Well,

Why do I start most of my blogs with Well?!?  Oh Well!  I did the Denver Century Ride at the end of June.  Well I am still riding a lot.  I got a Garmin Edge 500 in May and since then I have rode over 900 miles.  I am averaging about 300 miles a month.  I really love to spin!  I am going to be upgrading some components on my Tarmac this month and next.  I guess that the geek inside of me being able to upgrade parts like a computer.  I have gone from 235 to 192 and still losing weight the right way.

Jon

Here's on of my favorite rides:

Well,

I started cycling about a year ago in April (13 month but who's counting).  I weighted 230 when I started!  I am now down to 195 and on the road to 180ish.  When I started it took over 50 minutes to get work and I average 11 mph now this morning I took a longer route (1 miles ish)  and it took 35 minutes averaging 14.9 mph.  I am riding in about 3 times a week hoping to get to 5 once the weather lets me.  I need to get longer bike rides in on the weekend.  I am going for a nice slow and long ride Saturday with a buddy of mine.  That should make it better with 2 of us.  I also started going to 24 Hour Fitness and meeting with a personal trainer twice a week last year.  Versell really kick me back into shape.  I try and see him once a week now.

Fitness is fun,

Jon

Check out my best ride to or from work so far:

Well,

At work yesterday I was showing people how to use a pipeline function.  It's funny how a such a powerful feature of Oracle 10g+ (could be 9i as well) is so under used and misunderstood.  I love using pipeline functions to do complex query logic.  The example at work was we were using a pipe lined function for a query that was a tree query.  The tree query was returning space usage by folder.  The roll up we wanted was by site instead of folder.  So the pipeline function worked great to put the data back into a query so a reporting tool could access it.  Here's an example of what we did:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION size_rpt (p_parent_value number)
RETURN size_report PIPELINED
IS
CURSOR c1
IS
SELECT stuff
FROM complex_tables
START WITH parent_id = 2
CONNECT BY parent_id = PRIOR child_id;

pc          complex_tables.parnet_id%TYPE   := p_parent_value;
site_name   complex_tables.site_name%TYPE   := NULL;
doccount    NUMBER(14)                                     := 0;
docsize     NUMBER(14)                                     := 0;
out_rec     size_rec                          := size_rec(NULL
,NULL
,NULL
);
BEGIN
FOR rec IN c1
LOOP
IF rec.parent_id = pc
THEN
IF site_name IS NOT NULL
THEN
out_rec.site_name := site_name;
out_rec.document_count := doccount;
out_rec.document_size := docsize;
PIPE ROW(out_rec);
END IF;

site_name := rec.dcollectionname;
doccount := 0;
docsize := 0;
ELSIF rec.flevel >= 3 -- We only care about level 3 and below...  level is sedo column from oracle we rename in query to flevel
THEN
doccount := doccount + NVL(rec.contentcounts
,0
);
docsize := docsize + NVL(rec.contentsizes
,0
);
END IF;
END LOOP;

out_rec.site_name := site_name;
out_rec.document_count := doccount;
out_rec.document_size := docsize;
PIPE ROW(out_rec);
END;

CREATE OR REPLACE TYPE size_rec AS OBJECT(
site_name        VARCHAR2(1020)
,document_count   NUMBER(14)
,document_size    NUMBER(14)
);

CREATE TYPE size_report AS TABLE OF size_rec;

to run it:

SELECT * FROM size_rpt(10292);

Hope this helps someone if they need to do weird stuff...  Or stuff I just love.

Thanks,

Jon

Well,

With the weather outside snowing on Sunday I decided to tie flies.  It is very relaxing and fun to do.  I made some segmented blood worms with micro tubing.  They turned out really well.  I really enjoy messing with the different ways I can very a simple pattern.  I also had some friends over Saturday afternoon to make some wine.  We are using a kit and we start a Shiraz.  I also brewed some beer before they came over.  So it was a good weekend except for my youngest daughter who twice had a door slam on her hand.  The first time her and her sister were playing went hey were suppose to be going to bed (when most bad things happen) and she got her pinky caught in the door.  Then on Sunday she did it to herself with the car door.  So both hands have a injury.   Poor girl...

Jon

Well,

It has been a true pleasure to get this web site setup for the next decade.  Terry and I have been hand coding html for 10 years on the old site.  With a project I was working on with some friends I got introduced to Joomla.  Joomla ROCKS!  It has allowed me to create this dynamic web site in days instead of months. 

I think the content of this site can be more dynamic.  I need to update the information on all the images and there folders (100's of images).  I also need to add information about the each folder.  I have put up the old observatory page for Kiowa Observatory which was the domain kiowaobservatory.org before I got minorplanet.org.  Gosh has it been over 10 years now...

I took some time off from teaching this year so I can work on the website.  I still work IT in my day job.  I truly loved my teaching but with it and other projects I couldn't give it the attention it needed.

I will also being articles on how I do minor planet observing and CCA's observatory.  I donated my telescope/mount/ccd to CCA.  I did it so it could be used more.  I still have access to it but more importantly it is opening the eyes of students who many have never seen the nights sky to it.

Thanks,

Jon