Iritis back again

The iritis is back again - left eye this time. 

Thankfully, the referral to the eye specialist, from last July was still valid and I could just call and make an appointment. I was able to get straight in this morning.

The doctor has suggested that an indefinate referral from my G.P. for this condition may now be in order. I'll request that next time.

I also left things a little too long this time. I noticed a bit of an ache in the "top left corner" of the eye over the weekend, in bright light, but the usual "focussing up close" test didn't cause any hassle so I left it, hoping it would go away. Yesterday, things were a little cloudy which worried me and by last night, the ache was back. 

The doctor was a little alarmed as the "stickiness" of the pupil was a little worse than normal. 

Anyway, I'm now armed with eye drops and preparing to be hopelessly short sighted for a week or so. (As well as sensative to light as the Atropin opens up the pupil - which is not great considering we are experiencing our hottest week in 100 years in Geelong, temperatures over 40 C, every day.)

My eye specialist is now generously, bulk billing his customers (long term ones anyway). This means I don't pay anything, only the fee that is covered by govenrment health care, and this part is claimed directly form Medicare. His very ultruistic approach is that he would rather fix peoples eyes, than see permanent damage done, because people were hesitant to make appointments because of the cost. I guess he's done very well for himself out of the industry and is now giving back. Not that he'll struggle to make ends meet on the subsidised portion of the fee he is still recieving mind you. 

I was amazed to realise I have been visiting the same eye specialist, regarding Iritis for nearly 25 years now! He still has the same little yellow envelope, stuffed with A5 size cards, with notes scribbled on them detailing every visit I've ever made. These cards record my life history! Mixed in with the diagrams of my eyes, pupils, infected cells etc, are notes about my family life, jobs, schooling etc. Who needs a computer?

My LINQ stuff won't compile after Visual Studio 2008 SP1

That'll teach us to play with Beta stuff.

Anyway, import links here:

Changes to the schema element for the SSDL content...

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=3386038&SiteID=1

Other changes...

http://blogs.msdn.com/adonet/pages/entity-framework-breaking-changes-visual-studio-2008-net-3-5-sp1-beta.aspx

Also seems as though the System.Data.ProviderException has been replaced, I think with the System.Data.EntityException but don't quote me on this.

A BitWise Calculator

This was really useful when working out the constant vlues required to build a "magic number" used in some code I found on the net.

It is a bitwise calculator...http://www.fuelledoncoffee.com/tuition/bitwise/

public T Find (Predicate <T> match)

Like Delegates and Events in c# - at first - predicates and dynamic functions, Find and Exists on Generic Collections, confuse the !@#$ out of me everytime I need to use them.

I'm going to write some stuff down here that gets me over the line - it makes some sense to me, so that I can refer back to it. This post will probably change as I "grow wiser", but for now, it is here to stop me having to "re-aquaint myself" with this topic, via useless MSDN help, and examples about dinosaurs, everytime I strike it.

I want to find an occurence of an object, in my Generic collection.

So, you use, MyList.Find. All the doco words it like this:

public T Find (Predicate match)

Now this is just the "signature" of the Find method you are about to use.

Find, is a method on the List class.  

Now T was the first point of confusion. But as best I can tell, this is just a naming convention. It means your particular Type of object. (Your class name.) So it's kind of obvious - the Find method on your Generic collection, returns to you, one of your own objects. (Naturally).

From there, the next point of confusion is the word Predicate.  Any concept I'd managed to grasp until that point evaporated when I read that word. It just wouldn't gel.

After the 20th time I'd hacked a solution in to find an object in my generic collection, I decided to look up the word predicate in a dictionary.

It basically talks about "claiming, asserting, affirming something about the subject..."

I guess the "subject" in our case, is our function that is going to define what consitutes a match so we are asserting that the subject of that function, is one of our custom objects...a "T" within our list of T's  - List.

So, Find, on the List class, is going to loop through all its members, (which are, remember your very own objects) and return you one of them, which, when passed to the method you tell it to call ("match"), returns true.

If this is way to over simplified for you and that annoys you, move on to some other site or Google search result, if it doesn't annoy you and you can further enlighten me, leave me a comment that sets me straight, if it helps you too, then great! Good luck.

Time will tell whether this helps me again or not...

Buying tickets online versus over the counter

Yesterday I had cause to purchase one adult general admission ticket for the upcoming Twenty20 cricket match at Skilled Stadium. (Why? - Well my Milo In2Cricket group of kids is lucky enough to be taking part in the pre-game entertainment.)

Anyway, as co-ordinator I receive a ticket as does Kieren being a participant. Toby, being under 6 yrs old, is admitted free of charge, so Rachel needs a general admission ticket only.

Aynway, while I seriously doubt this match will be a sell out, I thought it best to purchase a ticket ahead of time to ensure Rachel doesn't miss out.

I went to the TicketMaster web site looking to purchase my one general admission ticket. While all signage for the game say "adults $15" TicketMaster are charging $18.30?? Ah well, I can live with that. Then, as I proceed through the process, opting for the "print it myself" option I notice another $5.00 handling fee! A handling fee, for choosing precisely the option where nobody other than myself, has to handle anything! And $5. That's not 50c. That's $5. So to buy online from TicketMaster would amount to $23.30. ($8.30 more expensive than buying at the gate.)

That's annoying. Now for the stupid part. I bailed out of this online purchase and drove into Myer, Geelong the next day where I purchased tickets over the counter. This process involved a few minutes of a TicketMaster employee's time, printing on their preprinted ticket stationery, they even tucked my ticket safely away in one of their own envelopes...guess what, after all that handling, no handling fee!

Just plain stupid!