Teaching CS in Dallas

Virginia Trip

Husband thinks I should drive.   We're both nuts, but that’s okay.  So here are my plans so far – spend July 8th in Brandon, Mississippi on my mother’s birthday.  Stop in Knoxville, Tennessee the next night and arrive in DC on the 10th.  He wants me to go to Philadelphia for a day so probably do that on the 12th.  I have to be at the Workshop from the 14th through the 16th, and I will drive back starting that day so I can be back in Dallas for that Monday.  My last night on the road will be at my mom’s unless she drives me nuts, and I’ll go a shorter way home.

Yes, I know my mother will read this as it will post on Facebook, so she’s warned.  Just remember mom, I only have the clothing that’s in my car, and the clothing you see will be my “worst”.

A smart person would wear her best clothing at her mothers.

I’ve found an Embassy Suites in Alexandria that’s $149 a night if I don’t prepay.  With my sleep problems, Embassy Suites works best, plus you can buy food and eat in the room every meal but breakfast, and breakfast is to die for.

And besides, I can always live on Slim Fast, I did for 7 weeks (only 6 in a row).

I really want to do some diabetes blogger meet ups.

Status

I have a Window Application (runs on the desktop).  It does the following:

• Allows the user to input number of days to change set
• Allows the user to input optional information about insulin usage
  • Total Units
  • Average Unit
• Allows the user to chose if they want to be reminded at a particular time (do not have to have a reminder)
• Marks all existing tasks with the same time as Completed
• Creates a new task

 

I need to make sure the reminder part works.

 

Next step -- create the SmartPhone Today plugin

 

I have lots of ideas for the future.  This could be set up for any type of irregularly reoccuring tasks.

My best design thinking is in the shower

I came up with this idea in the shower, and just realized while in the shower this morning that saving the Entry ID is silly -- would work find if this was desktop only or mobile phone only application, but since both can write Tasks in the end, I need to do a search on the subject line.

Documentation can be SO irritating!

I decided I wanted to do the regular Windows to Outlook side of the project first.  It makes sense having both, as I often change my sets in the morning, in front of my desktop computers.

 

So I wanted to figure out how to create an Outlook item.  I started with this article:

 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313787

 

Lovely article but I couldn't get it to compile.  I started doing research on the error message and kept running into references to PIA's.  I found them, and I had to install them.

 

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/thankyou.aspx?familyId=59daebaa-bed4-4282-a28c-b864d8bfa513&displayLang=en

 

I also found this article which was helpful too:

 

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb226711.aspx#officeoutlook2007whatsnewdeveloperspart1__intro

 

So here is what I had to do to create an Outlook Calendar entry (which does work).

 

I had to add an reference to the PIAs:

 

Add a reference to the PIAs. To do this, follow these steps:

a.	On the Project menu, click Add Reference.
b.	Click the NET tab, locate Microsoft.Outlook.Interop.Outlook, and then click Select.
c.	In the Add References dialog box, click OK

 

The next thing I had to do was to add the following statement to the top of the program:

 

It now looks like:

 

Imports System.Reflection
Imports outlook = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook

 

Module Module1

 

Sub Main()
' Create an Outlook application.
Dim oApp As Outlook.Application = New Outlook.Application()

 

' Get NameSpace and Logon.
Dim oNS As Outlook.NameSpace = oApp.GetNamespace("mapi")
oNS.Logon("YourValidProfile", Missing.Value, False, True) ' TODO:

 

' Create a new AppointmentItem.
Dim oAppt As Outlook.AppointmentItem = oApp.CreateItem(Outlook.OlItemType.olAppointmentItem)
'oAppt.Display(true) 'Modal

 

' Set some common properties.
oAppt.Subject = "Created using OOM in C#"
oAppt.Body = "Hello World"
oAppt.Location = "Samm E"

 

oAppt.Start = Convert.ToDateTime("11/30/2001 9:00:00 AM")
oAppt.End = Convert.ToDateTime("11/30/2001 1:00:00 PM")

 

oAppt.ReminderSet = True
oAppt.ReminderMinutesBeforeStart = 5
oAppt.BusyStatus = Outlook.OlBusyStatus.olBusy ' olBusy
oAppt.IsOnlineMeeting = False

 

' Save to Calendar.
oAppt.Save()

 

' Display.
'oAppt.Display(true)

 

' Logoff.
oNS.Logoff()

 

' Clean up.
oApp = Nothing
oNS = Nothing
oAppt = Nothing
End Sub

 

End Module

 

 

 

 

Finally -- A useful application to write

I have been trying to come up with an "after AP Exam" activity that will motivate all my students to think about software development in a positive way.  I am going to have the AP students do some of the research for the cross platform.

I've finally figured it out. 

An infusion set alarm.  This is something that could be cross platform too.  It could be written for the Palm Pilot and generate ToDo items.

I want my ToDay screen to show me when I should change my infusion set.  This is a program that should run on my mobile phone since

a) it really should run on my pump, and alarm me on the pump, but since my pump doesn't do that, and since I don't have access to that software, the mobile phone is the next best thing, since it is almost always with me.

b) running it on the desktop isn't the greatest of options, because I something have to replace a set off schedule (comes off during dog agility, pull off accidently, etc.)

There are two factors that influence how often an infusion set should be changed.

1)  Days.  An infusion set should be changed at least everything 3 days, but this is a variable that the user should be able to change in the options menu.

2)  Amount of insulin.  Most Type 1's are not aware of this, but you can really only push about 300-400 units through a set before skin starts breaking down.  At least that's the way it works for me, and my CDE said "duh" when I mentioned it.  Again, the user should be able to change this in the options menu.

3)  When a user indicates they have changed their set, the current open task should be marked complete.  A new task should be generated using the first of the two above factors.

Tasks:

1)  Research how to create a Task from Visual Basic/WIndows Mobile

2) Create a user interface

3) Design algorithm.

I am going to document my progress on the log and make what I write available to the Diabetes community.

FYI:  This application has all the things of a good software project:

a) It satisfies a need

b) It does not already exist.  If it does, I haven't hear of it which is a bit amazing.  However, the Cozmo pump has this feature, I believe.