I’m going to keep all my work and development related stuff here.  It makes sense because blogging about that stuff takes a bit more time, so I don’t mind sitting down in front of the computer to write a long post regarding that stuff.

I did a search for this exact phrase about a month ago to solve a quirky problem that I encountered while using the built in asp:menu control that was introduced with version 2.0 of the framework.

I could go into a long explanation of how difficult it was to find the solution to my problem but instead of doing that I am simply going to give you the solution, that’s all I wanted when I went searching and it took a long time to get it so here dear reader is the solution for you.

To the asp:Menu control render correctly in chrome (or safari) paste the following bit of code in your Page_Load event on every page that you use the control

        if (Request.UserAgent.IndexOf("AppleWebKit") > 0)
            Request.Browser.Adapters.Clear();

or grab it on snipt.org

I don’t ask those questions anymore, because now that people are asking me those same questions I realize that it isn’t that easy to come up with the answers, and sometimes when you do come up with the answers it hurts to much too talk about, it hurts to realize that you don’t have it all together.

So next time you think something is simpleand has an easy answer try putting yourself in that persons shoes, try thinking about those problems from a different point of view, you might just learn something.

Over the last year or so my entire life has been turned upside down, right side up and every other way imaginable.

I’m finally coming out of it and I feel the need to write about it.  So that’s what I am going to start doing.

I will probably still write about work related stuff, but I have an overwhelming urge to write about some of the things that I’ve gone through over the last little while, if you don’t like it that’s cool… you don’t have to stay and read.

If ya want all the dirt, the good and the bad then stay tuned.

Hint to anyone that buys me presents and might be reading this blog, you should probably consider buying me all the lost season box sets, kthxbye!!1

I suffer a great deal from the second part of that last paragraph.  I can easily be overcome by the fear of failure that it will prevent me from even starting, from making even the smallest amount of progress on a project.   It’s a funny thing, because that fear can be completely replaced with amazing focus, long nights and constant thoughts about the next task you can knock off that list as soon as you make even the smallest amount of progress.  Just seeing a small amount of progress being made can swing your attitude from one end of the spectrum to the other.  Gary Vaynerchuk has a great video that really put this concept into words for me,  Better Than Zero.  it doesn’t always have to be about the big win right?

One of my own personal tricks when working on a project that i’m having trouble getting motivated on is to re factor some of the code I’ve already written, it’s a small amount of effort that has a big impact on boosting my motivation.  Refactoring cleans things up, get’s your head into writing code and generally in my case motivates me to write a whole bunch of new code using some of the patterns I may have re factored to while getting myself in the mood as it were

So how do you get yourself out of these types of ruts?  Got any tips or tricks for getting yourself into the zone?

1. 37 Signals Backpack – I had pages split up into categories then would use lists on the page to store the links to the sites, didn’t work very well because it required a huge amount of manual work
2. Delicious – The obvious and one of the most popular solutions, I don’t know why but I don’t like it, I’ve never been able to integrate it into my computer use habits.
3. Google Reader – Using the “Note in reader” bookmarklet and tags in google reader this has been the best solution I’ve come across so far (but the tagging can get messy)
4. Gmail – For a long time I would simply send myself an email and then move it to a bookmarks folder, didn’t really like this solution either
5. Posterous – Just signed up for an account here, it’s got a great bookmarklet as well but not sure about tags just yet as I’ve barely started using it!

As a side note, and maybe the reason why I’m struggling a bit.  I’ve started doing bicycle crunches on the days that I’m not doing pushups, I’ve started with doing about 40 (2 sets of 20).  I’m wondering if this is tiring me out for my pushup days?

As promised, I’m posting about my first week of doing the hundred push up training program. As I noted I did score pretty high in the initial test, and I started in the bracket that aligned with my initial score but quickly realized I should drop down to the middle tier and go with that first. After doing the first day at the highest level I was really sore for the next 2 days. This indicated to me that it would make a lot of sense to drop down and use the lower level to build up strength.

I’ve found that doing the set’s of push ups in the morning works best for me. I do the routine just before I get into the shower every morning, so far I’ve been doing Monday, Wednesday and Friday which is perfect for me and it’s been going well. Dropping down to a lower level might be a little easier in the short term but as I’ve mentioned previously I’m in this for the long haul so going down to a lower level to build up strength definitely works for me.

All in all the first week has been great and I’m looking forward to many more weeks of building strength and shedding a couple of pounds!