Memorial Day 2016

One of most haunting books on Europe’s D-Day is the story of the men from Bedford County, Virginia that went to war as single company as told in the book “Bedford Goes To War”, by James W. Morrison. Their company was selected to be the 1^st line of landing craft that landed on Omaha Beach on June 6^th, 1994. Tragedy struck when 20 men from Buford Country died that day on the beach, but the families did not receive official notification until mid-July.

One poignant story recounted in that book was a letter written by a soldier who landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day plus 1, and found a plastic wrapped bible on the shore. He wrote this letter, dated July 9, 1944, to the family of the man who name was inside of the bible:

Dear Mr. and Mrs Hoback:

 

While walking along the beach D-Day plus 1, I came upon this Bible. Knowing that you no doubt would want the book returned,

I am sending it knowing that most Bibles are a book to be cherished. I would have sent it sooner, but have been quite busy and

thought it best if a short period of time elapsed before returning it.

 

You have by now received a letter from your son saying he is well. I sincerely hope so. I imagine what has happened is that

your son dropped the book without any notice. Most everybody who landed on the beach D-Day lost something.

 

The beach is now peaceful and quite since the German guns have been silenced. The bird have begun their daily practice and all the flowers and trees are in bloom,

especially the poppies and tulips which are very beautiful this time of the year.

 

With best wishes,

Private H.W. Crayton.

Mrs. John Hoback, whose sons Buford and Raymond were both killed on D-Day in France, had the letter published in the Bedford Bulletin.

 

Remembering Memorial Day, 2016

Charles B. Hodge

Commander, USNR-Retired

InstallShield Training Course

Recently we were asked to deliver some online training on InstallShield to some relatively new InstallShield developers.  Actually these were developers who were tasked to develop an installation program using InstallShield – which happens quite a bit due to turnover, etc..

We have considerable experience in developing applications in InstallShield – numbering in the hundreds, so it was easy to create an outline for these new students.  It was taught one-on-one using GoToMeeting, and the training was recorded which allowed the student to review any/all of the material later.  Flexible enough it was given in 4 hour increments – once per day to allow for meeting business requirements.

Here is the course outline that we gave.  If you are interested contact Mike Hodge at 770.309.6581 – or email at mike@InstallSolutionsInc.com

InstallShield training:

• Session 1 – 4.0 hours
  • General overview of 3 InstallShield projects
  • Detailed review of InstallShield Development environment (IDE)
  • Review of File Organization
    • Defining Features

• Working with features and components
• Static file linking
• Dynamic file linking
• Working with destination folders
• Best Practice Fundamentals
• “Key” Resource Usage
• GUID Usage
• Creating shortcuts

• Understanding User Interface and Execution Sequence

 

• Session 2 – 4.0 hours

This session focusing understanding and manipulating the Dialogs

• How MSI determines dialog order and conditions
• Working with control events
• Working with control conditions
• Required dialog boxes
• Altering dialog sequence
• Creating new dialog boxes

 

• Session 3 – 4.0 hours

This session will focus on making System changes to the user’s Operating System, such as configuring user data:

• Registry data
• Importing .REG files
• Altering via fixed values
• Altering via MSI Property values
• Altering via Custom Actions
• INI files
• XML files
• Environment variables
• File associations

 

Then we focus on handling special files

• MSI Properties
• Microsoft Redistributables
• NT Windows services
• Fonts
• .NET Assemblies
• Create IIS Websites
• Setup Prerequisites

 

• Session 4 – 4.0 hours

This section will present an overview of the usage of InstallShield proprietary InstallScript language.

• Log entries to MSI Log
• Access (Ready/Write Registry values)
• Query Operating System State
• Configure application data

 

In this section, you will learn how to run an installation from Windows Explorer or from the command prompt, how to perform silent and limited-user interface installations and how to pass information to the running installation from the command line:

• Running an installation
• Maintenance and uninstallation
• Using msiexec.exe
• Silent and reduced-UI installations
• Passing properties from the command line

 

Finally, we discuss how Windows Installer supports different types of updates and different techniques for packaging them for distribution. In this section, you will learn about:

• Types of updates
• Understanding a minor upgrade
• Understanding a major upgrades
• Upgrade testing issues
• General patch overview
• InstallShield Update Service

 

Where is ShieldMaster?

There has been a lack of posting lately on this Blog.  Essentially it’s been medical issues – my doctor found that I had a lump in my breast and after biopsy it was found to be Breast Cancer.  My oncologist has treated over 8,000 women for BC and I am his 4th guy!  Just my luck.

Chemo is finished and on the last 5 radiation treatments.

Been a long struggle, but I am making it!

ShieldMaster