timbuckthree.com

I’ve been spending my day between doing my regular work and prepping for 48 Hour Launch which starts tonight.  Next up is polishing my team’s pitch for tonight.  I’m trying to keep it as simple and straight forward as possible. I’m also working on infusing some energy into the pitch without over selling.  It’s a tough line to walk when you’re not used to selling.

What is 48 Hour Lauch? It’s a chance where developers, graphics artists, entrepreneurs, and other hangers on come together to make a large push to get an idea/project/business off the ground within a 48 Hour time frame.  It’s quite open ended and everyone is welcome to try to get their idea going.  I’ve assembled my team from friends old and new,  previous co-workers, and hopefully some new folks tonight after my pitch.

Our idea is quite simple and straight forward.  Allow customers to make to-go orders with their iPhone or through our website, OrdersOnTheGo.com. Viola! That’s it.  We wanted to keep it relatively simple for this launch. I plan to post updates here and via twitter.

That is all. Now off to go finish some more last minute work before this weekend begins.

A little while ago I started a little experiment. For a quick review I decided that I would severely limit the big time sucks of my day, namely Facebook, Chess.com, and of course email.  So after a little over a month of trying this out how is this working for me?

Honestly, some days are better than others.  Really some weeks are better than others, but over all I’d like to think that I’ve done well with my self imposed limitations.  I check Facebook a couple times a day and Chess.com only once a day maybe a second time at night before I go to sleep.

My email is a little bit more tricky.  Sometimes my job requires me to check my email quite a bit to stay up to date on things that are going on at the site.  For the most part though I feel really good about what I’ve been able to do.

Now for the flip side. I’ve found other ways to waste my time. I now search out more articles to read. A lot of them are about software development, entrepreneurship, and business development so I give myself a walk on those, but I still look up a lot of crap.  A lot of crap that is not Facebook, chess, or email (gold star for me!).

I figure I am like a lot of people and I tend to procrastinate.  If there’s something I dread or that I’m really not looking forward to I tend to find something to divert my time.  Like looking up old John Prine performances on YouTube, planning (read: daydreaming) for our trip to Chile, hunting down music videos of my new internet crush, or writing a blog post instead of working on my teams pitch/presentation for 48 Hour Launch this weekend. *cough**cough*

To recap, I’ve done well within the parameters of what I defined as success.  Yay me!

The bad part is that I’m still a lazy procrastinating slacker. Dangit!

Who knew?

I’m a passing history buff.  I love historical recaps, biographies, and fiction.  It just fascinates me.

When my friend, Darryl, pointed me to Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcasts I was immediately hooked.  He’s covered everything from plight of the Apache Nation, the Punic Wars, and the complicated events after Alexander The Great’s death.  They don’t usually last more than an hour per podcast.  They are easily digestible and I can listen to them while I work or drive.

His latest series has been absolutely riveting. It’s about the Eastern Front (the Ostfront) during World World 2. In the U.S. we know all about the death and destruction during the Invasion of Normandy and our struggles to get a foot hold onto the European Continent. We know very little about what happened on the Eastern Front. Dan goes into great detail about the battles, planning, and strategy between Germany and Russia along that front and exactly how ruthless and cruel it was.

It’s a four part series.  I’ve listened to them over the past month and I just finished the last one yesterday.  Just really good stuff.

Ghosts of the Ostfront I

Ghosts of the Ostfront II

Ghosts of the Ostfront III

Ghosts of the Ostfront IV

If you’re even just a little interested in history, go listen.  You will not be disappointed.

As a software developer you have a virtual tool box of snippets of code, sql, and scripts that allow you to do your job a bit more easily, quicker, and, at times, more fun. I have my own and if you’re in the technology field you probably have one too.  I’ve had some scripts that are specific to particular jobs, but for the most part I’ve had several scripts and tricks saved for years and years.

These tools are usually just quick, dirty and  allow for a bit of wiggle room to add on a few other bits of information.  They’re meant to be easily remembered and quickly altered.  They don’t typically give you a full solution, but at least give you a point to where you can begin.

One of the ones that I’ve used for awhile is for finding a particular term in a Stored Procedure, Trigger, or other database object within SQL Server.  This is really nice if you are on a project with a large amount of people working on the database, or if you are new into an existing project with a lot of legacy code.

Recently, I’ve had the need to ferret out where a particular table was getting it’s initial data.  This was with a legacy system that really had not been worked on in a long time.  In fact I worked on it several years ago, and let me tell you the phrase “Hell is your own legacy code” has now been crystallized and imprinted in my mind forever and ever, Amen.

Ok, where was I? Oh, yeah… Needing to find out when data was being inserted into a table.  I knew I had figured this out a long time ago, so I started looking around in my toolbox.  Here’s what I found:

Select Distinct o.name
,               o.type
From syscomments c
Inner Join sysobjects o on
    o.id = c.id
Where c.text like '%into myTable%'
Order By o.name, o.type

This quickly gave me a list of procedures, triggers, and functions that had that nice little phrase. Luckily there were only two so I quickly found my starting point.  It’s this type of quick and dirty tricks and scripts that make up my day and probably most programmer’s days.  In writing this and looking around for other solutions I found a solution on StackOverflow.com of course.  It’s a bit more rigorous and more lengthy, but still I’ll take my  little script.  It solves a problem quickly and it can easily be extended if needed.

Of course, every so often I would love to show some scripts out of my toolbox here, but as with all plans and good intentions we’ll have to see how well I can execute on this.  In other words, don’t hold your breath.

If there’s anyone else out there that wants to share their scripts or part of their day to day tips or tricks, feel free to post them in comments or drop me a line.  I’m always interested in how other people solve problems and get through their day.

There are a ton of things that I’m trying to do right now.

• Book hours for my contract work
• Work on getting my name out and more exposure around Chattanooga and the Internet.  Which this blog is part of.  Self marketing at it’s finest I’m sure.
• Work on projects that will hopefully bring in money down the road.  Projects that I’ve been wanting to do for quite sometime.
• Prep for our trip to Chile in December.  I’ve got my list of things to do and there’s still a lot of things to do still.
• Keep up with running, biking, etc.
• What else… oh yeah spend time with my family!  Yeah that….

Over the years I’ve dabbled with all the cool and nifty self improvement productivity movements.  GTD, The Seven Habits, etc.  Granted I’ve not had great success with any of those systems.  I’ve taken a few things here and there but it’s still just a mish mash pieces of each that have no really rhyme or reason.

I also regularly read ZenHabits.net another generalized productivity site.  They, ok really he – Leo Babauta, talk more about making small and increment changes within your life.  Small little changes that you can actually succeed at doing, like these posts about making lasting changes, focusing on willpower and simplifying your life .  That is exactly why I am such a fan of this site.

So with that I’m trying to cut out the just obvious time sinks in my life.  Of course there are a ton little distractions throughout my day but I want to start out looking at the big ones.  They are as follows email, Facebook, Twitter to some extent, and depending up where a particular game is Chess.com.  Over the next few days I’m going to try to limit my time on all of these sites. Email will be checked 4 times a day only at predetermined times.  Facebook and Twitter 2 times a day cause I still want to  post and see what’s going on at those sites.  Chess.com is regulated to 1 a day.  Period.

Let’s see how this goes.

I’ve recently made some changes in my career, in my job, and really in what I “do”.

For almost the past 5 years, I have been nestled rather comfortably in the corporate world.  Within this world you really don’t have to worry about much as long as you go along with the machine.  Do what you are told.  Fill out the paper work.  Work within the system and you’ll be fine.  Heck, lots of times you learn to make the system work for you.

Now I’m no longer cloistered away to go develop mind shatteringly elegant, maintainable, and efficient software… *Cough*. Yeah, business software can easily fall into the cycle of “later, rinse, repeat” which can quickly numb the mind.

Now I have to to actually think about promoting my company, my ideas, and my skills.  Essentially, I have to promote and market… myself.   Granted I’ve been an integral player and leader on most of the projects that I’ve worked on over the years, but this idea of self promotion is quite odd for me because I’ve been an integral player in behind the scenes.

So now I’m starting over.  I’m secure in my ability to design, develop, and implement software.  It’s my favorite part of the job.  Now I have to stretch and grow to get my hands around this promotion and marketing thing I have to do.  Now I get to learn something new that isn’t so cut and dry.

That’s exactly one of the main reasons why I made the move.  Well, that and I got tired of seeing my life played out in stereotypical Dilbert cartoons.

Today started was the first day of my “new job” which really means self employment.  I’ve got a contract with a company here in town.  I’m feeling a little under the gun to make the hours, but hopefully once I get the hang of things I want be so stressed.

One thing that has helped my day go quicker a bit more than otherwise is Pandora. I know I am very late to the party on this, but so far I’m making up for lost time.  So far I’ve got a Pixies/Nirvana/Super Drag station, a Wilco/Ryan Adams station, and a John Prine/Steve Earle/Todd Snider station.  I’m sure I’ll make more as I my moods and days change.

I’m thinking seriously about paying the $36 for a year subscription cause I like it that much.  I’ll let you know.  I like to support things that I use.  If I keep up my patronage of Pandora, I will.

I spent some time installing a bunch of software to get the Django framework running on my windows box.  It’s quite a bit actually.  From Python, databases, version control software, and a web server, I’m hoping it works fairly well.  I’m using John P. Mulligan’s how_to page to walk me through everything that I need.

This is all on a Windows Vista box so I’m thinking I’ve got a little bit of work left to try to get this going correctly.  We’ll see how it goes.

I hate chickens... except this one.

Here’s a photo for today.  Now for a little back story.

Berry has been trying to raise chickens for a couple of years now.  Unfortunately, Mother Nature has had other plans and have shown us and our children all about the circle of life.  And she’s shown exactly where chickens are in that circle in the most gruesome ways.

Anyway, I’ve fought against the chickens since the first day.  Don’t ask.  I have deep seated issues with chickens.  I love them for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, but caring for them is entirely too much for me.

Right now we have six.  Only two from the first early Spring batch have survived.  The photo is of the rooster, Sugar, and he’s one of the two older chickens.  I think he’s the favorite of the family, including mine.  The kids have handled him so much that he’s pretty mellow.

I made the mistake of admitting that he was a handsome bird to Berry who promptly told the children.  I’ve not heard the end of it.  Oh, well, what can I say? He is a handsome bird.

Needless to say we made it back from Chile safe and sound. It took me a while to not say “Si’” or “Gracias” all the time.

We had a fabulous time while we were there.  Granted, ten days was entirely too long to be gone from The Bear and The Mouse.  Chile now is such a fantastic place, different, but still absolutely stellar.  We want to thank all our friends and family who helped make this trip happen especially our host family, the McLeans.

We can’t wait until we can go back.