IT Professional and Communication Skills

It is a well-known fact that Information Technology professionals are often lacking skills in the communication department. Almost every job posting lately had stated you must have good Oral and Written communication skills. This was not me; at least until recent. I was always the guy standing by the punch bowl or snack table with hands in the pockets that said “HEY” as people walked by. IT professionals often confuse colleagues, friends and customers with their acronyms and tech-lingo – I was one of these people. Then I was pulled out to a Toastmasters meeting. Continue reading IT Professional and Communication Skills

Giving Back

It is important to give back to the community in some way. Your community may vary from other people’s, but it is a great way to create awareness of charities you believe in, your company’s good deeds and create balance and fun for your employees. Giving back also shows your employees the importance of supporting local charities and groups. Continue reading Giving Back

More Than Meets The Eye

There is more than meets the eye with me. On my resume it is majority Microsoft skills. Microsoft is used more than open source because that is what my work and customers demand from me.  Can I do more? Yes! I have experience in a lot of open technologies such as PHP, MySQL, Python and more. I do use these technologies, but not often Continue reading More Than Meets The Eye

Do Not Forget The Customers

New developers often design and develop what they believe is cool and cutting edge.  What is forgotten is how the customer or the user will think about the experience.  If the customer or user refuses to accept what you have built, you have just wasted time and money.  Potentially you are out of business. Continue reading Do Not Forget The Customers

Do I Need Source Control

Yes!  For the first time in my 15-year career I had experienced what it is like to not have source control, and I had hated it.  I had lost a very difficult to write SQL statement in a project.  It seemed almost impossible to rewrite the SQL for the second time.   I believe it was two of us working in the same project that had caused this loss of code.   I take the blame because I am the manager and I knew that source control was not implemented.  I should have taken the time to take all of the projects and check them into the source control system. Continue reading Do I Need Source Control

SQL Pagination

I have often encountered the culture of query for thousands of results, estimate the paging and then only display a small segment of the results that were retrieved from the database. This is particularly bad in a web environment. This results in the following issues:

  • A large amount of data to be transferred from the database to the website
  • Longer than necessary database queries
  • Script Errors and timeouts
  • Frustrated users/customers

Continue reading SQL Pagination

Should Children be Taught Cursive Writing

Cursive writing is the linking of hand-written characters.  It is the penmanship that was taught to us in school after we learned to print.  Some will argue that it is an old irrelevant craft due to the modern us of technology; after all, when was the last time you received a hands-written letter in the mail?  It is a fact that we do not use hand written notes very often.  In meetings, I bring my iPad, accounting we use computers and letters received are either written on the computer and printed or sent by e-mail.   Continue reading Should Children be Taught Cursive Writing