October 2007 - Posts

Wednesday, October 31, 2007 11:37 PM

Unit Testing and Decisions on BAD Data

I was having a conversation with a friend about their particular predicament and how they got fussed at for taking time, after being directed to, to write unit tests for someone else's code.  Not only had this individual been directed to do these
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Tuesday, October 30, 2007 5:03 PM

Learned, Relearned, and Learned Again, Agile Like

I have to admit, it is pleasant to "relearn" something versus trying to learn it the first time.  The images, explanations, and past learning pour back into my memory.  The memories and experiences are almost always good, the times fun, and
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Monday, October 29, 2007 5:16 PM

Pond's Laws of System Design (A.K.A. Something to Ponder)

In my eternal effort to keep up with everything, or at least the things related to what I do...  I found an excellent law of system design list by Mr Ward Pond over on his blog.  I always find lists interesting, as statistics show almost everyone
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Friday, October 26, 2007 10:47 AM

Oh my freaking !@#!

I just spent multiple minutes on the phone with Chase Cardholder Services attempting to find out the bloody freaking zip code to send a stupid payment to.  You would think that would be easy. I couldn't find it on the site, I'm sure it is buried
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Wednesday, October 24, 2007 10:28 PM

Business Intelligence Observations

As I sit through the second day of training I can't help but think back upon my previous experiences with OLAP and BI.  My thoughts run back to some other times doing the same things, but it just wasn't initially called BI or OLAP, simply reports for
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Tuesday, October 23, 2007 4:03 PM

BI/OLAP Training Day #1

Yesterday I attended Maxamine Training as part of my initiation at WebTrends.  Maxamine is a web site scanner for finding tags, JavaScript, and other assorted objects within a web application/site.  The application tool and software is a client application
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Monday, October 22, 2007 1:40 PM

The Guru(s) of MDX, OLAP, and SQL Server Analysis Services

While ramping back up for heavy duty OLAP & BI work there where a few names that kept popping up.  These are definitely the heavy hitters in the field.  For my (and you fellow reader's) future reference. The first person is Mosha Pasumansky.  He is the
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Friday, October 19, 2007 4:43 PM

Web Analytics Grasped, Week One Wrap Up

Web analytics are derived in two primary ways, so far (more on this later), JavaScript tags and web server log files.  This is pretty much the universal way that web statistics are collected.  There are dozens of books out there that cover this
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Thursday, October 18, 2007 12:31 PM

Silverlight, Popfly, ComponentOne Controls - The Web Just Got 10x More Capable!

Awesome stuff coming down the pipe from Microsoft!  Silverlight has been released as 1.0 for a little while now.  But just today I noticed Popfly has officially been released to beta!!!  Rock! I'm super exited about the features and capabilities
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Wednesday, October 17, 2007 3:40 PM

Web Analytics

It is day #3 at the new position and I've learned a TON about the Web Analytics field so far.  I've also learned a ton about the WebTrends product and still have a lot more to cover.  Since my 3 readers might not have a huge understanding
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Tuesday, October 16, 2007 10:40 AM

First Days at WebTrends

Day two is in full swing at this time.  I've been reading documentation, getting lined up on the training schedule for multiple classes, and oriented to my new business home and fellow coworkers.  Everything has been top notch. When I arrived
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Tuesday, October 16, 2007 7:35 AM

Sprint PCS Phones! Argh!?

I don't usually make entires like this, but blast it to hell.  My Sprint PCS Phone just now received messages I got 4 DAYS AGO!! This is the 4th time in 7 years of service that this has happened to me, but I still see no reason for it.  Has
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Saturday, October 13, 2007 1:09 PM

Thinker, a Real Thinker

Yo!  I made a gross error of neglect in my moving on entry! Ryan B. - thanks for giving me some serious ideas on book purchases, a very interesting "other section" at Powerll's, and for being an all around kick ass programmer!  I hope to run
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Saturday, October 13, 2007 1:06 PM

Powell's Recycles :: Books

I decided on my first official day 100% back in Portland I was going to finally get my "office" setup over in the south east side of town.  In doing so Joleen and I spent about 4 hours getting things cleared up and trash tossed, and I started stacking
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Thursday, October 11, 2007 2:13 PM

Moving Along...

I have been working for Centerstance almost a year and 4 months and made a lot of good friends.  It has been a great ride and I've learned a lot, and forgotten a lot (not really), had tons of great beers (Vodkas, Wines, tasting sessions etc.) with
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Wednesday, October 10, 2007 7:41 AM

Robert'); DROP TABLE Students;--

If you see the above, READ THIS!  Once again KXCD makes it to my blog.  Absolutely hilarious!  (Linked below for the lazy clicker)  
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Wednesday, October 10, 2007 6:17 AM

Mid-Way, In My Last Week, a Bit of Pondering

On the train again, 6:07am, 2 minutes before the doors close, 3 minutes before departure.  These last few weeks have been really nice in the sense of the commute.  I've been taking the Sounder back and forth in the morning and afternoon. 
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Friday, October 05, 2007 5:00 PM

Specialization Part II - A Short Declaration!

I feel like I've gone blog entry crazy today.  I've just had a few of these entries all queued up and ready to go, just not 100% baked and ready to publish. Recently I made a blog entry about specialization.  Actually it was a few weeks ago. 
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Friday, October 05, 2007 3:01 PM

Can't Interrupt Coding, But This is A Good Article

Here I am sitting at work, typing away at some code, and I took a short break to quickly read a blog entry, "Confessions of a Terrible Programmer".  After checking out these confessions of a terrible programmer I was reading through the comments. 
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Friday, October 05, 2007 10:52 AM

Smashed a Laptop?

I've been carrying my gigantic 17" Inspiron 1720 around in a messenger bag lately.  The bag is alright, it serves the purpose of carrying the laptop, but not much beyond just the laptop.  It doesn't offer a whole ton of protection either. 
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Friday, October 05, 2007 9:08 AM

3rd Party Support for Vista Sucks!

Still, after all these months, Vista support form 3rd parties is lacking.  It is really annoying and not limiting, but eliminating opportunity for 3rd parties.  One of the things that really has irked me lately is the Juniper Your Net VPN client
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Tuesday, October 02, 2007 9:04 PM

WebTrends Here I Come!

I've officially signed the paperwork this morning!  I can now announce that I will be joining WebTrends in downtown Portland on October the 15th!  I'll be working as a business intelligence analyst and looking forward to working on their various
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Tuesday, October 02, 2007 6:22 AM

.netTiers Code Generation

A tip for code generation.  When reading through various patterns based development books, working on my current gig, and just trying to make code more readable without adding too much headache, I've stumbled on a few tips. Name those entities! 
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