razor# tech blog

I just read a really good article from the BlueSummit (blog.bluesummit.net, link) blog about an organization’s mission versus it’s vision. It breaks down the differences between the mission and vision and even goes as far as to explain the different levels of the organization down to personal plans. [Read the rest of this entry...]

I’m currently studying to sit for the PMP certification. So far my studies have consisted of various project management videos online (primarily Google video and YouTube), and using the book Preparing for the Project Management Professional (PMP) Certification Exam Third Edition. The book is an excellent resource and I highly reccomend it to anyone studying for the exam. The following posts in this series will organize my thoughts and be a place to record my notes. With that said, let’s get started with a general overview of project management!

Introduction

There are two types of business functions: projects and operations.

Project - a temporary endevor undertaken to create a unique product or service (unique than your other company functions)

Operations - day-to-day work that goes on in the organization

A project’s end results can turn in to operations. A project may be to design and create a dynamic website, while the operations that are the direct result of the project would be to keep it updated.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

My company recently interviewed a potential ColdFusion developer. In the interview,  he mentioned somthing about using UUID’s as primary keys. This sounded fairly interesting to me because I personally don’t like the auto-incrementing most database systems have (our Oracle 10g at work reuses keys if you actually DELETE a row which makes debugging hectic) and implementing my own version of auto-incrementing seems a bit like a hack but at least it works well so far:

(SELECT NVL(MAX(MYID), 0)+1 FROM DBNAME.TABLENAME)

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Well I just took my first Microsoft certification exam and it wasn’t nearly as hard as I though it would be. Perhaps I just studied enough, but I scored 833 and I needed a 700 to pass. The highest score I’ve seen someone post online was a 859, so I assume the test is out of 900 (which is about a 77%).

I highly recommend buying study materials including those from Microsoft themselves (their 70-270 exam book is an awesome resource!) and any sample questions list. If you’re the type of person that normally gets test anxiety, I would suggest getting test software that simulates the testing enviroment. One of the biggest benefits of this is you not only get to see sample questions, but you also get a feel for the testing environment and it should relax you a bit knowing the format.

Google was my biggest resource in finding information about my test, but I also used Microsoft’s 70-270 exam guide (link, amazon.com).

I’m quite excited and looking forward to getting other certifications now as I have an Apple cert and now one from Microsoft. I’m thinking about getting a CompTIA Linux+ (link, comptia.org) because it’s vendor neutral and would show my experience with the three major desktop OSes, but perhaps a professional certificat would be an appropriate next step, such as the PMP (link, pmi.org). Either way, I’m looking forward to studying for it!

ATTENTION: There will be cake at the end of this post.

Well, well, well… I’ve recently re-discovered Portal from Valve software. It’s an awesomely mind boggeling puzzle game where the user has two “doors” or “portals” as their disposal.  You can shoot these portals almost anywhere you wish, which makes solving the puzzles such as “click this button, then click a button across the level” much easier. Of course, then you get to the “click this button, shoot a portal on the wall, run through it while shooting another one on the floor so you build momentum to fly across a barrier and then figure out what you have to do next.” [Read the rest of this entry...]

I’ve recently been doing research for an article I’m writing on steps to create a greener data center and I’ve decided to take my own advice. I’m currently running a Windows XP desktop I use primarily for streaming live and recorded TV via Orb (orb.com), Ubuntu 8.04 file server that streams media through my network to my PS3 and Xbox 360, and a Mac Book Pro laptop I use for general computing/development.

In general, I keep all of my computers on 24/7. In doing research for the article, it’s making me realize that the steps corporate data centers are currently taking are the same steps home users should be taking as well. [Read the rest of this entry...]

I recently came into contact with an SSH server (on my iPhone) and I’m enjoying this new functionality OpenSSH brings to my iPhone. In fact, I’m thinking of installing an SSH server on my Ubuntu fileserver.

Here are 4.5 basic commands you should know in order to effectively use SSH no matter what server you’re logging into. [Read the rest of this entry...]

I’m just testing out the Jott feature that connects Jott with WordPress. That’s pretty much it, this is pretty much just a test blog. Alright, hope you guys enjoyed it. Bye.

listen

I had a video issue when I restarted my headless Ubuntu 7.10 file server a few days ago. (In case you’re curious, I was installing uShare, a UPnP/DLNA media streamer that’s compatible with the Xbox 360 and PS3).

For my particular problem, it seemed I was having a problem with the resolution of the video card not being supported by my monitor. Reconfiguring the xserver package should fix most video/display problems and unless you have a non-standard setup, it’s worth a try.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Just a quick note saying I uploaded some source to the Downloads section. It’s my first iteration of the GamerInfo project.

I’ve also rewritten the code to the backend of my database driven GamerInfo project. It’s much more stable now and is keeping updates very well. I’m about ready to work on the Twitter aspect of it. I’m thinking of updating once an hour… Maybe that’s too much? It would only update when your gamerscore changes or perhaps if you change games. We’ll see!