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Sherry
10-20-2006, 06:02 AM
Hi ladies,

I will be out most of the day for hospital visits and blood work but I wanted to quickly pop on to let you know the status of the swap board. Unfortunately, it will not be ready for uploading today. As you know, Mark had to re-write the entire script and this is taking longer than he expected. When he gave me the "Friday" deadline, he was expecting to modify code, not re-write it.

In a day or two, the moderators and I will begin testing the code. We want to test it before it is uploaded so that your swapping experience will be as trouble free as possible. Mark has some exciting things planned for us, ladies. I think we can be patient a little longer. Whaddya think??

Oh yes, Mark hopes that the "I love you, Mark!" posts will continue. :p

Cheers and have a great day!
Sherry

Mark
10-25-2006, 03:12 PM
There really is a swap board coming. I apologize for the delay. I really hope that when I do deliver it to you, you'll feel that it was worth the wait.

The major cause of the delay is that I want this done right. I stand behind the work I do and intend to not only provide technical support for the swap board indefinitely but also be available for any enhancements you dream up in the future. For those reasons, I selfishly refuse to cut corners just to "get something up."

I've made significant progress and I hope to have something to show Sherry very soon with intent to be ready for public release quickly after that.

I'd rather look late than look sloppy. I appreciate your patience and don't take it lightly. Just give me another day or three and you'll have what I hope is the best swap board around.

Mark

Erin K
10-25-2006, 03:16 PM
Mark,
I don't know if you do much swapping? But you should know that all the stuff we've heard about this swap board it's gonna be the coolest one ever. I mean I wouldn't be suprised to see it written up in all the magazines about how cool it's gonna be. It's bringing swapping to an artform! ;) So we are happy to wait if it means we will be the pioneers on the coolest swap board ever.

flyingflower
10-25-2006, 04:10 PM
Keep plugging or tying or keying or whatever it is called :)

Once its done, I hope you stay around and swap with us :o

Sherry
10-25-2006, 04:16 PM
There really is a swap board coming. I apologize for the delay. I really hope that when I do deliver it to you, you'll feel that it was worth the wait.

The major cause of the delay is that I want this done right. I stand behind the work I do and intend to not only provide technical support for the swap board indefinitely but also be available for any enhancements you dream up in the future. For those reasons, I selfishly refuse to cut corners just to "get something up."

I've made significant progress and I hope to have something to show Sherry very soon with intent to be ready for public release quickly after that.

I'd rather look late than look sloppy. I appreciate your patience and don't take it lightly. Just give me another day or three and you'll have what I hope is the best swap board around.

Mark

Thank you so very much for the update, Mark! Take as much time as you need.

jdpisces
10-25-2006, 04:48 PM
xoxoxox MARK! :)

dgbearsmom
10-25-2006, 05:21 PM
How does it feel to have 200+ women love you? :)

Judy

workin4stamps
10-25-2006, 05:44 PM
We can wait as long as you need us to Mark!!!!! No problems here!!!!!

:-)

shurlyjean
10-25-2006, 07:28 PM
What a guy!!!!! I can't imaging knowing how to write the codes for this... how cool is that:cool:

Thanks for taking your time to do it right.....

Shirley :D

iloveflipflops
10-25-2006, 07:44 PM
Can't wait to see the swap board up and running :). You are doing a FABULOUS job!!!

WOO HOO for Mark!!!:rolleyes:

countrystamper
10-31-2006, 10:15 PM
of when the swap board will be up and running? No hurry, it is a busy time of year anyway and lots of us have things going on with the holidays arriving soon but just curious to know when you thought the board will be ready to use.

Thanks, Linda

emmcee
11-01-2006, 08:11 AM
Good Morning Mark. Take as much time as you need, we are very patient indeed. This swap board sounds like it will be a state of the art thing and we all are very excited about our future swaps. :)

Mark
11-01-2006, 08:40 AM
I know "soon" is probably losing some luster so how about Real Soon Now®?

There has been much progress and I would probably be just about able to finish the beta of this thing today but I'm going to be tied up most of the day. I still expect to have it ready for Sherry to start testing and complai... err... offering feedback before the weekend. (That's just a joke. Sherry's never been anything but sweet to me. I'm far more demanding than she is.)

The functionality is about 70% complete and then all that's left is cleaning up the code, working out a few kinks, optimizing it and polishing the style a bit. All of that can take days but most of it can be done after you're already using it.

I wish I could let you play with what I have done and offer feedback now (the core functions are all working) but that would require doing a vBulletin install on my public server and I don't want to take the time to do that.

Here's a screenshot to whet your appetite a bit (and prove I'm really doing it). http://markjshaw.net/me/pics/swapboard.jpg

(The sections expand and collapse within the page. What you see in that screenshot is the default main page with the full list collapsed at the bottom.)

It really will only be another couple of days. I promise.

mahodgman
11-01-2006, 08:59 AM
Oh Mark, that looks awsome! Thank you for your hard work and dedication, we are going to have so much fun with this new board!

emmcee
11-01-2006, 09:06 AM
Wow! You are uptown with your swap design. Looks cool.

Erin K
11-01-2006, 09:24 AM
It looks fantastic! Thanks Cowboy Mark

iupindiana
11-01-2006, 10:07 AM
We can wait because we want it to meet you high standards. We will just keep thinking of exciting ideas. JoAnn:)

cindi
11-01-2006, 10:53 AM
You just keep working on it with that awesome attitude & we'll wait!~! Thanks for your hard work and efforts on our behalf!:)

iloveflipflops
11-01-2006, 11:19 AM
so you just take your time and let us know when we can "dig in".

Looks great so far! Keep it up :).

toao
11-01-2006, 11:41 AM
WE LOVE MARK, WE LOVE MARK!!

Thanks Mark. We're a patient bunch, right girls? Can't wait to get back into swapping, and what better way than a fabulous new swap board hot off the presses.

Big HUGS to you Mark.

Mary ;)

Christie
11-01-2006, 01:43 PM
Looks good. Keep up the good work!!!!!!!
Christie

countrystamper
11-01-2006, 06:47 PM
Thanks so much for the update and looking forward to seeing your awesome swap board. Love what you have done so far with this site!

Linda

Beaglelover
11-04-2006, 04:39 PM
I agree with everyone. This place will really rock when the swap site is up.

You have a huge fan club here so I think my first swap will be a thank you one for you!!!!

Teresa:)

Mark
11-12-2006, 07:24 AM
... have been greatly exaggerated.

Once again, I apologize for the delay. I am making progress on the swap board, though and I have now cleared my calendar to get this done for you. Things keep popping up demanding attention and Sherry's been far too patient and understanding. As a result, The Stamp Shack Swap Board kept getting shuffled down the project list.

NO MORE! I've been working on the swap board most of the night. I'm going to church later this morning but that will only keep me away for about 2 hours. I'm well stocked with caffeinated beverages, junk food and music, the kids are away and I'm hunkered down bunker style until this thing is ready to go.

There are a few minor but particularly nasty bugs I have to squash and there is still a bit of the development to finish up, but it's getting close. I hope to have it ready to install on this server later today (probably evening) for Sherry to evaluate and test. I may not have ALL of the slickness that I want done by then, but right now I'm shooting for functional and useable so that I don't have to keep making excuses and begging for patience. Most of what I want will be done and if a few things have to wait, so be it. Y'all will be able to get on with your swapping and I'll just give you a 2.0 release later.

Thanks for your patience. Hang in there... It's coming.

Sherry
11-12-2006, 07:51 AM
and here I was planning a "knock your socks off" funeral... ;)

Seriously though, thanks so much for the update Mark. Muchly appreciated!

Sherry

GrammaStamper
11-12-2006, 07:56 AM
Yeah, Mark, we appreciate the update. You have no idea how many of us are starting serious withdrawal symptons due to lack of swapping. Your posts about the board are what keeps us going. Looking forward to later tonight.

shuggy
11-12-2006, 07:59 AM
thanks for all your hard work, mark!!

iloveflipflops
11-12-2006, 09:16 AM
Thank you Mark!!! You're the best!!!

suzi_f
11-12-2006, 09:26 AM
There are a few minor but particularly nasty bugs I have to squash

Erin, did you send your icky experiment bug to Mark? Bad Erin!!!

Thanks Mark!

toao
11-12-2006, 01:57 PM
now exhale. We are anxious to see what you've come up with, but at the same time we are respectful of how much work goes into something so important. I'm sure we'll love it, so don't stress our new friend, we're grateful to you for your effort towards getting us back in the game of swapping.

Mary

scrappinnuts
11-12-2006, 02:15 PM
Mark..The board really looks good...you are doing an awesome job..Thank you.

Mark
11-12-2006, 06:55 PM
OK. I cheated and took a 2 hour nap after church. But really I did that for you. :p Honest. I can go straight through until this thing is done now.

Here's the real deal, though. I've chatted with Sherry quite a bit about this but for those of you that don't know, the time consuming and challenging part of this project is the vBulletin integration. If this was a stand alone swap board, I could have done it in a couple of days and probably still wowed y'all. But I knew very little about vB when I embarked on this journey and it's a much more complex animal than I had estimated.

Over the last few weeks, I've tried every shortcut that I could possibly dream up or find online and none of them will work properly for what we need here. So, I've decided to go back to square one on the integration piece. (Just the integration! I'm not starting over!) I'll still have it ready when the sun comes up tomorrow and without compromising or churning out some sloppy hack.

Sherry has been wonderfully accommodating of my vBulletin ignorance and told me that as long as y'all could use the swap board without a separate log in, she would be happy. I truly appreciate that. But therein lies the rub. The hardest part of integrating a custom application into vBulletin is properly handling the authentication, sessions, cookies, etc. required to share the login. The rest is relatively easy once that is accomplished.

To illustrate to you what I mean, when you click on the Gallery link at the top of this page, there are no less than 6 individual scripts totaling well over 6000 lines of code and scores (if not hundreds) of database queries being used just to assemble the main page of the Gallery for you. In some cases, it may be more than that.

I know this because I'm now (once again) using that software as reference to get the swap board done right. The swap board isn't anywhere near as complex and won't take that much, but the concepts are the same. I've spent the last 90 minutes or so skimming all of that code again to figure out how they did it. I looked there for direction very early in this process but couldn't follow it and thought it was overkill for the swap board. Between then and now I've learned enough by trying all the wrong ways, that their way is understandable to me now and probably the only right way.

The good news is that I'm confident that (now) I can do it that way pretty quickly. The nasty bugs I referred to earlier will all be completely eliminated and we'll get the kind of integration that I wanted all along. Down the road this will make it much easier to enhance and maintain the swap board.

To summarize, (I really do have a point!) I'll still have the swap board ready for Sherry by morning and without any compromises on what I've wanted to deliver to you all along. There still may be some things to iron out based on Sherry's feedback and there will likely still be some "invisible" things I want to clean up and optimize, but I think I will be ready to go public with it tomorrow if Sherry is. (I say that with all of my real contact info in my Stamp Shack profile!)

So if any of y'all can't sleep tonight, I'll be on YIM. :cool: (Just kidding. I don't have time to chat tonight. The "crazy stamp ladies" are waiting for a swap board.)

Erin K
11-12-2006, 07:00 PM
Mark, I think that's wonderful! I'd love to see it tomorrow. From me though if it's not and needs more time that's fine. This website is a service to us! I'm grateful for every line of code that goes into it.

You rock and we really appreciate all your hard work. After you are done with us you'll have to come by once in a while to say hi to us!

Maybe even join a swap?

Mark
11-12-2006, 07:14 PM
... After you are done with us you'll have to come by once in a while to say hi to us!

Maybe even join a swap?

I'll be around. As for joining a swap, I dunno. That's not my area of creativity. I'm a code monkey. My daughters might come play with you sometime, though. They love craft stuff.

HeatherJ
11-12-2006, 07:30 PM
I admire your dedication, Mark! Thanks so much for working so hard to please the group - and I can tell you want to have a product you can be proud of! Thanks again!

HeatherJ

tojoco
11-12-2006, 07:30 PM
Thanks for all you're doing, Mark. We really appreciate it; and as much as we all want a swap board, we can be more patient if need be. I'm sure most of our swaps will have a January due date anyway so this is a great way to start off the new year. Thanks again.

suzi_f
11-12-2006, 07:53 PM
You're awesome Mark & we appreciate everything you're doing for us!!

mahodgman
11-12-2006, 09:21 PM
Wow, Mark, I'm scared that I actually followed all of that. Have you done any work with SAP? You are speaking techie with the best of them. Myself, I'm stricktly a functional person....lol that is what I do for a living.

Mark
11-13-2006, 08:13 PM
Ok, ok, ok! Maybe I was a little too cocky when I said I could have the swap board ready this morning. Y'all should be glad I have a mirror for the development work because one of the changes I made to the swap board code took down the whole site. Not even the main page would load. Ack! Just yucky database errors when I tried to load The Stamp Shack. This is why I have a dev mirror.

I've sorta got that fixed and the swap board is working now with the new integration method... sorta. It has no style. That needs to get fixed and then I need to finish up the feedback and email parts and we're good.

I've been accused before of being stubborn and slow to learn, but I really am confident that I can get this thing done tonight. It might have already been done but I finally gave up on the sleep deprivation method of software development and took a brief break today.

Thanks for your patience. (Lord, I'm getting tired of typing that!) Wish me luck!

inkinupstamps
11-13-2006, 08:17 PM
...and sleep deprivation and still working away!

I bet we appear as vultures as we wait to see the debute of the swap board. We are all just excited. However long it takes is how long it WILL take.

I'm just tickled that one as dedicated and hard working as you are has taken on the swap board!

Thanks so much for all you've done and continue to do!:)

shurlyjean
11-13-2006, 09:05 PM
Then you will wake refresh and ready to keep working on the SWAP board... Yea we need to shower Mark with cards!!!

S:) :p :D