One of the resources that I found to be extremely useful in my quest for better understanding of data modeling was from Tony Marston, a UK-based programmer and blogger extraordinaire. He presents a great discussion on The Relational Data Model, Normalisation and effective Database Design that gives a great summary on the normal forms, functional dependencies. Other resources on his site are way over my head, but I' ll be sure to review them again.

This is one of the goals of this blog - to inventory resources/sites and information I obtain along the way.

I'm attempting to build a database application for a print procurement system and am tackling it as a glorified learning lab.

Microsoft offers a series of free MS Office viewers and converters for people who don't own the software. They can be downloaded at this page.

But this can be taken one step further. Users with good bandwidth can get everything for free - suite and all - if they so desire. OpenOffice.org is a free productivity suite compatible with all major office suites.

Download it from http://www.openoffice.org

This year - for the first time since I can remember - I didn't go home for Christmas, but instead, spent it with Erin and her family in Raleigh. After celebrating ourselves on Christmas Eve, we awoke and went over to the M's around 10:30ish.

To offer the blow-by-blow, I'd still be writing through my vacation. It was a great time..even Oscar behaved himself.

We concluded the evening by visiting a Mulligan family friend's house.

Overall, this probably was the best Christmas I've had as an adult....fore!

Vist pdf995.com and they're pretty upfront about what they provide:

"The pdf995 suite of products - Pdf995, PdfEdit995, and Signature995 - is a complete solution for your document publishing needs. It provides ease of use, flexibility in format, and industry-standard security- and all at no cost to you."

Just by looking at the information on their website quickly asssured me it was quality. This will certainly come in handy, and I will be linking to it from the download center.

Given all of the features, the price is right too. They explain:

"All three products are available as FREE downloads. The free versions display a sponsor page in your web browser each time you run the software."

The only drawback is that its Windows only.

LINK: http://www.pdf995.com

The first site I visted, was essentially an ipodcasting (ipc) aggregator (iPodderx.com). Event podderx goes on to say "Many podcasts are largely aural recreations of conventional weblogs by the bloggers themselves."

Then I found ipodder.org and downloaded a podcasting receiver app. The one I got seems to be having problems...I hope I didn't screw anything up...

Basically weblogs in Audio format..that's what it is. So the next question is how many of the 10M users are savvy enough - or have the inclination - of receiving such content?

This is a good question...interesting

Markzware makes quite a line of products for the graphic arts. Imagine the range of services that can be offered as a value-add in a graphic arts setting.

In any case, the provider and consumer wins. If providers can continually tune their workflows because of cleaner files that these services create, they can deliver better products more efficiently.

Everybody wins.

It can get pretty sophisticated. There's tools now available that are real-time and web-based.

I picked this story up at the New York Times. It's about this scumbag tenant that reminds you of the character in Pacific Heights.

Basically, a widow used some insurance money to invest in real estate in New York. Instead of using a broker, she rented it herself and failed to uncover some 'issues' with her current tenant.

Long story short - he hasn't paid his rent and is using every legal recourse in the book to continue living for free. This is absolutely proposterous.

It also made me cringe. Hopefully, NC laws provide the Lessor better recourse...

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/19/realestate/19Assets.html

Here it is.

Heavy css use implies the use of a lot of images. These are called through css. Create a directory structure within a styles directory. Doing so will allow the css system to be more self-contained for the webmaster. This might help increase portability. It might speed execution (my conjecture).

Any way, I did it such as:

.categoryMain {
background: #fff url(i/c.jpg) 0px 0px no-repeat;
padding: 15px;
}

But why even use subdirectories?
Continuing on this thought, why even use a subdirectory. Just place the images in same directory as the css file. Now you have a cleaner path for subsequent DOM moves. So now its:

.categoryMain {
background: #fff url(c.jpg) 0px 0px no-repeat;
padding: 15px;
}

Its still portable. You case rename the root directory to whatever later. I've always seemed to bumble my way around, especially calling images with css. This makes it simpler.

There's actually some bit of the story that goes along with it. The photo did end up turning out OK, but just getting to that was a project in-and-out-itself.

Erin has had this idea for months. I wasn't too keen on it for a couple of reasons. I didn't want to disappoint anybody, so we went full force anyways. Getting there however led to some interesting moments.

I set up a camera - a brand new Nikon D70 - on a tripod and took a series of delayed shots. Took the file to Wolf Camera for prints. Pretty easy all around.

The only hard part was getting everyone to smile. Let me just say that the dogs were the easy part.

Who knows, this might become a tradition...

I had worked with this gentleman at a past job, and he had taken a liking to my brother Jim, who had also worked there. While Jim was sick with cancer, he would come by and see him and spend time.
He went on to pursue a career behind the badge.

I guess when he didn't show up for work - which he was accustomed to be an hour early for - the boys went knocking and found him. Miraculously he's still alive, but is paralyzed.

He'll mostlikely wake-up, if he hasn't already. And you thought a hangover was bad.

Peace be with him.

Update - 12-19-04
I was told news today that this gentlman has passed away. Peace be with his family during this time.

Looking back, this has been the first Christmas in probably forever that I've been done - or nearly so - so early. I always liked the last minute rush of the 23rd or 24th. Although it stressful, I basically shocked myself into the 'mood'.

This year, Erin sure helps. It's nice to have a tree...things are just different.

In a good way.

This was Erin's first official court case as an attorney in Wake County, NC. As it was pro-bono work, she handled the whole thing on her own. It was excellent that she took it upon herself to get in the courtroom and litigate.

Good for her...she was pumped. Seemed she handed some scumbag his 'hiney' if you know what I mean.

She's currently investigating opportunities. If you are in need of a great lawyer, let me know.

I have identified a package that will allow me to do this. Still need to determine how permissions are going to work. This is an important issue.

Here it is: