Well, I'm officially going to post my first post on this blog. (This is Kevin). Seeing how the majority of my life is spent doing remarkably geeky stuff, I'm going to post about the geeky stuff that I've been trying to do.

1)I've been trying to download, install and run a version of Storesonlinepro on my PC for the last couple of months. I gave up and took a rest but then at work (As of Friday I worked at Storesonline) I heard they made an update to the download. So this morning I tried it again and.....it worked! The only issue now is that none of my licenses and passwords will get me into the downloaded version. So now I have to figure out how to get the license and password without getting dinged with a download services fee (I heard they were going to charge people who called in for help with the download). I may just wait and see if I can get my new boss over at PMI to go get everyone the password.


2)In the storesonline software, there's a way to download a backup of your website. Until a couple weeks ago I didn't know how to open the format it was in. However, someone at work introduced me to the wonders of winrar, an extracting program similar to winzip, but on steroids. It opened up the backup to reveal nothing but beautiful XML files. I thought I had hit the motherlode. Quickly and easily creating entire websites seemed to be within my grasp, however, I noticed that each element and page is assigned a lengthy ID. I'm now afraid that Storesonline is storing all of the contents of the various elements and pages in one mega-database instead of miniture databases for each site. If the former is true, then that puts my plan of automating the site creation on hold until I can either figure how to create elements with different ID's without jacking up some poor suckers website just because he had the same element ID, or quickly creating the elements and pages in the actual builder. I'm guessing the latter is more likely, so I'm going to have to investigate how I can do this.

3)I've been preaching to the world about AutoHotkey. It is amazing at taking repetitive jobs and automating them. The big problem with hooking it up to the Storesonline storebuilder is that the download time from the various pages varies so dramatically, that I would have to create a 15 second delay between each page change just to make sure that the script doesn't get ahead of the actual program. Another problem is that the storebuilder's buttons are always changing position as more elements are created. So I can't set the screen coordinates for the various buttons, which is pretty frustrating.

Today I start at my new job, back at PMI. While I would be lying if I said I was excited to be going back to the company that I quit just 3 months ago. I am hoping that programming for PMI will be better than coaching for PMI. Less time on the phone and more time actually building websites. I am looking forward to the hardware/software they promised us. 2 widescreen monitors and photoshop instead of fireworks. That's going to be fun. It's amazing what a difference these little things make to geeks like me. Everyone who found out they were moving to PMI was upset, but when they found out they'd each be getting dual widescreen monitors they started to chill. Funny, everyone is OK about PMI now because PMI spent an extra $250 for a second monitor. Yet, we are all going to end up paying an additional $300-$700 for our new healthcare plan each year. But I guess that's just human nature.