January 2008
March 2008
February 2008
February 29, 2008 06:35.12 PM
So, go ahead and do a search for "Justin." Obviously, you have Justin Boots, Justin.tv, P. Diddy's Justin's restaurants, and last, but not least, Justin Timberlake. I'm nowhere to be found which is completely understandable.
Now, go ahead and do "Justin Alpha."
One would assume that would be just enough key words to get my link in there somewhere. Because Justin Timberlake had to take a cheesy role in Alpha Dog, I'm left high and dry on any Google search.
Add it to the life goals to beat out the Timbo Alpha Dog dominance and make it to the top five pages of results.
3 Comments
February 29, 2008 04:11.40 PM
So against all rules of the Software Development Life Cycle, I use my single alphawit.com instance as both development and production. I was messing around with the comments section today because I'm a narcissist and want to see my comments brighter than everyone else's. I apologize if you saw some of my backend code, exceptions, and had any problems.
For the record, I get my healthy serving of the SDLC at my day job which in turn is making me write my own form of a development cycled called the Hussle, which will be a spinoff of the SCRUM methodology. There'll be more details to come.
1 Comment
February 29, 2008 02:59.23 PM
Justin Impatience(JI) scale
- 1 - Normal and consistency are words used to describe this state
- 10 - My leg begins to shake and some might call me edgy
- 15 - I begin to email everybody I know with new wacky ideas like a mad scientist and expect immediate answers
- 50 - Don't call me or come near me, I won't stop talking and you'll have to know everything
- 100 - I want to fight anybody that delays me more than five minutes
- 500 - I have to lay down because my heart will explode
6 Comments
February 28, 2008 11:04.43 PM
So tonight I bought a pair of shoes at the mall. It's not like this is anything uncommon nor is this directly related to the internet. The interesting thing when you're at a shoe store is that you're at war with yourself over many things.
- Will I look cool?
- Is this a good deal?
- Most importantly, am I getting the best price?
Question number one is a no brainer because you can always make yourself feel cool. The problem most people have is that they don't ask, 'Will I look cool in everyone else's eyes?' and that's why we have our occasion trendsetters who just don't cut it... anyways, different topic. So, I checked off number two without a question. I found the shoes I wanted in both style, color, size, and comfort level. They were a tad bit pricey and earlier this week, I found some older styles from the same store that were half the price. I came to the conclusion that the shoe was good for the price so I checked off number two.
So now the big one... am I getting the best price? How the hell am I supposed to know this when I'm standing in the store and the saleswoman is breathing down my neck with her pitch. Sure, I have a treo, but the mobile web just doesn't cut it for quick researching. I sat there debating over and over again and finally the little mouse running on the wheel generated enough power to light up the light bulb.
"Excuse me sir, can I help you?" "No thanks, I'm actually looking up the shoes I want to buy three stores away to see if they're cheaper." "haha, good luck."
I went to the Apple store, found the nearest computer, and browsed the internet. I found that the shoes were not cheaper anywhere else and I made the purchase
Yes, the internet is great.
4 Comments
February 23, 2008 02:46.07 AM
Alright, so fortunately for me, I get to work with a wide variety of internet users at my day job. It's not that it's people my parents age and up that's the problem. It's an organization that is forcing people to use the web application even though they have no desire to use it. What then happens is incorrect usage of the application, misunderstanding of training, and common usability frustrations across the board. Everyone's got it... ok, great.
So, when you use html inputs of type submit, a single click will automatically invoke an HTTP request to the form's action attribute and will not stop until the server says so. When a user clicks it once, the response time is too slow, so they click it again, this then triggers two requests. Well, if you code sloppily, which we do sometimes...the back end doesn't know what to do and all kinds of crazy errors can happen. After trial and error and basically dumbing ourselves down to think like the users, we reproduced the errors and figured out what was going on. Apparently, there's people out there double clicking the hell out of everything. This includes links, buttons of all types, select boxes, check boxes, radio buttons, etc. Don't ask how the checkbox thing worked out for them... I'd imagine not too well.
So I don't think I'll be using too much of the submit buttons without adding onclick listeners that prevent the user from submitting twice.
Since I've recently been a fan of jquery, I'd do something like this in my header template:
$(":submit").click(function () { this.disabled=true,this.form.submit(); });
It should take care of the baby boomers. I didn't do it yet for this site so don't get all click happy.
0 Comments
February 21, 2008 12:23.25 AM
So I was about to demo some Google Maps code I did for somebody where it categorized pin points on a map across the country with details on each of the pin points. When I went to the URL, it showed a blank page...
..I thought, cool demo, your career is over. I decided to just research the hell out of it to figure out what was going on. Basically, the constructor, GMap2() would not load and it was saying the object was undefined. Alright, I can deal with that. For some reason, I couldn't get past the idea that the GBrowserIsCompatible() was working with no problems so I didn't think it was an issue with my API key or the actual Google Maps scripts loading. So I went through this entire list of things to make changes:
- Changed the variable for version from "2" to "2.s", "2.x", and "2.99" - no change
- Commented out jquery because that script loaded first - no change
- Since the site was on HTTPS, loaded it on HTTP - no change
- Rewrote entire script to use the new Google API calls(which are better if you use a lot of Google packages) - still, no f'ing change
- I finally figure out on my 5th attempt that I can put breakpoints on remote scripts using Firebug. I check the variables in scope and I see that the Image object is actually some dumb image I've created on the site in a local script... boooo. I changed the name of Image to something else, reload, everything works.
Long story short, I will use Firebug much more extensively in my debugging and always do regression tests of some sort, even with sites that you might consider small. You never know when you'll need that one component to work for potential work and it crashed because you tried to get cute with JavaScript.
0 Comments
February 20, 2008 06:25.33 PM
So for the first few weeks, I just wrote what I wanted and didn't let anybody make fun of me or argue. I have officially added comments so feel free to comment away. I can't promise the results look pretty nor work that well, so let me know if you find any issues...
0 Comments
February 17, 2008 09:31.06 PM
{{post.content}}
{{post.content|safe}}
...new in the development version of Django that I just checked out
0 Comments
February 17, 2008 09:25.14 PM
Either I'm missing something or Generic Views just don't it with Django when tryin to include your own HTML in the posts. Please mind all the HTML you see in the posts...
0 Comments
February 08, 2008 01:37.27 PM
Unless you were under a rock, you've at least heard something in the terms of "recession," "depression," "housing market," "economy sucks," "stimulus package," or "free money." Whatever you heard, the truth of the matter is that due to many factors, one of them being the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007, the market saw an enormous downturn at the beginning of 2k8 which led to the Feds dropping the Federal funds rate which directly dropped the prime rate which directly dropped all mortgage, auto, credit card rates for us great Americans. Well, guess what, it still isn't all rainbows and butterflies as the housing market is still overbought, some major fluffed up stocks are starting to see a major downturn (AAPL), and most importantly, Americans just aren't spending money.
Well, Bush and the House leaders came up with their plan. The Senate added their own little flavor and finally, by the end of next week, Bush will sign the bill that puts up to $1200 in the pockets of families based on conditional criteria such as marriage status, tax filings, and 2007 reported income. The goal of this was to put money in our hands so we go out and spend, spend, spend. Bush says, "Take a trip, go buy some clothes, eat out more often, get that hotel room with the heart shaped jacuzzi, but make sure you buy room service too and order some free movies." Alright, I paraphrased the entire thing or maybe I just made it up, but the point is that I don't really see it solving our problem unless I'm overestimating the intelligence of the average American and this facade that every little thing's gonna be alright is actually the truth. I was always told that a person criticizing another person's problem is no better than the problem itself unless they come up with a solution or at a least a suggested path to take that might mitigate the issues. I give you my modest proposal to stimulate the United States economy.
The problem with America is not just materialism, superficial greed, poor education on finances and investments, it's this simple. It's the children being born. We need to blame and take immediate action in punishing the children in American. With the participation of their parents, young Americans, we can bring the economy back to it's stable position and establish ourselves as a financial power and the definition of capitalism once again. I classify young Americans into three categories:
-
Shakers and movers (SINKs and DINKs)
-
Too earlies (renters w/kids)
-
Over extenders (homeowners w/kids)
In this modest proposal, I'm going to briefly highlight the lifestyles, aspirations, and most importantly, the children people are having.
Shakers and movers
These are your Americans who have focused on their career first over starting families. They decided to look at their finances, consider the consequences, and wait on having kids. These are also your single young adults who can't find a partner for the life of them so they decide to practice safe sex and focus on their career. These are the people who drive the economy. They more often than not, make the most money per age/experience, make educated decisions on buying houses, and spend their money more frequently on trips, clothes, cars, and other materialistic items due to the independence. Their ultimate goal is either to be Uncle Scrooge diving into their fortunes or eventually buy a home with a white picket fence and send their kids to college with no financial problems. One thing to keep in mind is that they WANT kids but DON'T NEED them. It will come to a point in their life where they will want kids and they will have a choice to either procreate or adopt. Easy right?
Too earlies
This group of young adults are the ones that did not use gloves while they were making love. They had kids a tad bit too early in their marriage/relationship/affair and now they are renting an apartment. They overextend themselves with credit card bills because they couldn't go back to school to get a better education which in turn gives them higher paying jobs. Any loans from college or cars are still around since raising children are pretty damn expensive. This group's goals are the same as the Shakers and movers except they don't have the financial freedom unless they take advantage of the Feds. Being a renter, they really want that house. These are the people who still spend like they're SINKs and DINKs but what they don't realize is that the expendable income is just not there.
Overextenders
This group has children, have debt, have cars, and also have a home. How they got this home could be multiple ways, mommy and daddy, luck, but more than likely, a loan from the a bank. These are the young Americans that see a life in something other than a house is not a good life for their children. They feel that they have to buy a house or their children will live in misery and will not grow up with a stimulating environment. These are what I call the top of the economic downfall. Rather than having aspirations, they are living their goals ahead of schedule. They've let their dreams overcome reality and for a short immediate time period, achieved total happiness. These people charge it up because with a house comes more expenses and also you have to present yourself as the model American, house, kids, white picket fence. You think that picket fence comes free? no sir, they charged that up on their American Express. I don't care if you're getting 1% cash back, these people are still in debt.
The SOLUTION
This is going to be extremely short since I've exhausted your attention with details. The main variable that differentiates these types of young Americans are children. If you take children out of the picture, in most cases, people have more money and they are satisfied in an apartment rather than a house. This, in turn, causes them to spend more money on selfish items and less money on space. The Overextenders have too many kids and they've made the mistake of buying houses they can't afford. The Too earlies have too many kids and they want to buy a house they can't afford. The Movers and shakers have no kids but they want them eventually. The solution is simple. The Overextenders and Too earliers have to sell their children at the premium prices based on their home and or apartment. To start, Overextenders will sell at the cost of 10% of the total square footage times the price/sq ft of their house. For instance, if your house is $200,000 at 2000 sq/ft, one child will cost ($200,000/2000) * (10%*2000) = $20,000 per child. Let's not forget about the Too earlies. Instead of valuing their children off the sq footage of their house, the same concept will be applied using the square footage times 360(12mo * 30yrs) = total valuation of apartment. The same logic for a house will be applied except it will be 30% instead of 10% since we want to sell the Overextenders' children first. Using a previous example if we have an apartment at $2000/mo rent at 1500 sq ft, we'll pay (($500 * 360)/1500) * (1500 * 30%) = $54,000 per child. Now, this will only work if the Movers and shakers are at their later age and have established financial stability. If they buy too early, the entire model will be useless. To prevent this, a restriction will be that Movers and Shakers must have 400% of the price of the child in assets such as savings accounts or investments. So to purchase a $20,000 child, they'll need $80,000. One more detail to add is that selling children must be enforced. A mother won't exactly hand over her baby unless the federal government takes action. If an Overextender or Too early miss a bill for two consecutive months, they will be forced to sell one child.
Brief overview of plan:
- Overextender sale price: (Total Price of house/Total Square Footage) * (Total Square Footage * 10%)
- Too earlies sale price: ((Montly Rent * 360)/Total Square Footage) * (Total Square Footage * 30%)
- Movers and shakers: Assets must total 400% of sale price of child
- If either the Overextenders or Too earlies cannot make payments for two consecutive months, they will be forced to sell one child
With the goal of satisfying all the needs of young Americans and providing a stimulus plan that will increase the success of our economy, this modest proposal asks for support of everyone to put this into immediate action. Blame our children, not our government.
This is complete sarcasm and what literary experts might(I'm not sure if I'm a good writer) call a satire. See A Modest Proposal if you don't under what this really means.
1 Comment
February 05, 2008 07:10.55 PM
So if you own a mobile device that has either WM5 or WM6 and you're a gmail user, you've probably gone through the trials and tribulation of Google's awful excuse for IMAP. The main problem with the link between the Mobile OS and Gmail was that any message that contained any HTML or rich text was immediately filtered out and you would only see the title of the email and no body. This worked for when I was at my computer or around my apartment but since I'm on lockdown at the FBI, I never get to see my phone. As much as I like IMAP better than POP, I had to ditch it and go back to Gmail's pop service because it actually worked.
If you develop software or provide a service, there are two things you must do:
- Make it work
- Make it work well.
The clock that says 3pm all day sure tells the time but it doesn't exactly tell the correct time.
Anyways, for the past eight or nine months, I've only been using the Exchange Server at my company and all my appointments, meetings, and personal stuff have gone through the IE Outlook interface which then immediately synchs with my phone. Alright, this finally just got lame for me. Outlook is great for work, I have nothing against it, but for my personal stuff, Google is a bit more aesthetically pleasing and fun. So, I did some research and came across OGGSYNC. It synchronizes Outlook and WM5/6 with Google Calendar. It was actually very simple. I had to download two files from my browser which immediately installed and I was ready to go. I hit synchronize which took about a minute to go back two weeks and a year forward. Now, all my calendars are ready to go.
Now, the annoying part is that I can't really separate work from play. On my Google Calendar, I can label things as Personal so when it's listed in my phone which is then synched to Exchange Server, it only has that label. What I would ideally like is if my Phone had both Work stuff from the Exchange Server and personal stuff from Google Calendar... then I would keep everything separate... Maybe it can do that, I just don't know how to use it fully.
0 Comments
