Levi Brinkkoeter - Programmer

I know I had said I wanted to update this blog daily but I just don’t have the time I wish I had to constantly update. Between my dogs, furthering my knowledge of the web development world and just the craziness life throws at me I just don’t have the time to put effort into my blog on a daily basis. Please know that I am trying and although I know hardly anyone follows my blog it does hold importance to me. The focus of this blog has really been my day to day life which is not very relevant to anyone following me who doesn’t personally know me. Once I get a little more knowledgeable in my area I would like to start posting tutorials and more but as it is I just don’t have the energy or time to write up anything. As far as what I am currently focused on ASP .NET MVC is what I am learning, at a pace that both helps me yet fulfills the business needs of my current position as a Coldfusion developer. I am becoming very knowledgeable towards the drawbacks of each language, Coldfusion enables rapid development with pre-built functionality. ASP .NET holds great power from a programmers standpoint, being able to customize each and every aspect is a huge selling point. Coldfusion can just crank out the sites and the functionality out of the box is great but I do not have experience in customizing the pre built functionality involved. My company is focusing on the Microsoft path so it comes down to an Adobe vs Microsoft environment. Coldfusion can crank out sites with relative ease compared to ASP .NET. What I am seeing of MVC is definitely a move in the right direction but it does have its complexity involved. Its all a balancing act and I am currently juggling both, I want to better my knowledge yet it is nice working with something I am comfortable with. The future is ASP .NET but I find it hard to pull myself from Coldfusion because of the ease of use. Always learning, always bettering myself realizing each language has it place and purpose, what the future holds who knows. Until then I will absorb as much as I can and do what I can until I find the best way.

I have already fallen behind on my daily post, I am going to make this post the past 3 days in one. I have mainly been working on two things, .Net integration with coldfusion and a redesign of one of our pages using jQuery. As I move into the .net world I am seeing the advantages, you have much more control but with more control comes more responsibility.

Coldfusion handles things behind the scenes for you, which is nice for quick web programming, a lot of things are done for you. ASP .NET is moving that direction but also giving the greater control over the stuff that coldfusion does behind the scenes. Its definitely a balance, on one hand things are quick and easy and the more advanced stuff just works like you are told it does. In ASP however you can tear those more advanced things apart and make them your own. Working on this integration is really showing me both sides, Coldfusion is able to incorporate .Net functionality but through the use of java proxies. I don’t fully understand how it does what it does but I’m sure i will learn it as i go, so long as what you are doing is relatively simple its just something to use that is already done for you. The programmer I am working with on this project is a very advanced .NET programmer and the design he is using will give us the greatest flexibility but is also causing deployment issues. We are getting close to having it done but through much manual logging and testing. Such is life.

The jQuery redesign is going easily, an area where coldfusion excels is the ease of layout in my opinion. Being that it is a tag based language it just seems to flow much easier with the html and css basics. JQuery itself is a very powerful framework and thankfully widely used and will be included in ASP .NET MVC going forward. I am glad most of the work I am doing with it will translate over to ASP .NET as well, I will have to wait and see how easy it is to incorporate it with a much more advanced language with different layout methods. I am very impressed with what I have done with jQuery and am blown away by how much can be done with it. I will definitely continue to use it wherever I can.

Programming in general is a mental workout, so much is involved and planning plays a big part in it. Trying to design with future growth in mind while trying to accomplish the task in the best way is still something I have work to do in. I am learning bits and pieces here in there but there is a wealth of knowledge to absorb. As I have said I will try to do daily updates but sometimes I’m just to mentally exhausted to try and be creative in my posts.

Today I spent the day revising my log in system, it went from a long file to a much shorter file mainly by dropping the main functions into coldfusion components. Parts were also removed from their own page and path and placed into application.cfm. I will be moving that over to application.cfc probably tomorrow, I have done it before for other sites just haven’t made the change for this one yet. By placing the logic in the application file every page is now guaranteed to process the log in if needed without any redirection to keep the user on the same page. One thing I noticed was that once you have logged a user in you cant redirect them because it will log them out, why I am not sure but its not a big deal I achieve the same effect without redirecting now.  Recently I rewrote the calls to stored procedure into component form, I wish I had done this earlier, the code is much cleaner now and once I need to changed stored procedures to assembly calls it will be a simple process. Before this I had really messed with components before and I am kicking myself for it now. On to another day preparing to finish up my ColdFusion coding and head into ASP.NET. Learning has been going slow but I am trying to force myself to study more, wish me luck.

Over this past weekend I was working on getting my sisters site designed and developed. Currently it is still in the early stages and there is not much to show, once it is a little more final I will link to it and let everyone see my amatuer efforts at design. The coding is not far from what I always do for a new site, setting up the application.cfc and the structure.cfm files, then filling up the content pages. The focus of the site is a store that sells novelty products, decor and whatnot, eventually becoming and online store when possible. I also found a new recipe for texas tortillas and put it to the test, it passed with flying colors and has become my new standard for those days I decide to make breakfast tacos or need homemade tortillas for fajitas or whatever else may come up. Once i rediscover the blog where I found it I will link it here and give credit to the author. Besides that it was the usual chores of cleaning up my place and washing my dogs. It is always a hassle washing 3 dogs but they are slowly getting accustomed to it, they hate the bath but like being clean. I did get in a decent dose of World of Warcraft but need to stop feeding my addiction to it i have other things I should be focusing on, yet it so hard to work all week and spend time learning for work at home. I need to get in the habit of bettering my knowledge as hard as it may be.

I am going to try and make my blog more of a daily journal on what I have been working on, I will try to make daily posts related to what I am doing at work. I will still make off topic posts when I want, but I want this to be more a journal than it is in it’s current state.

I caught an episode of Penn and Teller’s Bullshit over the weekend focusing on video game violence. They brought up many good points and it was a very good show. They had the infamous Jack Thomson as a guest they interviewed along with some other “interesting” anti-video game activists. Being a gamer I couldn’t resist putting my two cents in on the issue. According to these “experts” if a troubled kid plays a video game he is more likely to go on a shooting spree and the games are training them to be efficient killers. To distrust our kids to the point where we believe anything they see they will emulate is asinine. The example Penn and Teller gave was right on, a 9 year old that played violent video games like call of duty 4 and other had a hard time shooting an AR-15 rifle, it brought him to tears afterward. Yes he was young maybe a little too young, a 16 year old may act a little different but for someone to use a game as inspiration would take an unstable individual. You cant cure crazy, the sad reality is crazy is crazy is crazy, there could be an infinite number of factors that could drive an unstable individual to do what they do. If not a game, a movie , a line in a book, all things that are misinterpreted in the mind of a disturbed individual. To blame games is crazy in itself, I myself use games as a release. After a long aggravating day it feels good to dominate another person in a violent way, only because I know no harm will come to them. In actuality I have only shot a gun once in my life and that was shooting cow patties in a open field, because of my experience with games I know the damage a gun can cause and treat them with the utmost respect possible. To blame a medium for the individuals and their interpretation will damage those who genuinely enjoy them. Anything can be turned into a bad influence in the mind of someone who is not based in the reality of life.

Some days the drag just pulls harder and it takes much more work to overcome it. The drag could be anything, the monotony of life, waking up in a bad mood, stress, any number of things. When you are under it effects everything appears differently, I tend to see the down side of things rather than the positive side, and to break out of it takes something positively powerful. Anything I could use to pull me out of it is work, but it’s work that must be done for the greater good.  A good example is my dogs for me to feel better about how i care for them i must exercise them and wear them out, too much energy building up results in something or someone getting torn up. The drag doesn’t usually affect me very often but when it does i am just in a crappy mood all day and generally daily interactions just add to it. I am trying to find something to take the drag away when it attacks but it does also serve its purpose, life has its ups and downs you just have to roll with the punches.

Billy Mays was on the way up, he had many promising contracts coming up, Taco Bell and Microsoft were both on his plate from what I have read online. It’s always sad when the world loses someone and his spotlight in the public eye leads to an interesting situation. He had so many commercials he was making and had already made that with his passing many companies are left wondering how to proceed. It raises an interesting dilemma do we honor his memory and continue to use his television spots or move in a new direction? The public perspective is really what it comes down to, how are people going to respond to a person who has passed still selling products? To me it would not bother me even though I know he is gone, selling products and making commercials is what he did, to just stop using them seems like a waste. Its uncertain ground and Im sure some will use his work and some will move on, death affects people differently and everyone has different beliefs. He was a good man and was good at what he did, I know our company will miss him. Even though I did not know him personally I almost felt as if I did, he was a big part of our company and I saw his likeness on a daily basis.

Its all about your attitude, and lately my attitude has been dragging me down. It took a friend to open my eyes and try to make a change in my daily disposition. I am such a slacker and loner in my natural state but that only leads to the same boring life day after day. Time to start living it up, doing something that makes me happy even if I may feel foolish at times. Im sure everyone goes through it I have just been putting it off trying to avoid it. Im tired of it, life is passing me by and I wave it on. Time for a change, any little personal victory will help my overall emotional state, but sticking to my plan is the tricky part.  It is so easy to fall into old habits, never taking that leap but it will get me nowhere. I guess I have been thinking without money to do things I cant have fun. I have plenty I can do without spending a dime, spending time with my dogs is the most important and most negelected at this point. I have three dogs yet hardly take them out, and bad things happen when my dogs are left to their own devices. I need to be the pack leader for my pack and for myself, hopefully it will overflow into other areas of my life. I love my dogs and they are so good to put up with my slacking ownership methods thus far, I cant afford to brush them off. Back in Texas we would take long bike rides and all loved it, here in Florida I dont feel as safe taking them on a bike, but rollerblades are in our future. I just need to find a pair to fit my size 15 foot and learn how to rollerblade so im confident enough to take them with me. My lab, Lola has been with me since the beginning, about 6 years now and I can tell she misses our long rides wearing her out. We used to go about a mile or two with her doing most of the work, then head home and jump in the pool to cool off. No more pool but she still needs the exercise. Time for me to get up, get out and get something.

Such a balance to try to preserve, work at hand plus the work yet to be done. The work down the road is making the jump to ASP .NET and the work at hand is finishing off projects for the company with my current skillset. I have tried to balance my time learning what I can in my down time, and also cranking out what I need to for the current needs of the business. O to be caught in the middle, while there is no pressure on me I feel the pressure building up in my mind. Every day I work is another days worth of work I will have to go back and convert into ASP .NET.  I try not to let it get me down, I am blessed to be at a place that will let me make my own path, but the everyday grind has its price. I love what I do and like tackeling new challenges to the best of my ability. Everyday is unique, either knocking off another peice of a big project, or planning a completly new project. I look forward to where it will all take me, down paths I have yet to explore, all I can do is take my time and enjoy the scenery.