random thoughts & stuff
My thoughts, experiences, and learnings
I have recently had some work done around my house and I have to say that I am quite disappointed in the quality of the work that was performed. This was perhaps my own fault because I only got one bid for the actual work that was performed, but in my own defense only two of the places I called even responded to me and only one, the one that did the work, actually gave me a bid.
Read more →Dear local businesses,
First and foremost, thanks for being there. However, I do have some advice I’d like to throw your way.
Do these simple things and it can only help you grow.
Read more →Way back in 2014 I [wrote a post]({% post_url 2014-05-17-why-im-no-longer-a-google-fanboy %}) about no longer being a Google fanboy. Over the last 9 years I’ve waffled on this a bit. I briefly dipped my toe into the Microsoft ecosystem, but found it lacking (and it’s still lacking to this day). So I gradually drifted back into the Google ecosystem for most of my needs.
Read more →Oh wow, nearly another whole year has passed since my last blog post. If you are an infrequent visitor you may have noticed that I’ve simplified the design of the site quite a bit. For several years this blog has been sporting a Bootstrap based theme. While bootstrap themes make things easier (especially when using something like Bootswatch hosted from a CDN), it also adds a lot of overhead for what amounts to eye candy. While eye candy has its place, that place isn’t on the personal web site of a developer. I’m taking my inspiration from such famous developers as Richard Stallman and Donald Knuth.
Read more →Wow, time really flies when you’re having fun. It’s been over two years since my last update, so let’s see how some of the things I’ve talked about in the past have evolved.. er.. intelligently designed?
Read more →<rant>
Well, I just spent two hours of my life getting a project running that was already working on another PC. I’m so fed up right now that I don’t really want to work on the actual project. It is an ASP.NET Core 1.0 project that I’ve been working on a few minutes at a time for the past couple of months. I’ve made so little progress that when I started running into trouble I thought about just creating a new project from scratch and copying over the files. But without a guarantee that the new project would work I decided that was not a very good solution.
Read more →I didn’t want an entire year to go by without writing a post, so I thought that I would talk a little bit about a neat little tool I found for displaying grid data in ASP.NET MVC 5 projects. It’s called MVCGrid.Net. I say “neat little tool,” but it’s actually quite powerful now that I know more about how to use it.
Read more →Okay, so here is a post that has been months in the making.
Lately I’ve been working on an ETL project, mostly the E and T parts. The project involves exporting data from a database via an ODBC driver (AcuODBC to be exact). I don’t have any control over the database being accessed other than being able to extract data and neither the client nor I have much knowledge of how the database actually works. For my part I just know that I can access it via the AcuODBC driver.
Read more →I’ve been messing around on DigitalOcean with a FreeBSD 10.1 droplet. First let me say that FreeBSD is awesome. The thing that I like the most about the BSDs is that they don’t beat about the bush when it comes to making an OS because the purpose of each BSD is the OS. My main comparison is to Linux based OSes, which are awesome in their own way, but feel a bit splintered. With the BSDs it’s not just a kernel with a bunch of GNU apps thrown at it to make it usable, they take great pains to produce a complete OS. So when I need to know how to do something on FreeBSD, there’s probably already a darn good document out there with detailed instructions. Hell, you rarely have to go outside the FreeBSD manual unless you’re doing something really complex. It just works and that’s great!
Read more →Okay, so I rarely make websites or blog anymore. I’ll admit that I’ve fallen a bit out of touch with regard to the latest and greatest web technologies. But I’ve surprised even myself in the amount of time it has taken for me to understand Bootstrap.
Read more →I used to be a Google fanboy (my wife is still a Google fangirl). I used to sing their praises and recommend their software and services to anyone who asked for the slightest computer advice. But lately I’ve been rethinking my stance on Google and have started moving in other directions.
Read more →Okay, I spent about an hour trying to figure this out and finally did it. Google does not make deleting information easy because that information is their product. So the documentation about this particular subject is very sparse and ultimately I got what I needed from a obscure post in one of Google’s product forums. I’m posting this here for posterity.
Read more →Well, now that I’ve made you wait a couple of weeks to tell you why the Web is dead, I guess it’s time to disappoint (nothing can live up to that amount of hype). As my one piece of evidence I present this link. Go ahead, look at it. I’ll wait.
Read more →Twenty two years is a good run for most technology these days. In fact it’s a phenomenal run. That’s how long the World Wide Web has been in existence. But I’m here today to tell you that the web as we know it is DEAD! (The irony of making this statement in a weblog post does not escape me.) What killed the web? How did it die? Is this the end of all things? Come close and I’ll tell you the story of the end of the web, but first, a little history.
Read more →For those of you living in South Carolina’s first congressional district, I have one question. Have you no shame?
Mark Sanford’s re-election to his former post as your U.S. Representative would be laughable if it didn’t show the utter ignorance, hypocracy, and blind loyalty of 54% of the voters of that district. These results, combined with the 2012 re-election of TN-04 Rep. Scott DesJarlais, show that most people voting Republican are doing so strictly because there is an (R) behind the name on the ballot.
Read more →I’m from Tennessee and if we know one thing, it’s how to create terrible, awful politicians. I’d love to see many of our local politicians voted out. Unfortunately, our populace is fairly uneducated and apathetic when it comes to politics. They are used to going into the voting booth and voting for a (D) or (R). The only real hope we have that awful people will get voted out is a primary challenge (or retirement, but nobody’s going to be doing us any favors there). Here are my top 3 douche bags problematic candidates that deserve a boot.
Read more →