Florida Vacation 2011 - Pt. 1

Well, Flordia (that's how Lizzie spells Florida) is awesome! We have been non-stop "sunning it" since we got here. We landed in Naples around 11am on Tuesday after a sleepless night and tired flight. The girls loved the plane ride. They had never been in a big commercial plane before, and this was almost as exciting as the actual trip to Florida itself.

Checking in @ 4:45 am

Daizi and Jazzy

Jennifer and Lizzie

Naples, Florida
One thing that we quickly realized about Naples (sorry for any Naples natives here) is that they are not very friendly towards younger "touristy" families with cute kids. It's mostly wealthy older retired people who (apparently) don't want to be bothered with kids. We still had a great time and kept our smiles and friendly ways about us, but nobody was noticing. Regardless, Naples was beautiful and I could see why so many people come here for their retirement.

Waiting on our taxi after swimming in the ocean!

The room that we stayed in was pretty cool. We were on the second floor and the room had 2 bedrooms, 2 bath, full eat-in kitchen, and a living room with a fold out bed. The pool was about 100 yards away down a hallway and through a door. We spent many hours in the pool for sure. There was one little girl that liked the pool as much as us; her name was Olivia and she knew all of the Hardbarger girls by name by the time we left. :)

Thursday morning, we rented a minivan and drove up to Sanibel Island to do some shelling. Jennifer had heard that this was a prime spot to find some shells, and she loves finding shells anytime we go to a beach. The drive up to Sanibel was really cool. On our way up, we stopped at Fort Myers Beach and did some shopping. Another bonus for this drive was that our minivan had XM Radio and they had a radio station totally dedicated to Pearl Jam! Yeah, we listened to that station the whole way up and back. Nice! Once we got on Sanibel Island, we decided to drive all the way out to Captiva (very tip of island). On this drive, we passed a lot of beach front properties, and I must say that the houses along this drive were pretty spectacular.

Family Picture @ Fort Myers Beach

When we got to the tip of Sanibel Island, we all got out to see the beach. Unfortunately, the water was pretty cold and the waves were surprisingly huge from all of the storms out in the gulf. The girls didn't get to go swimming due to the waves and the icy cold breeze. Jazzy and Daizi played in the sand for a while. Lizzie and I threw the football, and Jennifer and Morgan did some shelling. From there we went to a really cool Mexican Restaurant and ordered some delicious food. The bill was pretty steep, but the food was very good!

Lizzie and Jennifer

Florida Everglades
On Friday morning, we packed up and headed across the Everglades for some swampy goodness. We made a few stops along the way and experienced some of the sites and attractions. Our first stop was a nature preserve with a long boardwalk that went about a mile into some deep swampy terrain. The girls loved it and so did Jennifer and I. We saw a few Aligators (big ones) that were very much "wild" and not confined by any means. We saw some cool birds, a goofy squirrel that charged us, then leaped onto a tree then just let us watch him. :) We didn't get to see any turtles or big spiders like I wanted to, but I'm sure they were in there.

Family Picture @ Fakahatchee Strand State Nature Preserve

From the nature preserve we drove further down the road to a nice restaurant where we ordered some yummy food. The girls got to eat some gator meat and authentic froglegs. :) We had to tell Daizi that she was eating "chicky nuggets" and she scarfed them down. After the plate was clean, we told her she ate aligator meat. She paused for a few seconds and then looked at Lizzie and said "That allidator was dood, Sissy!" :) (Daizi says her "g" like a "d"). We all lost it. After dinner, I ate some yummy Florida Key Lime Pie. Yum!!

After we filled up on "allidator meat" and dessert, we all went on an air boat ride through the everglades. It was awesome! We saw two alligators and got to skim over tall swamp grass "just like in the movies". :P The tour guide turned off the boat a few times and actually told us a little bit about the wild life and habitat in the area. I learned that the inside of a cat-tail is actually mother nature's gauze? If you shave off the outside of a cat tail, and then scrape out the milky inside of it with the edge of your pocket knive, it looks and acts just like gauze pads that you would see in an ordinary medical kit. The natives use it to this day.

After the boat ride, we got to visit their little local wildlife attraction. They had many animals in captivity from the Everglades. We saw lots of tortoises, lizards, iguanas, birds, allidators, trocodiles, snakes, stunks, a florida panther, wolves, wild boars, and more... We hung around for quite a while and just enjoyed the day together. It was hot and the sun was shining bright. One of the panthers was in heat, so we got to hear it roar over and over which was rather eerie. It sounded like a territorial bobcat about to pounce (a high pitch "wrowl"). :) Not a sound that I would ever want to hear out on the trail.

Jazzy holding a baby alligator

Daizi looking good on the air boat ride

Having fun on the air boat ride

Fort Lauderdale, Florida
We finally checked into our hotel in Fort Lauderdale and... WOW!! I'm going to save that post for tomorrow or Monday. Let's just say that our room is about as good as it could get!!

Our view from the 9th floor

Springing Back Into Minimalist Running

Get it? Spring?... :P No, but I've dropped the heavy shoes again, and I'm a 100% minimalist runner.

It's been a little over 2 weeks since I've switched back to my VFF's and my New Balance Minimus shoes. My feet and legs didn't miss a beat over the winter months. I've not been suffering from the lower leg pains that I experienced last year when I started running in my VFFs. Muscle memory at work here, I'm assuming. (?)

This past Friday, I took an 8 mile fun run with my buddy Eric @ Dillon State park. On this run, my new Minimus shoes gave me some nasty blisters due to the fact that I didn't wear any socks and we sloshed through some mud early into the run. When the shoes came off, I had some bright-shiny blisters on the tips of my middle 3 toes on both feet, and some nasty blisters on my heels from the back of the shoe. I put socks on after that run and had to grin-n-bear it the rest of the evening.

On Saturday morning, I met my good buddy Farley up at Mohican and we ran the Orange loop (15 miles).

Due to my tender blisters, I decided to break out the old black VFF KSO Treks that I got over a year ago. They have 500+ miles on them, and they stink like hell. They're falling apart but they are still amazingly comfortable. I glided through the forrest and only kicked a few roots and rocks on this run. Farley wore his Merrell Trail Gloves and had nothing but great things to say about them. They looked pretty comfortable and he claims that they are indeed extremely comfortable.

Side Note: Remember the last time I met with Farley, we ran into a fellow named "Last Place Jason". Farley recognized him from the Huaraches Google Group, and we stood around and talked to him for a few minutes after the race. At that time, we only knew him as "Last Place Jason". He was (and still is) a huge advocate of barefoot running and all things "minimalist". Anyway, (long story short) it turns out that he recently became the official spokesperson for Merrell Barefoot running. Oh and he has a real name too: it is Jason Robillard. :) I thought it was pretty cool to see a true success story from a great guy.

Check out some of his work on the Merrell Barefoot Training site.



Anyway, back to the Mohican run, this was the farthest that Farley has ever ran, and he rocked it like a trail pro. I think he has the taste for Mohican running now. :) It's quite addictive. He stated that most of his runs are flat, road runs around his neighborhood. This was an insanely hilly, single track trail that weaved in and out of trees and up and down hills the whole time. He admitted that he was a bit concerned after the first 2 miles. Of course, the first two miles of this run was all uphill and pretty slow going. However, once we got to the top of the hill and settled into a nice pace, our conversation allowed the time to pass pretty fast. I totally enjoyed this run and can't wait to run with "Brother Farley" again soon.

New Balance Minimus MT10OB Trail Shoe

I got a new pair of shoes today, and I can't wait to hit the trails in them. I chose the New Balance Minimus MT10OB trail shoes (New Balance's answer to barefoot running).



My VFF KSO Trek's are stinking up the house and simply unsanitary. I've put hundreds of miles on them and I've even had my mom stitch them together for me on one occasion. My other VFF KSO's are great for running on the roads or the bike path, but they aren't really good for running on the trails. There's no traction on the bottom and I slip and slide all over the place in the slightest bit of wetness or mud. I was going to just order another pair of KSO Treks online and be done with it. However, my good buddy, Farley, was telling me how much he likes his Merrell Trail Gloves (Merrell's answer to barefoot running). I've also read some pretty good reviews from the New Balance Minimus MT10OB shoes.

Jennifer and I decided to head into Columbus and do some "Daddy shoe shoppin". Our first stop was Easton to see what the New Balance Minumus shoe was like. I literally walked into the store, tried them on, and bought them. No need to look any further. These things fit great and there was no need to look at the Merrells. I'm going to officially retire my stinky VFF KSO Trek's. :)

NuGet Package Management to the Rescue

I've seen the light.

I am working on a project and needed to include a reference to Castle.Windsor. I thought about all the pain that goes with this. In order to even get Castle.Windsor working, I have to first download it. Place it into a directory on my file system. Then I have to add the reference to my .NET assembly. Once that's done, I have to then modify my web.config file to ensure that everything get's mapped up correctly. Then (and only then) can I try to do a compile and hope I didn't screw something up along the way.

Welcome to NuGet!

With NuGet, I simply go to the Package Management Console toolwindow inside Visual Studio and type:

Get-Package MyProjectName | Install-Package Castle.Windsor -Version 2.5.2

This means:
- Set MyProjectName as the default project
- Pipe that output as the input to the Install-Package command
- Install Castle.Windsor (v2.5.2) along with anything it might depend on

Viola, all that stuff is done for me automagically for me. I see a slew of output in my console window with a final "Done." at the end. Looking through my solution explorer, I see that the references have been added and a few config files were updated. Castle.Windsor is installed and configured.

Since this was so easy, I went so far as to install Elmah next. Installing these two projects into my solution took me less than 10 seconds. Without NuGet, this would have taken me 20-30 minutes and lots of docs-diving.

I'm a NuGet fan!

My Lil' Trail Hacker

Not often do I get to spend time with just one of my 3 girls. Sometimes I'll get to drive Jazzy to art class, or watch one of the girls while Jen is in town with the other two. However, it's rare that there is just "one on one" Daddy time.

Well the other day, I was wanting to get out of the house and get some fresh air. I was considering a relaxing 4-6 mile run around Marie Hickey, but I threw out an open invitation to the entire family for a relaxing 2 mile hike instead. Everybody declined, as they were sitting around watching TV or surfing the web... except Daizi. She was watching TV, but actually got excited to go on a hike. She was genuinely excited about it too. No matter how many times Jennifer, Lizzie, and Jazzy said "Daizi, are you sure you want to go!?". She asserted that she was sure! This made my day!! What was supposed to be a quick breath of fresh air outdoors, turned out to be an unforgettable hike with my favorite 4 year old!



We got to Marie Hickey around 3:30 pm, and Daizi suggested that we check the map so that we knew where to go. :) I let her pick which direction to start, and she decided that she wanted to go UPHILL into the woods instead of doing the easy, flat part first. I love this kid! :) We headed up into the woods with great conversation. Of course she started complaining about her legs hurting about 200 yards into the hike... I assured her that they'll feel better soon, and she didn't mention them for the remainder of the hike.

We kept our eyes peeled for animals the whole time. She wanted to see a "trock-a-dile" really bad. I told her that there were no "trock-a-diles" in Ohio, but she didn't get it and kept claiming that she wanted to see one. :) We did see some hawks, small birds, a crane, a family of deer, and a few "stwirls". I was really wanting to see the local owl, but we never did see it.

Daizi prolonged our hike with her never ending search for cool "egg-torns" (ie. acorns). We had to stop every 100 (or so) feet to pick up acorns. I never once told her to hurry up or "let's go". I truly cherished the time that she gave me on the trail. I was here with her, she wasn't here with me this time. I would stop and look with her. At one point we had about 10-15 different acorns and she wanted to put them under her pillow (?). I told her that she should pick about 3-5 of the best ones and leave the other ones for the squirrels. She thought that was a good idea, so she dropped a bunch of them and put exactly 3 in her coat pocket. :)

About 1.5 miles into the hike, she said she was getting tired. I believed her and picked her up and put her on my shoulders. She stayed on my shoulders the rest of the hike. This kid is tough to walk 1 1/2 miles on her little legs through these hills. She'll be running ultra's with me in a few years. :)

As we were approaching the back side of Oak Knob trail, we heard the water fall off to the side. After a nice rain, Marie Hickey comes alive and there is a beautiful waterfall that sits off the trail a bit. We headed over to the water fall and spent a few minutes admiring it.

After the water fall, we got back on the trail and giggled back to the car through the mud and over the little bridges. The entire hike took us a little over an hour, but it seemed much longer. We had a great time together and Daizi was wore out after we got home.

I hope to talk her into another hike next week... and then the next week... and then the next...

Hacking Together Good Code Quickly

I'm kind of a perfectionist when it comes to writing good code. I'm not saying that I write amazingly perfect code all the time. However, I do take pride in writing good code and always over-analyze (not in an OCD way, but...) my architectural choices when designing systems.

Well, it's officially crunch time on a project that I'm working on, and I'm forced to add features into the application with the quickness (ie. hack). :( It's not bad code. It works. However, it is not written to my standards and has some majore "code smell" to it.

Things like this:

DoSomethingCoolHere();

foreach(var form in Application.OpenForms)
{
  if (form is AnalyzerForm)
    ((AnalyzerForm) form).RefreshDisplay();  
}

I would much prefer to NOT use the 'Application.OpenForms' static property, nor would like to cast objects to specific types to call a method on them. However it works for now, and can be refactored later. At least I can take comfort in knowing that I get to refactor as soon as the "facade" is working.

These are all the secrets that I'm going to expose right now about our amazing software. :)

Running with Dean Karnazes

I saw on Regis and Kelly this morning (no... Jen was watching it, not me) that Dean Karnazes is going to be doing a Run Across America, starting this Friday. He starts his journey in Disneyland and will be running through Ohio in mid-April. I'm going to find out the closest 5K event that he has around here and will run it with him. He's coming through Granville, so hopefully there will be one near there...(?)

I've read 2 of his books and watched the "50 Marathons in 50 Days" movie. Dean is a great guy (no matter what some ultra runners may think of him). He is out there trying to get people excited about getting healthy and he makes money doing what he loves; running. It will be great to just run a few miles with him, even if I don't get to talk to him. Plus, the money goes to a good cause to help childhood obesity, so I may recruit some of my friends to run with me too. :)

Here is his journey:



Anyway, if you've never read a Dean Karnazes book, I encourage that you do so. Even if you are not a runner, or have no desire to run, his books are very easy to read and will give you a whole new outlook on ultra athletes. He's an inspiration to all of us mere mortals. :) Sure, there are other athletes that are just as extreme in some regard, but Dean is the one that is pushing it to the kids and mass media so that people get excited about it. If you've never ran or don't know why people run, read a Dean Karnazes book. He describes the passion perfectly in Ultra Marathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner. I read this book in 3 short nights and it changed my outlook on long distance running.

His book is what sealed the deal for me to sign up for my first marathon 3 years ago. Definitely an inspiration!

Hacking Like Neo

Have you ever wanted to skin your entire computing experience to be completely monochrome green and black like the Matrix? If you are a Mac user, you can.

Honestly though, I do a lot of coding in the dark and use this display a lot. I don't like sitting under bright lights. However, I used to get nasty headaches when looking at a glowing white screen in the dark. To solve this problem, I used to use a shortcut key combination built right into my Mac that would turn "White on Black":

> [CONTROL]+[OPTION]+[COMMAND]+[8] (try it now)

> or navigate through System Preferences -> Universal Access -> Seeing -> Display

Unfortunately, this would just negate all of the colors much like a negative from an old 35 mm roll of film. This wasn't very useful actually. My colors would all be out of whack with some pretty crazy colors (magenta, baby blue, purple, pink, lavender, yellow, etc..) and when I would visit a page that was originally black, then I would get the nasty white glare again.

A few months ago I stumbled upon a cool utility that allows me to do a lot more than just turn "White on Black". The utility is called Nocturne and it has been a dream come true for me. It works by adjusting tints and hues rather than just inverting all of the colors.

Here is a before pic:

Here is an after pic:

Not only does it look bad-ass for anybody looking over my shoulder, but it saves my eye sight when I'm coding in the dark. Best yet, you are not just limited to monochrome green and black. You can configure it to be any color you'd like. I can set my tint to red and it makes my Mac look like a submarine terminal. Check out my iTunes display:

So there it is. If you code in the dark, or want to code like a real hacker (:P), check out Nocturne (it's free)!

Google Chrome and Blogger Issues - Solved!

For those that don't know, I'm a 100% Google Chrome user. It's fast, easy to use, and did I mention it's fast. However, for the last few months I've been frustrated with the fact that I couldn't enter new posts to my blog from Chrome. If I wanted to blog about something, I had to either open Firefox or use a 3rd party tool (like Blogo) to post something to my blog.

Today on my run I thought that it was ridiculous that Google owns Blogger and Chrome, but the two don't work together. Clearly I'm not the only person who's experiencing this problem and I had to figure out what the problem was. I'd done searches in the past to try and figure it out, but the results I got back weren't correct. I wasn't using the proper terms or something, so I played with it and finally did a search for: "google chrome +blogger" and found the problem.

The problem was due to a Chrome Plugin called "MeasureIt" (great plugin by the way). Once I disabled it, I was able to enter all of this text inside my Blogger editor using Chrome. Just another emotional baggage issue that I've solved to allow myself easy blogging again. Maybe I'll start blogging regularly again??

2011 Mohican Trail 100 Mile Run

I did it. I signed up for my first 100 mile run.

I'm nervous as hell but excited at the same time. I know I can do it if I put my mind (and body) to it.

The 100 mile run has been something that I've been curious about since I found out there was such a thing. Ever since my first run @ Mohican, I've brushed it off as something that I'd never try; "that's just crazy!"

After my 100 km race last year, I got the bug to go further... As I was approaching the finish line at Oil Creek, I thought to myself that I could have probably gone another loop if I had to. It would have hurt really bad and I would have probably hit a wall that I'd never hit before. However, I could have tried it with no real fear leaving the aid station. After that realization, I went through all the "what if" situations in my head for weeks. I realized that there's no real good reason NOT to try the 100 miler.

A few months ago, I told Jennifer that I was considering it and she was (kind of) supportive by saying:

Whatever, Babe!? You know I don't care...

So that was my approval from her to know that she was on board with my decision if I wanted to do it. Well, I arrived home from Virginia on Friday, and knew that if I was going to do this, I had better just do it. I didn't say anything to her or anybody else about it. I just went to the website and paid the fee. After I did it, I went over and gave her a big hug and told her what I'd done. :) She thought I was crazy, but she's used to that by now...

The organizers have made some huge changes to the race this year and I'm excited to be in the first group of runners to run the new course. For an understanding of what has changed and why they've changed it, visit Mikey P's blog. He lays it all out beautifully and tells what they've changed and why they've changed it. They knew they'd get the good and the bad responses from the veterans. I'm not a veteran by any means; I've ran at Mohican quite a few times, and attempted the 50 miler two years ago. However, I'm still one of the new kids and have crazy respect for the veterans of Mohican. My response to the new course change is very good; I think it's great what they're doing to to welcome the new class of trail runners. The course is much easier to manage, it eliminates a lot of bottle necks, it makes it easy for runners to know where they're going next, and most importantly it makes it easy for aid and crew to do their jobs.

This morning was the first day of my training. I ran a slow 12 miler yesterday and ate a lot of crap food during the Super Bowl. Today I woke up early and began the first day of the P90X program. I did this once and got very strong. The idea is to do it again and get even stronger. I'm going to eat right and run during the program too (of course). I'm really going to try and improve my pace this time. I don't want the cutoffs to beat me for this race. My goal is to loose about 20 lbs of excess weight so that I don't have to lug it around the woods for 24+ hours. My running buddy (Kimba) has dropped an insane amount of weight and she's reaping the rewards with faster times, and stronger finishes. I know that my weight loss from last year helped me finish Oil Creek, and that was only 62 miles. :)

As for running as a minimalist... I don't think I'm going to focus on that for this race. I will absolutely wear my VFF's on my training runs, but won't limit myself to just running in them as I train for this race. Last year, I ran exclusively in them. I didn't wear shoes all summer. However, the Indian Run 60K really put my feet and calves through hell. That run was only 38 miles. (again, :) ). After that run, I began to prepared for the Oil Creek race and switched back to shoes... It paid off and I finished with minimal damage. This race is very important to me and I don't want my feet to be the reason for me to DNF (Did Not Finish). Therefore, I'll use my VFF's for most of my training runs, but will wear shoes for my "longer" long runs and the race itself.

I just have to know if I can do this. My ultra-running friends say I can do it, and I believe I can do it, so the next logical step is to do it. I'm going to give it everything I have to finish this thing so I can get it off my back. After June 19th, I'll know all of the ups and downs of the 100 mile race. I'll run through the morning, day, evening, night, morning, and day to finish it... or black out (whichever comes first).

Epic Snow

I saw on the news tonight that there is supposed to be a huge winter storm coming through. The people on the weather channel had me pretty worried actually. They were claiming this is the biggest winter storm to hit in about 15 years. Wouldn't it figure that it happens when I'm hundreds of miles away from my family.


Jennifer told me she brought a big load of firewood inside, moved her van into the garage, stocked up at the grocery store, and got all the candles out in preparation for it. Oddly, here in Virginia it's a balmy mid-40's F. I do fear that it may get worse before I leave though. My flight is Friday morning, and I go through Philadelphia for a short jaunt. Given this route, I may be delayed and possible fight some cancellations along the way. Yeah, I'm not looking forward to any of that.


Anyway, for now I'm enjoying a private stress free night here in VA hoping my girls get that snow day that they were so excited about over Skype tonight. :) Tomorrow brings some major weather for all you Ohioans, and I may wear a flannel to work, but no winter jacket will be necessary. Good luck and stay warm!

CodeMash v2.0.1.1 (Recap)

As I mentioned in my last post, Codemash is a top notch event.

Live Concert on Wednesday NightWednesday night ended rather perfectly actually. After the Pre-Compiler sessions, Chris Castle and The Womack Family Band showed up to rock out the attendee party in the grand hall area. These guys were awesome! I purchased a CD of the Womack Family Band after their set, and purchased Chris Castle's CD directly off of iTunes. They had a great sound, and best of all they were fairly local (Norwalk, Ohio).

I got to talk with a lot of people at the party, and Jennifer came to join me after she got the girls out of the water park. We had a great time and she got to see me in my element (true geek talk). I ran into a few people and we would just start talking about programming languages and different technologies. She was a sport and stood by my side with a smile the entire time. :) After the attendee party, we walked around and ended up sitting at the bar for another hour before calling it a night.

Chad Fowler KeynoteThat next morning, the alarm went off fairly early for me and I was out the door for breakfast around 7:30 am. Chad Fowler was the keynote speaker this morning and he did an AWESOME job. He talked about what defined "quality" in code and showed lots of different examples. One story that caught my attention was a discussion about a chunk of code that he looked at and thought it was horrible, but then later discovered that the code has not been touched in 20+ years and was still working... That little story gave me a whole new definition for "code quality".

Kids Programming - Aydin Acksu
After the keynote, I attended a session by my good buddy Aydin Acksu, titled "Kids Programming". Of course, my girls all met me there for it and they got to control me around a grid using commands: step, step, right, step, left, step, etc.. This taught them how how computer programs worked. Once they ran the the commands once, they would navigate Aydin back through the course to "test" the program, and then they "edited" the errors out to make it faster, and "tested" it again, etc... Basically everything a programmer does with a keyboard and a debugger. It was really cool how he approached the talk and all the kids in the class had a blast!

Rails A to Z - Matt Yoho
After that session I attended Rails A to Z by Matt Yoho (from EdgeCase). I learned quite a bit at this session and was amazed at how little code is required to make a Rails app. With about 10 lines of Ruby code, a user can connect to a database (build its schema), add records, and then disconnect (and destroy the table). This would take about 50 - 100 lines of c# code. Wow! Matt did a great job and he had my undivided attention for the entire hour.

WebMatrix 1.0 Product Launch - Josh Holmes
For lunch, we got to see WebMatrix 1.0 be launched to the world along with a lot of other amazing technologies (details). Codemash ain't no joke no more. This event has had all kinds of top notch speakers, and this year Microsoft had live streaming video from the conference to developers all over the world about this long awaited product launch. Congratulations to Codemash organizers for outdoing themselves each year. See Scott Guthrie's blog post for a list of everything that was announced today.

After the keynote, I skipped the next sessions, as there was nothing being presented that sparked my interest. I used this time to get in a quick run and workout in before the rest of the evening got ahead of me. I actually met a guy in the gym (ironically named Jim), who is close friends Mark Goodale (a local ultra-marathon hero). What a small world! We talked for about 30 minutes while we ran on treadmills next to each other.

Top Ten Tips for Moving from WinForms to WPF - Michael EatonThis session was pretty informative. Michael broke down all the differences between WinForms and WPF. I actually dabbled in WPF for a few weeks last month and got so frustrated with it. It was such a paradigm shift from everything I'd ever learned about windows application development. Buttons with click events and coordinates get's thrown out the window. Now developers use DataBinding to UIElements on various types of LayoutPanels through MVVM... Yeah!? Anyway, Michael's session confirmed that it wasn't just me. :) He gave some tips and suggested some 3rd party tools to help ease the pains. Great talk!

A Modern Open Source Development Environment - Gary BernhardtThis session was one that I was REALLY looking forward to even days before the conference. Gary uses terminal app and Vi as his development environment. This is what would eventually like to do as well so that I don't rely so much on VS2010.

Unfortunately the session was more about him showcasing how fast he types and navigates through different commands inside terminal. He didn't really focus on useful tips for users to do the same. It kind of turned into a "look what I can do" session, as opposed to a "here's how I do it" session. Don't get me wrong, I did learn something; I learned that I need to just bite the bullet and use vi exclusively outside of my day job. All in all, nothing very "constructive" came from this session (for me). He moved too fast, and assumed everybody in the session was familiar with Vi, Pyton, shell scripting, Git, and zsh.

He did answer a lot of questions about how he got so fast, but again he didn't explain anything with hard examples. It was mostly just pre-recorded videos of him typing in vi while he commented about his typos in real time, and then summed up the video with a benchmark. It wasn't what I thought it was going to be... :( I'm still a Gary fan though, and will continue to follow his blog: http://blog.extracheese.org/

Ford Fusion Keynote - Tj GiulliFor dinner, we all got to hear a developer from Ford talk about some of the new technologies that they are putting in cars, and it was pretty cool. Tj showed some of the new GUI's for the upcoming nav screens. He showed how traveling with a group of other drivers can be more "interactive" in that each car can talk to one another to know how low they are on fuel. Lots of other cool stuff was in here too, where the car could actually tweet it's status at any point along the route (ie. "Pulled into Taco Bell" or "I need fuel soon"). Pretty cool stuff really. Best yet, there was an API that was available to allow developers to tap into the engine and interface with it. However, I must admit that the API was a bit kludgy with their use of multiple yield keywords inside of a single void method. (?)

Cocktail Party, Jam Session, & Water Park Party
This is where it got fun! We all got to loosen up and mingle for the rest of the night. My good buddy, Greg Malcolm helped me setup my drums this year for the jam session. We had quite a turn out this year. Best of all Chris Castle and The Womack Family Band came back to the Kalahari to jam with us. They brought their gear back with them too. Of course, Carl was there and he's always a great entertainer. Again, we had quite a little crowd gathered up at a few points. There are a few videos on YouTube that showcase some of the shenanigans. :)

After the Jam session, Jennifer came to retrieve me so that we could all go to the water park and swim. The girls were so excited that I got to go with them and we had a blast!! We played water basketball, we hung out in the wave pool, and just relaxed and had a great time. After the water park, we split out separate ways and I went back to the grand hall to gather my drumset. As it turned out, I sat down and talked with Carl and Richard for a while on a couch and then we all headed back to the water park to mingle with other devs and get some drinks. There I met Justin Etheredge, and we talked for about 30 minutes about Ruby on Rails, and various javascript utilities that we used.

I didn't get back to the room til about 1 am.

Developing High Performance Web Applications with Javascript - Timothy FisherWell... I wanted to go to this, but couldn't. :( I slept in and rushed down to the breakfast area with moments to spare, then had to turn around and head back up to the room to get it back in order. Checkout was at 11 am and there was a LOT to do. Jennifer and I got it all done around 10:45 am. I kissed them all good bye and headed back down to the sessions... Jennifer was going to get some candy from the candy hut and then make the drive back home.

Rules for Good UX Design - Joe NuxollThis was a great session. Joe is an old Borland, turned Apple developer who now does other things I guess (?). Anyway, he had lots of useful information on what NOT to do with user interfaces (avoid "assy-ness"). :) He showed me some old user interfaces that mimicked some dialogs that I once (or twice) built that make end users cringe. He also showcased many user interfaces that were simply beautiful, and that hid a LOT of underlying complexity. This guy clearly knows his stuff and everybody in his session learned quite a bit about good UI design.

GitHub Keynote - Scott ChaconThe lunch keynote on Friday was pretty interesting. A developer from GitHub.com came to keynote about how they run their business. Basically, there is ZERO business processes or management structure across the entire company. Clearly it's working for them, but it has disaster written all over it in my eyes. From what he explains, people just kind of do whatever they want, whenever they want and for whatever reason. It's a very "open source" environment and sounds rather risky to me...

Everybody in the company has full trust of the entire enterprise. Everybody has the ability and permissions to do whatever they want. This means that anybody at GitHub.com (from the new guy to the CEO) could delete the entire site if they wanted to. Of course, this would never happen (or should never happen anyway), but the fact that there are no checks in place to prevent such a disaster seems a little haphazard to me. Scott indicates that everybody at GitHub gets the same pay. There are no vacations; you can just do what you want, whenever you want. No meetings, no deadlines, no feature list, no time frames, no nothing... It's amazing to me that they've had no problems yet. Good for them, but I (personally) like having a little bit of structure and credibility for my actions. Perhaps I'd feel different if I was put in this environment and saw it work. To me it seems a little chaotic and unpredictable.

How? It's because each employee is passionate about what they're doing.

Infinitely Extensible - Alex PapadimoulisThis was a great session. I follow Alex's blog (ie. The Daily WTF) and knew that this guy has seen it all. People send him code snippets from some of the most crazy logic puzzles. Many are just bad programming, but some are really funny dialog prompts that developers thing users would never see. Check out his blog to see what I mean. :)

Anyway, the session talked about how to keep it simple and avoid over-engineering simple problems. We as programmers do this by default; we over complicate everything and try to prepare for future enhancements that may never see the light of day. I really enjoyed his talk because it showed me things to look for when I sit down and start over engineering simple problems.

Anatomy of an E-Commerce Website - Joe WirtleyI was pretty excited about this session too. Joe is a really nice guy that I run into quite often around various events throughout the heartland area. His session was great and he basically just described how an international e-commerce site is setup to deliver real time results using caching and highly optimized data services across multiple databases. I learned quite a bit before I had to sneak out of his session...

Node.js - Open SpaceUnfortunately I had to sneak out of Joe's session because I was really interested in learning about node.js. It was an open space idea that somebody posted on the board and I wanted to see what it was all about. As it turned out, I got there way too late and didn't really get anything out of it. :(

Awards and Wrap-upAnother year passes, and I don't win a damn thing. GRR!! I guess I'll just have to come back next year and try again. :)

I'm now extremely excited about Ruby, Rails, Git, Shell scripting, Vi, and all things Unix. I plan to consume myself with knowledge of everything Ruby until I'm comfortable with all that it has to offer. While learning Ruby, I'll need to learn terminal app and vi pretty extensively. But that goes with the territory and hopefully I'll "get it" so that it can just get out of my way and I can focus on being productive on my Mac.

This all starts now!

CodeMash v2.0.1.1 (Pre-Compiler)

The time has arrived! I'm here at CodeMash and loving all the stuff that I'm learning so far!

I arrived yesterday around 1pm. When I arrived, I ended up geeking out in my room for a while, learning KnockoutJS. KnockoutJS is a very slick little javascript library that allows developers to integrate the MVVM architecture pattern into an Html page fairly easily. Anybody that is familiar with Silverlight or WPF will have no problem using it. However, for me it has been quite a learning curve since I'm not fluent in either. I've only been using the MVVM pattern (in my head) over the last month or two. I've never actually applied it until now.

Around 4pm, I headed down to the conference area and helped stuff the shwag bags with many other volunteers. They setup all the fliers and pamphlets on a table, and about 10 of us made a loop where we would walk around the table and grab one sheet at a time... At the end of the table, we would put the papers into a bag and start all over. I hung out in there for about an hour and a half before sneaking out the door.

After volunteering at the table, I got checked into the conference, then walked around the Kalahari for a while. While walking around, I actually ran into Carl Franklin from .NET Rocks. I stopped and talked to him for a little while, and was pretty surprised that he remembered me. After that, I went to the water park area and sent some water park pictures to my girls via Picture Mail.

Then around 7pm, I headed down to the gym to get my sweat on. I met a few guys (Chad and Bob) who were doing the P90X. They were on their 3rd month of the program and stated that they have noticed great results as well. We talked off and on for a while, then I headed back up to my room to get a shower before going down to the bar to "network" with some other geeks.

As it turned out, I actually ran into Chad and Bob again. We talked for quite a while, and then along came Greg Malcolm. Greg and I sat and talked and drank til about midnight. We talked about all things geeky, including Ruby, Rails, Javascript, Perl, Python, C#, ASP.NET, Git, SVN, and I think Scala actually came up once or twice. Around midnight, we both had our buzz on, so we went our separate ways to prepare for the big Pre-Compiler day.

Pre-Compiler
Whoops, I slept in a little. I had my alarm set for 5:30 am with hopes on getting a quick run in before breakfast. Instead, I woke up at 8:15. :) I scurried around and got ready to try and get a bit of breakfast before they took it away (@ 8:30). I made it! Barely, but I made it.

From breakfast, I went to the Ruby Koans lab hosted by Joe O'Brien and Marc Peabody of EdgeCase. I learned so much!! I basically learned that Ruby is the shit (this is a compliment for all my non-English speaking readers). I dabbled in the Ruby Koans last year at CodeMash, from a friendly tip. However, this year I dedicated myself to a full 3 hours of NOTHING BUT RUBY! Again, I can't say enough about Ruby. Joe and Marc are very passionate about the language and they are really good at getting people excited about the language and developer culture. I've already committed to attending the Columbus Ruby Brigade meeting on Monday. I made it through about 80 of the 274 Koans, and plan to finish them before Monday's meeting.

I had some great conversation with some smart people at my lunch table around Silverlight and WPF. Then from lunch, I decided to attend the Git Immersion presentation by Adam McCrea and Jim Weirich (also from EdgeCase). They did a great job explaining how Git is different from SVN and how it is an invaluable tool for all developers. Jim presented the Git system in such a way that made it easy to understand. I have it installed and will be using it quite often from now on.

The best part about both sessions today was that I got to use my crazy cool Bash and Unix knowledge in both sessions. Both sessions were 100% command line driven via Terminal.

Yeah, I'm having fun!

2010 In Review

2010 has come and gone. What a great year it has been. So much has changed in just a years time. We got a new bathroom and roof here on the farm. We tried to sell our house in a very poor housing market while attempting to purchase our dream house. We traveled to Maine and back. I took off my shoes and learned how to run barefoot. I dropped 25 pounds in the process while I trained for (and completed) a 100k ultra marathon. We got a new van, sold our pop-up, spent a lot of time outdoors, and just enjoyed life to the max. A lot of great things happened this year.


The Log Home Dream
We did all we could to try and reach our dream of living in a log home. We fought and kicked and went through all the steps to try and sell our house and live the dream. We put multiple offers on the house that we thought was "the one". While we would have been able to do it, we struggled to sell our house. Everything was "contingent" on the sale of this home, and it just didn't happen. We feel that everything happens for a reason. If it was meant to be, it would have happened. No sweat, we're living large right here.

Hardbarger Dream Vacation
The biggest highlight of 2010 was by far, our family vacation up to Maine and back. Jennifer and I have wanted to go to Maine since the day we met. It has always been the place that has defined "rustic" for us. We planned for it and saved up our money for it. We took 2 full weeks in the middle of the summer to take our 3 girls on an epic camping trip through Woodstock, Cape Cod, and Maine. It was the most perfect journey up the Atlantic Coast with a popup camper and nothing else better to do. The girls still talk about it to this day, and it was by far the best spent 2 weeks of the entire year. We all made memories to last a lifetime, and I hope that our girls will remember all the fun times we had on this trip.

Personal Health and 62 Miles
This year was also kind of a rebirth for me as a runner. I totally changed my running style to be a minimalist runner. I gave all of my shoes away and resorted to a homemade pair of sandals, and a pair of VFF "toe shoes". I did all of my training with no shoes, and was able to complete my goal of finishing the Oil Creek 100K this past October. In the process of training for this race, I went in halves with a my best bud and we ordering the P90X fitness program. He tried it for a few weeks and then gave it to me to get my money's worth. I dedicated a lot of time to the program and was able to drop 25 lbs in 3 months. By watching what I ate every day and working out, I got stronger than I'd ever been in my life. This along with my barefoot running totally reshaped my legs and midsection in a good way. I can only hope that what I learned about myself this year will help me to achieve my fitness and running goals for 2011.

Unix and Basic Hacking
Another big goal of mine this year was to learn how to use my mac. I've always been baffled watching my good buddy, Ben work terminal app like a puppet. He's able to just "manage" his computer with a terminal screen. I've watched him query databases, install software, update his system, configure users, groups, and server permissions with nothing more than a blinking cursor on a terminal screen. "If I could only learn how to do that, I'd get so much work done...", well this was my year to learn Unix. I've gotten very familiar with "man" and "info" commands in terminal. I've got a huge stack of books that cover all aspects of Unix from Bash, to Vi, to Gnu/Linux, to you name it... I've been reading like crazy the last few months. As a windows developer, I've always relied on the graphical interfaces of my high-powered IDE's. While I started in Assembler Language on a Sun (i.e. Unix) machine, I quickly got away from it once I discovered Visual Basic and it was my time to get back to Unix as a complete noob.

Whats Next?
As a family, we've decided to just settle down and enjoy our farm for another year or two. We have no intentions on moving from our perfect little house after all that excitement. We've also decided to not plan any huge vacations this year and focus on a very simple series of small camping trips around the state. We've considered a small ski trip to Snow Trails or something. We're going to save up for an EPIC vacation in 2012. No hints just yet, but it'll be huge! As a runner, I am going to train for and attempt the Mohican 100 Mile trail race this June. I have a long way to go, but I'm up for the challenge. I've already warned Jennifer about my goal, and she's on board with my up coming training commitments. I'm going to keep my girls and this family my number 1 priority, but this 100 mile race comes in at a very close 2nd. As for my hacking goals, I do plan to do some cool stuff this year involving some new Linux skills and terminal wizardry. I've already got a Linux server setup and ready for me to "ssh" files to (thanks Ben). I do plan to make use of this server space very soon. I won't stray too far from Windows; after all, it's paying the bills. However, I do plan to broaden my options to non-Windows development quite a bit this year.

Happy New Year!
I'm sure that 2011 is going to be a great year!

You Might Be a 4 Year Old If...

.. you blow your nose with a tissue and pull it away from your face without capturing the contents, then wipe the mess of snot off of your face with your shirt sleeve.

Yeah, that just happened.

3D Video Capture with Kinect

Simply amazing! I wish I was this geeky sometimes.

Upgrading to Visual Studio 2010 and SQL Server 2008 Express R2

I made the jump yesterday to finally install and configure my dev machine to run the latest bits. I upgraded from Visual Studio 2008 to Visual Studio 2010. I also upgraded from Sql Server Express 2005 to Sql Server 2008 R2 Express. I must say that I'm very excited to start using all the new stuff. Rather than installing everything side by side, I decided to scrap the old apps and fully commit to the new pieces.

During this process I had no real problems. The only real problem I had was getting SQL Server 2008 R2 Express configured correctly. I've tried various things to get the new database management tools working inside the SQL Server Management Studio 2008 R2 and couldn't quite figure it out (still can't). No matter what I do, I can't create a new 2008 R2 database without using VS2008 Server Explorer. Whenever I right click and 'Create Database', it always creates a SQL CE 3.5 database instance. This version is missing a lot of functionality. For instance, I'm not able to create views and the designer for this is very kludgy IMO. I'm sure it's something simple, but I just can't figure it out yet.

While trying to get it fixed, I completely uninstalled SQL Server Development Edition 2005. This still didn't solve my problem, so now I'm without Analysis Services 2005 and no full blown SQL Engine. It's all good, I've read that they sit side by side nicely even when installing SQL 2005 after SQL 2008.

The good news is that I can create a 2008 R2 database instance from inside my new VS2010 IDE. That's a win in my book and I'm content with this. The process was pretty simple

• Uninstall SQL Server 2005 Express


• Uninstall Visual Studio 2008


• Install SQL Server 2008 Express R2


• Install Visual Studio 2010 Professional


• Reinstall Resharper 5.1


• Test that everything worked...


• Convert Projects to VS2010


• Blog about the new goodness

I did have one pretty nasty problem when converting my ASP.NET MVC project to the 4.0 framework. Visual Studio provided a nice little wizard to do this, but when it did this there were some things that didn't work as expected.

The first problem was that it didn't add System.Core to the references. Without this library referenced, all of my Linq queries were brokent (+100 source files)! While this looks like a pretty simple thing to fix, it turned out to be a little tricky. I couldn't just add it as a reference from inside the IDE like I thought. When I tried to do this, I got an error stating:

"A reference to 'System.Core' could not be added. This component is automatically referenced by the build system."

Hmm... The way I was able to fix it was to:

1. Right click on my Web Project


2. Unload Project


3. Edit the .csproj file


4. Add <Reference Include="System.Core" /> in the appropriate ItemGroup


5. Save the change


6. Right click on my Web Project again


7. Reload project
8. 
   

Voila!

I also had (and still have) a problem debugging my web project. When I try to run my project, it does not actually start debugging like it should. The project compiles and starts the ASP.NET Development Server, but it doesn't actually load the URL in my default web browser. When I open the system tray icon and click 'Show in browser...' it crashes. I tried all kinds of things to get it to work, but nothing is working. I've installed a few patches and restarted IIS a few times after each one, but nothing. I've tried running aspnet_regiis -i against the new framework. Again, to no avail. As a test, I ran the project and then went to my web browser and typed in the appropriate URL. It works. I set some breakpoints in my code, and they work too. This works well enough for me.

Next steps I think are to convert my entire project to .NET 4.0 Framework so I can take advantage of all the new goodness with C# 4.0. I also plan to upgrade our web solution from ASP.NET MVC 1.0 to ASP.NET MVC 2.0. I'm also anxious to start using GrapeCity ActiveAnalysis 2.0 Silverlight control.

Upgrading to new development environments is so much fun... I'm actually excited to work a full day tomorrow! :)

Mike McCune Tribute Post - The Dillon Runner

I got a phone call yesterday from my buddy Rob telling me that my Dillon buddy, Mike McCune had died. It took me by total surprise. I don't know the details of what happened, but I do know that he will be missed.

Michael D. ''Mike'' McCune View Service Information Michael D. 'Mike' McCune, 56 of Nashport, died Tuesday, November 02, 2010 following a sudden illness. He was born Friday, October 08, 1954 in Port Washington the son of Donald McCune and Shirley Peters Seevers. He married Cassandra L. (Ousley) McCune on Saturday, August 24, 1996. Mike was employed by Sound Energy. He liked to fish and enjoyed the outdoors. Mike liked to cruise and enjoyed running and ran in several marathons including the Mohican 100 Mile Marathon. Mike was a great guy who enjoyed people and never met a stranger. Mike was a loving and caring husband, father and grandfather. In addition to his father, Mike is survived by his wife of the home; one son: Michael “Clay†McCune of Athens; one daughter: Page (Andy) Reichman Of Bolivar; three grandchildren: Kaden and Kaya Russell and Brennen Reichman; three brothers: Donnie (Sharna) McCune of Newcomerstown, Shawn (Vickie) McCune of Massillon and James Seevers of Dover; several nieces, nephews and friends. Mike was preceded in death by his mother: Shirley Seevers and one brother: Patrick McCune Friends may call from 4:00 to 7:00 PM Friday, November 5, 2010 at The Hillis & Hardwick Funeral Home, 935 Forest Avenue where funeral services will be held at 7:00 PM with Pastor Larry Kudart officiating. To sign the online register book or to send a personal condolence note please visitwww.HillisHardwickFH.com

That picture is the exactly how I remember Mike; smiling and happy. I met Mike @ Dillon State Park when I was on one of my long runs back in 2008. We passed each other once on the single track trail and traded greetings. A few hours later I passed him again and we both stopped and introduced ourselves to each other. We quickly realized that we both knew a lot of the same people. He was training for the Mohican 100 mile race and I was training for the Mohican 50 miler that year.

We crossed paths a few other times at various races after that. He would would always go out of his way and say "Hi" to me. I saw him at the Mohican 50 miler that year, I then saw him again at Bobcat Trail Marathon, and then again at the Forget the PR 50K (in his knee wrap). Mike was always so nice to me and treated me with great respect.

One day Jennifer and I took our dogs to the Vet in Zanesville, and I saw him and his wife (Cassandra) coming out with their dogs. Just like Mike, he stopped and talked to me for about 5 minutes and I introduced him to my family.

There were numerous times when I ran at Dillon and saw him in his yard. Each time I saw him he was all smiles and happy. I'd stop and talk to him in his front yard and he was fascinated with my VFF's. :) He kept inviting me to meet at his house for organized / group runs with other trail runners, but I never did... I wish I had now. :( It will be sad when I run by his house the next time I run at Dillon knowing that I won't see him again.

Tonight, I went to his calling hours to pay my respects. He had so many family members there and it was obvious that he was loved by many. I enjoyed seeing all the pictures of him through the years. He knew how to enjoy life, and he lived it to the fullest. What an inspirational guy! We'll miss you buddy!!

This post is just my way of saying that I'll miss running into Mike here and there. I'm sure he's already organizing group long runs in Heaven.

The New Twitter

I'm not a big Twitter user. I tried it for a while but then got overwhelmed with social media chaos. When I found something that I liked and wanted to share, I didn't know where I should share it. It became a juggling act for me to decide who I really wanted to see it. Did I want my Twitter followers to see it? Would any of my Facebook 'friends' want to see this? What about my friends that follow my blog on Google Reader? It's almost too much!! I found myself spinning out of control inside of this colossal web of social networking bookmarks. There's Facebook, Orkut, LinkedIn, Blogger, WordPress, FriendFeed, PicasaWeb, Flickr, Stumbled Upon, Delicious, Reddit, Digg, now Google Buzz... Oh and let's not forget to check your emails throughout the day too in between your IM's back and forth to your friends and coworkers.

Facebook has really become my main social media networking site. My wife and almost all of the people that I know around here are on Facebook. It's a great way to stay connected with everybody local and overseas. However, I'm noticing that it is kind of getting to be a little to much like high-school all over again. Every now and then I'll get a friend request from someone that I passed in the hall my freshman year. Should I accept? We weren't really "Friends" per se... Should I really be getting an invite to this event from someone that knew a guy that dated a girl I used to sit by in math class? Should I ignore or decline? The concept is great and it seems to be working. I do like the concept of 'Events', and my wife uses the crap out of the 'Photo Albums'. Our entire family is able to keep up to date with how fast our girls are growing and so forth. I do like it and it has added value in regards to keeping up to date with what's going on with those I know (near and far).

Twitter had always seemed like just another way for me to kill my precious time. It appears to be nothing more than a public area for anybody to do a quick brain dump about anything they wanted. To me, I can see this from Facebook (ie. Status Updates). Right?...

A lot of my geek friends use Twitter with great success. There are many Tweeters(?) out there that only tweet valuable links and content and to those I thank you. There are also those that use it as a public conversation log. It took me a long time to realize why anybody would want to post a tweet to somebody on twitter (for all to see). Why tweet a buddy when you could just email them or IM them? It's so that other can get involved if they want to.

There are also lots of Tweeters (again (?)) out there that tweet nothing but crap, rants, and random thoughts about nothing (ie. "I'm eating a burrito"). Occasionally, those "nothing tweeters" have some value in what they say though (ie. "I now have explosive gas"). So I do want to follow them, just not as close as I do those that consistently tweet valuable content all the time. After a while I found that Twitter was only useful (to me) when I followed a select group of people. The rest were just noise makers that wanted to get in on the action.

I know it's not just a noise collector. I know there is some great value out the. I know that 50 million geeks can't be wrong. I just need to figure out the best way to use it. Facebook is brainless to use. Twitter has a bit of a learning curve it seems (for me). There appears to be a science in filtering and searching for the most valuable content. I just haven't figured it out yet.

Today I learned that Twitter has changed it's design drastically. While I might not be a Twitter geek, I can appreciate the severity of re-architecting and redesigning a popular and extremely active website. It's epic really.Perhaps this new redesign will help me make sense of it all. We'll have to see...

Check out this cool video that they did for the new release:

Our Bad Dogs Made Front Page News

Our dogs made the front page of our local newspaper, the Newark Advocate today (direct link). Needless-to-say, it's been quite the story. Each person we've explained it to has been pretty amused. It was quite the hit at the local Sheriff station. I guess our insurance company (Cincinnati Insurance Co.) has sent the story around internally to share it amongst their staff. Of course everybody we have to tell the story to can't believe it. My wife posted the pictures on Facebook and it's gotten shared by numerous people (including myself). :P Enough people thought it was worthy enough to make the local paper, so we called and they were right. It made the front page! :)

Once I stop and think about it... yeah, I guess it is pretty bizarre.

Here is my side of the story:

Dan and I were 2 hrs into our drive home from Pennsylvania and we're rocking out to some old school Motley Crue. I get a call from Jennifer and pick up the phone:

"Wassup girl?!..." I say loudly with the window down and my cool shades on.

"Babe...", she says. "I got some really bad news..."

"Oh my gosh, what happened!?"

"It's bad."

Immediately I start thinking one of our girls got hurt or something.

"Ok, tell me what happened please."

She says: "The dogs destroyed our new minivan...", and then she explained it all to me in detail. I couldn't believe it.

Apparently, the girls went out to play and came back in screaming that 'the dog's had scratched the car really bad, Mommy!'.

Jennifer just thought it was a regular scratch and went out to see what they were talking about. She saw plastic pieces in the driveway, but didn't think anything of it. That is until she got on the other side of the van and saw this:

She could only cover her mouth and cry. The van was 3 weeks old and was now un-drivable. The dog's "went to town" on it. Of course, the dogs were sunbathing at this time and thought nothing of it. Just another used up chew-toy. Right?

We had no idea why they would do this, but there was nothing I could do for her. She was extremely upset and the girls were all crying. I told her to just calm down and try to calm the girls down. I'd be home shortly.

As Dan and I drove down Toboso Rd. we saw the Sheriff in my driveway and everybody was outside gathered around the carnage. I couldn't believe what my eyes were seeing...

The front drivers' side has been fubar'd:

The front tire has been chewed through in multiple places and entire front end of the van is covered in claw marks.

"Why," you might be asking yourself "would two loving family-dogs do this to a beautiful 2006 Honda Odyssey?"

As it turns out, there was a pile of raccoon feces under the van where the dogs had trapped a raccoon. Rather than patiently waiting for it to come out from under the new van and play, they decided to completely destroy the minivan instead.

Here is a picture of our youngest dog (taken 4 months ago), Ivy:

Here is a picture of the older (wiser?) dog, Valley:

They have been tied to their doghouses for the last 5 days in "time out". People have been coming and going and can't believe that these nice friendly dogs did such a destructive thing. We just released them today and they have been running around releasing their energy. We think that they finally "get it": Don't use Mama's new minivan as a chew-toy.

They're already back to their normal selves tearing up our yard in their never-ending-hunt of the local mole.