Random Thoughts
Men’s Room Etiquette – The “No Zone”
Jan 20th
This post has nothing to do with technology.
I’m not sure that anyone has ever posted any “rules” for men’s restrooms but there are some unspoken ones that most guys just figure out. Sometimes, though, there is a need to set some ground rules.
Toilets that flush automatically solved a major problem in men’s rooms everywhere. But today we’ll talk about the “No Zone”. The “No Zone” defines an area in which guys should refrain from preparing to preparatory acts such as, but not limited to, unbuckling belts, unzipping pants, and other such actions.
Rather than trying to explain with text, consider this common bathroom setup (which I created in Paint.NET — about as technology related as I can get). The red area defines the “No Zone” and you’ll see that it extends from the doors, past the sinks, to the divided stall areas. Yellow indicates the awkward area, and green is where said preparatory acts are acceptable.
Changing with the Seasons
Sep 26th
There are big changes happening amidst a very busy time in my career. Firstly, I have accepted an opportunity to join Daugherty Business Solutions as a consultant. This is a big change for me as I am leaving the public sector where I’ve been for the last 10 years. I’m really looking forward to getting experience working with different technology stacks like Java and Business Intelligence and working with some great people. I’ll be joining one of my musically talented former co-workers as well and am looking forward to that (and hopefully she gets her album on the Zune Music store soon!).
The last several weeks have been a combination of interviews, pre-employment paperwork, and the deployment of one of the largest efforts I have been a part of in my career. Not all of it has been roses and there have been some really long days in there, and I’m learning a lot, and all of it will slowly get distilled down to some lessons that I will share as time goes on.
I have about 2 weeks at my current job and then I will be looking forward to about 10 days of being technically “unemployed”. Hopefully during that time I can finish some of the thoughts that have been swimming my head for the last several months. So, I realize this note isn’t entirely technical but this is what’s on my mind and will be for the next few weeks.
Until next time, here’s where you’ll see me around the community:
STL .NET User Group – Monday Sept 28 @ Microsoft STL. Wear your STLDODN 2009 Polo and have a chance to win prizes (first come first serve)! Our top-rated speaker from STLDODN 2009, Muljadi Budiman will be showing you what’s coming in VSTS 2010.
NIEM National Training Event – Join us in Baltimore, MD Sept 30-Oct 2 where you can catch me for back-to-back presentations on NIEM and .NET, and SOA and NIEM (aka Service-Oriented, Event-Driven).
Coders 4 Charities – Based on the very successful C4C in Kansas City, join us for a community event hosted at CAIT in Clayton, MO on Oct 16-18 where we will spend a weekend developing solutions for local charitable organizations that need IT help. Sign up to volunteer and put your skills to work for the community!
Instant Messaging, Conversations, and Jobs: Tuesday Goodies
Apr 28th
REJIS enabled instant messaging within our organization. This has been one of the more exciting developments as of late because I personally find IM to be a great way to have short conversations without needing to break away from what you are doing or take your headphones off to use the phone. E-mail is not a medium for conversations. Too often will people include multiple items in an E-mail and only a few actually get responses. With IM it’s hard to ignore someone asking you Can you do A, B, and C? IM is like the person is actually standing there asking you, except that it is on your screen and they can see if you start typing. You have to be pretty good at ignoring people in person to ignore IM. If you turn off and the person is smart enough, they will come to your desk anyway.
IM is not for everyone. Some people can’t handle another channel for communication. Personally, I could do most of my day-to-day tasks with IM, a few phone calls and in person meetings only when really necessary. Many of the projects I work on already have few, if any, in person meetings for the technical staff at the various partners. These are by no means small projects either. To coordinate testing we’ll often use IM rather than E-mail or keeping conference lines open. For me this means I have to use Google Talk on my Blackberry (because we do not allow other IM connections internally). Most of the conversations go something like: "Hey we sent you a document but our process timed out, what happened?"
"Let me look at it and I’ll let you know." (time lapse) "Looks like an error during an internal process, we’ll fix it and let you know."
"Ok, we’ll send another when you’re ready"
Any further details are handled in a phone call or E-mail. In terms of simple coordination you can’t beat IM as a medium for brokering this communication. IM is not for everyone or everything, but it’s darn handy to have.
Twitter has been another interesting medium for conversations and meeting people. Most recently, my post about CodeRush netted DevExpress as a follower on Twitter and connected me to some of their evangelists and other CodeRush enthusiasts. Similarly LinkedIn is proving valuable as I am making connections with some people in the justice industry that will be able to help us solve some problems on our technology transformation effort.
Although I haven’t been on much lately, I also game on Xbox Live with one of the managers at REJIS as well as peers from other partner organizations. I would be remiss to say that we never had a few post-mortem meetings while shooting zombies or blowing up terrorist camps.
While on the topic of conversations, not long ago I recorded an audio interview with Clint Edmonson on the challenges of applying SOA concepts. The interview is up on the Thirsty Developer site. Give it a listen and let me know what you think!
Lastly, REJIS needs developers. We have openings for .NET developers and as one of the lead developers I can tell you we need good people. REJIS is currently using .NET 3.5 SP1 including LINQ to XML, WCF, WPF and we’re using Microsoft’s Enterprise Library and Unity. The projects we work on are mission critical apps that service a variety of purposes for criminal justice agencies. There is no shortage of work and believe me when I say you’ll get very valuable experience with things you won’t work with at other places (yes, there are things we do that are not discussed here). Take a look and apply on-line. Please don’t send me your resume unless you are looking for some peer review…I don’t make the decisions 
My Software Development Meme
Sep 8th
I saw this meme floating around the development community and thought it was a fun one. Clint Edmonson has called me on it so I’m going to give it a shot.
How old were you when you started programming?
My first experience with programming was on the Atari XE. I was around 8 or 9 when my dad and I went through the manual and followed the line by line instructions to build a program that displayed an American flag waving in the wind. I learned a lot about the Basic language and it kind of stuck with me. I didn’t do much programming after that unless you count the magic of format C: in Dos 6. Most of my computer experience during my teens was on the fix broken ones side.
What languages have you used since you started programming?
I haven’t strayed far from languages who have a lineage with basic. In college I started as a Computer Science major but I did not like the prospect of intensive math. I was exposed to C++ there which I enjoyed but was looking at switching to Management Information Systems. If you’ve read my bio then you’ll know during those college years I had a battle with cancer a few times that took me on some interesting paths. When it all settled I went back for my MIS degree where I spent time with VB 6, VB.NET, and SQL. I’ve also touched on PHP, Java Script, and even Java (which I now respect a lot more than I did a few years back).
What was your first professional programming gig?
My first gig probably isn’t as interesting as the path that got me there. When I worked for Lewis & Clark Library System I started as a PC technician. Most of my IT background through college was working for Internet providers and a few LAN gaming centers. At LCLS they had a lot of IT needs and I had a lot of jobs I could do. I bounced from a traveling PC tech to a server admin, security guy, and also the web master. After getting through my battle with cancer I had an opportunity to choose a path. We wanted to make our web site dynamic so I dove right in and started with ASP (we had Microsoft servers) and MS Access database on the back end. From there my journey into development really took off. I became the full time web master and eventually changed the title to Internet Application Developer.
If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?
I would have started sooner and studied more languages. I’ve been pretty vertical in my language market and would have liked to have been more multilingual. I would have also studied object oriented a lot more thoroughly to fully understand the concepts that drive it.
If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?
Study development outside the context of a language if possible. I have been struggling to unhinge myself from language centric development into the broader realm of software design outside of a specific language. This is difficult to do when you’re grounded in a language.
What’s the most fun you’ve ever had … programming?
Those first experiences where you spend minutes or hours typing away and then tell the program to run and watch it work are the best. Once you get past that programming is still a lot of fun but the challenges change and so do the motivations. That feeling of watching it work is always there and I think that is the big draw for me. Programming is a lot like art. Prior to my development life I spent a lot of time writing and drawing. I don’t do as much of that with pen and paper, but I’d like to think of my development as an art form and it’s satisfying to see your work out in the field helping people do their job.
Who am I Calling Out?
The people I want to call out do not blog (that I know of). Which is too bad. I don’t want to end this meme but sadly I have to for now.
