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Category: Technology

Thoughts on Completing a 15 Month Long Project

Thoughts on Completing a 15 Month Long Project

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Team, it’s been a long project, it’s been a tough project. You’ve developed bravely, proudly for your company. You’re a special group. You’ve found in one another a bond, that exists only in engineering, among brothers. You’ve coded for long hours, debugged each others work in dire moments. You’ve seen error messages and suffered through full regression tests together. I’m proud to have served with each and every one of you. You all deserve long and happy lives in peace….

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Making Shopping Carts Suck Less

Making Shopping Carts Suck Less

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I found this  brilliant graphic over at oatmeal (hat tip to Matt Brodeur for pointing the site out) and it hits on a subject that’s been on my mind the past couple days: shopping carts that suck. The oatmeal crews has definitely hit the nail on the head, so much so that I forwarded the thing over to the other Senior Engineer I work with as well as our Front End Design Lead, intending it as a subject for Monday…

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The Blog is Dead, Long Live the Blog!

The Blog is Dead, Long Live the Blog!

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Over the weekend, The New York Times proclaimed that blogging is dead.  I guess with their vast experience working with dead and dying media, they’d probably be able to recognize a fellow dinosaur headed for an early grave… All kidding aside, they’ve hit on something.  The days when everyone and their brother gets into blogging are probably over.  A year or two ago many “blogging gurus” would tell us that “we’re all media now”.  The truth of the thing is…

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How to Buy a Domain Name for Your Business

How to Buy a Domain Name for Your Business

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<Disclosure: I work for Namemedia, as Senior Engineer for Afternic.com, the premier marketplace for the secondary domain name market in the world.  As such, I tend to recommend Afternic and other Namemedia services.> The Business Owners Lament: “All the good domain names are already registered.” Yes, indeed, the initial land grab in the domain name market has been over for some time.  Most of the really good names are, indeed, already registered.  That doesn’t mean that they aren’t available, though. …

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Thoughts on Joining the World of Android

Thoughts on Joining the World of Android

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Over the weekend I made the switch to the HTC Evo 4g on the Sprint network.  I still have the iPhone, but will be using it as a glorified iPod Touch after a serious run in with AT&T’s much Byzantine labyrinth of customer support. The good: Both front and back facing cameras It seems like a more serious piece of technology The screen is better than the iPhone The camera is 8 megapixels, with built in flash Turn by turn…

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Twitter Just Became Relevant

Twitter Just Became Relevant

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I’ve got a long and storied history with Twitter.  At first, hated it.  Then loved it…and recently have been somewhat ambivalent. Personally I think the short form blog, which is what Twitter is, appeals to some of the very things that are wrong with modern society.  It’s designed for the ADHD generation, feeds the growing cults of personality, and in general, is a prime expediter of the dumbing down process.  The whole thing was designed to be scanned, not read,…

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Initial Impression – the iPad

Initial Impression – the iPad

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I’m now one of the kewl kids again…I have an iPad. While I’ll admit a fascination with the concept of the thing, it wasn’t on my acquisition list. You see, between my iPhone or one of my many computers, I’m almost always online. Even my TV gets Twitter, Google, etc. Lack of internet access really isn’t an issue for me. Now I have a 16gb iPad, the wireless version, and its trying hard to find its place in my life….

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Fighter Pilots vs. Bomber Pilots

Fighter Pilots vs. Bomber Pilots

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A while back, a friend mentioned his frustration with a coworker who seemed to be eternally breaking the site.  No matter how good things were, there was always just one more tweak he wanted to try, and in doing so, he’d inevitably take the site down. I was reminded of the story my father, Jack Cahill, used to tell me.  One I’m sure any of you who met him will remember There are two kinds of people in this world,…

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WordPress on Windows…Why Would You?

WordPress on Windows…Why Would You?

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Over the past two months I’ve had a look at two different sites running on WordPress that were running on Windows Servers.  In both cases, the sites were having issues, and in both cases, they could not get simple functionality they wanted to work on the servers and ended up moving to Linux hosting. Does WordPress run on Windows?  Yes, most definitely.  I can attest that I’ve run serveral installations going back to the old 1.x days.  The problem is…

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How Google Will Ruin the Cloud

How Google Will Ruin the Cloud

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I really enjoy having access to my stuff in the cloud.  Docs I can pull down anywhere, anytime, mail that isn’t tied down to a single machine, etc. Unfortunately, there are problems with the cloud, and with handing off services to companies like Google, which most of us aren’t thinking of. Over the past couple months I have had 4 major problems big cloud based services.  In each case, save one, it was impossible to get actual customer service from…

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