Good question. I’ve been busy lazy both. Very busy at work means I just want to unwind when I get home. Unwinding during the week usually includes making dinner; giving the kids a bath; getting them ready for and tucking them into bed; watching a show or two with Rachel; watching hockey, basketball, baseball, football, bowling, golf, curling, wheelchair racing, or any other competitive sport; and sleeping. So yeah, I’ve been busy being lazy.

Of course, that’s only on the nights I don’t bowl.

Speaking of which, I’ve been and will continue to be busy with that over the course of the spring and summer. To wit:

• March 28-29: IronMan Singles Tournament, Glenmore Bowl, Cincinnati, OH
• April 30-May4: USBC Open Championships, Cashman Center, Las Vegas, NV (host city changes each year)
• May 22-24: Louisville Derby Tournament, Executive Strikes and Spares, Louisville, KY
• July 10-12: St. Clair Lanes Team Tournament, St. Clair Lanes, St. Clairsville, OH
• July 31-Aug 2: The Petersen, Chicago, IL

When I do have a chance to belly up to a desk with a computer on it outside of work, I’ve been using Twitter and Facebook. Both require much less organized thought than a typical blog post. Not the kinds of posts you read here, mind you. In fact, my head hurts right now. Yet, I soldier on for both of you that will actually read this.

Here are a few thoughts on the aforementioned tournaments:

The IronMan was fun. 12 games over 2 days. 3 different oil patterns. There were a couple of sandbaggers, but that’s to be expected. I finished 5th scratch, but didn’t sniff the handicapped cut score. Maybe the re-rate rule that goes into effect next year will help my cause. Not holding my breath.

The USBC Open is a big deal. There are over 17,000 teams competing this year. That’s just a ridiculous number, considering the Louisville Derby Tournament, which is pretty popular around these parts, had 1,034 entries last year. This will be my first year bowling the Open.

I’m very excited about joining my buddy Jeff’s team. I know they have a tremendous amount of fun each year and I can’t think of a better place to kick off my Open career than Las Vegas. I really can’t wait. Just 4 (!) more weeks.

The Louisville Derby Tournament is always a good time. We golf Friday morning, bowl Friday night, spend Saturday at Churchill Downs, then bowl again Sunday midday. I usually bowl pretty well and typically make some money. I’ve been going for 5 years now and this will be the first time Rachel joins me for the weekend. Aside from cashing a big check, that’s about the only way it could get better.

St. Clairsville is always a fun time as well. Golf Friday, maybe hit the casino, bowling Saturday, dinner at West Texas Roadhouse, complete with margaritas on the rocks, maybe being asked to “keep it down,” definitely hit the casino after that, come home Sunday. Good times.

I’ve never bowled The Petersen, but I’ve heard stories. Stories about the tournament directors putting your bowling balls in shopping carts and you have to go find them. Stories about a curtain that hangs over the lanes, such that you have to bend over to see the ball hit the pins. Stories about lanesmen “adjusting” the oil pattern if you have 3 or 4 strikes in a row. They say only idiots bowl this tournament. I think that’s an insult to idiots. I’m bowling August 1.

Well, that’s my time folks. Please tip your waiters and waitresses.

First let me say that it should be illegal to paste content from Microsoft Word into an HTML text editor. But, since that’ll never happen, I’m left to deal with the repercussions.

The most ridiculous of which are these so-called smart quotes. They’re smart because they curl depending on which side of the quoted word they’re on. For example, this – “ – is a left smart quote, and this - ” – is a right smart quote. These are opposed to the more typical dumb quote: ".

The problem occurs when you users paste these smart quotes into HTML text editors followed by innocent little web developers like myself who have to output that content onto a webpage. Apparently, on Windows XP, these smart quotes aren’t recognized characters, so they are output as little rectangles. Sorry, no example for you. Just take my word for it.

Anyway, after about two hours of chasing that wild goose, I came up with the proper XSLT syntax to eliminate the little buggers:

   1: <xsl:call-template name="fix_quotes">

   2:     <xsl:with-param name="string" select="$your_variable"/>

   3:     <xsl:with-param name="find">“”</xsl:with-param>

   4:     <xsl:with-param name="replace">""</xsl:with-param>

   5: </xsl:call-template>

   6:  

   7: <xsl:template name="fix_quotes">

   8:     <xsl:param name="string"/>

   9:     <xsl:param name="find"/>

  10:     <xsl:param name="replace"/>

  11:     <xsl:value-of select="translate($string,$find,$replace)"/>

  12: </xsl:template>

  13:  

Yes, I had to actually paste the goofy quotes in the find parameter. And, yes, there’s probably a more concise way to do this, but it works for me (and more importantly the Google-Mini powered search engine on our website).

Hope this helps someone else.

Enjoy.

If you have something on your clipboard and you want to send it to someone via email, just go to your Outlook Inbox and hit Ctrl-V. It creates a new mail window with your clipboard contents already pasted into the body.

Convenient!

Move along if you’re not a web designer/developer and using ASP.NET with AJAX.

I’ve got two hyperlinks in an UpdatePanel that, when clicked, perform some database operation, then change their text to reflect the change that was made. Works perfectly in Firefox. IE, not so much. Why am I not surprised?

I had trouble figuring out a solution on my own, but thanks to an intelligent fellow named Phillip over at Full Extension, it turns out that setting the UpdatePanel to render inline fixes it.

God Bless you, Phillip. You saved me lots of time and a few gray hairs.

Surely everyone can agree that the putridity of the Bengals can be attributed almost solely to the team owner, Mike Brown. This is not news. Yet, the formal media as well as the blogosphere have really amped the volume of news and posts this past season and current off-season about the woes of the Cincinnati Bengals.

I've read probably hundreds of posts over the past year related to the reasons why the Bengals stink. Each and every one point to how stupid Mike Brown is, how small the scouting department is, or how frugal the team is when going after free agents as reasons for the ineptitude. That Mike Brown is too stubborn or too ignorant to know what it takes to win games.

Rubbish.

Mike Brown is a very, very smart man. True, each of the reasons given by journalists and bloggers certainly contribute to the ongoing losing seasons. But none of it matters. Mike Brown doesn't care. Mike Brown only cares about the bottom line. The financial bottom line.

As long as the stadium is full, the concession lines are long, and merchandise sales are strong, Mike Brown's wallet is getting bigger. This is what Mike Brown cares about.

As long as people continue to go to games, buy $7 beers, and purchase apparel, Mike Brown has no financial reason to change anything. One of the few times Brown made changes was after the 2002 season when many of the original COAs and luxury boxes were up for renewal.

Face it people. Mike Brown does not, I repeat, does not truly care about winning football games, let alone the division, conference, or Super Bowl. He cares about the financial bottom line. He does just enough to keep COA ownership levels at a specific threshold and luxury suites filled.

The only thing I could argue is that it is easier to do this by fielding a consistently winning team, but on this, I digress.

If you want the Bengals to pursue real change, quit going to games. Quit buying licensed merchandise. Sure, continue to wear the gear you already have; just don't buy any more.

End game: Mike Brown has no desire to win so long as people keep showing him the money.

Since my mind is very much in the gutter, I found this too funny not to share.

Enjoy.

Often times, you can do without the time portion of a T-SQL DateTime field. After perusing the various ways others have posted regarding how to do this, I settled on this particular one:

   1: DATEADD(dd, -DATEDIFF(dd, <mydatecolumn>, 1), 1) 

This gets the number of days from your date since “day 1” and adds it back to “day 1.” This gives you a new, clean date (with no time) and avoids converting the string to a varchar or something else.

Hope this helps someone else down the road. And me to find this later. :)