tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-354344212024-02-19T04:04:59.392-06:00Active Alert DataThoughts on software development, business, finance and career aspirationsCanadaGoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01896257761140113284noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35434421.post-77857798952381804012008-10-26T13:23:00.002-06:002008-10-26T13:27:56.632-06:00End of this Blog (Concentrating Efforts Elsewhere)When I started this blogging thing I thought that I would keep the different sizes of my personality in different blogs. (Just like I once had several web sites for different purposes). Instead I am reverting to just two blogs.<br />If you want to keep track of me in the future then please visit:<br /><a href="http://activealert.blogspot.com/"><br />ActiveAlert.blogspot.com</a><br />and<br /><a href="http://activealerttravel.blogspot.com/">ActiveAlertTravel.blogspot.com</a>CanadaGoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01896257761140113284noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35434421.post-29812985552973744322008-10-05T15:25:00.004-06:002020-12-12T20:41:23.979-06:00More church photos update<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZsMMmsWlgsqiqiRnR5lTpipX_XIlOBeL5PClrkt-ZR8lhWW-_S8k72YIZtbZ-5LoTazdLAG_rx5ybANbgncBuaipsCtFWeYOcEX-qd9iDyNIyojs2dD-7HtngX47rD1Qn_v9S/s1600-h/sk08h049_insinger.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5253784811965963730" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZsMMmsWlgsqiqiRnR5lTpipX_XIlOBeL5PClrkt-ZR8lhWW-_S8k72YIZtbZ-5LoTazdLAG_rx5ybANbgncBuaipsCtFWeYOcEX-qd9iDyNIyojs2dD-7HtngX47rD1Qn_v9S/s320/sk08h049_insinger.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></a>
Just added some more photos and another page of Ukrainian Orthodox Church Photos.
These ones are south of Edmonton and in Eastern Saskatchewan. See <a href="https://www.flickr.com/search/?user_id=32267947%40N06&sort=interestingness-desc&view_all=1&tags=alberta%20church">CanadaGood on Flickr</a>.CanadaGoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01896257761140113284noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35434421.post-27782680502859782372008-09-11T08:52:00.004-06:002008-10-26T13:28:31.057-06:00Twitter FeedsI have been Twittering (Twitter.com) for a couple of months now. I set up Twitter Feed this morning and am now testing to see if this blog gets fed to my Twitter account. I just wish that I could figure out how to get a few of my friends and relatives to follow me here. I know that a few of them look anonymously but so far not a single one has signed on a Follower. Sigh.CanadaGoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01896257761140113284noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35434421.post-37727884814555554232008-07-24T13:37:00.003-06:002020-12-12T20:34:47.277-06:00New Alberta web pages: Edmonton<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil0r6APmfCFysS_NmgnyyLEkncvBVpj_BVGAdDhMA0TdBT965gSMjsyoVzSc14H9Jp57SWhETLFMn8DzV2-M66HPWoOgOrybP6-YZel-gsHDU6Bi3MMTDAfDuyjmTWWqIAgD1d/s1600-h/edm08mf17_782.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226668170601165378" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil0r6APmfCFysS_NmgnyyLEkncvBVpj_BVGAdDhMA0TdBT965gSMjsyoVzSc14H9Jp57SWhETLFMn8DzV2-M66HPWoOgOrybP6-YZel-gsHDU6Bi3MMTDAfDuyjmTWWqIAgD1d/s320/edm08mf17_782.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></a>
I have finally made some Alberta and Edmonton related updates to my NotSorry.com web site. In June I added a bunch of photos of the local area, especially the onion-domed Ukrainian churches. Yesterday I added some photos of the local weather. I have been having good success at taking thunderstorm photos.
Have a look at <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080513130038/http://www.notsorry.com/alberta.asp">www.NotSorry.com</a>CanadaGoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01896257761140113284noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35434421.post-20092039237854056552008-06-28T16:16:00.004-06:002008-10-26T13:29:02.590-06:00Another Delphi ContractI should mention something about my last adventure in programming. (Oh why do these things always have to be an adventure?) I moved to Edmonton and the job only lasted three month for some strange reason!<br />The end client of the contract was 5D Solutions... at least that is what they still call it on their web site even though they officially changed their name when they were bought out by a big American company.<br /><br />In the interest of one day getting another software job I won't go deep into what was wrong at the company. But I must say that they <span style="font-style: italic;">really </span>knew how to spend money. It helps when you have the US government as one of your big customers!<br /><br />I am still surprised at how companies end relationships. I know that they are afraid of getting sued but when they break things off with no explanation it really leaves a bad taste. I do note that they are always looking for software developers and managers. They seem to have some trouble keeping people for some reason.<br /><br />One of the strange things at that contract was all the money that they wasted on my training. There was weeks and weeks of testing and online courses and then I was terminated without explanation. Hardly seems a smart way to spend money. The 5D software is used to control and document blood collection and blood product testing. (I found that especially interesting with my own medical history). Because of the nature of their software the US FDA was involved. The software package was considered a "medical device". Someone somewhere neglected to document the software the first time around so 5D was spending millions on getting it certified after the fact. The only small problem was the incredibly bad software decisions that had been made early in the project. So know, because so much time and effort had been spent trying to get the darn thing FDA certified everyone was afraid to throw the darn crap out and start over even though that would have created much better software on a much shorter schedule. GIGO to the max was okay as long as everything was well documented.<br /><br />Of course I was only hired as a lowly software developer even though they called all their employees "analysts". Sort of like when a big hotel makes all their front desk employees "Assistant Managers" after their first week on the job. I know that I was not actually an Analyst because in three months there was little opportunity to actually analyse anything and provide input for improvement.<br /><br />Anyways I am not bitter. I got out of the Vancouver rat race for a while and I am enjoying my rental apartment in Edmonton. It has a great view to the south and is the largest space that I have ever had all to myself. (It is 20% larger than my mobile home that I recently sold in Surrey, BC). Since I have money in the bank -- another story that I have not yet written about -- I took the occasion to become a student for a while. Since April I have been a full-time Athabasca University student. It is all by "distance learning", either online or by the mail. I was trying for a Bachelor of Arts but I keep ratcheting back my expectations and will happy to get what they call a University Diploma in the Arts. It all depends on how many credits they give me for previous education. Athabasca University is taking their time getting back to me on that one.CanadaGoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01896257761140113284noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35434421.post-29354904100821053572007-09-09T14:51:00.001-06:002008-10-26T13:29:23.488-06:00Pinnacle Dazzle DVD Recorder and Studio 10 softwareI have spent much of the last couple of weeks producing videos, movies and DVDs. It has been an educational, creative and often quite frustrating experience. When I searched online I found that there are many others who have had similar problems. So I thought that it would be useful to put some of my experiences and discoveries online.<br />(I have a many years of photography, software development and computer database experience. I am just learning about things like DVD burning, video codecs and MPEG versions).<br />I have some old Mini VHS-C videos that I recorded ten years old ago. I wanted to capture those tapes on my PC and create some DVD and YouTube movies. When I visited my local Future Shop store here in Canada I found what I thought was the perfect solution.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Dazzle DVD Recorder capture</span><br />They were selling a USB connection box called a <span style="font-style: italic;">Dazzle DVD Recorder</span> from the Pinnacle division of Avid. The price was cheap, about $65 US, and it included software.<br />My first problem was deciding which version to buy. They have a regular and a platinum version. As far as I could figure out in the store, the only differences seem to be that the more expensive version had some sort of hardware compression that allowed use on older USB 1.0 computers. I thought that it was strange that the more expensive version seemed to be designed for older computers. I bought the cheaper red version. I later figured out that the more expensive Platinum version also includes the ability to create DivX and MPEG4 output. But those are only apparently needed if you are creating the most modern HD videos or trying to copy data with copy protection. In any case it seems like the same DivX and MPEG4 codecs are available for download at a later date.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Buggy Install</span><br />My next problem was the software installation process. I have HP Pavilion computer with 1 GB of RAM with a 1.5 GHz Intel processor. The install took hours if you include the time to download and setup the later 10.7 version from the Pinnacle web site. Instead of just providing just the required and licensed software they install everything and cripple the many features that are not licensed. Everywhere you look in this software there are crippled features that can be licensed for an upgrade fee. Because I am particularly fussy about photography I downloaded the Studio Plus 10 upgrade. That was needed to do even basic colour balance correction.<br />There are essentially no written installation instructions. Today, two weeks later, I noticed a file on the <span style="font-style: italic;">Bonus DVD-NTSC </span>disk -- they gave me two copies (!) -- named <span style="font-style: italic;">Studio_us.pdf</span> with a complete instruction book. I have not yet had time to read it since I only discovered it today.<br />There is another version of Studio (Version 11) but there is no clear reason to do an upgrade.<br />There is a software product included named Instant DVD Recorder. It is for basic copying direct to DVD. There is no editing options and there is not even the ability to capture more than one input into a single DVD. If you have a dozen MPEG files you can only record a DVD with the first one. There is an easy to use menu system but the only chapter option is to simply create a new chapter every few minutes. This is easy to use but feeble. I have not had much success with that and my remarks here are all about the Pinnacle Studio 10.7.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Studio 10 Capture problems</span><br />After a few tests I seemed to have the hang of the capture process in Studio 10. But I experienced frequent crashes when it was time to do the actual capture. After several hours finally figured out that since I had been doing database development work that I had the System / Performance Options / Advanced / set to best performance for Background Services instead of Programs. Ouch. I should have set things that way but the capture program should not have crashed without an error message.<br />During my testing I had to reinstall the Studio software. At one point I did a complete Uninstall and fresh Install.<br />My first video captures were saved in the provided compact MPG2 format. I checked a few times and was happy with the results and proceeded to capture nine video cassettes. I was in for a surprise though when I finally took a closer look at the results. Some of my captures started to get out of sync five or ten minutes into the video. In some cases the audio playback was more than two minutes behind the video. I finally figured out that things generally stayed in sync when I used the AVI option. These are much bigger than the MPG2 versions. For a 30 minute tape it requires close to 2 gigabyte to store the AVI capture.<br />So now I was into the Studio 10 editing process. It is slick and easy to create complex tasks. At one point I was trying to save some space. I found an innocuous sounding feature that allows a person to Delete Auxiliary Files. I could find no reference to these in the help files so I proceeded to do the Delete. I thought that they were some sort of temporary rendering file. Afterwards, when I reopened my old Projects, I found that all the video clip displays were replaced with pictures of a big Blue Exclamation Point symbol. Ouch again. I tried phoning customer support -- it was a Thursday morning -- but there wasn't anyone in the office. I eventually recreated all my projects from scratch.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Writing Final Files</span><br />Now we get to my biggest roadblock. I have spent much of the last week trying to get past the place in the program where it says 'Writing Final Files...'. This was particularly confusing since when I checked the Processes in the Windows Task Master it showed Studio using about 96% of the CPU and was constantly doing I/O Writes. I tried many options and many experiments. I finally figured out that all those I/O Writes were simply writing many repeating messages to infinitely expanding error log files. The Studio program was not actually doing anything useful. At one point I left it at this Writing Final Files stage running for 18 hours before I gave up and broke out of the program. It took me days to figure out if this was a problem with my system, a problem with my Project's design, complexity or size.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Solution</span><br />I finally figured out that this big roadblock was due to the installed Menu system files. There is an option to upgrade to Premium Pack Menus but, since the installed Standard Menus don't function, why would I pay even more money for the extra Premium Pack? I finally figured out that all these hang ups were due to the funky menu system. As far as I can figure out none of the supplied Menus function. It is likely due to the strange folder setup especially for the buttons. Under <span style="font-style: italic;">C:\Program Files\Pinnacle\Studio 10\</span> I find folders with names such as <span style="font-style: italic;">Titles</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Titles 16x9</span>. Under the folders with <span style="font-style: italic;">16x9 </span>in the name, you find files with <span style="font-style: italic;">16x9 </span>in the file names. BUT while there is a <span style="font-style: italic;">Buttons </span>folder that has some files with <span style="font-style: italic;">16x9</span> in the names, there is no <span style="font-style: italic;">Buttons 16x9 </span>folder. Judging from the error messages when opening projects the system as installed cannot find the proper Menu components.<br />So I created some Menus from scratch using the Menu Editor. And surprise of surprises, when using these homemade Menus, everything renders and I can create DVD images and burn disks. I should put some menus on the net somewhere and of course would do so if I get some encouraging comments.<br />I hope that all this will be useful to some other user. I will continue to use this Dazzle hardware and software ; especially since some of the alternatives are so expensive. There are plenty of other inexpensive options for the actual DVD burning such as Windows Movie Maker and Nero. There are few inexpensive options for the actual clip and menu editing.CanadaGoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01896257761140113284noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35434421.post-26410062051890207262007-08-04T12:39:00.001-06:002020-12-12T20:28:32.012-06:00Analysis of Geographic distribution for operating systems and databasesI have long noticed that some kinds of software, some operating systems and some databases are more popular in certain regions than in others. I have wondered if this was the truth or just my opinion. I tried, without much success, to find some statistics on these regional differences.
<a href="https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/">There is a web site </a>that I like from TIOBE Software which scans the Internet to see what programming languages people are currently talking about. TIOBE illustrates the buzz with a monthly scan created with the Google search engine. I looked for something similar that would show the geographic distribution of software and databases. Not much success in my searching, so I gave it a limited try on my own.
My favourite web site for software jobs searching -- at least for American jobs -- is <a href="http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/genthree/index.jsp">DICE.com</a>. Originally it was strictly for software <span style="font-style: italic;">contract </span>positions. Now it includes a lot of more permanent jobs. It still has a preponderance of <span style="font-style: italic;">serious real </span>jobs. Some other software job web sites include a lot of part-time jobs and low-paid stay-at-home employment.
In my search today I looked at some languages and computer systems that I use myself. These include some of my personal skills sets. This gave me some hints as to where I should concentrate on for my software skill upgrades and sales promotion efforts. I concentrated on both West Coast states and several large states where I expected to find software contracts. Click Here to see my Results Table[Now deleted]. <div><span style="font-size: 100%; font-weight: bold;">Some Conclusions</span>
I was reminded today how good I am at general data analysis. Too bad that I can't get a job doing just that. (<span style="font-style: italic;">Hint. Hint. If anyone is hiring</span>).
The key to looking at the data in this table is comparing the percentage that the states are of the entire US population to the percentage of that state's software jobs are to the whole. The population percentages are in the bottom row.
The first thing that I noticed is just how few jobs are in the states close to my Vancouver, BC home. For example, while Washington is a major software centre, it has just 2% of the US population. In this one time sample there are less than 2% of the total jobs for some of my best skills such as Delphi, Visual Basic and PL/SQL.
So where are the jobs? In Illinois and California the percentage of open jobs is higher than the population percentage in almost every category. This might be because it is harder to get people to move to San Francisco and Chicago for work; or it might simply be because there is more actual work there or it might be because the employers there have greater need for these particular skills.
I also see that there is very little demand for some of skills that I know well. It is amazing just how few jobs there are for Delphi programmers. I see a lot of Java and Oracle PL/SQL jobs and I should concentrate my training there. Another surprise was the approximately 3 to 1 ratio of COBOL to RPG jobs. I do like doing AS/400 (iSeries) RPG but there are darn few jobs out there.
It would be nice to create a system to automatically update a database like this and put it on the web each month. It could be more general and have more states. (Let me know if there is any demand for this). </div><div>
<span style="font-weight: bold;">The Canadian Picture</span>
I did a similar analysis for BC, Alberta and Ontario using data from the Canadian site <a href="http://www.workopolis.com/">Workopolis.com</a>. The conclusions are similar when looking at the number of RPG vs Delphi vs Java positions. (I had better brush up on my COBOL and Java knowledge). It was a bit of a surprise just how many software jobs there are in Ontario. For example there were 32 'SQL Server' jobs in BC, 56 in Alberta (which has a smaller population) and 247 positions in Ontario which has less than 3 times the population of BC.
Today's analysis brings more strong incentive to hit the road if I don't find a good job soon. There is so much more demand in Alberta and Ontario.</div>CanadaGoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01896257761140113284noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35434421.post-78360033178557355922007-05-05T18:10:00.001-06:002020-12-12T20:23:19.082-06:00Software Language Code ConvergenceIt is interesting how software programming languages are converging in so many ways. To be more exact, the underlying structure and functionality might be wildly different but the front end appearance of the language code all seems to converge. <div> In the old days of computer languages there were vast differences between the grid placement of RPG, the free form nature of BASIC and the wordiness of COBOL. One could tell them apart in an instance. Now all the languages strive to be free-form and object-oriented. They all pile on as many built-in functions and abilities as possible. </div><div> Once one language designer decides on a need for a CASE statement they all need one. Once one language uses a // for line comments then all the others have to do the same thing.
I have been recently learning and working with JavaScript and Java. I have been told for years that they were quite different concepts and Wikipedia says that they have quite different syntax. But gee, they both do a lot of {block} operations and both try to be as succinct at possible. </div><div> I was wondering why all these languages are based on English. I know that French tends to be wordy and other some human languages have much more complicated verge structure; but I do wonder why one never sees a computer language based on something like POUR .. SUIVANT ... FINI instead of IF .. THEN ... END. </div><div> Surely there must be some computer languages based on non English verbs and nouns?
This is awfully ethnocentric don't you think? Or am I being simply human species-centric instead of being a truly digital thinker?</div>CanadaGoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01896257761140113284noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35434421.post-42209775407404723262007-04-02T21:15:00.001-06:002020-12-12T20:21:17.768-06:00Some Software InspirationAs I have said elsewhere, I am once again searching for jobs and a steady salary.
I went to an interview last week where they asked me to name a technical book that had inspired me. I must admit that I fumbled the answer. I have read many software manuals and technical books; many of them were useful but I can't think of one that was really inspiring.<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">What is inspiring?</span>
On the other hand I am inspired by many other sources. I get a lot of inspiration from magazines. When I was working in California I enjoyed reading Software Development Magazine each month. It was inspirational to read all the latest concepts and applications.<br />
Sometimes these advanced concepts can be a hindrance to my work. I read about Agile methods and Ruby on Rails and JavaBeans. Then I return to my work repairing thirty-year old RPG code while trying to convince my employers that code can be reused and, just perhaps, that speed of software development, careful design and code reuse is as important as compile speed or multi-level object inheritance.<br />
Sometimes knowing that there is a better way to do things just leads to frustration. I often find that the guy who quietly sits at the back of the meeting and takes two months to do something that should take two weeks, is also the guy who is offered the full time permanent job with benefits while I am out looking for my next contract.<br />
(I just had a look and saw that Software Development Magazine has merged with the ancient -- in computer terms -- <a href="https://www.drdobbs.com/">Dr. Dobbs's Journal</a>. Both of the magazines and several others are free to American residents but expensive subscriptions for Canadian residents). [By 2014 even Dr Dobb's had gone virtual]<br />
Other magazines? I had a subscription to <a href="http://www.wired.com/wired/">WIRED magazine</a> for several years. In its glory days of the mid nineties this was a magazine that existed to provide inspiration. I like high style, effective colours and good graphics. WIRED had them all. It also had lots of good ideas and thoughts on everything digital.<br />
Where did they go wrong? They managed to both get too conventional at the same time that they got more weird in appearance. While in the earlier years they would use graphics to illustrate a point and provide information, it seemed that they became dedicated to <span style="font-style: italic;">the look</span> without the additional concentration on useful information. There were far to many pages with something like silver type on purple paper designed just to make the reader squint. While in the early days WIRED would provide pages of useful and inspiring pages at the beginning they evolved having many many pages of advertising in the same place. WIRED became the Vogue of the computer industry.<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Current Magazine Inspirations</span>
I currently have subscriptions to several general business and news magazines. I read <a href="https://fortune.com/">Fortune magazine</a> because of its practical information and left-wing bias. Left-wing? I don't think that there is another magazine that has done quite as authoritative biographical evisceration of the average American 'C' level executive suite. As often as they insist that Bill Gates or Warren Buffett are business gods; they also give us lots of stories about their foibles and all so human eccentricities. After reading those exposés I find it hard to think of the average great financier or CEO as anything more than reasonably smart and well-educated people with good luck and supportive families.<br />
When Fortune is at its best -- doing an in-depth corporate evisceration or essay on the business costs of American medical costs -- it makes one want to stand up and change the system. If only I had the power.<br />
A final business magazine inspiration is <a href="https://www.forbes.com/2007/07/17/magazines-silicon-valley-biz-media-cx_bc_0717business.html">Business 2.0</a>. This is the slimmer, hipper and more concise version of Fortune. Lots of stories about the Web and things digital. I normally find myself folding over many page corners as bookmarks before I finish an issue.<br />CanadaGoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01896257761140113284noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35434421.post-6684242397105179622007-03-15T19:11:00.002-06:002020-12-12T20:03:32.351-06:00Recent Training in Crystal ReportsIn late 2006 and early 2007 I undertook to learn something about using Crystal Reports.
This is the report writing software package that is now owned and distributed by BusinessObjects.
I signed up and took four online web courses at the BusinessObjects web site. Apparently they have the full course content of the classroom versions at half the cost. I completed them and finished by the end of January.
<br />The course work went fairly fast -- I had already used a dozen different report writing packages over the years. I hope that I find some use for all this training since I am currently unemployed and looking for work.
<br />Crystal Reports is one of Vancouver's software success stories. I can remember applying unsuccessfully for jobs 20 years ago in their little office on Pender Street in downtown Vancouver. Considering all the big software success stories on the West Coast of the US it is interesting that there are so few big success stories from Vancouver.
We have companies that have done well here -- such as AccPac or Entertainment Arts -- but they always seem to get bought out by a much larger company.
<br />I think that it might have something to do with our old resource based economy. We have long been a world centre for things like Fish Processing, Mining and Forest Industry companies.
At the same time that Seattle was making Boeing jets, Fremont California was making Fords and LA was making movies; we in BC were making cedar shakes and canned salmon.
I am not sure how the fact that San Jose, CA was the apricot centre of the world fits into this theory, but it there must be some reason that Hi-Tech never took off in the same way here as it did further south.CanadaGoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01896257761140113284noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35434421.post-1162784697494757922006-11-05T21:07:00.001-06:002020-12-12T20:09:26.515-06:00Current Contract WorkMost of my work in the last ten years has been contract employment.
Some of these have been short term but they have also lasted as long as 2 years. I like long term employment but the regular jobs that come my way always seem have some glaring problem. Among other things, I have had great luck in picking companies soon before they either go under or get swallowed up.</br>
That has put huge holes in my resume. <br /> It is always a toss-up whether to include an interesting computer experience or to leave off yet another short term job. Some of those short term jobs have been great learning experiences but it is hard to explain that in 20 words or less on a resume.
<br /> Even my formal education has been somewhat ill-fated. In 2003 I spent three months of the summer learning Internet Programming at a place in Vancouver named Corporate Communications Training College (CCTC). Apparently though they were <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/bc-college-abruptly-closed/article18230064/">fiddling with the books</a> and a couple years later they closed their doors without notice.
<br /> Contract work has its upside and downside. The money is good and it has given me a degree of freedom. I can take a holiday when I want and I set my own hours. But that supposed freedom has some big costs. When I take that holiday I am not paid for my days off. And when one contract ends one never knows when the next one will start. <br /> Most years it is almost as hard work to look for employment than it is to actually put in 8 hours in an office.</br>
Contracts have taken me to a lot strange situations from here to Mississippi. That is my biggest strength on the job market. There are plenty of software employees who have done the same thing for a decade or two. When things are chaotic or ill-designed or ill-fated I have had lot of experience in just those sorts of situations. I ask lots of questions, I learn fast and I get along with a wide variety of people. That is one of my strengths.CanadaGoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01896257761140113284noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35434421.post-1160952649603612942006-10-15T16:48:00.001-06:002008-10-26T13:33:05.687-06:00Active Alert Data Corp.My current software efforts are for my personal corporation.<br />The name is Active Alert Data Corp.<br />My <a href="http://www.activealertdata.com/">ActiveAlertData.com</a> web site includes my resume and some details.CanadaGoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01896257761140113284noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35434421.post-1160886396342297072006-10-14T22:24:00.001-06:002020-12-12T19:55:10.359-06:00Data is what I doI am a software contractor.
I am currently working on a 6-month contract scheduled to end in January 2007. I have Oracle SQL, IBM RPG, Delphi Oracle and other skills.
<h3>My Software Summary</h3><dl><dt><strong>Oracle PL/SQL programming</strong> -- at least years experience plus Oracle education </dt>
<dd>Have completed 3 Oracle Education SQL and PL/SQL courses with programming exams </dd>
<dd>Have programmed procedures, functions and triggers </dd>
<dd>Other SQL experience includes IBM's DB2/400, Microsoft SQL Server and Access SQL </dd><dd>Experienced with Toad for Oracle development tools </dd></dl>
<dl><dt><span style="font-weight: bold;">Borland Delphi </span>versions 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 2006 -- 10+ years experience. </dt>
<dd>Expertise using QuickReports, ReportBuilder, Rave, InfoPower and FirstChoice components </dd>
<dd>Have developed front end applications for several Oracle SQL and SQL Server projects </dd>
<dd>An 18 month contract involved production control software for truck / auto assembly </dd>
<dd>My 2003 year-end job involved Delphi / SQL Server development and extensive travel </dd>
<dd>2005 contract was with console batch applications in a mixed environment </dd>
<dd>Currently learning and working with Borland Developer Suite 2006 </dd></dl> <dl><dt><span style="font-weight: bold;">Internet programming and development</span> -- 10 years experience </dt><dd>HTML, Active Server Pages (ASP), VB.Net, VBScript, JavaScript, Macromedia </dd><dd>Designed, developed and maintain several web sites that rate high in Google searches </dd></dl> <dl><dt>Microsoft SQL Server: </dt><dd>2003 to 2005 SQL programming and database design -- 1 year experience </dd></dl> <dl><dt><span style="font-weight: bold;">IBM iSeries </span>/ System i / AS/400 mid-range computers: <span style="font-weight: bold;">RPG, COBOL,</span> SQL, DDS, Embedded Queries, DB2 and CL programming -- 3 years experience </dt><dd>Up to date RPG and CL skills. Worked on current V5R3 version in mid-2006. </dd><dd>Maintained IBM System/36: RPG II programs -- 1 year experience </dd></dl> <dl><dt>Borland Paradox for Windows versions 4, 5 and 7 -- 2+ years experience </dt></dl> <dl><dt>Year 2000 (Y2K) Conversion Analysis and programming -- 3 years experience </dt></dl> <dl><dt>C Programming: VMS C, Pro C and Borland C Builder -- 1 year experience </dt></dl> <dl><dt>dBase versions: II, III, III+, IV and dBXL -- 3 years experience </dt></dl> <dl><dt>PICK Basic, Revelation and Advanced Revelation -- 2 years experience </dt></dl> <dl><dt>Microsoft Office Applications and Tools </dt><dd>Have worked with several versions in last 10 years.
Did a lot of VBA and Access development.
Skilled with macros, scripts and batch programming.
Have done Excel automation using OLE and Activex.</dd></dl>CanadaGoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01896257761140113284noreply@blogger.com0