another long hiatus

Here we are again after another long hiatus. What's prompting this entry is the aftermath of some very stormy weather we've had the last couple days. The last couple nights we've had nonstop lightning. Not bolts for the most part, but lightening in the clouds that was going off like strobes nonstop. And torrential rains. I was able to swim Monday night, knowing we were going to get some rough weather later. Not as rough as folks up in Mississippi and Alabama, where tornadoes creamed towns on Sunday and killed 18 people, but a light show that started around 0300 and died off c 0600, just when I was going to work. The same areas in Mississippi and Alabama got run over again Monday night, killing another dozen people. I started out for the pool c 1830 but aborted along Bayou because I could see that there was too much lightening. I headed back home and over the course of the evening the weather got worse. Supposedly we got 5 inches in an hour between 2100 and 2200. Linh got stuck on I-10 overnight because of water flowing over the interstate. I tried to go to work this morning and ran into flooding and stalled cars on Cervantes near A Street. I cut down to Garden Street and had to make a detour around some more flooding just before Pace. When I went over the bridge there was flooding at W and Garden. I went up on La Rua and tried to get over to Warrington. I cut down Old Corry Field to Garden/Navy but the intersection at Navy Blvd and Highway 98 was totally flooded. I tried to cut through Corry Field but their gate onto Highway 98 was closed. That's when I got a call from my boss telling me the hospital was closed for the day. I wound my way back home. Linh got home around 0800. She said Bayou was a mess near the Presbyterian Church. Around 1030 I thought I'd go over to Pensacola State College to see if the pool was going to be open at 1100. As Linh said, Bayou WAS a mess. The whole front of a house near the McMansion had collapsed. In spots, there was dirt a yard deep on Bayou. The neighborhood up behind the church looked a mess. I managed to wind my way through and over the dirt and got up to 12th. There were several abandoned cars facing the wrong way along 12th. PSC was closed, so no swim. I hit a tennis ball for awhile then headed back home. I thought I'd take Summit, but it looked closed. The dip on 12th looked a mess so I tried to go back via Bayou, but it was now closed. I wound up cutting over to 9th, then cutting back on Fairfield to 12th. 12th was flooded at one point so I cut over to 17th, then home. Online I could see pictures of damage along Scenic. I just got back from riding my bide down there. The road is undermined at Scenic and Bayview, so there's a detour. There's a spot right by Bay Bluffs Park that's going, and farther down the road past Brookshire a washout has taken out both lanes. The police wouldn't let me go down to get pictures of that spot. It looks like DOT is going to have their hands full trying to fix/shore up Scenic Highway.

SharePoint 2010

We've been using SharePoint 2007 at work for years. Now we're transitioning to SharePoint 2010. Things are locked down pretty tight where I work so I can't do any code-behind development, but there's still a lot you can do with the available web parts. I am able to use SharePoint Designer 2010, which has come in handy to tweak some things, adding functionality that's not available out of the box.

Theme

I like this theme a lot better than the mint-green

WebMatrix

I've been working with WebMatrix to build Web Pages 2.0 pages to interact with data stored in SQL Server. I like WebMatrix and the Razor syntax; it lets me keep the code for the page on that page. I've always found ASP to be too verbose and obtuse for my taste. Well, I'm learning ASP.NET whether I like it or not as I build pages with WebMatrix.

The impetus for this "project" is interacting with data. Having some concrete goals in mind eases the pain of the ASP.NET I need to learn to accomplish those goals. As always, it's a process of solving a seemingly-endless set of small issues/steps, some of which are spawned by the latest tweaks to the page/site.

Perhaps that's why my previous attempts to "learn ASP.NET" were unsatisfying: I didn't have a sharp focus and quickly became overwhelmed by the vastness of the topic. Not to mention there are a number of approaches and methodologies. WebMatrix just seems simpler to me than "Web Forms" or "MVC".

I really need to tweak the look and feel of this site

Right now it's got a mint-green theme. I hate that color. It's too institutional.

Another long gap

Another long gap between blog posts. In the last few days at work I started a couple blogs on our SharePoint 2010 site. A few minutes ago it struck me that this blog was already extant. Perhaps I'll start actually using it.
BTW: I'm having to use HTML mode to compose this on my work computer. I couldn't just click in this editing window and start typing.
It's actually not a problem working in HTML because I've been working a lot with WebMatrix, which doesn't have a WYSIWYG editor. It's good for me to work directly with the HTML tags.
I'm going to go ahead and publish this post to see how it comes out.

Wow, it's been a LONG time since I've been here. I'm surprised it's still here.

This is a test post. It's been a week or so since my last post and updating my blog, so I had to find my way back to this point.

(door creaks as I return to this long-unused spot on the net)

Helllloooooo.

Long time since I've experimented with blogs, but maybe it's time to revisit the genre. I'll try to tie this blog into my new website, www.christianbahnsen.com

This might also be a good spot to do some journaling. Perhaps I should set one up for Carsten, too.

I think I'll post this for now and be back later.

Ciao

The problem appears to be the firewall or security level on my primary internet access PC. I'm not having the problem on this less secure PC.