On the off chance that anyone not only downloaded and installed either the Yahoo or Google widget, but is also wondering when they are going to be fixed, please don’t hold your breath. I have no plans for updating either one of them.
Widgets
February 8th, 2010Quick Note
February 2nd, 2010All award shows are pointless wastes of time. The Oscars doubly so. The only thing that actually matters in the entertainment industry is the moolah. If you don’t earn some money, you suck.
There’s your acceptance speech. :D
Apple and Yahoo Fails
January 28th, 2010I was trying to post a comment on a recent Yahoo! Tech blog and after making me sign in three times to eventually see the commenting box, it wouldn’t let me actually post it. Apparently Yahoo wants no part in trying to take down the behemoth known as Google, with its functions that work and what-not.
At any rate, the blog post was about things that aren’t in the iPad that rumors suggested would be. I’ll not bore you or myself with repeating his list, but I will share my comment: “Not being a big fan Apple since the Mac did away with my beloved Apple //c, I have not been keeping up with the rumors. However when I heard that Apple was going to do a tablet, I assumed it would be a tablet PC closer to a notebook rather than an mp3 player. Apple doesn’t need anything else to compete with the Kindle; the screens on the Touch and iPhone are plenty big enough for ebooks. It doesn’t need an oversized mp3 player that does stuff no mp3 player needs to do; that’s what the Touch is. And it certainly doesn’t need to come out with a product with such an unfortunate name; there’s already plenty of things wrong with Apple without introducing “iPad” into the joking lexicon.”
New Software Update
January 25th, 2010I’ve spent some time trying to get things to the way I like them. The theme is still boring and does some things completely wrong from my point of view. I am in the process of creating my own theme, so that I can get this site back to the look that I want. I’ve found a couple of plug-ins that have helped, but there are still a few things that I need to work around.
I just spent some time adding categories and categorizing my old posts. GreyMatter didn’t have categories when I used it, so this is a new experience. I will say that WordPress has some issues of its own that should be resolved. Maybe I’ll submit a request.
New Software
January 21st, 2010I’ve replaced GreyMatter with WordPress because my server hates perl. It will take a while for me to get everything back to how I like it, so please be patient.
Center Pictures in Word with VBA
August 25th, 2009For something that turns out to be super-easy, there was not one place on the web that I could find this information. I needed to programmatically center all images in a Word document using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). I searched high and low, and while I could find how to loop through all images, I couldn’t find how to center them. Then I turned to the macro writer’s best friend: the macro recorder. Duh! 
It actually took me longer to find a document with pictures than it did to record the macro, see what it did, add it to my loops (see below), and test it.
You’ll notice that there are two loops in the code. That is so that it picks up inline figures as well wrapped figures.
Sub centerPictures()
Dim shpIn As InlineShape, shp As Shape
For Each shpIn In ActiveDocument.InlineShapes
shpIn.Select
Selection.ParagraphFormat.Alignment = wdAlignParagraphCenter
Next shpIn
For Each shp In ActiveDocument.Shapes
shp.Select
Selection.ParagraphFormat.Alignment = wdAlignParagraphCenter
Next shp
End Sub
Simple, huh?
Syntax Error at the End of DOORS DXL Script
July 20th, 2009If you get a syntax error at the line after the last line in your DXL script, check for unclosed blocks. You missed a closing brace (}) somewhere.
Convert string to int in DOORS DXL
July 13th, 2009DXL has some weird things omitted, like a way to directly convert a string type to an int type. After searching high and low, I finally found the way…by looking in the help manual under the real type. 
If you need to convert string s (where s holds an integer value) to int i, all you need to do is convert it to real first. So the line would be: i = intOf(realOf(s)). Nowhere does that manual point that out, of course. You’ve just got to stumble upon it yourself. No wonder DXL shows up on a list of the worst programming languages. 
New Blog – Oh, wait, no
July 7th, 2009I decided that I wanted to start a completely new blog where I would talk about how I’m coping with raising my children. I wanted it to be easy, so I went with Google’s Blogger. I set up by account, adjusted my settings, and began to design it. Then I decided that it was a complete waste of time. I’m not going to post every day on any blog, not even one that could lead to a lucrative book deal.
The worst part is that I spent over two hours coming up with the perfect name. I’m not going to share it, though. I may change my mind again. :)
DOORS DXL probeAttr_ Function
June 17th, 2009Despite being used in several places within the the standard DOORS functions, the probeAttr_ function is unknown to the help file and indeed the web (aside from being used without explanation). So here is my crack at defining it.
probeAttr_
Declaration
string probeAttr_ (Object o, string attrName)
Operation
This returns a string that is the value of the attribute, attrName, for the object, o. This is the same as using the dot operator to extract the value. So, s=probeAttr_(obj, “Object Text”) is the same as s=obj.”Object Text”.
Why in the world this is even necessary, I have no idea.