I don't really get sick that often and usually it passes real quick. Well, last Thursday it came on fast and really took me down for the entire weekend. I didn't believe that it was possible sleep 24 hours in a row. But here it is Sunday and while I'm not 100%, I'm probably back in the 90's.
But as bad as it was, it was nothing compared to what my wife has gone through during the last 9 months. Last year in October she had what we thought would be a standard colonoscopy. But it wasn't. They found some polyps and after some additional test determined that they were cancerous. After a series of additional tests, we were told days before Thanksgiving that it was serious, in fact, so serious that they told her that she may only have 3-6 months to live.
We did not know what to do or say, but one thing we did know was that we could not tell our daughter who was coming home from college the next day for Thanksgiving. Some might say we were wrong not to tell her right away, but we were afraid it would affect her semester finals when she went back after Thanksgiving. We made it through Thanksgiving without giving her a clue to the problem. For that we probably deserve an Academy Award. Besides, she would be back in about 2 weeks for winter break and we could break the news to her then when she had more time to absorb the news.
Sue started chemo treatment at MD Anderson beginning in December. There is a thing called a CEA number, (Carcinoembryonic antigen) which is in indication of cancer activity. Her first set of numbers as she started treatement were around 380. To put that in perspective, a normal person has a CEA level of 0-5 and a smoker might be as high as 0-10. We were worried. But we were determined to beat this.
The people at MD Anderson and our doctor were fantastic. Our doctor was grime about his initial prognosis but promised to treat her case aggressively. Without going into a week by week analysis, she went through 11 cycles of chemo treatment, each 3 weeks long. During this time, we kept a positive viewpoint that no matter what the doctors said, we were going to prove them wrong and beat this cancer. We also prayed to God that he would somehow heal her, somehow pass this spirit through her body and remove the cancer cells. Many of our friends joined us with their prayers. We also talked to people about natural remedies, folk remedies if you like, different herbs and spices. You see we had great response from herbal remedies before using Ginger to help Sue's knees so why not.
Today, Sue is off chemo. Her last CEA number was 3.1. Is she cured? We don't know yet. Indications are good. The last CT scan did not show any active tumor areas. Her doctor is cautious and asked for addition tests or may even still want to operate to remove the dead tissue areas. We don't know yet, but have an appointment with him this coming Friday. Did our doctor's aggressive treatment turn the tide? Did the prayers to God cure her? Did the natural remedies somehow trigger her body's natural defenses to battle the cancer?
I don't know. I like to think that all three in some combination worked. God directed us to the right doctor who had a great plan and the natural remedies just augmented everything and maybe he did pass his spirit through her body to remove/kill cancer cells. In any case, I thank God every day for his hand in giving me back my wife no matter how much longer that may be. I don't know what I would do without her.
So in retrospect, my little illness was nothing. I appreciate your continued prayers that my wife will truly beat this cancer. If you feel so inclined, please support the American Cancer Society so research can come up with more miracle drugs to beat cancer for all its victims.
Thank you.
With the introduction of Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft also released a set of related products called Microsoft Office Web Apps. These apps are available free to anyone with a Hotmail or Live account from Microsoft and works with files stored in the user's SkyDrive folders. It is also possible to install Web Apps to work with a company's SharePoint Server 2010 document folders.
But let's start from the beginning to see what it takes to use the free version of Web Apps. As I mentioned, you need to begin by getting a free Hotmail or Live email account. Many of you may already have this because Microsoft uses these accounts to validate you registration to Microsoft events, webcasts, and even access to content such as TechNet and MSDN subscriptions. Some of you may say that the last thing you need is another email account that you have to check. Trust me when I say that I totally get that. There have been times when I've been so busy that I don't even check my two major accounts more than once a week, and that's even after what I'm about to tell you. Hotmail lets you consolidate the viewing of many of your other email accounts from other providers through Hotmail. Of course Hotmail has all the standard email features you need including the creation of folders to store your messages, the ability to create custom rules to route your email, email junk filteringf and even safe and blocked senders. But perhaps something that even many Hotmail users may not know is that you now have 'unlimited' storage through what Microsoft calls 'ever-growing storage'. While my initial thought to this was, 'Great, I never have to delete an email message again', I was quickly brought back to Earth by the thought that a couple of hundred email message a day times 365 days a year times several years will quickly add up to a ton of email to search through to find anything. Therefore I still recommend constantly maintaining your junk mail filters as well as your other routing rules to save email you do want to keep in appropriately named folders and deleting all the rest permanently.
Now that you have a Hotmail account, the next thing is to sign up for a SkyDrive account to let you store documents, pictures, music, videos and any other file type you may want to keep around. While this is also a free account, you are currently limited to 25 GB of storage. For most people, this may be a quite reasonable amount of space, but for those of you with a lot of music files or video, you may find filling up this space to occur faster than you at first thought.
When you upload files to your SkyDrive, you can determine whether others can view (share) your files. You can even limit with whom you want to share your files. But you could keep your files private using this space sort of like an external storage location for your important files that are automatically backed up regularly and thus protected from occasionally but always traumatic disk drive crash.
So now that you have your SkyDrive, you ready to start uploading or creating documents in your SkyDrive folders using one of four Web App tools. The first, and in my opinion the one that will see the most usage, is Word Web App used to create and edit Microsoft Word documents. In fact, I created the original draft of this document using Word Web App on a Windows 7 machine. Performance was as good as using the full Microsoft Word client, but then this document is not very complex in terms of features. What do I mean by not very complex? If you look at the ribbon for Word Web App, yes it does using the ribbon interface, you will see a fairly complete Home ribbon which provides most of the formatting options you are familiar with from the full client version of Word. However, as you look that the Insert and View ribbons and compare them to the ribbons in the full client version of Word, you will see a sharp decline in the supported features. Does this make it a bad implementation of Word for the Browser? No. Rather think of it as the first iteration that Microsoft, like any company, needs to make to see what people like and don't like before spending orders of magnitude more resources in building. Maybe it will never have all the features of the Word desktop client. Then again, maybe when it does, Microsoft will phase out the desktop client approach completely and begin charging for use of the on-line version either on an annual subscription basis or a per-usage basis. If I had to place money on which of those were true, I'd go with the latter.
The other Web apps that are available are Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Each have basic compatibility with the more feature-rich client versions, but at least each provide a way to work with some of the documents on-line no matter where you are and even if you don't have your own computer through any internet access. By the way, here is a clue as to what features you the Web Apps suite may not support when you try to upload those documents. Features that you can only create using options not found in the Web Apps ribbons may not be compatible when uploading your files for use the Web Apps. Some features may appear and be read-only while other may need to be removed before uploading. For example, don't try to upload Word documents with revision tracking turned on when using your client version of your Office 2010 tools. Working on books and even shared documents from work benefit greatly by using revision tracking while creating the original documents. Unfortunately, this feature is not available in Word Web App and you must removed it before uploading the document to your SkyDrive and using it with Word Web App. On the other hand, Excel documents with graphics and charts will load up to SkyDrive and open with Excel Web App, but you cannot add new charts or graphics to the excel document.
In any case, Web apps are a interesting new way to work with your documents. At the very least SkyDrive can provide a way to transport documents from one location to another without having to physically carry them on a USB drive or some other device and it can provide a backup/recovery location for some of your most important files. If you haven't tried Microsoft's Web Apps or Google Docs, you owe it to yourself to try both to see which if any you like. My favorite for now is Microsoft's Web Apps. What do you think?
Yesterday, Saturday May 8th, I got up at 4 AM. Not my usual time for a Saturday, but necessary in order to drive to Jacksonville and be ready to do a presentation at SQL Saturday at 9 AM. Fortunately, the weather was nice and the drive uneventful and I got to the University of North Florida with plenty of time to spare. This was SQL Saturday #38. No, I haven't been at all of them, but I think this was my ninth event since they started nearly three years ago this fall. Attendance was good with 500 registered attendees. The only problem that as always, quite a few people register but do not attend. This is unfortunate because most SQL Saturday events have to turn people away at the end because at some point they have to plan on a maximum capacity.
For those people who did attend, I am sure they had quite an enjoyable day as there were six simultaneous tracks run throughout the day including one devoted to Business Intelligence. (Whoever came up with that oxymoron deserves a prize.) Perhaps the 'best' presentation was the last one of the day in the BI track, Iron Chef – BI held in SQL Stadium, otherwise known as room 1102. Four SQL Server Iron Chefs, including Brian Knight faced the challenger, Devin Knight, in a challenge to build a BI solution for a university donation application within 40 minutes. Of course, the challenge ultimately became a duel between Brian and Devin as one might expect, sort of a Family Feud meets Iron Chef. As the competition raged on, Brian or Devin would alternately get the upper hand in the development with applause around the stadium for successful or unique steps and corresponding boos when error messages popped up. Between serious commentary on why both Brian and Devin choose different paths to the solution, there was plenty of humor and good-natured ribbing.
Ultimately, both completed their tasks in the allotted time showing their own separate approaches to solve the problem. What a wonderful, informative, and amusing way to end out the day. Hats off to both Brian and Devin for a job well done.
Just a quick note on the progress of my book, Office and SharePoint 2010 by Apress. All chapters have been written and have gone through the technical editing process. Front material (like dedications, forwards, letter to the reader, etc., are being completed tonight. Copyediting has begun and should not take exceptionally long. I hope to see the book finally published sometime this summer.
Yesterday I spent the day in Tampa, Florida. Ok, from Orlando I know that it is not much of a trip. However, I went there to attend the 2010 SQLSaturday event. The weather was great for the first time in weeks so the whole day promised to be very pleasant. My wife, Sue went along. Of course, she would just drop me off at K-Force where the event was held while she spent the day walking around some of Tampa's great malls.
I had the opportunity to be a speaker at the event. I feel fortunate that this was something like my 8th SQL Saturday event in the last two and a half years. However, having taught computer classes on the side since 1979 or so, it is something I truly like to do. While I do try to reuse a session a couple of times before retiring it with some minor changes each time as I go around the state to different SQL Saturday events, I prepared a new session to début at Tampa titled: Beginning XML for the SQL Developer. Originally, I had hoped to combine this session with one by Scott Klein who I met down at the South Florida SQL Saturday event last summer. Unfortunately, not only was he not able to present his portion, but I heard that he also was not able to attend because of pressures from his editor to finish a book he is working on. I can't wait to read it Scott!
Anyway, I got to the K-Force early because I had one of the opening sessions. However, when I went to find my room, I was surprised to find that it was not a typically class room. I guess I should have thought about the room name a bit more. The room was named, the Foyer Room and that should have been a clue. Of course this was not a training room as much as it was a reception/waiting area when candidates come to K-Force for interviews. However, there was a projector in the room (on the desk counter where the receptionist would sit) and a 2' by 3' board wrapped in white plastic stuck on a table in the corner to be used as a screen. Around the room they had about 25-30 chairs to face this 'white board'.
Well, being a 'guest' in Tampa to speak at their conference, I was not going to complain too much so I began to set up my computer. When I turned on the projector, I quickly realized that there was no way for the projected screen to fit on that tiny 'white board' and even if it did, people toward the back would never be able to see a thing. So I decided to re-point the projector toward the one blank wall between two doors. It was not the best of choices because the projected image really keystoned badly. Finally, about 10 minutes before the start, one of the event coordinators came by and noticed my 'choice' of projecting the image. We discussed options and decided that we would take down one of the pictures on the wall in front of the reception desk and project on it instead. He then ran out to get more of the white plastic wrap and quickly created a 'white screen' that I could project on. We rearranged the chairs to face the new direction and got done just in time to start.
People were still coming in even as we were to start, but that is pretty typical of first sessions. The real problem was that our room was just outside the registration line and we had to keep the door closed to keep the noise down. However, when we closed the door, the door would automatically lock and new people could not come in. So one of the attendees who was actually sitting behind the receptionist desk next to where I was standing found some tape on the desk that we could use to 'tape' the door latch so people could come in.
In any case, we had a very successful session with about 30 attendees in a very small area. I know we had some people look in and then leave when they saw how crowded it was. I hope they at least get a chance to see the session materials posted on the SQLSaturday site. Yes, it is posted already. The rest of the day I attended some great sessions by others including some on PowerShell and one by Kathy Malone on Access and SharePoint. In fact, it was hard to pick which sessions to go to because there were 7 simultaneous tracks. Two of the classrooms were actually in a different building down the street. I'm sure I will be able to catch a repeat of some of those sessions though at one of the future SQL Saturday events this year. While I did leave during the last session of the day because my wife and I wanted to get dinner before heading back to Orlando, it was definitely a very good day and I want to say that despite the minor issues, they put on a great SQL Saturday event and I hope to return next year.
BTW, SQL Saturday in Jacksonville is coming up on May 1, 2010 and Code Camp in Orlando is scheduled for March 27, 2010.
Update on my progress updating my SharePoint 2007 book – I'm about half done with the initial editing. YEAH!!!
First, let me state that this ability only seems to work when editing a document previously saved to a SharePoint document library. Furthermore, the library cannot force a check out of the document when you begin to edit it. However, you can allow the library to track versions and indeed, allowing versions will allow you to use Word to compare the current version to previous versions so you can see each of the changes made to the document.
Concurrency problems as described in Chapter 1 were an inevitable consequence of the way Word 2007 handled multiple editors of a document. Basically, it was an all or nothing choice. Either you could lock the entire file by checking it out of SharePoint so that no one else could open it in edit mode, or you could allow multiple people to edit the document and then have to cope with having to compare two or more versions of the document, identify the differences between them, and accept which changes you wanted to keep from each. Because that was such a time consuming processing, most SharePoint administrators decided to make it easier on everyone by requiring document check out before you could edit the document.
Now Word 2010 comes out with a potentially game changing feature, at least in the word processing arena, that allows multiple simultaneous editors to a document when they are using documents stored in SharePoint. Rather than locking the entire file to protect the integrity of changes made to the document, Word 2010 now supports locking individual paragraphs of a document. However, while those individual paragraphs are locked, other editors can make changes to other parts of the document. Of course, as soon as you begin editing a different paragraph, Word and SharePoint lock that paragraph to any other users.
While editing a document that someone else also has open, SharePoint passes information between all users to identify which paragraphs others have edited. It places a bracket around the left side of the paragraph and adds a tag off to the left margin to identify the person performing the edit. However, it does not show the edit changes made by others, at least not in real time. These edited paragraphs remain locked until their individual editor saves their changes back to SharePoint.
You can periodically check to see if any updates to the current document have become available, in other words saved by other users. The display tag mentioned a few paragraphs back associated with each change also will let you know when updates become available by displaying a double arrow refresh icon. You can then update your copy of the document by saving your copy back to SharePoint but leaving it open. As part of the save, SharePoint downloads any updated text to your open version of the document. Now you can make changes to this changed text too.
So why would you choose to not require check out of documents before editing them? If you have a large document for which several people have edit responsibilities, you may want to allow multiple people to edit the document simultaneously because they seldom if ever need to edit the same portion of the document anyway. This allows the work from multiple people to occur simultaneously thus improving everyone's efficiency. On the other hand, small documents or documents in which multiple people typically will edit the same portions or all of the document probably would be better managed in a library that requires check out before editing to protect the edits of each individual.
I have illustrated this ability in my upcoming SharePoint book due out 2nd quarter of 2010 from Apress.