Completeness, Travel & Best friends After the first week of August things were almost to a complete state for the COM object. I know Chris had been doing some work, and I had been providing him with any help I could offer. Samples of my XML, ways I would do things. It helps just talking about nothing at all sometimes ... just yak about work and the solution sometimes presents itself.

I had already walked through the COM object deployment some months ago. It was a new thing for Chris and somewhat for Mik. Chris did shed some light on the DLL deployment though. It's not that the COM must be compiled on the other machine, you just need to be an administrator and register the DLL manually with regsvr32. I realize we should have know this. I don't know windows technology at all. I have never claimed too. I have learned a tremendous amount over the course of this year.

The final testing setup is to build on your machine. Have TS open to the dev server. Shut down IIS. Copy the DLL and web services files across. Register the DLL manually. Restart IIS. This does seem to be a simple procedure, yet it is very time consuming. There is some waiting involved, and if you miss a step, or in the wrong order ... *boom* the web service fails.

Just ask Chris about recompiling because he forgot about some junk variables named 'QQQ'. Or some other variables were unused. Or the case sensitivity of the DLL is not patrolled by case-insensitive VFP? Since VFP is basically a free for all on the code syntax (even more so than PHP ever could be ... which is hard to believe). When you compile the DLL in VFP ... no warnings or errors. It's just when you deploy it that case and variables cause you problems. It was funny for me because I am used to all sorts of linking, and C style problems like that. The FoxPRo experts out on the Island were not however. Made for some good times.

Needless to say we made great headway this time. On my last night there I even wrote a utility page to parse the old style data files into valid XML requests, and then another utility to send the XML requests. Just for testing purposes really. Rudy can make it all pretty ... I just wanted it to work. It was good to leave on a high this time. We actually hit a huge milestone. I was quite pleased and I think they all were too. I had to rush out of the office to catch the ferry back to the mainland. It was a great trip!

I stayed in Vancouver with Heath for a night. I ripped down to the English Bay Boathouse where I had a few drinks waiting for him to finish work. Two rather intoxicated girls came in. Sometimes you can just tell that trouble is brewing. They pulled up next to me, and we shared a table for a while. 15 minutes there and they already spilled drinks. Evelyn apparently works there, but was on her night off. The other girl was dressed in pink. Mini skirt and ball cap. She apparently took a liking to my Flyers hat and wanted to trade. So there I was with too hot girls, spilling their drinks, pinky telling me she loves me and wants to know if I love her, all the while wearing a too small pink cap. Heath just shook his head.

Things started to escalate on the unsoberness scale. The other staff were trying desperately hard to get her out of there. It got really bad when pinky almost told of the manager. I was sitting right there, and if looks could kill. That girls was almost a little pink stain on the Boathouse deck. I just shook my head. Talking with the sous chef later about the incident I found out that pinky's nick name is "nightmare" ... becuase she is one? She is a little bit trashy and has a rather large liking to needles. Not very surprising for Ganville Island I guess.

I had breki with Heath the next day after a great sleep at his new apartment. I wanted to hit the road as early as I could. I was flying back. I left downtown Vancouver @ 10:30. I was back in Calgary @ 10:00. The roads were great. I stopped as little as possible, and I left Golden while it was still much daylight out. That was way better than hitting Kamloops at dusk last time. I must say the trip is quite boring when you do not have someone to play cards with. ;-)

I recovered for a day, and did the usually mail / laundry / cleanup (I actually vacuumed!) / shopping thing. Heath flew in on Friday and I picked him up. I dropped him with John down at Ceasars for steak. I bolted up north to see Rene for a haircut (she was a doll for squeezing me in ... I love you too). She gave me a totally nee wicked style since my hair was super uber long. I hadn't had a cut since like February! I met H&J at Original Joes for a few drinks and talks of old times. There is nothing like your buddies stories, and growing up with these guys ... it was a good feeling.

We hooked up with Danphy later, and headed down 17th. We worked our way into Melrose right where the red mile is. It was crazy packed in there. We spent a couple of hours there having drinks and whatnot. John was pretty hammered. I was driving so I had to keep it easy. We left Melrose around 1:00. It was off to the casino. We went into the poker room. got on the list and eventually sat down. Heath bailed on poker and went to play slots. I cleaned up at the poker table. The other locals were not liking me at all. I had trips 3 times, flushes, two pair on the flop. I was the kill for like 4 hands in a row. People don't like it when you raise to 16 pre-flop on a 4-8 table. I walked out up $300 after a couple of hours. I played a heads up with John ... and we were both like ... "why bet ... it's all the same money?".

So after a late night Denny's run we got back to my place at 5:00 A.M. I crashed ... the boys watched Tombstone. And Johns wife phoned at 9:00 A.M. Who phones at 9:00 A.M.?!!!!! It was a long day ahead of us. John's stag party was Saturday night. This is going to be a treat. What kind of night will 3 best friends have?  ¶ 12:00:00 PM