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  • 4th of July, 2008 in Coppell, Texas

    Posted on August 27th, 2008 mitch Print Print No comments

    Coppell had a 4th of July fireworks show this year and here are a few pictures that I took from very, very close up using my cell-phone camera.

    Due to the shutter speed, it made for some very interesting shots:

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    All images Copyright (c) 2008 by Mitch Milam

    Meanderings
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  • Some things you would not usually put together

    Posted on August 27th, 2008 mitch Print Print No comments

    Yes, you read correctly.  The Choo-Choo Cafe offers both Sushi and Catfish.

    014

    It actually get's better. You may have noticed that I took this picture while standing next to my pickup.  The right-side of the truck is the dark object in the lower-left corner of the picture.

    I'm standing beside my truck because I'm filling up with gas, about to head back to Dallas.

    Yep. You guessed it.  The Choo-Choo is built into the gas station.

    Meanderings
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  • Funny Story of the Day – 8/23/2008

    Posted on August 23rd, 2008 mitch Print Print 1 comment

     

    The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid term

    The answer by one student was so 'profound' that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well :

    Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

    Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.

    One student, however, wrote the following:

    First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today.

    Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added. 

    This gives two possibilities:

    1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

    2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

    So which is it?

    If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, 'It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,' and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct……leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting 'Oh my God.'


    THIS STUDENT RECEIVED AN A+.

    Meanderings
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  • Truck pain

    Posted on August 10th, 2008 mitch Print Print 1 comment

    I have a Ford F-150 pickup which has been acting up a bit recently.  I took it to the shop and after spending a bit of time in diagnosis, they called me to deliver the news:

    Blah, blah, blah, injector, blah, blah, coil, blah, blah, blah, $1,000.00

    Not nearly as bad as it could have been, so I'll take it.

    While speaking with my Dad Friday night, he told me about a friend of his who parked his truck in the wrong spot and found it caught between a rock and a hard place:

    100_0041

    Or, to be more specific, between a tree and a grain truck.  The truck's driver was backing up and said he didn't even feel it.

    Meanderings
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  • Working with Dynamic Entities in CRM 4.0

    Posted on August 1st, 2008 mitch Print Print No comments

    Working with Dynamic entities is a bit different in 4.0 vs. 3.0.  When writing plug-ins and using Microsoft.Crm.Sdk, you have the ability to access the attributes of a Dynamic Entity via a property bag, much like this:

    DynamicEntity updateEntity = new DynamicEntity("m3_roundrobin");
    updateEntity["m3_lastuserid"] = newOwner.ToString();
    updateEntity["m3_teamid"] = teamId.ToString();

    However, if you're writing an application that used the standard CRM web service, this methodology is not available to you, so you have to resort to the more code-intensive methods we used in CRM 3.0

    Fortunately, if you look deep into the CRM SDK, you'll find a solution to this issue.

    After installing the CRM 4.0 SDK, browse to this folder:

    sdkserverhelperscscrmhelpers

    and look for the following file:

    dynamicentitypartialtype.cs

    If you add this file to your Visual Studio project, you will have the same Dynamic Entity property bag capability using the CRM web service as you do when using the Microsoft.Crm.Sdk assembly.

    I was pleasantly surprised when I located the code and it has made working with Dynamic Entities much easier.

     

    Have a great weekend everyone.

    Customization, Dynamics CRM
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