me talking out loud

Well I’m going on vacation for just under a month starting tomorrow. Will be going to Florida and Maine in the US and visit my family and my spouse’s family. Don’t worry I’ll still be around because I still have to work on my IntSmarty project. I’ll also be posting pictures of the vacation later.

The family and I will be going back stateside to attend my sister’s wedding and graduation for RN school. My family keeps asking me when exactly are we going to show up. Unfortunately I can’t tell them since I don’t know.

Here is how it works - My husband is retouring at his military command. This means since we will be having a COT (Countinuous Overseas Tour) the military will fly us (as in the whole family) back stateside to where my husband joined the military. Those tickets cost ~$1500 - $1800 US each, so the military is saving us $4500 - $5400 in plane tickets. We figure that much money is worth not knowing when we fly out until 2 - 5 days before it.

My boss and my husband’s boss know we are going on vacation and the approx time period so it is all good. Both my family and my husbands are very excited about us coming home since we haven’t been there in 2 years. Also my daughter and husband will be in the wedding so I know my sister must be going crazy not having something concrete to work with. Don’t worry everyone - we will be there! So relax.

Well I have about 2/3 of my index page working in English (4 of the 5 templates are being used). Planning on working on the last 1/3 tomorrow. Then I have to send out the tranlation files and get them back. I wonder if this page will work without a hitch? Hey - I can hope!

(Man - this sucks not being able to talk about the specifics of the project - never mind not being able to show it. But the company does own it and it is going to be proprietary software… *sigh*)

Well I finally have the Intsmarty completly displaying the login page correctly. YEAH!!!

The problem was in the smarty_lang_prefilter. The code originally has the strings being replaced in the ISO-8859-1 character set (using the utf8_decode). But my page is in the utf8 character set (so it can be more flexable). So of course there were problems with the display of 2 character sets on 1 page. Once I removed the the utf8_decode it worked perfectly.

Computer Help-Desk Tech - Popular Science

Number 11 of popular sciences worst science jobs - the computer help-desk tech!

Was feeling poorly all weekend so we didn't do much this weekend (other then some cleaning and that was even a small amount). Saturday night my husband did talk me into taking the family to see "The Incredables". It was pretty good and we had fun, but personally I thought it could have been better (a couple of scenes reminded me of the "Return of the Jedi" forest fight scenes with the speedsters). I was also surprised when there was no "clips" or cartoons at the end of the credits..... have kinda come to expect it from Pixar.

Kayla really enjoyed it. She was giggling through the whole movie. So if you have kids - definately go. If you are a child stuck in an adults body - well then you might consider whether or not it is worth it.

Well this past week I have had to suspend all work on the IntSmarty project.... Just have too many other things to do before I go stateside for a month. With the problems I'm having with the IntSmarty handling the Japanese and the work required to straighten it out... I can't take the time right now. *sigh* Have been catching up on all my other projects and duties (and unfortunately my paperwork). Hope to restart work on the IntSmarty next week.

Well it finally showed up this weekend and man does it have a lot of information on areas I have never worked with. I can't wait to get a chance to check it out.... *blush* along with all my other PHP books (I am currently reading 2 other PHP books on and off).

Will let you know if I find anything interesting. Since I'm self taught I'm sure there will be a million things in there that I had no idea about.

Well I had to go to Siapan this weekend for business. Arrived ~10 AM and didn't get to see my room until 9 PM ( ). Meetings/explainations/introduction and socializing the whole time. All in all it was a very good day.

Everyone was VERY interested in the IntSmarty and what it was, how it worked, and how it was going. Most of the developers I met and am now working with had never heard of or used Smarty so I also had to explain how that worked so I could then explain how the Intsmarty worked. It was fun talking about (and at times arguing about) error handling, the security I am using for the site and it's database, coding/DB naming conventions to be followed (I managed to win some fights and lose some - so I guess it all worked out right ), what they were working on and how and if it may connect to my site, Smarty and IntSmarty, and finally the databases and database designs .

All in all it was a very good time (though I would have liked to talk more about what they were doing - it looked interesting). And I am very pleased that the Software Engineer likes my coding style. I always thought I coded well and clearly, but it is nice to have someone else verify it. Went to dinner with Jun (the Marianas Resort and Spa programmer) and had a lot of fun. The restaurant he took me to was excellant and we sat and catched up with each other.

It is interesting and at times frustrating to be working with such an international group of programmers and engineers. With the language and custom barriers we sometimes run into, we all definately have to remember to relax and go slowly. This whole project is teaching me alot - in coding, in working with a team, and in working with others from a different country and culture. I still do not know the proper way to be introduced to someone from Japan. From what have observed - I am to hand the person my business card with 2 hands (holding only the top corners) so the card faces the person and bow. If I am receiving the card - I am to grasp their card with 2 hands (touching only the bottom 2 corners) and bow in return. *Sigh* There is so much to learn.

Well I jave my japanese file loaded and the page runs. Few problems though. The translation strings for the error messages (use cnb's myGettext on those) are working fine in English and Japanese. The problem is in the IntSmarty or Smarty. I personally think it is the Smarty. Ok here goes my theory - IntSmarty does its job and gets the string conversion in the alternate language and passes it to the Smarty to put into the template. Smarty however doesn't know what to do with the multibyte strings or how to display them, so I get the wonderful ???? strings.

Sent an email to coogle (John Coogeshall - the creator of IntSmarty) telling him of my problem and my opinion of what and where the problem is. He very quickly got back to me that he would take a look. And today he sent me another email saying that he thinks there is a "problem with multibyte support" and is taking a closer look. Man I really wish I knew Smarty and how it works. Will be taking a look at it's code when I get back to work and see if I can pinpoint the problem since coogle does have another job (Congrats by the way and I hope you enjoy your new job at Zend) that has nothing to do with me and my problems ( ). More minds working the better. Will keep you posted.

Oh and I am just about ready to load the index page and all it's templates on to the server and start debugging that page. Want to first get it working in English. Maybe by then I will have a solution for the problem I am having with the multibyte strings. The index page is much more complex then the login screen so I am sure I will having a couple of new problems.

And one more shout out to coogle - Thank you for your help with solving this problem. I know you are very busy, so I really appreciate you taking the time to help.

Finally got back my translation tables for Japanese.... Will be plugging them in and trying them soon. Will let ya know how it goes.

Well I finally remembered to ask my friend if I could post his code to the blog and he said yes. so here it is:

cnb is an awesome programmer and guy. You should checkout out his blog to learn more about him and what he is currently doing in the world of PHP. I would also like to thank the people on the PHPCommunity IRC channel (#phpc on freenode) for helping me get this far.

I would personally like to thank the men and women (past and present) who are serving or have previously served in all of our armed forces. Because of you standing guard, protecting us we can argue politics all day long (no matter which direction we may lean to) and feel safe.

   "It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press.
   It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us the freedom of speech.
   It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.
   It is the soldier, not the lawyer, who has given us a right to a fair trial.
   It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves under the flag, and whose
       coffin is draped by the flag."
~Author Unknown

Yahoo! News - Elvis Sightings Abound at LA Open Casting Call

OK - I admit it... I'm an Elvis Fan. And yes I still rock out to his songs... And I'm teaching my daughter to do it too.

Yahoo! News - Palestinian Leader Arafat Dies at 75

All I can say is - Wow. Didn't ever expect him to go this way. love him or hate him - He definately left a mark on the world. Only history will say if it is a good thing or a bad thing.

Yahoo! News - Women Wrongly Warned Cancer, Abortion Tied

This makes me furious!!! At a time when a woman needs all the information and support you can give her - you threaten her with breast cancer even though there is no actual link!

The Next Generation %u2013 MySQL 4.1 / 5.0 - PHP Conference & MySQL ComCon

What is coming out and what I am missing by not being there.

Well I'm still waiting to get my translation files returned. Didn't think that it would take this long to get them back. In the mean time I have been working on the templates for my index page. All in all I have 5 templates for it. Am thinking about extracting the header html (looks like file tabs - navigation) and making that into it's own template. Will have to learn how to make a template that accepts a param so the right "tab" is displayed. Granted I can do the copy and paste thing with the best of them, but... probably be more "professional" with it's own template. *sigh* Research and learning time vs. just getting it to work... The great trade off.

Have also started the index.php page. Talk about a big switch ( ) - pun intended. Think I have most of the logic worked out (in the comments) - just have to actually write the code to do it now. Since I have never done anything OOP I have never been shown how to diagram a page like this in UML. That would have come in handy with the 5 templates interacting... another thing to learn.

Well we joined one of the local companies who do off-roading modifications to vehicles in a trail clean up. In exchange for going off-roading and cleaning up the trail you are on - they had a BBQ (Chamarro Style). We took one of the longer trails that went from Nimitz hill (Channel 10) to Leo Palace Resort. There were a total of 3 vehicles (2 trucks and our jeep). Besides the mud slinging we hit quite a few really tricky spots that required spoters to help everyone get through. We were the only vehicle that had less then a 6 inch lift so we scraped the underside more then a couple of times. But we were also the only ones to get through the last mud bog . I don't even feel bad about almost rolling over - someone else almost did as well. If you want to see pictures just go here.

It was a pretty tough day having to go off-roading (oh hurt us) and then having a good, free BBQ. Life is rough some times.

AOL Movies: The Star Wars Experience

So close - almost got to see the new Star Wars episode III trailer/teaser. It is available to AOL members (I have a screen name through netscape). Thought I might be able to sneek in - but nope...

sigh - should be open to view in a couple days so I'll be back.