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

It does go down

I just noticed that gas has finally dropped down to under $4 a gallon around here. Yeay!

It's really sad that I am happy to pay just under $4 a gallon, but at the gas station I fill up at (I always fill up at the same place for convenience) it got up to about $4.65 for Plus. Ouch.

Good thing I don't own a diesel! Sorry Rick.

~Matt

Silver Falls State Park

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This weekend we met with my parents for a picnic and some sightseeing at Silver Falls State Park. The park is just 26 miles East of Salem and about 15 miles South of Silverton [map].


It took us a while to find each other because there were some communication issues and there is no cell phone service in the area at this time, but after we met up we had a wonderful lunch with all sorts of gluten free and soy free menu items.


After lunch we went to actually look at some waterfalls, apparently there are 10 big waterfalls within the park, but even on the way to see just one of them we saw 2 or 3 small waterfalls that are not on the map.

There are lots of hiking trails all over the park and it is setup so you could start at one end and walk past all of the waterfalls.


Throughout our day in the park we ran into a couple groups of people that were walking the length of the park and we just happened to drive, park and walk down to the waterfall in the time it took them to walk from one attraction to the next. If we didn't have two children 5 years and younger with us, we would have walked a lot more.

The weather on Saturday was wonderful for enjoying the outdoors and the lighting for taking pictures was great. It was a great place to try out the various settings on my new camera. We had a very nice drive down to the park, it's only an hour and a half away from Portland, and that's not taking I-5. Since the park is strategically located half-way between Portland and Eugene, I think the parents and I will plan on meeting there again.


Till next time...

~Matt

11 years

It was our 11^th anniversary just recently and we made it pretty low key this year. Usually we will plan a getaway to the coast or something more noteworthy than dinner and a potential movie, but this year we seemed to be pretty busy with the end of school, work(s) and the always volatile babysitter plans. We ended up going to the Veritable Quandary for dinner and caught a few local bands at Dante’s.

We have haven’t been to the VQ in a number of years, but I am happy to say that it was just as good as I remembered. They serve gourmet American food and have a very interesting menu that changes frequently based on what ingredients are in season. Kim ordered a really good Salmon dish and I got an Opah dish that turned out very well. I’m not usually one to order fish as an entrée, but Opah is a very meaty fish and I enjoyed it a lot.

Kim mentioned at dinner that 11 years doesn’t seem as long as 10 years for some reason and strangely enough I can see what she means. Maybe it’s because 10 years together is such a noteworthy accomplishment in a relationship, or maybe because we had planned quite a lot for our 10^th anniversary and this year we just winged it. I’m happy to say that we are both still good friends after 11 years and enjoy hanging out whenever we get a chance to step out of our very busy daily routines to spend some time together.

I found it amusing looking around the restaurant at the other couples that most sit across from each other, even when the tables are surrounded by benches on 3 sides. The two of us sat on the same bench with heads together if not a head on a shoulder and talked and laughed about all sorts of things while enjoying a couple of drinks and a beautiful night. It probably looked like we were a couple that was dating or one of those silly newlyweds.

11 years down and looking forward to the next 11.

~Matt

What's in a Name

I was talking with my sister just the other day about the little one that she's expecting and it occurred to me that she hadn't changed her last name since she became married. She still retains her Heidenreich name while her husband's last name is Rawitscher. This makes for a very interesting dilemma for an upcoming child. What name to give the child?

"Do we hyphenate our names together, why don't we just make up a new last name like Rawhide and ride off into the sunset as a family." Both last names are each terrible in their own right, neither is pronounceable by the common person and neither can be easily spelled if spoken, which is why my sister has never changed her name. Why trade one unpronounceable name for another. But the thought of naming a child Johnny Rawitscher-Heidenreich would probably be just as mean as naming a child Apple Tomato Smith.

I was also talking with her husband about baby names and we got to talking about first names. Does a name define the person, or does the person define the name? I know a number of people with the same first name and many of them are very similar. Have you ever met a physicist by the name of Brock? Have you ever met a jock with the name of Melvin? Think of a few names and see if the people you know by those names are similar. Maybe it's just my imagination.

If you ask me, they should just go with LaDamien Von Puderschmidt Rawitscher-Heidenreich III and be done with it.

~Matt