Archive for 2010

3

Web Design at its Worst

By
Xnuiem
– September 28, 2010Posted in: thoughts, website

I admit, I like to find gigs on Craigslist.  There are horrible things on there, and some stupid requests (“I need a PMP certified Project Manager with 12 years industry experience that can start today for $12/hr.”), but every now and then, something decent appears.

I was browsing, wondering about competition and stumbled on this website : LeoScorp, LLC .  What a bad name for a company, but when you first look at the site, you are amazed they claim to be in the website building business.  Bad use of colors, background image is distracting, and let’s face it, picking something like Astrology to base your company name/theme/logo on could actually turn people off, especially down here in the Bible Belt.

Assuming you make it past all that, check out their About Us.  Does anyone care they swam together at a public pool?  Does that make them better developers/designers?  If this was their homepage, sure knock yourself out, but on a business site, keep it professional.

Then go to the Services page, where they have a stupid little computer extremely slowing typing out the content.  First, it is slow, I type much faster than that and read WAY faster.  Let’s go already.  I don’t have time to sit there and be annoyed at a little graphic you thought was cute.  Furthermore, doing that stuff isn’t even close to SEO helpful, so maybe it is a good thing you are on Craigslist looking for jobs since Google just isn’t working out for you.

But let’s face it, no matter how bad a site is, it could always be worse.

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4

Programmers, do you have Insurance?

By
Xnuiem
– September 25, 2010Posted in: programming, thoughts

Calling all programmers, those of you that do it professionally at least.  Do you have your own personal errors and omissions insurance?  Should you?  Probably.

I have been in development for a long time time, about 12 years, and for the web development world I live in, that makes me ancient.  I carry my own errors and omission insurance for personal projects, just in case the GPL can’t protect me well enough.  What is this insurance you ask?

There is a good article over at Insurance Journal that goes over exactly what it is and why you might need it.  My question is a bit more complex though.  If you are a professional programming, working on someone else’s payroll, do you need this insurance?  If you are fired for incompetence, or laid off, and the company you used to work for finds a bug that has cost them $1M a week since it was implemented 2 quarters ago, do they have the right, or abililtty, to sue you for that loss?  Perhaps.  It all depends on where you live, what company, and the situation.

Being sued for something you did on the job, in the best interest of the company, under the leadership of someone else, is extremely rare.  Most likely because it requires the company to admit they were less than diligent, didn’t do a very good job managing, and then makes them liable to their stakeholders since they are basically admitting an agent of their company screwed up.  Companies don’t like to do that.

However, if you are working on a 1099 or a third party W2, you need to make sure you are covered.  If you are on 1099 or doing corp-to-corp, you had better have insurance.  You are liable in that case, in the absence of another contract, for everything you do and write.  While you probably wouldn’t be found guilty of anything (I hope), it would be expensive to fight it, and better let the insurance company do it.

If you are on a third party W2, make sure the folks you are actually workign for have E&O insurance as an add on or rider to their general liablity.  You could need them to protect you for something you did in their employ on behalf of one of their clients.

So, do you have insurance?  Do you need it?  I am not a lawyer, so none of this should be taken and blindly run with, but, ask yourself if you are covered, and if you have questions or doubts, find someone that knows and ask.  It never hurts and could save you a lot of trouble later.

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0

Types of Programming Bugs

By
Xnuiem
– September 23, 2010Posted in: programming, thoughts

In a recent project I have been working on, I took over another’s code base, based in Drupal, and have been working to both fix issues and add functionality.  It has been a lot of fun learning Drupal, and working with this interesting application.  And finding different types of bugs.  If you are a programmer, you know there are bugs that are different and behave oddly.   Here are some types of programming bugs I have come across recently.

Heisenbug
Named for the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, this type of bug is only appears when you aren’t looking.  You know the kind, the kind you swear you can’t replicate, but yet, the users day after day report them happening.  If you try to measure this type of bug, you will inevitably alter your results.  They are the worst to track down, because a lot of the time you end up making changes just to hope they go away, even though you still aren’t sure exactly what caused them.

Keyser Söze Bug
These actually arent even bugs, but they make you think they are, and are a complete pain in the neck.  Basically, it is a “bug” that is causing a huge problem for you, but as you learn, and dig and dig, you figure out it isnt a bug, just a “feature”.  It may be stupid, illogical, or incorrect, but the code itself is working just as design and written.  So, in essence, it isnt a bug, only made you think it was.

WTF Bug
This is one of those that you swear up and down you have fixed, several times, yet is still there.  The most common one of these is when a customer’s ISP or internal firewall have cached old versions, so the damn thing is still cropping up on you, but you know it isn’t there anymore.  Another time these happen is when you change one part of the code, only to figure out that those methods were depreciated 8 versions ago, and now all that logic is somewhere else.  Yes you changed it, yes you committed it, but the bug is still there.

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1

Programming Standards are NOT pointless

By
Xnuiem
– September 19, 2010Posted in: programming, thoughts

It seems some people took my other article a bit too seriously.  While I was very serious and feel strongly about my convictions when it comes to HTML “validation”, the same cannot be said of programming standards.

For those of you that have never programming professionally, this stuff may be very new to you.  However, trust me, it is extremely important.  Programming standards are not stupid, are not corners to be cut, and must be strict, otherwise they ARE pointless.

There are standards when it comes to documenting your code, and I wont get into them.  But if you are interested there are programs out there which more or less set the standard if you want to use them.  JavaDoc, PHPDoc, and for those MS folks….. .  Go check out their websites for good advice on how to format your comments in your code.

Now, for actually coding, I have my own set of standards, developed over the years, to make the code both readable, but also hopefully logical.  Most people I run into think my code is pretty readable, some languages more than others.  Let’s face it, Perl code will never, ever, be as readable or “pretty” as Python.  It just isn’t going to happen.  Sorry you old UNIX guys, but Perl just isn’t very pretty.  The OO languages are much easier on the eyes.

So, other than for documentation reasons, readability (which leads to maintainability), are there actually other reasons to program to a standard?  Only if you want to use your code in some sort of portfolio.  But those first two reasons are EXTREMELY important.  Everyone out there that has programmed professionally will know exactly what I mean.

Tabs or spaces?  Braces at the end of a line or on their own line?  Spaces between concatenation or operators?  Double quotes or single quotes?  Print to buffer or hold in variables?  Globals or object variables?  Arguments or variables?

There are a ton of questions, and I cant answer them all.  But think about why you do something, and if you cant come up with a good reason, probably time to stop doing it.

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0

How to fix WP ECommerce

By
Xnuiem
– August 30, 2010Posted in: programming, writings

On front end pages with no ecommerce functionality, this plugin adds over 220+ database queries.  The more I messed with the code trying to make it behave, the more I understood just how horribly written this plugin is.

Now, as someone that has been doing development long enough to know, there are times that code just gets away from the development team and becomes a mess unto itself.  It happens, especially in the OSS world where code reviews are few if ever.  But, as I read the forums for this thing, the developers are just fooling themselves thinking the code is in good shape.

Here are a few basic suggestions:
1) Check to see if the page needs to execute the plugin.  If it doesnt, dont do it.  There is no reason to increase the number of queries by an order of magantuide when I am on a page that has no WP Ecommerce functionality.
2) Clean up the queries.  For example:
SELECT `id` FROM `wp_product_list` WHERE `active` IN(’1′)
should be
SELECT `id` FROM `wp_product_list` WHERE `active` = 1
It is more effiecent.

3) Index the tables!  The query above doesnt use an index.  That is right folks, the field “active” in product_list is not indexed.  This is easy and simple.

4) Use arrays or some other data structure for complex data.  Dont use the same basic query over and over again.  Example:

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2

Is God Pro-Life? I doubt it.

By
Xnuiem
– August 30, 2010Posted in: 300 million morons, ramblings, thoughts

If you, like us, spend any time driving in rural parts of Texas and New Mexico, you have seen the deluge of Pro-Life billboards and parenting ads.  I assume that out in the sticks there isn’t anything else for the teenagers to do but make babies, so the prevalence is a lot higher out there.

On our recent vacation I saw one that said “God is Pro-Life”, and man did that annoy me.  Is God Pro-Life?  If you are answering unequivocally “yes”, how the heck do you know?  Did you ask him?  Did he blog it?  Did you get the memo?  Last I looked we, humans, were given free choice by God, so the facts would tend to lead to the conclusion he is Pro-Choice.

For those of you that don’t know, I am Pro-Choice.  I don’t see it as my place to tell others what to do in their relationship, with their bodies, or with their lives.  That is a decision everyone should make on their own, and the consequences, one way or another, are between you and God.  No one else.  That same outlook also makes me for Gay Marriage, since again, who am I to condemn someone’s way of life.  If they are happy and not making me or mine unhappy, I don’t care who or what they do.

I am also pretty damn sure the Bible said do not judge people, love everyone, and treat everyone (and by extension their beliefs) with respect and generosity.

So to those of you running around all pissed at me now for saying God is actually Pro-Choice…why do you care?  Are you, personally, going to adopt each possible abortion?  If not, you don’t have a pony in the race and should sit down.

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Christian Science just rubs me wrong

By
Xnuiem
– July 31, 2010Posted in: ramblings, thoughts

Ok, starting this off, I probably have to preface my rant.  I am not saying Christian Science is full of crap, just that they have an aspect that just really annoys and pisses me off.  I am not saying I have all the answers or advocating one religion over another or downing any of them, except perhaps Islam since it is just retarded you cant draw a picture of Muhammad.

For those of you that do not know, my wife is Christian Science, and I of course love her.  I am really ok with CS, but this one thing just irks me.

At the beginning of each CS service, they set up what CS is, which is a good thing since it is a less traditional take on the Protestant movement.  Part of that little spiel is they explain that there is no pastor, just the Bible and their “textbook”: Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. That book was written back in the late 19th century by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of CS.  They then explain that the reason for not having a pastor is “un-divorced from truth, uncontaminated and unfettered by human hypotheses and divinely authorized”.  Um…so you don’t want a pastor, because you don’t want your message contaminated by humans, and yet you read from a book that a human wrote that is admittedly not the Bible?  WTF?  Really?  Do you even bother to listen to yourself?

Just to reiterate, pastors are bad because they speak what they think with the Bible as a guide, fettering the message if you will, so instead we read only from two books, one of which a mortal non-divine woman wrote about 120 years ago.  If you have never read the CS book, you should.  It is basically her responses to the scriptures.  For example…

Bible
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. – Matthew 5:5

CS Textbook
Whatever text the “Mother Church” in Boston decides will be the response.  A few weeks ago it something to do with authority which didn’t make any sense to me, since it just didn’t seem relevant.

So yes, they do “fetter” the Bible, and God’s word, which I am honestly OK with since I go to church.  Let’s just not start off every single sermon message thing with a hypocritical statement.  There is enough of that to go around in organized religion as it is.

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0

New Moon….please make it end

By
Xnuiem
– July 8, 2010Posted in: 300 million morons, ramblings, thoughts

Ok, Jess and I watched Twilight New Moon the other night and I am still in a ball in the corner trying to understand if there was a point to those 2+ hours that I just missed.  I have finally come to the conclusion that no, there is no point.  The entire movie could have been made into about 12 minutes, because the rest of the time all we got to watch was one character or another staring off into the distance.  For the record, if it was even a slight surprise to you that Jacob was a werewolf, you are a mental defective and should stick to watching Dora the Explorer that way the plot is linear enough for you to follow.

Let’s go through a checklist of what it takes to make a Twilight movie:

Acting?  Nope.
Plot?  Nope.
Anything surprising at all?  Nope.
Wasting lots of time with montages as if that makes a movie?  Check.
Lots of staring into the distance?  Check.
Vocalizing the obvious?  Check.
Taking a 2×4 to your head to make sure you have a low enough IQ to enjoy Twilight?  Check.

The moral to the story is, if you drool on yourself, you will enjoy the movie.  Otherwise….have some dignity and watch Battlefield Earth instead.

The only way I may watch another one would be if it was like this:

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0

Top 15 Advantages of Being a Temp

By
Xnuiem
– May 25, 2010Posted in: ramblings, thoughts

I’ve held onto a list from Dilbert.com from 2001 as to the Top 15 Advantages of Being a Temp.  It’s still so true.
1. You’re only lending your soul, not selling it.
2. You won’t be there when the fruits of your labor turn rotten.
3. Trying on a different personality at each new job site.
4. You don’t have to continually fork over park of your paycheck for coworkers’ weddings, babies, birthdays and anniversaries, or children’s school, scouts, athletic, and band fund-raising efforts.
5. No one gives you clothes emblazoned with the company logo and then expects you to wear them.
6. You can avoid the internal “war”. I once temped at an office so divided and filled with hate, one half wouldn’t even speak with the other.. it was my job to convey messages between the enemy camps.
7. Your true Pointy-Haired Boss is usually miles away… and the “customer” PHB can often be ignored.
8. Overtime at time and a half! woohoo!
9. Leaving at 4:30.
10. Eight words: “It was like that when I got here.”
11. You get to hear the words, “good job” and “please stay” frequently.
12. When the company goes out backwards your resume says you worked for an agency.
13. You don’t give a rat’s hoohaa what the stock is doing.
14. I know my end date.  The directs don’t.
15. It’s like being the only lemming in the group with a parachute…

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0

Obama is a Douche

By
Xnuiem
– May 20, 2010Posted in: 300 million morons, ramblings, thoughts

Dear Mr. President, ever hear the phrase, “no one can call my sister ugly but me?”.  I didn’t think so.  But take a hint, and dont applaud when the President of Mexico rails on your people for upholding federal law, and being far less severe about it than Mexico is.  You may not like AZ right now, but at the end of the day, they are still US citizens, (mostly legal ones).  Allowing El Presidente to talk like that not only makes you a complete hypocrite, but a douche.

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