tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-195042372012-02-10T21:34:49.500-04:00programming and working in softwaredelsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.comBlogger951100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-71415514490264476622012-01-29T22:18:00.000-04:002012-01-29T22:18:58.786-04:00

Years ago I read the story of Naveen Jain at InfoSpace. An interesting tale of that time. This is the sequence I found remarkable from January 2001. On January 10 Jain left InfoSpace. Then this ... word spread that Jain was looking at office space in the same Bellevue building to start his own wireless company. His business concept involved micropayment technology — using a cellphone, for

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-46432478718759478522011-12-19T21:12:00.000-04:002011-12-19T21:12:20.195-04:00

Everywhere I've ever worked the network has been Active Directory (AD).  Now AD is fine, it does some things very well. So a couple years ago at work they brought in MKS Integrity. There was training and the MKS consultant worked in something like "MKS is enterprise, you just log in as yourself using your regular AD credentials". At the time I thought, wow that's cool. It was to me unheard of

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-69485303093236062692011-11-28T21:34:00.000-04:002011-11-28T21:34:59.428-04:00

I've been with the development integration team for a little over a year now. The team had been around for a couple of years before I joined. A lot of the DI team's code is in scripts. And almost all of the scripts are in Perl. Now this was a change for me. I hadn't looked at Perl in years. I dabbled with it a bit back at Core Networks like over 10 years ago. The truth is somewhere around 2001 I

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-82973132327316003632011-11-27T15:30:00.001-04:002011-11-27T15:32:08.832-04:00

It's been a while since I've posted. I haven't forgotten about this site. I'm glad Google still knows about it and steers some visitors here. I still work in software and I haven't lost interest in programming and software development. I guess I ran out of things to write about. So what have I been up to the last year and a half or so? Around a year ago I joined a new team at work. I now work in

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-16046910138617827952010-03-22T20:13:00.000-03:002010-03-22T20:13:05.314-03:00

My long time favorite tech blogger Joel Spolsky of joelonsoftware has now signed off. It was a great site in its heyday. Thanks for the memories and great articles Joel! And the forums were great in their heyday, the hub for those programmers who "get it". Alas, like a great TV series the writers "ran out of things to talk about" and the last years weren't as good as the first. It was indeed

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-68153196490733815752010-03-02T21:54:00.000-04:002010-03-02T21:54:33.967-04:00

At work I've expressed interest in being involved in the recruiting process. As it happens we're thinking of bringing in a co-op student for the January work term. My team leader remembered I'd expressed interest in recruiting and asked if I wanted to attend the phone interview. I agreed and me and the lead manager went to a conference room to phone the candidate. He is not a local student. The

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-18314714710504268112009-08-24T23:25:00.004-03:002009-08-27T20:12:48.451-03:00

In recent months I've been working within scrum. It's been a learning experience for me. I hadn't worked in this type of environment before.An important aspect of scrum that has taken some getting used to is the self organizing aspect of it. Historically I've always been in a model where there is the team lead/project manager who hands out assignments to programmers, monitors progress, and then

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-71330880144268471882009-05-18T16:03:00.000-03:002009-05-18T16:59:06.337-03:00

Code review is an interesting subject. Software history is littered with companies that began doing code reviews with the best of intentions. Then somewhere along the way they became discouraged and just gave up on code reviews.Why does code review fail?That's a good question. Most people agree that code review is beneficial. It catches bugs very early when they are extremely inexpensive to fix.

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-59518268669674269302009-04-02T21:32:00.001-03:002009-04-03T21:13:30.079-03:00

I recently finished up reading another book about agile. This time it was Scrum and XP from the trenches.It was a pretty good book. Well written, an easy read. I liked it because it described real world experience using scrum over several years at a software company in Sweden. It's good because it shows that in practice there were some deviations from agile doctrine that worked for them.For

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-52846975030925460092009-03-27T21:40:00.002-03:002009-03-27T21:53:17.570-03:00

This week I was doing some stuff with some log files. In the logs there were some periodic logs that appeared every 30 seconds which was distracting and annoying.In UNIX this is of course swoosh, itstail -f logfile | grep -v pattern >> outfileAlas running on my Windows desktop Microsoft in its wisdom sees no need of such conveniences like tail and grep.So what to do? Of course, what I did back at

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-45564825975916844082009-03-09T22:25:00.000-03:002009-03-10T21:07:57.559-03:00

This is kind of a strange one if you think about the name. I mean, why would you want the software to be non functional?Of course we know what non functional requirements are. That is stuff that an end user or even tester cannot verify directly by using the system. Such as "all code is reviewed", "JSF will be used to generate the GUI web pages", "database access will be through stored procedures"

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-17359666517746311102009-02-18T22:23:00.000-04:002009-02-18T22:59:26.987-04:00

I recall back in fall 2001 back at Core Networks, shortly after I joined Core. We were kicking off a project for the next version of the CoreOS flagship product. The project lead mentioned that we were going to be doing some tweaks to the software development process for this project.At that time Andrew, one of the earliest Core Networks employees from the founding in 1998, had this comment. He

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-83006020363285081542009-01-06T19:28:00.001-04:002009-01-06T19:30:18.565-04:00

A little surprise to start off the work year. I guess while I was on vacation they gave some stuff to everyone for end of year. There was still some left so I went up to where HR had it and got mine.It was a soccer theme with company logo gear from umbro. There was a carry bag with a soccer ball to inflate, a ball cap, and a long sleeve soccer shirt. It looks fairly nice.In high tech the flow of

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-34219991429277946142008-12-07T12:54:00.000-04:002008-12-07T13:32:54.373-04:00

I just finished reading the book User Stories Applied. It was interesting. A co-worker lent me the book and suggested I read it. I can't remember the last time I read a work related book on my own. It's been a long time. I guess my interests outside of work are more, well, "interesting" than studying up further on what I do during the daytime to get paid.It's good for me to get more of a grasp on

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-691610428768224172008-11-21T21:17:00.001-04:002008-11-21T21:28:43.141-04:00

We put in some new printers a little while ago at the office. Usually that's nothing special. Stuff doesn't work for a couple of hours while they get the IP and printer name and such set up then business as usual.But it was a bit different this time. We now have colour printing in the office for the first time. And it's great. I like to print code and it's great being able to get the same

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-3860483509752127382008-09-09T21:34:00.003-03:002008-09-09T21:53:03.171-03:00

We're kind of in a middle phase of our current software project. In the last few weeks we've been focused on fixing as many defects as we can and getting it as stable as possible. Thus new feature work has been neglected a bit.So pretty much each day was come to work and knock off as many trouble tickets as we could. Now some might find this distressing, focusing on fixing things over new design.

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-41752940702493754172008-08-15T18:36:00.003-03:002008-08-15T19:00:03.601-03:00

I've been doing some JSP work the last few months. We use struts. It's not too bad I've found.One thing struts does pretty well is supporting translation to different languages through the use of keys [aka tokens] into a properties file. This generally works well for the programmer and we generally don't have to worry a whole lot about translation of the user interface screens to different

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-40064258376210212012008-07-14T20:50:00.002-03:002008-07-14T21:07:17.106-03:00

Technical debt is an interesting term we seem to hear a bit more lately.I think anyone with experience in software development knows instinctively at least what it is. It's good that people are finally attaching a label to it. It's an important start.Sometimes a team will seem to make incredible progress on early releases of some product, then may seem to slow down later. There can be a number of

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-42818731637875061942008-06-29T12:00:00.003-03:002008-06-29T12:40:39.234-03:00

I kind of discovered this by accident. I was going through a manual multi step process to convert some numeric IP addresses in the database to a text dotted quad format, for input into a command line load testing script. I was finding it tedious.The thing is I had SQL functions available to convert numeric to dotted quad and dotted quad to numeric IP addresses. In the database device table we

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-2509853122976630432008-06-12T21:59:00.002-03:002008-06-12T22:26:37.019-03:00

I've spent the last couple of weeks doing something that I'd avoided for the last four years. I developed some Web pages in Java using Struts and JSP.You have to know the history on it. Back at Core Networks in 2004 there was this core of around 5 Java developers who had been with the company for a little over a year on a next generation product. Additionally there were around 12 existing pre

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-88752681024997949092008-05-24T20:15:00.002-03:002008-05-24T20:45:35.805-03:00

A while ago we came across a puzzling problem. We had a situation at a customer site where under some seemingly random circumstances some database records were not getting cleaned up as they should.It was hard to reproduce the problem either on the customer side or in our own test sites. After some investigation we realized the problem. We had two tables, which I'll call "site" and "site_control"

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-9177715855021957212008-05-02T19:40:00.000-03:002008-05-02T19:42:36.380-03:00

A little while back I had to create a PDF version of an install guide for a maintenance patch release I was putting together.I hadn't generated a PDF before. Historically the tech writers just took care of it in some mysterious process. Due to some company reorganization it now fell to the developer who was creating the code patch to also put together the PDF patch install guide.The document was

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-84988641054128666522008-04-16T23:16:00.007-03:002008-04-17T08:45:39.219-03:00

I'm doing something that many people in high tech do. I'm leaving my job to join a new company. I've been with SupportSoft and its acquired predecessor Core Networks since 2001. I'm joining Research In Motion later this month.For me a job switch is a big move. I've only done one before, going from xwave to Core Networks in 2001 after 3 years at xwave and its acquired predecessor PRIOR Data

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-82129657085408617042008-04-05T15:17:00.000-03:002008-04-05T14:49:49.606-03:00

Somewhat quietly the Java JDK GUI has improved. Especially since Java 5.I'd kind of given up on swing over the years. Everyone has bad memories of traditional Java GUIs. Battleship gray, clunky. Control-C didn't work on Windows, instead it used Unix semantics like Control-Insert for copy and paste. Select a piece of text and right click the mouse. Nothing happens.If there was one thing which made

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-58261440388110548232008-03-18T22:24:00.001-03:002008-03-18T22:02:11.204-03:00

Social networks are interesting. They represent the evolution of the computer and network.First there were PCs. Then came local networks with printer and file sharing and e-mail. Originally the networks were to extend the capabilities of the PC. They were originally called "computer networks", i.e. computers linked together. This changed over time and the network became more important. Instead of

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-15097772745585952792008-03-02T21:40:00.002-04:002008-03-02T21:53:33.208-04:00

I've been assigned to do performance testing for an upcoming application release. We made some architectural and database changes so we want to be sure our hardware estimation process is still valid. Also we want to try it out on the newer Sun T Series servers.Along with measuring performance I can identify areas for performance improvement and optimize where possible.Application performance is a

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-16359730270727864752008-02-20T22:29:00.001-04:002008-02-20T22:28:48.897-04:00

I just got my ComputerWorld Canada last week. It seems like it's been a while since the previous one. I noticed they have gotten thinner the last few months.I think January 2008 is the slimmest I've seen. It was only 18 pages. While the content is still good, the seeming gaps between issues and the slimming is a concern. I wonder if they will cease publication soon.It would be too bad if that

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-91117299203280812482008-02-07T20:30:00.000-04:002008-02-07T20:27:58.624-04:00

It's definitely true that the cost of dealing with software bugs that make it into the field is orders of magnitude larger than finding and fixing them pre production.After our recent reorg I'm now responsible for maintenance on earlier releases of the flagship product out of our office. On Monday I got a trouble ticket about a customer who was experiencing problems after upgrading between minor

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-61021481716459077562008-01-27T23:00:00.000-04:002008-01-27T22:59:25.245-04:00

We've been measuring how our server software performs on Sun T series servers against the older V series.The results with the T series have been very encouraging. For comparable servers the T series performance is around double the throughput of the V series. We're very pleased with this. This is good news because comparable T series cost less than V series and power consumption is lower. With

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-63876513473079941262008-01-11T23:30:00.000-04:002008-01-11T23:40:36.809-04:00

I bought a domain name from Yahoo domains recently. It was for a site I was helping my son set up. It's a basic setup. It just uses Blogger to post content. It's working out OK so far.I didn't realize that you can just buy a domain name from within Blogger now so knowing that I might have done things differently. Still Yahoo domains has a good user interface and it was interesting and not

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-40310018355242142852007-12-19T10:20:00.000-04:002007-12-19T10:31:44.339-04:00

Here's a couple of links around the 25th anniversary of the Commodore 64 [1], [2].I started out programming on the Commodore in junior high school in the early 80s. Those were the best times to be into computers and programming. The Commodore 64 was a great machine with sprite graphics, sound, and 38911 Basic Bytes free.I had the Commodore dot matrix printer and easy script word processor that my

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-35507162686586362992007-12-03T17:59:00.000-04:002007-12-03T18:43:20.211-04:00

We recently missed our quarterly targets and had to preannounce. As often happens after a miss there was a round of downsizing. I'm fortunate and happy that I got through it OK.This round was different than other RIFs with this company and other companies I've worked for. The timing was such that the downsizing was done in the late stages of a big development project. As a result the affected

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-87533182552593310492007-11-08T20:33:00.000-04:002007-11-08T20:51:17.080-04:00

In this product release I spent a good bit of time implementing quite a few reports. Our product has a reporting engine and the report content can in theory at least be created by anyone. For the out of the box reports "anyone" turns out to be the programmers on the software development team.Most software products to some extent at least allow individuals other than the original programmers to

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-48536514607610832812007-11-07T17:43:00.000-04:002007-11-07T18:31:07.673-04:00

This is a very handy utility for just moving text between applications and cutting off the formatting cruft that messes things up. When I'm copying a number from Word into Excel or code from Eclipse to Outlook I almost always just want the text. The formatting from the originating application is no use in the target application. Before I had to use tedious options such as paste special or do the

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-89761715082584618632007-10-26T14:14:00.000-03:002007-10-26T14:15:49.798-03:00

I've been working on report definitions lately. The work involves writing various database queries which are the data source that feed the reports.One of our requirements is that the reports are to be able to run on an Oracle or SQL Server database. So I'm keen to use common SQL that will work on both DB platforms as much as possible in order to avoid having to maintain separate Oracle and SQL

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-65308513673838136162007-09-01T16:39:00.000-03:002007-09-01T16:53:56.889-03:00

I've done a good bit of Servlet development over the last couple of years. I've generally found Servlet to be pretty good to work with. I feel Servlet is about the best part of J2EE.The thing about Servlet was that when it came out in the late 1990s it had to compete for market share and developer mind share. They had to convince people to start using it. So Servlet does things that are developer

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-91069887471007120072007-08-26T12:19:00.000-03:002007-08-26T12:38:42.200-03:00

I clicked over to this site to start a post and I'm greeted by this.Sorry about the small image. In summary Blogger thought this is a spam blog. I wasn't allowed to make new posts and had to click on the link to get them to review the blog to get off the spam blacklist.I clicked the link then Blogger reviewed me and of course said I'm OK in this e-mail.from: Blogger Help to: "cbmc64@gmail.com {U

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-561733500647254572007-08-01T22:00:00.000-03:002007-08-01T22:03:04.918-03:00

It's remarkable how much stuff can be added to a product without adding any new end user features. Often an initial product release is tied to a specific sale to an individual customer. The customer has a specific environment and the development team is able to get the initial release done on time by building to just that setup.After the initial sale you want to sell it to additional customers.

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1937391901316103492007-07-03T21:51:00.000-03:002007-07-03T21:50:42.871-03:00

There are some standard desktop hardware technologies around that can maintain developer productivity in the event of common failures.A longstanding thing is desktop uninterruptible power system. Our office is in an industrial park. Power outages are a fact of life here. They occur during the day several times a year. A very basic desktop UPS for around $30 each gives the users 10 minutes backup

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-44077132557319616192007-06-02T16:26:00.000-03:002007-06-02T16:25:46.421-03:00

A little while ago I was at a house party. I got talking to a fellow who does creative work for marketing campaigns. I asked him if it's true that two thirds of the money spent on advertising is wasted. He agreed that it was.He said with advertising you can have it fast cheap or good, pick two. That rule applies in a lot of areas. I remember the first time I saw fast cheap good. It was a sign on

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-5110641176780324292007-05-04T19:08:00.000-03:002007-05-04T19:26:04.209-03:00

You may have heard the story of the monkeys and the cold water.http://www.mountainhome.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123027878http://www.eve-tribune.com/index.php?no=1_26&page=4I'm sure this happens in all industries, and it can happen a lot in high tech. What happens is that at some point there is some limitation, restriction, bug, inexperience, or lack of knowledge about some technology. So we start

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-15397621404006489352007-04-30T21:51:00.000-03:002007-04-30T22:14:25.660-03:00

This is an example for how to create an inline Java thread and launch it. The Thread Javadoc describes it in pieces and this is a complete example.import java.util.Date;public class InlineThreadDemo { public static void main(String[] args) { System.out.println( "parent thread " + new Date(System.currentTimeMillis())); // launch child thread using inline declaration

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-39324153595007850662007-04-04T21:49:00.000-03:002007-04-04T21:46:37.850-03:00

I got talking a little while ago with a smart guy at work. He's a veteran developer, doing it longer than I have. We have some similar views about how software should be built.Anyway we got talking about software quality and reliability, a favorite subject. Of course when the subject is reliability the discussion immediately goes to dial tone. That was kind of interesting, we don't talk about

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-52739658691696823162007-03-05T07:56:00.000-04:002007-03-05T08:01:22.664-04:00

I recently experienced something that many in high tech get to do. I cashed in some stock options. I often didn't think I'd ever get to. The first options I was granted were in 2001 with my previous employer. And it's only now that I saw anything from them.The company stock price unfortunately tumbled after they acquired my previous employer. When we joined we were granted options. We've also

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-8707459522240431122007-02-11T18:09:00.000-04:002007-01-23T16:08:05.691-04:00

A few years back with the company that my current employer acquired there was this big death march development project. The project was crucial to all the good things that happened later and everyone was on board with it.I was arriving for work at a crazy early time and working steadily through the day, leaving around regular end of day time.There was this other guy I noticed who arrived shortly

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1167786800421824642007-01-02T20:51:00.000-04:002007-01-02T21:13:20.830-04:00

As of today I've been working in high tech for 10 years now. I started full time at PRIOR Data Sciences back in January 1997. Wow, 10 years of this. I started full time right after my last exam in December in my Computer Science degree at the Technical University of Nova Scotia.While at TUNS, I did all of my three Co-Op work terms at PRIOR, and they asked me to come on full time after I graduated

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1165434428003571792006-12-06T18:05:00.000-04:002006-12-06T18:01:06.383-04:00

I work as a programmer for a small consultingware ISV. Since we're small, everyone has to be flexible and take on roles outside their primary area from time to time.Programmers tend to be higher up the skills chain than some others in an ISV. As a result we have the ability to be reassigned to a number of non-programming roles at the same skill level or lower. These tasks could include in no

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1165363509071941052006-12-05T19:51:00.000-04:002006-12-05T20:05:09.130-04:00

Normally I have little use for Internet Explorer, except at annoying sites that only work with IE. I switched to Firefox years ago and have never regretted it. Hello tabs!However a smart guy at work showed me a handy thing that IE is actually useful for. IE does a pretty good job of rendering raw XML. It shows it in a nicely formatted, color coded way where you can open and close the branches to

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1163041214877272382006-11-08T22:42:00.000-04:002006-11-08T23:00:14.903-04:00

So HP has had some negative publicity lately. What an idiot that board member was to make those leaks and cause all that trouble. That was good of Patricia to take one for the team.I still think well of Hewlett Packard. I've always thought well of HP. Back when I was in high school, they were considered a very prestigious company. They made the engineers calculators and the ultrasound machines

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1162134674882588402006-10-29T10:58:00.000-04:002006-11-08T22:40:53.010-04:00

Here's another update on my former colleague who has been looking for work in high tech. I heard from him this week. He gave me a heads up that I might be hearing from a company he has interviewed with. That was considerate and smart of him to tell me in advance who I might be hearing from.The company is a large, well known IT firm. I haven't heard from them yet. I kind of thought I would have

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1161551086504674442006-10-22T17:48:00.000-03:002006-10-22T18:04:46.516-03:00

I was getting some weird printing errors on the Dell laptop last week. Visual C++ runtime error, followed by program termination. That's weird, it was all working OK and nothing had been changed.I went to the printers console in the laptop, and it said stuff like spooler service not running on the main HP PC where the printer was shared from. Hmmm. I opened the printer in the HP. Indeed the share

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1160526495971835052006-10-10T21:15:00.000-03:002006-10-10T21:28:16.010-03:00

We're nearing the end of the testing cycle for a product release. There aren't any high priority bugs around so I was told to just grab some lower priority issues. Given a choice I decided to tackle some documentation that had become a little bit out of date.I find I've enjoyed doing the documentation. There's a certain Zen to documentation that makes it satisfying. Maybe it's because, like code,

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1159489880319603492006-09-28T21:49:00.000-03:002006-09-28T21:55:19.110-03:00

We now have a Dell laptop computer in addition to the HP Pavilion we already had. My wife will be using the laptop. She wanted to be able to print from the laptop to the hp deskjet 3650 using the wireless router.The laptop is connected to the Internet through a D-Link wireless router which works great. The D-Link included Network Magic which set up the home network. It also set up the printer as

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1158879592430704002006-09-21T19:58:00.000-03:002006-09-21T19:59:52.453-03:00

I didn't hear back anything from my former colleague's first interview. However I did hear from recruiters twice in the past week doing reference checks on him.The first one was from a large well known tech firm. The second was from a startup company.The woman from the large firm seemed to be looking for an overall feel for what my colleague was like. She asked me how long I'd known him; how long

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1158795058014857672006-09-20T20:30:00.000-03:002006-09-20T20:30:58.033-03:00

We're a small team, around a dozen developers and a handful of testers. Two or three times a year the developers have to temporarily join the test team to help complete a test cycle for a product release. Myself and around three other programmers have been with the test team the last week or so. Hopefully we'll be finished up by the end of this week.Testing is an interesting experience. I don't

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1154381619632732772006-08-05T13:10:00.000-03:002006-08-05T13:13:00.226-03:00

I former co-worker who got caught up in the recent RIF got in touch with me recently. Luckily for him he's already lined up a couple of interviews. Hopefully he'll be back working in high tech soon.He contacted me to ask if he could use me as a reference. I said OK. He's a pretty good guy. This is the first time someone asked me to be a reference. Maybe I'm getting somewhere in high tech after

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1154381464971957652006-08-01T19:14:00.000-03:002006-08-01T19:35:16.860-03:00

I e-mailed a former co-worker who got caught up in the RIF last week. I wanted to wish him well in his search for a new job. We'd worked together on a number of projects over the last five years. I was his team leader on projects for around 2 years. I sent him these tips that I had picked up over the years.* update your online resume on monster, workopolis, hotjobs, etc at least once a week. Many

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1154272325714847622006-07-30T19:51:00.000-03:002006-07-30T19:59:44.613-03:00

We downsized again recently, 10%, as part of the quarterly announcement. A few people in our office were affected. This included some good people who had made valuable contributions. Luckily for me I managed to survive this cut, like the previous layoffs. It's not real surprising just because tech companies rarely just do one round of layoffs. There's usually at least a second round. Hopefully

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1153664221792039972006-07-23T11:05:00.000-03:002006-07-23T11:21:23.850-03:00

I use Yahoo. I like it, it's pretty good. I've never given them any money directly but I've used their games, finance, e-mail (until I switched to GMail). I still use Yahoo as my start page. The recent changes in the personal Yahoo pages with the Ajax and moving the blocks around are really impressive. Very smooth and slick. Nice job Yahoo.Sometimes I find Yahoo comes across as deceptively simple

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1151167450325930482006-06-24T13:15:00.000-03:002006-06-24T13:44:10.490-03:00

I work for a consultingware ISV. That means we tend to sell to large companies. We have base products that we customize to the customer's requirements to do the deal. Pretty standard stuff.One thing I've noticed is that the overheads of what we do are very high. The amount spent on travel and lodging for each sale is a lot. Also for each sale made, an ISV also spends on deals that they bid on but

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1149042375260769582006-05-30T23:45:00.000-03:002006-05-31T22:16:47.900-03:00

The weekend started so well. Through a series of circumstances I went to see Evita at the Neptune Theatre. That was a very enjoyable show.I got home around 11 PM. I was going to do a quick login and check my e-mail and get to bed by 12.Unfortunately when I logged in the computer was in a bad state. The screen was covered in popups that kept appearing on their own. The popups were for stupid sites

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1147471034844666772006-05-18T19:46:00.000-03:002006-05-18T19:49:44.186-03:00

We were doing some performance analysis recently of our application. The application is distributed across a central J2EE AS component, with satellite nodes running under Tomcat connecting to the central J2EE server.We used JProbe to collect the baseline performance data and locate the hot spots. I have all positive to say about this product. I was focused on the Tomcat part, but the people who

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1146357351093390932006-05-10T17:26:00.000-03:002006-05-11T17:25:09.086-03:00

It's just so impressive what you can do remotely these days. The software is great and the CPUs and networks are now fast enough to make it work quite well. Here are a couple of examples.Sitting at my home on a weekend I get a call about a support issue.- from my home PC I connect to a VPN at the Halifax office- from the VPN I'm able to remote desktop to my work PC. The GUI and everything comes

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1146356547902069822006-05-03T20:27:00.000-03:002006-05-03T20:32:59.326-03:00

Remember when Java bragged about being "write once, run anywhere"? Well in EJB land that does not seem to apply.We did a port of a J2EE application to a new application server. We were able to finish it. I'd say that about 70% of the porting effort was spent on EJB. Around 15% was the GUI servlets. Around 15% was other stuff like documentation and the ant scripts and some J2SE clients.The servlet

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1145152734068833712006-04-15T22:32:00.000-03:002006-04-15T22:59:31.976-03:00

At work we were having some interop problems between our server and some DSL devices. I wanted to get some packet traces to see what was going across the wire in both directions.Needing some software for this, I Googled around a bit. There were some commercial products. Most of the commercial products were big elaborate network management suites. I just wanted to sniff some traffic between my PC

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1144622324292764942006-04-09T19:07:00.000-03:002006-04-09T19:38:44.326-03:00

We've hired a new CEO at work. Since I joined Core Networks in the summer of 2001, this is the fifth CEO I've had. We also preannounced this quarter. This is the third time in the last seven quarters we've preannounced. I don't think many people are expecting the new leader to just maintain the status quo.In the nine years I've been in software, there's been some interesting times. I've been

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1143323517148501092006-04-03T21:42:00.000-03:002006-04-03T21:58:43.086-03:00

I heard from a former coworker last week. She invited me to join her network on LinkedIn. It looked interesting and I respect her, so I joined. So now I'm LinkedIn, yay for me. My network only contains the one person, so I should try to increase it I guess. I'm not sure who I should ask to join. It would be a good time to try to find some of my old TUNS (now DalTech) fellow students and find out

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1141700886855710062006-03-06T23:00:00.000-04:002006-03-07T22:37:05.763-04:00

Here's a tip if you spend most of your work day working at a computer, like most programmers do. It is a lot faster to use the keyboard than the mouse. The mouse slows you down. You have to interrupt yourself to reach over and it is slow and imprecise to use. Then you have to interrupt yourself again to get back to the keyboard. You will be more productive if you learn the keyboard accelerator

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1140793912171663162006-02-24T11:08:00.000-04:002006-02-24T12:29:00.276-04:00

I've released another game that I wrote. Skateboarder NYC v1.0 is now available for download over on my free games site.It's freeware and the Python source code is available. Enjoy!

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1139280994300025902006-02-06T22:51:00.000-04:002006-02-06T22:56:34.300-04:00

Last week I pulled an all nighter at work. I hadn't done one since the death march project last year. A problem was found in some code that was to be used for an imminent customer demo. It turned out to be a newly discovered bug in the same troublesome code from the project last year. Fortunately I was able to find and fix the problem, and the demo went more smoothly. It was a long night. I was

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1136344232963838162006-01-03T22:44:00.000-04:002006-01-03T23:10:33.083-04:00

Recenty Research in Motion has announced they are coming to Nova Scotia, with 1200 tech support jobs. This is great news for the high tech industry here in Nova Scotia.I notice RIM has posted some Halifax jobs on Workopolis. I subscribe to Monster and Workopolis alerts, even though I'm not looking to switch jobs. I just like to know what's going on. People in tech seem to be pretty gossipy about

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1135795763326498982005-12-28T14:46:00.000-04:002005-12-28T14:49:23.340-04:00

I find typos in e-mail annoying. It’s a distraction that makes it hard to concentrate on the content of the message.Some people don’t care about e-mail typos. They either don’t notice them or don’t mind them. Perhaps the majority are this way. It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s the case.Should you care about typos in your e-mail? Perhaps you should, for a few reasons. While you may not mind typos

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1135386686142703052005-12-23T20:55:00.000-04:002005-12-23T21:17:27.500-04:00

I've been working in Java for around a year and a half now. One of the best things about Java is working with Eclipse. It is a very good product.When I started out, I found the product to be complex and intimidating. That's no surprise. While it has a good user interface, it's a powerful product with a number of concepts to grasp. Some people like to jump right in with new technology. For myself,

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1135137505243870962005-12-20T23:51:00.000-04:002005-12-20T23:58:25.256-04:00

Lately at work we've been emphasizing Javadoc more. I here's a couple of things that I noticed Eclipse will do to make it easier to create Javadoc.- if you type /** above a function then press Enter, then Eclipse will generate a Javadoc skeleton for that function- Eclipse will also auto format your Javadoc content after you type it in. Type in the content from the Javadoc skeleton. Then select

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1134002399301734042005-11-18T20:37:00.000-04:002005-12-07T20:45:52.840-04:00

My previous post about JUnit got me thinking some more about the subject.Traditionally in projects I've worked on the developers write both the code and the JUnit tests. The developer will write some code, then write tests for the code he just wrote. This means that a developer will spend a portion of a project schedule writing the code, and a part of the schedule writing the JUnit tests.I wonder

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1133979469498522922005-10-27T14:15:00.000-03:002007-11-01T22:45:11.014-03:00

Update August 2006, survived another one.---After a tough quarter, the expected layoff happened at the office. I'm glad that I was fortunate to survive this downsizing.I've never actually been downsized in high tech. That is something of a rarity in this business. I've managed to survive quite a few though. Here they are that I can remember.Date Company======== =======Jul 2000

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1133979204174164482005-09-22T14:11:00.000-03:002005-12-07T14:13:43.390-04:00

If you don't have this then get it. It's great. No more wasting time on interminable Outlook "advanced" searches or Windows explorer file searches. Although in win explorer I was able to turn off the stupid dog, I couldn't fix the rest of that horrid user interface, nor make it any faster. I was surprised this week at work to learn that quite a few people aren't using this.You can get it at http:

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1133905369954130682005-08-28T17:41:00.000-03:002005-12-06T17:42:49.973-04:00

Last night I went over to my neighbours house. He was at our house about a week ago, picking up his son who was visiting my 7 year old. Anyway he mentioned that he had saved some pictures from his digitial camera to his computer. He was trying to get them from his computer onto some blank CDs he'd bought but was having problems and getting errors. He'd heard that I know about computers and asked

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1133904850471971192005-08-24T17:31:00.000-03:002005-12-06T17:34:10.486-04:00

We're doing some stuff at work where we need to get the Base64 encoding of the SHA-1 hash of a password. Here's how to obtain it in Pythonimport sha1import base64print base64.encodestring(sha.new('password').digest())That's it. One line of code. No download of 3rd party. No worrying about licensing or purchasing something.Try it in C or Java. In Java the JDK sees fit to provide neither SHA-1 or

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1133821079303232392005-08-20T18:17:00.000-03:002005-12-05T18:17:59.306-04:00

I just wrapped up my part in a project which has now gone into testing. It went pretty well. I didn't do any JUnit stuff. I haven't done any JUnit in more than a year. I actually like JUnit. It's a good way to generate automated tests. It is pretty easy to learn and use. So if there was more time then I'd be motivated to use it.What should you do if there isn't quite enough time for JUnit? Don't

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1133820921307628292005-07-05T18:11:00.000-03:002005-12-05T18:15:21.330-04:00

This snippet describes how to write a Java Object to a database BLOB column, then read it back. The Java Object must be Serializable so that it can be represented as a byte array for either writing or reading.First, writing to a blob column. For this example, there is a table called blobtable. It contains a BLOB colunm called blobcolumn. The way to write it to the DB is to assign the Serializable

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1133748261160926962005-07-04T22:03:00.000-03:002005-12-04T22:06:32.086-04:00

I recently was working on an application that was Servlet based in Tomcat. That was pretty good. It was nice to be able to roam around the Java language and libraries and do stuff with threads and such.Before this most of my Java experience was EJB. I don't really like EJB. It seems annoying a lot of the time with its rules and restrictions. And it's so verbose and so much overhead getting things

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1133748126372438552005-06-14T22:00:00.000-03:002005-12-04T22:02:06.373-04:00

I like to read ComputerWorld Canada, especially since I get it for free. Every few weeks or so they have an article where they mention SAS. They always seem to have something good to say about them.Like this recent article about software quality where they use SAS as a positive example of a software company where quality is a priority. Go to ITWorldCanada, enter code 050562 in the quick link,

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1133712411533276422005-06-07T12:02:00.000-03:002005-12-04T21:59:40.976-04:00

This snippet is an Oracle PL/SQL function that returns the current timestamp in the UTC time zone. It takes advantage of the EXTRACT Oracle built in returning its result in UTC.FUNCTION getUTCDate RETURN DATEAS  utcYear NUMBER(4);  utcMonth NUMBER(2);  utcDay NUMBER(2);  utcHour NUMBER(2);  utcMinute NUMBER(2);  utcSecond NUMBER(2);  dateString VARCHAR2(30);  ts

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1133712006008888512005-06-06T11:59:00.000-03:002005-12-04T12:00:06.030-04:00

In the recent death march project, I was responsible a large block of inherited code. I don't mean inherited in the object oriented sense. I mean that the code was written by a different office and transferred to our office for use in the project. The intention was that by reusing the original code we could save time against building the module ourselves and help to meet the project schedule.We

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1133634770567846612005-06-02T14:31:00.000-03:002005-12-03T14:32:50.576-04:00

A former co-worker once described tech support from a large, well-known software vendor like this: "I found it was better to stand in front of a mirror and describe the problem to myself than to try to get help from XYZ support."Why is tech support generally bad? The problem may be that once people get to a point where they can be effective at it, then they are at a point where they can be better

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1133581282534532392005-05-31T23:40:00.000-03:002005-12-02T23:41:22.536-04:00

We're finally finishing up a real death march project. Several times over the two week crunch period, I along with several others had to pull all-nighters. It was an unfamiliar experience for me. A different life/career experience, but not something I want to start doing every quarter.One night I fixed a showstopper bug in some inherited code. More on that later. Anyway I was just on standby if

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1133581090154450672005-05-30T23:34:00.000-03:002005-12-02T23:38:10.163-04:00

This snippet is an Oracle PL/SQL function that will convert an IP address from dotted-quad format (like 66.102.15.100) to the corresponding numeric value. This can be useful in a table where an IP address is entered by the end user in the familiar dotted quad format and a trigger is used to keep the numeric value of the IP address in synch. For the application, just use a regular expression to

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1133556468906307652005-05-30T16:45:00.000-03:002005-12-02T16:48:32.833-04:00

This snippet is an Oracle PL/SQL function that will convert an IP address from numeric format to the corresponding dotted-quad string.FUNCTION numberToDottedQuad(dottedQuad IN NUMBER)RETURN VARCHAR2 AS    item NUMBER;    part1 VARCHAR2(3);    part2 VARCHAR2(3);    part3 VARCHAR2(3);    part4 VARCHAR2(3);    divisor NUMBER;BEGIN    item := dottedQuad;    divisor := 256*256*256;    part1 := TRUNC(

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1133494880581484172005-05-29T23:41:00.000-03:002005-12-02T12:31:08.713-04:00

I started programming in BASIC on the Commodore 64 back when I was in Jr. High. At the start I used the GOTO statement to control program flow.After a few months I was excited because I found out about this useful command called GOSUB. The GOSUB command allowed me to reuse blocks of code and the system would conveniently return control back to the calling point when the GOSUB block was done.Later

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1133494781554802062005-05-29T23:39:00.000-03:002005-12-02T12:30:34.946-04:00

The genX'ers may remember Bill Casey from the 80's. He was the CIA director for Ronald Reagan. Casey was involved in some way in the Iran Contra scandal. Unfortunately shortly after the scandal broke Casey died suddenly.After Casey's death, suddenly everyone was blaming Casey for everything about Iran contra. It was convenient to lay it on Casey. He was involved in it. And since he was dead he

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1133494684228495592005-05-26T23:37:00.000-03:002005-12-02T12:28:19.806-04:00

Where I work we use Java/J2EE with the "beans and screens" model. We use JSP/struts for the user interface, backed by business layer EJBs. The business layer EJBs are backed by a database abstraction layer. We don't use entity beans - regular business layer EJB is verbose and overhead enough, thank you. We do quick HTML mockups of the UI screens before formal JSP development begins.The beans and

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1133493801532067012005-05-05T23:22:00.000-03:002005-12-02T12:32:48.096-04:00

I just did a utility in Python where I took the content from a large table from a technical manual in Word and displayed it on a GUI in a tree view. I just exported the Word table to a delimited text file and the Python script parsed the text file and built up the content for the tree view. It was not too difficult. That's the thing with Python. Everything just seems easier and faster. With

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1133493623496507902005-04-18T23:20:00.000-03:002005-12-02T12:27:17.013-04:00

I noticed my former employer xwave has been doing well lately. They've posted more jobs in the last two months than in the previous three years.I've sometimes wondered about leaving xwave. I wonder how things would have turned out if I'd stayed there. It was a good place to work and I was well treated there. I didn't leave for any real good reason. It was kind of a strange time, around mid 2001.

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19504237.post-1133493332040160372005-04-10T23:15:00.000-03:002005-12-02T12:25:28.336-04:00

I like to program. I get paid to program. I like to talk about programming.I started programming in grade 8 with the good old Commodore 64. Those were the best times for progamming.After those C64 experiences, I went on to university. Eventually I finished a CS degree from TUNS. TUNS is now Daltech. I have all good to say about TUNS and the old TUNS CS program. I consider a TUNS degree

delsquaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03287159882518809852noreply@blogger.com0