Exploring the Droid
Recently I've been having a lot of fun playing with my new phone.
The previous statement isn't much of a surprise in this day in age, but I think I should qualify what I mean.
I've been having a lot of fun playing with the software internals of my new phone.
Resume Available
Hello All -
I put my resume up for availability as I'm not quite certain how much longer I can stay at my current job. I'll be looking around for things to work on in the Dubuque area, so if anyone knows of any open positions, please let me know.
The resume itself can be found here, or just use the link at the top of the page.
DNN Module Creation, Explained (part 1).
Since I haven't shown up here for a while, I should talk a little bit about what's been going on in my life. I'll keep it short.
December: Left my job in Rock Island, was in a musical at Quad City Music Guild, Found a job in Dubuque at 365Advantage, lived in a suitcase until I found an apartment, worked on mobile phone development.
January: found an apartment, continued phone development until our other two developers left, was told in a week to learn DotNetNuke module development.
So here we are.
I've had some consternation in trying to figure this framework out (I come from the Java n-tier and Ruby on Rails MVC worlds). The biggest is getting my head around WebForms. For some reason, carrying state of pages between each other seems dirty to me, compared to handling everything by referencing the entities themselves (a la REST). I've even googled it: 
Turns out that's not how they do things in the DNN world.
Through some aid via the book Professional DotNetNuke Module Programming and the books author, Mitchel Sellers, I think I've slowly gotten a hang of the basics.
On the face, DNN is a CMS. Compare a default install with something like vanilla Radiant or WordPress. But most people forego that aspect of it, and use the portion of DNN that they've become known for: pluggable modules.
You would think that a system that was built to be completely modular would make it easy to build modules, right? I WISH. Maybe it's just me, but I shouldn't NEED Visual Studio, SQL Server Management Studio, and some magic to build a module. Then again, I come from Java and Ruby, where I'm not tied to an IDE. DNN Module building requires it, though.
Now that I've finished complaining, Part 2 will demonstrate how I've managed to get around this, and use the services that .NET provides (like LINQ to SQL) to make DNN Module building as painless as possible.
Quandary (part 1)
I wish to pose a question to the masses, particularly to other available software developers. Take this statement:
"The more screwed up the process, the longer you have a job."
How does that make you feel? Does it bother or amuse you? Would you feel uncomfortable hearing it from a coworker? A boss? When does the statement cross the line, if ever? As a programmer, you strive to produce the best product possible. When is there a "good enough" point? If something is broken, but acceptable, is that ethically capable of being released? Is a project that has no (unit, acceptance, ui, etc.) testing capable of release?
Let me know in the comments.
(PS: wrote this post from my Motorola Droid, which I'm having an absolute blast with)
Don’t Break the Chain
After reading this post on LifeHacker, I couldn't escape the feeling that I should start doing something like this. I mean, it works for Jerry Seinfeld, it can't be all that bad. 
Basically, as described on the link above, the idea is that you keep a daily calendar of all the specific goals you want to accomplish. Every time you do something related to a goal, mark off the day on the calendar. Once you have a few days consecutively, that is a chain. The object of this motivational strategy: Don't Break the Chain. Seems like a simple enough thing.
In the spirit of bringing in new ideas in order to make things work, I'm going to use a modified schedule, but the chain still takes effect. Different days for me will be devoted to different goals/tasks. Mondays and Thursdays I tackle some Ruby code, so I can stay fresh and learn about some of the newer developments that I've missed, having been out of the Ruby loop for a while. Tuesdays and Saturdays are devoted to Corner of Seven. That's right, you might actually see more blog posts. In addition, I'm looking at building new and experimental pieces onto the domain, including rails and Java webapps, and playing around with php and python, so I can apply these to the blog, and keep the site as a form of digital portfolio. All of my things will be up here, so it makes it more centralized.
Motorola Droid
Finally, the big hurdle in my calendar, and what is to be the biggest chain - Android. I've been looking at the mobile phone operating system for a while now, but haven't had the drive to fully enter in and create things for it. That is, until I saw (and afterwards, held) one of these.So, starting today, once a day I will try to do something new in terms of Android development, in an effort to increase my skill and knowledge in the mobile OS. Hopefully we'll get to see some neat little apps come out of this "Don't break the chain" mentality. Hope you're along for the ride - I guess we'll see come every Tuesday and Sunday.
Cheers for now.