I haven’t written a post on here for quite a while.  Things have been pretty crazy with my work at DeseretBook.com.  We’ve launched the new retail site as beta and it should be replacing the old system within the next couple of weeks.  That project has been really long, but very fulfilling.  There’s quite a few updated and new features on the site along with a killer new design.  Feel free to check it out.

Besides that, I’ve been preparing myself for Ko Dan Ja Shim Sa, which is an 8 day test to become a 4th dan in Soo Bahk Do.  I’m also testing for my Sa Bom which denotes a “master-level instructor”.  The dates are set for August 14-22 which is in less than two weeks!

So those two items have made blogging really hard to do lately.  My wife on the other hand has started her own blog about our family.  She’s done a really nice job.  I hope everyone will check it out and make a few comments (she loves comments).  http://familiacorrales.blogspot.com.

A new type of scam is running through the U.S. and people are actually falling for it.  Read below:

Ricki Brown
Control Specialist
Willingboro PDC
Ext. 2045
JURY DUTY SCAM:

This has been verified by the FBI (their link is also included below).

Please pass this on to everyone in your email address book.

It is spreading fast so be prepared should you get this call. Most of us take those summons for jury duty seriously a new and ominous kind of fraud has surfaced.
The caller claims to be a jury coordinator. If you protest that you never received a summons for jury duty, the scammer asks you for your Social Security number and date of birth so he or she can verify the information and cancel the arrest warrant.

Give out any of this information and bingo, your identity was just stolen.
The fraud has been reported so far in 11 states, including New York , Oklahoma , Florida , Illinois , Texas and Colorado .

This (swindle) is particularly insidious because they use intimidation over the phone to try to bully people into giving information by pretending they are with the court system.
The FBI and the Federal Court System have issued nationwide alerts on their web sites, warning consumers about the fraud.

Snopes site: says this is real fraud.

http://www.snopes.com/crime/fraud/juryduty.asp<http://www.snopes.com/crime/fraud/juryduty.asp>;

FBI site: warns about the fraud.

If you are experiencing an unusual ruby error after installing RMagick, before digging too deep, try not only rebooting your web server, but Windows itself.  That fixes a ton of possible errors that could result from a RMagick installation. The error I had was RMagick.so not found.

OK, it’s not a firewall issue like I thought.  I haven’t been able to log into skype all day.  I’ve looked at my firewall configurations, nothing.  Apparently, Skype is down for the day.  I also didn’t realize they came out with a new version.  I’m probably really behind, but the download is down as well.

I’ve been working on this for a long time.  I get this error when trying to work a sql statement like so:

@names = CommonGivenName.find(:all, :conditions => [ “common_given_names.name LIKE                                   #{params[:descendant][:given_name]}%’”])

I keep getting this error:  malformed format string.  I couldn’t figure out the problem, but apparently, Rails doesn’t like the % sign.  After adding a second one, the query ran just fine.  If anyone has any ideas on this, I’d be interested in learning.  I just know it works this way.

Alright, so my next post is technology based. I’ll get to some martial arts stuff soon I promise. Jimmy showed me this youtube video on these guys did a superb job at explaining the joys of Ruby on Rails development. Imagine setting up a database schema and throughout development you add a table here, or a column there. Your code and db schema evolve throughout the process. Then BAM, you need to revert your application code to a previous version. I’ve found it quite difficult to revert my db schema back to the same version. Well, Ruby on Rails has a nice module called migrations. Migrations are 100% Ruby code which can create your db schema for you. As you add tables, modify a column, or whatever you need to during the db schema lifecycle, migrations keep a record of every change you make and an easy way to revert at any time. Once migrations are set up, reverting is as easy as typing “rake db: migrate VERSION=10″.

Enjoy the film:

What an exciting day Jimmy and I had during Seth Godin’s presentation on his new Book, The Dip. It was a wonderful presentation that focused on a very unexpected topic–failure. The presentation helped me put into perspective that to be really successful in life, you need to narrow your focus to what you really excel at and go full throttle. In order to do this, you will need to give up a lot of opportunities. To determine what you should give up and what you should pursue, look at the long term effects and determine whether or not this battle will end in added opportunities or a dead-end.  In short, pick your battles and find the battles that can yield the most benefit.

Seth advised Jimmy and I one on one while driving him to the airport (yes, Phil’s Mercedes broke down in Salt Lake, we passed them on the road, picked them up, got lost on I-15, turned around, and finally made it to the airport in time to get Seth onto his flight).  Seth asked if our web development company Apriux was a local business or going national.  We responded that we were currently local but were looking to possibly do work nationally as well.  Seth told us that if we had a really slick and efficient process, then we could go nationally or we could just be hyper-local.  He said that trying to do both was basically suicide.  I was listening to Seth’s lecture, I promise.  I guess I didn’t have time to let it sink in.  Pick your battles, find what you’re good at and do everything in your power to be the best at that.  Jimmy and I had a nice conversation on the way back to Provo about our business strategy.
Those are some of my takes from the conference.  I’m sure I forgot a ton of stuff.  Anyone else have some thoughts?

Alright, a bunch of people are trying to get Seth Godin to come speak in Utah.  This is a great opportunity to learn some new ideas on how to become successful.  The cost for admittance is $50 and you receive 5 copies of his book.  We need 400 people to pledge to be there.  If anyone is interested, go to http://www.pledgebank.com/SethGodinUtah.  This is a great opportunity!

It’s a pretty well-known fact among web developers that formatting never comes easy when the majority of the population uses Internet Explorer. Luckily, in the newly released IE 7, the Guillotine Bug has been fixed. From what I’ve seen, many of the IE bugs have been fixed in the new release. The problem is that most people are still using IE 6.

I just deployed a new online system and it went pretty smooth. I received a few emails about a few minor bugs, but overall the project went quite well. One of these bugs, was the Guillotine Bug. This bug chops off the bottom part of a floating div with links on it. Here’s an example of the source code that would produce this bug:

< div class="container" >
< div class="floater" style="float: left" >This floating div will have the bottom section cut off.< /div>

This is the main section that contains a link. The link should involve some javascript or ajax.
< /div>

Below is a graphical representation of how this set of code should appear:

On the initial page load, the page will look like the IE example and to the normal page viewer, the site appears to be working correctly. After clicking the link on the right column however, the layout is changed to the Guillotine example and most of the left column is cut off.

The answer is quite simple. After closing the container div, add the following: