Grilling pancakes

The new grill came with a griddle so we grilled pancakes, sausage and eggs and even ate them out on the deck. They said when I bought this grill that it would change the way I think about grilling and it has. Grilling pancakes was never something I thought I would do but they came out perfect and I will do it again. Saves me from heating up the house during these blistering Kansas days.

Makes me think I need a second griddle as this one had enough room for 6 pancakes but when the kids are back from camp I will want room to cook even more of them. I am sure they will find it funny that daddy can grill pancakes.

VS 2010 64 bit issue solved

I needed to target x64 as the trial license for the imaging software I am testing was for 64 bit. If you set the "Platform target:" on the build tab of the project's properties to "Any CPU" instead of x64 it will work. The reason? The designer is 32 bit ONLY and can not see into a 64 bit assembly. Doing the Any CPU builds everything needed. What a hassle, glad I found a solution.

VS 2010 needs to be fixed

Not sure if a day can be much more frustrating. VS 2010 was my nemesis all day long today. I could load a project and run it without a problem but the WPF XAML designer refused to show it. Sure it showed it exactly once then I ran the program and it could never show it again. Said it could not find the only name space used in the entire project.

I am running Win7 / 64 bit. Tried the exact same thing on XP 32bit with no issues. Of course that is of little help to me. I will have to figure out some way to prove this to Microsoft I guess and hope there is a fix at some far off point in the future.

I spent most of the day figuring it was my fault as most programmers tend to do. Instead it looks like some OS / VS combination is at play.

Adding to the fun I spent the last part of the day trying to get all scrollbars to style the same way in XAML. Turns out it is a single line of XML to do it but searching the web to find that one line was not fun. Then after I got the one line it turns out the scrollbar XAML kicked out by our designer using Blend needed to be tweaked too. Will have to finish making that fully work tomorrow. We got a slider working pretty quickly, and I need to go back in and change code to use that globally instead of adjusting for every instance, but the scrollbar is more complex and thus causing new headaches.

Here is the final code line I needed. So many websites just list the code and not where it belongs in context:

<Window.Resources>
<!-- Pull in our styles via merge calls -->
<ResourceDictionary>
  <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
    <ResourceDictionary Source="Styles.xaml">
      </ResourceDictionary>
    </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
    <!-- Here is the magic section -->
    <Style BasedOn="{StaticResource NewScrollBar}"
TargetType="{x:Type ScrollBar}">
    </Style>
 </ResourceDictionary>
</Window.Resources>

A new grill for the family

Just went a bought a grill for my Birthday / Father's day. They generally fall right on top of each other which stinks but does allow for a combination gift.

I listen to a grilling show sponsored by Smoke 'n' Fire on a local sports radio program. I have purchased supplies from them in the past including tools, rubs and spices. They had a Father's day sale going where you get a cover and a free cooking class if you buy a grill. I got the Beefeater Discovery 5 burner grill. I grill at least 3 times a week no matter the weather and I grill a lot of food each time so we have left overs for lunch so I wanted the surface space.

I was going to get a 4 burner but they had only one left and it was already assembled. I would have had to pay the $70 assembly fee which was close to the difference to just upgrade the 5 burner. I have no problem assembling items plus when you assemble it you know more about it.

Becky and Trevor picked it up this afternoon and it was missing a few nuts so we had to stop back over and pick them up. Good thing the place is close. Previously I have bought the large but inexpensive grills. I have proven I grill so it was time to step up to something professional. I was looking for easy to clean, rock solid and gas based. I did a bunch of on-line research and the store really recommends this one. It has much better construction that what I have bought in the past and appears to be super easy to clean. I love cooking and am excited to give this a try.

Pretty easy to assemble. Nice to have a grill cover again to keep the birds out. Seasoned the grill with oil and will try my first burgers on it tomorrow as I cook for a little Father's day party at our house.

The grilling class is not until next month. An hour and a half class where I am sure to pick up some really cool pointers - or should that be hot pointers? Not like I am a beginner but just like programming there is always more to learn.

Welcome

Welcome to Kev Said What? which will be about the fun I have daily programming in Java / C# / WPF and using various programming tools.

To start things off here is a list of my favorite utilities, this could easily change at any time.

PSPad http://www.pspad.com

I use this all the time for editing all sorts of files and for its grep features.

Eclipse http://www.eclipse.org

This is where the Java programming occurs. What not NetBeans? We are using TFS for version control and it has a plug-in for Eclipse. Plus we are doing an Applet so we are not using any other super special features.

MS Visual Studio 2010

This is for all my C# / WPF work. I was doing C# with WinForms but now we are doing WPF work. Probably will be more post about that right now.

7-Zip 

It is free and works like a champ.

Burn Aware

Nothing fancy but it works and it is free.

Google Chrome / FireFox / Opera

I use them all. Right now I use Chrome at work and Opera at home as I have FireFox set up for the family and they keep changing my tabs. 

Paint.NET / Photoshop Elements

Love Paint.NET as it is free so I install it on every computer for quick photo editing. I use Photoshop Elements when I am doing more detailed work with a lot of layers. I am not a super star with either but can get my way around in them and have combined 4 photos into one for some really cool Christmas cards. This is an area I want to learn more about.

Along with programming I also enjoy cooking. I grill at least 3 times a week year round. I have been out grilling in 15 degree weather many a time. Makes it harder to judge your on grill time but it always tastes great.