About a week ago I updated my Zune software to version 2.3. Unfortunately for me, the install failed and I could not use the Zune software for anything where I needed to login. I struggled for days to try to resolve this issue. Then two days ago I found a blog that suggested to turn on my Windows firewall during the installation process. I have no idea why the Windows firewall needed to be on but it resolved my installation issue.

Zune version 2.3 is installed and running happily on my Vista laptop!!

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post on a web time tracker tool called, Paymo. I have used this tool on a daily basis since I signed up to use this service and I love it. It has made my time tracking much easier both on a daily and monthly basis. It is very important to me to have a reliable and accurate service such as Paymo since I am an independent consultant that bills clients on an hourly basis.

The support has been second to none. I notified Paymo of an issue and it was resolved by the next day.

I highly recommend using Paymo for your time tracking needs.

I have been using Paymo time tracker for about two weeks to do all of my project time tracking. I absolutely love it!

There are two parts to this web application:

1. Paymo Time Tracker
2. Paymo WebClient

The Paymo time tracker is a free tool for the first 1-3 users. It allows you to enter your time via projects and their associated tasks. Of course, you can add as many tasks as you need to a particular project. This tool also provides time reporting based on the dates entered or canned reports such as current week and previous week. Unfortunately, it does not have a weekly report that has a view by the day.

The Paymo webclient is an unique tool that allows you to start a clock when you begin a particular task. After you complete your task and stop the clock, the time is added automatically for you. I haven’t used this feature much since I usually have a number of people stopping by my cube to check up on a project’s status.

The support from Paymo has been wonderful. There was a bug that recorded the time being 0:59 minutes when I actually entered 1:00 hour. I submitted this bug to Paymo one night and it was fixed by the next day.

There is also a commercial version of this tool that will be released in the future. The commercial version is available for 3 or more users.

I have been looking at and using a couple of different photo/image editing programs. I started looking at these programs because I am interested in improving my skills in creating graphic images so I can service my customers better when building their websites.

First, I am a software developer. I have very little graphic design experience other than the occasional graphic for a button to use on some website. So my preference is to find tools that are free and relatively easy to use.

The tools I am currently using are Paint.NET and GIMP.

First, let’s take a look at Paint.NET. They have a nice user community that provides tutorials to show how a certain task is performed. I found this tool pretty easy to use when doing Photo editing and simple graphic images. However, I found it a little difficult to use when creating more advanced graphic images such as a Web 2.0 looking button.

The GIMP program has been great for both Photo editing and graphic images. I found this tool very easy to use even for more advanced graphic images. I was able to create a Web 2.0 looking button through this tutorial . Here it is:

This isn’t too bad considering it was my first attempt and took me all of 15 minutes to complete. I will have to work on my technique to make it look better but I am sure that will come with more experience.

I think both of these tools are good candidates to use when editing your photos or images. I need to spend more time with both of these tools to unleash their real potential. Either one one of these tools should meet your graphic editing needs.

Recently I have been kind of down on some of the products being produced by Microsoft. This has been kind of tough for me to handle since I make my living developing software using Microsoft products. I still like the majority of products by Microsoft. However, it seems Microsoft wants to have them use all of their products.

For example, a couple of weeks ago I tried to use Windows Live Mail as my mail client for one of my email accounts. I could not use Live Mail because this account was not an msn or hotmail account. I thought at first I was not setting up Live Mail correctly. After I Googled for a resolution, I discovered a lot of people having the same issue using various email accounts like gmail. So, what did I do?

I installed Mozilla’s Thunderbird mail client. I was up and running in less than 5 minutes. Now, why would Microsoft only allow people using msn or hotmail accounts the ability to use Windows Live Mail? I don’t know, either.

IE (internet explorer) is another product I have been disappointed with. I have been going between browsers the last 4 or 5 years. I usually use Mozilla’s Firefox or Opera. I try to go back to use IE but I just can’t do it. I have found that Firefox and Opera perform better than IE. IE 7 has been frustrating to use. It usually throws the famous error where it asks if I would like send the information to Microsoft.

On a positive note, I have been pleasantly surprised with Windows Vista. I have the Home Premium Edition. It has been very stable and reliable for me. However, it took me awhile to get this version of Vista working with Visual Studio .NET 2005. Also, I cannot debug ASP.NET unless I manually connect to the aspnet worker process (aspnet.exe).

Overall, Microsoft does a great job developing products for people to use at work or home. I just hope they realize some of their products could be improved and available to more people.

Over the years I have looked at a lot of code where the developer does not write any comments or the comments that have been written are very poor. Developers should comment their code to save time and confusion by others who read their code. It will also save you time if you need to make a modification months after you originally wrote the code. It will also help you if someone has a question about the code. Your comments will help you remember why you are performing a certain task in a specific way.

However, if you are writing comments for every line of code you write then you are not helping anyone. Your comments should explain what the code is trying to achieve. .NET makes it very simple to add comments to your code so you can not use the excuse it is too time consuming anymore. You can use the summary or remarks tags in .NET to comment your code.

Commenting your code should be part of your daily coding practice!

SQL Server has a Reverse function that I have found to be very useful. This function simply returns your expression in a reverse order. It is nice to use if you would like to start your string search from the right. Let’s use the following number as an example: 676777-9099999-86666 .

Now suppose I need to return the last part of the number, 86666.

I can get this result with the following code:

SELECT RIGHT(c.OrderNumber, (CHARINDEX('-', REVERSE(c.OrderNumber)) - 1))
FROM Customers c

The Reverse function would simply return 66668-9999909-777676, which probably is not very useful. However, I can use the CHARINDEX function to obtain the starting position for the first hyphen (’-') . Then I can use the Right function to retrieve the string, which turns out to be 86666.

We survived our trip to Denver, CO to see family with our two children (4 & 2). It was actually a pretty good trip because the kids enjoyed playing with their cousins so much. Other than the occasional meltdown, the kids were really good. The weather was great as we had only 1 day where it rained.

If you are in Colorado, I would recommend going to the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden, CO. Our entire family enjoyed seeing the trains, which they have over 100 different locomotives and cars. Some date as far back as the early 1800’s.

I will look forward to our next trip to Colorado as it is one of my favorite places to visit.

Finally the NHL hockey season has started! What else is there to do during the long fall, winter, and spring months here in Minnesota?

I have been waiting for this since we purchased our big screen tv. Watching hockey (or sports in general) in HDTV is awesome. I am a big Minnesota Wild and Detroit Red Wings fan. It looks like the Wild will again compete for the Division title and a playoff spot. However, it will be tough again this year since they play in arguably the toughest division in hockey. The Red Wings of course will make the playoffs and possibly compete for the Stanley Cup. I love the Wings but I think Dominik Hasek is not the playoff goalie the Wings need to win the Cup. The Wings have a good mix of experienced and young players that will make them tough to beat during the playoffs.

I think the surprise team this year could be the NY Islanders who had a big off-season. However, it was very expensive to get rid of Alexi Yashin.

Stanley Cup Finals Prediction: Detroit vs. Ottawa

Stanley Cup Winner: Ottawa