I have added some new blogs to the "Other Blogs I Read" pod, all of which are fellow CF bloggers:

• Todd Sharp - I've added fellow Cleveland CFUG member Todd Sharp's CFSilence blog. I've been reading Todd's blog quite a lot lately, and although I don't see my own blog in his long blog roll (that's OK - I'm not sure I'd read my own blog if I didn't write it!), I wanted to give him the credit he deserves.
• Rob Munn - San Diego CFUG manager Rob Munn, whose IT Evolution in Practice blog is a recent entry to the CF blogosphere. Rob's blog has been very interesting reading since I first discovered it, and, since it appears not too many people are reading his blog, I wanted to offer up a permanent link for him on my blog.
• Ben Nadel's Kinky Solutions - A Student's Perspective blog. If you are a CF developer, you should be reading Ben's blog.
• Peter Bell's blog - Another must read blog!
• Matt Woodward - Whom you probably know from the ColdFusion Weekly podcast and Mach-ii. I have also been recently involved in his CHUG open source user group application project.
• Brian Rinaldi's Remote Synthesis blog, both for his open source content, and for his content overall.
• Brian Kotek's blog, where there have been several gems lately...
• and... last but not least, the wonderful Charlie Arehart's blog.

I also updated the great Leo Laporte's blog link.

Are there any blogs I didn't list here that I should be reading? Let me know!

A follow-up to my last post...

My Adobe Community Expert bio, minus pic, is now up. You can find it here.

At tonight's Cleveland Adobe Users Group meeting, I announced that I am stepping down as manager of the group. Mike Cooper, who's been my co-manager since last year, has officially taken over as the group's manager. If you go to adobe.com's user group listing, you will notice he is now listed as the manager of the Cleveland AUG.

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/usergroups/search_results.cfm?findType=1&country_id=D6D8274E-1954-4FEA-87FD8F85B651B29A&state_id=3C393EF7-9B3B-43A1-B8456A862C39B70B

I started the Cleveland Macromedia Users Group in May, 2004 and have served as its manager throughout its history. Since then, we've gone from 12 members the first meeting, to 191 members today. We've seen the Macromedia acquisition by Adobe, the branching off of the ColdFusion and RIA User Groups, a few website catastrophes, a name change, and several location changes. We've had some great meetings and great speakers. It's been a blast!!! And now, it's time for me to step down.

Over the last several months, I have been managing both the Cleveland AUG and the Cleveland CFUG. It's too much, and both groups are suffering. The AUG needs someone who can focus more time on it, and so does the CFUG. Three years+ is a long time to run a group voluntarily, and I have been doing less and less design work and more development and supervisory work at the office.

As the new manager, Mike will invigorate the group and help it continue to grow. He's got some great ideas, and I think he's going to be an awesome manager.

I will stay on as Mike's co-manager, help him get up to speed with everything that goes into running an Adobe Users Group, advise and help as needed. I hope to be able to present to the group once in a while, too. I'll still be attending meetings most months, too.

I will also continue on as the Cleveland CFUG manager for the foreseeable future. This change allows me to focus more of my time on the CFUG. Anyone that knows me knows that ColdFusion is my passion, and I intend on continuing to instill that passion into the Cleveland ColdFusion Users Group. Dan Vega, my co-manager, and I will continue to work on making the Cleveland CFUG everything it can be.

I was supposed to be at CFUnited this year... but circumstances, both work and personal, got in the way, and I didn't end up going. I never booked the conference, though...

Well, that's not going to be the case for MAX.

For the fourth time, I will be attending MAX this year. I am all booked - conference, training on Sunday, hotel and flight. I will not be making a vacation out of it, like I have in past years, as my wife will probably not be coming to Chicago with me.

I will be staying at the Palmer House Hilton, which is one of the three official hotels for the conference.

MAX looks like it is going to be a fantastic conference, and I am looking forward to it. Hopefully, I'll come up with something to top my last MAX (see the related entries for a hint of that).

In the spirit of a recent post of our cat Xena snuggling up to my wife while she's on her laptop, here's a picture of our most recent addition, Loverboy, who was fighting with this blur of an empty water bottle this afternoon.

Julie found Loverboy a few weeks ago, after someone dumped him in the park at the end of our street. He was only 7.5 lbs when we got him - fur and bones, but he's gotten healthy in the short time we have had him. His coat is now shiny and beautiful instead of the matted mess he was, and he's put on about 5 lbs. Someone didn't take care of him.

Although he's a beautiful and affectionate cat, we'll probably not keep him. We are overloaded with animals now (five other cats and three dogs), and it's difficult with this many. We'd love to find him a new home, but we're also not in a hurry to give him up! :-)

These pictures were so cute, I had to post them...

This is Xena, our appropriately named "warrior princess" cat... who is cuddling up to my wife while she's on her laptop... taken this weekend.

She's being more of a princess in these pics than a warrior... but, trust me, she can be a warrior, too!

Like several other people in the CF community, I thought I'd give my personna:

• 40 years old (unfortunately... as my hairline would attest) but I act like I'm younger (or so I am told).
• Proposed to my wife and soulmate, Julie, on hour 18 of our first date, and haven't looked back; we've been married since December, 2004. No children. This is my first marriage, her second.
• I take that back... I DO have children! Three dogs: Buster (a goober of a pitbull mix; around 9 years old), McKenzie (a Sheltie, around 6) and Stella (an Eskimo mix... unsure of her age - probably 8 to 10 years old); and five cats: Madonna (a calico, about 16), Smokey (aka. Doo Doo Man, a grey domestic short hair, about 13), Simba (a white domestic long hair, about 8), Misty (a Siamese/tabby mix, about 5) and Xena (a warrior princess, and a tabby mix, about 1 1/2). I had no pets prior to living with Julie, and we have gotten three of them since we were married (McKenzie, Stella and Xena).
• We have also fostered several animals, who are now in their forever homes.
• I was very close to my mother and father; they both passed on earlier this decade.
• I have a HUGE extended family, which I haven't seen much of in recent years. My mom was the oldest of 14... my father was sixth of seven children. I am an only child.
• Born in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. I've lived in Windsor, Waterloo and Toronto, Ontario, before moving to the U.S. in 2000. In the U.S., I have lived in suburban Cleveland, Jacksonville, FL, Dunbar, WV, and back in Cleveland since 2004.
• Former consultant... now a fulltimer.
• I have been programming since I was 14, where my first language was Fortran... using punch cards.
• Purchased my first PC (a Commodore 64) at 17, my first DOS machine in 1987 (at 20), and my first Mac in 2005.
• Procedural background. I really hadn't learned OO until last year. Now, that's all I do!
• First exposed to ColdFusion in 1998, when I was consulting at a 3D software company. Fully converted to CF in 2000, after dabbling in Perl, PHP and ASP.
• I live in suburban Cleveland (in the city limits) and work in downtown Cleveland at a wholesaler with an enterprise B2B website.
• A self-confessed workaholic. I work best when under a tightdeadline.
• I struggle with my weight. I don't always take care of myself, especially when working long hours. Thankfully, I am fairly healthy otherwise.
• I used to love working out... but haven't done so in a long time.
• Food - Just about anything. I love good buffets. I love a good steak. Sushi and sashimi. Anything unusual or exotic, but I also love a good burger. Cheap eats are awesome! I prefer substance over presentation.
• Drinks - Coffee (a recent convert), Crystal Light and other powdered drinks, or plain water. The occasional beer...
• Music - Too much to mention! I'm into metal, both classic and alternative/nu metal, hard rock, classic rock and progressive. I'll occasionally listen to some pop. I can't STAND country!!! That's all I ever heard growing up... and I got very tired of it. I'll listen to Johnny Cash... but rarely. When I crank up the tunes, that's when I work the best.
• TV - The Biggest Loser, The Dog Whisperer, Survivor, The Apprentice, Grey's Anatomy, ER, Intervention, Wife Swap, Trading Spouses. All Star Trek... although I really haven't watched it much since Enterprise went off the air. I used to watch a lot more TV. I've had a DirecTV Tivo since they first came out in 2001.
• Movies - The Matrix, Fight Club, Pulp Fiction, Braveheart, Gladiator, Star Trek movies... all sorts of comedies.
• I used to be a game junkie... but that died off long ago. I don't have the patience for most of the epic games of today. The only exception would be first person shooters, which are awesome... I bought an XBox and it sat there.

Remember the other day when I said I was working this weekend? That's actually not an isolated event. I have to work almost every weekend, some weekends more than others. I have to do promotions to production environments on the weekend. This past weekend, I worked more than normal. Among other things, I was working on this...

Although I announced that the BIG project went live way back in November, some business issues prevented the full release of that project. It was pushed back several times, but finally went live as of this weekend. As of yesterday morning, a pilot program started for approximately 25 of our retail customers.

Just to review, we released a new version of our extranet that turns our ordering system to also take on drop shippers, and allows new types of content. It's nearly a complete rewrite. Is it a big system? Our existing system processed approximately 80% externally, and, with our inside sales team, accounts for almost 100% of our sales last year (sorry, can't tell you how much), and the new version will take over as our retail customers are slowly converted over the next two years. The primary technology, for both systems, is ColdFusion.

I can only describe the old system as spaghetti, whereas the new system is harmony. Back in May, I was skeptical about developing in OO, but I wouldn't develop any other way today. And, although skeptical in the beginning, I have grown to love Mach-ii.

I am long overdue discussing some of the many techniques I used in this project, many design based, and I will try to talk about them here.

For now... I am off to work!

1967 - Brian Meloche was born...

Yes, today marks a day I have been dreading for a long time. Today marks my 40th birthday.

Most people are surprised, although not all, when I tell people I am 40. I guess I probably don't act 40, and you could take that as either a compliment, or that I have never fully grown up. I think it's a double edged sword.

I had to work today (I'll blog more about that)... and so did my wife... so it's a pretty low key day.

I recall a past job I had prior to going back to school, where I delivered pizza in between better jobs. One of the cooks, who was only sixteen, thought I was forty when I was only 24. I still remember that, and wonder how old she'd think I was if she met me today.

Anyway... just thought I'd mention it to anyone reading this blog o' mine.

Growing up, my dad's biggest joke near the end of the year was to proclaim, "See you next year!!!" Of course, he'd see the people he said it to a couple of days later... As many things we seem to do as we get older... I notice I now say the same thing!!!

As far as the blog is concerned, I screwed up the joke!!! I didn't realize I went the whole month of December without a blog post... so I guess an update is in order.

A lot has happened since the last post... and I'll update you over the next several posts as to what's going on both personally and professionally...

Stay tuned!

I presented at the Cleveland CFUG and AUG meeting last night. Due to the fact that our regular AUG night would be the night before Thanksgiving, and we didn't have a presentation ready yet, and the subject matter was good for the AUG, I decided to make it a combined meeting.

I did a "ColdFusion 101" topic. This is definitely a topic I'd like to do an Adobe Connect recording on in the future, but I didn't have a lot of time to prepare for the meeting, so I was working completely unscripted, and... we were at a new location last night, so I didn't want to risk it.

I thought it went pretty well. My goal was to build something dynamic from scratch within the two hour time limit. What I was able to do was build a website with a login, logout, different roles, and display all records and edit an individual record in a database... In fact, one of the slowest parts of the presentation was just getting the HTML and CSS right! I also put both the Login and the Logout menu items in a table with other menu items, which in retrospect, made it a little more difficult, and was probably a mistake. I didn't use a framework, and my goal wasn't to produce perfect code. I just wanted to show people what's possible, and I think I did that effectively.

I can see myself presenting this content again in the future, and record it next time. However, it probably won't be until the new year. I do encourage other user groups to contact me to do this presentation, especially those that are not ColdFusion groups.

I have to admit that I spend more time listening to podcasts than I do reading blogs. Perhaps it's because I like content being pushed to me, and I haven't got on the RSS bandwagon... and I'm usually too busy coding or reading email when I am on my computer to read... but I DO enjoy listening to stuff.

I thought I'd add a Podcasts pod... so here are the podcasts I listen to on a regular (and semi-regular) basis. One thing you may raise your eyebrows on is the Ruby on Rails Podcast. No, I'm not a Rails developer... I've never even tried Ruby or Rails yet... but it does look compelling. And... I think it's a very good idea to find out what "the competition" has been up to! :-)

It's been a trying six months or so, but I am happy to report that the big Mach-ii project I have been working on at the office officially went live this morning. Hopefully, the 60+ hour weeks, 75 at the peak, will start to be reduced over the next few weeks.

Unfortunately, I cannot tell you a lot about the project. What I can say is that it's a B2B website that is designed to replace our existing site, and also has drop shipper functionality, so that we can sell products for other companies. It also completely ties into our mainframe systems for order processing and fulfillment. It's written entirely in Mach-ii, rewritten from the ground up, and is almost entirely OO (one legacy sub application was not entirely converted, but the rest of them were).

It's been a learning experience, that was not always smooth. In fact, there were times when it was quite bumpy. However, it has taught us a lot and the lessons learned are helping us redesign and streamline our development process.

There will be a lot more going on with this project. We have to make a few changes in version 2, and begin to port over other aspects of the business to the new site, but version 1.0 is out the door!

You may recall my post with pictures of Sylvia a couple of posts back...

Well, also on Wednesday of last week, Julie and I brought Sylvia to her new owners in North Canton.

Sylvia's a nice dog, but she's not a good match with our three senior dogs. Integrating her with the other three didn't go well, and she was unpredictable, especially around the cats.

We're happy that we were able to find a good match. The people that took her are experienced dog owners, have had just about every breed of dog, and they only have one other dog, a german shepherd mix, and no cats.

I'll update the blog with some updates as we get them.

It's been a busy few weeks, but I wanted to be up to date on a few things... first of all

Last Wednesday, I was able to get a misdemeanor dismissed. Let me explain...

Last month, when my mother-in-law and Julie's friend, Barb, were visiting us, Julie and I did a thorough cleaning of the house, and threw out a LOT of trash. There was a lot of stuff left over from our recent garage/yard/estate sale, but also other trash that needed cleaning. There were a ton of garbage bags. And I've been working so much lately, I didn't want to have to deal with it Wednesday night... so I put the bags straight to the curb. The day before the trash normally goes out, we found that the trash had already been picked up, and we had thought that we were maybe the victims of identity theft or something.

The next week, I get a summons to appear in court with a citation of a $75 fine and a misdemeanor charge... for putting out the trash too soon. I had to appear last Wednesday or face a warrant for my arrest! To think of all the crime and problems Cleveland has, to have to appear in court for something SO STUPID was beyond me.

I had to go to Housing Court, where businesses and people with charges FAR more serious than the ones I was up on were ahead of my case. These are people who had properties in major neglect and faced thousands of dollars in fines and possible jail time if they did not comply. Then, they get to my case...

I pleaded NO CONTEST. Thankfully, the court has a program to waive charges on first time offenders, so the charge was dismissed. I was out $8 for my parking, a day off from work, and the inconvenience.

I was glad I was able to have the charges dismissed, but, in my opinion, the whole thing was a waste of time, and of taxpayer money. I am not saying I shouldn't have been cited for it... but a simple warning with a copy of the laws pertaining to trash would have been just as effective AND cost the taxpayers a lot less.

These are pictures of the new dog we're fostering. Her name is Sylvia, and she's a one year old Pitbull/Basset Hound mix. We were originally going to foster Sylvia in January, but she had mange, and she ended up being fostered by the woman that arranged to have her pulled from the pound in Southern Ohio where she was scheduled to be euthanized. That woman couldn't keep her any more, so Julie and I felt that we should step in, now that she no longer had a foster home.

As you can see from these pics, she's a bundle of energy, and cute as a button.

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After some grueling times at work over the last several months, I have been needing to upgrade my blog for a long time. This weekend, I was finally able to do it.

My RSS feeds have been disabled for some time. CrystalTech, my web host, noticed a problem that I hadn't been able to get to. I wanted to fix it, but it seemed that an upgrade of BlogCFC was also necessary, from the 3.9 version I had been running to the new 5.5.002. I was really surprised that I couldn't find any documentation about upgrading the blog, and I suppose it would have been easier if I hadn't tried to do it all at once...

I had to make some custom changes to the code to make it work on my hosting account, since the "org" conflicted with another site on the server. The first time I tried to upload the code, I botched it up pretty good, but my second attempt (by separating the old blog from the new) was a success.

Then, there was the data transfer... not such a resounding success!

I needed to upgrade from Access (yes... I know... it was quick to get it up when I needed to!) to MySQL. The hosting problems were being caused by the Access... yes, again, I know. I'm not proud of sticking with Access that long. What can I say? I've been busy... and it wasn't a priority to upgrade.

It probably would have been easier to go with SQL Server, and I could have, but I figured MySQL was easier to isolate from my other apps. There is also something I need to do as a separate project with my SQL Server hosted database to upgrade, so I figured MySQL was a good alternative.

As is often the case when switching databases, there were issues with dates and boolean fields. I had to make custom updates to the records... one at a time. There are also new fields in the new version that didn't get turned on. It didn't automatically publish the entries. Once I figured that out, and published the old articles... everything came back.

It took a substantial portion of the weekend, but this post signifies that the transfer is now complete.

I still have to customize the look and feel... but I'll get to that later.

We've made a change at the Cleveland CFUG... I co-founded the CFUG with Mick Keily, and Mick's been the manager since the inception. I've been co-manager, which basically means that I help out, but most of the decision making has been his and his alone. Recently, it's been harder for Mick to manage the CFUG, due to work and personal commitments. Although I am very busy these days myself, I have offered to take the burden of the daily operations of the CFUG. With that, I have been made manager of the Cleveland CFUG. Mick remains manager, as well as the official representative of the group with Adobe. Since I also run the Cleveland Adobe Users Group, I have all the same access as Mick. Essentially, we're sharing the role, but I am taking over day to day operations. That said, I'm not doing it alone.

With everything going on, especially right now, I'll be looking for more help running both groups. A few people have stepped up, and I think sharing the burden is a good thing. Dan Vega and Jacqueline Lum (of the new Cleveland RIA user group - clevelandria.com) are helping out with the groups, and a few more will likely emerge.

I'll get into why I'm so busy in a subsquent blog post.

Due to a payment snafu, my site was offline for several days. The hosting provider had an old credit card number. I thought they had tried to run the new one I provided, but they hadn't. I was able to straighten it out this morning.

I can happily report that the site is working again. I apologize for the inconvenience.

I have been asked a few times through this blog on how to contact me. I didn't intentionally leave it off the blog. It was an oversight. I wanted to correct that. You can reach me via Gmail. It's brianmeloche-gmail~com (where ~ = . and - = @). Sorry to make it cryptic... but I get lots of that minced luncheon meat they like so much in Hawaii every day!!!