ASCI is Awesome

We did our first Deep Creek summer vacation, and I have to say that it was pretty darn awesome. But I wanted to focus on ASCI, which stands for Adventure Sports Center International. We have done a good deal of white water rafting in the past, so when I saw that there was an artificial water course - my first thought was, "why?"

Why go to a man made course when there are so many great white water options nearby?  The answer is because it's always good. On most rivers you are rolling the dice on any given day depending on the conditions. The ASCI experience is always consistent : non stop white water.

Our Group Paddling ASCI at Deep Creek

I was surprised at how much fun I had on this course. If you have ever been to Wisp resort during the winter time, you've probably noticed that big empty flat area surrounded by bolder at the top of the mountain. Believe it or not, that is a summertime water course. If you go, you'll get about 2 hours of run time, I think we had about six or seven runs through the entire course. They have guides at various areas to make sure everyone is safe, and my 52 lb daughter had no problems staying in the boat (see picture).  If you are staying at Deep Creek, the advantage of this is that you can get the white water experience without having to commit your entire day.  After our 2 hour run, we drove back down to the lake and had some lunch, then went down to the beach at the state park. It's the perfect family getaway without having to go all that far away!

The PHP Resolution

Last month I was dealing some PHP issues on my recent project and I finally came to an understand of what was going on. In short, I would run a SQL and have PHP return the value for the result, only to find out that the result wasn't what I expected.  The gaff I made reflects on my lack of understanding of comparison operators. Having lived in an Oracle SQL world for nearly two decades, I used SQL to troubleshoot other peoples data issue by writing code to tease out problems.  When I needed to make an exact math on data, I would use the equals sign to get that record I was looking for. However, in PHP land, using the equals sign is how you SET a variable.  If you want to find a match for something, you use two equal signs (==).

else if ($variable == '3')

In the above situation, the double equal translates to ," If the variable is equal to  3, then its true"

The transition in compassion operators between  SQL to PHP can be nerve racking as you have to switch "logic"  hats while writing code in the same damn file. The SQL and the PHP sit side by side, yet the use of the operator has different meaning. You live, you learn!