Asplundh to the rescue

We had a neighbor’s cat (Little Man) stuck up a tree for 2 to 3 days and we called an animal rescue service to get some assistance, but were told that there was nothing they could do. They said the Fire Department does not respond to cats anymore (I’m sure rescuing a cat in a tree with a ladder truck is more than urban legend) and we should put some food at the base of the tree for the cat to “eventually” come down. The owner of the cat started with this tactic when she found the cat was stuck in the tree and all the neighborhood cats were grateful for the snack while they watched a fellow feline’s fate unfold.

Once we were made aware of the cat’s predicament a couple of us tried to raise a ladder to climb up in the tree and get the cat, but this was a 60’ Fir tree with the bottom 1/3 barren of all branches. The next step is of course to lash two extension ladders together along with a 3^rd to meet in the middle to take the form of an “A” with one protruding side. All we needed was someone to say, “Hey, watch this” and this would have been a pure Darwin moment. This solution was terrible at best with ladders coming apart, bending, bowing and to make matters worse, the cat retreating farther up the tree because of all the commotion below. We tore our tower of precarious ladders down and tried to find someone in the yellow pages under animal services, but it was after 5 pm on Sunday night so nobody was answering. My last contribution to the cause that night was inspired by the Steve Martin movie Roxanne; open a can of wet cat food at the base of the tree.

The next morning I tried a different approach. I called Asplundh’s main call center and explained the cat’s predicament and they transferred me to a regional office, then a manager who took all of my details and contact information. He then forwarded that information along to his field office to ask for a volunteer to come assist the kitty out of the tree. 10 minutes later I got a call from a nice man named John Ryan who had a free time slot, was nearby and was willing to help us out.

John threw a guide line up into the tree and then pulled his heavy rope up the path he laid. He threw his guild line up again and pulled his rope up and around a couple more branches to make a good secure hold on the tree. Up he went after Little Man and the closer he got to the cat the further up the tree the cat ran. I gave John a backpack to put the cat in and when he finally caught up with the cat in the last 6 feet of the tree he was able to successfully grab and secure the cat. We noticed John coming down the tree and called up to see if he got the cat and John responded, “How do they say…The cat is in the bag.”. J I never thought I would be relieved to hear that statement, but considering the height that the cat had retreated, any other outcome would have been dire.

After everyone was safely out of the tree we were able to reunite Little Man with his 2 year old owner and her mother.

Now I guess we know who to call if this happens again. ;)

From Asplundh to the rescue!

John Ryan works for Asplundh and is a sub-contractor for PGE and we would all like to thank him for his willingness to help us out when others offered no suggestions, dismissed us as overreacting or just didn’t bother returning a phone call.

Thanks again John!

~Matt

Meh

So you know how life sometimes get's in the way of things? I'm sure most of you have the very same problems. With all the family, kids, dogs, cats, frogs, work and games in my life I rarely have the drive to actually publish a post on here. Usually I will start to compose something, then get it 90% done and never get around to posting it. Unfortunately this happens way too often and the last post I have on here was from almost 2 years ago!

So, in the interest of moving forward I will be pushing out a few of the oldies but goodies that never made it out the door.

Do enjoy.

An evening with Lil Wayne

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Last week I was able to attend a concert at the Rose Garden through my work. We get tickets to concerts occasionally and when this one popped up I immediately though of my brother-in-law Nick. I was able to get 4 tickets for myself, Nick, Lamont and a friend of his Miranda. Initially I was going just so Nick could attend, but actually hanging out in the sky box with a bunch of fun people having drinks made the night really fun.


The first act was Kari Hilson and Nick and Lamont were really exited to see her. Later in the show she came back on stage to sing a couple of songs with Lil Wayne.



I was really impressed by the Gym Class Heroes. They played a lot of songs that I was familiar with, but until that night I didn't really knew who they were. I made a note to check out some of their work because they put on a good show. (The guy on the left is waving a flag of some sort)



The main event of the night went a lot better than I was expecting. I am not a fan of Lil Wayne primarily because I don't like the voice synth that he uses in most of his songs. I don't have a problem with the effect from time to time, but he uses it too much for my taste. At the show there was only one song where he used that heavily, for the most part he was just singing and put on a really good show.

Daddy, I've been home a long time

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It's the week before X-mas here in Portland and a huge storm hit, bringing with it a total of about 10 inches of snow. Some areas were reporting a lot more, but people here are not used to this type of weather, so the entire town was shut down for about a week. At one time I went to the store to get some groceries and they were completely out of milk among other key amenities.

There was no school planned for the week of X-mas and the week of New Years, but this year the week before that we got his with a giant snow storm. The kids were starting to exibit signs of cabin fever as the days with Mom and Dad were adding up.

Ayden exclaims to me one day during this break, "Daddy, I've been home a long time.", obviously not used to the idea of spending so much time at home with his parents who are usually busy doing a number of things for work or for school. In the end we built a snowman, threw snowballs at each other and enjoyed our very white X-mas.

Hope all of you had a great time this holiday season, no matter what was thrown at you.

~Matt

Way too busy lately...

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I went on a very nice trip with part of my family to Idaho a couple of weekends ago, but apparently I have been pretty busy, because I just now got the time to get the pictures off of my camera and post them.

The last couple of times we made this trip we took my oldest Connor with us (Mom, Dad, Connor and I) on our road trip to visit the family in Idaho. This time we took my youngest Ayden and he did very well on the trip. He was playing with various toys on the drive, watching some DVDs and just zoning out with the rest of us watching the world going by.

We stayed at a very nice hotel that was on Cole Rd. in Boise and was strategically placed between my Grandfather’s house and my Uncle’s house where we usually gather. Everyone was happy to meet my youngest son and Ayden was thrilled to play with his two cousins in the backyard while the adults were doing boring stuff, like talking. J
On our trip we also got a chance to go disc golfing at a course just out of town at Eagle Island State Park. This is the second time that I brought my discs on this trip, and last year we had an epic group of people young and old playing, this year was a little less diverse, and fewer participated in the actual disc throwing, but all had a good time at the park visiting or trying to find our damn disc in the rough.

Later that same night we drove up to Lucky Peak to hang out with my grandfather some more and ended up having dinner at a beautiful little restaurant up at the summit of the mountain.


Quite a group of people!



~Matt

Eye of the Geek - Grouping radio buttons between group boxes

I’m introducing a new type of post here, one that my family doesn’t care about, but others around the interwebs might find useful.

I was working on a side project at work recently and had some trouble getting the layout to behave the way I wanted it and after much surfing to try and find a resolution I was unable to find any specific information about this issue.

Grouping common radio buttons between group boxes:

When you are using the designer in Visual Studio to layout your form if you want to group radio buttons together you need to use either a Panel or a GroupBox to link those radio buttons together (make them mutually exclusive). By default any radio buttons located within a GroupBox will be part of the same radio button group (see Figure 1). What if you wanted to group the radio buttons together logically, but not programmatically? Is there a way to get all the radio buttons to act as one continuous group, but have it look like Group A relates to one thing and Group B relates to another?

[Figure 1] Radio buttons are part of separate groups and each can have a value selected.

Create a Panel around the outside of both GroupBox controls (see Figure 2).

[Figure 2] Create a Panel control that surrounds both GroupBox controls.

Drag the Radio buttons onto the Panel control. Right-click on the GroupBox controls and choose “Send to Back” so they show up below the radio buttons. (see Figure 3).

[Figure 3] Radio buttons are located on the Panel layer, not within the GroupBox controls.

Once you have the radio buttons within the Panel control you need to use the keyboard to position them where you want them “within” the GroupBox controls. If you use the mouse to reposition the Radio buttons then they will automatically be placed within the GroupBox controls and will be grouped separately. Performing this step with the keyboard you can now have only 1 Radio button selected at a time, but you can logically group common radio buttons together with the nice labels that GroupBox controls provide (see Figure 4). If you try and add a GroupBox control to a group of Radio buttons it automatically adds them to the GroupBox control. Very annoying.

[Figure 4] Only one radio button can be selected at a time, regardless what GroupBox control they live in.

Hope this helps.

~Matt

New Camera Meet Old Camera

Ok, now you two play nice...you might meet in a pocket sometime and I don't want to have to separate the two of you.

LG Muziq and Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS

My family all pitched in and got me a new camera for my birthday, which isn't till Oct, and I am in love with it! It is very easy to use and has a number of settings for all the environments that you will encounter in your daily lives. I wouldn't call it a professional camera, but for a camera that will fit easily in your pocket it is a dream! It easily outshines my old digital camera and is about the same size as my phone, which I have been using as my personal camera for some time.

Here are a couple of similar shots to compare.

LG Muziq

Cannon PowerShot

If you are looking for a new digital camera to snap pictures with and aren't a huge photo buff, I would highly recommend it.

~Matt