Summer Project

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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.

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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

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

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

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.

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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

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?

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

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"

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.

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.