the P.Pole

5 random quips:

• “(500) Days of Summer” and “I Love You Man” were great movies
• Modern Warfare 2 is quite an addictive game
• Grooveshark is awesome
• I hate spelling and grammar errors, but feel that they are necessary when being mushy with Amy
• Picking others’ brains is as important as picking your own

Today Eugene Roman (an executive at OpenText) came to have lunch with us co-op students. He spoke at length during and after lunch about some principles that he has adopted in his work and personal life that have gotten him where he is today. Pretty rad exec, if you ask me. I really liked when he answered the question “How do we find jobs in this market?” with “With hard work and cleverness.” I have already asked to have a sit-down with him next Thursday to find out what exactly makes a guy like him tick. Should be quite a learning experience, I say.

There’s some saying that I will, in a matter of a few words, begin butchering via paraphrase: “A humble student has innumerable masters.” There’s also the “A true student is always ready to learn.” Something along those lines is what I’m applying here. There are two kinds of successful people in my opinion, those who are lucky, and those who know what they are doing. Given that someone successful knows what they are doing, surely there is something to be gained from first knowing their road to success, understanding it, and eventually integrating the lessons learned into your own adventure. I am pretty excited.

5 things I’ve learned this week:

• how to write SQL queries
• import/export data with MS SQL Server (more hidden than you’d expect)
• basics of using PHP with MySQL or MS SQL Server (the latter works now too, with an additional module)
• basics of using ASP with the same instead of PHP
• Bhupinder Singh is a great man (let it be known in all the lands)

Basically, I’ve got this project involving a whole lot of moving parts (database, queries, multiple user-interfaces, syncing, etc…) and I, being an expert in none of these things, was resolved to teach myself all the tools Id need to get things done how the pros do. Time-consuming, often frustrating, and I felt inefficient many times along the way. However, I am glad now, since I do have a basic understanding of how a whole bunch of things work now.

Anyway, yesterday I was on the corporate Twitter-like feed on Yammer, and I was mentioning/asking around about all these options, while being open to suggestions. Bhupinder, a wise man I met while waiting for the same bus at DC, chimed in about Webforms, Continue reading

This is unexpected, sneaky, and nerdy all in one beautiful burrito of awesome (found while reading through some PHP tutorials for work, while jamming out to Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean”).

5 things I taught myself to do within MS Excel’s macro modules:

• automatically find and “commit” existing data (by saving values and removing all formulas) in non-empty cells
• referencing + manipulating cell contents for VB programming
• automatically add to, remove from, and sort lists within ranges of cells
• create (and abuse) snarky user interaction windows/prompts
• establish a data connection with an online table + refresh the table

These things are pretty basic for advanced Excel developers, but for me, one who is in between the unwashed masses and the mildly initiated, well, I feel pretty damn good about figuring this stuff out mostly on my own (Google, Macro Recording, a coworker, and Herman were great helps along the way).

It has been said that necessity is the mother of all invention, but I think my inventions are bastardized in nature, as laziness is fact the real mother of these inventions! Like one of those secret plots, where the king’s child is actually born of a concubine (in this case, a very seductive and clever, albeit lazy concubine), but the public is kept from this knowledge, to protect the good name of the royal family. But even more secretly, the queen is fuming, but also satisfied because the child takes care of her needs… too? I am not sure this translates.

In any case, I was being a sneaky cleverist, and made a whole bunch of macros/functions/buttons for deciding how an expense tracking workbook would work. This was for the project managers here at Open Text, IT. I believe myself and any that follow would not enjoy the laborious task of manually maintaining the sheet’s infrastructure and editing the VB code to accommodate for the slightest changes, so I wrote it in a very hands-free fashion, and it will work flawlessly so long as no one decides to delete random columns/rows… Which no one ever does, right? RIGHT?! Well, i can leave documentation, and that’s about it really… Here’s to hoping no random user decides to “clean” my sheets.

Yesterday, there was a meeting at work where they were explaining to us the etiquette/basics of “blogging”. What is “blogging” you ask? Without being pedantic, it’s what I’ve been doing here for the past several years on my own. It’s nothing new to me, but people “out there” seem to trivialize or write off the habit as something for “those people”. I’m pretty comfortable with writing online–heck, the P.Pole was “outed” yesterday to everyone on the Open Text Yammer network and I’ve already gotten over it–but I don’t know that a new blogger (“NewB” for short?) would feel the same way. We were all required to undergo the training session as Open Text encourages the coops to blog about their experiences at the company, which is actually quite a great idea. I’d be fine with this, and might even make a few posts just for the people running this idea, but I’ve got some bones to pick first (you didn’t really think I’d make it so easy, did you?).

First off, online publication is not for everyone. This was evidenced by the lack of enthusiasm/response when, at the end of the fifteen minute presentation, nearly everyone was either zoned out or leaning out of their chairs to leave. I think most people are great consumers of content, but few are destined for the high and noble calling of producing good, palatable writing. To open this up to everyone is a must, obviously, but to expect everyone to willingly participate is a stretch. In terms of how the internet is used, I’d say the majority of people will mostly be content with consuming content (oh lookit the cute lil’ unintentional pun) 90% of the time, while a small minority focus on producing content 90% of the time. I’d count myself as somewhere in between, with a bias towards producing. And of course, I am not exactly representative of the majority of people hither or tither.

The other major nerve they hit with their system is that they want us to “blog” on Facebook. Don’t get me wrong–Facebook does have its uses. I just don’t think it’s nearly as professional or dedicated looking as an actual Wordpress/Blogger page. In fact, I take my posts from here, where they are true blue to how I want them to be presented, and inject a bastardized form of them into my Facebook feed for friends/family (that may not want to bother with visiting my URL or setting up an RSS reader) a chance to keep abreast (you’ve got to love that word) of my comings and goings. I just don’t think it’s the best way to journal or publish for the long term.

In any case, I suppose this is me half-complying and half-rebelling to their mandate to have us coops blog. Like most other things, I’ll do it if its meaningful, but I’m going to do it my way, because I think it’s better.

Work work!

5 great changes of late:

• at work: I’ve begun work on my term project at Open Text, automating the entire process of my job—”The Idea” (more on this below, post-list)
• at home: Eric, the new guy who is replacing Taylor for this term, has unclogged our shower drain with a pair of tweezers and much Liquid Plumbr (SIC), and now we do not shower in pools of soapy water
• at school: none—no schooling to be done while on coop as it is strictly forbidden
• at OS-level: I was forced to reinstall OS X Snow Leopard when I decided to fix my BSOD problem on Win7 by repartitioning/Boot Camping/installing everything, and now I’ve got a fresh OS X, retaining all my data, and a clean Win7 install, with Team Fortress 2 and CoD4: Modern Warfare 2
• at heart: I feel pretty happy and satisfied what with my deepening friendships, and doing decently well at work, which I had been worrying over before

So! My big Idea. Basically, there are parts of my job that are rather straightforward and could/should very well be done by an automated process. As we are not OS X, I cannot just write up/record an Automator workflow to do these tasks, and am forced to tackle them manually.

One of my term projects (I’ve got about three so far, and they’re all doosies) involves me finding/contemplating/inventing a way to automate most of the process of adding change/project requests, initiating and closing the same, etc…

The Problem: if we are to hook into the system that is in place, I would have to design this all in SQL, a programming language I am not familiar (at all) with.

Continue reading

Open Text!

I am now working for this company, and so far, so good! I didn’t post an info post last week (I believe this would be the first time that I am completely foregoing and not making up for afterward in a long time), mostly because I was so engrossed in work + Team Fortress 2. Actually, I should make up for skipping last week’s post! Double list, ahoy!

5 things I do everyday now:

• wake up at 7 am to Owl City (either “The Saltwater Room” or “Fireflies”)
• wear a long-sleeved dress shirt with  dress or corduroy pants
• keep my work shoes in my filing cabinet
• munch on the complimentary granola bars and “crispy rice marshmallow treats”, while sipping tea or hot chocolate
• find time to trick out my work-desktop while on my lunch break

5 things that surprised me about Open Text (which will be “they” for now, at least until I feel like it should be a “we”):

• they encourage workers (especially the coops) to participate in social networking on and about the job
• they have special phone booths for workers to make private/personal calls
• they have separate communal coat closets for smokers and non-smokers
• they are much more liberal with trusting their employees to make good decisions in terms of ethics (how to use time, equipment, etc…)
• they have hired about 20+ coop students just within the IT department, so clearly they are a huge supporter of the coop program

So far I am liking the work for the most part. I’ve been assigned some pretty rad but challenging projects/assignments, and the day-to-day tasks are no walk in the park, but I am not disliking it. I think this is probably because the environment is so free and positive that I don’t feel a slave or anything. Some things are fun, some things just need to get done.

I think the most enjoyable times are when I get to discuss things with my supervisor (a very senior/veteran Project Manager at Open Text) about the ways we would change things if it were up to us. I think we see eye to eye on a lot of important issues (I don’t know whether it’s because he trained me so I only have his ideas, or if it’s just that we share the same kind of intuition/common sense/expectations of systems). In any case, I am hoping to get more chances to pick his brain and learn lots.

See you all next week! I’m off to bed.