I would love to say that I am moving over to development and getting a chance to move that direction, I have to admit it’s not. I will be continuing to support an AS400 and the applications that run on it. The cool thing I am looking forward to is it’s not just one AS400, it’s two, setup with data replication over 100 miles.

Ya I know what your thinking, why would you want to continue a career path on ancient, dying tech? Well, it hasn’t died yet and I don’t see it’s death coming anytime soon. Kind of like Cobol and RPG, both of those languages are alive and well. In fact, I was reading last week that Java and .NET programmers are calling RPG programs from stored procedures. So this will give me an excellent opportunity to get familiar with that as well.

At any rate, I’m very excited to be back in a technical group and working on a team with a common goal. Good things are coming, and I am going to learn a great deal.

It’s probably a good thing for me to take sometime out on technical reading anyway. So I started reading the book and found I couldn’t put it down. The author is a talented writer no doubt, it’s not often you find a book where chapter after chapter is a page turner. It was a good read and I would recommend the book to anyone with a disclaimer.

If you haven’t read the book, wiki’ed it, or seen the movie and still want to be surprised, you should stop reading here.

While the book was a great read, I was blown away by the plot. It was a mash up of Orwell meets Mad Max, with some Fahrenheit 451, Poe, Stephen King, and Shakespeare all rolled into one that would make the Roman Gladiators look sheepish.

The short version of the plot is America implodes on itself in a number of ways. A new government is formed and located in the center of the country. Outlying Districts are conquered in a rebellion and to pay homage to the central government the Hunger Games are formed. 2 children (12-18) from each district is selected to participate. Drafted in a lottery is more accurate. They are taken to the capital where they dressed up, fed well, and interviewed like the opening of the Olympics.

Then they are tossed into an outdoor arena to fight to the death. Not only are these games a fight to the death, but it’s also about survival as well as dodging traps set by the GameMasters (the designers of the games). Oh and people bet on the outcome of these games. By the way, did I mention the participants are CHILDREN?

It’s a page turner, but my god is it messed up. Collins does an excellent job of showing the morality and the human side of the participant….but holy crap does it make you wonder where she came up with this. It’s nuts. Then there’s the ending that spirals off into political unrest and a giant finger to Totalitarianism.

Presentation Notes: (number to slide)

Slide 2

Model Driven Architecture is a development frame work for disparate software systems. Rather in English, MDA is a software architecture method that seeks to bridge the gap between software applications that normally would not communicate natively. In short, MDA is a method to map communications between non-communicating parties. MDA uses tools like UML to visually create models that can developers use to understand larger software systems, as well as specific tools like XML to actually create mapped communication channels.

Slide 3

OMG, the Object Management Group (not Oh My God), formally introduced Model Driven Architecture in 2001. However the concept of MDA first came about in the early 80’s. MDA is structured to be an open standard that is both reusable and portable (Slack). OMG also emphasis XML as the standard between storing and exchanging data between disparate systems. In fact, XML’s ability to pass information between systems has become such the standard, that Microsoft has even joined in with their support of XML storage in their Office software. However, the Microsoft standard is different than the Open Office Standard thus there are two standards for word processing and spreadsheet programs.

Slide 4

OMG, the Object Management Group (not Oh My God), formally introduced Model Driven Architecture in 2001. However the concept of MDA first came about in the early 80’s. MDA is structured to be an open standard that is both reusable and portable (Slack). OMG also emphasis XML as the standard between storing and exchanging data between disparate systems. In fact, XML’s ability to pass information between systems has become such the standard, that Microsoft has even joined in with their support of XML storage in their Office software. However, the Microsoft standard is different than the Open Office Standard thus there are two standards for word processing and spreadsheet programs.

A recent movement (with in the past 5 years) in the relations between the Oklahoma Department of Education and school districts across the state, is the implementation of applications with SIF compatibility. With over 500 school districts across the state, the State Department of Education as well as the legislature, wanted to be able to track students in the State of Oklahoma. The state wants to be able to track student test scores, grades, attendance, bus route, what schools the child has attended, the food served at these schools, etc. and the state wants to be able to do this in a virtual real-time environment (Oklahoma Department of Education). They are so adamant about this ability to look at student information, that a school district will be fined by the state for not validating the information is accurate and up to date.

Currently, the implementation phase of the project is just tied to the Student Information Systems, however down the road district finance software will also need be tied to the state. In order for the State to track students, each student is assigned a Student Testing Number by the State. All the districts information about the student is then exported daily to another staging database where the information is then put into the formats required by the state. It is then the school districts responsibility to check on the States Wave website for errors. In the event of errors, the district is responsible for correcting the information in their Student Information System in a timely manner. Once the error has been corrected, the error is removed from the state error report. Error’s can include duplicate Student Testing Numbers, missing test scores, invalid student addresses, other school districts recording the same student at the same time, etc.

With the responsibility of validation falling on the school districts, school districts are ramping up personnel to do nothing but maintain student data and resolve errors from the State. This obviously removes resources from the classroom and places those resources in administration. In addition to the added overhead of student data managers/departments, school districts are required to purchase electronic student information systems that are compatible with the states SIF requirement.

Slide 5

Pros – The benefits of using MDA principles is disparate systems can now communicate. Organizations can purchase software, or retain developers on staff, to accomplish the communications between systems. In certain circumstances this maybe cheaper than purchasing or upgrading software to receive the same benefit. Using UML to model systems gives a common environment for all stakeholders to understand model software applications. As mentioned, governed by the OMG.

Cons – Adding additional systems to communicate between systems may make the overall complexity to much to handle for overloaded IT departments. Open system, that can be used out side the rules.

Slide 6

Model Driven Architecture is a long fancy name for a series of capabilities that encourage standards for communication between disparate software systems and common model language. MDG is governed by the Object Management Group (which still has no connection to “Oh My God”). Like every system used in the world of IT, there are pros and cons to it’s use, however where affordable the pros typically out weigh the cons. School districts in the state of Oklahoma are required to send electronic reports to the state based on the Model Driven Architecture. Model Driven Architecture makes collaboration easier among large groups of people, as well as large group of organizations.

Presentation Notes: (number to slide)

Slide 2

AOA stands for Aspect Oriented Architecture, also known as AOP or Aspect Oriented Programming. Aspect Oriented Programming is used to develop software solutions for Object Oriented Programming (OOP) behavior that cannot be easily address by OOP techniques.

History – Aspect Oriented Programming is another development from Xerox. AOP is the result of a developer named Gregor Kiczales, who worked at Xerox’s Palto Alto facility from 1984 until 1999 (Pollice).

Use of AOP – Aspect Programming is programming based on behavior of objects. More specifically, an aspect is “a modular unit of crosscutting implementation. It encapsulates behaviors that affect multiple classes into reusable modules.” (El-Manzalawy). In short, AOP gives developers other options when maintaining, or adding functionality, to large scale software systems by allowing developers to write code that acts on existing code.

Slide 3

AOA uses crosscutting to apply programming capabilities. Crosscutting is defined as taking aspects of existing program structure across the whole of the system and cutting out similar behavior. In this fashion, AOP can act separate of the OOP system structure.

Slide 4

The best and simplest example of AOA is the use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) used in web development. Basic webpages are made up of two different types of “code”. Most people are familiar with HTML, while CSS are less known, or recognized. HTML is used to present content in a webpage, where as CSS governs the presentation of the website. CSS relies on AOA to accomplish it’s task. HTML is made up of content tags for headings, paragraphs, and setting page sections (divisions known as div tags). CSS  assigns formatting attributes to these elements as a whole, or as a group. As a whole, all fonts in a paragraph can be set to a certain style, size, and color based on the paragraph element of HTML. However in the event that a certain section(s) of the webpage needed a different font style, the paragraph element in this section of the webpage can be assigned a CSS class. This class can then behave differently than the other paragraph sections based on it’s superseded instructions from CSS.

This method of web design is not only simpler, it is more efficient. On large projects, one team of developers can work on content while another team works on presentation. The greatest benefit of this aspect approach, is that the content of the webpage may change constantly, but the presentation elements of the webpage rarely change. This makes content updates easier to handle without having to worry about presentation.

Slide 5

Pros – The pros of using Aspect Oriented Architecture are patterns of behavior can be handled alike in one piece of code versus resolving these issues in lots of smaller pieces of code inside the existing code structure.

Cons – To date, limited application to existing OOP structures/systems.

Presentation Notes: (number to slide)

Slide 2

1)The Unified Modeling Language or UML for short is a programming language used to design architecture. While it is considered a programming language, it is not actually used to “code” in, but rather to develop the software system in a visually documented manner.

2)UML is used to graphically represent each abstract of a software application. UML can be used to layout database maps showing relationships among entities, UML can be used to represent stakeholders and what portions of an application stakeholders will utilize, and UML can document software classes in the application.

3)UML benefits and aids development with visual representations of the system/application under development. The representations illustrate how different aspects of the system communicate and interface. Another benefit of UML is allowing the representations to only show the portions of the development that are of interest at a particular moment. This is known as abstraction.

Slide 3

Developed in the mid 90’s by Grady Booch, Ivar Jacobson, and James Rumbaugh. UML was actually the combination of three other development methodologies with the sole purpose of a unified modeling language. This unified modeling language would provide a medium for developers to communicate and share ideas across industries. (Kobryn)

Through out my varied career in IT, I’ve always had an easier time of understanding Microsoft products. That’s not to say I haven’t learned Unix, Linux, or other non-Microsoft products because I have. But for some reason, Microsoft “stuff” has just been easy. I noticed this with code too. C# was easier for me to learn and understand than other things. I figured that by sticking with C based languages (Java and C#) I could pick up both simultaneously. Uh  huh….not so easy I founded out.

The class I had before Christmas taught me, there is so much more to Java than just the core language it would take dedicated study to learn. That is to say, Java applications use a “gaggle” of frameworks from all over the place. It’s hard to keep up, or in my case figure out which to use. One of the course requirements was to create an application to pass information to and from a database. For the life of me, I couldn’t make that connection work. The documentation wasn’t consistent between the IDE’s, between the Databases, and Oracle has done a terrible job with documentation (especially Sun’s).

During the last course, Software Architecture, I started analyzing where things went wrong. What I came up with was the realization that I was trying to figure out a complicated environment on my own and thinking about it from a C# perspective. By C# perspective, I was thinking about how I would write the application in C#, but code it in Java. Like an American trying to speak Spanish, but thinking in English. I also looked around my life (so to speak) and realized that I didn’t know anyone who knew Java, but I had a C# influences.

So this is where the epiphany hit. While I want to learn Java, I think it’s important for me to hold off. Studying software engineering has taught me that developing applications isn’t about the coding language, it’s about the processes. However, when you need to provide a workable application, a Software Engineer needs programming skills. And at the moment, I think up ideas all day long about how to fix something, but I struggle with making the ideas happen because I haven’t spent enough time practicing my programming skills.

I’ve decided to take the easy path with this problem. Instead of getting frustrated working with Java and learning the abundant frameworks, multiple IDE’s, and how each database can connect to Java, I’ve decided to put learning Java on hold indefinitely. Instead, I’m going to roll with the punches and focus solely C#. Microsoft make’s the choice easier with one IDE, one framework, and one database.

I feel confident this is the right choice and will help me to become a better Software Engineer. I can become a diversified engineer after I’ve mastered the craft. If anyone has any advice or resources that will help me to become an expert in C#, please don’t hold back.

So in November I caught a trailer for J. Edgar and thought to myself, “Ok I’m not a fan of DiCaprio but Clint is directing/producing….this could be good.” Then there’s that whole J Edgar Hoover thing. The man who had dirt on everyone. Which to be honest, is really about all I know about J Edgar Hoover.

And after watching the movie, is still pretty much all I want to know.

I have to admit, I really wasn’t all that impressed with this movie. The movie was essentially a high level overview of Hoover’s life; his career, his social life, and his time in the FBI. In short…..the movie focused on what motivated the drive to create the FBI -Commies, Hoover’s social life – his gay lover and his mom, and the FBI – which was apparently all that motivated Hoover.

And maybe it’s just outside the FBI, Hoover wasn’t that interesting. I don’t know. Granted this man is a legend of the 20th century and it’s tough to shove his life into 2 hours, but I walked away with the impression that Hoover was an afraid momma’s boy, who was full of himself, and suffered from a Napoleon complex. I have to admit though, it takes conviction to get all the Presidents from Hoover to Nixon to bend to your will.

Still, I’m glad I didn’t spend the money on the DVD. Clint, you need to find better material to work with. This was a let down compared to Gran Torino.

The OS war has been restarted, who is gonna win this one?

And no, I’m not paying a royalty to Great White for that phrase. In what appears to be a fashionable Hollywood fad, Apple and Microsoft are “rebooting” their storied rivalry, only this time, I think it’s going to be a winner take all. What do I mean by winner take all? Well, I mean the winner of this fight is going to walk away with the PC market, the tablet market, the phone market, and a huge chunk of the cloud. The punchline? The geeks aren’t going to decide how this one plays out. Apple, Microsoft, IBM, and other tech companies are going to sit in the back of the bus while Main Street, USA decides the winner of this fight. Okay, okay….a ring/fight announcer I am not, but that doesn’t change that OS Wars of 2012/2013 are more than likely going to change the modern computing world almost as fundamentally as the airplane changed transportation.

Here’s a quick break down. As we know, Microsoft came out of the 90′s as the de facto operating system of choice. Bill Gates won, software was in fact more important than hardware, in the standard pc arena anyway. Fast forward 20 years, and Apple has rushed to develop a new trend, mobile computing. This time around, IT IS about the hardware. So long as the hardware is light, extremely portable, and can be integrated with a mobile bandwidth. I am of course, referring to the iPhone and the iPad. These two little devices from Apple have redefined computing, and set the course for where computing is going. In 5-10 years, desktops and laptops will be hard to find in their current configurations. What most users will see, and want, is a smartphone/tablet docked to external monitors, keyboards, and other peripheral devices. Unless of course, all of these are connected via bluetooth or something.

Apple developed the touch interface, and placed that touch interface in the iPhone and iPad. The Mac Book, iPhone, and iPad are all very light, as well as sleek. Over the years, Apple has partnered with Microsoft to figure out how to port Office over to the iOS. Long ago, Apple based that iOS off the Linux kernel and brought the power of Linux to a nice interface. Apple without a doubt has been an innovator and has reshaped the world of IT in the last 5 years.

In that 5 years, Microsoft has been relatively dormant. There was the flop that was Vista. Microsoft, maybe not intentionally, abandon there mobile platform. There has been some salvation with the release of Win7. I will give them kudos for that OS. It has been very stable and very un-Vista like. But that’s all the kudo’s I can give them. They have seemingly been asleep at the switch. Google has jumped into the phone market and keeping very well with the iPhone, with rumors of a good Droid Tablet coming to market soon. All of which, Microsoft has not answered.

So….one has to wonder, what has Microsoft been doing?

I guess the answer to that question is  Windows 8. Only this isn’t just an answer to the phone, or the tablet, or the desktop. This one OS is an answer to everything. There is only two ways this can go, because Microsoft has placed all of it’s eggs in one basket on this one. Windows 8 is suppose to bring together the tablets, the phones, the desktop/laptops, and even the cloud. That’s a lot to gamble on. Especially when Microsoft has a recent track record of hitting the mark on every odd numbered OS.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an advocate for Microsoft. I view everything in IT as a tool, and each tool has it’s pros and con’s. For instance, Windows is a better OS for general use. Why? Because all the apps are written for Windows. For an email system, Exchange wins again. Why? Because it’s the easiest to use and the client was written to communicate with Exchange, those features count. For a web server, I have to go with Linux and Apache. Why? Because it has been my experience that those servers are more stable and more secure. For instances when power counts with low overhead, I’d roll with Unix/Linux every time. Why? Because that’s what they were built for.

But here’s what has caught my attention with Win8. Not only is this OS suppose to be the OS to rule them all, but Microsoft did something I never thought they would do. They borrowed from Linux. I’ve always said, the only reason Linux struggles as a viable alternative to Windows is the fragmentation of the OS with so many flavors. Had one flavor stood out enough, and gather the support of a couple popular software ports, Linux would have been more powerful force gathering more market share. But it is what it is.

Microsoft knows OS’es. Microsoft knows User Interfaces. Microsoft knows how to market their creations. (I feel like I’m channeling the Bo Know’s commercials here). Microsoft knows how to recover from a bad OS. What I think people are underestimating is Microsoft’s ability to learn from it’s mistakes. I think this is a do or die moment for Microsoft, and I think they realize it. Well, I think Ballmer is aware it’s do or die for him as well, but that’s a separate issue. If Microsoft uses inspiration from Apple and Droid in the form of their mobility, adds in the reliability of Linux in the form of their new file system and some other features, and then cranks it out of the park with the ability to tie the desktop, laptop, phone, tablet, and cloud all together in one offering that is easy to use….Microsoft wins, and Apple again falls into a distant second. However, if Microsoft screws this up, Apple is going to take over and reign supreme. In fact, I think the shift in the market would be so great, Microsoft might go the way of Novell.

The only thing to do, is watch and wait.

Why would these organizations choose to protest you might ask? Well it’s because Congress has drafted two bills, one in the Senate and one in Congress, that would extend copyright infringement rights to the internet. By doing so, holders of copyright could shut down, sue, or force ISP’s to take down any material they claim is copyrighted. All with out a court order of course.

But who would think this is a good idea? Well the media companies and record labels do of course. We all know how voraciously record labels love to sue college kids for their MP3 trading. Remember Napster? God forbid if media companies can’t make huge swaths of money. Anyway, these media organizations are shelling out lots of money on the “hill” to lobby for these bills under the cloak of protecting American intellectual rights. Uh ya…ok.

Since the day the Internet went mainstream, people have screamed about the Internet taking money from their businesses, state and local municipalities crying over lost tax revenue, record labels losing money, and the Internet is corrupting our youth with violence and pornography. 10 years ago the lost revenue was going to destroy America. This is a new assault in an old war. So why take the time to comment on it?

Well, for the first time I can remember the Internet as a collective is fighting back. The Internet has found a voice……well, a coherent collective voice anyway. It’s a milestone I think. The idea behind the Internet was to be a free source of information, which it has become. Of course, there are also a zillion ways to make money from the Internet as well, but overall, content is mostly posted freely.

It seems to me that if record labels and media outlets are so worried about losing revenue, maybe they should adapt to the times and figure out a solution on their own. What really disturbs me, is Congress thinks nothing of running right out to draft legislation to benefit a small portion of the populace. The real kicker is, what makes Congress think they own, or can control, the Internet? It’s like claiming the Moon as sovereign US territory just because we stuck a flag up and left a bunch of crap on the surface. How do you control an idea? Because lets face it….the Internet isn’t a tangible asset now is it?

Thankfully Chris Dodd is out of the Senate, but it still blows my mind how a former Senator can utter stupidity like this regarding previously mentioned “entities” making a statement on legislation that affects them:

“It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and use their services. It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today. It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests.”

Did I miss something? Can people and organizations not choose to make a statement if they want? Did the Constitution just up and disappear? Oh wait…..Dodd is the CEO for Motion Picture Assn. of America. He was quoted as saying he wouldn’t be a lobbyist when he left DC. What an effin hypocrite.

So if the bill(s) become law, how do you enforce this? What becomes of the sharing of ideas? What happens when somebody comes up with a way to improve a copyrighted/patented idea? Wasn’t this country founded on innovation? How do you innovate when it innovation becomes a crime?

I’m borrowing this from Tech Republic….well, just because some of these made me chuckle.

The Original Post

Takeaway: Here are 25 suggested resolutions for the dork-tacular among us.

Every year, many mere mortals make pledges of self-improvement to justify the next trip around the sun. We geeks are no different, though our resolutions might be. For 2012, I hereby resolve to…

1. Stop explaining ThinkGeek t-shirts to people who clearly don’t care.
2. No longer utter l33t-speak acronyms out loud, let alone in conversation with n00bs.
3. Cease referring to George Lucas as “The Destroyer of Worlds!”
4. Stop feeding the trolls.
5. Not use xkcd comics as arguments in online debates, even when someone is wrong on the Internet.
6. Let the whole Windows/Linux/Mac thing go. Mostly. (Maybe.)
7. Stop pointing out which webcomic originated the t-shirts worn by characters on The Big Bang Theory.
8. Finally board and polybag all my comics. Yes, even the Chuck Austen X-Men run.
9. Only use movie quotes and catchphrases once per conversation. Even the Monty Python ones.
10. Spend at least one hour a day in direct sunlight. (Lunar reflected sunlight does not count.)
11. Only record as much content on my DVR as I have waking hours in the week.
12. Watch science-fiction programs without audibly correcting the science. Even during Fringe.
13. Stop explaining the difference between Wil Wheaton and Evil Wil Wheaton. (Yes, there is one).
14. Watch movie and TV adaptations without audibly pointing out deviations from the book or comic. Even during Game of Thrones.
15. Provide adequate spoiler warnings.
16. Not threaten to kill those who fail to provide adequate spoiler warnings.
17. Forgive people who confuse Star Wars and Star Trek. Mostly. (Maybe.)
18. Accept that Enterprise, midichlorians, Mutt Williams, planet Zeist, and the Eighth Doctor are all canon.
19. Not refer to real-world group activities as “raids,” or venues as “instances.”
20. Admit that raids and instances are not real-world group activities. Not even in The Old Republic.
21. Refer to my friends by their names, not their Twitter handles.
22. Learn the real names of all my Twitter friends.
23. Spend more time updating my blog than redesigning it.
24. Accept that not everyone celebrates Pi Day, Yuri’s Night, Tau Day, Towel Day, Star Wars Day, and Talk Like A Pirate Day. (But celebrate them anyway.)
25. Forgive the Fox Television Network. Mostly. (Maybe.)