Kinect Windows SDK programming using Visual Basic

Perhaps you are like me and trying to use visual basic to do some programming on the Kinect with the new SDK microsoft released, only you can't find any working examples. I manually converted an old BETA SDK sample to the new code so it is functional (except the skeletal tracking) the video and depth cameras are functional however.

Hope this helps someone: Here is the link

-Matt

My first week

Well, as most of you know, I'm now on the employed list. Yep, made it through the first week, even. :) That means, I still need to survive 2-3 more weeks before I know if this is the right job for me. Here I am, wearing my Hawaiian shirt on Friday. Everyone was impressed that I found a girl's Hawaiian shirt. :)

So, the way it works at my job is the first 3-4 weeks are the "Multitasking" phase. They teach us the bare basics of what the job is about, adding new stuff each day. At the end of the initial phase, they assess us by throwing a bunch of stuff at us and we have to sink or swim. If When I survive, I'll move to the next training phase, filled with classroom instruction and listening in to real dispatchers do their job. This is just the beginning of a long training phase, which might last up to 18 months. I hope I'm ready for it...

I'm really lucky, because Matt has been helping me out, practicing the verbiage, and teaching me how to do certain evolutions. I would be completely lost without him. Instead of just lost. ;)

Anyway, I'm probably going to be pretty busy for the next LONG while, and won't be blogging as much (such a joke, since I haven't been blogging much lately anyway), but I'll try to keep everyone up to date on my progress.

~Pam

Chhhhhhh-anges!

Well, I guess most of you know by now, but Matt and I are going to go through a drastic life change here pretty quickly...I got a job. And not just any job, but a Load Dispatcher job with Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Sound familiar? Yep, it's the same job as Matt. As in, we'll be working together. We might even see each other every day. All day, even. Shocking, I know. I mean, how can a marriage last when you have to see each other all the time? :) I'm just poking fun at some of the comments we've gotten since I was offered the job. Some people really can't imagine working with their significant other. I'm thinking it won't be such a big issue. If we can ride our bikes from Canada to Mexico together and manage not to kill each other, I think we can manage working alongside each other. Will there be moments? Yes. But tell me this. When are there not moments? Does everyone get along 100% of the time with every single one of their coworkers? Nope. Didn't think so. I'm pretty excited. I know the first couple years will be extremely challenging, especially for me. I have a lot to prove. I mean, I'm the first female Navy Nuke the department has hired. Only one female so far has completed the training program and was picked up as load dispatcher (she was a station operator beforehand). That puts a lot of pressure on me to complete the program and get picked up. But I'm ready for a challenge.The job starts on Monday, when I will begin ~1.5 years of training prior to becoming an actual load dispatcher (until then, I'll just be a trainee). I'm getting pretty excited!

Matt and I (and Gwen, too) have been doing P90X for almost 2 months now. I've put off buying new clothes for the job, since my body is going through some changes. I'll be doing some major clothes shopping this weekend, though. It's been quite a while since I've bought new clothes, and I'm a little excited about that as well.

In order to make our lives easier, with the two of us working, Matt and I are trying out a new thing. It's called Dream Dinners, where you basically make up a menu online, then go into the store at your reserved time, and put your meals together. They have all the ingredients laid out and you put it together, seal it in freezer bags, and viola'! Ready-made meals. I made up my first set of meals today. 36 servings of food took me about 45 minutes to put together. Not too shabby! That, along with the installation of a dishwasher, is going to make my chore list much shorter and easier to manage :) And Matt has promised to help out around the house more as well. We've put up white boards around the house so we have places to make check lists of things that need to be done. I'm thinking a 50/50 split with the housework sounds about right, don't you? :P

Anyways, that's about it. Enjoying the beautiful California weather. It's been sunny and warm lately, in the mid to upper 70s, but I'm sure spring will get here eventually and the marine layer will move in. I'm hoping we get some rain..it's been pretty dry.

~Pam

Windows 7 Firewall Service will not start

So let us say you are having trouble getting the Windows 7 Firewall service to start, and you have googled everything and tried it all to no avail. This worked for me:

Find and download ProcMon.exe

Apply a filter with the "result" = "ACCESS DENIED"

Try starting the firewall service from the services portion of the control panel, you will get errors like below if there is a registry problem.



If it is a registry problem, got to the folder in regedit with the problem, right click on it and choose permissions.

choose add. and enter "NT Service\MpsSvc" and click check names . Then give MpsSvc full control of those keys. Then try running the firewall service again, you should see fewer Access denied messages, keep going until you get all of the keys and have no more access denied messages. At this point the firewall service should start if it doesn't you have more problems.

Good Luck, this is a PITA.

-Matt

In addittion this will fix the  Diagnostic Policy Service from not running with Code 5 errors as well...