<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss version="2.0"><channel><title>RSS feed for InstantSpot site Mark Brown&apos;s Blog</title><link>http://markbrown.instantspot.com</link><description>Adventures of a ColdFusion Newbie</description><language>en-us</language><copyright>This work is Copyright &#xA9; 2009 by Mark Brown&apos;s Blog</copyright><generator>RSSVille ColdFusion FeedMaker, version 1.0</generator><pubDate>Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:21:22 GMT</pubDate><item><title>Baseball Season has started!</title><link>http://markbrown.instantspot.com/blog/2007/04/09/Baseball-Season-has-started</link><description>&lt;p&gt;  I&amp;#39;ll be the first to admit that I&amp;#39;ve never been a baseball fan at all.&amp;nbsp; My whole life I&amp;#39;ve never really cared about the sport at all.&amp;nbsp; I played Little League, Babe Ruth, but once I got into high school everything was about Football, so I ran track because it helped me with Football.&amp;nbsp; I just never understood how or why people liked Baseball so much.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  &amp;nbsp;Then I had kids, 2 sons.&amp;nbsp; They both wanted to play Baseball last year, my youngest was to young to play yet, but my oldest son was 10 and played in the 10 and under league.&amp;nbsp; What an absolute blast to watch him play last year.&amp;nbsp; My wife and I really enjoyed and looked forward to watching him play.&amp;nbsp; So needless to say we were looking forward to this year.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  &amp;nbsp;Saturday was opening day for the league.&amp;nbsp; My youngest is playing Tee Ball and my oldest is playing in the 12 and under league.&amp;nbsp; My youngest son&amp;#39;s game was at 10 on Saturday morning.&amp;nbsp; We pulled into the parking lot a the baseball complex and the temp in my car reads 38f degrees.&amp;nbsp; We get to the right field, begin to warm up, and it starts SNOWING! &amp;nbsp; Most of the kids were loving it.&amp;nbsp; Game starts and we all had a blast, well, most of us did.&amp;nbsp; We lost, but it was still fun and my son had fun, which is really what counts.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  Now, I&amp;#39;m going to rant a little bit.&amp;nbsp; All you parents out there, if you signed your kid up for a sport, you are making a commitment to the TEAM that your kid will play, even if conditions aren&amp;#39;t perfect.&amp;nbsp; What are you teaching your kids if you let them whine and cry about the conditions then let them sit out of the game?&amp;nbsp; Your teaching them it&amp;#39;s OK to let their team down just because they don&amp;#39;t want to be a a bit uncomfortable.&amp;nbsp; This is not how you develop productive hardworking citizens.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  I&amp;#39;ll get off my pedistle now...back to Saturday&amp;#39;s game.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  My oldest son&amp;#39;s game was at 12:15 on Saturday, so we run to grab a quick lunch, then head back to the now 42 degree ball fields.&amp;nbsp; The 12 and under games are scheduled to go 90 minutes or 7 innings, which ever comes first.&amp;nbsp; I&amp;#39;ve never seen one go 7 inning though.&amp;nbsp; The game starts, and it&amp;#39;s a heck of a game, very close, good pitching, good hitting and good fielding.&amp;nbsp; My son hit a triple and then struck out.&amp;nbsp; They ultimately lost by 1 point, but what a game.&amp;nbsp; What fun it is to watch them play.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  &amp;nbsp;I&amp;#39;m starting to see why Baseball is such a popular sport! &lt;br /&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;  &lt;/p&gt;  </description><pubDate>Mon, 09 Apr 2007 12:46:11 GMT</pubDate><guid>http://markbrown.instantspot.com/blog/2007/04/09/Baseball-Season-has-started</guid><category>Family</category></item><item><title>CF Newbieness and Hello</title><link>http://markbrown.instantspot.com/blog/2006/10/11/CF-Newbieness-and-Hello</link><description>&lt;p&gt;  Well, Hello.  My name is Mark Brown.  This is my first blog, so bear with me.    &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  &amp;nbsp;  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  I decided to start this thing because I&amp;#39;m learning some new skills.  I&amp;#39;m a IT Manager, and am very familiar with pc&amp;#39;s, servers, networks, blah, blah, blah.  It dawned on me a few months ago that I needed to learn some new skills.  On the advice from a friend, Mike,  I decieded to learn Web Application Programming using ColdFusion.  So, I figured, that sounds easy enough, and started.  First problem I ran into was, I HAVE NO PROGAMMING EXPERIENCE.  None.  Ziltch. Nada.  I&amp;#39;ve written a few batch scripts for login scripts on my Novell servers at work, but other than that I was clueless.  Well, I&amp;#39;m still clueless, but an learning more by the day.  You web programmers talk your own language.  I&amp;#39;m Starting to understand some of it, but hey, life is just one big learning curve. Right?   &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  &amp;nbsp;  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  Anyway, I&amp;#39;m about 6 months into it.  I haven&amp;#39;t been hitting it too hard, but have learned quite a bit.  About a month ago I launched my family website, http://www.thebrownhomeonline.com.  I did it with Coldfusion and it seemed fairly straight forward.  It&amp;#39;s got a private section that took me a while to figure out how to do the security, and the initial learning about frameworks to keep the maintenance of it easy were a bit difficult for me, but I eventually got it with some very generous help from Mike.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  &amp;nbsp;  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  I&amp;#39;ve got a couple other projects I&amp;#39;m working on, which I&amp;#39;ll talk about later.    &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  &amp;nbsp;  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  Main reason for this blog entry is just to Introduce myself, and give you all a idea of what to expect from this blog.    &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  &amp;nbsp;  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  What I&amp;#39;m hoping to accomplish here is to document my journey from total cluelessness in ColdFusion and web apps to my finished products.  I hope to be able to help other newbies find good resources I&amp;#39;ve used, and/or document some of the hurdles I ran into throughout this process and how I overcame them.  You&amp;#39;ll probably also get to see some of my rants and raves on wide variety of subjects.  Lucky YOU!!!  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  &amp;nbsp;  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  So, there you have it.    &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  &amp;nbsp;  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  Later,  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  Mark   &lt;/p&gt;  </description><pubDate>Wed, 11 Oct 2006 13:42:07 GMT</pubDate><guid>http://markbrown.instantspot.com/blog/2006/10/11/CF-Newbieness-and-Hello</guid></item></channel></rss>