CEO for EnGraph software
About the
leader in transportation software
For the last three months or so I've been working on an iPhone (and iPad) app in my spare time. It all started when I took the kids to Minneapolis and had a hard time finding radio stations to listen to on the trip. I looked in the App Store for an app that would use my GPS to show me Christian radio stations nearby, but there wasn't one. So I decided to build my own. Using public information from the FCC and a few other sources, I built a database in Google docs that contains the frequency for all ......
The next task in our Team Foundation Server is going to be id 666. Maybe I should not work today and just watch basketball. Technorati tags: Evil ......
Since EnGraph's productivity has gone through the roof with Team Foundation Server, we now have time for other things. Like installing our KU basketball hoop (9 months after moving in): I used to be a deadly shot back in the days of Kyle's basement. Now if only Joey will give me the ball back: Technorati tags: EnGraph ......
Our software will automatically generate pick up and drop off times based on distance of trip, how many other people are on the bus, how long it takes to drop them off, etc. We display these times in our custom TimeSpinner control based on WPF Extended Toolkit’s button spinner. Since the computer is generating the time, they are often not human-friendly. 6:00 AM is a lot easier to remember than 6:03 AM. So we give the users the option to modify these times. Using the spinners, they can adjust the ......
EnGraph is looking for an ASP.NET developer to join our team. We are a small company in Lenexa, KS that creates .NET applications for Paratransit agencies. A good candidate would be very comfortable with ASP.NET, Forms Authentication and JavaScript. A huge bonus would be knowledge of IIS, Google Maps API, AJAXPro, ActiveReports, WPF and SQL. We are accepting resumes immediately and look to hire as soon as January 18th. We would consider contract or full-time and we would require office attendance. ......
Pre-approval letter in hand, let the house shopping begin!10:10 AM Apr 28th Apparently it's impossible to look at a house without the realtor begging to be your buyer's agent. Back off people!1:36 PM Apr 30th Finally going live with software that I've been working on for 2+ years!3:59 PM Apr 30th First install and we run into a proxy brick wall...smooth4:43 PM Apr 30th Done with an exhausting day of house hunting. Found a lot that we liked. One that we LOVED, in shawnee of all places.6:40 PM May ......
Currently DateTime.ToShortDateString will not include any "0" prefixes. I think this makes any vertical lists of dates look funky: Here is a very simple extension method that will append any needed leading "0" to the date: namespace ParaPlan.Extensions{ public static class DateHelper { public static string ToShortDateEqualLengthStrin... DateTime dt) { var rv = new StringBuilder(); if (dt.Month.ToString().Length ==1) { rv.Append("0"); } rv.Append(dt.Month.ToString... rv.Append("/"); if (dt.Day.ToString().Length ......
Frank Ohrtman, who talks about everything WiMAX, has started a new series of posts about how WiMAX could potentially advance specific vertical industries. Delivery Industry Agriculture I would like to see an article about how WiMAX could help the ParaTransit industry. EnGraph has a digital manifest application that runs on Windows CE and it would be better adopted with the bandwidth and cost benefits of WiMAX. Technorati tags: Frank Ohrtman, WiMAX, ParaTransit, EnGraph ......
Where's Tim hasn't been getting much attention the last couple of months. A little bit here and there, but nothing like the Digg days of last summer. I've got several requests for information the last week or so though. Joab Jackson (who did a National Geographic story last October) is working on an article. Ronan Fitzgerald (who did an article in The Guardian) has been emailing me about the Social Geocoding studs NavXS. Davey Winder is also working on a mashup article. I'll post the links to these ......
We moved most of our stuff from our Lawrence office to our new EnGraph office in Lenexa yesterday. Putting all our stuff into Jonathan's trucks. See the basement page for reference. David was nice enough to paint! Server room...populated! No logo yet :( Gotta have the KU hoop My new desk ...with all my junk Technorati tags: EnGraph, Lawrence, Lenexa, Kansas, Kyle Archer, David Collins, Jonathan Umscheid, KU ......
I didn't really like how I was storing some of our SQL connection information. It was buried deep in the file system in an XML file, but it was still plain text. So I spent my day looking at the different encryption options in the .net framework. I needed it to be two-way encryption so our objects could still work with it, so I decided on Rijndael. I found some great code, modified what I needed and wrapped it in one of our objects. It works pretty well. Now only if KU could have pulled it out... ......
Yesterday Kyle, David, Jonathan and I walked 18 holes at St. Andrews in Overland Park and then did some planning at our new EnGraph office in Lenexa. Here are some pics: David teeing off Water hazard? Our new desks! David and Jonathan's office Server room...finally! Technorati tags: Golf, EnGraph, Kyle Archer, David Collins, Jonathan Umscheid, St. Andrews, Overland Park, Lenexa ......
The last year in the Pendleton & Sutton building has been good for EnGraph. It is our first office and I remember when we just moved in. However, we've added new members to the company (and are still looking for more), and an office in Kansas City just makes sense because all the developers but me live in the KC area. We just signed for a place on Strang Line Rd that used to be occupied by Kyle's brothers company, ASB. We move in on Monday and I'll be driving there everyday (which will make Where's ......
Jeff Atwood wrote an interesting post yesterday arguing for using GUIDs instead of auto-incrementing integers. We recently had one of our clients merge with another one of our other clients and it was a pain merging their ParaPlan databases. If we were using GUIDs as Primary Keys, the headache would have been much less. Technorati tags: Database design, Jeff Atwood, GUID, EnGraph, ParaPlan ......
A couple weeks ago, I blogged about the pain in my hands because of tendonitis. Since then, I've followed all directions from my doctor, took my medicine and even switched to using my left hand for the mouse. The pain only got worse, and it got to the point where my hands, wrists and forearms were throbbing. It hurt to drive, play with the dogs, use the remote control and my productivity with EnGraph was going down the tubes. Some days I would have to quit at 3 PM and just read a book. By the way, ......
Update - Found a solution here I've had a problem ever since installing TFS, and I've not blogged about it yet because I wanted to figure out a good solution first. I haven't found the solution, so I'm hoping for some good advice from the brilliant GWB readers. We have quite a few dll's and controls that we reference from our applications. For example, we have our SQL Connection String control that lives in the EnGraph Controls team project. If I want to use the SQL Connection String control, I add ......
Yesterday, Jonathan Umscheid started full time with EnGraph. He's been working on a contract basis for us for a bit now and it's great to have him on board full time! Jonathan and David are doing some really cool things with our AutoCAD project and they really need to start blogging about it! We are still looking to fill a position for a .NET developer that will help Kyle and I on our transportation and GPS software (you might even get your own Where's Tim). Technorati tags: Jonathan Umscheid, David ......
Kyle blogs about his issues (and resolution) with installing Adobe Reader 8 on his Vista machine. For more of his thoughts on Vista and how Access 2007 sucks, see this post. Technorati tags: Vista, Adobe, Kyle Archer ......
I was digging through some old VBA code today, and found this little guy: On Error GoTo i_cant_belive_i_have_a_erro... I actually remember when I wrote that. It was when we were still working from Kyle's spare bedroom and I didn't even have a desk. I was working on some old card table with my crappy Compaq laptop. Technorati tags: Old code, EnGraph, VBA ......
David added some more hard drive space to our Team Foundation Server yesterday. Technorati tags: David Collins, EnGraph ......
Windows has pretty good VPN management. It's pretty good at redialing the connection when the connection is dropped, and for the most part it works. However, sometimes it thinks it connected to the VPN when it's really not, and it doesn't validate the connection to a specific internal IP. We needed something that was a bit more robust and could disconnect and reconnect if it couldn't see a specific IP. This class I wrote takes a VPN connection name and an IP to ping and will use rasphone.exe to connect ......
Clarification - The specific program I am working with here has the word "updater" in the name. This flags the UAC that it needs admin rights. Full Trust ClickOnce plays nicely with UAC otherwise. I've been battling all day with how one of our ClickOnce applications works with the UAC in Vista. I've found two ways to get past the "Cannot Start Application" message: Run IE as an administrator The first way is very painful and not useful for a repeatable process, but it works. Assume your ClickOnce ......
In a recent post, I talked about wanting a TFS group called ParaPlan_Stud that contained Kyle and myself that we could assign tasks to and view in our "My Work Items". Much thanks goes to Mickey Gousset, who wrote a book that you need to get, for helping me with this. I originally made this a blog post, but it was a bit lengthy and I didn't want to flood the front page, so I added it to my articles. http://geekswithblogs.net/t... ......
Kyle and I are running into a small problem with Team Foundation Server when it comes to assigning tasks. In a typical software development company, a Project Manager receives a bug or feature request. He then assigns associated tasks to his developers. Once the developer is finished, the task is re-assigned to the PM for review. At EnGraph, things are a bit more collaborative. Partly because of our size, but also because we like to manage support and development from a team perspective. Back to ......
I came to work this morning to find a pile of snow where I usually park. It didn't seem like we got much snow this weekend, but it sure looks impressive all piled up like that. If you look closely on the left hand side, you can see the bus that I blogged about here. Technorati tags: Snow, Lawrence Kansas ......
Christoph Wille has developed a Team Foundation Server code check-in policy that checks the pending changeset for ///code comments. This has been a very useful tool for us. It can be downloaded here. Thanks Christoph! Technorati tags: TFS, Check-in policy, code comments, Christoph Wille ......
If I plug our DSL modem and router in our battery backup, will we maintain internet connectivity if the power goes out? Technorati tags: Stupid question ......
As Kyle blogged about and I blogged about a couple months ago, we are still looking to hire at least one person to do .NET development in the Kansas City area. We have some really cool projects going on and we just don't have the resources to take everything on. We are thinking about advertising in CareerBuilder. They have some good packages for print and internet exposure. Has anybody worked with CareerBuilder? Have any good or bad stories? Know any friends that are interested in working with .NET ......
When migrating our TFS from a workgroup based install to Active Directory, we got a couple errors when running Team Build. Access to the path 'C:\...BuildLog.txt' is denied To fix this error, I simply deleted the root Team Project folders in Windows Explorer and re-ran the build. The build then recreated the folders. You may have to run the builds in a specific order if your solutions reference assemblies that live in these folders. The other error occurred after a build started: TF42004: Team Build ......
Jeff Julian - Mr. GeeksWithBlogs - was nice enough to tag me, so here are five things you probably don't know about me. 1) I have a chapstick addiction. It's bad, I go through a stick every couple of weeks. It's really not my fault though, my Mom and sisters are just as bad as me. 2) I'm a bad driver. I feel sorry for anybody that has to ride with me. I go out of turn at four-way stops, run too many yellow(ish) lights, liberally interpret lane dividing lines, and generally assume that I have the ......
Moving our TFS Server to Active Directory wasn't that bad. I followed these instructions from MSDN. They are meant for people moving from one domain to another. But the steps worked for moving from a TFS workgroup based install to a domain based install. All of the tasks that were assigned to Kyle or myself were migrated over to our new domain usernames and using this handy permissions tool, I was able to get all of our permissions set correctly. The only problem is initiating a build. When I right ......
I added my main workstation to our new Active Directory domain last night with out a hitch. This morning, I added my Vista laptop and ran into a bit of a problem. So I added a DNS role to the server and was able to add the laptop to the domain. Then we started in on Kyle's laptop. When attempting to log on, we got "The system cannot log you on now because the domain engraph is not available". After much googling, I discovered that the DNS role was incorrectly set up. I thought that just removing ......
Today I get to learn how to change a Team Foundation Server from a workgroup based install to a domain based install. We've had Active Directory for a while, but it was never set up right. Thanks to Robert Oderkirk at Free State Business for helping us figure out what was wrong. So now, we have to attach all of our computers to the domain, set up the network users, and hope that TFS plays nicely with the transition. I need to do more research, but hopefully, I just have to switch the TFS accounts ......
We were supposed to get Visual Studio Team Edition for Developers in the mail by the 20th of this month (Dec 06). It still hasn't come and I don't see it on MSDN. Time to get back on the phone with Microsoft. Technorati tags: VSTS, Tired of waiting ......
I'm a huge Cesar Millan fan and have learned so much about proper dog training from his show on National Geographic. I just found his blog and rss feed. His latest post is about dogs as co-workers. Joey has been coming to work with me ever since we got our office. It's easy for me to get too plugged into my current project and taking him for a walk or playing with him provides a nice mental reboot from time to time. Technorati tags: Dog Whisperer, Cesar Millan, National Geographic ......
Most bloggers do some sort of self-gratuitous year-end post where they talk about all the great things they have blogged about over the last year. I tried to come up with a post like that, but I found that I only talk about Where's Tim. So instead, I thought I would pay homage to the greatest Director of Software Development that EnGraph has ever had - Kyle Archer. In no particular order, here are my top six posts from KJA this past year: EnGraph to attend n4a this summerMy Visual Studio Experience ......
I've been chin deep in confusion the last week getting EnGraph to be official Certified Partners and installing Team Foundation Server. Luckily for me, there is a lot of good information online so I thought I would post a mini-guide: DO ask lots of questions to your Microsoft rep about becoming certified DON'T freak out when the partner's site opens 15 new Internet Explorer windows DO follow the competencies instructions as close as possible DO worry when you don't hear back from Microsoft after ......
I ordered a new server and workstation from Dell on Friday. Not only did they give me 60 days same as cash, but they shipped our server on Saturday. The representative gave me his direct line and said to call him anytime I need something. I recommend him to anyone needing new hardware: Matt Moore - 512.723.5850 Technorati tags: Dell, good customer service ......
The roads are disgusting today, so I am working from home. It's nice to get laundry done and have Cold Pizza on in the background, but I miss my monitors. I've been with EnGraph for 3.5 years now. The last nine months we've had an office. For a year, we worked out of Kyle's basement, and the rest of the time, I was working from home. I love having an actual office. Mostly because it provides a needed separation between personal and professional life. I found that I had a hard time shutting down when ......
We finally got everything straightened out with our certification process. Apparently we had assigned the wrong competencies to the wrong assessments or something. An hour and a half on the phone took care of it. The lady that helped me was really nice and explained things well. But more importantly, EnGraph is finally an official certified partner of Microsoft. Team Foundation Server, here I come. Technorati tags: EnGraph, Microsoft Certified Partner, good customer service ......
Kyle is heading to Philly today. He has been helping them set up a transit company from the ground up. Literally. They didn't have office space two weeks ago. He talks a bit about it on his blog. Anyways, he is heading to the airport now and sent me this picture. Technorati tags: Vista, license plate, kansas, Kyle Archer, EnGraph ......
Kyle and I are heading up to Omaha tomorrow for HDC. I'm especially looking forward to LINQ by DonXML and ATLAS by Joe Stagner. Here is a list of all the sessions. Technorati tags: Heartland Developers Conference, Omaha, DonXML, Joe Stagner, Kyle Archer ......
Matt Dunbar & Co. did a fantastic job putting together GIS day at Kansas University. My favorite part of the day was judging the student competition. Seven students gave ten minute presentations on unique uses of GIS. They showed everything from a geographic boundary of where grits are consumed (apparently South Carolina is the capital of all that is grits) to a traffic analysis of SW Douglas Country in Kansas. The winner was Lincoln Lewis. He showed how to make GIS data pretty using a suite ......
Rachael King from Business Week writes about Where's Tim: Meet Tim Hibbard. It's 11:45 p.m. on a Wednesday night and Hibbard is currently near the intersection of Jacob and Ranch Streets in Lawrence, Kan. It's a cool 50 degrees outside. He's not moving around now, but he's traveled a total of 28.42 miles today. And no, I'm not stalking him. Very cool. She also talked with John Musser of ProgrammableWeb (THE place for web API's). He talks about the article on his blog. Technorati tags: Where's Tim, ......
I'm driving to Jonesboro, AR today to install ParaPlan for our newest client, EAAAA. I'll be driving through Clinton, MO. You might remember that we stopped there on our SC Code Camp trip. It's also Jeff Julian's hometown. Watch me here. Technorati tags: Where's Tim, EnGraph, South Carolina CodeCamp, Jonesboro, Clinton, Jeff Julian ......
A very cool thing just happened. One of my classes has a 100% next to it in NCoverExplorer. Granted it's pretty much just a data store for now, but it's still 100%! Heck yes, I'm agile. If you haven't downloaded TestDriven.net, go get it now. You can right click in Visual Studio and run NUnit, debug your tests and get code coverage statistics. Technorati tags: Code Coverage, TestDriven.net, NCover, NUnit, TDD ......
Kansas University (right here in Lawrence, KS) puts on a Geographic Information Systems day every year. A couple months ago, Matt Dunbar contacted me and asked if I would speak about personal tracking. My talk is titled "Big Brother is on MySpace. How GPS will change our everyday lives (in a good way)" After some shameless promotion of Where's Tim and EnGraph, I plan to talk about how real time GPS can add a new dimension to social networking sites like MySpace. I also plan to talk about enhancing ......
Heartland Developers Conference 2006 in Omaha was a huge success! Joe Olson, Phil Wolfe and everybody else involved did a great job getting everything put together. Day 1: Joe Stagner did the opening keynote on Federated Logic. Basically using data sources that live anywhere on the internet with ASMX web services. He even talked a little bit about GPS and web based mapping solutions. Something that is near and dear to my heart. Next, I went to Dave Donaldson's talk on Power Programming with Attributes. ......
We are looking for a .NET developer to join our team. This person will be helping Kyle with our transportation software and also working with me on our GPS software. You might even get your own Where's Tim! For more information about EnGraph or this position:See this pageTalk to me at the Kansas City .NET user group tonightSend me an emailChat with me on MSN Technorati tags: EnGraph, Career, Opportunity, Software Development ......
The Messenger blog talked today about using their protocol handler to initiate IM conversations from an a href or command prompt. The idea is to use their handler (msnim:) as you would a typical handler like mailto. I wonder how hard that is to implement. That would help our clients transition smoother between our .NET and non-.NET applications. For example, if they had a vehicle loaded in our ParaPlan software and wanted to see where the vehicle had been that day, we could put an a href link that ......
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