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The Big 5-0

Today I, to use Tamar's words, "reached the top of the hill" (she's just a couple of days behind herself). Although I may look my age (I was considered to be the poster boy for the "this is what 40 looks like" birthday party at DevCon in Orlando ten years ago), I certainly don't feel it. I think I'm in better shape than I've been in 20 years.

Well, except I notice that injuries take a lot longer to heal. I actually had physiotherapy today for the first time in my life to help with my injured shoulder. And although I love snowboarding with my son, I definitely feel it the next day. And those darned kids with their loud music. I have to go chase some of them off my lawn.

Getting Time Zone Information

Here's some code that retrieves local time zone information:

local lcTimeZone, ;
  lnID, ;
  lnStandardOffset, ;
  lnDaylightOffset

* Declare the time zone information API function and get the time zone
* information.
 
#define TIME_ZONE_SIZE  172
declare integer GetTimeZoneInformation in kernel32 ;
  string @lpTimeZoneInformation
lcTimeZone = replicate(chr(0), TIME_ZONE_SIZE)
lnID       = GetTimeZoneInformation(@lcTimeZone)

* Determine the standard and daylight time offset.
 
lnStandardOffset = ctobin(substr(lcTimeZone,   1, 4), '4RS')
lnDaylightOffset = ctobin(substr(lcTimeZone, 169, 4), '4RS')

* Determine the total offset based on whether the computer is on daylight
* time or not. Get the description for the time zone.
 
if lnID = 2  && daylight time
  lcTimeZoneDesc   = strtran(strconv(substr(lcTimeZone, 89, 64), ;
    6), chr(0), '')
  lnTimeZoneOffset = (lnStandardOffset + lnDaylightOffset) * 60
else   && standard time
  lcTimeZoneDesc   = strtran(strconv(substr(lcTimeZone,  5, 64), ;
    6), chr(0), '')
  lnTimeZoneOffset = lnStandardOffset * 60
endif lnID = 2

You can then add lnTimeZoneOffset to a local time value to get a time in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) or subtract lnTimeZoneOffset from a time value in GMT to obtain a local time value.

Southwest Fox News

As we get closer to the conference (it starts four weeks from today), the news gets as hot as the Phoenix weather!

Visionpace is offering a free six-month subscription (or a six-month extension for existing subscribers) for Visual MaxFrame Professional (VMP) to all Southwest Fox attendees. Between all the offers (VMP, xSQL, and CoDe magazine) and prizes to be won (over $100,000), this conference will pay for itself before you attend your first session!

Five bonus sessions are planned for Friday night at 8:00 pm after the dinner party:

• Stonefield Software is hosting a Stonefield Query Developers Meeting. This meeting is open to everyone.
• Visionpace is hosting a VMP Developers Meeting. This meeting is open to all developers using VMP (developers not using VMP are also welcome).
• Bo Durban is leading a VFPX meeting. Everyone interested in VFPX is welcome to attend.
• Mike Yeager of EPS Software is presenting a bonus session titled "VFP to .NET Migration Strategies." This session provides a detailed overview, based on best practices and real world experience, of the optimal way to transition a mission critical application from any version of FoxPro to .NET and SQL Server.
• "Show Us Your Apps" is an opportunity to show the crowd what cool things you've done in VFP. Because there's a limited amount of time available, presenters are limited to 10-15 minutes each. Please email info@swfox.net to let us know what you'd like to show.

Southwest Fox News

The Southwest Fox 2008 session schedule is now available. One thing you might note is that we've planned a dinner party for Friday night this year. Also, vendor sessions are held concurrently with other sessions rather than in the evenings as they were last year.

I posted a new video demoing one of the cool features I'm showing in my session on Advantage Database Server: full text search capabilities, even against VFP tables.

Former VFP Product Manager Ken Levy will be at Southwest Fox, hanging out at the VFPConversion booth and showing a new utility he's created and releasing into the public domain.

One of the bonus sessions this year is "Show Us Your Apps", an opportunity to show the crowd what cool things you've done in VFP. Because there's a limited amount of time available, presenters are limited to 10-15 minutes each. Please email info@swfox.net to let us know what you'd like to show.