Hobby: What hobby?

I'm soo damn fickle. Well, this past weekend I didn't do anything on the hobby front. I think I'm going to put on my career tunnel vision glasses as I can't see myself doing testing for long periods of time. So, there's my update. Expect to see more career related posts from now on. Though I really do want to get back to making a game. I just have to be sensible right now (indefinitely).

Career: DB Tables are done

So, as far as I know, the tables and relationships are done for the DB. Everything seems to look good. Hopefully I won't need to change anything down the road. If I do, well I'll learn something from it.

I think now I can go ahead with figuring out how it all will look now. Tis will be a grand 'ol time! ^_^

Hobby: Quest for the holy tutorial

Not much going on over the weekend on the hobby front. I found another tutorial on C# game programming which gives me headaches in the second part of it. Is it really that hard to do up a tutorial, posted on a Microsoft website no less, that can compile without errors? I mean COME ON!!!!

Anyway, I will trudge through it next weekend to see if I can make it work. Though I'm still keen on doing up a 2D thing before moving on to 3D.

Career: Busy week

Yeah, didn't do anything on the career front this past week. Well, programming wise. I am reading Code Complete at work on my spare moments. It's going slow but I think it will be worth it in the end. I'm thinking of picking up a book on design patterns here in the near future. That's an area I should probably read up on. I did read an article about the Singleton pattern today. It was a good read but probably just hit the highlights. I hope to do more stuff on my front end this week. I'll probably sit down to design some forms or stuff. Though really I should flesh out what it all should do before thinking of the forms. Anyway, so that's that.

Career: Of Tables and Relations

So, I added a couple of tables to the ol database last night. Though I hit a problem. It's not a big problem, but it's an issue I'll have to solve because Vanilla Ice isn't here to. Because if I had a problem, yo he'd solve it...never mind.

I guess a bit more background info is needed now. As I stated last post, I am in the mists of creating a database with a front end to store my job contacts. The only user was going to be me. Personal information wasn't important. A little bit later, I decided it would be cool to expand it to include all my employment history, jobs, job contacts, references, the whole kabob so to speak. So, that's all good. I had a central contact table with pretty much everything else spoking off it. Then, I thought it would be cool if I had a person table which would include personal stuff. Then I was thinking if I'm gonna have a table with personal info, why not bust it out and make my DB good for multiple users. So I add those tables last night.

I was looking at the ER diagram and noticed a data flaw. See, I had intended to my contact table to own resumes and cover letters and what not. Which makes sense, kind of. But if you think about it, a person has a resume and cover letter, not a contact. But a person might have multiple versions as well. So now I'm thinking how to resolve this.

It will probably be better to have a person own zero or more contacts and each contact can have zero or one resumes and cover letters associated with it. Then a person can have zero or more resumes and cover letters. If that makes sense. If it doesn't, there's a nice MIS program taught at WSU Tri-Cities. ^_^ Damn..I just looked at their course listing for Fall 2006. Game development as a course. Oh...the rage......though I'm kind of happy to see it there. Sort of...

So, that's career right now. I realize that I should make these posts shorter so I can focus on the problems at hand. Need to learn how to avoid the long posts. o_O

Career: C# and SQL Server

Ahh, a post about what I'm working on during the week. So, a few weeks back, I was unemployed for just about three weeks. Typically when one is unemployed, one applies for unemployment benefits through your local state offices and/or internet related website. I did the latter. One of the thing you had to do was to do some sort of job search activity 3 times a week. They had a nice little form that let you record who you contacted and whatnot as they may want to see who you talked to at any given time. I didn't use the form. I used Excel. Using a spreadsheet was good enough for what kind of information they wanted, but I wanted a far more complex and cryptic way of doing it. Ok, not really. I actually thought that this form would translate well to a small database. And you got to have a front end for that database.

So, I went forth getting what I needed to make said database. There were several options available to me. On the free side, database engines that I could have used include MySQL, Firebird, MS SQL Server Express, or the MS JET engine which is included with Excel. I knew of MySQL from some past work I did with it. I also have a book on it, Learning SQL. I read about Firebird in a magazine many months ago and didn't really have any hands on experience with it. SQL Server Express is the free, stripped down version of SQL Server 2005. I've used SQL Server in the past at one internship. I just "threw-up" the JET engine up there cause I'm kind of kicking its tires at work. I actually had no intentions of using JET.

I eventually went with SQL Server as it included a nice GUI for making tables and all that good stuff. I'm sure MySQL has something similar and I have no doubt in my mind that it's a very capable engine. Since I'm into C#, which is pretty much a MS product, and I was planning to do the front end in it I thought it would be good keep it all...umm...native. I guess. Though I do have plans of making another front end in maybe Java (because I like torture and there always seems to be some demand for java devs) or even a web interface in AJAX (because I'm a sheep in the herd of AJAX).

So I went to work designing the database in SQL Server Express. It's not to terribly complicated with maybe 15 tables. It's probably good enough for my needs and that's all I really need. The backend is mostly done, with just a few more tables to add. When I say mostly, I just realize that there's more than just tables I could put in. Things like stored procedures and triggers and..and...I dunno. Other stuff. I know I may not need that but I think it will be good practice to have a little of that in.

Next up is to start designing the frontend and all that goodness. I frankly have no idea what it should look like. I have been reading a book, Windows Forms Programming in C#, which I just noticed that a new version is out on Friday. Snap. Oh well. I will have to pick that up in the future. Anyway, so I've been reading through that to get an idea on how to do forms and dialogs and other graphical related things. It's been a good read so far. I hope the next version has more goodness.

That's where I am at right now. Reading and thinking how the app will look. It shouldn't be too complicated but I'm doing this to learn now as I really don't have a need now to record my job contacts at the moment. ^_^