Codesweep's RSS Feed

aaaah Poor Me...

Thu, 29 May 2008 07:46:00 GMT

So here I am right now in San Francisco on a Training Mission in Workflows for my job while my wife is at home with the kid. Of course I miss them but I take a guilty pleasure in being able to sleep through the night for the first time in 5 weeks. Heh, maybe I'll just tell the new mom "why don't you find a hotel for the night and let me stay with the kid" when I get back, don't know how wise that is though, granted she's better equipped body-wise to deal with a baby than I am. All night formula anyone?

Anyways I better get to class, later all!

Back from SF

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 09:38:00 GMT

Well I'm back from San Francisco, nice place, food is very good but extremely expensive. They seem to take pride in their wine lists like nothing I've ever seen as well. Frankly I've never been too picky about my food, if it doesn't eat me I'll eat it.

Got to hand it to the airline companies though. On my return leg a 2 hour mechanical delay wound up in a missed connection for me and I got to spend a night in Vegas at the "Hotel of Airline Purgatory" where a bunch of airline stranded passengers were at. Was kinda freaky seeing that an airline company could almost fill up a hotel with stranded passengers.

But at any rate, I'm back home now, time to listen to a crying baby some more.

Sharepoint, new job, etc...

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 07:49:00 GMT

Sorry haven't been posting much, new job taking up good chunk of my time at present. However I've been learning quite a bit now on Sharepoint, in particular workflows as I start to learn how to use K2 while working for Inobits. It'll be a bit with all that I have to learn. However K2 makes life pathetically easy in the workflow world, look out people who build Workflow like software...

A final tribute to Hillary

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 17:56:00 GMT

Once again time to get political.

Well Hillary you've fought the good fight vs. Obama and really did a number. I promise though, I won't forget you in 2012/16 if you're there. Just take it easy and enjoy life for the next 4-8 years. Good night and good luck!

Ebooks...

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 11:32:00 GMT

Ebooks, the greatest thing since, well the book right!

Well one little problem I've encountered in my Ebook reading days, there are no Ebooks!

Ok Amazon brags 125,000 books for their Kindle device as I write this. But it's never anything I want to read, no "geek books" such as Programming topics, application topics, etc. Some of those "Funny Books" like the Dilbert collections? Forget it...

Publishers need to make some serious effort to get Ebooks going if I'm buying into this...

New Certification Direction...

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:15:00 GMT

Ok I've decided to go the MCPD route first in my certification studies, granted it's stuff that I know and practice on a daily basis. Next up I'm picking up one or 2 Sharepoint Certifications, and then I have the Microsoft Architect program in mind ultimately. So cool, so nice :-D

Also you may have noticed my new Amazon widget, no shame in trying to make a few bucks off of my site (like the Google Ads weren't), and besides those books are hand picked to be some of the best out there, must have reading material. I might try a few more Amazon banners, etc. as time goes on. We shall see... besides Amazon.com ranks as one of the e-commerce companies I truly admire, truly the finest example of a no-hassle easy way to get what you want to read...

Anyways, take care y'all...

More Changes

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 10:26:00 GMT

Ok I consolidated all the links on the right hand side into a web user control which makes things far easier and more liberating than using a Master page, which was a wrong idea for this site from the get go.

Also I added a new Amazon banner, if it's too cluttered with sponsorships let me know :-)

Happy Fathers Day Everyone...

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 08:08:00 GMT

Oh jeez I'm a dad too...I'm going back to sleep :-)

Rant of the Day - UPS

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 19:40:00 GMT

Normally UPS and I are on good terms with each other, they ship me stuff I order, and I pay that shipping and handling charge at whatever E-Commerce site I ordered from. However this time around we went a little different...

My cats seem to love this stuff so I feed it to them on a regular basis. UPS is the main shipping source normally. This time around for my cat food order, UPS "attempts" to deliver three times, when I was at home during one of the times mentioned on their tracking site, and my wife was for the other 2. It's possible we didn't hear the UPS guy at our door, however no "sorry we missed you notice" or anything, is it possible they didn't even try?

So I now need to drive 20 minutes out of my way to the UPS center to pick up my cat food. Some convenience huh? Good work UPS.

Inexperience

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 19:22:00 GMT

This week's lesson learned, careful how you throw a newbie into the shark pit.

Long story short, got into a situation at work where my lack of experience in client meetups for this company showed and I got my tail handed to me so to speak. Never a pleasant feeling. I'm hoping the repercussions from this aren't far and wide but I think the situation is saveable still. I also remain optimistic that ultimately I'll pull through and one day be able to make a client want to buy our product so bad they'll be drooling :-p . But for now I'll have a beer and commiserate. C'est la vie.

Yet another accident

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:03:00 GMT

Yet another accident by my place has happened that I have borne witness too. Gave them my business card and everything and told them to contact me if they need anything.

Long story short I was waiting to make a left turn, guy opposite me making the other left turn perpendicular to me is either in a rush or ignorant of the fact that this intersection is a yield, and makes his left turn into the guy next to me going straight through the intersection.

Ok so the car accident is the fault of the guy making the left granted. However it's an interesting study in human behavior because the majority of the traffic lights in my neighborhood and on the street in question are left turn arrow intersections. Permitting a no yield left turn. Except for this one. So people used to making non-yield left turns make the left turn here and get themselves caught in a classic t-bone accident.

When does it become the city's problem? When should they get involved and consider installing a left turn arrow light? Thoughts anyone?

K2 and Kerberos

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:45:00 GMT

Spent most of the morning helping my boss out troubleshooting Kerberos authentications between Windows Services, got nowhere :-/ anybody good with Kerberos out there? Unfortunately I'm more of a MCSD than MCSE.

On the other side though, I'm getting really good with K2 now. K2 is just a phenomenal tool for rapidly and easily building workflows with zero to minimal code required. Need a workflow? Need a process in your organization updated for the 21st century? Give us a ring.

Confidence Inspiring

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 06:33:00 GMT

I use Scottrade for most of my investing cash. While they're not a bad brokerage, cheap and hassle free, every so often they amuse me with some antics. This is one of them.

Earlier I get an email from Scottrade with advertising a new Vorce/Velocity widget designed to make me a better trader in their ScottradeElite product. Plus they'll give me $100,000 in virtual cash to try it out. My thinking here is "cool, at least it's a way to test what I could do with 100 grand in the market with no risk."

So I log in, grab my 100k in virtual cash and begin to have fun. First order I place, by 2000 shares of American Express stock at approximately $40, draining 80k of my cash. Second order I place after gaining 20 cents on that trade is to sell and take my gain. Scottrade comes back, order refused, I don't own 2,000 shares of stock. Huh?

After repeated attempts to sell my virtual stock I give up. I log back in later to find my American Express shares gone and 80k in virtual cash gone as well. HUH?

Ok I understand it's a sim, but I can't help but think, if a sim is this bad with something as simple as a sell order, what's the live system like? Is that a fair question?

Remember one thing your systems you build always need to to is inspire and reassure, if one system is found defective, it may ask people about the whole organization. You can't be bug free, but to assign priority to one system over another in quality assurance is often a mistake. Those resources in QA should be divided equally at all times.

Happy Birthday..

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:04:00 GMT

To me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday to meeeeee, happy birthday to me :-)

Not bad, 30 years on this planet and counting...

More client meetings

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:26:00 GMT

Well yesterday I had my 2nd client meeting with Inobits, went a whole lot better than the first anyways :-) I think it's more or less my self-confidence now here at Inobits and "getting into the groove". The perception that one can do anything is far greater than the reality of the situation in that there's always a lot to learn.

Also once again we learn to "code for the next guy" as I always emphasize, as I had to spend 2 hours hunting and pecking through code to change simple URL's that were hard coded, ugggh if I were manager I would have insisted on soft coded URL's with external variables to change not reequiring a re-compile to do so. *sigh* then again I do have to remember that no code is perfect.

Netflix and Kludge

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:21:00 GMT

Ok so I'm a Netflix subscriber and a generally happy one at that. I have 2 Queue's and am debating opening up a third queue for my kid for all her kids stuff.

Of course my ambitions there were almost curtailed by the fact that Netflix was getting ready to ditch multiple queue's per account. Netflix sited the fact that it was difficult to maintain these queue's and admittedly it was a "kludge".

Now being in the IT world, I'm no stranger to kludged code. Where a major design change to an existing site is beaten over the head with a bat until it fits in the same block as the rest of your code. Approaches to kludge have typically ranged from:

Refactoring the code, re-architecthing the site and build that kludge in properly later.
(Netflix's first approach) Removing the kludge, making the rest of the code easier to deal with down the line.
Just living with it for now...

Refactoring carries the joy of fitting in the solution the right way, getting the design to a more perfect state and hopefully approaching a utopia with your code. Oh did I mention this is typically the costliest option?

Removing it carries the joy of getting rid of the kludge while work continues around it, but you lose feature sets. In this case it proved poison for Netflix when the public responded.

Just living with it ensures that while the feature remains that was kludged, the site will continue to get more burdensome to deal with as that kludge is worked around.

Is there an ideal solution to this? In consulting, I've typically advocated a "If it ain't broke don't fix it" approach. However I typically take a look at the cost of refactoring the kludge into a proper design, combined with any other major feature changes that are being thought of at the time, and do a cost-benefit analysis of a refactoring or leaving in place for now. At some point, it becomes more cost effective to refactor.

But to remove a feature in the name of progress? That's like cutting off your arm in hopes of making your running speed faster. Sure it lightens the weight you have to run with but...

Long story short, I hope Netflix learned from this. My personal view when that news came out was that it would have been pointless to continue to have an account with Netflix as (ironically) kludgy it would have been to maintain one queue for three people.

Oooh....

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 09:37:00 GMT

Amazon I do love you sometimes. Earlier I wrote a piece complaining about the lack of books for Kindle, however now I notice that 2 of the books (VB 3.5 and Sharepoint reference) are now available in Kindle formats. I may have to splurge on that $359 after all for one of those things.

Coding Standards...

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 16:04:00 GMT

Today's interesting article on Slashdot Coding Standards and as usual I shall weigh in with the "why care so much?"

Well ok, some neatness in code is preferred, any tab standard is better than none. However in my readings of code, I've never cared, and sometimes ever even noticed whether or not a programmer is using a certain variable naming convention, tab standard, etc. As long as the code is neat and grouped, with variable names that tell the story, who really should care? I've seen many an organization drive themselves nuts trying to follow the lead programmers coding standard, wasting countless dollars of good coding time in hours, just to clean up and properly tab everything. Drives me insane. As long as the code is readable, just leave it at that already and don't worry more. Jeez...

A true calamity in IT

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:45:00 GMT

Perhaps some of you have been listening to the saga of Terry Childs, or if not Slashdot can get you up to speed, but long story short this is a true calamity of the worst of what can happen in IT when worst practices are followed, namely:

The lack of proper oversight by management on this administrator, who was noticing that he had so much power? Was so disgruntled, etc?
The fact that any one person can do so much in such a large network, surface area security anyone? No one set of username's/passwords should ever be allowed to reach that far...

Ok Terry Childs argument of "nobody else was as competent as me in this" is an interesting defense, granted the network held up very strongly for as long as it has. However, when I've said "code for the next guy" I've never meant it stronger than what this guy here has done. What if he got hit by a bus? Management needed to step in a lot earlier on this guy. Hopefully we've all learned.

Family tech support

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 08:52:00 GMT

Well as usual I head up to parents home, and am greeted with a litany of tech support issues on their computers. 4 issues to look at, 2 nailed and 2 will have to wait. Not that I mind much after all when I need an attorney my parents are always there too :-)

Though I've noticed over the years, the number of issues I'm called in on appears to be on the upswing. I'm not entirely certain if it's because the greater number of computers in the house (six years ago there were 2 computers at my parents home, now there's 4) or if it's the greater number of more complex software programs, viruses, spyware to wreak havoc. The job as a family tech support guy can be a tough one sometimes, but I shall keep attacking it, or maybe I should just start training others in the house as I am trained. Think my 3 month old daughter is ready to start learning computers yet, hehehe :-p

Today's rant, Video and Web Pages

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 09:09:00 GMT

These days it seems like more and more of the web is turning their content into video rather than typing it up like I do right now. Let me be the first to say I won't be joining that trend. Why? Because:

ADA Compliancy, Blind people can't see it, deaf people can't hear it. Braille readers do good with text and most deaf people can read.
Notwithstanding that, what if I'm in a quiet environment? I'm not hearing you anyway, at least offer closed captioning!
Older computers have issues with some video
Bandwidth issues, admittedly a small issue with high speed internet being in the picture.
How many different codecs must I have to watch video? Quicktime, DivX, .wmv, .avi etc... this gets annoying fast.
and on and on....

Long story short, have a text based option with a summary of what you got people. Thanks!

The best of times, the worst of times

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 06:33:00 GMT

Well I'm back from another business trip to San Jose. It's great to know I might have gained a client for my company. However not so great to know that another client was really annoyed that I couldn't devote my full attention to them at the same time and decided to walk on the contract.

I do wish I could have done more for them, unfortunately when I was running myself ragged until 10pm at night for the client I was in San Jose for, there was just nothing left to keep running until midnight.

This is becoming a tough problem to deal with in IT. The lack of skilled workforce in some specialties is something to note. The other problem with this client was my Sharepoint knowledge is somewhat limited and we couldn't find any expert, despite everyone's searches to help out full time at anything approacing a reasonable rate ($200+ hr anyone?). Hence overbooking everyone who may have even heard of Sharepoint.

However our new client is someone I'm more passionate about anyways. More exciting people, a little more energy at the company. I look forward to further dealings with them, I hope.

Tech tip for the Day, VMWare USB and Blue Screens

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:09:00 GMT

When running a VMWare machine off your USB drive (or any part thereof, a virtual HD, etc.) disable the USB controller in the virtual machine within. Or use as little else USB related as possible. I had my USB hub plugged in with a few devices and got repetititve blue screens until I disabled it. Just a helpful tip...

And Now Alaska

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 20:42:00 GMT

Well greetings from Alaska, where I work now for another client for my company. Interesting project upgrading from K2 2003 to Blackpearl. Intelligent bunch of developers and passionate people reign here as well. For those of you who don't know either, Alaska is one beautiful place. Pics don't do it justice.

Of course the one thing to get used to are the lobsided daylight hours, sun setting at 10pm? Ugggh...

Overall I'm lovin' this job, but it does keep me farther from home than I like, I do miss the wife and kid... :-(

And back again!

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 15:10:00 GMT

Well I got a weekend reprieve, but I'll be back in Anchorage first thing Monday again. Between setup difficulties involving Microsoft and K2 (imagine: a License key on a product that changes every time a different user logs in, I'm still wondering why)...

This gets rough when trying to have a family. However I take some solace that others have it worse than me, such as those troops in Iraq/Afghanistan these days. It could be a lot worse...

So Very Tired...

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 19:43:00 GMT

So very tired from my trip to Alaska. Was attempting to migrate a Server from K2 2003 to K2 Blackpearl and having limited success though we're finally turning a corner. Pretty soon we'll have a good procedure in place to help minimize the issues we've faced altogether. Anyone out there need a migration done?

In the meantime you'll find me self medicating myself on beer and pizza, and lamenting enough about my frustrations in air travel you'll see a new website from me soon on the general theme ;-)

Money saving tip for the day?

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:00:00 GMT

Ok so your wife has just given birth, and you're a geek trying to break even vs. the cost of everything (true story!), you're asking yourself "what's the best way to save a few bucks long term". You, want my best tip ever?

If you're a software developer at least, my tip is this Hire a maid.

What is your response, those things cost $75/day!

I know, but think about it, a maid gets done in 2 hours what takes you 4 hours. So if you bill your time out to maid service, assuming an average developer takes in $50/hr, you're billing yourself out at $200 for vacuuming. Why not just buy a new vacuum every time you vacuum?

So what are you going to do with your newly found 4 hours? Not play games I hope, think...

If you have any clients you're working for, bill hours to them, they'd appreciate the time spent
No clients? Good, study for another certification exam which will expand your billing potential.
Got a great idea you want to build a website around? Not a bad idea either but now the maid is more of a controlled risk :-)

Well you ask "my cleaning standards are low, why not just put up with a dirty place?" Most people appreciate their house as something more than a health hazard and most of the female gender appreciates their place liveable. So keep the woman(en) in your life happy, and do nothing but spend some pocket cash while freeing up 4 hours for your web development time, best of everything!

Need a maid? These people have done a pretty good job for me. No they're not paying for this promotion :-)