charlie griefer

just the perfect amount of cowbell

i watch one sport.  football (american football to be specific).  16 weeks a year, my wife graciously allows me my sundays (and the occasional monday or thursday or... well, saturday) to watch my giants play.

it's been a while since i've been really happy about that.  i mean, they're my team (i was born and raised in new jersey), so i stick with 'em through good and bad... but past few years there's just not been much more than infrequent flashes of 'good' surrounded by pretty consistent ....well... not so good.

we last made it to the superbowl in 2000, and were embarrassed 34-7 by the ravens.  since then, we got a new coach (who was on the verge of being run out of town last season), traded the farm for eli manning, and in spite of making it to the playoffs the last 3 years, never advanced past the first (wildcard) game.

this season was supposed to be more of the same (if not worse). tiki barber, who most fans considered to be the heart and soul of the team, retired. he didn't just retire tho, he retired and called out the coach and the quarterback (coach being a large part of the reason he retired, and he questioned the quarterback's leadership abilities).

in spite of this (or, if you believe what you read on the internets, maybe because of it), the team somehow managed to shock everybody. we lost our first 2 games (giving up a combined 80 points). but then somewhere in game 3 (against washington), something happened. we went on to win 6 in a row, and made it to the playoffs (again, as a wild card).

along the way, something else happened. we played new england (the undefeated juggernaut new england) in the last game. for all intents and purposes, it was a meaningless game for both teams.  new england had already clinched the division and a bye week. we had clinched a wildcard spot. a win by either team wasn't going to change that (nor was a loss). new england, of course, wanted to play for posterity and pursue the perfect season. in the end, the patriots did pull it out (38-35). but if you believe in "moral victories", that would have to go to the giants. they played well and almost pulled it out. they lost because, as good as they played, new england played better. but when you're talking about the 2007 new england patriots, that's a pretty high bar.

into the wildcard game. on the road. knocked off tampa bay. first time in 3 years we're advancing past the wildcard game. on to dallas. on the road. everyone picks us to lose. we win. on to green bay. on the road. everyone picks us to lose. we win. we're going to the superbowl to face the patriots again.

what was notable about the 3 playoff wins (aside from the fact that they were all on the road) was the fact that the giants played damn good football. no interceptions. very few penalties. smart, heads-up, smash-mouth football. i'll be the first to admit that some of the wins during the season came about not because we played good, but because we played better than the other team (who played badly).

so on to glendale, arizona and the patriots.  we were the one remaining obstacle to their perfect season and a place in the history books.  and again, we played some damn good football. this may have been one of the best superbowls that i've ever had the pleasure of watching (altho there were some moments that weren't exactly pleasurable). not because "my" team was playing. but because it came down to the wire. yes, down by 3 with 4th and 20 deep in their own territory and 10 seconds left, i wasn't convinced that tom brady and the patriots weren't going to pull this out. they really are that good of a team (my hat's off to them for an amazing season). but in the end, the giants perpetrated one of the biggest upsets in superbowl history.  it was a beautiful thing to witness.

again, hats off to the patriots players, staff, and fans.  18 wins in a season is an amazing feat.  simply amazing.  but like they say, on any given sunday... and on this particular sunday, the giants wanted it more.

tom coughlin... eli manning... i apologize.  i've been pretty hard on both of you over the past 3 years.  over the past few weeks, i've been cautiously optimistic.  but after today, i fully admit that i am back on the bandwagon.  you've both made a believer out of me once again, and made me proud to bleed blue.  for that, i thank you (and plax and amani and osi and... ) :)

y'know what would be great?... if there were a survey or something from adobe regarding coldfusion IDEs.
if anybody hears of anything like that, please lemme know, k? :)

in all seriousness, it's great (from a purely speculative standpoint) to see adobe asking for this information.  it's also great that cf developers want to make sure as many voices as possible weigh in.

so... doing my part (because maybe there's like a prize or something if you're the 1000th blogger to post this) :)

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=321RrO9_2fWaP_2bdYMnmF9CuQ_3d_3d

i can't imagine this isn't a fairly well known "issue" in the model-glue community, but what with being new to model-glue, this was a new issue for me.  i figure it's worth mentioning, if only to save somebody else the several billion hours of debugging that i lost this afternoon.

let me point out first that this isn't a model-glue issue per se.  it's a combination of using model-glue with coldfusion debugging and some javascript thrown in for good measure (some of you may already know where i'm going with this).

when you've got coldfusion's "Enable Request Debugging Output" selected on your server (which i generally do on my development box), you'll notice that you see each individual model-glue view fully rendered in the debugging information.

the page that i was working on relied on some javascript that my company uses to do client side form field validation (among other functions).  the page has a hidden div that, on failed validation, is populated with the various errors and then set to display="block".  this is done via a fairly straightfoward document.getElementById() call to the element.

i got everything set up, submitted the form without filling in any fields, and expected that i'd see a big red box display at the top of the page.

there was no big red box :(

no worries... i've got firebug running, so surely i'll be able to find the source of the problem fairly quickly.  hmm... firebug reports no errors.

i switched over to IE, thinking that perhaps somewhere in this .js file, a non-standard method of referencing an element was being used.  i wondered if it worked in IE (at this point i had already done a fair amount of debugging in firefox, and needed to explore my options). 

big red box.  w00t!  works in IE.  so the culprit must be some non-standard javascript.  so that sent me off in a flurry of debugging... in what was totally the wrong direction.  ever get so focused on thinking you've identified where the issue is that you end up with blinders on?  you're so laser focused on finding the issue (now that you think you've identified it) that you stop thinking about other possibilities.  yeah, that was me. 

a few thousand hours later, i realize the javascript is good.  it's fairly straightforward, and i'm convinced that i'm looking in the wrong place.

to make a long story short (or at least, less long), it finally occurred to me to check for multiple instances of an element with the same id value.  after all, i was plugging existing code into a framework that was using files i had built myself, so i figured it was possible that somewhere along the way, multiple files could have been included that contained an element with the id "errorBox".  i was on the right trail, but for the wrong reason.  did a quick "view source" of the rendered page, and a CTRL-F for "errorBox".  yup.  there were a few of 'em.  but not because there were elements in multiple pages with that id.  because of the rendered views in my CF debug output. 

IE of course, blows dead monkeys, and rather than giving any indication that something might be amiss, decided to try its best to figure out what i meant.  i don't want my browser to do this (i wouldn't mind if my wife tried it on occasion tho).  i want my browser to say "hey... something's not cool here".  i love me my firefox... but it also might have been nice if firefox (via firebug) had given me some indication that i was trying to reference a specific element by id, but multiple elements existed with that id.  but at least it didn't pretend there wasn't a problem.

moral of the story?  model-glue plus javascript plus coldfusion debugging could make for a volatile mix.  remember that if you have coldfusion debugging enabled, all of your views effectively render twice (once on the page itself, and once in the debug info).  this can potentially bite you in the ass when using client side scripting to reference specific elements by id.

view it's a wonderful life (2007 remake)

seems that jeff coughlin has way too much time on his hands these days.  he's put together a remake of the holiday classic it's a wonderful life that remains somewhat true to the original story... i just question some of his casting choices.

• charlie griefer (yay, me!) - george bailey (originally played by jimmy stewart)
• scott stroz - uncle bill bailey (he um... drinks. a lot.)
• mark mandel - mary hatch bailey (originally played by donna reed)
• andy allan - clarence the guardian angel
• simeon bateman - zuzu bailey

jeff himself makes a cameo playing ernie bishop, the cab driver.

if nothing else it gets you thinking... would the offspring of charlie griefer and mark mandel really look like simeon bateman?  the mind boggles.

santa (as channeled by mike potter) arrived a bit early at the griefer household this year.

i just got home from work to find a box from amazon waiting on the doorstep.  it was the flex 2 book by chafic kazoun and joey lott, with the following note:

Merry Christmas from the Adobe Flex Team!  Thanks for your interest in Flex.
Add your Flex app to the Flex Showcase at http://flex.org/

From: Mike Potter, Flex Team

i'd heard of this happening to others, but never thought it would happen to me (which yes, i do recognize sounds like the opening to a penthouse letter).

i'll actually be donating this to the bay area cfug for be used as a raffle giveway during the next meeting.  turns out i already had this particular book.  not sure if i forgot to move it to the 'purchased' items on my wishlist or not (it's there now... but that's either because i'd already done it, or because mike bought me the book... likely the latter).  i figure by donating it to the CFUG, it'll still be going to a good cause.  if you're going to be in the bay area for the next meeting (jan 21, 6:30 pm) stop by.  the topic is flex and AIR (ted patrick will be presenting), so it's somewhat appropriate, i guess :)

in any event, the thought and effort is very much appreciated.  thanks to mike and the entire flex team.  merry christmas back atcha!