Long Shrift

practical applications of martial arts

I started taking jujutsu classes about six months ago, and I'm enjoying it. The classes were not exactly what I expected; for example, one of the biggest challenges has been redefining some of my boundaries of personal space. And I've had to learn a bit of Japanese, which is far more complex and subtle than I had anticipated.

I was talking to another student after class the other day. He asked me why I had decided to take martial arts classes, and I reeled off several reasons: I needed to do something to get in better shape, and I knew that I'd blow off running or working out in a gym. The fact that I pay for classes encourages me to show up.

The other student nodded his head in agreement. "That's exactly what made me sign up," he said.

"And I'll admit, it's comforting to know that I might be able to use some of what I've learned if I have to defend myself or my family," I continued.

"Yep, me too," he said.

"And of course, I want to be prepared for the zombie apocalypse," I said. "Admittedly, some of the training isn't going to help with that. I mean, knowing pressure points won't help, since zombies don't feel pain. And we need to spend more time on attacks to the head. I suppose when we get to swords, that'll be useful, but that's a long way down the road."

I'm not sure why I have so much trouble making friends at the dojo.

a flair for drama

We heard a story about a friend of ours who was almost born in a car on the way to the hospital. The next day, we were sharing the story with Quinn, who had a lot of questions, like what kind of car it was. Then he asked if she was born 'the stomach way,' like he was. We said no.

He paused. "So she was born..." He started gesturing with his hands, pantomiming something coming up from his throat and spewing out of his mouth, as if explosively vomiting.

We looked on, horrified. "What are you doing?"

"So she was born... the horrible way?"

----

I walked into the living room to discover that Quinn had pulled up the sofa cushions and leaned them against the back of the sofa, making a small triangular cave for himself. It was fairly easy to deduce that he had taken a flashlight and a pitch pipe in there with him. As a parent, you don't get a lot of opportunities to observe your child surreptitiously, and I just listened, smiling, as he sang and played under there.

After a couple of minutes, he called out: "Can I have some water?"

I decide I'm going to give him a little surprise, and I creep over to the side of the sofa and sit down on the floor. When he pokes his head out, I'll be right there to scare the crap out of him. He keeps on talking to himself - he apparently has some Star Wars action figures under there as well.

A few minutes pass. The action figures are working out a plan to attack the enemy base. It sounds intricate. I study the blemishes in the hardwood floor.

A few more minutes pass. He's taken to playing the pitch pipe, and it sounds like he's trying to make sounds by blowing with his nose. Note to self: find some other way to tune the guitar. I'm contemplating the hinges on the door to the office, wondering how to get paint off them.

Finally, after almost twenty minutes, Quinn finally decides to stick his head out from under the cushions, and I peek my head over the arm of the sofa and thoroughly startle him. We have a good laugh, during which I point out that he could easily have gotten his own water instead of calling for me to get it.

"I had a Plan B," he says.

"Oh? What was that about?"

"Well, I figured I was going to run out of water soon, so I was going to make myself cry so I could drink my tears." He pauses. "What's so funny?"

gaming the system

I recently got myself a new Android phone, which meant that I now had an old phone without an apparent use. In the past, I've donated old phones, but given my old phone's less-than-stellar antenna, I figured I'd just be handing over a headache. There are certainly some good uses for old phones; I had been thinking that I'd use it as a remote for our Blu-Ray player, since that would make it easier for inputting text - like, if you wanted to search Netflix or Hulu. But we don't use the Blu-Ray much, and I'm lazy, so the phone was languishing in a drawer.

A while back, I downloaded a light saber app for my son Quinn, the Star Wars devotee. For a 7-year-old, this is highly entertaining - you can pick different colored light sabers, and even play a Star Wars theme for background. One downside is that the app drains the battery quickly. More concerning is that to use the best effect - the sounds the light saber makes when in motion - means that a 7-year-old hand is tenuously holding an expensive smart phone while whipping it around wildly.

It dawned on me that I could set up a couple of apps on the old phone for Quinn to use. It can no longer make traditional calls, but it's got wifi, so wiping and re-downloading a few apps was easy. But this created a couple of challenges: first, that Quinn was now using some very noisy apps more than ever. The bigger issue is that now we've essentially given the boy a gaming system, something we said we'd never do.

I don't have a problem with giving a kid a Nintendo DS or what have you - I think they can help a child pass the time with something that is more interactive than a TV, and they can be slightly educational. My problem is that I think a kid's use of a portable game system can get out of control. I shake my head when we're out to dinner, and the kids at the next table are staring at GameBoys instead of talking to their parents. If we're taking a long drive somewhere, the kid could be looking out the window, or reading a book. As parents, we don't feel guilty if we sometimes need to distract the kid for a little while and take a few moments for ourselves.

But I think that these initial intentions collapse over time. When you got your first credit card, did you tell yourself it would only be for emergencies? Back when cell phones were more of a luxury than a necessity, we envisioned using them only if being pursued by a masked serial killer through a darkened parking structure (forgetting that cell phones are prone to battery and signal failures in such situations). So right now, the boy gets to use the old cell phone now and then, when he wants to play with the app that makes sounds like Star Wars blasters. And he will have the same 'screen time' restrictions that we have with the TV. But eventually... is he playing Angry Birds for hours straight when we take that road trip to the Grand Canyon? Is the only limiting feature going to become the pitiful battery life that the old phone has?

I don't know exactly how this is going to play out (honestly, no pun intended).

Using 'and/or' parameters in SSRS

I'm new to using SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), and I've just started putting together simple reports. I recently had to create a report that had two parameters, and the user needed to have the option to choose a value from parameter A and/or a value from parameter B; further, the user had to be able to choose all values from parameter A or B.

After poking around online, I discovered there the was a lot of documentation on allowing people to choose multiple values from a single parameter, but that wasn't what I was looking for. So I figured I'd document what I did in the hope that it would save someone the hassle.

First of all, if you're new to using parameters in SSRS, this article at Arcane Code is a good place to start.

So here's my situation: We are using a database that tracks people who are presenting at a meeting. To simplify things for the purpose of this post, we are pulling the data from three places:

• vw_PreferredMail (alias: pm), which contains the ID, name, and contact info for each presenter
• tblPresentations (pres), which contains the presenter's ID as well as the SessionID
• tblSessions (sess), which contains the session number

In the report, users need to pull up a list of presenters and sessions. There are usually multiple presenters with each session, and several people are presenting at more than one session. To give the users maximum flexibility, we want them to be able report on:

• a particular presenter - producing a list of all the sessions where the presenter is speaking
• a particular session - producing a list of all the presenters within a particular session
• all presenters and sessions at the meeting

It became apparent very quickly that it's better to test the basic SQL code in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) instead of SSRS. In SSMS, all the code is in one place; if you're tweaking it in SSRS, then you're going to be bouncing back and forth between the different datasets and parameters. Once the basics are in place, then I'd need do fine-tune the parameter values in SSRS.

First, get the basic SELECT in place - figure out the joins between each table and view, and display whatever fields or expressions you need in the results. To join the view and tables I mentioned above, I'd have something that looks like this:

SELECT pm.ID, pm.Last_First, sess.SessionNumber
FROM vw_PreferredMail pm
JOIN tblPresentations pres on pres.SpeakerID = pm.ID
JOIN tblSessions sess on sess.SessionID = pres.SessionID

Now try inserting some variables and get that to work:

DECLARE
@PresenterName varchar(10),
@SessionNumber varchar(10)

SET @PresenterName = '123'
SET @SessionNumber = '2314'

SELECT pm.ID, pm.First_Name, pm.Last_Name, sess.SessionNumber
FROM vw_PreferredMail pm
JOIN tblPresentations pres on pres.SpeakerID = pm.ID
JOIN tblSessions sess on sess.SessionID = pres.SessionID

WHERE pm.ID = @PresenterName
AND sess.SessionNumber = @SessionNumber

To add one more level of complexity, we need to allow the user to easily be able to a particular presenter and/or a particular session, or select all the presenters and/or all the sessions. To do that, we can change the WHERE clause to this:

where
(
(@PresenterName = '..All' and pm.ID like '%') or
(@PresenterName = pm.ID)
)
and
(
(@SessionNumber = '..All' and ses.SessionNumber like '%') or
(@SessionNumber = ses.SessionNumber )
)

So if you specify '..All' as the value for @PresenterName, then the query will return all the presenters. (The reason for '..All' instead of simply 'All' will become clear in a moment.)

At this point, you're ready to move into SSRS and set up the main report dataset as well as the datasets for the @PresenterName and @SessionNumber parameters. In each case, we want 'All' to appear in the drop-down menus, so we need to add that value to the result sets. Wisely, a lot of report developers add the two periods ('..All') so that the 'All' option will appear at the top of the list of results.

Note that for @PresenterName, we will present a list of presenter names, in last_first order, rather than forcing users to specify the presenter's ID.

@PresenterName:
select last_first, ID
from vw_PreferredMail
where id in
(select SpeakerID from tblPresentations)
union
select '..All' as last_first, '..All' as ID
order by last_first

@SessionNumber:
SELECT DISTINCT SessionNumber
FROM tblSessions
union
select '..All' as SessionNumber
order by SessionNumber

Now, when you preview the report, both drop-down menus show '<Select a Value>' by default, and '..All' is the first option after that.

I got a call at the office; the caller ID showed that it was a call from home. I glanced at the clock – 4 pm, so they would have just gotten back from Quinn's swimming lesson. My wife was on the line. "Your son would like to speak to you."

"Sure, put him on."

"Daddy, I have good news and I have bad news. Which would you like to hear first?"

"How about we start with the bad news?"

"OK. So, I think I'm going to have a black eye."

"You what?"

"So I walked into a door and maybe I'm going to have a black eye."

"Oh my gosh – are you all right?"

"I'm good. And the good news is, I swam across the pool and set a record."

"Um, wait a sec. Can we go back to the black eye thing? What happened?"

"I was walking backwards and I turned around and there was a door."

"Well, sure."

"And I set a record for swimming across the pool. Ten seconds."

"Really? That's great!"

"Miss Nicole said that I set a record."

"Well, ten seconds is pretty fast. Wow – I'm really proud of you."

"Dad, are you at your computer?"

"Yes I am."

"I was thinking that you could send an email to everyone you know, and tell them that I set a record."

"Everyone I know?"

"Yes, like your friends, and people at work that you like and everyone."

"I see. So, are you sure your eye is OK?"

"My eye is good. Can you think of anyone else that might want to know about my record?"

"I'm sure I can."

Getting the word out

I got a call at the office; the caller ID showed that it was a call from home. I glanced at the clock – 4 pm, so they would have just gotten back from Quinn's swimming lesson. My wife was on the line. "Your son would like to speak to you."

"Sure, put him on."

"Daddy, I have good news and I have bad news. Which would you like to hear first?"

"How about we start with the bad news?"

"OK. So, I think I'm going to have a black eye."

"You what?"

"So I walked into a door and maybe I'm going to have a black eye."

"Oh my gosh – are you all right?"

"I'm good. And the good news is, I swam across the pool and set a record."

"Um, wait a sec. Can we go back to the black eye thing? What happened?"

"I was walking backwards and I turned around and there was a door."

"Well, sure."

"And I set a record for swimming across the pool. Ten seconds."

"Really? That's great!"

"Miss Nicole said that I set a record."

"Well, ten seconds is pretty fast. Wow – I'm really proud of you."

"Dad, are you at your computer?"

"Yes I am."

"I was thinking that you could send an email to everyone you know, and tell them that I set a record."

"Everyone I know?"

"Yes, like your friends, and people at work that you like and everyone."

"I see. So, are you sure your eye is OK?"

"My eye is good. Can you think of anyone else that might want to know about my record?"

"I'm sure I can."