I don't know about you, but I have a difficult time when I go to the grocery store. If I don't have a list in hand, I tend to wander aimlessly up and down the aisles, picking up what looks good at the time, with no coherent plan of what I'm going to do with it once I get home. Top that with my natural aversion to shopping in general, and the results are typically disastrous, as I am in a hurry to escape regardless of what's in the basket.

I think my problem is multiplied when I go to Costco, not only is there food, there is also other things (tires? hardware? computers? cameras?) to distract me from my targeted purchasing. Costco can also accommodate the social shopper with the free and copious food samples. If you're a hermit though and can't handle the human contact necessary for the occasional human interaction necessary for grocery shopping, then Costco is completely the place for you.

(As an aside for any readers not familiar with Costco, it's a warehouse store. That's the kind of place where you buy not one roll of toilet paper, or even a package of four. It's where you buy a package of six packages of four. Though the variety is limited, if they have what you want, you can get a LOT of it at one time for a pretty decent price. Oh, and the butcher shop is pretty damn good.)

Enter the 17,586 servings of freeze dried food. With this bad boy (conveniently delivered on a pallet) stored in the basement, you can hunker down and let the world end around you and still be able to enjoy brownies and other tasty treats at the end of your nutritious meals. If you're the type to fly solo, you can possibly avoid all human contact for 16 years, if my math is correct (17,586 servings/3 servings per day = 5,862 days = 16.06 years). You will need to supply the water needed for re-hydration yourself.

The Pallet 'O Food is currently on sale, but you better act fast, as the price ($2,999) is only good until May 20, and who knows? maybe it will sell out.

With apologies to The Drifters'  "Under the Boardwalk": 

Over the weekend, out in the sun.
Over the weekend, I had me some fun.
Over the weekend, I went running around.
Over the weekend, I watched soccer in town.
Over the weekend, weekend. 

Yes, I managed to mangle yet another old popular song  in my head as I finished up a run on Sunday. Saturday was spent at the soccer fields, as Mikaela had a soccer tournament. The weather was spectabulous with brilliant sunshine, and high temps in the low 80s each day. Great for Earth Day. 

Unfortunately, Mikaela's soccer team wasn't up to the level of the weather and lost all three of their games. It was hot, they got tired, but in the end, they simply didn't have it to win. On the bright side, I did manage to snap a few good action photos.

Quick Hits:
During the run, I had a couple of quick hitting items cross my mind. 

QH#1: The most serious is – in my mind – a glaring stupidity in the Garmin software for my FR405CX. For the last couple of runs, it's been deleting the oldest laps to make room for the new ones. That makes sense. Then, today, inexplicably, the timer stopped on a lap recording. The screen said I had to manually delete an activity for any new activities to be recorded. WTF? In the middle of a run (thankfully I don't race, and it wasn't in the middle of one), I have to stop, and manually slog through past activities and delete one for the timer to continue to record the current one. That. Is. Retarded. What's the first thing I did when I got home and uploaded my data? Deleted it all. I never refer to it on the wrist anyway. But still, forcing me to stop and delete an old activity to continue to time the current one is beyond the pale.

QH#2: I thought I would give a new-to-me nutrition method a go. I bought a tube of Perpetuem Solids sold by Hammer Nutrition a week or so ago and took them out for a run. I've never been a fan of goo-type running foods, and gummy cubes are just plain gross. Looking at the Perpetuem Solids, I'm reminded of Sweethearts - on steroids. Or giant Tums. I popped one in a was surprised by the lack of flavor. Maybe I've burned my taste buds out with my green chile, or the strawberry-vanilla was too subtle for me, but there really wasn't much flavor. Which in my mind, isn't necessarily a bad thing. The consistency is unusual, and took a bit of getting used to. But by the second one, I was firmly in favor of them for me. I like 'em, and will be using them on any future runs that require foods.

QH#3: After uploading my run to connect.garmin, (And deleting all of them on the wrist assembly - see above) I noticed that this run was the longest in 6 months, and my weekly total is the highest in 4 months. Nice. Maybe, just maybe I might be getting back into the swing. The elevation gain was a top 10, too. Must be the Perpetuem.

And a happy birthday to my bro who shares the celebration with our globe, though he came a bit before Earth day. 

That's it from the Slang weekend. Hope it was as good for you, doing whatever it is you do, as it was for me, doing what I do.  Do be do be do.

Monday Morning edit: I apparently missed seeing the fireball and concomitant booms while I was running in the early morning. I guess my breathing was so hard at that time (I would have been climbing the Ash Creek trail), I heard nothing. Bummer.

One of the selling points I have heard in the past regarding the Macintosh vs. Wintel configuration for a personal computer, was that a Mac was not susceptible to virus attacks like a Wintel machine. This is likely a big selling point for people who don't want the added complexity of having to buy, maintain and configure a software package designed to monitor and eliminate potential virus and/or spyware on your computer.

That was a disingenuous argument at its best, because it always was vulnerable - just less so. Now, as the Macintosh goes more mainstream and increases in popularity, people who get their jollies by writing malware are targeting Macintoshes more and more. 

The current preferred method of attack seems to be through Java apps on websites that access the Mac OS through the installed Java application on the Mac that runs the webapp. Last week a large attack titled "Flashback" infected anywhere between 700K and 800K Macintoshes. Apple was slow with addressing this, but finally came out with a security update last week.  Mac users need to take a cue from their Wintel cousins, and be a little more cautious about what and where they are clicking out there in the wild web world.

More information can be found here, and here.  Tools have been released to address the potential vulnerability if you need to check. Security companies had tools out before Apple had the fix to the OS addressed, so if you are prone to Java play on the internet with your Mac, you may want to check this out.

To suffer a flashback of a different type and quote an old 1980's police TV serial, "Let's be careful out there."

I've been doing various athletic-type stuff for a long time now. My sense of  proprioception is pretty clear after high school and recreational wrestling, track, basketball, rugby, racquetball, cycling, trail running, martial arts and yoga. Why is it then I walk out of every yoga class feeling like a complete dork? It's not that I don't get it; I do. I just can't seem to get my body to the point of cooperation. It's frustrating to the point of becoming demoralizing. Add in that I discovered that not everybody moves with pain regardless of exercise level, and the result is a why-bother attitude arising from the depths. 

So I run - and my body hurts (especially when I go *boom* onto the rocks). I do yoga and and my body not only hurts, it doesn't do what I will it to do. In the past, I could probably have nailed the poses Angela is putting us through. Now? Ha. I can barely accomplish 10% of the whole. Getting older sucks. Getting older while trying to maintain one's past image of one's self not only sucks, it fails miserably in the process.

Somebody remind me why we (and by that I obviously mean me) do this? The running, cycling, yoga, etc? To feel better? It hurts. To look better naked? Sorry, nobody wants to see that; lights off, thank you very much. Social aspects? Not so much. I run alone and I don't talk during yoga – it might draw attention to my flailing, failing and flopping.

It's Wednesday, and my mental memory is as bad as my muscle memory. I'm sure I'll be somewhere on a trail over the weekend working in some painful miles between Mikaela's soccer games. If you happen to see me, remember that "smile" is really a grimace of pain.

This weekend was an outdoor kind of thing for me, which is good. I was the timer for a benefit 5K on Saturday morning (Carson High School Safe & Sober). The weather gods sort of cooperated in that it didn't actually snow or rain, but was chilly with a cutting breeze (at least for those of us simply standing around and not running), that made it more difficult to log in late registration runners on my phone's timing app. Nothing like fat-fingering in an entry when you can't feel your thumbs.

All in all, the event went down fairly well, with a couple of glitches. The most egregious one was the race itself. We had a route map posted, marshals at all the major intersections and turns, yet, yet the race leader made a wrong turn. He ignored the race marshal pointing in the correct direction and yelling at him, and instead of going straight, turned right. O_O

As is usually the case in a race, everyone else simply plays follow-the-leader, assuming the one(s) in front know where they are going. In this case, they didn't. As a result, we had people all over the west side of town, and people coming to the finish line from both directions after completing anywhere from the scheduled 5K to around 5M. Oh well. It's a fun/benefit run, not a competitive event.  After the runners were in, and food being ingested and music being listened to, instead of giving awards for all the various divisions, I think there was a pretty unique way to reward the division winners. All of the runners' tear-off bib numbers (after finish time was verified) were entered into a raffle drawing. Each of the division winners got extra entries into the raffle. Pretty cool way to reward division winners if you don't have a lot of prizes available.

Spooky day, Friday the 13th and all. Of course, it's as rare an event as a Tuesday the 4th, or a Saturday the 22nd, but superstition has no logic. 

This past weekend, I ran a few times. That was the first time I had multiple runs across consecutive days in a long, long time. After each run, I gauged whether or not to run at the time I was going to go again. Each time, my legs felt strong, with no pain to speak of. And, at the end of each of those runs, I still felt good, and relatively pain free, and ready to go again.

"Yay!" I am thinking, "I do some killer yoga, stretch each day, and I can get back to it." So I figure to take a couple of days off, do the yoga thang again, and hit the run on Wednesday. So far, so good. Until I actually started to run. Wow, the wheels came off the bus in a hurry. It seemed as if in the first 1/2 mile, my ability to run regressed 3 months. Hammy pain on the left, calf pains on the right, bilateral hip pains. what the hell happened to the good feelings of running I had the week before? I ate similarly, I stretched similarly, I was focusing on form similarly,  I did yoga... but my body responded entirely differently. 

I completed the run, though I suspect I had more of a grimace than a smile plastered on my face when I reached my car. By the time I made it home, my legs were screaming obscenities at me for putting them through what they thought was a grinder. I stretched, rubbed and popped some AdvilPM (my favorite drug) to ensure a decent night's sleep. This morning, I woke groggy but I actually slept through the night, and the legs felt tight, but better. 

I really wish my body would play nice more than for a few days at a time. I'm hoping to get out there again this weekend, so we'll see.

Part 1 of this two-part series focused on creating the SVN Repository itself. Part 2 is delving into the specifics of hooking the save action on a document in that folder to automatically add/commit the changed document to the SVN repository. This involves creating an application level event, and code to fire it and the actual SVN code based on your document's location.

Step 1: Create a class module in a dotm that loads at startup.
There needs to be an application hook that is always available. The easiest way to do this is to create a class module in a macro-enabled template residing in the startup folder for MS Word that has application-level events. F0r 2010 that location is typically C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\STARTUP. 

Create a macro enabled template and as part of that creation, create a class module. I called mine ApplicationEvents. Code the app event DocumentBeforeSave as it appears below:

In addition to the code you have in the App_DocumentBeforeSave Sub, you will need to declare a couple of public variable that can access it. At the top of the module in your declaration area, declare your public variables:

Public WithEvents App As Word.Application
Public BSave As New <yourclassmodule dotm name>.ApplicationEvents

Here is the code in the Sub itself for copy and paste purposes:

Private Sub App_DocumentBeforeSave(ByVal Doc As Document, SaveAsUI as Boolean, Cancel As Boolean)
   'Exit this process if the document has never been saved before
    If InStr(ActiveDocument.FullName, "\") = 0 Then Exit Sub
   'save the document
    ActiveDocument.Save
    'hook the SVN actions     
   Call SVNCalls.SVNAddCommit(ActiveDocument.FullName)
End Sub
Now you need to write the SVN call itself. You can put this code anywhere you want, as long as it is somewhere the App_DocumentBeforeSave Sub can see it. So if it is not in the same dotm as the class module, where you do put it has to be referenced by the dotm where the class module lives. For simplicity purposes, you are better off keeping it all together.

Step 2: Code to invoke SVN actions.
The simplest way to do this is to create a bat file on the fly and use the Shell command to tell SVN to execute the bat file. The code below is what is called from the Application event we set up in the startup dotm above:

Function SVNAddCommit(strFullName As String) As Boolean
Const cUpdateFileName as String = "svn_update.bat"Const cClean As String = "svn cleanup"
Const gkMyDrafts as String = "C:\Work_Documents\"
Dim strMsg As String
Dim strSVNString As String
Dim strDraftPath As String
Dim strCommit As String
Dim strAddDelete As String
Dim strBatFile As String
Dim FileNumber As String
Dim strCleanupString as string

On Error GoTo trap
'if the global variable is not instantiated, do so
If BSave.App Is Nothing Then Set BSave.App = Word.Application
'create a cleanup string to ensure the repo is always good to go
strCleanupString = "cd " & Chr(34) & gkMyDrafts & Chr(34) & vbCrLf & cClean & vbCrLf

'create the batfile
strBatFile =gkMyDrafts & cUpdateFileName
'test to see if the document is where the svn is located. If the file being saved is not in my work folder and so not under version control, bail out.
If InStr(strFullName, gkMyDrafts) = 0 Then GoTo Done
 'Create add string. This string will ensure any newly added files to the directory are added to svn. it's ignored if
 'the file is already added
strAddDelete = "svn add " & strFullName & vbCrLf
strMsg = "Saved " & Now()
strCommit = "svn commit --force-log -m "

strSVNString = strCleanupString & strAddDelete & strCommit & Chr(34) & strMsg & Chr(34) & Chr(32) & strFullName
'create a bat file to execute
FileNumber = FreeFile()
Open strBatFile For Output As #FileNumber
Print #FileNumber, strSVNString
Close #FileNumber
'execute the bat file
Shell strBatFile
'All is well, set the function to true and go
SVNAddCommit = True

Done:
    Exit Function

trap:
    Err.Raise (Err.Number)
    GoTo Done
 End Function

That's it. Every time you save a file, it will check to see if it is in the Work_Documents folder, and if it is, it will commit the saved document to the SVN repository, creating a micro-version environment for you.

Versioning files is an important thing in a business world where document creation for a demanding and capricious set of clients is The Way. The document drafter never knows for sure if the file being modified is exactly what is needed/wanted, or if the client will want to revert to a previous version. Often, the situation arises that a document under construction needs to be reset to a point in time a few hours earlier, and moved in a different direction from that point. Other than creating and manually saving multiple versions of the document, there is no really simple method to handle this situation.

Taking a cue from the programming world, I integrated the subversion concept and used it for document construction in MS Word. I wanted to make the process invisible to the user, so that every time they saved their document, it was not only saved as expected in the location they expected, but additionally, a micro-version of the document could then be retrieved exactly as it existed when saved, regardless of additional changes and saves. As any geek knows, this is exactly what SVN does for you; any time a commit action is invoked, the items under version control are written and retrievable in the state they were at that time regardless of subsequent changes. Typically, this is at the end of a coding cycle, but there is no reason why the "cycle" can't be shortened to be every time the user clicks Save for a document, is there? I couldn't think of any, so I went ahead and did it. 

The process is fairly straightforward and can be divided into two clearly defined sets of actions:

1. Establish the SVN repository to receive all the micro-versions; and,
   
2. Hook MS Word actions to SVN commands.

This post will handle the first set of actions, the hooks from MS Word will be in the second.

In order to create the repository, you need to install a subversioning client. I used Tortoise, as it is easy to set up and run. It's an open source project, so feel free to donate. 

After you have downloaded and installed Tortoise, you now have your framework established for creating your repository. You can use the Tortoise interface, or you can do it simply by modifying the following batch file. As displayed, this batch file creates a SVN repository called "drafting" on a network drive. The process creates the remote folder necessary called "work_svn", and it creates the repository for my local C:\Work_Documents folder:

Save your text file with a .bat extension and double click it to run. As is the case with everything computer related (and kind of the raison d’être for this post), make sure you back up the folder you are versioning before starting. It's unlikely anything will go wrong, but Murphy gets around.

Coming up next in Part 2: hooking the Save Action of MS Word to automatically commit  the changes to a document in my Work_Documents folder, every time I save it.