open my email, launch the internet, open up remote desktop so I can log into work, launch my time card, and a bunch of other things that I do every morning.

It also takes advantage of remembering what I typed last time so when I type "m", it displays "mail" or "music" depending on what I did last time. Often times all I have to type is one letter and it already knows what I want to do. What a huge time saver!!

So what's the cost of this great tool? Well .. what's it worth to you? Technically it's free, but donations are certainly appreciated by Bayden. I can tell you that after using this tool for just one day I sent my donation off to Bayden giving them my praise and kudos.

I consider this tool a "Must Have" and I'm sure you will too!