As we all know, the economy is in the dump with no relief in sight.  In fact, it is only getting worse as we sink more and more closely to the dreaded “d” word, depression.

My wife and I have several credit cards like most Americans.  We pay our bills on time, always paying above minimums.  We shop to get the good rates and favorable terms, that is until recently.

In the last ~60 days, we have received several notifications that our interest rates are increasing and/or our credit lines are decreasing.  We have good credit, never missed a payment, always pay above minimum, and yet, even on cards we do not have a balance we are seeing our rates moved from fixed single digit rates to double digit variable rates.

A couple of the cards claim that they ran our credit and that is the reason for the increase of rates and decrease of credit line.  However, our credit score is higher now than it was when we were issued the card, so that reason is completely bogus.

Closing the account is not a viable option since that hurts our credit score.

This irresponsible behavior, tightening of credit without cause is only going to further the economic crisis.  We are, without cause, being charged more for the same credit.  It is like a double inflation.  Credit costs more, the dollar is worth less, and yet, without credit and a strong dollar, the American economy will never recover.

Credit companies must be held responsible for their actions.  Consumers need more options for recourse when adverse actions are taken without notice or explanation against their accounts.  Closing the account isn’t feasible since it hurts the credit score of the consumer.

Either this behavior is stopped, or the economy will continue to falter.  When faced with higher interest rates for no reason, and lower credit terms, do you honestly think the consumers will be willing to spend any rebates or refunds?  Of course not, we will be too busy trying to pay down our increasing debt load despite no spending or reckless actions on our part.

Write your representation now!

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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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Well, it has been about a year since I officially stopped working on PHPX.  And last week someone came forward and asked to take over the project.  It has been a very interesting thought process on this since it is a lot more complex than I originally thought it would be.

First, there is the problem moving trademarks and copyrights.  PHPX is a trademark, PHPX is also a 501(c) non-profit dedicated to the distribution of free and quality software in order to better facilitate communication between communities of people in a virtual environment.  Sounds all official doesn’t it?  Well, sadly, it is.

I want to give over PHPX for someone that cares about it to develop it, but I am not really sure how to disentangle myself from all the legal stuff that goes along with it.  Perhaps I should just fork it and let them take over that.

What do you think?

          

I hope everyone survived 2008 ok.  God knows the stock market, banks, airlines, and a lot of other people didn’t.  I am looking forward to a new year, a new job, more great times with my family, and of course, surprises that are just part of life.

So, with that in mind, enjoy the New Year, and check back soon!

          

Ok, so we all know that we should write “valid”* HTML, and yet, less than 5% of websites validate for one reason or another.  Now this statistic can be a bit misleading as a comment from a user that didn’t use valid markup could invalidate the website, so granted, there is some play with the stats (per the usual), but let’s again assume that number is close.

Why?  Why do we not write perfect HTML?  Surely with the free validator on the authority’s website there is no excuse to write code that wont validate against the standard.

The answer there is simple, if and when all the major browsers (Firefox, Safari, IE, Opera, Chrome) all render a page according to the standard, then I will finally start caring about the validation of my websites.  Until then, I will continue to write code that works across the board, and just not care if it is “valid”.

To be real though, most of the browsers work pretty well, however the 800lb gorilla in the room, IE, does not.  Microsoft continually changes the standards by which they will render a page, like promising CSS 2 support in IE7 then bailing on that promise 6 months before release.  And let us not forget the horribly pathetic Javascript rendering engine, JScript, that the rest of us just ignore because it can’t be trusted to behave reliably.

So, like even on this website, we find ourselves writing “valid” code, and at the same time having to redefine valid to mean “Code that works in all the browsers”, not “Code that the W3C says is valid even though it looks like crap in IE6″.  Just to maintain a semblance of order and sanity, we use the handy IE CSS hacks where IE on Windows will actually arbitrarly execute code depending on the version of the IE browser being used.  Does that sound like an admission of guilt on the part of MS to anyone else?  OK Bill, repeat after me, “I know my browser sucks, so, instead of fixing it which would severely hamper my marketing and legal budgets, I will just allow hacks in order to ensure you nerdy web guys can still make pretty pages”.  There, was that so hard!?

So, someone feel free to run the validate against any of my websites.  Don’t bother sending me the results because I don’t care.  The sites work, the code looks good, documented, and is maintainable, so, what exactly was the complaint?

*valid code is extremely subjective, but let’s assume here I mean W3C “valid” code.

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For those of you that didn’t know, I am officially looking for a job.  Yes, I have left Caris.  I wasn’t there too long, sadly, but I suppose it was time to move along.  I learned a few things, have some more experience, and paid the bills, what more do you need from a job?

So, although it is the worst time of year in a horrible economy to be looking, I am looking for a job.  The typical, Application Development Manager or Project Manager position, really not further east than Irving with a few exceptions.

And to Caris, well not the company, but the people there, to my friends, I will miss working with you, it was fun and great building PathConnect together and watching it grow and make the customers’ day.  I will remeber the experiences and enjoy looking back.  Good luck in all that you do in the future.

          

All this talk lately about being “Green” is just crazy.  Why did it have to become trendy in order for everyone to start being at least a little environmentally conscious?  We all live here, there are finite amounts of everything ranging from corn to water to cows.  In fact, the only thing that seems to be fairly infinite is the ability of the human species to breed and take over more resources.

Nature, by definition, lives in balance with itself.  It understands supply and demand better than Wall Street.  If there is a lot of rain, the antelope are abundant, and then there are more lions until the populations stabilize, or another factor comes in like a grass fire that kills off a lot of food for the antelope, then the lions starve and their population dwindles.  It’s a whole Circle of Life type of thing.  There are only two organisms on Earth that do not really follow this law:  humans and viruses.  Both reproduce out of balance with their surroundings and are willing and capable of destroying their very habitat (and eventually themselves).

Jess and I have always been pretty “green”, because, we respect Mother Nature, and so should you:

          

A cousin of mine sent this to me and while I’ve heard it before it’s still a good point.

A group of graduates, well established in their careers, were talking at a reunion and decided to go visit their old university professor, now retired.
During their visit, the conversation turned to complaints about stress in their work and lives. Offering his guests hot chocolate, the professor went into the kitchen and returned with a large pot of hot chocolate and an assortment of cups - porcelain, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite - telling them to help themselves to the hot chocolate.
When they all had a cup of hot chocolate in hand, the professor said: “Notice that all the nice looking; expensive cups were taken, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. The cup that you’re drinking from adds nothing to the quality of the hot chocolate. In most cases it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink. What all of you really wanted was hot chocolate, not the cup; but you consciously went for the best cups… And then you began eyeing each other’s cups.

Now consider this: Life is the hot chocolate; your job, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain life. The cup you have does not define, nor change the quality of life you have. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the hot chocolate God has provided us. God makes the hot chocolate, man chooses the cups. The happiest people don’t have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything that they have. Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly. And enjoy your hot chocolate.

          

http://www.unityfortworth.org/

          

Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons because, to them, you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.