the P.Pole

Time to catch up quickly! What better way than a self-Q&A session? No, really, name them!

Where have you gone as of late, Carl?

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

What’s that?

It’s a video game. Can’t talk. Busy shooting things.

What about other things?

What other things? Oh I guess I do still work during the day.

That’s it? Work and gaming?!

Yeah pretty much. Work all day, game most of the night (with eating and whatnot shoved in somewhere).

Well then, how is work? How’s the project coming along?

Work is fine. The project, a project portfolio/tracking automation system designed by yours truly is more or less up and running. I’m in the process of creating and adding new views/ways to consume the information.

I’ve also nicknamed her “Potts”, as in Pepper Potts (Tony Stark’s secretary). Potts pretty much takes care of all the annoying/repetitive parts of my job so I can get back to being badass.

My boss seems pretty impressed/happy with my results. I’ve built this automation system on the intranet database system (Ollie/Livelink), making use of WebForms, LiveReports (glorified SQL queries), and WebReports, with plenty of CSS, HTML, JavaScript, a Livelink language layer, and a whole lot of self-teaching. I’d say that creating a system that automatically updates and generates content/displays/views to interact with the data is pretty damn good for a coop with just some basic Excel, HTML, and Scheme know-how at the start of the term.

You sound quite pleased with yourself.

What can I say, someone has to be, right?

And there’s absolutely nothing else you’re up to?

Well, I also manage to find time to work on Amy’s birthday present.

What is it?

It’s awesome. Can’t say much else, since it’s pretty secret this time. Kind of a “don’t ask, don’t tell” affair at the moment. Nearly complete, and all the little gears and cogs are falling into place. Should definitely be finished on time.

Is there anything else you’d like to say to your fans?

First off, I’d like to thank the Academy, my parents, and God for this. Also, everyone at the studio and special effects studio! You know who you are! I couldn’t have done this without you!

…

Seemed apt at the time. I believe we’re done here! Back to my rainy day at work + hope for breaking 2.00 kill-death tonight/this weekend.

5 frustrating things about work today:

• not having the necessary privileges to administer my own files/project on the production instance of Ollie (it’s lame that I can’t do something like choose from the full list of mechanisms for submission/revision of forms)
• arbitrary and unpredictable errors causing some reports I initiated to fail
• arbitrary and unpredictable errors causing my entire SQL tables to be wiped (seriously, what?!)
• discovering serious configuration issues that impact my project’s design in a serious way, at the last moment before my demo tomorrow
• having to bother a much busier coworker (someone I look up to), Bhupinder, because of many of the above issues, since he’s like a guru, except he shouldn’t have to field questions/concerns of a mere coop

If Business class has taught me anything, some of today’s problems could have been solved with… EMPOWERMENT: the granting of just the right amount of decision making power to the right person in the right position/capacity.

5 things that happened over the past week:

• had some pretty serious conversations with Eric, a housemate
• finally got my assignment/project files moved to the production servers at work (soon to start integrating my smart-work to start replacing my repetitive, dumb-work!)
• submitted my final assignment for PD5: Project Management, worth half my final grade (I hope I don’t manage to flunk a professional development course)
• GSP dominated Dan Hardy, Carwin rocked Mir, and I think last night was the most fun I’ve had in a long time
• an excellent sermon at Waterloo Pentecostal Assembly about the pursuit of excellence

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.