Thoughts on Engineering. And Coffee. Posts

The command line is awesome. Seriously – if you have only ever used a mouse to navigate a computer then you are missing out. Way back in middle school I had a teacher for an anthropology class. One of the lessons from that class that has stuck with me all these years is how amazing and useful the human thumb is. To illustrate this concept, one day he would have all of the students tape or wrap their thumbs so that they couldn’t use them and then try to complete the school day like that. Let me tell you – it wasn’t easy. That is a little bit like using a computer with only a mouse. Sure – it is useful and handy and all, but you aren’t using all of the tools at your disposal. So let’s un-tape that thumb and set up something amazing on Windows – bash.…

Data is awesome. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that having an ability to sift through mounds of data and come up with a specific answer or conclusion is an awesome ability to have. In my experience as a developer, building queries and logic into databases has always been one of my favorite types of development. Linking together disparate pieces of data into something functional and usable is really cool. However, one aspect of data that was drilled into my head as a young Engineer was the ability to audit data. Who did What and When did they do it? Now, years later I find myself building an integrated custom data solution for Product and Project Management, Time Entry, and Product Release Management. So where did I start? With the data of course. The following is a quick crash course in setting up tables and functionality in a…

We all dread that moment. That first blue screen of death. That gentle swelling of a hot battery. That soul-crushing feeling when your partner in work, your daily driver, the device that is your portal to the world has an issue. Yes, I am referring to your work computer. It is one thing to get a new work computer when it is planned. That long and arduous process to check all of the nooks and crannies for long-forgotten files and work. The slow migration of apps from one unit to the next. It is a completely different feeling when frantically scrambling to back everything up while fervently praying to the computer god, Clippy, to just give me a few more minutes before overheating to the point of another attack of the blue screen. Yes, my work laptop is currently dying. The battery is starting to swell and the unit is…