Of [...]]]> I have so many Information Technology issues on the table at any given moment, due to my work and school schedules that I have a hard time keeping it all organized. Therefore, this overall page will serve as a menu of “what’s going on”, and you can look to the feature sub-blogs for more information!

Of course, I could have taken the “easy way out”, and either created my blog(s) on Blogger (which I did anyways) or else I could have installed one or more of the many open-source or otherwise free blog programs that run on ASP or PHP — Okay, so I did that, too! The point, though, is that I decided to create my own blog site for the fun of it.

Really, though, it is all about flexibility. I needed the ability to showcase my work during college, and also a searchable repository of data that I collect while doing research. This site is particularly handy for me in this way because I can access it from anywhere, and use it to store and retrieve research data.

Today, I think I’ll go ahead and create the “LifeBlog”, where I can blog about everyday stuff, and not just techie bits that help us developer types along!

If you are here for the techie bits, though, go ahead and check out these blogs; I’ve split them up to make them a little easier to dig through:

• Application Development
• Database Development
• Personal Development
• Web Development

I’ve just recently added the ability to add comments to each page, so feel free to let me know what you think!

Now that I’m a proud holder of my Bachelors Degree [...]]]> As a student of Information Technology at South University I collected many pieces of documentation, software, and other works that I posted on my original site. My professors at South University were excellent, and I reccomend them highly. To learn more, please click the graphic below!

Now that I’m a proud holder of my Bachelors Degree in Information Technology, I’ve decided to continue to host much of the information that I collected, and keep it searchable via Google and other web search mechanisms.

Of [...]]]> I have so many Information Technology issues on the table at any given moment, due to my work and school schedules that I have a hard time keeping it all organized. Therefore, this overall page will serve as a menu of “what’s going on”, and you can look to the feature sub-blogs for more information!

Of course, I could have taken the “easy way out”, and either created my blog(s) on Blogger (which I did anyways) or else I could have installed one or more of the many open-source or otherwise free blog programs that run on ASP or PHP — Okay, so I did that, too! The point, though, is that I decided to create my own blog site for the fun of it.

Really, though, it is all about flexibility. I needed the ability to showcase my work during college, and also a searchable repository of data that I collect while doing research. This site is particularly handy for me in this way because I can access it from anywhere, and use it to store and retrieve research data.

Today, I think I’ll go ahead and create the “LifeBlog”, where I can blog about everyday stuff, and not just techie bits that help us developer types along!

If you are here for the techie bits, though, go ahead and check out these blogs; I’ve split them up to make them a little easier to dig through:

• Application Development
• Database Development
• Personal Development
• Web Development

I’ve just recently added the ability to add comments to each page, so feel free to let me know what you think!

Meagan, I found your poem, and I want you to know that I never forgot you or Mystic. Please write me.

My Mystic

I had a kitty [...]]]> There was once a special cat in my life by the name of Mystic; but that’s nothing compared the very special young girl who was a part of my life then.

Meagan, I found your poem, and I want you to know that I never forgot you or Mystic. Please write me.

My Mystic

I had a kitty black and white

He used to sleep

With me at night

He would wake me up

To get a scratch

And on his eye

He had a little black patch

We’d play together all

Day long

Never thinking something

Would go wrong

He was my friend

My pal to

The end

He was hit

By a car

I bet they drove

Away far

by Meagan

Rate each one on a 1-5 scale: 1 = very like me to 5 = not me at all.

1. [...]]]> Assess your time management skills by filling in this questionnaire:

What do you find most difficult to get down to? Reading? Writing? Revision? Preparing presentations? What do you do to avoid doing them, are any of these familiar?

Rate each one on a 1-5 scale: 1 = very like me to 5 = not me at all.

1. I can only really get down to work when there’s a deadline looming

I’d give this a 4, because when I have everything I need to do a job, I like to dig right in and get my hands dirty. It’s not all that uncommon, however, for things to have difficulty coalescing until late in the project, which results in the same hectic pace as deadlines near as procrastination.

2. I often feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work to be done

This is a 1 for me. As a parent, a student, a business-owner, and chief bottle washer, I can be spread pretty thin sometimes.

3. Planning is a waste of time, I prefer to work intuitively

Well nobody’s perfect, so this is a 4 for me. Occasionally, I just dive right into a project, but mostly I live by the adage “the sooner you begin coding a project, the longer it will take to complete it.”

4. I always seem to underestimate how long a piece of work will take

3 — For familiar tasks, I have a realistic idea for how long they will take; if I underestimate, it’s usually for a reason, but it is just so hard to prepare for all possible interruptions of a development cycle!

5. I’m a perfectionist, I never really feel a piece of work is “finished”

2 — Sometimes it’s hard to know when to say when!

6. I’m not really sure of what is expected of me

4 — I can’t say I’m a “5″ only because I’m expecting a lot of changes when I graduate, and I’m not sure sure of what will be expected of me in the near future.

7. There are some things I am always “putting off till later”

3 — My brain operates on a sort of “voting system”, where things are prioritized according to urgency and value. Urgency often trumps value, because it is profitable (it generates service calls and other billable work) yet at the same time, may not provide as much value as other items which were preempted.

8. I find it hard to concentrate on just one thing – I tend to hop from one thing to another

4 — Can you say “A – D – D”, boys and girls? Lol~ Yeah, I’ve got it, and I get phone calls and emails, and chats, and all kinds of things to reach out and take my attention away from one project and on to another. I think I do a pretty good job of going full circle, though, to make sure that everything that is both urgent and valuable gets taken care of.

9. I’m often tempted by new/different options or ideas

4 — I am an XP developer, and so I live and die by CASE tools and technologies which aid in the rapid development and deployment of business solutions. The adoption of these techniques over the last decade has completely changed the way that I work.

10. My room is chaos, I’m forever losing things

2 — Others may sometimes see my workspace as chaotic, but I know exactly where everything is! Don’t touch!

11. I like to keep an “open door”, always ready to spend time with/for others

3 — You never know where the next big idea will come from, so you have to listen when opportunities come knocking. At the same time, you also have to have balance for development tasks which need to be done in continuous, uninterupted blocks of time.

12. I can only work from a clear desk

5 — I can work from any desk, even yours! All I need is a powerful enough computer, a private login, and internet access, and I can work from anywhere.

13. I find it hard to say “no” to people

3 — it’s hard to be “immune” to this one… generally, when customers give me a project that I don’t “want to say no to”, I simply bump the price up enough so that I DO want to do it, and leave it up to them.

Let’s face it, the real reason why you might legitimately want to say no to someone is because you’re feeling like you might be putting into it more than you get out of it, in terms of some sort of value, or maybe because you have something else to do which is of even greater value to do that day, even if it is as simple as spending time with the family. In such cases, you just have to either find your own acceptable compromise, or else figure out how to extract the needed level of value from the request.

14. Instead of getting down to work I…

2 — I Check my email… Hmmm, lots of things in there would like my attention today… Ooops, the phone just rang… dangit, can you believe the other line rang at the same time! One phone call needs a new email account created, the other needs a new feature added to their Access database. As soon as I hang up the phone(s), I get 3 more emails regarding the database changes, so I read them. Half way through, the phone rings again — it’s a telemarketer, and I shut them down quickly.Â

I remember that I also need to work on “dotProject” for class, so I open DreamWeaver, and then I realize that I do not have a site configured, nor even the site root created, so I open File Explorer, create the root folder under wwwroot, go back to DW, create the site root, and just as I finish, I get a notification about the database changes… They need them NOW, instead of the following week, as is the norm.

And so forth…

With so much experience, my friends often ask me why I bothered with a degree, when [...]]]> I am the epitome of the “alternative student”; at the age of 40, I’ll graduate with a Bachelors’ Degree in Information Technology, and will mark my 14th year of intensive involvement with the various aspects of the Technological Information field.

With so much experience, my friends often ask me why I bothered with a degree, when I’d already been working in the field and making money.

The easiest reason to cough up is that throughout my working career, I’d been passed up many times for high-paying positions, simply because of my lack of degree. So now, theoretically, assuming that a full time job is what I’m after, I can at least qualify, if not command, any number of positions that range far higher than those I’d previously been able to be considered for, depending on responsibilities and locations.

But money is not the ultimate reason why I went to college, even though, the Lord knows, I really do need it! I already knew how to fix computers, and it’s true, I know how to do so even better, now, but computers themselves are not the actual technology, you see. The software that runs on them is a product of technology, but not really a technology unto itself.

The real value of a thing is the concepts and ideas which led to the creation of the thing itself… My good friend Dr. Li gives a good description of this.

First, he gives us a bit of clarification:

“To clarify, IT is a field of study, whileinformation technology is just a procedure that processes data. ComputerScience is a field of study, while the act of coding is a sequence of

Dr.Li then goes on to remind us that IT in a corporation is not just computer support when things go wrong; IT adds value, not only to the employees of the corporation, but also to its customers, by providing new services and reduced operating costs, which can result in great savings.

Just take a look at this definition of IT, though — He really hits it on the head!

Definitions: (5/12/2006 – whatcanbe)
InformationTechnology (IT) is the discipline that systematically studies methodsand processes that increase the value of data and structured data by

processing, generating, and/or delivering the result to the right

person in the right place at the right time.

If you read this carefully, you’ll see that there is no reference to computers at all. In fact, information technology pre-dates computers, and in one form or another has been used for most of the 20th century.Â

Probably the simplest example possible is a toaster — yes, even a toaster uses a little information technology. I mean, just imagine a toaster that didn’t let you know it was done toasting! Even the simplest toaster makes a distinct noise when it pops up, and you can see the toast sticking out of the top — it has sent you, the operator, a clear stream of information that you can easily understand: “The toast is ready”.

But toasters did not always work this way — I’ve seen antique versions, where you had to manually flip the toast. Granted, it was still an improvement over yet earlier attempts, but somebody had to sit back and conceive of a better way. The idea that arose from this, and the research, development, and testing, is the essence of IT.

Granted, I don’t know the actual story of the development of the toaster, I was just using that as an example. A more purified example, however, is ISO 900X. ISO stands for the International Standards Organization, and the different levels of specifications that they provide can be applied to different business specialties. When businesses enroll, and then document their compliance with these specifications, they can display the ISO logo on all of their paperwork, and qualify for a greater number of contracts with governments and businesses worldwide.

actions that produces software applications.

Some tools do even more than just [...]]]> This graphical Java Applet which lets you visualize search results; Very useful for seeing how keywords relate!

• TouchGraph — This awesome tool lets you enter any search phrase or keyword(s), and returns the results in a graphical format which represents the way that the results are related to each other.

Some tools do even more than just track statistical data; they give site developers a way to create a permanent registration of their site(s) with their respective search engines. They also allow the site to expose an RSS feed which the search engine can use to collect links and information to be used in displaying indexed content to users.

• Yahoo! Site Explorer — I’m not sure which came first, but this tool reminds me a lot of the Google Sitemap tool, which I describe next. Basically, what it does is to allow you enter your URLs into the online database, verify that you actually control those sites, and then explore the information that the search engine carries for your site. Additionally, by providing RSS feeds of site content with links, the search engine can be automatically informed of updates to your site.
• Google Sitemaps — As mentioned above, Google and Yahoo! provide very similar offerings, but there are some key differences. First off, it seems that Yahoo! uses a standard RSS feed, which allows you to stuff it with more keywords and content. Google, however, uses a very simple format which only lists links to pages, and when was the last time they were modified. Any additional information about your pages has to be collected by the GoogleBot.

I’ve seen some pretty good results with the sitemaps; this site is maintained in the engines almost primarily via these mechanisms… My rankings aren’t great, but then again, I don’t always have full content articles in here, as this site mainly serves as a knowledge base of disparate technologies.

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