Aren Cambre's Blog

Yesterday, my son and I did a family race.

It was called the Great Amazing Race, put on by Flying Color Sports. It’s supposedly a lighter version of the same thing you can see on TV.

It was neither great nor amazing.

It’s presented like a charity:

• They ask for volunteers and donations.
• They claim to benefit Active Families 30 Initiative, although some times it comes across as the Active Families 60 Initiative.
• At $30-$50 per family, it’s expensive, like one would expect for a charity fundraiser.
• They sell things you wouldn’t dream of in a real competitive event, like $5 Head Start Token to buy 1 minute off your time or $20 for a t-shirt with a plain logo.
• They claim donations to their “community fund” are tax-deductible.

Here’s a problem: this “charity” has the patina of a loose, for-profit operation:

• No IRS-recognized charities have names beginning with “flying colors sports” or “active families“. In fact, Flying Colors Sports is an Ohio for-profit LLC that was chartered in 2004. Ohio had no business on record beginning with “active families”. (Search for yourself.)
• Through Google, I can’t find clear evidence of anything charitable these Active Families 30 or Active Families 60 charities have done, or that they even exist!
• The event organizer said Akwasi Owusu-Ansah was supposed to attend but couldn’t because he was just traded. Um, no. It was January 15. He had been traded 6 weeks prior, on Dec. 4.
• Poorly run, disorganized event, especially for something that cost between $30 and $50 per family.
• No trained medical staff, or if they were there, they were well-hidden.
• Was run worse than many free Cub or Boy Scout events I’ve been to.
• Low-quality, sloppy web site with poor poorfreading, like ”Norbuck Par” or “I-365″ (it’s I-635!). In fact, it’s just thrown together with Godaddy’s free Website Tonight tool (see bottom of most pages).
• The promised race packet was just a green, generic bifold flyer with no useful event details.
• Credit card data is transmitted with no security and converted to email, which is inherently insecure.
• No runner identification whatsoever. It’s all on an honor system basis. I could have easily scammed my way into the event.
• Instead of “8 fun-filled stations“, there were six, and they were silly: 1. blindfolded guide, 2. sponge relay, 3. mummy wrap with toilet paper, 4. golfing a tennis ball into a hula hoop, 5. “hold the football between your legs while you go around some cones” and 6. a bingo game. Yes, the last station is really a game of chance, where you watch slower people get lucky and pass you up! Sure, these were enjoyable, but not $30-$50 per team enjoyable!
• Purportedly tax-deductible donations are to be sent to the private residence of Donald and Karen S. Helton at 7858 Red Fox Drive, West Chester OH 45069.
• The company’s headquarters are at the private residence of Gregory L. and Michelle R. Benton at 8270 Miranda Place, West Chester OH 45069.

So what’s the truth? Is there really any charity behind this?

I don’t know.

It could be that this is all legit, and some charity puts on an overpriced, over-promoted, hokey event run by a marketing firm that communicates poorly.

But it’s also possible that this is only a for-profit enterprise. If that’s true, it would be shameful. They would be getting undeserved free labor, and they would pretty much be pocketing money from families’ charity budgets.

Either way, participants deserve the truth, and they deserve something better than a brief, sloppy event for $30-$50, and taxpayers deserve for a charity to be organized properly, with IRS recognition.

This explains how to show addresses in a SharePoint 2010 list on a Google Map.

This article is based on Kyle Shaeffer’s Plotting Your SharePoint 2010 List Data on a Google Map. The main difference is I upgraded his method to Google Maps API V3.

Here’s how it’s done:

Create a list

Using SharePoint Designer 2010 (free download!), open your SharePoint site and:

1. Under Site Objects, click Lists and Libraries.
2. In the Lists and Libraries tab, click Custom List.
3.  Enter MyData and press OK.
4. Click on your new list, then select Edit list columns in the Customization section.
5. Add a Multi Lines of Text field using the Add New Column button at top left:. Name it Address.

Create data view

Still in SharePoint Designer 2010:

1. Click Site Pages under Site Objects on the left:
   
2.  In the ribbon at top, select Page > ASPX. Name your new page map.aspx.
3. Click on the new page, then click Edit file in the Customization section. If asked to open the page in advanced mode, click Yes.
4. Make sure that Design or Split are selected at bottom. From the menu at top: Insert > Data View > MyData

Now you’ll see your data in a table in the page.

Add the JavaScripts

You’ll need to reference two script libraries: Google’s Maps API and jQuery.

Find the opening <form> element in the source code. Right after it, paste this code:

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?key=AIzaSyDfiyRU8FAP90FYUp9rujok-x8-CVD7_Z4&sensor=false"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
 
<div id="map_canvas" style="width: 98%; height: 400px"></div>
 
<script type="text/javascript">
// set up the basic map object
var latlng = new google.maps.LatLng(34.603885, -4.626009);
var myOptions = {
	zoom: 2,
	center: latlng,
	mapTypeId: google.maps.MapTypeId.ROADMAP
};
var map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById("map_canvas"), myOptions);
 
// this is used for geocoding
var geocoder = new google.maps.Geocoder();
 
function codeAddress(address, theName) {
    geocoder.geocode( { 'address': address}, function(results, status) {
      if (status == google.maps.GeocoderStatus.OK) {
        var marker = new google.maps.Marker({
            map: map,
            position: results[0].geometry.location
        });
      } else {
        alert("Geocode was not successful for the following reason: " + status);
      }
    });
}
 
// this is called with body's onload to pull addresses after the page is done loading.
function initialize() {
	$("tr.ms-itmhover").each(function(i){
		codeAddress($(this).find('.ms-rtestate-field:eq(0)').text(), $(this).find('.ms-vb-title:eq(0) a').text());
	});
}
</script>

Replace API_KEY_GOES_HERE with your own Google API key. Don’t have one? Get it at https://code.google.com/apis/console/. Be sure to get a Google Maps API v3 key! v2 is deprecated.

Now you need to add an onload attribute to your body tag to fire off the initialize function:

<body onload="initialize()">

Viola! You have a map that dynamically pulls from the below list!

Caveats

The initialize method works by scraping from the rendered HTML. It’s finding every tr with class ms-itmhover–which is what is produced by the data view you inserted above. Then within each of those trs, it finds:

• The first item with class ms-rtestate-field and gets its text contents. This will be your address.
• The contents of the a tag within the first element with class ms-vb-title, which is the title field.

You’ll have to do JavaScript surgery if you change fields in a way that alters this. For example, if another multi line text field displays before your address, you’ll have to change .ms-rtestate-field:eq(0) to .ms-rtestate-field:eq(1). Or you’ll need to alter the XSLT behind the data view to produce some other classes or code.

Also, because this uses JavaScript to scrape the screen’s contents, you must deliver the data list in the page . It doesn’t have to be visible–you can make it invisible with CSS. If you don’t want the data to be on the page, you’ll need to use more sophisticated techniques, possibly some kind of AJAX.

I manage a Sitecore installation that’s integrated with an enterprise Active Directory.

We have over 11,000 accounts in our Active Directory. I needed a list of the Sitecore users, who are only a small percentage of the 11,000.

We have nothing in Active Directory that sets them apart, like group membership.

We architected our solution so that users are never assigned directly to items; users are members of Sitecore roles, and we assign Sitecore roles to items. All I have to do is rifle through all my Sitecore roles.

So how do I find my users? It took a little C#. Here’s the core code:

var roles = Sitecore.Security.Domains.Domain.GetDomain("sitecore").GetRoles();
foreach (var role in roles)
{
    foreach(var roleMember in Sitecore.Security.Accounts.RolesInRolesManager.GetRoleMembers(role, false))
    {
        if (roleMember.AccountType == AccountType.User)
        {
            var userObject = Sitecore.Security.Accounts.User.FromName(roleMember.Name, false);
 
            // only adding SMU domain users
            if (userObject.Domain.Name == "myActiveDirectoryDomain")
                AddUserToList(userObject);
        }
    }
}

This gets all Sitecore domain groups and extracts all users who are a member of my corporate domain. Of course, you’ll replace myActiveDirectoryDomain with your own domain name.

I created a separate AddUserToList method to handle adding these items to a Dictionary:

private void AddUserToList(User user)
{
    if (!_users.ContainsKey(user.Name))
    {
        _users.Add(user.Name,user);
    }
}

After the core code runs, you’ll need to code your own stuff to spit out what’s in the dictionary.

Here’s what I used:

foreach(var user in _users)
{
    var row = new TableRow();
    OutputTable.Rows.Add(row);
 
    row.Cells.Add(new TableCell { Text = user.Value.Profile.UserName });
    row.Cells.Add(new TableCell { Text = user.Value.Profile.FullName });
    row.Cells.Add(new TableCell { Text = user.Value.Profile.Email });
 
    if (user.Value.Profile.FullName.Length == 0)
    {
        row.CssClass = "alert";
    }
 
    var rolesCell = new TableCell();
 
    foreach (var role in RolesInRolesManager.GetRolesForUser(user.Value, false))
    {
        if (role.Domain.Name == "sitecore")
        {
            rolesCell.Text += "
 " + role.Name;
        }
    }
 
    rolesCell.Text = rolesCell.Text.Substring(7);
    row.Cells.Add(rolesCell);
}

Note that I already had a Table named OutputTable on my ASPX page.

Tadaa! The result is a list of all my domain members who are Sitecore users.

I recently set up a corporate WordPress blog system. With the Active Directory Integration plugin, users can sign in with their corporate ID and password.

But here’s a problem: each blog post has a link to the author’s profile. That profile’s URL includes the user ID. The corporation’s security standards say we can’t expose user IDs to the world, so the author profile URLs have to be sanitized.

It took a while to figure out a solution, but the end result is reasonable.

I found this post at StackExchange’s WordPress site. Adding the first two code snippets (below) to the end of wp-config.php tells WordPress to use the user’s nickname metadata to construct the profile URLs:

add_filter( 'request', 'wpse5742_request' );function wpse5742_request( $query_vars )
 
{
 if ( array_key_exists( 'author_name', $query_vars ) ) {
 global $wpdb;
 $author_id = $wpdb->get_var( $wpdb->prepare( "SELECT user_id FROM {$wpdb->usermeta} WHERE meta_key='nickname' AND meta_value = %s", $query_vars['author_name'] ) );
 if ( $author_id ) {
 $query_vars['author'] = $author_id;
 unset( $query_vars['author_name'] );
 }
 }
 return $query_vars;
}
 
add_filter( 'author_link', 'wpse5742_author_link', 10, 3 );
function wpse5742_author_link( $link, $author_id, $author_nicename)
{
 $author_nickname = get_user_meta( $author_id, 'nickname', true );
 if ( $author_nickname ) {
 $link = str_replace( $author_nicename, $author_nickname, $link );
 }
 return $link;
}

But wait, there’s more!

Now you have to get a proper value into the nickname field. Active Directory Integration makes this easy. In this plugin’s settings, go to the User Meta tab and enter this into the Additional User Attributes field: mailnickname:string:nickname. You’ll may need to replace mailnickname with your own Active Directory user attribute if it isn’t appropriate for you.

That’s it. The next time a user logs in, the nickname field is updated, and all future profile URLs for that user will not have a user ID.

I’m not a Lawrence Lessig fan. He’s too radical, but he still had a great quote last year:

…I am a little surprised by the respect that non lawyers typically give the law. Because lawyers’ view is one of constant skepticism. We constantly ask and demand of the law that it explain to us: How does this make sense? And we never presume that we happen to have a body of regulation that makes sense. We always examine. Where it does make sense, we say good for the law, and we encourage people to follow it. But where it makes no sense, our perspective is that the law needs to be changed.

He only encourages obedience to laws that make sense. Later he wrote “Stop believing, stop listening, stop deferring. Feel entitled to question this system.”

(Getting Our Values around Copyright Right, EDUCAUSE Review, March/April 2010)

This is refreshing. Usually, I see the paintywaist viewpoint, that all law deserves to be obeyed just because it exists.

No!

Law is just an approximation of right and wrong. It’s often off.

Americans were once required to return slaves, but it was never wrong to ignore this law and help slaves become free. Similarly, suppose 75 mph is safe on a road. 75 mph is illegal if the speed limit sign says 65, but it’s not wrong.

Educause’s recent Outsource the Transactional, Keep the Transformative complements my recent article questioning the value of IT projects.

In my article, I said that work  easily expressed as a classical/waterfall project probably has less intrinsic business value. This includes stuff like routine infrastructure and commodity services.

The Educause piece has a graph showing how Pepperdine University rated the value of its in-house IT services:

(Click the image to see the full size.)

Sampling of services with lowest value or transformative potential, mostly the stuff of process or where classical/waterfall projects are normative:

• Windows administration
• Security
• DBAs
• Help Desk (outsourcing this is the theme of the Educause article)

And services with the highest value or transformative potential, the stuff of agility:

• EIS functional (basically business analysts)
• Portal
• Technology & Learning Team
• University Planning (basically enterprise architecture)

I chuckled at security’s inclusion in the least value segment. Security has always lived in a halo of insecurity; their value is in what didn’t happen. How do you express that? Regardless, you’d be crazy not to have a good security team.

How about the rest? Does this mean Windows administrators, DBAs, help desk staff, etc. should quake in their boots?

Depends. In the near term, I don’t see a sea change, but I also don’t see growing opportunities for work on the bottom left of the graph. Long-term, the outsourcing question is “when”, not “if”. And until then, the value of work on the bottom left isn’t intrinsic; it’s measured by what it enables the people on the top right to do. If the bottom lefters aren’t helping the top righters, they are nailing their own coffin.

Once the outsourcing begins, I’d hope that it results in either:

1. Equivalent position at the outsourcer. I saw a university do this when it outsourced its trades department (HVAC, plumbing, landscaping, etc.). If you enjoy the trade, this can be good; you’ll probably have more growth opportunities versus pigeonholing with an employer where your trade is ephemeral. This is already happening to pure-play programmers, too, but that’s a subject for a different day.
2. You get reassigned within the original employer. This is what Pepperdine did (see bottom of page 1 of this). But–and this is a big but!–it’s only going to work if you’re versatile and able. If you’re a one shot wonder, have little skills depth, or find it difficult to adapt, this could be the beginning of a downward spiral.

So what to make of this? Two things.

First, if your job is routine, process-driven, or involves a lot of waterfall projects, you may not be high on the business value ladder. These positions will be scrutinized. Make sure you are versatile enough to merit and survive reassignment.

Second, watch what’s going on around you. Where are you, your immediate coworkers, and your department headed? Is the cliched “writing on the wall”? Sometimes, you need to be proactive and transform yourself up the business value ladder.

Transformation, agility, and business value are the future of IT. Process and waterfall’s share of that future is declining. Be prepared.

Thanks to a bill recently signed by the governor, the Texas Transportation Commission, which oversees TxDOT, may establish speed limits up to 85 mph on any state highway.

The bill uses the word “designed”. I’m afraid this may be misinterpreted to mean the civil engineering concept of “design speed”.

“Design speed” is not the maximum safe speed. It’s only a tool to guide road design. At best, it’s a conservative first guess of a speed limit; it’s often OK to set higher speed limits.

The TTC still has to change some rules before we can possibly see higher limits. They’ll probably adopt whatever TxDOT recommends. I sent the below letter to TxDOT to encourage them to not conflate the bill’s language with the civil engineering concept. I got a positive response, but the proof will come when the TTC adopts the speed zoning procedure revisions.

The letter:

HB 1201, which was just signed by the governor, allows the TTC to set a speed limit up to 85 mph on any road provided that “that part of the highway system is designed to accommodate travel at that established speed or a higher speed” and a standard engineering study was run.

This is a good thing. The old 70 mph limit was legislated in 1963. It’s now 48 years later, and 85 mph is perfectly safe on many roads with our drastically improved vehicle and road technology.

Here’s my concern: I hope the word “designed” in the revised statute will not be misinterpreted and become a roadblock to higher speed limits.

There is a concept of “design speed” in civil engineering. However, a design speed is a poor guide for a road’s true maximum safe speed for at least three reasons:

1. A road’s design speed that of its worst part. Suppose a 50 mph road has a 40 mph curve. By definition, the road’s design speed is only 40 mph. In the real world, the road should be signed at 50 mph, and yellow warning diamonds would be posted at the curve recommending 40 mph.

2. Design speeds assume characteristics of vehicles and road technology of the past. So a design speed established in 2011 will assume the inferior stopping distances, power, and safety of vehicles from many years ago. Even worse, most Texas rural roads were designed decades ago (e.g., back when cars had poor drum brakes, biased ply tires, weak horsepower, little safety equipment, dim headlights, no ABS or stability control, etc.). Design speeds established way back then will certainly understate what today’s on-road fleet can safely handle.

3. MOST IMPORTANTLY: Per the AASHTO, the design speed is merely “a selected speed used to determine the various geometric design features of a roadway”. Therefore, it is really only a theoretical/laboratory measurement. Its purpose is not to determine a speed limit.

The design speed must not be interpreted as a maximum possible safe speed. At best, it is only a conservative “first guess” of an appropriate speed limit; a road’s true safe speed may easily be higher.

To conclude, I ask that, as the TTC revises speed zoning regulations to accommodate HB 1201, that it not hamstring the speed zoning process with the civil engineering concept of “design speed”. Certainly in its use of “designed”, the legislature did not mean to invoke this specific concept. In doing so, Texas would misuse a theoretical, laboratory measurement whose purpose was never to be an absolute cap on speed limits.

(AASHTO is the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.)

My church, First United Methodist Church of Dallas, has a Sunday school class afflicted with a radical left winger.

If you’re one of my Facebook buddies, you’ll remember this from January 9, 2011:

Wonderful, call a substantial portion of the electorate “stupid people”…

Now it gets more nerdy and nuanced. The same class now has this on its tackboard:

The point here is to get sympathetic liberals to hand-wring over military spending.

Except it’s a lie. It conveniently omits about 2/3 of federal spending!

Here’s a truer picture of federal spending:
(image source: Wikipedia image and article)

It’s more like 20% of federal spending!

Now, to be frank, while I believe in a strong defense, I am uncomfortable that the United States alone accounts for about 40% of worldwide defense spending. I’d like to scrutinize our defense spending, but I’m not going to lie about it with convenient numbers.

And I’m also not going to lie and slander in church.

[This is a letter I just sent to a Dallas civil engineer asking him to remove a recently-installed, unwarranted stop sign.]

Mohammed,

Recently, an all-way stop sign was put up at West Lawther Rd. and White Rock Rd. on the west side of White Rock Lake. Through an open records request, I have received a copy of the warrants. I’ve attached those and your field observations to this email. [The warrants and field observations.]

I am concerned that this new stop sign does not meet the claimed warrants and therefore needlessly inconveniences road users, increases risk of undeserved traffic tickets, and created a hazardous situation.

The first warrant finds a need to control left hand conflicts. To prove this, I want to see obstructed sight lines, high traffic volumes, or some interaction of the two. In fact, none of this is a problem. I have driven through this intersection many times. Visibility is fine, and outside exceptional times (e.g., exceptionally-crowded events at White Rock Lake), the traffic volumes rarely require any wait for left turns. (Remember that traffic controls should be based on normal conditions, not outlier events for which the city already requires individualized, affirmative measures to control traffic.)

Here’s an aerial map from Google Maps:

This intersection only has two left turn conflicts: northbound White Rock Rd. turning left on westbound White Rock Rd. and southbound West Lawther Rd. turning left on southbound White Rock Rd.

There is no visibility problem for either left turn.

Left turn at northbound White Rock Rd. has no visibility problem either direction. Looking north while stopped at the stop line:

Looking west:

There is plenty of unobstructed sight to make a safe turn.

Southbound W. Lawther left turn to southbound White Rock Road also has acceptable geometrics to facilitate safe left turns.

This is the southbound W. Lawther view at the stop sign, looking south, and a little forward of the stop sign:

Traffic heading north, emerging from the park, will be going slowly. It will have just passed through a narrow railroad underpass, made a tight 90 degree turn, and will be slowing for a stop sign.

Same intersection, looking west:

Excellent visibility. Further note that eastbound cars may be approaching at less than the 30 mph speed limit. They will have just approached from an all-way stop at White Rock Rd. and Winsted Rd. Additionally, the traffic will be slowing for the sharp curve anyway; a 25 mph advisory speed is posted for eastbound traffic around the curve.

Here’s the irony: this all-way stop creates two new hazards:

1. The stop sign encourages left-turning SB W. Lawther traffic to stop further back. Compare the following photo to the prior one of the intersection:
   
   Note that I was actually stopped a few feet pastthe stop sign; had I been stopped with the front of my car at the sign, as required by law, I would have even worse view of oncoming traffic. Additionally, eastbound traffic approaching on White Rock Rd. now has a worse view of southbound W. Lawther traffic. Below is a picture I took approaching on eastbound White Rock Rd.; the white car has already completely passed the stop sign before it became visible to me.
   
   Normally, this is roughly where rational motorists would stop before taking a left turn. The stop sign pushed this point further back.
2. Left-turning southbound W. Lawther traffic used to only have to monitor one direction: eastbound White Rock Trail traffic. Thanks to the all way stop, southbound W. Lawther traffic has to negotiate both directions as all directions have equal right of way. This ambiguity causes confusion, which causes crashes.

Your own field observation confirms the absence of a traffic volume problem. In 30 minutes, you recorded 74 vehicles pass through the formerly uncontrolled part of the intersection (vehicles coming from EB White Rock Rd. or SB W. Lawther). That means the mere 9 cars approaching the intersection from the park have, on average, 24 seconds between potentially conflicting vehicles. Clearly, there is no problem here with traffic volumes.

The second warrant is whether there is a need to control vehicle/pedestrian conflicts near locations that generate high pedestrian volumes. Again, this warrant is unmet.

Given our relatively dry conditions over the past few months and no sidewalks, “high pedestrian volumes” will be readily apparent with grass trails. Indeed, you do see a pedestrian path on the south side of White Rock Rd. while west from the intersection:

But the rest of the intersection is notable for its lack of pedestrian activity. Here’s the view headed north from the intersection:

In other pictures in this document, you’ll find no additional evidence of pedestrian usage of the intersection.

A satellite photo makes it even clearer:

The only pedestrian traffic is heading west from the elevated trail (old railroad right of way), heading west to cross White Rock Rd. a few car lengths south of the intersection, then continuing west along the south side of White Rock Rd.

On top of that, there’s not even a valid reason for pedestrians to cross the intersection—the other side only has the fenced backs of houses, and safer crossing points exist within less than a minute of walking in either direction.

Given that the in-intersection pedestrian traffic is minimal, possibly nonexistent, and that there is no compelling reason for pedestrians to cross the road in the intersection, and safe alternative crossings are a brief walk away, if in-intersection pedestrian traffic is even considered a problem, it would be better to just ban pedestrian crossings at the intersection.

The third warrant asks whether there is a visual obstruction that will prevent safe vehicle movement unless conflicting directions are required to stop.

As clearly demonstrated above, the only visual obstructions were created by the all way stop.

To conclude, the all way stop sign at White Rock Rd. and W. Lawther Rd. meets no warrants, and it makes the intersection less safe. I respectfully ask that you revert the intersection to its prior state, where only northbound White Rock Road, emerging from the park, had a stop sign.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Aren Cambre

This is a great example of the stupidity of a lot of the Texas Republican Platform.

From page 9 of the 2010 platform:

We oppose any constitutional convention to rewrite the United States Constitution. We demand the Legislature rescind its 1977 call for such a convention. We call upon other states to rescind their votes for such a convention.

This is Eagle Forum-style, nut job paranoia. They fear that a 31 year old concurrent  resolution, calling for a balanced spending amendment, can somehow result in a runaway constitutional convention and rewrite the US Constitution.

No kidding. They really believe this.

Here’s the 31 year old resolutions: HCR 31, Regular Session, and HCR 13, 2^nd Called Session.

Now here’s the irony: the current (82^nd) Senate did almost they same thing: they called for a constitutional convention for a balanced budget amendment.

A balanced budget amendment is silly; it won’t fix anything because runaway spending is simply taken off budget. That’s what happened with Social Security and Medicare.

But it doesn’t matter. I doubt enough states will call for this convention. And while we’re waiting, the Texas Eagle Forum and Phyllis Schlafly disciples will have another dumb cause to rabble rouse over.