elorg.net

On a normal day lately, I’ve been either migrating old 2003 sites to 2007, or finding ways to implement functionality that’s not exactly “out of the box” to accommodate various needs. This usually involves a few “related” lists, maybe some custom SPD workflow, and a DVWP or two. It’s fun! And then… I need to document what I’ve done for either the users to understand how to use it, and what to expect. Or more likely, for myself to refer to down the line when someone asks me to go back and support it

Sure, you can use the SharePoint wiki as-is. It’s fine. It “works”. But I like to take it a step or two further. Here are some “extras” that I implement on most wikis that I create these days. (more…)

Yeah… so… We haven’t really made much progress on the renovations since – November?!? We’re such slackers…

Maybe someday we’ll actually finish it. *crosses fingers*

The first floor renovations on our house are nearly done! We’ve almost finished the minimum needed in order to meet our goal – host Thanksgiving. We’ll still have a bit of work to do on the front section of the first floor, but that’s functional-enough and not really necessary at the moment. I doubt we’ll have time to move forward with that remaining portion – and if we did, it’d just be opening a big can of worms (re: would make a big mess). (more…)

It’s been a while since my last home desktop/workstation purchase, and I’ve just about maxed-out my upgrades on the old Mac Pro. I’ve been considering picking up a new computer for some time now, but torn over the cost/benefit. Listening to my podcasts it sounded like Apple’s looking to replace the Mac Pros for the most part, with the newer iMacs. I scoffed at the iMacs back when I bought my Mac Pro, but now they’re actually pretty nice. Plus, an iMac wouldn’t generate nearly as much heat, use nearly as much power, and weigh nearly as much as The Beast that is my Mac Pro. So recently, I decided to take the plunge.

I visited the Apple store one weekend for other reasons, and asked them about their iMac stock, you know, since I was already there. They don’t carry the upgraded model that I wanted (no surprise) so I’d have to order it online and wait. And that’s when the fun began… (more…)

I’ve gone through so many forum solutions over the years. I moved to bbPress at some point a while ago because I was tired of trying to integrate Vanilla with WordPress. Unfortunately, bbPress doesn’t seem to be updated often, and is seriously lacking… almost everything.

I think it’s time to move back to Vanilla (again). It integrates so much better, and even though I absolutely loved it the last time I used it, it looks so much slicker now.

I’ve been doing some tinkering, and it’s NOT going to be an easy process. There’s a script that’s supposed to help with the migration – but it fails horribly for me no matter what I do to try to coerce into behaving. I’ve mapped out a lot of the fields (maybe I should actually write all of that down and share it) and that portion isn’t so bad. It’s the differences in the way that bbPress and Vanilla each store the content of the first post of each topic that’s going to be the biggest pain. Thankfully my little forum is pretty low traffic, so I can take my time.

So far I’ve tried a LOT of different approaches, and ruled them all out. I think I have a game plan now, and just need to sit down for a day and get it done. I’m hoping it actually works and I’m not wasting my time. It’s not entirely a waste though – I consider myself a database n00b, and hacking through all of this is teaching me quite a bit.