Meanwhile, back at the farm...

New Site and New Blog!

2008-09-10T21:23:00.000-07:00

I'm now over at My New Site www.michaelfarmer.info/blog.

Come take a look!

Helping Out a Friend

2008-06-19T11:18:00.000-07:00

This post is a call to all my followers out there to help a good friend of mine. Bob Laidig has been working with me at Sento for 5+ years and has been a good friend and trusted co-worker. Bob is now moving on to another opportunity and in conjunction with his departure I would like to ask all my friends and followers to donate to a good cause that Bob is undertaking

On June 28 - 29, 2008, Bob would like to take part in the 2008 Harmons Best Dam Bike Ride which is a ride to raise funds for finding a cure for Multiple Sclerosis. He is currently about $275 from reaching the minimum $500 entry. Please take some time to visit the donation website, read about the cause, and make a donation.

Thank you!

Click here to visit the site or copy and paste the following link:

http://main.nationalmssociety.org/site/TR/Bike/UTUBikeEvents?px=4749786&pg=personal&fr_id=7250&s_tafId=93198

The Joys of Creation

2008-04-27T08:07:00.000-07:00

The following was taken from The Music and the Spoken Word

Nancy was eight years old when a teacher looked at her drawing and spoke six words Nancy would never forget: “You’re not very talented, are you?”

The words not only embarrassed her, they burrowed inside her, creating a firm resolve never to make a fool of herself by attempting to draw or paint again.

It took more than five decades for Nancy to outgrow this image of herself as a clumsy, artless, and uncreative person. Today Nancy knows something she wishes she could have understood when she was eight: the reason we create is not for the praise of others but because we love something so much we want to see it exist.

That’s what creative people do. They bring to life things that didn’t exist before.

Creativity is one of the great, mysterious hungers we all have as mortal souls, and there are as many ways to express this divine drive as there are people who feel it. Some of the most creative people in the world never pick up a paintbrush, sit down at a piano, or fill a page with words. Yet because of them, the world is filled with scented gardens, warm quilts, and loving relationships. Sometimes the most important thing we create is as simple as a smile.

Many of us have something we’ve always wanted to try to do but never quite got around to it—perhaps because we lacked the confidence, or maybe because we were afraid we would fail. The good news is this: when we set aside our fears and begin to create, we make not only our lives but our world more meaningful and more wonderful.
One wise man put it this way: “God left [the] world unfinished. . . . He left the problems unsolved and the pictures unpainted and the music unsung that man might know the joys and glories of creation.”1

1 Attributed to Alan Stockdale by Sterling W. Sill in Conference Report, Apr. 1960, 70.

Mitt Romney's CPAC Address

2008-02-08T07:51:00.000-08:00

You probably heard the in the news yesterday that Mitt Romney announced that he is suspending his campaign for the Presidency of the United States. You probably heard a clip from his speech at CPAC where he outlined that because of the treat to our country from Jihad and the inevitable retreat by the Democrats, he could not continue to split the Republican vote. Doing so would only weaken the opportunity to send John McCain, who has been a strong supporter in our battle against Jihad, to the White House.

What you didn't hear in the news was the rest of the speech. You can read it here. You can also watch it right here:

Here are a few excerpts that I thought were most notable:

The threat to our culture comes from within. The 1960's welfare programs created a culture of poverty. Some think we won that battle when we reformed welfare, but the liberals haven't given up. At every turn, they try to substitute government largesse for individual responsibility. They fight to strip work requirements from welfare, to put more people on Medicaid, and to remove more and more people from having to pay any income tax whatsoever. Dependency is death to initiative, risk-taking and opportunity. Dependency is a culture-killing drug. We have got to fight it like the poison it is.

The development of a child is enhanced by having a mother and father. Such a family is the ideal for the future of the child and for the strength of a nation. I wonder how it is that unelected judges, like some in my state of Massachusetts, are so unaware of this reality, so oblivious to the millennia of recorded history. It is time for the people of America to fortify marriage through Constitutional amendment, so that liberal judges cannot continue to attack it.

Most politicians don't seem to understand the connection between our ability to compete and our national wealth, and the wealth of our families. They act as if money just happens – that it's just there. But every dollar represents a good or service produced in the private sector. Depress the private sector and you depress the well-being of Americans.

That's exactly what happens with high taxes, over-regulation, tort windfalls, mandates, and overfed, over-spending government. Did you see that today, government workers make more money than people who work in the private sector? Can you imagine what happens to an economy where the best opportunities are for bureaucrats?

It's high time to lower taxes, including corporate taxes, to take a weed-whacker to government regulations, to reform entitlements, and to stand up to the increasingly voracious appetite of the unions in our government.

Operational BI

2007-12-11T11:48:00.000-08:00

Mark Madsen is blogging about Operational BI. Operational BI just means that BI is more accessible to end users.

Vendors in the business intelligence and enterprise applications market have been talking a lot about operational BI, making BI pervasive and active/dynamic data warehousing. They're responding to the need businesses have for up-to-date information at the point of use so decisions can be made more quickly or tasks can be done more effectively.

Making operational BI a reality will require two things: front-end tools that address the specific interface needs at the point of usage, and a metadata-driven query layer that isn't tied to a specific UI.

Mark goes on to note that we wont likely see any of the predominant BI vendors adopt either of these two things. Why? Inertia. The article is a good read, and I recommend it because it explains the problem very well.

I believe there is a a market for a metadata-driven query layer. Something like this would be complex, but as I've said before, I believe the talent and tools exist, they just aren't focused.

Sexy Enterpise Software?

2007-12-10T10:16:00.000-08:00

Scoble is out of his element writing about Enterprise Software, but he hits this nail right on the head.

Why enterprise software isn’t sexy � Scobleizer — Tech geek blogger

I have invested by interests and schooling in Enterprise Software. I love Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing. To me, the concepts are really exciting. The software itself -- not so much. The trouble is that most enterprise software is massive. It is extremely complex in its implementation and its goals. Because of this, more time is spent on functionality than usability. When was the last time you saw a UI to enterprise software that you liked?

Here's the trouble. We really don't care enough about it to spend the extra cash to make it thus. Enterprise Software doesn't need to be sexy to get used. Consumer software does. CIO's are going to buy software for the company that will bring value and that value isn't going to be measured by how many warm-fuzzies my employees get while using it. It's based on cost savings and maximizing revenue, more of the former for CIOs.

So as much as I'd love to see enterprise software vendors build sexy applications, I don't see them wasting time on eye-candy any time soon. There is, however, a great deal to be excited about in enterprise software. As with any software, it doesn't matter how well it looks in comparison to how well it runs. The back-end may not have the polish we would like, but the stuff that goes on there to simplify complexity and provide value is simply amazing. It's worth looking at and studying.

---

I really should put this in a separate post, but I must point out one other thing here. If you want to point a finger at one other contributing factor to the lack of sexy enterprise applications, I think you have to point to Java. Most enterprise applications are built on Java. Java has the ugliest UI libraries out there. One way to quickly start building sexier applications is to either dump Java or encourage Java developers to work on libraries that actually look nice and encompass modern UI techniques. I don't mean to pick on Java here (if you know me, you know I'm not a fan), but to me it is an obvious conclusion.

Crayon Physics

2007-12-01T20:40:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Scoble I found this incredible video.

Enjoy!

Web Page Rendering On IE vs Firefox

2007-11-09T09:50:00.000-08:00

A lot has been written and said about rendering differences between IE and Firefox. I don't want to go there, but I do want to point out an observation I've made. It used to be that most sites looked really nice when rendered in IE. I used IE for all my browsing about two years ago. Then I switched to Firefox and haven't looked back. One thing that I noticed when I first switched is that many sites just didn't render right when viewed in Firefox. Over the last two years things have really changed. It is very rare that something doesn't render correctly in Firefox these days. That could be attributed to a lot of things, but regardless, rendering is generally not an issue. (I should note here that the difference in standards IS an issue for the developer, but for the person doing the browsing it's not an issue.)

Since my hard drive on my MacBook Pro died earlier this week, I have been forced to use IE a lot more -- especially at school. I've noticed something that caught me a little by surprise. IE was having a real hard time rendering many of the sites I use. Most of the really popular sites with big development budgets look great, but many of the "Web 2.0" sites I've visited don't look right. This is very similar to the experience I had when I moved to Firefox.

So why the switch? I don't know. But if I had to guess I would say that it probably has to do with another observation I've made. If you are a web developer and you don't work specifically on Microsoft / .Net products, you are probably using Firefox to run your site during your development process. When you finish or get ready to deploy, then you test on IE and make changes. Am I out of whack here? If I'm right, then what that means is that more and more web sites are being built with Firefox standards then kluged to work with IE. That would explain the shift.

Well, I could be completely wrong here, but this is just a hunch. Anyone else made any similar / supporting observations?

When OS X Goes Bye-Bye

2007-11-07T19:27:00.000-08:00

I had the unfortunate experience of losing my hard drive on my MacBook Pro this week. Thanks to Mozy I had at least a partial backup which included my most critical files. So, I'm out a laptop until next week -- what do I do? I have two servers at home (ok, just beefy desktop machines running as servers). I consolidated them into one server and used the other as desktop so I could do work and school stuff.

Which OS? Hmm, going to Windows sounded excruciatingly painful. That would be my last resort. Well, I chose Ubuntu. I've used SuSE in the past, but it's become to bloated for me and I wanted to try something new. Gutsy Gibbon seemed like it was worthy of a try. So here's how it went:

Step 1, install the OS. Very simple. Dowloaded the ISO, burned it to a CD and booted. Everything went great. Now that it's up, WOW, the desktop looks great. It's no Leopard, mind you, but for Linux it looked fabulous. In my opinion, it also looks better than Vista -- but what doesn't.

Step 2, install VMWare Server. Yep, I know, I didn't want Windows, but I needed it for a stats test that requires SPSS -- for Windows. I had to have it done last night so on it went. Being on the bleeding edge in Linux has its downfalls, however, and VMWare was a bear to install on this new kernel. I was a little out of my element so I didn't take very good notes, but thanks go to Google and Forums for showing the way.

Step 3, after being spoiled by iTunes, having music in the background all the time and not having the luxury or time to re-record all my CD's (yep, lost my music library), I needed some tunes. Jango to the rescue. Whew... now that that's taken care of...

Step 4, Oracle Client. Oracle client for 10g R2 installed just fine after I told it to ignore system prerequisites. Just had to setup my environment and it works just fine. This is really getting to be old hat for me now.

Step 5, ruby and oci. The project I'm working on is a ruby script for archiving our data warehouse so ruby and oci were next. I ran into some trouble because zlib isn't installed by default on Ubuntu but after installing it using aptitude and recompiling ruby everything was setup fine. I also installed Ruby on Rails at this point because, well, I was there and I like having it available if I feel like doing anything for fun.

Step 6, install a vpn client. Oh boy, now I got to mess with the kernel again to try to install Cisco's VPN Client for Linux. After a failed attempt and some googling, I just bagged it and installed vpnc through aptitude. I setup the config file and ran vpnc from the command line. After a few trial and error runs on the config file it connected beautifully. Wow, who knew about vpnc? Not I, but now I'm glad I do.

Ok, so, about 10 hours later I'm up and running ready to get back to work. So why blog about all this? Well, for one, I wanted to tout Ubuntu. It really is a great desktop alternative. I would use it any day over Windows. If you haven't tried it in a while, give it a shot. It's impressive. My biggest hassle so far is getting used to using the control key instead of command/alt for everything. If anyone knows how to switch that in GNOME, please, let me know.

Another reason for the blog post is to point out that there is life after OS X. I know I'm a real sucker for Apple products, but if you can't afford it or can't stomach Apple culture then there are viable alternatives to running Windows. There will be a little learning curve, but if you don't mind getting your feet wet on the command line and learning something new then Linux deserves a serious look.

Now that's my kind of classroom!

2007-11-04T20:27:00.000-08:00

BRAND INFECTION � When Brand Infection works…

My Social Networking Winner and Losers

2007-11-03T15:14:00.000-07:00

It's been several of months since I denounced Social Networking and then renounced after a few days. Since then I have created accounts on many networks and thought I would categorize some of the more popular sites as winners or losers. So here are my reviews of whether the social networks are, in my opinion, winners or losers:

Facebook (Loser)
That's right, I may be the only one saying it, but after about a month of really trying to get some value out of Facebook I simply never found it. Sure, there are a lot of neat things about Facebook. I liked the video stuff and the whole idea of being able to make applications. Trouble is, most of the applications don't do much more than provide some kind of entertainment. No value there for me. I get my entertainment doing things with my family. Now days I rarely visit my Facebook site and the ironic thing is, I rarely see any of my friends doing much out there either. Overall, with all the hype, I was expecting more from Facebook and has been a huge let-down.

Plaxo (Winner)
For a long time Plaxo was just an online address book. If that's what you still think it is, you need to take another look. They have basically 2 new features I have adopted that I use all the time. First, I now have the ability to sync my calendar and contacts with Outlook, Google Calendar, & iCal (on my Mac and my wife's). This synchronization happens almost instantaneously and is reliable. Plaxo is still working out some of the glitches and occasionally I have to resync one of my sync-points, but for the most part it works really well.

The second feature I love is Plaxo Pulse. This is a fabulous way for me to see everything that my contacts are doing. It aggregates feeds from most of the social networks along with Amazon wish lists and blogs. One of my favorite features is that I can see what RSS feeds my friends are sharing from Google Reader. This allows me to see what my friends are reading and lets me quickly and easily take a look myself.

Twitter (Winner)
This one was a complete surprise to me. Never did I think that logging my life 147 characters at a time would be so fun. The best part about Twitter though is that I get to follow some amazing and interesting people. I love to see what they are doing, reading, and talking about. I have always maintained that if you want to really learn about something, you should hang out with people that are already doing it. Twitter does that for me.

Here are some other interesting things that I've observed through Twitter: I now feel like I'm friends with people I've never met. I have a resource that I wouldn't have otherwise -- for example, the other day I asked the editor of MacWorld Magazine (Jason Snell) if he thought a product was worth the price. I had an answer within an hour. That blew me away. I also find out news from Twitter. Between Dave Winer and Robert Scoble, I'm able to keep a pretty good pulse on the web world. I have also been updated on weather (snow storms), the California fires, and earthquakes. All this news came to me a lot sooner than through the news networks or even my RSS feeds.

FamilyLink (Loser -- so far)
FamilyLink is a social network for genealogy and is the brainchild of Paul Allen, one of the founders of the most successful genealogy web site ever, myfamily.com. FamilyLink has the promise of being something really great. The idea of having a place where one can collaborate their work with others on their family tree is one that I've had for a long time and one that I think has a lot of potential. So, why the "loser" status? The site is just to young. The interface is ugly and buggy which makes it frustrating to work with. Collaboration is the idea, but the implementation feels like it was done by a bunch of beginning programmers. FamilyLink is ALMOST there. Maybe a few more rounds of development and interface upgrades and it will be on my "winner" list.

LinkedIn (Winner)
LinkedIn has become my networking go-to site. The thing that makes LinkedIn so powerful is the enormity of people that are on it. I've been able to find and "link up" with many co-workers that I would not have been able to find any other way. I am constantly surprised by the people that I find and that find me. If I ever need to contact these people, I have their contact information at my finger tips. I know the site has many other useful features, but this aspect of LinkedIn is why I use the site and why I think it is a winner.

Other Winners:
My "Other Winners" sites include sites that we don't normally view as Social Networking but we use all the time. Here they are along with a brief description of why they are winners:

Flickr: No better place to store, share, and organize online photos.
Blogger: Easiest place to have a good looking / fully featured blog for free.
Jango: Best web radio I've used -- will get better with time.
Del.icio.us: Bookmarking made simple, especially when integrated with Firefox (more on this one at another time).

Other Losers:
My "Other Losers" sites include sites that I tried to use but was not enticed to return to them nor did I understand them.

TokBox: Interesting idea, underwhelmed by the features
Digg: I tried it, didn't digg it.
Stumbled Upon: Too much work for too little value.
Jumpcut: Too much offensive material right in your face.
Slide.com: Same as Jumpcut.

Using Subversion Branches and Externals

2007-10-18T06:49:00.001-07:00

If you have been following my twitter feeds lately you already know that I've been trying to figure out some subversion stuff for a current project I have to come up with some process around using subversion. Well, I'm a real newbie at this and Google was only slightly helpful. Well, I think I learned what I set out to learn and I thought I would post my findings here.

References:
http://blog.kowalczyk.info/archives/2006/06/06/short-tutorial-on-svn-propset-for-svnexternals-property/
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.1/ch07s04.html
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.1/ch04.html

Creating a Branch:
syntax: svn copy source target
example to copy from trunk to current directory:
svn copy svn://localhost/trunk/DW/RIM/RIM/Stored/MY_STORED_PROC.sql .

Merging changes:
syntax: svn merge svn://original_path_to_file -r[Original Version]:[Version to Merge] /new_file_path
example:
svn merge svn://localhost/branches/DW/RIM_1.4/MY_STORED_PROC.sql -r1:2 ./MY_STORED_PROC.sql

Creating Externals:
Notes:
Externals can only be created on directories, not individual files.
Externals provide an alias to a directory within subversion
Creating externals involves setting a property on a subversion directory.
To create a directory that has subdirectories that are externals:
1. Create a file with the alias definitions. The contents of the files should be like this:
alias_directory_name path_in_subversion
for example
$ cat alias_def.txt
stored_proc svn://localhost/trunk/DW/RIM/RIM/Stored

You can create multiple subdirectories with multiple entries. For example
$cat alias_def.txt
stored_proc svn://localhost/trunk/DW/RIM/RIM/Stored
tables svn://localhost/trunk/DW/RIM/RIM/Tables

Once the definition file has been created, it can be applied using the svn propset command to a working subversion directory using the following commands:
svn propset svn:externals . -F alias_def.txt
svn update

These commands will create the directories "stored_proc" and "tables" with the appropriate contents as defined in alias_dev.txt in the current working subversion directory.

Matt's Pensieve: PC vs. Mac Pet Peeves

2007-10-13T20:01:00.000-07:00

Matt Freestone is one of my best friends and favorite associates. We've worked together long enough now and agree on so many things that people we work with even get us mixed up now and then.

So I was happy to read something that finally gives people something substantive to tell us apart. Mike will be the one with the shiny MacBook Pro. Matt will be the one with the shiny PC.

Between Matt's post and my previous post on why I use a Mac, it's easy to see that to each is own, and that even goes for OS religions.

10 Reasons Why I Use a Mac

2007-10-12T08:44:00.000-07:00

So I've been using a Mac in some way or another for just about a year and a half now. I had long been a user of Windows and even DOS. About 4 years ago I started to experiment with Linux and liked it, but was deterred by how difficult it was to do what should be simple, like watch a DVD. I had long been a Mac hater. Like most Mac haters, it was the culture more than anything that turned me off. The other big reason I hated it was because I thought it didn't have any power for anyone that wanted to get "real" work done.

Now that I have switched to a Mac, I am amazed at how much I love it. It's not perfect, mind you, but it is by far the best experience I've ever had on a personal computer. As much as I love it, I am astounded when I see people buy a computer without taking into consideration a Mac. So I thought I would list 10 reasons why I use a Mac to see if I can illustrate why it should be considered. This is not meant to be a marketing post for Apple. It's just a way for me to explain why I will stick with Apple over Windows.

1. *nix
The number 1 reason I love my Mac so much is because of the BSD Unix that it runs on. This not only provides me with the memory management, file system, and folder structure that is characteristic of such a system, but it gives me the ability to harness the power of a true terminal / shell. Although this may not be a big deal for most users, it's a huge deal to me. I love my bash prompt. iTerm is almost always running and I love it because I can simply and quickly accomplish many things that make everyday use of my computer more pleasing and more effective.

The other fantastic benefit of using a traditional Unix folder structure is that I no longer have to deal with the Windows Registry. If I backup my home folder and my computer completely dies, I can restore my home folder and I'm back up and running, preferences, settings, and all, in no time. You would never dream of doing this in Windows.

2. Nagging
I can't stand Operating Systems that want to tell you everything they are doing... constantly. Windows will not leave you alone no matter what you want to do. I often sit in meetings with people trying to demo something on Windows. It literally takes them as much as 10 times longer to do something than it should because they have to confirm that they really want to do something. Windows also constantly wants to brag about how it does something for you. The little popup in the bottom right corner wants to inform you every time Windows accomplishes anything. I'm sorry, but this is annoying.

For the most part, OS X only notifies you if something goes wrong. I don't get a popup for everything and anything it does. It's clean and it leaves you alone so you can do your work.

3. Organization
When I switched from Windows to a Mac I wanted to copy photos, music, and documents to my Mac. Then it hit me, I had no idea, despite my best efforts to organize, where all that stuff was! Sure, I had "My Music", "My Documents", and "My Pictures" folders but almost every app I used on Windows put their stuff anywhere they liked on my hard drive. It was a nightmare trying to figure out where everything was. In fact, I just gave up and started over bringing this stuff to my Mac from it's original source.

iLife (iTunes & iPhoto in particular) has changed everything. All my music is now well organized. My documents are all in one place. My photos are all neatly organized and easily accessible. That is how it should be. My "Home" folder has everything that I want in it. I can quickly and simply find everything that belongs to me on my computer.

4. Stability
My first Mac was a Mac Mini G4. My wife still uses this computer and it is the main computer that the family uses to browse the web, manage finances, and maintain music, photos, and home movies. This little box has NEVER locked up or forced us to reboot. The only time it is rebooted is when we shut it off when we go on vacations and when we install updates that require a reboot (about once a month). That's it!

I would never dream of having this stability on Windows. When using Windows, I had the habit of making sure I completely shut it down when I was finished using it. Then when it was time to use it again, I had to wait for it to boot. Routinely as the day went on, I would have to reboot to regain speed that I was losing as the day progressed. Again, this is just not going to allow you to be effective in your work.

5. Automation
Part of using a computer is repetition. We do the same things all the time. Sometime those things are monotonous and just take too much time. Enter Automator, Applescript, and the shell. I love to find ways to work smarter. These tools on the Mac help me do that by automating repetitious activities. For example, one of the tools I use leaves little "buffer" files all over the hard drive. (Note, this is an Oracle product...) So, at 8:00 every morning, an Automator task automatically launches, finds all of these pesky buffer files on my hard drive, and deletes them for me. I have also used Automator to setup development environments, swap my command and alt keys for me when using a Microsoft Keyboard, mount network folders, backup Podcasts, and manipulate large amounts of images all at once.

6. Simplicity & Usability
OS X and accompanying applications excel at letting you do things that should be easy without any hassle while not completely taking away full control. For example, when I plug in my digital camera, iPhoto detects it and lets me download my pictures into my library by pushing 1 button. It even alerts me if I, for some reason, had already downloaded that picture before so that I don't get duplicates. This seems like such a simple thing, but I can't tell you how many times I've had to try to sort out duplicates and try to find lost photos on a Windows machine.

This is just an example. Simplicity is one of the hallmarks of OS X. It's in Apple Mail, iPhoto, iTunes, etc. It's what made the iPod what it is. I not only appreciate it, but it's the first thing I notice that is missing when I use Windows.

7. Control
OS X puts all the controls for my machine in one place, "System Preferences". When I first started using OS X, I was constantly looking for the "Control Panel" equivalent. I couldn't believe that everything I needed was in the "System Preferences". Well, after a while I realized that System Preferences is a very simple interface where I could easy find network settings, display settings, keyboard settings, etc. It was all there, neatly organized for me and, most importantly, easily accessible. Here's the test. Without using the Windows command prompt, how many clicks away are you from knowing your IP Address. I can tell you, it's a lot more than the 3 clicks I use to find it in OS X.

When problems do arise, and they do, I appreciate that I can always bring up my terminal and quickly get to the guts of my system to fix problems. This requires a little bit more know-how, but since I have the knowledge, I appreciate it. This isn't so with Windows. When you have a problem, there just aren't available (in the OS ) the tools that you have in OS X.

8. Security
I can keep this one really short. No viruses, no trojans, no zombies, no spyware, no worries. I've never had to even think about security since moving to a Mac. And I don't have to run a resource heavy virus scanning tool. It's a whole new world on OS X; it's a breath of fresh air! Sure, there are still security risks. But OS X takes care of the majority of them for me, so much so that I don't even worry about it.

9. Quality
Again, I can keep this one short. Using OS X is like moving into a new house. Everything is clean and crisp. It looks nice and feels nice. Everything works the way it should. You don't feel like you have to constantly fix things that are broken. It just works and works great.

10. Applications
Most OS X applications I use are fantastic. They are well built, simple, powerful, and fun to use. My favorites include Quicksilver, Journler, iTerm, TextMate, Adium, Skim, Voodoo Pad, and of course the iLife suite. Not to mention the oft overlooked applications that just come with OS X: Mail, iCal, and Address Book. I love the consistent user experience, integration, and quality that I get with these applications.

I should also note that it is marvelous to not have to deal with Windows Installer. Most apps install simply by dragging an icon to my Applications folder. This stumped me when I first switched to a Mac because I was used to applications needing to install components all over the hard drive and registry. Not anymore! Click and drag... wonderful and liberating.

Summary
I've really hyped up what I love about my Mac in this post. OS X and being a part of the Apple culture does have its flaws. In addition, there are things on Windows that I miss (window resizing and decent Family History software to name just 2). But for the most part I will use my Mac over a Windows PC any day.

I hope this post was helpful to some of you who may not have considered a Mac, or are contemplating buying a new PC in the future. I have not listed all of the things I love about my Mac, but I offer these these things to ponder and consider. Good luck making your decision!

BI, where's your focus?

2007-10-08T10:45:00.000-07:00

I'm seeing a lot of really interesting ways of displaying / visualizing data these days from the big Business Intelligence (BI) companies and from some smaller, even web-based, companies. There is a small effort to utilize Web 2.0 technologies, although I think for the most part the people building BI apps don't understand Web 2.0. (I've ranted on this before.)

Data Visualization is absolutely essential in BI tools. But in then end, I'm just looking at charts and data. Anything beyond that is either organization of data and eye candy or delivery (getting it on the web / dashboard / email / etc). But is this where the real focus should be?

I don't believe that enough attention is being given to meta-data. Meta-data, or data about the data, should be generated and gathered into a repository and then opened up to the world. Imagine a meta-data repository that could be searched and made available using all these neat visualization tools. The key is that the meta-data also knows how the data should be organized and delivered to the BI / Data Visualization tools.

Here's how I see it working. I pull up my Dashboard on my Mac which has a simple widget with a search bar. I type "Gross Sales" and then I'm presented with search results from my meta-data repository of all the data elements in my enterprise that match the criteria. In the list I see "Gross Sales - The total gross sales of products". I click on that and another small list appears below with check boxes. Items include "by Region", "by Product", etc. I choose the categories that I want and click Run. I am then prompted for a date range or a list of common / custom filters. When I click "Generate", the data comes up in a chart and I'm given a limited number of controls to customize the display. When I click Save, my chart is saved and automatically updated from that point on. My BI tool then becomes my own dashboard already built into OS X.

What's going on in the background? Utilizing web services, I'm making several calls to my meta-data repository. Once enough information has been collected from the end-user on what they want to generate a database (or cross-database) query then the meta-data repository generates the query and runs it on the database. The third party application then, also using web services, requests the data which is returned in a standard XML format for manipulation.

The real trick here is that you need an amazingly intelligent meta-data repository / server. That is why I think this is where the focus should be. We have enough tools to make our data look pretty, what we really need are systems that know and understand our data so that we can make informed decisions without all the domain knowledge that is currently housed in the heads of data stewards in the enterprise.

There are a lot of really bright innovative people out there that can solve this problem. In my experience, groups of individuals are capable of solving any problem with the proper focus. Right now the BI world is focused on the easy stuff. Now let's buckle down and get on with the next frontier of Business Intelligence - Data Intelligence.

Parallels Shared-Networking on the Fritz

2007-10-06T06:33:00.000-07:00

I love Parallels and I use if often. For networking, I have chosen Shared Networking for ease of use and so that I only have to have a VPN client on my Mac. Last night I was in need of printing from Word 2007 to my shared printer. But for some reason, my Parallels machine couldn't connect to the network. I looked at the IP settings and sure enough, it wasn't getting an IP address from Parallel's NAT service.

Well, I fought with releasing and renewing the IP address to no avail. Then, because I was frantic, I switched the networking to Bridged. The Parallels machine got it's IP from my router and I was back in business. But I don't want that machine to use Bridged networking permanently.

So I fought with it again this morning. With some help from Google, I discovered that the NAT service is located at /Library/StartupItems/Parallels/pvsnatd. Issuing a simple stop and start from the command line was all it took. Within seconds, my Parallels machine was able to get an IP address from the NAT Service and I was back in business. Strange that the NAT service was either hung or just stopped working.

Commands issued:
sudo /Library/StartupItems/Parallels/pvsnatd stop
sudo /Library/StartupItems/Parallels/pvsnatd start

Hope this helps anyone else out there that runs across the same issue.

Hey world, I'm on Twitter!

2007-10-04T08:57:00.000-07:00

Yep, that's right. I'm on Twitter. I've been on it for about a week now. So far I've really enjoyed getting tweets from those that I follow. I've also been adding my own. Then it hit me... NO ONE IS READING MY TWEETS! Why am I doing this? So I invite the world to follow me. I promise to be somewhat entertaining, informative, and always open to discussion. If you are a fellow twitter person, I'd be glad to follow you too! Let's see if this twitter thing can actually bring value.

Web 2.0 Components Are Tomorrow's BI Front End

2007-10-03T08:29:00.000-07:00

Business Intelligence (BI), generally speaking, is behind the game. This Blog post talks about something that I've been thinking about for about 2 years now. BI vendors have been extremely slow at adopting Web 2.0 techniques and technologies into their primary applications. I've seen Business Objects begin to dabble in the realm but the potential there is enormous and virtually untapped.

Will it take the "Google of BI" software to revolutionize the industry? I don't see any of the major BI players, including Oracle, Business Objects, Cognos, and MicroStrategy, being able to really harness the power of Web 2.0. Why? Momentum. These company's have too much invested in their monolithic, exceptionally complex, forklift-implemented applications and architectures. Their only hope is to buy a smaller, innovative company and start swapping out components in their architectures. By the time they pull this off, it will be too late.

So where are the BI equivalents to Flickr, YouTube, Google, Facebook, etc.? Hmm... I don't see any. Where are they? Anyone else see the void/opportunity that I see?

Oracle Pushes Enterprise 2.0

2007-10-03T08:16:00.000-07:00

No other company is in a better position pull off Enterprise 2.0 than Oracle. There are others that are close, but Oracle has a huge edge up on the competition. The main component (other than cash) that gives them this edge is Fusion. Think of Fusion as a central information hub that contains and maintains business rules. All information in the enterprise eventually ends up going through this hub for processing and distribution. By abstracting business rules into an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and by providing consistency from Database to CRM to ERP, Oracle can, with the proper vision, make Enterprise 2.0 a reality.

Oracle continues to bring in big revenues and don't be surprised if that trend continues. No other provider can offer the complete dream that Oracle can. If you think Oracle is going to drift away being overcome by open source competition, you are in for a big surprise over the next 5 years.

Ease of Use. Apple Wins!

2007-10-02T08:17:00.000-07:00

I was just noticing that you can download your contacts in LinkedIn into your address book. I was happy to see that they had instructions for Windows and Mac. But notice (by clicking the URL below) how many steps it takes to get the export imported into the various address books.

View Screencast

Is it any wonder that more and more people are switching to a Mac?

Paul Potts

2007-10-01T12:50:00.000-07:00

The story of Paul Potts blows me away. I was introduced to his story last Friday when one of my professors presented it as sort of a "feel-good" moment. More important than his voice, Paul shows that there is talent out there to be discovered, and when it is, it motivates and inspires us all.

Setting up Oracle on Ubuntu Running on Parallels

2007-09-24T09:39:00.000-07:00

I recently created a Parallels image for some classmates running Ubuntu with Oracle 10gR2. I included instructions on how I created the image and I thought it would be helpful to anyone else out there to see how I did it (not necessarily how it should be done). To make this post more searchable from Internet search engines, I've included all the steps here rather than posting a link to a pdf. Enjoy!

SUMMARY:
Ubuntu Server
User: duser, pw: duser
User: oracle, pw: oracle
Hostname: vm-ubu-oracle
Static IP: 10.211.55.10
Webmin:
User: root, pw: duser
Link: http://vm-ubu-oracle:10000
Oracle:
SYS pw: oracle
Admin: http://vm-ubu-oracle:1158/em
TNS Entry:
ORCL10 =
(DESCRIPTION =
(ADDRESS_LIST =
(ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = vm-ubu-oracle)(PORT = 1521))
)
(CONNECT_DATA =
(SID = ORCL10)
)
)

Setup Parallels Networking
Note: All networking is using the Parallels default for shared networking. Some of this has to be tweaked a little to allow for static IPs and to ensure a consistent network between your Ubuntu Server and your Mac.
Go into your OS X System Preferences, Network
Click on Parallels NAT, Configure
Click on TCP/IP
Change Configure IPv4 to "Manually"
Set the IP Address to 10.211.55.6
The last number in the IP address can be anything between 2 and 9. Whatever you choose will be the IP that the Ubuntu server will see your Mac as. I will be using 6 throughout this documentation. (Also set: Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0, Router: 10.211.55.1)
Click Apply Now and close System Preferences
Open Parallels, Preferences
Under the Network Tab, ensure that "Enable DHCP scope for shared networking" is enabled.
The 3 IPs should be as follows:
Start: 10.211.55.10
End: 10.211.55.254
Mask: 255.255.255.0

Download the Server Edition (492 MB) of Ubuntu from here:
http://mirrors.xmission.com/ubuntu-cd/feisty/ubuntu-7.04-server-i386.iso
Create a Parallels Image
Custom Image
OS Type: Linux
OS Version: Ubuntu Linux
RAM 512Windows XP CD Key
Create a New Hard Disk
15000 MB, Split Disk, Expanding
Shared Networking
Default Adapter (networking), Connect on Startup
Name of Virtual Machine: Ubuntu Oracle
Optimize for better performance: Virtual Machine
Remove Floppy Drive and Sound Card.
Decrease video memory to 4MB.
Start Virtual Machine attached to installation ISO

Ubuntu Installation
Language: English, Country: United States, Keyboard US English
Hostname: vm-ubu-oracle
Partitioning: Manual - 1GB swap (required by Oracle). The rest for Primary Bootable.
Timezone: Mountain, Clock NOT set to UTC
Username: duser, Password: duser
Software to Install (leave blank)
NOTE (courtesy of http://paul.annesley.cc/articles/2007/05/01/ubuntu-704-feisty-server-parallels-cdromkernel-workaround):
On the “Installation Complete” dialogue, choose “Go Back”, and then select “Execute a shell” from the menu. Run the following commands (ignore any errors and accept defaults if prompted):

umount /dev/scd0
chroot /target /bin/bash
mount /dev/scd0 /media/cdrom
aptitude install linux-generic
aptitude remove linux-server linux-image-server linux-image-2.6.20-15-server
exit
shutdown -h now
Setup access and aptitude
login as duser
sudo visudo
add the following line if you wish to not be bugged when running sudo
WARNING! This isn't considered safe practice. I just do it because of the volume of sudo commands that will be entered during the setup. If you wish, you can remove these edits once the setup is completed to be safe:
duser ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL
change the members line to read:
%admin ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL
edit the apt sources list to pull from the online repository
sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list
comment (#) out the line that starts: deb cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server 7.04...
update the local repository by running:
sudo aptitude update
install ssh and samba (accept defaults on dependencies)
sudo aptitude install ssh samba

Setup some Environment Variables (this is a personal preference and can be omitted)
Add the following lines to the ~/.bashrc file
if [ -f ~/.bash_env ]; then
. ~/.bash_env
fi
create a file in ~ called .bash_env
add the following lines to .bash_env
PS1=“\h: \W$ “
TERM=linux

Setup Webmin
Note: you should be able to login to the server using Terminal or iTerm. Check the ip address using ifconfig. The ip that my server got was 10.211.55.7. Yours will be similar. I would suggest using a terminal from here on out because of ease of copy and pasting commands and screen scrolling.
Download Webmin
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin_1.360_all.deb
Install prerequisites:
sudo aptitude install libauthen-pam-perl libio-pty-perl libmd5-perl openssl
Install webmin
sudo dpkg -i webmin_1.360_all.deb
Update your admin password
sudo /usr/share/webmin/changepass.pl /etc/webmin root
I used "duser" as the password
Navigate your web browser to https://:10000
You should be able to login as root with the password entered earlier

Setup Static IP
Login to webmin
Navigate to Networking, Network Configuration
Under "Interfaces Activated at Boot Time" click on eth0
Change the IP to static and apply the following:
IP: 10.211.55.10
You can use any range from 5 to 254. I will be using 10 from here on out
Broadcast: 10.211.55.255
Netmask: 255.255.255.0
Click Save.
Click the checkbox next to eth0 that you just modified and then click the apply button.
This will send your browser into a constant state of refresh. Just click stop and enter the new ip address in the address
Setup routes under Network Configuration
Default Router: Gateway: 10.211.55.1
Active Route 1:
Destination: 10.211.55.0
Gateway: None
Netmask: 255.255.255.0
Interface: eth0
Active Route 2:
Destination: Default Route
Gateway: 10.211.55.1
Netmask: (nothing)
Interface: eth0
Save changes and apply.
Setup a hostname on your Mac by adding the following to the bottom of the /etc/hosts file on your machine:
10.211.55.10 vm-ubu-oracle

Setup Samba
Samba can be setup manually from the command line, but webmin makes it simple
Navigate in webmin to Servers, Samba Windows File Sharing
Click on Windows Networking
Change Workgroup from MSHOME to WORKGROUP
this is for better integration with Windows if you ever need it
Set Server name to vm-ubu-oracle
Save
Click Edit Config
Scroll to the Share Definitions section and change the homes section to look like this (removing the semicolons):
[homes]
comment = Home Directories
browseable = yes
writeable = yes
Add your user to Samba by executing the following command:
sudo smbpasswd -a duser
(you should now be able to mount the home directory on your Mac from Finder using: smb://)

Setup Oracle Prerequisites
These instructions come courtesy of: http://www.dizwell.com/prod/node/52
For more detailed explanation of what we are doing here, please visit that site.
Install packages:
sudo aptitude install gcc libaio1 lesstif2 lesstif2-dev make rpm libc6 libstdc++5
sudo aptitude install unzip libxp6 libxt6 libxtst6
Setup the Oracle Users
sudo groupadd oinstall
sudo groupadd dba
sudo groupadd nobody
sudo useradd -m oracle -g oinstall -G dba -s /bin/bash
sudo passwd oracle
I set the passwd to "oracle"

Setup Kernel Parameters
sudo vi /etc/sysctl.conf
Add the following lines to the bottom of the file:
kernel.shmall = 2097152
kernel.shmmax = 2147483648
kernel.shmmni = 4096
kernel.sem = 250 32000 100 128
fs.file-max = 65536
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65000
(leave 1 or 2 blank lines at the end)
Reload the sysctl file by issuing the command:
sudo /sbin/sysctl -p
Update security limits
sudo vi /etc/security/limits.conf
Add the following lines (leaving blank lines at the bottom)
soft nproc 2047
hard nproc 16384
soft nofile 1024
hard nofile 65536
Setup the Oracle Environment
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/awk /bin/awk
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/rpm /bin/rpm
sudo ln -s /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 /lib/libgcc_s.so
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/basename /bin/basename
sudo mkdir /oracle
sudo mkdir /oracle/10g
sudo chown -R oracle:oinstall /oracle
sudo chmod -R 775 /oracle
Setup the Environment Variables
sudo vi /etc/profile
Add the following lines:
export ORACLE_BASE=/oracle
export ORACLE_HOME=/oracle/10g
export ORACLE_SID=orcl10
export PATH=$PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/bin

Install Oracle
Download the oracle installation file: 10201_database_linux32.zip
I used samba to copy it to the /home/duser/software directory
Change the ownership and move file to the oracle directory
sudo chown oracle:oinstall /home/duser/software/10201_database_linux32.zip
sudo chmod 775 /home/duser/software/10201_database_linux32.zip
sudo mv /home/duser/software/10201_database_linux32.zip /home/oracle
sudo aptitude install unzip
su - oracle
rm 10201_database_linux32.zip
Launch Installer from X11 terminal
Do not close the X11 terminal until the installation has finished.
Launch an X11 terminal or xterm compliant terminal (iTerm will not work)
ifconfig (take note of your ip address)
xhost +
ssh -X oracle@10.211.55.10
export DISPLAY=10.211.55.6:0.0
database/runInstaller -ignoreSysPrereqs

Oracle Installation
Most of the options will automatically set the values in the installer. I will only note items to be changed from the defaults below.
Screen 1 (welcome): Next
Screen 2 (Inventory): Next
Screen 3 (Installation Type): Enterprise Edition
Screen 4 (Home Details): Next
Screen 5 (Configuration Option): Create a database
Database Configuration: General Purpose
Database Config Options: Database Name=> orcl10, SID=> orcl10
Database Mgmt Option: Next
Storage Option: File System
Backup and Recovery: Next
Database Schema Passwords: Use the same for all accounts: oracle
Summary: Install

The installer will now install Oracle and Launch a new window to create the database.
When it is finished click Ok, the installation will proceed.
The Database Control URL is http://vm-ubu-oracle:1158/em
Execute the root scripts (accept defaults)
When it is finished, a dialog box will appear with the following information:
The following J2EE Applications have been deployed and are accessible at the URLs listed below.

iSQL*Plus URL:
http://vm-ubu-oracle:5560/isqlplus

iSQL*Plus DBA URL:
http://vm-ubu-oracle:5560/isqlplus/dba

Enterprise Manager 10g Database Control URL:
http://vm-ubu-oracle:1158/em

Setup Oracle to load during boot
Update the oratab
sudo vi/etc/oratab
Change the line that says:
orcl10:/oracle/10g:N
to: orcl10:/oracle/10g:Y
Edit dbstart
sudo vi $ORACLE_HOME/bin/dbstart
change the line that says:
ORACLE_HOME_LISTNER=/ade/vikrkuma_new/oracle
to: ORACLE_HOME_LISTNER=/oracle/10g
Create the dbora file
sudo vi /etc/init.d/dbora
add the following lines:
#!/bin/bash
#
# /etc/init.d/dbora
#
# Startup script for Oracle databases

export ORACLE_HOME=/oracle/10g
export ORACLE_SID=orcl10
export PATH=$PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/bin

case "$1" in
start)
echo -n "Starting Oracle: "
su oracle -c $ORACLE_HOME/bin/dbstart
touch /var/lock/oracle

su oracle -c "$ORACLE_HOME/bin/emctl start dbconsole"
echo "OK"
;;
stop)
echo -n "Shutdown Oracle: "
su oracle -c $ORACLE_HOME/bin/dbshut
rm -f /var/lock/oracle
echo "OK"
;;
*)
echo "Usage: 'basename $0' start|stop"
exit 1
esac
exit 0

Save the file, then update the boot config:
sudo chmod 775 /etc/init.d/dbora
sudo update-rc.d dbora defaults 99

Binary marble adding machine

2007-09-19T08:50:00.000-07:00

I ran across this site this morning and loved the video at the bottom. That is one cool piece of work.

Binary marble adding machine

Personal Finances Mockup

2007-08-30T10:31:00.000-07:00

I have had a number of responses on my post about Quicken. Most of you wanted to see the spreadsheet that I talked about in that post. Well, at the possible expense of using the idea to become the next big breakthrough in personal finance and getting all the credit for it, I have posted a sample mockup on Google Docs for you to look at.

You can view it here.

Your first impression may be, "That's it?". Well, yes, that's it. But name a personal finance application that would be so helpful in planning how you spend your money and where. The beauty is its simplicity.

BYU Football

2007-08-24T08:37:00.000-07:00

Ah, I can smell it in the air. BYU football is almost here. If you want to wet your appetite a little, you can always listen to last season. I started listening to the games last night.

Ok, I'm pumped.

Macworld: Feature: 8 Great Quicken alternatives

2007-08-24T08:19:00.000-07:00

I've had a few comments / responses on my recent post about Quicken. Macworld, coincidentally just ran this article on 8 alternatives to Quicken. I would be interested to hear if any of you have used these and whether they were any good.

Baby Bibs Recalled

2007-08-16T11:30:00.000-07:00

We've been using the greatest bibs that we could find for many years now. We love them so much that we buy them when we are in Utah because they are only sold at Babies R Us.

Now they are being recalled. I've been mostly ignoring these Chinese lead paint stories that have been coming out lately. But this one hits home!

Come on folks, get your act together!

Quicken on a Mac: Don't let the door hit you on the way out

2007-08-16T08:03:00.000-07:00

There are rumors that the Mac version of Intuit's financial application Quicken is on it's death bead. Derik DeLong seems to think so anyway. The question I have is, does anyone really care? Quicken for the Mac is ugly, buggy, and barely usable. The Windows version is nice, but cluncky in my opinion. So does anyone use Quicken anymore and what value does it bring?

Case in point: about 4 years ago, my brother was hurting financially. He's not at all computer savvy, but he thought maybe he could put together a spreadsheet to help him track expenses and budget for the future. He and his father-in-law, also not at all a geek, sat down with Excel 97 running on Windows 98 and together they came up with a very simple spreadsheet. When my brother showed it to me (I was also hurting for cash at the time) I was blown away by it.

At the same time, I had been trying to use Quicken (Windows) to keep track of my expenses and budget. But I had been unable to translate the data I was putting into Quicken into a real plan for getting out of debt and back on track controlling my expenses. The real questions I wanted Quicken to answer for me were: How much money do I have? (it did that one great) How much will I have at the end of the week? (not very helpful there) Will I be able to pay my bills after I buy *enter toy here*? (again nada)

My brother's spreadsheet very simply answered these questions. So I had him print it out for me and I took it home, jazzed it up a little, and I had a spreadsheet that would get me back on track. It's now 4 years later. In that time my income has increased significantly, I'm now married, I have 2 kids, a mortgage, and other typical bills. But, ironically, I still use that simple spreadsheet which has remained virtually unchanged to manage my finances and my budget. I have never seen it's equal (although I've wanted to write a new version using Rails for about 2 years now).

But here's the point. How is it that my unschooled, non-geek, brother (By the way, he's exceptionally smart in other areas... just not computer tech) --- how is it that he could come up with something so practical and useful? Why can't those software shops at Microsoft (Money), and Intuit (Quicken) figure out how to really help people get their finances on track? I'll tell you why, and it's a lesson all development shops need to learn.

First, don't build software that collects data unless you plan to answer real world questions with that data. In order to get those questions, don't ask the developers. They don't know. You need to ask the users who will use the software. You need to be able to solve real issues.

Second, the problem with the current state of personal finance software is that they are all recreating what is already there. Log transactions, see where money goes, create a budget that consists of where you want to spend your money in the next X amount of days / months / years. That's it! All upgrades to Quicken and other financial apps have just focused on those few features. There is no connection between the money spent, current money on hand, and future purchases. Without that connection you can't answer the questions I stated above. Being able to answer those questions is key in making the data bring value to the consumer. Putting it simply, think beyond the current feature set and come up with something helpful and new. Spending release cycles on pure eye-candy but that does not bring more value does not help the consumer.

So to wrap up this long and ranting post, let me just say that I would be happy to see Quicken for the Mac go. See ya! Maybe someday I can take my simple spreadsheet, turn it into an app, enter the marketplace, and blow people away by it.

Hmmm... doesn't all this sound a little familiar?

OLAP SHMOLAP!

2007-08-14T09:04:00.001-07:00

Can someone explain to me why OLAP is such a big deal? It's a technology that is ancient (so far as computer technology goes) and yet I don't see why it is such a big deal. When I tried to use it, I found that I could duplicate the end product using a star-schema which seemed much less complicated and a lot less expensive (dollars and resources).

So what's the big deal? And why is Oracle spending so much time on it lately?

Transmission of tacit knowledge

2007-08-14T08:59:00.000-07:00

Today I read a post where Jon Udell writes the following about an experience learning a new way to write code in python.

...I’ll argue that this principle of transmission of tacit knowledge is profound, and can apply to almost any discipline that’s subject to online narration.

There are all sorts of obvious reasons to narrate the work that we do. By doing so we build reputation, we attract like-minded collaborators, we draw constructive criticism, and we teach what we know.

Sometimes there’s also a non-obvious reason. It’s possible to teach what we don’t know that we know.

One of the key benefits I see from blogging is sharing ways that I do things and in-turn learn from others how they do things. For example, I recently setup a Subversion server. It was my second attempt and although my first attempt was unsuccessful, my second attempt went much more smoothly. Today, I also read a post by Scott Lemon where he shared his experience setting up a Subversion server in Apache. I learned that there were a lot of resources on the web that I didn't find that could have helped me.

I have made it a practice to read my RSS feeds in Google Reader for about an hour every morning. I have found that this is the most effective way for me to learn new things and, as this post suggests, acquire more tacit knowledge.

I believe that any manager of a technology team should encourage this. It sharpens skills and improves innovation. There have been many times that I have read something and it has given me new ideas on how to approach a problem that I'm facing in my work. This gives me the advantage that I need to stay competitive.

Quickly share images and video screencasts with Jing

2007-08-13T12:47:00.001-07:00

I mostly work from home so I am always looking for ways to communicate with my colleagues more effectively. Today, after reading a post by Jon Udell on the topic of __fill in the blank__casting, I checked out Jing. I downloaded the OS X version and within a few minutes I had a link to a screencast online. I chose to do a short video on how to use some software that I put together. This is really going to save me some time in training others how to use the stuff I'm creating.

Also, this can be used to post small screencasts to my blog. For example, check out this video I just did on how to create a slick chart in Numbers.

In case missed it, Apple enters the BI Industry

2007-08-08T09:00:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, Apple introduced their new spreadsheet product Numbers. This is extremely exciting for me because I see it as BI done right. Now you may think that I'm just an over zealous Apple evangelist. Well, I am. But here is why I think, even if Numbers is a flop, that it will set a new bar for Business Intelligence.

First, Numbers removes barriers. Check out the demo for the Flexible canvas. Why did it take Apple to figure this out?!! How many times have you been building a spreadsheet that you want to look nice only to find that you have to split and merge cells in one table just to make another look nice. I predict Microsoft is having a huge "ah ha" moment over this. Duh.

Second, ease of use. Apple gets usability. Their products are beautiful because they are simple. Numbers is no different. Gee, make formulas human readable. What a novel concept. Drag and drop Sum, Max, Min, etc... again Duh.

Third, drag and drop layout and print view. This goes along with the first, but think about it for a second. With all the craze over Dashboards, why haven't any BI solutions made applications that create attractive and easy-to-assemble dashboards? Why does it take Apple to show us how easy it should be with a simple spreadsheet style platform? Well, they did and it's beautiful.

What's missing? A metadata interface. Now that we have an easy way to assemble our data and make it look great we need a way to get at our favorite data. Imagine for a second, that on the left side of Numbers there is an option for getting your data from a Data Warehouse, Web Site, Web 2.0 interface (i.e. RSS, WebService, etc), or XML & CSV files. Now imagine that you click on one of those and you get a Metadata explorer that shows user friendly views of your data. Now you simply choose the fields that you want, how you want it assembled, then poof!, the data is dropped into a table in your spreadsheet. Implement some eye candy such as Apple's "skim" feature to browse sample data, etc and you have an extremely powerful BI tool.

I admit that Apple probably wouldn't implement something like that in Numbers, but as a BI observer, I can't help but dream about this.

Safari maks the iPhone the Smartphone of Choice

2007-07-23T09:02:00.000-07:00

You've probably heard the hubbub about Apple choosing to only allow web based applications to be developed for the iPhone. A lot of developers are up in arms about this. I don't get it. Yes, there are some limitations. But in the long run, this was the right decision for Apple to make.

Take this article, Will Safari Make iPhone The Smartphone Of Choice In Business?, for instance. It points out that Business Intelligence developers need only build a web front-end for their systems to provide analytics to the iPhone. Imagine what a relief this is to the code-lazy BI world. They only have to hire a bunch of cheap web-developers and POOF they can now add analytics for mobile users.

It's a good point. Imagine how long it would take for the BI industry to offer mobile analytics if it had to develop their own Object-C applications for the iPhone. It would probably never happen.

Hint: Using Google for Spelling

2007-07-19T12:38:00.001-07:00

I had a brain freeze today and couldn't, for the life of me, spell the word "alley". So I opened up my OS X dictionary and and started to type "al". Nothing that looked right. I tried ally but that wasn't what I wanted either.

After some thinking I wondered if I put the phrase, "in a dark ally" into Google if it would suggest the correct spelling. Sure enough, it did. So, if you can't figure out how to spell a word, but can put it in a phrase or sentance, then try Google for a spell dictionary.

Rich Internet Apps Offline: What a Concept | The Intelligent Enterprise Blog

2007-07-19T08:26:00.000-07:00

On the Intelligent Enterprise Weblog, Nelson King has a post entitled Rich Internet Apps Offline: What a Concept | The Intelligent Enterprise Blog.

The main topic is really about how Google Gears is making it possible to take web content offline. Why is this important? It's simple. Even though access to the world wide web is easier now than it's ever been, there are still times when it's impossible for the mobile traveler to get to their favorite sites. For example, while attending BYU-I, I cannot get certain sites because of the firewall restrictions. Another example, when I travel on the road, I would like to be able to catch up on my reading through Google Reader. This is now possible because of Google Gears.

Lets take this to the world of Family History. Recently I was in Salt Lake at the Family History Library. I could not get internet access on my laptop there. Now imagine that I used FamilyLink as my primary genealogy database. I would be out of luck to do updates and the sort. But if my FamilyLink data were available to me offline through Google Gears, I would still be able to access, edit, and save my data as if I were online. That would be a significant feature.

I hope that FamilyLink figures this out and works toward this in a 1.0 or 2.0 release.

Record time installing Oracle 10g

2007-07-18T08:35:00.001-07:00

Last night I set a personal record. I was able to install Oracle 10g on Ubuntu server and have it completely running and configured to start upon bootup in about 20 minutes.

WHEW!

So what happened? Well, the first time I installed Oracle I only installed the Standard Edition. I then realized that Standard does not support Query Rewrite for Materialized Views and it does not support partioning tables. So I wiped out my installation and installed Enterprise Edition.

How did I do it so fast? Well, it's the 3rd time I've installed it in the last week. :)

MacUser: SuperDrive firmware update may have killer feature

2007-07-17T12:58:00.000-07:00

MacUser: SuperDrive firmware update may have killer feature

It's true and it hurts. I'm one of those that was affected by this. I didn't know it until I tried to put a CD in the drive last night and noticed that it was dead. I then realized that it's been some time since I heard the CD drive warm up when I wake my MacBook Pro out of sleep.

I really hope a simple update will fix this, but I'm skeptical. Maybe Apple will replace my drive for free. Let's hope so.

Before You Build That Data Warehouse, Try Plug-and-Play Real-Time BI - DMReview

2007-07-17T09:50:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry, but does this really look like plug-and-play to you?

Before You Build That Data Warehouse, Try Plug-and-Play Real-Time BI - DMReview

DMReview is full of this kind of stuff. In my opinion, unless I'm a > 500 million dollar company this just isn't helpful.

Social Networking Update

2007-07-17T09:04:00.001-07:00

Ok, so I've been social networking now for just over a week. I have been avoiding it for some time because of the time and the offensive material that I've found at many social networking sites. Well, as you know, I've given in and created a Facebook profile and started connecting with my friends. Here are some of my observations so far.

I really like Facebook. It's clean and the material I've seen so far hasn't been offensive. I'm sure there is offensive material out there, but some sites force it on you (ahem YouTube). Facebook is nice because if I don't want to see it, I don't have to.

Another thing I've noticed about Facebook is that it really doesn't take that much time to be involved. I spent several hours getting it setup and browsing the applications, but now I just check it about once a day to see what's changed and what my friends are doing.

So what do I wish Facebook had that it doesn't. Ok, I'm really going to get labeled a flip-flopper here, but I wish it had more of my real friends on it. So that being said, Kelly (my one and only blog reader / commenter) please join up and add me to your friends list. It would be great to have you out there. I would be happy to add any others that read my blog to my friends list as well.

So why all the attention to social networking and blogging lately? Well, I'm getting ready to start a series of posts on some ideas that I've been having about agile data warehousing. I know what you're thinking -- oxymoron. You're right. That's precisely what I think too. Stay tuned...

Advertising my Blog

2007-07-17T08:45:00.000-07:00

I'm doing everything I can think of to advertise my blog. I have posted it all over my social networking sites including:

I hope the new attention gets new people reading. If not, oh well, I still have fun blogging. What other ways can I advertise my blog?

Another Semester Comes To A Close

2007-07-16T15:27:00.001-07:00

Well, another semester at BYU-I comes to a close today. I am finishing my Microeconomics course and a religion course on Building and Eternal Marriage. This morning was my comprehensive final for Econ and it was rough. I spent much of the weekend studying for it and I believe I did well, but I'm glad it's over.

I really enjoyed Econ though. I don't think I want to be an economist, but I really see the value of that role in our modern day businesses and government. I have also really really enjoyed my instructor Dr. Allan Wallburger. If there are any out there that are, by any chance, considering taking an Economics class at BYU-I, I whole-heartedly encourage you to consider taking a class from Dr. Wallburger. It will be tough, but you'll walk away with an appreciation and excitement for the topic.

I am glad to have the next 8 weeks off. I plan to do some much needed yard work, finish my basement office, and spend some much needed time with the family.

Now that we have Google Gears, it's time...

2007-07-10T08:42:00.001-07:00

It's time for someone to make a really really good family history site and enable it with Google Gears. I am dumb founded by the dearth of good Family History software out there. This is an area that needs some attention.

In the past, the problem has been to build a cross-platform application for the masses. Now that Google Gears is here, someone needs to build a very cool Web 2.0 Family History site that is Google Gears enabled so that people can work offline if needed. Cross-platform issue solved.

Value of Education & Tacit Knowledge

2007-07-10T07:19:00.000-07:00

I can't tell you how many times I've been asked whether I use any of the stuff I learn in school. Usually I am asked by people that haven't attended any higher education and have made it "just fine" in their life without it. They don't see how taking an English, Economics, or Stats could have helped them in any way.

My response to them is always that I use the knowledge I gain from school every day. Their follow-up question is usually a variation on the following, "How can you possibly remember and apply everything you learn in school on a daily basis?" This one is a little bit more tough to answer.

As I finish up my Econ 112 (micro economics) class this semester and start studying for the final, I am overwhelmed by the amount of information that we have covered over the semester. I don't remember it all. In fact, I'm finding I don't remember much of it at all. So what value did the class bring to me and how does it help me? The answer is newly acquired tacit knowledge.

I recently read a post by Phil Windley about some difficulty he had troubleshooting an issue with his Mac. He posted a follow-up post that touched on the tacit knowledge needed to utilize troubleshooting tools like Google Search. His follow-up post was a response to a riff that was done by Jon Udell on troubleshooting for normal folks. (I recommend reading both Jon and Phil's posts on the subject.)

These posts got me thinking about that eternally nagging question that I am constantly asked by my well-meaning friends about school. It dawned on me that although I don't remember everything I learned in my Economics class, I gained tacit knowledge that will help me solve problems down the road. The nice thing about tacit knowledge is that it's not particular. I can apply the tacit knowledge gained from Micro Economics to my personal and professional life. I also know that if I ever need to delve deeper into a problem, that there is an Economist out there that has the tools to solve the problem. Had I not taken this course, I would have no clue that someone had already figured out the solutions to the problems that may be vexing me at any given time.

The point here is that the value gained from education, especially undergraduate study, isn't the ability to solve certain equations or understand the supply and demand curves for an oligopoly. The point is that because I took the time to try to understand these concepts at some point in my life I now have another tool in my tacit knowledge toolbox that I can use to my advantage. Attending a College or University is a prime opportunity to acquire this knowledge. It isn't any wonder to me that those with degrees from higher education are more valuable to their employers and to the world in general. I'm not saying that tacit knowledge can't be gained elsewhere, I'm just saying that time in school is not wasted regardless of how pointless the current subject may be.

Giving In to Peer Pressure

2007-07-06T12:51:00.001-07:00

I can't take it. I had to do it. I'm now on FaceBook. I know, I know... I'm a hypocrite. But this is what I learned.

I've wasted a ton of time getting my profile setup
It wasn't nearly as simple as I thought it would be
No one I know very well is there
Most of the people I found were students who I have nothing in common with

Ok, so now that I've ranted a little on my experience. I would like to state why I went ahead and setup an account. First, peer pressure. I want to be cool like Phil and Paul and Robert (see previous post).

Second, I noticed a dearth of technology representation from Eastern Idaho. I know what you're thinking. There isn't any technology in Eastern Idaho. Well, you're only mostly right. One of the biggest employers in Idaho Falls is the Idaho National Laboratory. This is a place full of scientists and techies. There are also several small firms here that do technology related things (ML Technologies & Docutech to name a couple). The thing I don't understand is how there isn't any technology community. The only thing I can think of is that there isn't any leadership. I've seen some attempts to get this going, but nothing has really come out of it. Well, I thought it would be fun to try to start up a group on FaceBook to see what kind of response I could get.

Third, I wanted to validate my claims from the previous post. How much time would it take? Is it worth my time? Those are questions I want to validate before I go out claiming whimsically. I plan to share my experience here and let you know what I think.

Social Networks Are Not for Me

2007-07-06T08:14:00.000-07:00

To use the cliche, they are taking the internet by storm. Social Networks such as YouTube, FaceBook, MySpace, Ning, and etc are being discussed all over the net as the next big thing. I recently read a blog post by Paul Allen wherein he states that FaceBook will be the largest social network in the world. He points out a number of things that I had never thought of in regard to a social network. My first inclination after reading his post was to run over to FaceBook and create an account.

But then I got to thinking about my recent experience with Twitter. Twitter was an interesting idea, but I failed to see how it could benefit me all that much. To me, Twitter seemed like an awful amount of work for so little return. But after reading about it from Phil Windley and Robert Scoble I thought I would give it another try.

After about a day of adding my tweets to the massive online network I gave up. I just couldn't justify the time spent. The opportunity costs were way too high for me. I look at it this way. What would I need a virtual social network for when I am perfectly happy with my real world social network? How could I spend time trying to build relationships with people I don't know or really care about when I so desperately need to be giving time to my family, friends, and church groups? To me, the latter groups constitute a greater sense of community and personal benefit.

That being said, it is interesting to me to see Internet icons like Windley, Scoble, and Allen really embrace these networks as a means to stay on top of their "game" and to spread their influence and ideas. I really enjoy reading their prospectives and views. I just don't see a place in my life (be it professional or personal) for these networks.

Am I wrong? Should I spend more time on FaceBook / Twitter? Am I really missing out on the next big thing? Let me pose those questions to the people I care about most, my wife and my children, and the resounding response will be that they would rather have me spending my time with them, focused on their needs, concerns, and life than having me SMS messaging my tweets to the world constantly. To me, it's a no brainer.

Viddler

2007-06-22T10:26:00.000-07:00

I started uploading family movies at Google Video recently for my family to enjoy. One thing I hate about Google Video and YouTube is that there is no way to share video without the person watching the video to be bombarded by other video's and comments that are inappropriate for all eyes.

I was happy to discover Viddler today. I'm going to give it a try to see how well it works. Let me know if you've had any experience that would help me know if this is the online video panacea I've been searching for.

Disable the Windows Key

2007-06-22T08:30:00.000-07:00

I have been using Parallels for some time now and one annoying thing I keep running into is that when I use cmd+tab or cmd+anything while Parallels is active, Windows thinks that I'm hitting their windows key and pops up my start menu.

Since I never use a hot key for the start menu, I started to look for a way to disable it. Sure enough, I found a way. I found this web site that shows you how to do it. Basically it's a registry hack. So I created a reg file that can be imported that does the trick. Create a file with a .reg extension. Then add the following lines:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout]
"Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,03,00,00,00,00,00,5B,E0,00,00,5C,E0,00,00,00,00

Save the file and then double-click it in Windows and, of course, reboot. I know this worked on Windows XP. I'm not sure if it will work on Vista.

New Look! New Feature!

2007-06-21T09:37:00.001-07:00

I updated my blog today to show a new look and feel. I also added a new feature that I love. I started to use Google Reader as my RSS aggregator about 2 weeks ago. I used to use iGoogle but I thought I would try a real reader for a while to see if I liked it. The feature that I added to the blog is the Recent Articles of Interest. This just shows articles from the "Shared" folder in Google Reader. Very nice.

Worklight Puts Web 2.0 on Corporate Data

2007-06-21T09:09:00.000-07:00

I stumbled upon a new product by Serendipity Technologies called Worklight.

Worklight is a secure and scalable server based software product that provides workers and consumers with 'Web 2.0-style' access to corporate data stored in enterprise information systems and applications... Worklight extracts information from enterprise applications and serves it in a secure and personalized fashion using a host of web 2.0 technologies, both inside and outside the firewall. Personnel are able to easily define their own application views, and then display them through tools like RSS aggregators, popular web based personalized homepages, or desktop gadgets.
(taken from the Worklight Product Sheet - registration is required to see the product sheet!)

The architecture is pretty simple and it's very close to my Event Based Reporting idea. Basically, you build a server product that aggregates snapshots of data from different data sources and applications. Then you feed those snapshots via RSS feeds, Web Services, and the like.

I really think this approach is the future of data delivery. Of course there will always be a need for printed reports, but actionable data needs to be delivered in more general and malleable forms so that tech-saavy managers can gain the competitive edge they need.

Looking for a new blog host

2007-06-21T08:31:00.001-07:00

I'm looking for a new place to host my blog. I'm really into free blogging and I love Blogger, but I can't find any nice free tools that I can use to post to the blog from OS X.

I use Journler to write all of my blog posts, but it has stopped supporting Blogger. The application recommends LiveJournal (or any other metaWeblog compatible site), but I have yet to see a LiveJournal blog that isn't exceptionally ugly.

Does anyone have any ideas or can point me in the right direction?

Automator Workflows for Rails Development

2006-09-06T22:09:00.000-07:00

I have just put together two Automator workflows for loading my Rails environment for development. I did this because whenever I want to work on a rails application I have to do the same things: Load Textmate, Launch Lighttpd, and open the default location in Firefox. As I mentioned, I made two workflows, one for launching the environment from the right-click menu in Finder and the other one that I can launch via QuickSilver or by double-clicking.

The first lets me navigate to the root folder of my rails application in Finder, right-click, and choose Open in Rails under the Automator sub-menu. Just save the workflow as a Finder Plug-in and it will automagically show up in the menu. The meat of this workflow is the AppleScript:

on run {input, parameters}
set railspath to POSIX path of input as text
tell application "Terminal"
do script "cd " & railspath in window 1
do script "script/server" in window 1
set miniaturized of front window to true
end tell

do shell script "mate " & railspath
delay 5
tell application "Firefox"
OpenURL "http://localhost:3000"
end tell

return input
end run

The "delay 5" statement is to wait for lighttpd to load. The rest is pretty self explanatory.
Here is a picture of the workflow:

The second workflow allows me to choose the root folder of my Rails application. The AppleScript is the same, I just used a different workfow action. It looks like this:

Simple Things that Make a Day

2006-08-30T08:02:00.000-07:00

My children really make my day sometimes. They do so much to brighten my day and make me feel very very happy. Last night as I was getting Nathan ready for bed he made my day. I was attempting to rock him to sleep. It was approaching 11:00 PM and I was really really tired. I was very anxious for him to sleep, but he just wouldn't cooperate. He just wanted to play. Finally I got him calmed down and as I rocked him, he was focusing on something on the wall behind me. I kept telling him, jokingly, "Nathan! Go to sleep!" Over and over again I would tell him. Well, being just over 3 months old, he obviously wasn't listening - or understanding. But you would never had guessed it by what he did next. Just as his eyes were starting to get heavy, he would look over at me and smile. It wasn't one of those casual smiles either, it was one of those "I'm playing with you dad" smiles. He would start to close his eyes and just as he would do so, he would smile and then open them really quickly. It was very funny and it only took about 3 rounds of this to have me laughing extatically. He eventually did fall asleep, but before doing so, he made my day!

Today I was really struggling at work to stay focused. I was feeling tired and a little overwhelmed by my current project. I called home to talk to Sara about some things related to our new house and Abbie wanted to talk to me. She was very anxious so Sara put her on the phone. She was quiet at first, then I said "Hi Abbie". Her response was "Hi daddy! It's me, Abbie...." and off she went. I didn't understand much of anything else she said but Sara told me later that she was just telling me about her day. Hearing her call me daddy made me chuckle and even laugh right out loud. Abbie has always been such a sweetheart. She always seems to know exactly what to say or do to liven your day. Today, hearing, "Hi daddy! It's me. Abbie" made my day.

Make it a Success!

2006-08-30T07:55:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to do some more reading lately on what's been going on in the BI Industry. I lost touch while I was in school finishing my Associates Degree in Business Management. Now that school is out of the way (for a little while anyway) I can begin catching up. One of my favorite magazines (Intelligent Enterprise) had a fantastic article entitled "7 Pillars for BI Success". When I finished the article I realized that we have already adopted many of these pillars into our BI strategy at Sento. We have seen success on many accounts and continue to do so as we enlarge our BI System.

Recently, Nortel Networks visited Sento and looked at what we are doing with the data that we get out of their Symposium (PBX) system. I can't speak for them, but I will say they were impressed. The system is very impressive. We have been able to take a very complex and confusing set of data and present it to the business in a way that allows them to get the information they need, when they want it. It also allows our users to build ad-hoc reports on the fly. Since the release of the system, requests for reports based on the Symposium system have decreased dramatically.

I mention this to point out that a projects success should be emphasized and reemphasized to the business. When propriety allows, I believe companies should seek industry recognition for the quality work they do. Many times in the aforementioned article it pointed out the 1-800 Contacts and Allstate had won awards for the work they had done for their business. This not only makes the company look good, but it instills in executives confidence for future projects. So make your project a real success by spreading the word. Let people know how great your work is! Your project is only a success if people view it as thus. Showing off your work is only wrong if you do it at the expense of others.

BI Megatrends

2006-08-28T10:22:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading an article in Intelligent Enterprise about the latest trends in Business Intelligence. This was a very insightful article with some great points on how the BI industry will be focusing on over the next year. Neil Raden from Hired Brains touched on many of my own ideas for BI and data warehousing. Without laying the elephant on the table, he outlined that BI and DW vendors need to do more to incorporate new technology and to offer their solutions to more companies than those willing to fork out the big bucks. Here are a couple of comments that I found to be relevant to that topic specifically:

"Typically, BI has been a disconnected activity, with users unable to traverse the big gap between being informed and being able to do anything about it. Currently, stacks of BI functionality, such as reporting, ad hoc analysis and OLAP (online analytical processing), serve only a small fraction of the user community (as measured by licenses)--10 percent to 20 percent, according to most studies, though actual use is probably even lower. Although the tools generally require no programming and the basics can be taught in a couple of days, conceptually BI still demands a level of understanding about the data, data models and data manipulation processes beyond most knowledge worker's skills or patience. Consequently, the level of IT involvement in BI is still high, leading to reduced ROI and an overall lack of agility and timeliness, except for those few power users who invest the time and effort to develop proficiency."

"Three external factors will drive BI out of its comfort zone and into new modes of usefulness. The open-source movement is one of them. However, it remains to be seen whether open source's impact will be simply to drive down software costs or to start something bigger. Can the open-source community marshall its participants' creative resources to develop truly breakthrough products? Everyone knows about Linux, but BI software doesn't have a similarly vast number of interested parties behind it. On the other hand, the pressure might be a good influence on BI vendors, who might otherwise feel they can get away with mediocre software at exorbitant prices."

"The time has come to radically rethink BI's basic methodologies. Caching, virtual data warehousing, query federation, autonomous agents, real-time and direct access to operational data stores are all more feasible now and must be built into the new BI. Doing so will help companies alleviate the delays and rigidity that confound current approaches."

"Monolithic BI suites with expensive per-seat licenses will lose favor--as will BI and data warehousing "stacks" cobbled together from different generations of technology. Market advantage will go to newer, less comprehensive entrants. Even older applications that provide specific functionality, such as visualization, Monte Carlo simulation or other stochastic processes and industry-specific analytics will get a leg up."

What is really going on in Iraq?

2005-11-29T20:12:00.000-08:00

Whether you agree with the war in Iraq or not, I think the American public needs to be informed about some of the good that is going on over there. I really liked this article written by James Q. Wilson at the Wall Street Journal. He believes, as do I, that President Bush needs to speak more specifically about the accomplishments that have been made. He writes a speech that he feels the President should make. Here is an excerpt:

My fellow Americans: We are winning, and winning decisively, in Iraq and the Middle East. We defeated Saddam Hussein's army in just a few weeks. None of the disasters that many feared would follow our invasion occurred. Our troops did not have to fight door to door to take Baghdad. The Iraqi oil fields were not set on fire. There was no civil war between the Sunnis and the Shiites. There was no grave humanitarian crisis.

Saddam Hussein was captured and is awaiting trial. His two murderous sons are dead. Most of the leading members of Saddam's regime have been captured or killed. After our easy military victory, we found ourselves inadequately prepared to defeat the terrorist insurgents, but now we are prevailing.

BI Vendors Coming to an awful Realization

2005-11-19T20:44:00.000-08:00

I read another news article about a story that I've been following for a couple of weeks now. Business Objects, one of the largest Business Intelligence (BI) vendors, has recently purchased Crystal Xcelsius to bring more analytic capabilities to, you guessed it, Microsoft Office products (Excel and Powerpoint). This is following a HUGE trend in the BI industry as vendors are learning the sad truth about their products - no one likes them or really uses them. Most data consumers are still just using BI tools to extract data for analysis in Excel.

Is this a dangerous move? Probably not for data consumers. This does pose serious problems for businesses that are serious about data governance and adherence to SEC regulations and legislation such as SOX. Because users have freedom to manipulate data any way they please, without regard to any change control, they pose a huge threat to their company.

I wish BI vendors would spend more time making their analytics tools more powerful and "Excel" like. BI tools have the ability to keep data authoritative so why not provide the flexibility to move data around, consolidate, and summarize as the user pleases. Oh, they'll claim they can do this, but of all the BI products I've seen (at least the key players anyway) they aren't even close.

Data Warehousing for Small Business

2005-11-19T20:10:00.000-08:00

Recently, Tom Foydel responded on my post on Data Warehousing for the Rest of Us. He brings up a couple of ideas that I would like to respond to. First:

But if I am a small or medium sized business then I probably don't have the volume of transactions that make a Data Warehouse necessary. With my volume of transactions I ought to be able to use a business analytics tool that's part of my ERP/CRM system.

Tom, you have a great point here. I honestly believe that a business has to have a reason to build a data warehouse before building one. I know that sounds overly simple and ridiculous, but you see this mentality all the time in IT. If your ERP/CRM analytics tools are adequate for your business then there is no reason for having a data warehouse. I think that principle needs to be taught to most techies in general, if you don't need it - don't build/buy it.

On the other hand, there are many small to mid-sized businesses that do have the volume of transactions that warrant a data warehouse. But, it's not just volume that counts. As soon as the business needs to start performing analytics across multiple disparate data sources a data warehouse of some kind and size is probably going to be necessary. This is the area that I am referring to when I say that the big boys have left us out. There really isn't anything out there, that I have found, that addresses this problem.

My other comment is that large business that have data warehouses have not fared very well lately. Some smart people like Peter Drucker have noted that small and medium sized business are growing today, but large businesses are mostly stuck in neutral. Are data warehouses necessary? Do they really propel growth?

Another GREAT point. Yes, it is true that even the big boys have many data warehousing woes as well. It just goes to show how immature data warehousing still is. I believe the reason businesses question the value of warehouses is because of poor alignment between the business and the warehouse. Companies may spend millions trying to get a data warehouse together only to find that it doesn't bring any of the promised value.

I personally believe that data warehouses can propel growth. They can do this at the large scale and the small scale if they are built with properly aligned business objectives. Businesses that don't have any plans to utilize the analytics to make business decisions will just end up producing a bunch of "gee-wiz" reports that don't bring any business value. Companies that allow the reporting and analytics to drive decision making will be able to utilize the power of the data warehouse to propel growth.

Getting in on the Ground Floor

2005-11-09T20:11:00.000-08:00

I just love the fact that the data warehousing and related industries are still in their infancy. What's that you say? Infancy? For an industry that is over 20 years old (and for computer technology that is a lot)? Yes, that's exactly what I mean - infancy. Take for example this article published by Bill Inmon, considered to be the father of data warehousing:The Importance of Customer Data Integration

He comes right out and says we aren't even close. I agree 100%! As I have stated before, data warehousing and customer data integration and related technologies are still virtually unavailable to the majority of the businesses out there that desperately need them. Business Analysis is still largely being done in spreadsheets for crying out loud!

To me, this infancy is the allure of this industry. It's like getting in on the ground floor of a promising company. Anyone with good ideas and a good work ethic can make a huge difference. I believe in that potential.

Data Warehousing for the Rest of Us

2005-11-09T19:39:00.000-08:00

If you are part of a small to mid-sized company trying to implement a Data Warehouse or research whether Data Warehousing is right for your company, it probably wont take you long to discover that Data Warehousing is still for the BIG guys and not for the rest of us. Data Warehouse tools vendors cater to the big companies because they are the one's that bring in the big revenues. These vendors so proud of their "rocket science" that they can charge exorbitant amounts for their solutions and then wrap industry heavy weights such as Ralph Kimball and Bill Inmon around their products declaring best practices that are unreasonable and cost prohibitive.

I am sick of reading about "the ideal" data warehousing solution. I have been reading data warehousing and data management articles for about two years now and I firmly believe that these authors live in a dream world that only exists where there is an infinite amount of money and resources to go around.

I do give them credit, however, for promoting technology and practices that can, at least, get you off in the right direction; but in the same breath I blame them for the unbelievably high failure rates of data warehousing projects.

What I want is a Data Warehousing Methodology that doesn't fall on its face in the real world and doesn't cost my company a fortune to implement. Of course, I want my complex analytics, ad-hoc engines, and consolidated reporting tools too! And I also want it to have impeccable performance. Can I have my cake and eat it too?

I am currently working on a methodology that I hope will do just that. I don't have a name for it yet but I have some underlying principles laid out. My goal is to develop a methodology for building data warehouses for the rest of us. The core of my new methodology is centered on agility and speed. My hope is to have some time over the next couple of months to develop my ideas a little more and then post them here for comment. Any feedback is appreciated.

Ethics and Values

2005-08-25T20:13:00.000-07:00

Last night I started the class that I have been dreading my entire college career, Ethics and Values. It’s not that I don’t believe in ethics or values… my main problem with the class (or I should say, the thought of the class) is that I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to respectfully respond to anyone challenging my idea of ethics and values.

Last night my view of the class changed. Not too surprisingly, the instructor seems reasonable and impartial. We also receive our first assignment, which I will be including as part of this post.

We watched a 30-minute interview with Bill Moyer and Michael Josephson that discussed ethics in America. Michael Josephson was a successful lawyer who gave up his practice and started his own institute that teaches ethics to businesses and anyone else that wants to learn. I was frankly delighted by the interview. Here are some of the main points that were discussed:

• Ethics is “Right” and “Wrong”
• Civilizations and History teach us that ethics build enlightened and prosperous civilizations
• Civilizations may not agree on what is “right” or “wrong”, but they do agree that it is important to know the difference
• We are too concerned, in America, with competing or winning
• “Shades of Gray” ethical decisions are based on our values and must be looked at by the situation
• Ethical behavior pays off in the long run although it may require immediate sacrifice
• Sub-cultures, such as gangs, find some success based on their own set of values temporarily. But the success is temporary and will give out to tried and true values in the long run
• It’s our responsibility to fix unethical conditions & circumstances
• We must reward the role-models that we believe in
• We need to have more role models that we can be proud of for standing up for what is right
• Constituents need to hold elected officials to high ethical standards
• Money drives politics in our day – we need to change this by electing individuals that are driven by ethics
• An ethical person should do more than is demanded and less than he is allowed
• Be proud of the people we are and the contribution that we’ve made to others
• Lying takes away another persons possibilities for input
• Self righteousness, a desire to make the world run how you think it should be run without regard for others, leads to unethical behavior

Michael Josephson makes some very good arguments as to why we should be less competitive and more ethical. I personally feel that seeking to do what is right, rather than convenient, offers more rewards than those that try to cheat or take advantage of others or their circumstances.

Impending Daylight Savings Change

2005-08-02T08:42:00.000-07:00

I'm very surprised to not be hearing rumblings anywhere about the impending daylight savings change that is included in the Energy Bill that is expected to be signed into law soon (or may already have been). The bill extends daylight savings from mid March to mid November.

Does anyone else see a huge problem with this technologically speaking? How many programs and technologies do you use in a day that have algorithms to figure out daylight savings? I would venture to say that the majority of these algorithms will need to be changed in order to be compatible with the new schedule.

My gut tells me that this issue was grossly overlooked and this *could* (at most) turn out to be another Y2k to the industry. Do you think I'm blowing smoke? I would love to see your comments.

The Report Lifespan

2005-08-01T20:45:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me today that reports have a lifespan. I don’t know why it has taken me so long to realize this, but I was in a meeting today where the thought came to me.

I have been an administrator of a reporting system for years. Something that I wish I had realized sooner is that reports have a lifespan. What I mean by “lifespan” is this: When a report is requested, it is usually based on some business objective that is underway. But what happens to the usefulness of the report once that business objective has either gone away or morphed into something else? The answer is that it sits in storage consuming IT resources and slowing down your Business Intelligence system. The lifespan of the report is essentially over.

In the ideal world of Business Intelligence, organizations come up with some objective that they want to accomplish in the organization. They then go to an IT department with an idea of how to track information that will drive their objective. IT then builds something – a system, a report, or whatever, to track the information that is wanted. Once the information is available, the business decision maker uses that information to make an informed decision.

Ad-hoc Reporting systems, such as Business Objects Web Intelligence or Micro Strategy, can be used more efficiently to create reports specific to business objectives. These reports are intentionally created to have a short lifespan. They are usually very specific and may contain non-standard reporting metrics. Because these reports are generally only viewable to a select audience and are stored as personal documents, the report consumer naturally cleans them up once the lifespan of the report has expired.

There is, and probably always will be, a need for standardized reports that are used across the organization or departments. These reports should be created with the “lifespan” concept in mind. By standardizing metrics across the viewable audience and including abilities to filter and drill, these reports can be consumed by many viewers for long periods of time. Problems arise when one-off reports begin to spawn for specific audiences that want to see the data tweaked for their need. As soon as this happens, the lifespan of the report dramatically shortens.

In my opinion, organizations that can embody ad-hoc reporting abilities instead of creating one-off reports can dramatically decrease the amount of stale reports in there systems. To do this, report consumers must be trained to go to the ad-hoc systems for their one-off needs, rather than requesting tweaks that are specialized just for them from existing reports. Implementing tools that monitor report usage can also help administrators cut down on stale reports piling up.

myTopo.com Launches New Website

2005-07-20T10:06:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite web sites has a fresh new look. MyTopo is a fantastic site for building topo maps for your next backpacking / adventuring trip. I highly recommend it.

Customer Intelligence Links

2005-07-08T07:12:00.000-07:00

Here are some links to information about Customer Intelligence.

http://www.charter-uk.com/customer_intelligence.htm

http://www.1to1.com/view.aspx?DocID=20703

http://www.dmreview.com/article_sub.cfm?articleId=1023901

Summer Project

2005-06-24T06:39:00.000-07:00

Now that I am out of school for the summer, I thought it would be fun to brush up on some web application skills that have been neglected in recent years. Why would I want to do web programming? Well, I firmly believe that the future of my participation in geekdom rests in my personal ability to throw together some kind of web application. To be a true geek, you must be able to program in some language. This is because geeks want their computer to do what they want, not what some other programmer thought would be cool or useful.

I used to fill this need using Delphi. I love using Delphi to this day; however, now that I have sworn off Windows for Mac OS X, I wanted to branch out and participate in something new and innovative. After hearing all the raves about Ruby on Rails, I decided to give it a try.

Ruby on Rails has several advantages for me. First, it is simple. That's good! I need something I can learn in about 6 weeks spending maybe 2 to 3 hours per week. Second, it's new and innovative. Based on the Ruby scripting language, Ruby on Rails provides a true Object Oriented language for web applications. This will also give me a refresher in OOP. Third, in about 2 hours, I was able to setup a full development environment on my Mac Mini. This was much easier than previous environments I've struggled with setting up (LAMP for example). So far the environment is running just fine with full connectivity to MySQL. (I will probably do another blog on how I got all of this setup later.)

So, what is my project? I have decided to pursue one of my programming dreams and build a Family History application. I have used Family History applications extensivly in my own research but I have not yet found one that I really liked. Believe it or not, I have put quite a bit of thought into designing such an application. My first phase requirements are pretty simple:

1) Build a ruby script that will import a GEDCOM file into a simple database.
2) Build another ruby script that will parse the GEDCOM database into a relational normalized database.
3) Build a simple UI using Ruby on Rails for navigating through the individuals in the database.

If I can accomplish that before school starts, I will be really pleased with myself.

The Burden of Trusted Information

2005-06-13T22:14:00.000-07:00

In a recent (June 2005) article published by DM Review. Authors Timo Elliot and Darren Cunningham talk a little about The Burden of Trusted Information. I have been very interested in this topic for well over two years and was interested in what they had to say that could help me in my quest to provide "Trusted Information" to the business. Like most of the articles that I've read in DM Review, they only were able to give me a theoretical, high-level view -- most of which I was already aware of. Elliot & Cunningham spend a good portion of the article explaining the problems and identifying some of the root causes surrounding data quality. About half-way through this article, I thought to myself that a lot of these problems could be taken care of by a well implemented Business Intelligence Competency Center (BICC). To my surprise, once the article finished explaining the problem, the authors explained:

"To remedy these problems, organizations should implement a trusted information framework that ties together the different elements of the corporate information systems. Given the complexity of today's corporate information systems and the diversity of organizational structures, there is not one single way to do this. However, one key step is to establish a group focused on ensuring that the organization is getting a return on its information assets. There has been strong growth in recent years in BI (business intelligence) competency centers staffed with data, IT and business experts, and such a center is ideally oriented to carry out the role of coordinating between the different teams involved in data manipulation and use. Many organizations find that a less formal 'virtual BI competency center,' with regular meetings between members of the different teams (data warehousing team, data stewards, BI and business users), is a good first step toward a more strategic solution. "

It's good to know that my thoughts and ideas are on track with industry experts. But at this point, that's really as far as it goes. I have been in the middle of organizing a BICC for about a year now and it is much more difficult than it sounds on the printed page. Virtual team or not, a BICC is such a resource intensive engagement that I believe companies will really struggle to implement a team that can do all of the things that experts say a BICC should do.

At a minimum, I believe a BICC should:

* Work with the business to determine the Business Intelligence needs of the company.
* Provide an authoritative access point for all questions regarding data definition and quality.
* Develop a Business Intelligence road map for the company which includes long-term and short-term goals.
* Have authority to oversee and implement all Business Intelligence initiatives within the company.
* Provide accountability when data is wrong.
* Provide analytical expertise to information consumers.
* Be involved in the implementation of corporate controls involving information storage and retrieval.

I personally am not convinced that Business Intelligence solutions need to involve 20 people and cost millions to implement. The size of the project should be aligned with the business need and capability. A BICC consisiting of a few virtual team members from different parts of the company (Operations, Sales, IT, Reporting, etc...) should be sufficient to get a BI initiative started. The value that the BICC brings is in communication, organization, and control. Without these, a business will never realize the power of BI and will find themselves in a perpetual whirlpool of meaningless information and costly implementations and re-implementations of BI systems.

IBM a reluctant user of Wine software

2005-06-13T07:04:00.000-07:00

I was reading an article on open.itworld.com about IBM's reluctance to admit that they use Wine internally while trying to push Linux to the desktop of its employees. The article points out that they are using it to run Lotus Notes.

Reading between lines it is easy (at least for me) to see why IBM would be reluctant to talk about wine. First of all, HAS ANY ONE EVER SEEN ANYTHING REALLY RUN UNDER WINE?! I personally have never seen it work. I've even seen people run Crossover Office and think that it was the greatest thing ever.... for a week. After they had used it for a while and put up with the lock ups and other anoying quirks they just switched to Open Office.

I think IBM and others, like Novell, should concentrate on making OS agnostic applications that can compete with Microsoft dominance. I believe there is a vast market out there hungry to utilize the cost savings of Linux, BSD, MacOS, etc... if they could just break free of the proprietary limitations put on all of us by Microsoft product users.

Performance Management Technology is NOT for Call Centers

2005-06-06T08:00:00.000-07:00

I don’t pretend to be a call center industry expert by any stretch of the imagination. I do try to read up on the industry and follow the latest trends, especially when it comes to IT Operations surrounding the industry. Having been a call center agent for 4+ years I am amazed at the technology that has emerged, especially in the last 5 years, that claims to bring more productivity and profitability to call centers by providing agent incentives based on complex performance measures and analytics.

Shrouded in terms like “Performance Management”, these technologies are complex and extremely expensive. Not only are initial startup costs a heavy burden for call centers, but ongoing maintenance and administration costs can be smothering. Although the companies providing these technologies boast ROI, I personally don’t see how throwing technology providing rich analytics at a call center can increase the performance of an agent.

It is my opinion that if call centers want to increase the productivity of their agents, they should start with their agent’s supervisors. Training should be provided to ensure that supervisors know how to properly motivate their agents and inspire them to do the work that they were hired to do. As an agent, I was rarely (if ever) motivated by a supervisor pointing out to me how profitable I was or how many calls I can take in an hour. I already knew that. What I needed was a supervisor that could instill in me the motivation to improve and help me identify ways to perform better. In this regard, technology budgets are better spent on agent monitoring (or recording) and coaching tools.

Call centers are notorious for having small margins. That is why I don’t understand how expensive Performance Management tools can bring profitability. Call centers will get a lot further by developing cultures of growth and development based on simple and inexpensive agent incentives. With this model, call centers do NOT need to invest (if you could call it that) in advanced Performance Management technologies.

Oracle sqlplus "&" issue

2005-05-26T11:01:00.000-07:00

I ran into an interesting issue today with sqlplus for Oracle 10g. I was trying to insert a row using a statement like:

INSERT INTO tablex (SomeVarcharField) VALUES ('Cats & Dogs');

When the script ran I got a message like this:

"enter a value for dogs:"

When I press enter the value that was inserted was 'Cats '.

WIERD!!

I found out that sqlplus treats ampersands as special escape characters and that the only way it will accept it is if it is the last character in the string. So the work around is to end the string at the ampersand and concatenate the rest of the string. For example: 'Cats &'||' Dogs'

That worked. In my case I had a bunch of INSERT statements in a SQL file and I didn't want to change each one individually so I asked some of my coworkers what I could do. They suggested a nifty command (using SED) to do the trick:

sed -i.bak "s/\&/\&\'\|\|\'/g" MyFileOfInserts.sql

This creates a file called MyFileOfInserts.sql.bak with my old data and then replaces & with &'||' . That nasty stuff in the middle is a regular expression. You gotta LUV IT!

Marketing: Get the Geeks!

2005-05-24T06:44:00.000-07:00

Apple is a marketing genius and it's about time. For decades computer users have been plagued with Microsoft dominance. Windows has saturated the Operating System market which has made it a favorite target for identity thieves, hackers, and virus makers. During those years, the quest was on for something better. I think that most of computer users have become accepting of the "Blue Screen of Death" as well as other wonderful Windows features that makes life miserable and frustrating.

Enter OS X.

Apple did what I think was a stroke of brilliance to regain the audience. They went after the geeks. They built an OS based on BSD, a popular Unix environment for geeks which made them giddy as school boys. Build to be robust as well as easy to use, OS X is a marvel and a thing of beauty to behold as well as a much welcomed breath of fresh air for power users.

Why is that genius? Who do the novices of the computer world call to get help with all of their problems? It is usually a friend or relative who has the reputation of being a geek. What will the geek recommend to their fellow novice who's new PC computer starts locking up after only 3 months of use? What will the geek recommend when that friend or relative calls frantically because their computer has been infected with a virus, trojan, etc. ? What will the geek recommend when their parents call because they can't get their photos off of their new digital camera -- and when they do they don't know where they went -- and when they finally do find them they accidentally deleted them?

The answer is obvious, "Dude, you should buy a Mac." Yes, get the Mac. Make the move. Life will be much easier on us all.

Orem will fund part of structure

2005-05-05T07:32:00.000-07:00

If anyone has driven down State street in Orem in the last year you've probably noticed a gaping hole in the ground surrounding a very tall, majestic looking tower. You may also have noticed that very little has changed in the last year. Well, all of that could change now that the city of Orem has bailed out the financially struggling owners. Overall, I am happy to see someone step in and do something about this. Although it is nice to have the trailor park gone, a huge hole in the heart of the town is not much more amusing.

I will be interested to see how this all works out.

---

deseretnews.com | Orem will fund part of structure: "Orem will fund part of structure

OREM — Orem city officials have agreed to help build the first level of the Midtown Village parking structure at 320 S. State — paid for by assessments against the project.
The City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved the resolution creating a $7 million special-improvement district that's been in the works for months.
'This is a very complicated project,' said Mayor Jerry Washburn. 'A great many hours have been invested in this.'
City Manager Jim Reams said the agreement constitutes a construction loan that acts as a lien against Midtown Village, which is worth many times the cost of the parking structure.
Orem has the right to foreclose if the project should stall.
Larry Myler, one of the project's owners, said he supports the city's action.
'I think the city made a wise choice in having the project bear the burden rather than the county taxpayers,' he said. "

New Mormon temple offers heavenly views

2005-05-04T13:29:00.000-07:00

I read this article from a San Antonio newspaper about the Temple being dedicated. I couldn't help but feel what an incredible contribution the temple makes to those that enter it's doors. I thought the article was well written and fair.

You can read the article by following this link:
statesman.com | New Mormon temple offers heavenly views

You will probably have to create a login to view the page, but it is worth it.

Pelosi on Social Security

2005-05-04T10:23:00.001-07:00

I thought the following post from the Wall-Street Journal was amusing. Although I am not sure Bush is right in his approach to Social Security, I know I don't agree with Pelosi. In fact, I don't think I agree with hardly anything she ever says-- on anything!

Best of the Web Today - May 2, 2005

By JAMES TARANTO

You Bet Your Life
ABC doesn't put transcripts of "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" on its Web site, which means it goes pretty much unnoticed except for TiVo-equipped political junkies. Fortunately for you, dear reader, your humble columnist is just such a junkie, and we sit through "This Week" so you don't have to. Anyway, here's a hilarious exchange from Stephanopoulos's interview yesterday with Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader:

Stephanopoulos: Why should American people trust the Democrats [on Social Security] if you don't have a specific plan?

Pelosi: The American people should trust the Democrats because we originated Social Security. This was a very entrepreneurial idea of the New Deal and Democrats will not allow the Republicans to turn this great deal for the American people into a raw deal for them by what they are proposing. They've never really supported Social Security, and the way to damage it, I'm trying to select my word carefully, is to destroy the universality of it. The genius of Social Security at the time was that everybody supported it in terms of the working families of America because they got a stream of income commensurate to what they put into the program.

So the Republicans have "never really supported Social Security" even though at the time it originated "everybody supported it." Granted, the GOP was the minority party in 1935, but like the Democrats today, it never quite ceased to exist.

Even funnier is Pelosi's statement that "the American people should trust the Democrats because we originated Social Security." Sounds great, except that Claude Pepper died in 1989, and every other New Deal-era Democrat we can think of predeceased him. Even Robert "Archaeopteryx" Byrd arrived in Congress almost 18 years after the passage of the Social Security Act.

Pelosi's comment has overtones of Marx--not Karl but Groucho, who in "A Night at the Opera" uttered this line: "Nix on the love-making because I saw Mrs. Claypool first. Of course, her mother really saw her first but there's no point in bringing the Civil War into this."

"A Night at the Opera" came out in 1935--the year Social Security was born, 70 years after the end of the Civil War, and 70 years before Nancy Pelosi's Marxian performance on "This Week."

A Fresh Start

2005-05-03T16:43:00.000-07:00

So, I am sitting here at the University Mall campus for Utah Valley State College (UVSC) about a half hour before my Biology 1010 class starts. I was happy to find that the wireless connection that I purchased for the main campus is in place here so that I can be online during class. This kind of technology is really cool.

After the last semester, I am glad to have a fresh start. I really felt that last semester I put in a sub-mike-farmer-standard effort. With only one class, I am glad to start anew and really put forth a revitalized effort.

---

Funny thing just happened. The instructor here, who seems really nice, is setting up a projector. Looks like she will be using powerpoint for her lecture. She just asked me if I knew how to make the remote for the projector turn the slides. She needs a cable to plug the projector into her laptop to get it to work. The funny thing about this though is that you never know when odd-ball computer skills will come in handy.

The Perfect Email Client

2005-05-03T13:17:00.000-07:00

Word processors, such as WordPerfect and MS Word, have been around for some time now - over 20 years. Honestly, I can't think of anything that I would add to them. I have been using Word for over 5 years and I love it. For me, it is the perfect word processor. That isn't to say that it has flaws. I wish someone would come up with a way to do numbered lists and bullet points that isn't excruciatingly painful. There must be some balance of automation there that is helpful rather than frustrating... but that is another post.

With email being around for over 10 years now, it strikes me that there is yet to be an email program that is simple and easy to use. I have been a consumer of GroupWise, Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Evolution, and various web clients. All of these products get the basic job down and each have their elements that are cool. The problem that I see is there is yet to be a single email client that is both simple and gets the job done.

Currently, I use Outlook because of the my reliance on an Exchange Server where I work. It is a good start and probably my client of choice right now. The problem is that it is so slow and clunky. Because of the massive code base behind it, it is neither simple or easy to use. That takes me to my next favorite email client, Thunderbird. This is a small and easy to use email client, but lacks some of the simple functionality that I love in Outlook. One thing that I wish Thunderbird would do away with is the Mozilla, Netscape "To" line that requires every contact to go into a wierd list. That wouldn't be too bad if they could incorporate some easy-to-use key strokes to move from line to line. Instead, it turns out to be a hassle to send email to more than one person.

With a concept as easy as email there is still a huge void for a product that just works. If anyone runs across one, please let me know. If not, will somebody please just take the cool features from these packages and just write me a simple, easy-to-use, feature rich mail client?

SQL... is it time for something new?

2005-04-29T07:36:00.000-07:00

I was recently reading an article in DM Review talking about what is needed for the Business Intelligence world. One suggestion was to get rid of SQL. The author sited that it is one of the big weaknesses.

I don't agree.

SQL is what gives Business Intelligence it's strength. It is an easy to use and learn language that has become a standard for database queries and operations. I don't understand why we need to move away from this. In addition, supplementary languages (like Oracle's PL/SQL) are very useful and can even be object oriented.

Move away from SQL? I say... NO WAY!

Elder Dallin H. Oaks addresses BYU on Civic Responsibility

2005-04-28T10:34:00.000-07:00

Great talk on rights, freedom, civic responsibility and where current trends will lead us.

Where will it lead?

Senator Zell Miller's "Deficit of Decency"

2005-04-28T10:28:00.000-07:00

U.S. Senator Zell Miller, D-GA
Floor Statement on 'Deficit of Decency' in America
Prepared Remarks for Delivery on the Senate Floor
February 12, 2004

The Old Testament prophet Amos was a sheep herder who lived back in the Judean hills, away from the larger cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Compared to the intellectual urbanites like Isaiah and Jeremiah, he was just an unsophisticated country hick.

But Amos had a unique grasp of political and social issues and his poetic literary skill was among the best of all the prophets. That familiar quote of Martin Luther King, Jr. about ‘Justice will rush down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream’ are Amos’s words.

Amos was the first to propose the concept of a universal God and not just some tribal deity. He also wrote that God demanded moral purity, not rituals and sacrifices. This blunt speaking moral conscience of his time warns in Chapter 8, verse 11 of The Book of Amos, as if he were speaking to us today:

That ‘the days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land. Not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the word of the Lord.

‘And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east. They shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it.’

‘A famine in the land’. Has anyone more accurately described the situation we face in America today? ‘A famine of hearing the words of the Lord.’

But some will say, Amos was just an Old Testament prophet – a minor one at that – who lived 700 years before Christ. That is true, so how about one of the most influential historians of modern times?

Arnold Toynbee who wrote the acclaimed 12 volume A Study of History, once declared, ‘Of the 22 civilizations that have appeared in history, 19 of them collapsed when they reached the moral state America is in today.’

Toynbee died in 1975, before seeing the worst that was yet to come. Yes, Arnold Toynbee saw the famine. The ‘famine of hearing the words of the Lord.’ Whether it is removing a display of the Ten Commandments from a Courthouse or the Nativity Scene from a city square. Whether it is eliminating prayer in schools or eliminating ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance. Whether it is making a mockery of the sacred institution of marriage between a man and woman or, yes, telecasting around the world made-in-the-USA filth masquerading as entertainment.

The Culture of Far Left America was displayed in a startling way during the Super Bowl’s now infamous half-time show. A show brought to us courtesy of Value-Les Moonves and the pagan temple of Viacom-Babylon.

I asked the question yesterday, how many of you have ever run over a skunk with your car? I have many times and I can tell you, the stink stays around for a long time. You can take the car through a car wash and it’s still there. So the scent of this event will long linger in the nostrils of America.

I’m not talking just about an exposed mammary gland with a pull-tab attached to it. Really no one should have been too surprised at that. Wouldn’t one expect a bumping, humping, trashy routine entitled ‘I’m going to get you naked’ to end that way.

Does any responsible adult ever listen to the words of this rap-crap? I’d quote you some of it, but the Sergeant of Arms would throw me out of here, as well he should. And then there was that prancing, dancing, strutting, rutting guy evidently suffering from jock itch because he kept yelling and grabbing his crotch. But then, maybe there’s a crotch grabbing culture I’ve unaware of.

But as bad as all this was, the thing that yanked my chain the hardest was seeing that ignoramus with his pointed head stuck up through a hole he had cut in the flag of the United States of America, screaming about having ‘a bottle of scotch and watching lots of crotch.’ Think about that.

This is the same flag that we pledge allegiance to. This is the flag that is draped over coffins of dead young uniformed warriors killed while protecting Kid Crock’s bony butt. He should be tarred and feathered, and ridden out of this country on a rail. Talk about a good reality show, there’s one for you.

The desire and will of this Congress to meaningfully do anything about any of these so-called social issues is non existent and embarrassingly disgraceful. The American people are waiting and growing impatient with us. They want something done.

I am pleased to be a co-sponsor of S.J. Res. 26 along with Senator Allard and others, proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relating to marriage. And S.1558, the Liberties Restoration Act, which declares religious liberty rights in several ways, including the Pledge of Allegiance and the display of the Ten Commandments. And today I join Senator Shelby and others with the Constitution Restoration Act of 2004 that limits the jurisdiction of federal courts in certain ways.

In doing so, I stand shoulder to shoulder not only with my Senate co-sponsors and Chief Justice Roy Moore of Alabama but, more importantly, with our Founding Fathers in the conception of religious liberty and the terribly wrong direction our modern judiciary has taken us in.

Everyone today seems to think that the U.S. Constitution expressly provides for separation of church and state. Ask any ten people if that’s not so. And I’ll bet you most of them will say ‘Well, sure.’ And some will point out, ‘it’s in the First Amendment.’

Wrong! Read it! It says, ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’ Where is the word ‘separate’? Where are the words ‘church’ or ‘state.’

They are not there. Never have been. Never intended to be. Read the Congressional Records during that four-month period in 1789 when the amendment was being framed in Congress. Clearly their intent was to prohibit a single denomination in exclusion of all others, whether it was Anglican or Catholic or some other.

I highly recommend a great book entitled Original Intent by David Barton. It really gets into how the actual members of Congress, who drafted the First Amendment, expected basic Biblical principles and values to be present throughout public life and society, not separate from it.

It was Alexander Hamilton who pointed out that ‘judges should be bound down by strict rules and precedents, which serve to define and point out their duty.’ Bound down! That is exactly what is needed to be done. There was not a single precedent cited when school prayer was struck down in 1962.

These judges who legislate instead of adjudicate, do it without being responsible to one single solitary voter for their actions. Among the signers of the Declaration of Independence was a brilliant young physician from Pennsylvania named Benjamin Rush.

When Rush was elected to that First Continental Congress, his close friend Benjamin Franklin told him ‘We need you. . . we have a great task before us, assigned to us by Providence.’ Today, 228 years later there is still a great task before us assigned to us by Providence. Our Founding Fathers did not shirk their duty and we can do no less.

By the way, Benjamin Rush was once asked a question that has long interested this Senator from Georgia in particular. Dr. Rush was asked, are you a democrat or an aristocrat? And the good doctor answered, ‘I am neither’. ‘I am a Christocrat. I believe He, alone, who created and redeemed man is qualified to govern him.’ That reply of Benjamin Rush is just as true today in the year of our Lord 2004 as it was in the year of our Lord 1776.

So, if I am asked why – with all the pressing problems this nation faces today – why am I pushing these social issues and taking the Senate’s valuable time? I will answer: Because, it is of the highest importance. Yes, there’s a deficit to be concerned about in this country, a deficit of decency.

So, as the sand empties through my hourglass at warp speed – and with my time running out in this Senate and on this earth, I feel compelled to speak out. For I truly believe that at times like this, silence is not golden. It is yellow.

Mike's Blog.

2005-04-28T10:00:00.000-07:00

I decided to start blogging again in my spare time. This is more for myself than anything else. Meanwhile, back at the farm will contain my random thoughts and ideas relating from technology, to politics, to just plain random thoughts. If you find this blog, I hope you enjoy and please take time to comment if you so desire.