Sent from my iPhone Paul Continue reading

To be fair, those are great beer commercials. Continue reading

Nike plus commercial from last year. I'm a huge fan of Nike plus and the challenges. Join the challenge, and add your miles to your team's numbers. The men vs. women challenge, however, is a tad out balanced this year.... Continue reading

Article link via: marketplace.publicradio.org It's a great article. And if you read it, check out the comments. Frustrated comments mentioned trouble finding the call center tips. See if you can find the link. And if you want to improve your... Continue reading

Three years ago I switched over from certified Microsoft guy to mac fan boy. (Stop laughing, David!) I like this student project which shows a company I read the final rites for 10 years ago to the brand that can... Continue reading

I'm running late on my mid-life crisis. Still, people point to my gadgets and claim I'm on the installment plan. But, know this: 1. I will never buy a large sports car. I will always drive a small hybrid. And... Continue reading

I mostly use Cache Objectscript at work. I've been begging the company to send me for a 5 day course to help me master this code. Most of the senior programmers I've worked with have taken it. And right now, said company is mentioning budget cuts and won't help me here. Now I'm lobbying for more local...er general training in object oriented help. It's cheaper. And I might be able to get something there. Still, one suggestion from my Jedi masters at work is to create something I'm interested and just play with the code. I agree with him that... Continue reading

"Waiting for activation" This may take some time. These words will prevent my loved one from calling me and visa-versa. But I never use the phone part that much. Still, I've got to do better in that area. I promise... Continue reading

I've come to terms with this one. Oddly though, my title is System Analyst/Programmer. It's really a developer. Google is full of interesting discussions on this one. I'm not a code smith yet. But I'm getting closer. Still I can't help but wonder if it's something like a "used car" vs. "previously owned" argument. Developer sounds more like a guy at a photo lab. They sound friendlier than programmer. Programmer could mean one has to approach employee with caution. Often with baked goods. A developer is something a project manager can sink their teeth into. Another minion to ruin a... Continue reading

Sorry, I was just held up in travel limbo. I was snowed in when I traveled to Long Island back when I started this post. Back in February. Something bad happened. Everything went dark and cloudy, maybe stormy too. I... Continue reading

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com Happy Pi Day! Pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. But why is Pi Day celebrated...... Continue reading

When I was fourteen, I wrote space-invader games in BASIC on a VIC-20. If you were interested in computers back in 1982, I bet you did the same. When I was 18, I wrote multi-user dungeons in C on serial... Continue reading

Sometimes the projects I work on take a life their own. They do keep to the exact definition of a what was asked of me. I'm not talking about losing the control. If you have a spec document to write a random lottery generator, I would not show up with a tip calculator. No, I mean taking the effort to make things unique. The programmers I admire are the ones who offer little surprises in the buttons or menus that add value. My favorite example of this is the Zen Word processing program called Omnwriter. It blanks out the screen... Continue reading

Computerworld: Pa. school district denies spying on students with MacBooks Developers created the software to quietly snap the student photos in the name of security. In Corporate culture, a company owns everything on a computer provided and its network. In addition, you are forbidden for security reasons, to add your own machine to the network to give one a sense of privacy. There are good reasons for this. I would not want my country's nuclear weapon secrets on a private laptop finding its way on eBay. The PA laptops were owned by the school. The schools have the right to... Continue reading

Toy construction set company Lego Group plans to launch an MMOG (massively multiplayer online game) in the second half of this year, to be called Lego Universe, said Mark Hansen, director of business development and LEGO lead for the project.... Continue reading

When trying to learn something new, sometimes it's necessary to get away from the home. One of the deals I worked out with my wife in order to get quiet, uninterrupted studying time is escapism. There's a few days in a week I have to run away and not be home. This means I try to find places open really late with free wi-fi, if possible. So far that has been Starbucks and my local library. The library is perfect. But 30 minutes before they close, they feel the need to remind me 8 times (Sadly, not an exaggeration.) that... Continue reading

Well, all right. I'm be working in New Jersey for most of the time I'm there. But I did take a little bit of extra time on the weekend to say hello to anyone in the area that my rental... Continue reading

(Sorry, I thought this went up days ago...) Learning a new skill or talent is never easy. That's why when you get some offered help, it's a good idea to take it. The hard part is swallowing one's pride to take on something new. When there are people there to help, take up their time as much as possible. But when I first started, I wasted too much time trying to go through books, online searches, and other sources. I took too much time and it cost me in my energy level and incomplete projects. I used to think it... Continue reading

Snow Angel? Continue reading

I finished section 2 in my programming book. Again, it's not like the others. The last lesson detailed how he creates a program "recipe" complete with a plan and a test to complete before the code is done. I also got hit with something I call "worry fatigue." There are some parts when I slog through and I think to myself, "I know this - can I please skip this part." But I got caught with missing some points I really should have worked on. So, this is the biggest difficulty - trying to completing unreasonably timed goals. There's no... Continue reading

Truth be told - I'm not as green as the first post led people to believe. I've been a professional programmer for a year and a half. What I'm concentrating on is being a DAMN GOOD coder. I'm not there yet. But I've been overwhelmed by the amount of support I've seen in the comments. Thank you! The 10,000 hour rule I learned in the book Outliers. (Forgive me, world, but Malcolm Gladwell so looks like Side Show Bob.) Currently, I code in Cache ObjectScript for work. I really like it. I've also dabbled in C++, java, and visual basic.... Continue reading