Feed: Cutter's Crossing - Who I Am - AggScore: 67.5

On the last day of CFUnited 2005, a group of us were out on the patio having a final drink together. I got into a conversation with Clark Valberg about linguistics. I was a translator in latter half of my time in the military, and Clark was asking if I thought my experience with learning another language had helped me in learning to be a better developer? I absolutely agreed. I have an aptitude for languages, and always have. It's something I've picked up, and I can generally get to a point where I can effectively communicate (at least on the simplest of terms) within a very short time. Programming isn't much different, if you think about it. When I first got into computing again, after leaving the Army, I was teaching myself ten different programming languages at the same time. I had a lot of catching up to do, being out of the game for so long, so I picked up some books, found online resources, and took to the task of getting up to speed. Maybe that's why there are so many talented developers outside the US. In the US, we aren't required to learn another language out of necessity, whereas in most other countries of the world (not all, but most) it is very commonplace for people to speak two or more languages. You can kind of apply this in the reverse, to some degree, as well. Those who only learn one development platform may be limiting themselves. Knowing one programming language inside and out can be a good thing, but learning others can also open a developer to new ways of approaching a challenge. I've known many developers who knew a server-side language (ColdFusion, ASP, PHP, whatever), but never bothered to learn JavaScript, or how to write well formed XHTML. To me, that's limiting. Even crippling. What are your thoughts?

Several months ago gas in Nashville cost almost $3 a gallon. One enterprising station owner decided to charge around $2.60 a gallon, while all of his competition was at the $2.97 range. While he did this, people were lined up to get in the station. People were pouring through his little convenience mart, to go to the bathroom, or maybe pick up on his 2 for $2 Coca Cola deals. His competitor's stations (there are 4 more within a two block radius) were nearly empty. This station owner was a very smart man. Did he lose money? His profit margin may have been smaller, but the traffic and sales increase probably doubled his typical profit intake. He had to bring in tankers three times a day to refill his tanks, and some delivery truck was almost always there restocking something in his convenience store. There is a lesson to be learned here by America's retailers. If you've never worked in retail management, you don't know what kind of mark-ups most retailers have on the goods you and I purchase every day. Sometimes those mark-ups are anywhere from 70 - 100% of the actual cost of goods. Bars and Restaurants even more so, where the mark-up could be as much as 600% on some items. Now, to be fair, these businesses have a lot of overhead they have to pay: salaries, utilities, licenses, security, insurance, etc. But, notice they're having trouble doing some of these things right now? No one is buying. This is called "market correction". See, we (the American public) have allowed these companies to more or less rape us for years. Why is it that an automobile that cost $3,000 is 1977 will cost $18,000 today? Why does a gallon of milk cost almost $3.50? Why is it that a gallon of gas that sold for $1.15 in 1999...? Well, because we let them charge us that much. And right now, we're done. Not only won't we pay those rates, we can't. The government is so heavily involved in trying to 'bailout' America (Have you read the stimulus plan?), that big business is still losing the Big Picture. You want your people to stay employed? You want to get back towards the black? You want to keep getting fat bonuses, and have the funding to continue driving innovation and expansion? OK, then charge a reasonable rate for product. What is really more important, a fat profit margin, or staying in business? I know, there are dozens of other factors involved here. Employers think they pay too much for help. Employees don't think they get paid enough. Unions want every benefit the rest of the American public can't afford. Fuel and utility costs are rising, increasing the expenditures and affecting the bottom line. When does the cycle stop? When do we, the American public, wake up and say enough is enough? When do American businesses say "We can do better by the American people, and survive, and be profitable." and start working with the boundaries of sanity. $250 for a Wii and $40 a game? It's a f@%#ing game. $200 for an iPhone? It's a damn phone. $80 for a pair of Nike? They're shoes for God's sake, they're gonna wear out in six months if you use 'em right. When did we become so screwed up that we would continually let ourselves be taken advantage of? When does common sense sink in and we all say "No"? (When does "Common Sense" become common again?) There is a difference between being profitable, and being Greedy. It takes people, average Americans like you and I, to stand up and be heard. It takes forcing retailers and businesses to "get it straight." What do you want to say? What do you want to do? How do you want to live? These aren't just retorical questions, I'm looking for your feedback. Stand up and be heard.

To all of my friends, family, and colleagues who voted for our new President Elect, Congratulations. It is my sincerest hope, wish, and prayer, that in the coming four years I never have to say "I told you so."

Today I received the following comment here, on an older post on Variables and Naming Conventions:

...I wish Adobe would publish and adopt some kind of official naming convention. Sometimes reading sample code written in some other convention can make things harder to follow...

It was almost funny that this comment had come in when it had. Recently I was doing a lot of research for a User Group presentation I just did on the new ColdFusion 8 Ajax Components (have to re-record it before public release). In the process, I spent a great deal of time going over documentation all over the internet, from LiveDocs to countless blogs, absorbing the wealth of information that is already out there. It was outstanding that there were so many resources out there for people to learn from. On the other hand, it was a little sad that so much of the sample code was written in ways that can really start new developers off with some bad habits. I'm not perfect, by any means, but I try to pay careful attention to the code that I place on this blog for readers to use and learn from. One thing that I attempt to do is pay attention to basic Web Standards, like using XHTML (the current standard) instead of HTML, keeping styles in the stylesheet, and having unobtrusive JavaScript. I don't always do it, sometimes it doesn't make sense for a quick example, but I try, especially within code downloads. I also try to adhere to my own Coding Guidelines, so that code appears to be consistent and easy to read and understand. Probably the one that bothers me the most, and that I see most prevalent in blogs, documentation, and books, is the lack of proper variable scoping. I know that, often, we're just publishing quick examples, but this can be an extremely detrimental practice. I have worked on some very large enterprise applications, with years of code written by half-a-dozen different developers, most of whom learned their ColdFusion (and development) skills through the docs or a book. Many had actually come up with some very creative and effective algorithms to fix some issue, or create some new whiz bang feature, but their code was so poorly scoped that, after time, it could take down the server. Why? How? Enterprise sites may contain several hundred (or thousand) templates, containing dozens of variables on each page, and can potentially be hit by hundreds (or thousands) of users simultaneously. Multiply the number of variables by the number of pages by the number of users, then imagine ColdFusion doing a ScopeCheck on each one, to figure out which scope each variable requested belongs in. Even if the variable is in the VARIABLES scope, it's still that many times ScopeCheck will be called while rendering a page. Still not convinced? Go download varScoper, and run it on your project root folder, including your subfolders, and see what it comes up with. Yeah, I'm still in shock. Cleanup on that is easier on a small subproject scale, but it's definitely forced me to think better when I'm writing my code, paying attention as I go, to minimize the performance impact of my applications, no matter how small it may be. I learned my bad habits from the docs, various books, sample code slung around on the CF-Talk list. I've continued to realize that there are better ways of doing things (like OOP and frameworks), and adjust my style and methods, and I think it's important to consider these 'best practices' when contributing. A little more code, but the right thing to do in the end, for you, your app, and your systems. So, if you own a site of documentation, revise it. If you're writing a book, edit it. If you publish a CF blog, live it. The up-and-coming are reading us all of the time to find out how to use this wonderful language. Let's try to show 'em how to do it the right way. You might not follow any guidelines at all, within your development, but this scoping thing is way too important to gloss over, and will only help everyone in the long run.

Well, this was fun! Thanks Aaron.

Well, I've had this on my desktop for two weeks now, so I thought it was time to share. Not entirely accurate. They didn't have any hawaiin (that's not spelled right) shirts on the avatar maker. And where's the props? I need a mic!

Wow! Ok, I'm not a big race fan. Races have two real moments of big excitement, the start and the finish. Other than the occasional wreck it's a bunch of cars going around in circles. Well, that's how I thought. [More]

Well, It's good to be back (so to speak). I had a nice bout of the stomach flu, and it was no fun. But now I'm back in the saddle and ready to go. I should post the next phase of my EXT UI DataGrid tutorial within the next few days, and I hope to get back to my Creating The View tutorial very shortly (next stop: Mach II). This very minute, though, I'm sitting in the Nashville International Airport preparing to fly out for the weekend. My stepfather has been asking me, for half a decade now, to join him for the Indy 500. No reason to say no this year, so I'm waiting on a flight to Charlotte, North Carolina where I'll catch a connection to Dayton, Ohio. We're going to check out a few things in John's hometown before making the trip in Sunday for the race. I personally have never been a huge racing fan, but the Indy 500 is an event. It would be kind of like turning down a trip to the Kentucky Derby, the World Series, or the Super Bowl. So, I'm in for the new experience and little time with my step dad. Which is interesting in regards to my DataGrid tutorial. IndyCar.com is highlighted on the home page of Jack Slocum's Ext JS UI library as a site that uses the javascript components extensively, sporting a cool AJAXified interface that provides real time racing data during Indy races. So, I'll try to knock out the next installment of my DataGrid tutorial while I wait around in airports. See if I can get this train moving again. I'll also fill you in on the fun of the weekend as I go along.

Ben's visit is quickly approaching, and every stop on the tour (so far) he's announced another exciting new feature in our favorite platform. Aaron came out of his office today to announce that the giveaways are getting even bigger. Aside from raffling off a Scorpio license (to be given upon release), we'll also be giving away a copy of Flex Builder with Charting! [More]

I found myself, again, at a crossroads. Recently I decided to update my resume. I had accounts on Dice, Monster, CareerBuilder, and ComputerJobs from my last job search, so I decided it couldn't hurt to keep them up to date. I had been in my current position for sixteen months, learned a few things, accomplished various goals, and thought it would be a good idea. [More]

Well, it's been a busy year already. I've been working on the largest code rollout in the history of our company. 250+ templates in all. I'm thankful that we hired another senior developer in Andy Matthews, a great guy whom I already knew from our Nashville ColdFusion User Group. Although the initial project was in support of a new project relating to statistical usage reporting, encompassing user and session management, we have also begun a full scale rewrite of our session and application initialization. No small task with our system, and something that will be further enhanced in the coming year as we finalize our migration from ColdFusion MX 6.1 to 7.

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Per Tim's suggestion:

• 37 Years Old
• Lives in Nashville, Tennessee
• Former Army
• Drives a 2006 Chevy Cobalt
• Rents an apartment, while working towards a house
• Married to SuperWife, Teresa, with 5 year old Diva Girl daughter, Savannah
• Likes to read Stephen King, Tony Hillerman, murder mystery thriller mayhem and things that go bump in the night. Gets to read fiction maybe twice a year.
• Battlestar (with the wife), Smallville (with the daughter), Heroes (for me)
• Loves to sing, misses fronting 'The Band'
• Favorite Book: To Kill A Mockingbird
• Favorite Musician: Jimi Hendrix
• Loves movies, but rarely goes to the theater
• Listens (and sings) to everything from Nickelback to Nat King Cole, with strong leaning towards classic rock and the blues
• Captain and Coke

Many years ago, probably while stationed at NSA, I sat down and wrote this poem while coming up with content for the 741^st MI BN's newsletter, for their Memorial Day edition. Since then it has also appeared in the Ocean View, DE American Legion newsletter, the Ocean City, MD Veterans of Foriegn Wars newsletter, and an abbreviated version on Poetry.com. I thought the content was still fitting for this Veteran's Day, a gentle reminder to thank all of my brothers and sisters-in-arms who put their lives on the line in the name of freedom.

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Bad Habits and Disillusionment

A continuation of The History of Cutter and Computers

So, there I was, back into computers again. And, in my mind, this World Wide Web thing was gonna take off. I quickly got tired of perusing online porn day-in and day-out, IRC was boring, and people were really starting to try to make money. This new online bookstore of the day, Amazon.com, was really taking off in sales, even though they still weren't turning a profit.

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The Early Days

A continuation of The History of Cutter and Computers

In February of my senior year of High School I went down to the Military Enlistment Processing Station in Atlanta, GA to sign up for the U.S. Army's Delayed Entry Program. I told them I wanted to work with computers, so they sat me down to watch a little movie, off a 12 inch Laser Disc, about the wonders and joys of working as a Tactical Fire Direction Control Specialist in the Field Artillery. Eight months later, while going through Advanced Individual Training in Fort Sill, OK, I discovered that these highly advanced system [note the sarcasm here] were invented during the Korean War, sat on the back of a five-ton truck hauling a noisy generator, and gave it's user a battlefield life expectency of about thirty seconds. (This machinery has been replaced since my time.)

OK, so the Army, computers, and myself, didn't get off to the rockin' start I had been hoping for. But, that was OK. I was young (18 my first tour of duty) and stupid, and really only wanted to get drunk and laid in those days anyway. [More]