Blog

I can't tell you how excited I am to be going to Adobe Max in San Fran next month. This will be the first real conference I have ever gone to. I'm very glad my employer sees the benefit in the training I am looking forward to getting. So far there has only been one thing about Max that really sucks...

I had the need to calculate how many week days existed in an arbitrary range of dates today. I Googled for a while but didn't find anything I liked and I really didn't want to iterate over the entire range and count. For what it's worth, this is what I hacked out.

Recently Yahoo's home page changed for me. Interestingly enough, I only get the new page at home while using Internet Explorer. Apparently they are "easing" their redesigned site into the market a few users at a time. I didn't start getting it until I cleared my IE cookies last night. Even after clearing my Firefox cookies, I still get the old school page there.

I can never find this stupid page when I need it, so I am linking to it here so I won't lose it again. Use this when you want to download a specific JDK from Sun's site and don't want to wade through their confusing-as-heck "featured downloads" mess. http://java.sun.com/products/archive/ Update-- the URL appears to have changed. I'll put it here in case they ever deprecate the old one. http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/archive-139210.html

Kristin Schofield released a long-overdue Evangelism Kit PDF on her blog today that is basically marketing information about ColdFusion aimed at the Executive level. I found this timeline from page 6 rather interesting. It shows Centaur being released in 2009, but then it goes on to show what I can only assume to be the next two releases of ColdFusion: "Sully", and "Link" in 2010 and 2011 respectively. (See picture) Most Notably, Link lists a "Pluggable Architecture". Hmmm...

In a weird and monetarily lacking way, I enjoyed the extra free time lately after being laid off. I feel like I have finally gotten out a rut. After a month-long hiatus from full time employment I have accepted a position at a Kansas City company called National Seminars doing ColdFusion and SQL development. We hope to add in some Flex as well soon. My first day was last Friday.

Can anyone tell me why there is no widely adopted protocol for instant Messaging software? Every web browser and web server use HTTP. Want to transfer files with your favorite FTP client? No problem, they all use the same protocol. What about sending and receiving E-mails? There's always POP3 and SMTP. Telnet and SSH are the same story. Sure, there's some different flavors, but most all clients are interchangeable. Why then, must I sign up for AIM, Yahoo, Skype, ICQ, and MSN just to keep in touch with everybody? Trillian sure helps, but I still have to have all those accounts. Why? Why can't we all just get along?

I am not just a programmer, but to some extent a sys admin. Because of that responsibility (and the fact I have had servers compromised before) I am always interested in security. I think to stop crackers; you've got to think like them. When was the last time you tried to hack into your own server? If you don't know what your vulnerabilities are, how can you close them?

Hallelujah! According to Kristen Schofield's blog (ColdFusion Product Marketing Manager), the academic version of ColdFusion is now available for educational institutions teaching ColdFusion. http://www.webbschofield.com/index.cfm/2008/9/2/ColdFusion-8-Now-Available-to-Students-and-Educators-for-Free

I was working on a friend's multi-meter today and found myself needing to run to RadioShack. I'd rather not elaborate why I needed to fix my friend's multi-meter. It involves a test lead in the Ohms plug, 120 Volts AC, 2 blown fuses, 1 smoked capacitor and me. Suffice it to say I set out to fetch a new ceramic capacitor with radial leads, measuring 82 pico farads that wasn't shorted out.