Monthly Archives: September 2010

x of the month

Posted on September 29, 2010 by mark

Today is my Mom’s birthday. Happy Birthday Mom! As you get older, buying gifts gets more and more complicated. If you’re like me, you tend to just go out and buy those essential things you need; given a situation where … Continue reading →

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things i like: guided tours

Posted on September 27, 2010 by mark

When traveling, you don’t always have the time, energy or expertise to make your visit the vacation of a lifetime. That’s why I love guided tours. Continue reading →

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mini-cases: controlling the source

Posted on September 24, 2010 by mark

When you’re working on something by yourself, life is simple. But add just one person to the mix, and everything gets a lot harder. You want to keep track of what changed, when, and who was responsible, and to do that, you need source control. Continue reading →

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mini-cases: better to beg for forgiveness, part 2

Posted on September 22, 2010 by mark

In this mini-case, I did not have official approval for my idea. And it was simple: I was working for a business that, among other things, allowed users of a website to search for airfares across multiple providers—pretty innovative, at … Continue reading →

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mini-cases: better to beg for forgiveness, part 1

Posted on September 20, 2010 by mark

This case is about a time I should have started a skunkworks. While the historical origin of the term “skunkworks” is lightly disputed (it most certainly references a comic strip called “Li’l Abner” and stems from military projects in the … Continue reading →

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brief update: 20100916

Posted on September 16, 2010 by mark

No update yesterday, for which I apologize. I’ve been writing quite a bit of the content for the mini-cases, but it doesn’t always make it to the blog by the deadline. I blame the editors. I had a great lunch … Continue reading →

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mini-cases: support your core

Posted on September 13, 2010 by mark

The new content-management system was done, and we breathed a sigh of relief. We needed it to support our ambitions of providing even more specific content to our users, who came to our site for our well-informed professional recommendations in … Continue reading →

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mini-cases: things take time

Posted on September 10, 2010 by mark

My manager uttered a phrase that, to a software developer, was simultaneously thrilling and terrifying: “It’s time for an upgrade.” I was working for a company in the financial services sector; their core business involved a proprietary system for predicting … Continue reading →

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mini-cases: keeping the lights on

Posted on September 8, 2010 by mark

You know your job is in trouble when you can’t log on to the Internet, and the Internet Service Provider tells you that the bill hasn’t been paid in months. Such was my situation at a small government contracting company. … Continue reading →

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mini-cases: more movement means more mistakes

Posted on September 6, 2010 by mark

I used to have the power to email over 250,000 people at my fingertips. We weren’t spammers; far from it: we were publishing a successful newsletter to all those subscribers, and had quite a few who were actually paying for … Continue reading →

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