The Ready Room

What to do when your iPhone won't charge

2012-01-29T09:20:00.001-05:00

I've had two older iPhones now fail on me after the device shuts down automatically from a dead battery. If you have the same happen to you and you can't get the device to turn on after charging even overnight then check out this link and I bet your phone will be fixed.

For me I had to plug in the device, and reboot the PC. Nothing happened so I tried the unplug and replug trick and finally I launched iTunes by hand on my PC. I let it sit about 3 to 5 minutes and bingo, the phone booted up.

Christmas Tree Layout

2011-12-04T10:54:00.000-05:00

So I've settled on a new track plan for around the tree. It's a neat little three time around loop with some tunnels and hills and trees. As I said in my last post I don't plan on this being for realistic operations, it's mainly for display purposes at Christmas time and for constant running. The primary audience will be kids and people who are not really into operations. So if you want to be critical about the track arrangement feel free but remember it's not meant to be realistic just real nice looking.

New projects

2011-12-01T18:09:00.000-05:00

So lots of new projects going on lately. On the railroad front I have two major projects going on. First I'm working on an around the tree layout for Christmas. N scale of course. The track plan calls for nearly 30 feet of "mainline" that will loop around three times. I would like to be able to have one or two trains running on this at a time for display purposes only. It's meant to look good and not necessarily be realistic or operable.

On the operations side I'm still considering a point to point shelf layout for operations. I'm thinking of a proto-freelanced shelf based on Latrobe, PA and the mixture of the Ligoneer Valley Railroad, Pennsylvania Railroad Latrobe/Unity/Hostetter branches and the West Penn Railways lines. This will be a big undertaking so I'm doing some experimenting on the around the tree layout for some additional practice.

I'm also working on converting some more engines to DCC and building a DCC sound car. I have some older life like locomotives that I like and work well and I would like to be able to run on my layout. Since my NCE Powercab doesn't have support for DC I needed to get some more equipment updated.

I'm going to work on some more write ups about all these and I'll be posting them with pictures and links sometime soon.

A Readmissions Data Model, Mk II (part 3)

2011-09-19T20:11:00.000-04:00

This is part three in a series of thoughts about how to track these readmission measures, you can read part 1 and part 2.

So after a lot of thought, struggle and some guidance from a very wise data modeler I had the opportunity to work with on another project I've come up with some ideas on how to manage this in various time periods. It's not trivial by any stretch of the imagination, but it is doable. While I don't have my schema fully designed yet, I've been able to test portions of it and it seems to work well. I have tested this basic design with SQL Server Reporting Services, Microstrategy, and Information Builders WebFocus. It appears to function well in all three environments.

The very first thing that needs to be done is to clean up and stage the data, in our case we are downloading the raw data from our EMR and storing it in SQL Server. Then I am using SSIS with stored procedures to go over and manipulate the data into the shape I need. I start by pulling every visit by encounter_id and I join that to itself by the medical_record_id where the prior visit encounter_id does not equal the current encounter_id and the date of the prior visit is less than or equal to the current visit, and the prior visit is an inpatient stay. This meets our basic needs, but I still need to iterate over the data again getting the max(prior_discharge_date) for each current.encounter_id and then filtering this out. I find that a series of temporary tables make this work much easier. Don't try to do this in one single statement loop over and remove the bits you need to from the dataset each time until you have a list of current and matching prior encounter_id fields.

Now the easy part is to just use this map (you did remember to store the output in a real and not temporary table right?) and link a current encounter to a prior encounter. I wind up making a very wide table (or view) that contains all the data elements I'm interested in including a bunch of calculated fields that I called things like [3day], [7day], [10day] and [30day]. Finally I populate those fields like so:

CASE WHEN datediff(dd,prior.discharge_date,current.admit_date) between 0 and 3 THEN 1 ELSE 0 END

Finally just open this table in your reporting app and merge with your date dimension table and then SUM on the above described calculated fields to get the number of patients in each bucket. In my case I'm interested in Fiscal_Month and Financial_Class buckets so I SUM those fields against those buckets and get an accurate and fast count of patients returning.

To make this model even more functional I decided to add another calculated field that I called [PatientCount] which simple equals 1.0 for each encounter_id. Then I can use this field to count patient visits in each bucket and give my users multiple ratio/percentage calculations on the same report.

While this is a lot more prep work than my first idea of using MS SSAS, it's a lot simpler to actually accomplish and since most of the execution is run by the stored procedures before the users ever start their work it's also a lot faster at runtime.

Let me know if you fine this useful or if anyone wants to discuss this further.

A Readmissions Data Model, Mk I

2011-02-09T11:44:00.003-05:00

So this post continues the thoughts in one of my previous posts about designing a OLAP cube to analyze all cause readmissions. The E-R Diagram above shows my first pass at a star schema to answer these questions. To be totally honest I consider this one of my worst designs ever which is one reason I didn't put a lot of work into cleaning up the lines on this one.

My major issue with this first pass is that it doesn't allow for analysis of anything other than 7 day and 30 day metrics, it is currently incapable of providing a breakdown of readmissions by the delta between index discharge and readmission. Also a major functional issue of this model is that if a user mistakenly includes 7 day metrics with a 30 day dimension it will return results that are completely invalid (Although technically correct to computer).

So after deciding that this is completely unsustainable I've started working on rewriting this entire piece. I've actually contacted with a great Data Modeler to help us prepare for this among other projects. So today I just want to get this back out there and maybe get some of the folks who have been following this thread to comment and let me know their thoughts on designing this, and I will hopefully continue to share what I have found and built for this project here to continue spuring on discussion of this topic.

A Hobby Mash-Up (aka: You Never Forget Your First Doctor)

2011-01-30T17:36:00.006-05:00

So admittedly I haven't done any modeling, railroad or otherwise recently. My little layout has been sitting in the corner mostly untouched for months, and my track sketches for a larger more robust layout have been sitting on a shelf or in my My Documents folder also for months. There are doubtless many reason for it, but a large one is likely that the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years Holidays all just were here, and I have a nice new TV and Netflix account that I have been enjoying with the family.

One of the "new" things we have discovered on Netflix is Doctor Who. We started with the 2005 Series and have worked both forward and backward in the series. I think we've seen the first, second, third, fourth and ninth Doctors thus far.

Back on the model railroading front most of what I've done has been around operations. I joined OpSig this year in an effort to learn more about operations and maybe even find some local groups that I can guest operate with for a session or two to learn the ropes (if you know of any in Western PA please let me know). While learning operations and building a layout that allows me to run a good session is a goal I have to admit that Structure building really is what I enjoy the most about the hobby. So after breaking all the ice on the drive way and realizing that I was just too sore to do anymore around the house this weekend I thought about pulling out some card stock scratch building supplies and just messing around when I had a great idea. Why not build something that me and the kids would get a kick out of on the layout. Something we had been enjoying on TV currently, say an n-scale TARDIS.

Here is a picture of the mostly finished product on my layout. It's sitting under a tree near the train station. I can't help but think that this just might be the first time the Doctor has been in Pennsylvania. The base needs a bit of trimming and molding to the layout still, but that will come with time as I decide where to keep this piece at.

Here's a close up of the piece. The TARDIS itself came from a Deviant Art site, the sidewalk came from Scale Scenes, one of my favorite sources for card stock modeling products. The figures I bought online from a guy named Jens in a big multipack. They have been custom painted to match the scene as the Ninth Doctor and Rose. If you want to duplicate this Take the Image from Deviant Art and scale it to around 900 DPI. I did some simple math and a bit of trial and error to get that figure. If you want you can do what I did and rotate the page so that it's square to the TARDIS pattern and cut it down and then print it out to the right height. I found that somewhere around 1.6 in high for the pattern was pretty good to make the Doctor's head be at about the right height on the door.
All in all this was a quick project that I just threw together with the kids so that we weren't totally bored this weekend while my shoulder was healing from all the work around the house. It was pretty fun to watch the kids look for it on the layout after I installed it too. Even my four year old was able to find and it recognize it. While it's simple, made of paper and not the greatest it does look nice when viewed from the 2 foot rule. Now let's just hope some major disaster doesn't follow the Doctor to West Forge.

Designing a Data Model to Analyze Hospital Readmissions

2010-11-20T15:00:00.004-05:00

So I have been tasked now for about a year and half now to support my employers initiative to reduce the number of inpatients who return to our facility for a related reason that could have been treated on a previous visit. My role in this whole process is to provide analysis support to determine 1) How many patients do return within a set period 2) are their second admissions related to their first and 3) what ancillary circumstances can we identify that might have contributed to this.

I pulled together a set of data last year in a real down and dirty fashion that allowed the staff to have an idea of who was coming back and why. However my small amount of BI experience left me with a touchy and barely sustainable SQL Analysis Cube.

In my quest to improve upon this design I've begun working on a new method of doing this, but I was shocked to find that after a whole afternoon of Google searching I found a total of ZERO examples of what other places are doing. I know this is a hot topic here in the US as several Payers are considering not paying for these readmissions in the near future and with healthcare being so much more open to sharing business practices than other businesses here I am just amazed that someone hasn't posted something yet about how they managed to solve this same problem.

So I thought after all that I'd make a post about this. I haven't yet come up with something I consider sustainable, but I am actively working on it. I figure if fortune shines upon me (and maybe you the reader) though something like this I can meet up with other DBA, DWA or BI types and maybe collaborate on something that meets multiple needs. So if you are the type interested in that respond to this post and I hope we can work together sometime to realize this project.

A Paper Train Part 2

2010-04-08T19:14:00.005-04:00

So in case you missed it I built a paper Acella a while back, and today while I was looking around the web I found another very cool paper train paper. a paper GG1 over at a place called Creative Park. Below is a picture of theirs. Once I put one together I'll take pictures and put them up here. In the meantime why don't you head on over and make one yourself.

Toy Trains and Nuclear Fusion

2010-01-08T10:27:00.002-05:00

In a really neat way some researches have found a great way to use a normal everyday item for a lot of us in a whole new way. The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory used a model train engine with some californium-252 on it to test their neutron sensors in their fusion reactor. Being a train enthusiast who has a Bachelors in Applies Physics I find this doubly interesting.

Check out the full artical at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/29/science/29train.html?_r=3&ref=science.

West Forge Layout: Operations!

2010-01-01T22:14:00.002-05:00

First off Happy New Year everyone! I hope that everyone has a great holiday weekend.

Now onto the topic of my post. I have to admit that aside from playing with my kids Thomas train layout I've never really operated a layout of any type except for the ones that went in circles underneath Christmas trees. I do recall as kids my sister and I making the train or the trolly car go around a few times and then stopping it at certain spots that we decided were stations to pickup and drop off passengers. However, I've never done anything that I would really consider operations. The club I belong to doesn't do operations yet, and I don't seem to know anyone in the western PA area that does this at home. If you happen to be in Western PA and in need of crew member let me know.

Anyway, having never done this before and using a track plan from a book I was left with trying to figure all this out myself (aren't model railroading books great!). I have to say I was really hoping that I liked it after I went through all the work to build this stuff and get it running well. So today after watching a movie with the kids and my wife I sat down with a notebook, pencil and track plan and tried to figure out how to operate my little module. The very first thing I realized is that this module lacks anything that even resembles a run around. This was clearly another rookie mistake on my part that meant that all my switching moves had to be pre-planned and the cars positioned properly in the consist. Once I got over that problem I was able to come up with a 12 step operation plan that involved switching four locations: Nathan's Warehouse, C & E Hardware, The General Store/Railway Express Agency, and the Lumber Yard.

After my kids went to bed I decided that it was time to try this plan out. My original goal when I started planning this layout was to be able to operate the layout for 15 minutes with a crew of 1 person. I was pretty sure my plan would do that and maybe take even longer. In the end though the operation plan took just over 12 minutes to complete, but that time didn't include using the passenger station at all. I decided that I can either add passenger operations to this plan or change that siding to an additional small industry to add a few more minutes to the operations. Overall though I'm very pleased with the way things worked. I found a few small track issues I need to work on on the spurs, but aside from that I had a very pleasant 12 minutes running my trains in more than just a loop.

I do think that larger scale operations would be a great deal of fun, and look forward to trying those someday. All of this makes me happy as I have a better understanding of operations now, and that just became one more thing that I have learned from this little 2'x3' layout.

West Forge Layout: Scenery

2009-12-28T21:24:00.005-05:00

So it has really been ages since I made a decent post about things. I think I will rectify that today. I'd like to post a bit about all the scenery I have been working on for my little module. Since this is now complete I'm going to go over it rather quickly in just one post. First I'll start with a quick picture of my test fit of all the structures I planned to use. I used some miscelaeous items to stand in for trees and some buildings are just pieces leaning together to help me plan out the space. Honestly I think I redid this process several times as the buildings took shape and I began to have better understanding of how to utilize the space. Next time I'll probably make cardboard cutouts of the footprint of each building to start with as that would have been easy to keep taped to the foam while I was working on the track.

Once the celluclay goop mixture was good and dry I began adding paint and ground foam to the layout. I think I did this step too early actually, some of the buildings weren't ready yet, and in all honesty the track needed a lot of work still, but that's another post. Here are two shots, one of the church area and one of the whole module with it's ground foam in place.

The ground foam is a mixture of Wood Scenics and Life Like greens and dry/dead grass with some sifted sand mixed in in some areas. The still unfinished road way is actually cardstock that I printed on my printer and glued to the layout. It came from http://www.scalescenes.com a site that I highly recommend. Even if you don't want to use card stock buildings (which you should consider using anyway) The add ons like interior carpet and paintings are worth it.

Finally here is a picture taken after the trees were added to the hill and station area. This is looking down from the hillside onto the rest of the layout. The tree bases are not yet sceniced, I'll probably paint them and put some additional ground foam around them to conceal them a bit more. That's about it for today, I'll try and get some more up soon. On a side note I did have this module out and running this Christmas. I didn't have it under the tree it actually sat on a cabinet on the far side of my fireplace, but looking back at last years post about "Being Happy with what you have/an N-Scale under the tree" I felt it important to note that West Forge itself was my families Christmas tree train display. The kids enjoyed it quite a bit as did I.

West Forge Layout: Hillside

2009-08-31T10:53:00.002-04:00

So work has been progressing on my layout even though I haven't made a post in ages. I was working on improving the hill and cut that I built into the original foam layout. The hill was covered with Celluclay and latex paint originally. It always seemed too flat and lacking something. I used the ground goop I created before to add more texture to the hill and area on top of it. I did a lot of pulling away with sticky fingers on the slope to add a rocky look to it and just some texture to the top.

Once it dried I painted it brown, then washed black over that and washed raw sienna over that. The top of the hill was painted plain raw sienna. I really liked the color of the top. Might be a bit too golden looking for Western PA, but it was much better thant he light tan I originally used. I think I'll look for a color closer to that for any future projects I work on. Finally I did a good bit of dry brushing grays and browns accross the front slope and sides and added some shadows to the nooks and crannies. Admitedlly the whole thing had a very "prehistoric" look to it which I was worried about but the next step really blended it all together better.

The final step was ground foam. I used 4 different foams on the hill, bright green, dark green, dried grass and earth. In addition to that I used some fine sand I had left over from the ground goop for added texture. The whole mass was sprayed down with Wet Water (using rubbing alcohol not soap) and then doused with a good layer of watered down glue. Any foam that was "run off" from the top and settled on the slopes I left in place and hit with the watered down glue. I added some additional foam to the slope to enhance that by putting full strength glue and sprinkling sand and various greens onto it.

I was very happy with the end result. It did retain a bit of the big fake hill look, but a lot of the road cuts in south western PA where I grew up look a lot like this. So with that I called this part of the project a success and prepared to move onto installing the road through the town.

West Forge Layout: Beginning Terrain

2009-08-31T09:13:00.003-04:00

So I've decided that I need to start getting the terrain laid out on my layout so that I have a better idea how the structures and trees will fit in. I opted to use a variation of Lou Sassi's Ground Goop mainly because I had the needed supplies on hand. I mixed the goop up as follows:

1 part Celluclay
1 part latex paint
1 Part tube sand
1 cap Lysol
Water to thin as needed
Acrylic Art paints to darken the color
*in this case 1 part = 1 cup

Like I said I had this stuff on had. The tube sand came from my truck, it was an old tube that is falling apart so I scavenged a few scoops of the sand from the ripped bag. It was a bit on the course side. I think next time I might screen it a bit to get the large stones out first as they made the goop a bit more rocky in some areas than I wanted. The latex paint was the left over light tan I used to cover the blue foam. I felt it was too light so I put a few older watered down tubes of brown and black acrylic paint to try and darken it. It made things more gray rather than more brown. Next time I'll get a darker latex for my base. Closer to Raw Sienna I think

Here is the results.

Over all I'm please. I need to clean up the areas where the structures will go, but this has tuned my flat sheet of foam board into something a bit more natural and earthly looking.

Next will be ground foam, some asphalt for the street and I think I'm going to repaint the rail head and ties to be a better color. I'm really not sure why I did such a red color for that.

West Forge Layout: Recovery and reconstruction

2009-08-19T08:18:00.003-04:00

Well over the last few weeks I got back into working more on my n-scale West Forge, PA layout. I added some new 1x4 lumber to the base to strengthen the module after the "Earthquake" ripped a fault line across the town. Since that time the town has rebuilt itself.

The station has remained the same near the the railroad cut through the hillside. WF Tower likewise hasn't really changed. Along main street we have a new machinery and equipment supply vendor that receives flat cars, box cars and tankers at semi-regular intervals. Next to that is still St. Patrick's Church, a local landmark it survived the earthquake unscathed. The local general store is still next to the church, it's received a new coat of paint during the towns reconstruction, but otherwise is the same old store with a small Railway Express office on the side. Across the street from the store is sill the lumber yard. It was farther away from the fault line and really didn't take any damage, it's mostly unchanged except that they tore down one of their old sheds. Where the old lumber shed was is now a small warehouse that receives mainly boxcars of LCL goods that go out via truck to other local businesses that aren't rail attached. The row buildings along main street are pretty much all the same still, the corner bar, the hardware store, and the soda/candy shop are all unchanged. There does appear to be some construction planned for the far end of main street just before the railroad tracks.

Back out into the real 1:1 world I've finished a few buildings including a new warehouse card kit that I got from Scalescenes.com. If you have not read about them in the latest Model Railroader magazine or haven't been to the website do yourself a favor head over there and download their two free kits. I will say that I recommend using a glue stick over spray mount to mount the pages to card stock. My spray mounted pages began loosening from all the folding and stuff needed to build the kit. Also since the page weights are in metric I mistakenly used too heavy of card to build mine and ran into some issues, so for those interested I recommend that for light card just use standard ink jet printer paper (around 20 lb), for the medium card I think his recommendation is about 80lb card stock. I used a poster board which was a bit too heavy. For the heavy card though laminate two or three pieces of poster board together to get the right thickness. I will say that even with the issues I had my kit came out great, and hence I made room for it on my layout.

Shortly after I finished my card kit I went back to scalescenes and looked at their texture sheets. I picked up the US roadways kit. It's worth the $6 USD that I paid for it. The asphalt looks great once it's cut out and flanked with sidewalks or dirt, and the sidewalks came out really nice when I printed them. I'll attach a picture of my road and tree test from the other night to the end of this post. This was just a test so I used only one sheet and that's why the road markings are a bit off. my only real complaint about the roadway kit is that there isn't just a sheet with three n-scale sized two lane roads with a single white or yellow line down the middle. The addition of that to the kit would take this from a should have to a must have in my opinion.

Anyway, before I run on too long that is what has been happening on my layout. I will try and get some additional pictures of the new structures soon.

West Forge Layout: Magnitude Simon Earthquake Rocks the Town!!

2009-04-21T15:49:00.002-04:00

So it's been a few months since I wrote anything about my layout project at home. For good reason, my father was hospitalized for two months after the new year and then we started March with his funeral. Not a fun time.

One of my earliest memories of my dad is a shopping trip of all things. It's not too surprising that I would remember this as it was a rarity, my dad didn't like to shop unless it was at his own pace at a fleamarket. Anyway, this trip was to a home improvement store called Busy Beaver if I recall, although the details in my head are sketchy and it might have been a Hills or Gold Circle or something like that. The important thing is that it was the day my dad picked out a train around our family Christmas tree. I think I was about 3 or 4 years old at the time. I remember how excited he was about that train set. Just last year I had asked him about it, and he told me he was actually really excited as he had always wanted a train when he was a kid, but his family could never afford one. That train over the years apparently meant a lot to both of us.

Onward to 2009, and my youngest son Simon seems to have the train bug right now too. He spent a lot of time with me just watching my GG1 go around and around this year. So sometime in March I pulled out the West Forge model I've been working on and got some trains running on it. I pulled out some structures and rolling stock and had a great time with a table top module. The kids really enjoyed it too. Unfortunately I decided not to stick it way back in the closet where I had been keeping it I set it upright along the wall of my bedroom with full plans to pull it out in a few days and start figuring where I wanted to place my structures on it. In comes my son who manages to somehow fall off my bed and breaks his fall with my foam layout. The damage is probably fixable but it's cracked clean through 98% of the module. If it weren't for some ducktape and ballast I think it would have been sheared clean into two pieces.

So now I'm left decided do I try and repair this to make it functional (my goal was to be able to provide 20 to 30 minutes of operating fun on the module), or do I scrap it and start moving on and renovate my basement to give me a nice train room.

Obviously the latter option would be much more fun :-D

A Great Holiday Train Show

2008-12-29T10:11:00.003-05:00

If you are in the Pittsburgh area and you enjoy a good train display and haven't gone yet this year make sure to stop by the Western Pennsylvania Model railroad Museum to see their show. Directions and times can be found on their website http://www.wpmrm.org/.

If you are familiar with the show at the Carnegie Science Center, this one is almost twice the size in a scale that is about 50% smaller, so you see nearly 4 times the trains, scenery and towns.

So if you haven't gone already try and make time before mid-January to stop down and see their display. They also have a large Lionel Toy train display as well as several Thomas the Tank Engine tables for the kids to play on. The WPMRM is a non-profit Museum dedicated to preserving the memory of Western PA's railroads. All the staff are volunteers and all the work is done by the volunteers too. Who knows you might see me down there volunteering too!

Merry Christmas!!

2008-12-25T00:00:00.001-05:00

Merry Christmas to all! I hope everyone has blessed and happy Christmas.

An N-Scale Around the Tree?!? Be Happy with What You Have!

2008-12-19T17:10:00.002-05:00

I love Christmas time. I know we are still in Advent and Christmas actually begins on the day most Americans seems to think it ends, unless you are like most of the Pittsburghers I know and leave your tree up until the Steelers are out for the season.

I can't say for certain what it is about Christmas that gives it that magical feel that would make even Walt Disney envious. It could be the presents, Santa Clause, freshly fallen snow, or just time spent casually and freely with friends and family. This is something even I have had a hard time with this year. Between a bad economy, a scary election season, failing companies all over and the increased stress that work has put on my team to provide more and more analysis of our business it's been tough for me to enjoy even a simple Christmas party let alone this wonderful Advent season as I should be.

It's hard to let the excitement and greed of secular and commercial Christmas not get to me. Where does an N scale train fit into all this. Well My wife and kids gave me my Christmas present early this year. It was a really nice HO Scale Locomotive done in the scheme of the Oil Creek and Titusville railroad here in Western PA. My first thought was that it would great pulling some passenger cars around the tree. That however is where things really started going wrong for me.

Search as I might I wasn't able to find my HO EZ-track, and the only store near by me that carries it discontinued all their train products this year and don't stock it any longer, and I just didn't have time to run down to the next town south of me to the hobby shop there last week. This was a real disappointment for me as I really wanted to have that train around the tree. The train around the tree is one of those things that while I can certainly live without one having one adds to the magic for me by linking this Christmas to those when I was a kid and my dad put up a 4x4 plywood sheet layout under the tree.

This year though I was really given a special gift by my daughter in something she said the other day. She prayed the other day that "everyone could be happy with what they have." This hit me hard personally because lately it's been tough for me. We have only one income unlike most of my friends and relatives, and so I have a lot less disposable income. Don't get me wrong I don't feel slighted by this in any way, in fact I'm very blessed and lucky to have all that I do. Sometimes though it's tough to not want more than I can justify having. This little statement helped me put things into perspective, for me one of the things that meant was improvising a little bit of track. While I didn't have HO track I had a bunch of N scale track that came with a small set I bought years ago. So I pulled it out along with its matching power pack, ripped up the tree skirt that was all bunched up and setup my trains.

Most of my equipment is N scale, and has been since the early 90s so after I did this it really started to make more sense. Granted its small, but hey it got my GG1 out of the box and running, and its quieter than my Lionel set that is just too loud in out living room.

This also had the benefit of getting me back into working on my rolling stock. I changed out a lot of old rapido couplers I had for Accumate or Micro trains ones. I also started weathering my cars a bit with pastels which has really made them look better I think. You can see the differences with the tank cars in the lower photo. All in all I think I'm a lot happier to just focus on what I have and enjoy rather than searching for something new to make me feel better. This doesn't mean I won't be buying more couplers since I still have stock to convert, but it does mean that I'll be buying N-scale ones and probably not messing around putting Kadee couplers on my under the tree train this year, or looking to buy a new cheap train set just to get the track from it (I seriously almost did it the other day).

So this got me thinking a lot lately that maybe I should consider something more for next year, nothing huge but maybe just a 40"x48" platform with some foam scenery and a tunnel on it. Something that I could screw the tree stand into to secure it and camouflage it. I guess I'll just have to make sure that if I do build it I make sure to be happy with what I have and not go over board for an basic under the tree layout.

The benefits of my four year olds philosophy are also helping in other areas of life. I'm happier at work, and in fact I'm making an effort to be sure that folks get exactly what they asked for or paid for and not cutting corners just to save me time. I also think that I'll start preparing all the "stuff" in my basement for a full purge onto ebay and out to the Saint Vincent de Paul store. I have a lot of stuff that I've accumulated over the years, most of it I save because it has "value", but in the end it's just cluttering up my house and life and making it harder to do what I want to be doing. If all goes well I'll clean up that stuff and have a nice place to setup my trains and a nice place to play with my kids.

That, is how I'm going to try and be happy with what I have this year, and to try to avoid that greedy feeling that can pop up when I start to see all the "toys" other folks seem to have. I hope you all can have a Merry Christmas enjoying what you have and not focusing on what you don't.

West Forge: Track Detailing

2008-12-19T06:42:00.000-05:00

This turned out to be a fun project to let the kids help out with. I decided to use acrylic tube paints for coloring the ties. granted they will not hold up as well as something like Polly Scale or Model Masters would have, but I had them and they are easy enough to clean up that I wasn't too worried about the kids spilling anything. Plus I really didn't feel like dragging the air brush out for this. I choose a dark brownish red for the base color. I'm really not sure why I choose that color. It went on and dried very red looking rather than a dirty brow. Already the track is looking better than the glossy black color it comes.

Here is the layout after the red paint was dry. Again not sure why I went so red. It's pretty clear here that the color is too red. You can also see the cut hillside I added to the corner here has the scultpamold but on it now.
This is a close up of the track after I decided to dry brush a grayish brown over top of the red. Things still look overly red here as the sides of the ties are red in a lot of places where the dry brushing didn't touch. Once the ballast is down it should cover up a lot of that. After this shot was taken I wound up replacing the bad section of track (seen as the top track in this shot) and things began to run much more smoothly.

Next step: Ballast!

West Forge: Laying the Track

2008-12-15T07:18:00.001-05:00

Now I wish I could say that my track work was great, heck I'd even be happy to say it was good, but at best my track work is passable. That's one of the reasons I decided to start with such a small project. I had a bunch of code 80 flex track, cork and blue foam left over from previous projects and that meant that this project was going to be a cheap way to improve my skills in N Scale.

To get started I began test fitting my track at the least forgiving areas my turnouts and crossover. This let me start to get a feel for where I also wanted to break out my power blocks since initially this layout will be all DC based. I used a blue sharpie this time to start noting where I needed to install insulators and what looked like good spots for my feeder wires. Once I was happy with a particular pieces location I used my dremel tool and a pair of tin snips to cut my flex track and then soldered it all together. I really have to admit that I might choose to not solder any special track next time like the cross over and turnouts as later when I had to clean up some poor track work I nearly ruined a turnout. Note that the solder removing ribbon from Radio Shack works wonders to help get a piece of track free.

Here you can see the first half of the inner and outer loops completed. Looks good doesn't it? Well it wasn't I had to remove almost the entire inner loop seen here because I somehow managed to point the soldered joint on that section. Nothing would run properly over that spot. Next time I will really have to pay more attention to this part and not rush it so much. I think i was over confident in my own soldering abilities. I've been soldering for years and years, but soldering track is a lot different than electronics.

This is what the track looked after it was all layed. Again on this half I did have to replace a second section of the inside loop due to a poor connection between two pieces of flex track. You can also see the blue markings noting where the insulators are installed at.

This is a close up of the connection to the rest of the branch that isn't modeled. At some point if this small module works out well I'd like to make it a semi-permanent piece of a larger layout that shows the rest of the branch and possible an interchange with the Pennsy main line and maybe an interchange with another line (NYC, Bessemer or B&O probably). At this point I really haven't given much thought to what comes next. Also in this shot you can see the ground throws that I installed. I have never used these before but I decided to use them this time because I wasn't using switch motors and didn't want to be using those huge atlas switch machines. For a few dollars apiece they are well worth the investment to me. They have an internal spring that makes sure there is some tension on the points in both directions and they lock slightly at each end to help maintain the points connection to the rails. Plus they were super easy to install.

As I mentioned above I tried to repair some of the bad connections before I replaced them. Here is my example of what not to do. I used a few larger nails to try and push the inside rail into a better position then I attempted to redo the solder, but that just didn't work. I wound up cutting this whole piece out and putting fresh flex track in. You can also see the newly installed feeder wires and spst power switch that I installed to turn this section of rail on and off from the power bus.

West Forge: Transferring the Track Plan and Installing the Roadbed

2008-12-11T07:00:00.000-05:00

So yes life happens. It's been a while since my previous post about the building of my West Forge practice layout. With all that's been happening in the world I've spent a lot of time working providing my employer with detailed productivity reports to help the hospital staff appropriately and in a cost effective manner, but that's another post. This one is a continuation of what I was working on previously. My 2x3 N scale Pennsy themed layout.

In the above picture you can see what became my method of transferring my track plan. I used XTrkCad to print out a 1:1 scale version of my plan, I choose to trim off the excess paper edges and then taped each piece to the blue board in the proper position. I choose to save paper and not print the empty the middle section. Once that was complete I used a thumb tack to poke holes through the plan into the blue board down the center line of all the rails. You can see I also tested the fit of my turnouts to make sure the program had the correct template. Happily it did size all the parts correctly.

In this photo you see the next two steps I took. I used a black sharpie to darken each pin mark just to make it easier for me to see the lines (and it made the work visible for this photo). I then began to fit my cork roadbed into place by following the darkened center line. To hold down the road bed I used yellow wood glue and standard metal straight pins pushed into the shoulder of the roadbed. I made sure to keep the flat top of the roadbed cleared as much as possible so that I wouldn't run into any issues when I installed the track. This was then all left to dry for a few days.

Here you can see the edge of the finished module with the road bed in place. I've added a small cut hillside to the one corner to add some interest The foam layers are again glued together with yellow wood glue and straight pins. You can also see the edge of the foam where I used plain old duct tape to strengthen and protect the side of the foam. While certainly not a nice piece of fascia the duct tape really did help to the protect the sides from getting too banged up while I was working. This is something I will probably do again when working with any exposed foam.

The final step for the roadbed was to cover everything with a light tan latex paint. I used just a cheap flat latex that was a pale sand color. While it does look very pale in this picture, and on the module, I still think it was better to go lighter here and let the ground foam darken the scenery later on. After I did this I realized that I'll have to paint most of the layout again anyway because I'm going to put sculptamold (of whatever the name of the generic version I bought is) onto the board to add some visual interest and to make it look less like a flat board, but I also wanted to make sure that the yellow glue holding down the road bed was sealed before I ballasted. This may or may not have been a good idea on my part but I was thinking that the really wet water and glue combo might damage the roadbed or weaken the glue that I used on it. Thinking back I believe that yellow glue is supposed to not be washable by water after it cures/drys so this step was probably not needed, but it still felt good to not be looking at plain old blue foam any more.

So next is going to be track, wiring and ballasting I guess. I'll try and get the next post up before Christmas, but who knows I still have a bathroom to finish repairing between now and then also. As usual please feel free to comment and let me know if you think I could have done something better.

West Forge: Sub Roadbed and "Benchwork"

2008-09-15T06:05:00.001-04:00

So I choose to do something I haven't seen done before for my bench work. Admittedly i was inspired by some bench work I saw that was built primarily from artist foam core mat board. I built my bench work completely from blue extruded foam. I took a piece of foam that I had in the basement (remember I'm trying to use what I have to build this) and I cut it down to a width of 24 inches. This left me with a none to straight 2x4 foot piece of foam. To make it more rigid and flat I cut halfway in 6 inches from each end and snapped the piece back until they layed flat connected only by the plastic wrapping to the main board. I cut out additional pieces to use as cross braces under the foam top (make sure that you use the same sheet or a sheet you know came from the same store at the same time as I have found different batches can be slightly different thicknesses). I then used yellow wood glue and sewing pins to hold it all together, and left it to dry for about 3 days with weight on the top.

Once it had sit for 3 days it was dry, flat and solid, but still very light. You can easily pick it up with just one finger. Below you can see how I layed out the supports. After the glue dried I removed the large pins (all I had at the time) and replaced them with some flat headed steel pins I picked up the store. I decided to leave the pins in place to keep the foam from shifting if it took a hit (something highly likely to happen in my house).

At this point it's rather nice as I was able to just slide the entire board behind my dresser to keep it away from the kids.

West Forge: My New Layout

2008-09-13T08:43:00.002-04:00

So as I've said before I chose my new trackplan recently. The choice was influenced by a few factors.

I wanted a continuous loop for just running something around and around.
I wanted some spurs to have some type of switching action.
I wanted a passenger station, a signal/Interlock tower and an industry.
It needs to be a small table top layout that I can move around the house right now as we are still doing lots of work on the house (and will be for the foreseeable future).
It needs to be affordable, I am working on paying stuff off and just getting by. I had to dig into my savings account for the money for my GG1 and I don't' want to wipe out my savings on a layout (tempting as it may be).
Considering item #5 above if needed to use as much of the track, equipment and supplies that I already had on hand.
A layout that is somewhat expandable is a large bonus.

After all that I found a nice 2x3 layout on a site in my bookmarks. It fit the bill of giving me something small that I could pull out of a closet set up quickly on a table and run some trains either for myself or my kids. Here is the basic track plan:

The basic premise is that this is set near the town of West Forge, PA, a small rural part of Pennsylvania served by a branch of the PRR. The lower track is the branch line coming in from the PRR mainline it is where set outs will be made for any operations and it is where I hope to later expand this layout with a wraparound shelf that could go along a wall.

Over the next few days I will post additional pictures of the construction that has occurred until I get caught up with where I am now at.

Kato GG-1: It's MINE all MINE!

2008-09-12T13:56:00.002-04:00

So I have to admit that I have been a bit cheap when buying my rolling stock and motive power on my layout. Most of my locomotives are either Life-Like Ready To Run pieces that I bought off ebay or Bachman engines that came from sets I've bought over the years. up until now I would have said that my Life-Like N scale PA and SD7 locomotives were my nicest. Well all that changed Wednesday night when I picked up my first ever Kato loco and by far the most expensive loco I now own (it's pricier than even the Lionel O27 I bought for around the tree).

The Kato GG-1 is a beautiful engine. It looks great in the pictures, but I will say that the pictures don't even do it full justice. Out of the box the loco comes "paint shed new". It's got a bit of a gloss finish to it that I at first felt looked a bit like un-painted plastic but it is painted and it's just got a waxed up finish. Great if you are using it as a showpiece, or railfain train on your layout, maybe not what you want if you are running it as an old freight car. Since Kato designed it to pull the Broadway limited it's not a big surprise to me that it's shined up.

All of the Lettering and striping on mine are well done. You can clearly read the words "Fuel" and "Water" along the lower edge of the body.

The engine runs well and is relatively quite especially at low speeds, at least compared to my other locomotives. While I have not yet taken it apart to fully examine the interior it appears to have 6 drive axles (the center sets), and it is well weighted. It came with Magenetic couplers pre-installed, i just needed to insert the metal pins into them.

At $140 for the DC version it's pricy, to me at least, but if you are a Pennsy fan or heavy electric fan it's probably worth it for a very nice piece like this. If you regularly buy nicer motive power than this is probably middle of the road pricing from what I've seen.

All in all I'm glad I picked one up. I'll try and get some pics of mine put online later, but for now you can always see what Kato has on their site at http://www.katousa.com/N/GG1/index.html

Patty Schneier @ St. Andrew's

2008-07-24T14:59:00.002-04:00

The Butler Humanae Vitae Ministry held a conversion speaker event this past weekend at my parish St. Andrew's in Center Township Butler County. I spent the weekend as the events techie taking care of wiring, mics and the sound systems. The event was fantastic, Patty wound up giving two separate but related talks to the group. The first was her conversion testimony about learning about John Paul II's Theology of the Body and of Humanae Vitae. It was a great talk about the changes to her life, her marrige and her family.

Following Dinner Patty gave a second talk that was being recorded that is in a way best called "Six Years Later". It covers what has happened since the original conversion, and how it has continued to effect her family. Unfortunatly due to the mic not being properly powered we weren't able to get a suitable recording for her, but we all figured that it was for a reason. I personally think Patty will refine the talk even further and make it even more powerful.

All in all the event was fantastic. We had about 105 for mass, and around 120 for the first talk. The NFP promoters dinner had over 50 people including kids, and we had about 40 people return to hear to the second talk. Many thanks to Fr. Salgerg, Patty Schneier, and the BHV team for a great event.

Choosing a Track Plan

2008-07-24T14:54:00.005-04:00

So as I said in a previous post while thinking about how to best get my own trains running again I decided to store away my bendtrack modules and put something new together. I started with my old Model Train bookmarks to look for ideas.

I like what Dave Vollmer has done with his door layout, but I wasn't looking for anything quite that size yet. I also liked the "N-Scale layout that grows" book from Model railroader but with all the switches in it the cost was a bit more than I wanted to spend right now. In going thorugh my bookmarks I found a stray one in IE (which was surprising since I rarely use it) for Mini N Scale Track Plans and I found that I really liked a few of these super tiny layouts. So I'm sort of settled on one of the 2'x3' layouts from that site. In thinking about things I've come up with the idea that i will do a small Pennsy themed branch line that services a small community station, and one of the larger industries in town.

So that's where I'm at. I've chosen the layout, the prototype railroad, and some basic structures for it. Now I need to determine what the name and type of industry will be that is serviced by this branch line and I need to keep moving on finishing my structures and sub roadbed. I will put up some pictured of the new layout once download the ones on my camera.

A New Model RR Project

2008-07-24T14:22:00.004-04:00

Well the modular layout I'm working on for the WPMRM is coming along great. I missed this past week but I understand our team finished laying the track on the outer loop that we started the previous week and even got a train running on the outer loop.

Even with all that going on I've been wanting to see my own trains run on something other than a loop of ez-track. Not that I have anything against my ex-track it's just that I'm finding I want more than to just have a few cars go around in a circle. So the seed was planted and I began thinking about my own layout. I've opted to scrap the work I've done so far on my bendtrack modules as the track work is just too poorly done and without other bendtrackers in the area I don't have a great incentive to make modules any longer. So I started looking at other peoples small track plans.

While looking those over and before I decided any specifics I knew that I wanted a Pennsy style Interlocking tower. I picked up a small (cheap) Atlas kit just called "Signal Tower" from my local hobby shop and decided to dig in. I used pictures of ALTO and AR towers as my primary guidance. Here are some pictures showing it off.

This is a picture (courtesy of Walthers) of what the raw kit looks like. It's a "molded in color" kit that snaps together.

Here is what mine came out looking like after several nights of work. I wanted it to be heavily weathered as if it had been standing in a remote location for quite some time.

And of course the obligatory scale picture next to a quarter. This little bugger is SMALL. I was actually quite unprepared for just how small and delicate some of the parts were.

All said and done I think I spent about a week working on this almost every night for at least an hour. Which I considered to be a pretty quick build actually. It was for the most part easy to assemble, and not very difficult to weather. I'm just very happy that it came out looking this good. It doesn't look like plastic which is a huge bonus to me.

Kato GG1

2008-06-04T11:55:00.003-04:00

Well looks like I'm off the hook for June as Kato moved the GG1 release back to August now which now coincides with the Braodway Limited too.

While I don't Model the NEC or any PRR electrified lines now, nor do I plan on modeling Eastern PA, I will probably still get the GG1 just because it's my favorite piece of PRR motive power. While I doubt that it will inspire me to setup overhead wires on my proposed layout right now, who knows what the future might bring. For now I don't even have a great layout, just the two test modules I built a few years ago. When I do finalize my layout plans it will contain some passenger operations and a nice loop for passenger trains to just run on.

June 7, 2008

2008-06-04T10:43:00.001-04:00

Moving SQL Server Databases

2008-05-12T09:02:00.002-04:00

This is something that I've had to do a lot lately since we are migrating to a larger HA architecture here at work. This article gives a quick list of dos and don'ts to make your next SQL Migration go smoother.

Moving a Database

Here is also a direct link to the Microsoft kb referenced in the above article, this one tells you how to move users from one server to a new server without needing to recreate them and use sp_change_users_login. Check it out here.

A Practice Layout

2008-03-05T13:35:00.002-05:00

Well a lot has changed since I started thinking about my next layout. Kato has released the date June 2008 as the release of their new N Scale GG1 locomotive. Sort of helping me to decide how I want to proceed with my own layout. I will be picking up one unless some major bills come up between now and then, and I'll probably look into getting their Broadway Limited car set to go along with it later on.

Also, since then the model railroading class I have been taking has come to end and they have announced a sort of "graduate" session. Those of us wanting to continue on can join the museum as probationary members and participate in the building of a new modular layout. It will be HO scale and designed for transporting to other locations for shows, but still a very cool project. I'll be heading down there tonight to turn in my application and start participating. I figure that this is a great chance to spend some time learning more about the hobby before I dive in and start buying supplies. Plus if all goes well I'll have some time to run trains with the folks at the museum, which I hope will help me decide what aspects of railroading I really want to model.

All in all for the $15 membership fee and 18hours of service required I can't complain. It is certainly worth my time to build something with other more knowledgeable modelers. They are providing all the materials and guidance which means it's unlikely that I'll screw up any major components that would cost me a lot of money to replace.

A new N scale Layout

2008-02-21T10:17:00.003-05:00

Well I've been thinking a lot about what I want to do with my own little model railroad. While my current BendTrak modules are nice, they are big, flat, the track work is on the poorer side and they loud while running (gluing the track down was NOT a good idea). I've been toying with the idea to build a 4 foot straight module that would go between my current modules, but after evaluating the track work I just can't justify that. The track work is bad in some places and needs major repair (more like rebuilding). So I am left with the option to rebuild the two existing balloon modules or to work on something completely new.

At this point in time I do not have any local hobby groups building modules, and the one person I knew who was building modules has moved away and was using a different standard than me anyway. After seeing some of the great non module displays that folks are making in the class I’m taking, and in Model Railroader magazine I’m leaning toward a small (3x5 foot/ 91x152 cm) semi permanent layout. Now the question is do I model part of the NEC to justify having the GG1 when it comes out, do I model a part of the PRR main line or do I do a Pennsy themed freelanced layout?

I think I’ll make up some sample track plans in XTrkCad and see what works.

A Paper Train?

2008-02-13T13:19:00.000-05:00

While sitting in on the model railroading class I have been taking I learned that during WW2 the Lionel company released a paper train for around the Christmas tree. This sounded neat and I went looking for such a thing, I was also searching for a cheap Acela model also as I just don't have the cash to pick up the Bachman one right now (who knows maybe I'll luck out for my birthday). Those two searches converged to one place:

http://www.trainweb.org/tgvpages/models/model-acela.html

While not the Lionel train (although the above picture is showing the N-scale paper version next to my Lionel Pennsy set), and not a running N-scale Acela this was sure a fun little project. The Instructions are very detailed and very well written, and with a good hobby knife and some craft white glue this went together quickly. I would say that the first power unit took me a bit more than an hour to complete, and the remaining cars all took me much less time. In fact the more I built the faster I got. I built the final 4 cars in just a couple hours by pre-scoring the parts, cutting them out, and finishing with the glue.

In the end I wound up with a very nice display piece and several evenings of entertaining projects that kept me off the laptop. All in all I can't complain about it. Time well spent.

Wooden Train Layout

2008-02-13T11:21:00.000-05:00

So I've wanted to build one of those wooden railways layouts for my kids (you know Thomas the Tank Engine/Brio). I remember when I was a kid seeing those in the stores and wishing I could have something like. Well now I can, although I'll let the kids play with it to.

The Table

My Father-In-Law built the table for the kids a while back, it's a nicely made wooden table with just a plywood top and what I think are oak sides. It's survived my three kids for at least three years now. It was originally built to hold a wooden train but it was very useful for other stuff too. So we never wound up installing the wooden track onto the table. The end result was that the kids ripped it all apart and after a few days we would shove it into a box and say screw it.

The Track

After a quick trip to a few toy/hobby stores that all had fixed wooden track layouts my wife one evening setup a few loops of track onto the floor for the kids to use. That lasted about an hour before the youngest had the whole thing destroyed. My wife rebuilt it to surprise the kids the next morning. To none of our surprise once again my youngest destroyed it within a few minutes. So I decided that since they liked it so much it was time to stick the track to the top of the table. This of course involved a few trips to the hobby stores to pick up those few missing track pieces and some glue. After reading the back of the Gorilla/Rhino glue I wasn't sure I wanted to use that in the house (and being all of 8 degrees F outside I figured working in the open garage wasn't going to be pleasant either), so I opted to try out some plain old yellow wood glue. Which worked at first but only lasted a few days before, yet again, my youngest destroyed the whole thing.

Finally, I broke down and started using the Rhino glue. It didn't have that bad of an order to it and it certainly seems to hold well. The only downside is that you have to keep clamping the whole thing down (I used cans and jars as weights) so that it can cure properly. We also used some kids paint to cover the wood with greens and blues and once I am sure that they can't destroy this version I'll start gluing down the trees, buildings and signs for them.

I just upgraded from Vista to XP!!

2008-02-04T14:42:00.000-05:00

So I got my new laptop a few months ago, it's a work PC that I use everyday. It came with Windows Vista Business on it, and I have to say that as doubtful as I was of Vista I do like it. Vista can be best summed up by saying "It's Pretty". While there are other great features of the OS, there are a lot more detractors in my opinion.

Visual Studio doesn't work right
How do you sugar coat this one? Microsoft's own IDE doesn't work well with Vista. I managed to get mine to work, but you have to make sure to always run it as an Administrator. For some reason there is no OS patch to fix this! While this wasn't a huge problem for me as I do have admin rights to my notebook, I have a lot of friends at other companies who don't have those privileges on their local PCs. In fact most users at my company except I.S. don't have even power user rights to their PCs. In this setting Vista just won't work for IT.

2003 Server Admin Pack
Don't bother. It's not really worth the headache. I got AD Users and Computers working (mostly, don't bother with Exchange). In the end though it was just easier to RDP out to the server and do my work there.

MSTS
On the lighter side I like Microsoft Train Simulator. It's fun. It was also written in 2001 and requires less than 128Meg of RAM. Why on earth does it run slowly on my Duel Core laptop, with 2 GIGS of RAM and more VRAM than was ever thought of in 2001! Why? It's not to the point of being unplayable but it's annoying in that it's so choppy.

File Copy
If you watch your network monitor you will quickly see that as soon as your PC starts playing any sound files your network bandwidth drops to less than 10% capacity. I run on a Gigabit network, why doesn't my laptop take advantage of that? Oh, it doesn't because Microsoft thought it more important that my MP3s sound good than I be able to copy an ISO image to the server in a timely fashion. Oh well, at least I can listen to the latest Big and Rich while I copy my files.

RAM
I checked out my laptop when it first came from the factory, granted it had a bunch of utilities from Dell pre-installed, it would idle after boot at around 1200 Megs of RAM in use. I understand that this is some sort of Pre-Cache method to make sure that the apps I need stay in memory, but it caused my PC to seem to do a lot of swapping. The HDD ran nearly constantly. Under XP with all the Dell tools re-installed the PC idled at 380 Meg

In the end what pushed me over the edge was a co-worker of mine saying that he loved his Vista laptop, and that he had very few problems with it. So I asked what issues have you had?

"Well iTunes crashes a lot and my MS Keyboard causes a BSOD when it gets plugged in. I live with that because I love how it looks. If XP could look like Vista I'd switch in a minute."

This is the guy who loves vista in my office. All that he really liked was the Look, and our Network Admins hate it and don't want it on the network at all. So I started poking around for XP to Vista total conversions. I went with a Brico Pack from CrystalXP.net called Vista Inspirat Ultimate 2. It's neat in that when turned on to Ultimate it really makes XP look just like Vista. It's really missing on a few things and there are other utilities that make up for that.

Visual Tool Tip gives you the Vista like window icons when you mouse over the task bar. VSE makes the XP Start Menu minic the Vista version. While cool I did not use it as I liked the XP menu, the only thing I really miss is the search box built into the vista menu. VSE does have the search box but you have to make sure that all links are in your local Profile and not the "All Users" profile. Finally Vista Drive Icons gives you that nice windows explorer drive icon with the blue full/empty thermometer bar.

There are lots of other options, I went with good looks for the lowest price. Most if not all of these are free. Some of my co-workers chose to use StyleXP or WindowBlinds, both good products and both worth the $20 registration fee. I just didn't feel like dishing out more money for something that really should be a MS utility built into the OS.

In the end, yes I lost a touch of functionality, primarily in the start menu search box, but I gained a great deal of performance. My hard drive no longer churns constantly, and all of my apps work. Which at the end of the day is really the most important thing to me. If I can't admin my databases and apps effectively and efficiently then my PC is getting in my way. There are plenty of obstacles in business to overcome. My OS shouldn't be one of them. So I'm proud to say that this week I Upgraded to XP!

Mary & Islam - An Interesting Outlook

2007-07-30T09:07:00.000-04:00

I read this on another blog that I check out regularly. It deals with some very interesting tidbits of how Christianity and Islam overlap.

This gives me hope that in the future maybe we can reconcile all the peoples who offer praise and service to the One God under his one true banner.

The link to the original article is Here, but for ease of use I'll repost an excerpt of the article about Bishop Sheen. This struck me as important right now in the history of our world as right now Christianity and Islam are quickly reaching what seems to be a major crossroad, and I don't believe that Islam or Christianity are to blame for this. It is the people on both sides that are either ignoring God's plan or corrupting it (Many times both).

Here in the western world (The America's and Europe and sometimes parts of the Far East) we give into and many times celebrate lust, gluttony and greed. While I have never been to the mideast it seems they are suffering from vengeance or anger, wanting to stamp out the perceived threat of the west's faults. The west then wants to stamp out the anger in the mideast through freedom and democracy (A noble pursuit when done in love).

I put forward Matthew 7:3-5

: Why do you notice the splinter in your brother's eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me remove that splinter from your eye,' while the wooden beam is in your eye? You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother's eye.

Anyway the reason I found the original article to be so fascinating is it's discussion of Fatima (Both the town, the Apparition and the Woman). Bishop Sheen clearly lays out his belief that Our Lady of Fatima might be our biggest support during this time of misunderstanding and conflict with our separated brethren over seas.

Without further waiting here is the original article by Bishop Sheen:

By Bishop Fulton J. Sheen (1950)

Moslemism is the only great post-Christian religion of the world. Because it had its origin in the seventh century under Mohammed, it was possible to unite within it some elements of Christianity and of Judaism.

Moslemism takes the doctrine of the unity of God, His Majesty and His
Creative Power, and uses it as a basis for the repudiation of Christ, the Son of God. Misunderstanding the notion of the Trinity, Mohammed made Christ a prophet only.

The Catholic Church throughout Northern Africa was virtually destroyed by Moslem power and at the present time (circa 1950), the Moslems are beginning to rise again. If Moslemism is a heresy, as Hilaire Belloc believes it to be, it is the only heresy that has never declined, either in numbers, or in the devotion of its followers.

The missionary effort of the Church toward this group has been, at least on the surface, a failure, for the Moslems are so far almost unconvertible. The reason is that for a follower of Mohammed to become a Christian is much like a Christian becoming a Jew. The Moslems believe that they have the final and definitive revelation of God to the world and that Christ was only a prophet announcing Mohammed, the last of God’s real prophets.

Today (1950), the hatred of the Moslem countries against the West is
becoming hatred against Christianity itself. Although the statesmen have not yet taken it into account, there is still grave danger that the temporal power of Islam may return and, with it, the menace that it may shake off a West which has ceased to be Christian, and affirm itself as a great anti-Christian world Power.

It is our firm belief that the fears some entertain concerning the Moslems are not to be realized, but that Moslemism, instead, will eventually be converted to Christianity, and in a way that even some of our missionaries never suspect.

It is our belief that this will happen not through the direct teaching of Christianity, but through a summoning of the Moslems to a veneration of the Mother of God.

This is the line of argument:

The Koran, which is the bible of the Moslems, has many passages concerning the Blessed Virgin. First, the Koran believes in her Immaculate Conception and in her Virgin Birth. The third chapter of the Koran places the history of Mary’s family in a genealogy that goes back through Abraham, Noah, and Adam. When one compares the Koran’s description of the birth of Mary with the apocryphal Gospel of the birth of Mary, one is tempted to believe that Mohammed very much depended upon the latter.

Both books describe the old age and the definite sterility of Anne, the mother of Mary. When, however, Anne conceives, the mother of Mary is made to say in the Koran: “O Lord, I vow and I consecrate to you what is already within me. Accept it from me.” When Mary is born, her mother, Anne, says: “And I consecrate her with all of her posterity under thy protection, O Lord, against Satan!”

The Koran has also verses on the Annunciation, Visitation, and Nativity. Angels are pictured as accompanying the Blessed Mother and saying, “O Mary, God has chosen you and purified you, and elected you above all the women of the earth.”

In the nineteenth chapter of the Koran, there are forty-one verses on Jesus and Mary. There is such a strong defense of the virginity of Mary here that the Koran, in the fourth book, attributes the condemnation of the Jews to their monstrous calumny against the Virgin Mary.

Mary, then, is for the Moslems the true Sayyida, or Lady. The only possible serious rival to her in their creed would be Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed himself. However, after the death of Fatima, Mohammed wrote: “Thou shalt be the most blessed of all the women in Paradise, after Mary.” In a variant of the text, Fatima is made to say, “I surpass all the women, except Mary.”

This brings us to our second point, namely, why the Blessed Mother, in this twentieth century (1950), should have revealed herself in the insignificant little village of Fatima, so that to all future generations she would be known as “Our Lady of Fatima.”

Nothing ever happens out of Heaven except with a finesse of all details.

I believe that the Blessed Virgin chose to be known as “Our Lady of Fatima” as a pledge and a sign of hope to the Moslem people, and as an assurance that they, who show her so much respect, will one day accept her Divine Son, too.

Evidence to support these views is found in the historical fact that the Moslems occupied Portugal for centuries. At the time when they were finally driven out, the last Moslem chief had a beautiful daughter by the name of Fatima. A Catholic boy fell in love with her, and for him she not only stayed behind when the Moslems left, but even embraced the Catholic faith. The young husband was so much in love with her that he changed the name of the town where he lived to Fatima. Thus, the very place where Our Lady appeared in 1917 bears a historical connection to Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed.

The final evidence of the relationship of Fatima to the Moslems is the
enthusiastic reception that the Moslems in Africa and India and elsewhere gave to the Pilgrim statue of Our Lady of Fatima. Moslems attended the Catholic services in honor of Our Lady; they allowed religious processions and even prayers before their mosques; and in Mozambique the Moslems, who were unconverted, began to be Christian as soon as the statue of Our Lady of Fatima was erected.

Missionaries in the future will increasingly see that their apostolate among the Moslems will be successful in the measure that they preach Our Lady of Fatima. Because the Moslems have a devotion to Mary, our missionaries should be satisfied merely to expand and to develop that devotion with the full realization that Our Blessed Lady will carry the Moslems the rest of the way to her Divine Son.

As those who lose devotion to Mary lose belief in the Divinity of Christ, so those who intensify devotion to her gradually acquire that belief.

Problems with SPN, IIS and SSRS

2007-07-27T13:55:00.000-04:00

I'm in the middle of a large SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services deployment at work. When we upgraded some of the PCs to Vista and IE7 we have had a lot of issues with the default Integrated Security that SSRS users. Some users would come to the site and be unable to proceed past the login prompt (which they shouldn't bet getting anyway).

Turns out that the vendor was using a custom identity in the IIS application resource pool. The solution was to remap the Server Principal Name from the host to the user account. This apparently also sets us up to cluster this later on (yay). Here's the original blog post I found that Helped me out a lot.

http://www.adopenstatic.com/cs/blogs/ken/archive/2006/11/19/606.aspx

Abortion and Contraception: Old Lies

2007-07-11T20:14:00.000-04:00

I remember reading things in High School about the Salem Witch trials and life in the Medieval period, and how horrible it was. This article begins to reform my thoughts on the period as well as our own.

http://www.catholicexchange.com/node/63540

The author gives a good synopsis in this statement:

it troubled me that the Bible never mentioned the words "abortion" or "contraception." Eve's Herbs provided me with a startling realization: in ancient and medieval times, contraception and abortion were often considered a form of sorcery and witchcraft, rather than a form of medicine.

Anyway, a very interesting read for those feeling like we are living at the worst time in history for the Faith, or for those who think the end is near by reading the witting on the walls. This appears to be have been a problem long before any of our mothers chose life.

What is a Real Man?

2007-04-10T14:52:00.000-04:00

I found this Article to be of particular interest to me, and I feel it made some excellent points on Manhood and how it differs from Maleness.
http://www.catholicexchange.com/en/node/60540

"Men are wired to lead. They were created to lead. Robert Lewis believes that many men in our generation are refusing to lead and that they are "passively yielding to the feelings and emotion of the moment instead of aggressively leading with God's truth. Our homes and communities are in chaos because of it. Leadership demands that men have the courage to master their passions and bridle themselves with the truth... The courage to lead with truth rather than surrender to feelings always separates the men from the boys." Where do these truths come from? As Catholic men, we know our primary source is the Scriptures and the teachings of the Church. That is why it is important to spend time reading and studying Scriptures and Church teachings. That is why it is important to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with other men for support and encouragement."