Andy's Altar Ego

Facing the Giants is a new indie film produced in 2005 and shown in limited release during the Spring of 2006. The film centers on the struggles of a burnt out high school football coach as he overcomes obstacles on and off the field by leaning on his Christian faith.

Apparently he leans a little to heavily for the Hollywood crowd because the film has earned a PG rating. What exactly does PG mean? The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) says

"The label PG plainly states parents may consider some material unsuitable for their children, but leaves the parent to make the decision. Parents are warned against sending their children, unseen and without inquiry, to PG-rated movies. The theme of a PG-rated film may itself call for parental guidance. There may be some profanity in these films. There may be some violence or brief nudity. However, these elements are not considered so intense as to require that parents be strongly cautioned beyond the suggestion of parental guidance. There is no drug use content in a PG-rated film. "

So how did the MPAA come up with a PG rating for this low-budget independent film by the Kendrick brothers (who serve as media ministers for a mega church)? Their website vaguely claims that it is for "thematic elements." That might make you wonder what kinds of on-and-off field struggles the coach is going through, right? Maybe he's struggling with temptations over alcohol to cope with the job. Or the cheerleaders.

Nope. He's a Christian. That's it. When explaining their PG rating for the film they referred to its dominance by the worldview of one religion and parents with opposing religious views might be offended. They intoned about "proselytizing." In other words, it shares strong Christian themes including answers to prayer in a way that contradicts the humanist worldview of Hollywood.

Beware the Christians?

BoundField.DataFormatString does not handle DateTime formatting. If you would like to set the format for a DateTime field -- say displaying the date with only "{0:d}" you've got to set an additional parameter: HtmlEncode = false.

So, if you're creating things on the fly:

BoundField aColumn = new BoundField();
aColumn.DataField = "MyDateField";
aColumn.DataFormatString = "{0:d}";
aColumn.HtmlEncode = false;

GridView aGrid = new GridView();
aGrid.Columns.Add( aColumn );

This is not earth-shattering news. Raj Kaimal and others reported it much earlier. Raj notes that the BoundField applies HTML encoding before the data formatting. That makes sense.

What was most frustrating about this -- and consequently caused me to burn time -- is that the decision to apply HTML encoding before data formatting is NOT consistent across server controls. It's not even consistent among the classes that extend the DataCountrolField class.

In one of the CompositeControls that I've constructed I have a GridView that holds data that is generally unique by date. To save space I chose to create place the date into a ButtonField and let the ButtonField trigger the "Select" command:

ButtonField aColumn = new ButtonField();
aColumn.ButtonType = ButtonType.Link;
aColumn.DataTextField = "MyDateField";
aColumn.HeaderText = "MyHeaderText";
aColumn.CommandName = "Select";
aColumn.DataFormatString = "{0:d};

GridView aGrid = new GridView();
aGrid.Columns.Add( aColumn);

Guess what... this works! It just so happens that I tried this before I tried formatting the BoundColumn so I really thought I was screwing up the latter somehow.

So, which one is the buggy control, BoundField or ButtonField???

Zarcarias Moussaoui, the Al Qaeda terrorist who would have taken part in the 9/11 hijackings if any of the hijackers had been unable, should live.

I do not say this because I oppose capital punishment. In fact, I'd like to set aside the question about whether or not one agrees with the death penalty. Assume that it is the law of the land and that it is applicable to murderers and their cohorts.

Under that assumption Moussaoui fits the bill for the death penalty. He was equally culpable for the deaths of thousands of Americans on September 11, 2001 because he had intimate knowledge of the plans and supported them rather than report them.

Moussaoui's conduct at trial clearly demonstrates that he has absolutely no remorse regarding the felling of the Twin Towers in New York or part of the Pentagon. In fact, he would like to see more deaths to Americans. He has made comments like "burn them all" and called his defense "American B.S." He smiles at the panicked 911 calls from September 11.

At first my reaction was that Moussaoui had lost it. Certainly that's what this week's spate of psychologists are suggesting in an attempt to spare his life. However, I now think he's "crazy like a fox." Moussaoui is simply a man deeply and completely dedicated to a form of radical Islam. Because of that Moussaoui wants to die. Moussoui believes that, as a Muslim matyr, he will be ushered into the presence of Allah. Whether or not seventy virgins are waiting for him there is beside the point: it is a guarantee of "salvation" in his mind.

And that's precisely why he should not die. Executing Moussaoui is a double-edged sword and both edges cut against the interests of this country. First, no justice would be served to Moussaoui because he would not be punished -- at least not in his perspective -- but would receive a reward. Second, the execution of Moussaoui would likely send tremors throw Muslims worldwide. Some might be incited to further violence. Others would be emboldened to commit acts that would merit a matyrs death either in their exercise or in their "punishment".

Let Moussaoui live out his days in a prison cell where he will eventually die as a cranky old man for having been denied a matyrs' death.

Charles Petzold has articulated well one of the concerns that I've had about embracing some of the new time and code saving features of Visual Studio 2005. In short form Petzold charges that the dev environment becomes controlling, forcing developers to embrace less than optimal coding practices in favor of coding speed.

I think that his article leads credence to a comment a co-worker made recently that .net practitioners tend to be less deeply grounded -- or at least less deeply practiced -- in solid OO principles. With the development environment eliminating so much of the thought behind software development, it seems that we tend to drift in the direction of least resistence.

One particular comment that Petzold made spawned a thought on a parallel track with him. Under the heading Generated Code Petzold notes that VS includes generates references to unneeded namespaces/assemblies when generating a project. "These extra references don’t do any real harm except if someone else examines the program — perhaps to make some changes after the original programmer has moved on — and assumes that the application requires these references."

I wonder if these extra references are simply a means by which to further secure VS/MS dominance in the market place. As Petzold alludes, the presence of the references suggests that they may be necessary. This may cause the initial developer to start pondering their use which, in turn, will spawn their use in other places. Is it any wonder that System.Collections.Generic is one of the references that VS.2005 includes? Not when it Generics also makes the front page of the IDE as one of the hot new topics in VS.2005, etc. If MS views Generics as a leg up on Java and other platforms then it will be widely promoted even within the IDE.

If you're looking for a great Christmas album pick up a copy of A Christmas Song (1992) by Russ Taff. Taff's rich voice and the warm accompaniment achieve his goal of reviving the Big Band sound he recalled from the Christmases of his childhood. The closing song, "What a Wonderful World," would make Satchmo proud. It's great for a quiet evening or dinner music. It's the favorite of a few dozen Christmas albums I own and always the first one I put on when the Chrismas music migrates from the closet to the stereo.

My favorite Christmas song of all time is "O Holy Night." The problem is that I'm very opinionated on how it should be sung and it seems like everyone who thinks they have a Voice is now coming out with their own interpretation.

A more contemporary song worth a listen is "Saviour's Day" by Chris Eaton from "Christmas Carols of the Young Messiah". My kids like the sounds of the previous track ("A King Is Born", Ron Kenoly) but there is something about the quiet rhythm of Eaton's track that always hits me.

Ordinarily the annual trip to the mall to see Santa is not very exciting. Since we were running short on time this year my wife Dawn took the kids while I was at work. I wish I had gone.

You see, Santa Claus knew us. While the photographers were complaining that Santa did not know what time it was, Old Saint Nick was spending lots of time with each of my four children. "How are your grandparents," he asked then added, "JD and Nancy are good friends of mine." Later he noted that "Taylors First Baptist Church is a very special place for me" and that "the most important part of Christmas is having Jesus in your heart." These were things that only someone who knew us well -- who'd knew when we were awake, when we'd bee bad or good -- could know.

My children -- 9, 7, 4, and 2 -- were in wide-eyed awe. Santa knew them well. Their Faith in the meaning and myth of Christmas was stengthened.

A few days ago my home in the Upstate of South Carolina was hit with an ice storm. Close to one million homes and businesses lost power in the storm. I ventured out the morning after the storm in search of some necessities for the coming weekend and was surprised that, when I needed to turn left onto a six lane state highway, traffic in both directions actually stopped and allowed me onto the road.

One day later I was faced with a similar scenario. The majority of homes and businesses which had lost power were still without power. I was driving on a major road in town and this time I stopped to let someone cross four lanes to merge into traffic. This time horns sounded from all directions.

The difference in the two scenarios appears obvious enough. However, there is one less than obvious difference. By the second day the police were asking motorists to treat all intersections with unpowered traffic lights to be treated as four-way stops. The irony is that when asked to treat such intersections as a four-way stop people rebelled against doing what they'd freely done the day before.

Just remember, you don't have to do what is right, you get to...