What motivates you to excel?
Is it something intrinsic, or an external influence? To answer my own question, it simply takes interesting projects to motivate me to do good work. The trouble comes when there is no real work available.
Things have been very quiet in the Angus world. In consequence, things have been very quiet on this blog. With 2 genetic defects recently discovered in the Angus breed, the breeders have postponed their usual sales as they scramble to test their animals. Add a recession as the cherry on top and you have one very quiet company.
June and July are typically quiet months for this business anyhow. What makes it unbearable is the side projects drying up. Every summer and every quiet period between breeders’ sales, I have made a mad dash to work on or finish up a side project. They have varied from posting the sale books online efficiently to improving our web sites en masse to solving the Photo department’s cataloging issues to building prototype web apps to campaigning for improved Angus Journal and Angus e-Classifieds sites.
With no side projects to focus my energy on, the boredom is driving me up the wall. I like identifying high-level problems and solving them. There are plenty of problems left to solve, I just keep running into a wall of red tape and No! answers. My nose hurts and the last wall nearly broke my glasses. 
Since there aren’t any interesting projects going on, I’ll share a few good links instead:
- For recent graduates and anyone looking for an unconventional road to changing careers, try Recession Proof Your Career, by Charlie Hoehn [via I Will Teach You To Be Rich].
- If you’re looking for deep, thoughtful writing, try any of Paul Graham’s essays. Pick one at random. You won’t be disappointed.
- Inspiration and instructions on how to live simple.
Working with Flex 3
Predictable as ever, requests for updates to our clients’ sites are picking up as everyone gears up for the Spring Sale season. It’s comforting to see that demand hasn’t slowed, despite the media’s constant attention on lost jobs and drooping sales.
From 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., I do updates. It’s dull work, but I’m grateful nonetheless. It’s become dull because there are only 15 sites left that need migrated from GoLive to Dreamweaver and 5 of them won’t count, since I plan on rebuilding them anyway. I stick to the daily grind because of an agreement with Rich: if I want to work on projects during busy season, I have to do updates during regular hours and the fun projects during overtime hours. I have to admit, it’s a nice managerial trick to keeping me focused and motivated to do what I have to do.
So why do I look forward to after hours work? Because we just bought Flex Builder 3
and four
Moving on, I’m another step closer to creating a web-based Flash Media Encoder. Currently it’s a free app available from Adobe for Windows XP/Vista only – with no Mac support, which is why I am building my own. I have built a small receiver, so users can watch a live stream that we broadcast out. It’s for learning and testing purposes only, so there aren’t any regular live streams happening. Next I’ll be working on building the broadcaster. Just getting the broadcaster to RUN is my first goal. Beyond that, I’ll work on auto-detecting bandwidth levels, error/exception handling, and handling multiple requests for the live stream.
The main goal is to have a functional prototype ready to use during the National Junior Angus Show. So my first big project due date is Sunday, July 19. I hope I can meet the deadline!
What if…
Sometimes I can’t help myself. What if?
- …the Web Services department managed all of the web sites? Certified Angus Beef, AngusSource, National Junior Angus Association, Angus Foundation and more.
- …the Web Services team was given the time and resources needed to truly be a useful service to our Angus breeders?
- …we had the time to develop and market mobile ads?
- …we had the time to build a working online-only sale book for breeders?
- …we were able to access the raw data powering the Angus Association?
- …we had permission to manipulate it into something more meaningful and useful for our breeders?
- …the departments/company/child companies actually worked together, as a whole entity, instead of independent little factions?
- …the Angus e-Classifieds didn’t suck and we marketed it as a selling tool?
- …the IS department and Web department played nice, and developed an easy-to-use shopping cart, so our breeders could sell their embryos, semen straws, certificates and miscellaneous wares online?
- …we were trusted to do our jobs to the best of our abilities, instead of mistrusted and micromanaged?
Well, then…
- …our talents could really shine.
- …breeders would value our services.
- …we’d be on the leading edge, creating new products.
- …we’d help ease the Special Services department’s burden.
- …fresh insights would reveal themselves.
- …breeders could use their data as a tool, not just as a bragging point.
- …information would flow freely from one section to the next.
- …we’d generate hands-free sales revenues.
- …web sites would be tangible and relevant, when translated into money in pockets.
- …we’d be Google.
What could you accomplish, if red tape didn’t exist? What have you accomplished, despite it all?
Future Projects and the IS Team
As Sale season comes to an end, I’m looking forward to fewer updates and developing some new projects. Last week Web Services (that’s us) had a meeting with Information Services (think of the Apple commercial where PC meets Mac). It was funny, yet nerve-wracking. Here were the desktop programmers, neatly dressed to the nines, with a team of nine people. Here are the web programmers, sloppily dressed in jeans and tees, the motley crew of five. Okay, great, you say, but why was this meeting significant?
These are the keepers of the keys. They clearly outrank us: the technology team from the parent company, who makes the decisions on the hardware and software used on our web servers. To be dramatic: they can help end the suffering and pain we experience on a daily basis when trying to use the outdated administration section in the Angus Journal web site
I have waited two years to hear that bit of good news.
They listened politely, but none looked eager to help with this project. We are not asking them to clean up bad code or ‘unbreak’ the site. We are asking for a new build, from scratch. No easy task considering how much archived information lives in those databases. I can’t blame them for looking unhappy at the prospect, but I am certainly grateful to see we have help.
So many of the departments are fragmented, little factions unwilling to share their information across departments, despite all of them being owned by the same parent company. I hope our two departments can show others how to collaborate and play nice.
Drupal Testing
I’m working with Drupal right now. I am taking Drupal 6.1 out for a test drive. So far it looks pretty good. Skinning 6.1 looks like it will be easier than 5.5.
Since Monday, I have had a crash course in:
- PHP5 and why it’s better than PHP4;
- Reading PHP and knowing what the functions do
- mySQL5 and why I want it instead of mySQL4;
- executing a few commands for basic mySQL tasks
- Shell access and using the command line
- Symlinks and what makes them so useful
I also discovered the woeful restrictions on shell access by our hosting company.
My philosophy is, the best way to learn how something works is to break it and then attempt to fix it again. Besides, it’s better that I break it first. That way I know what to expect when turning it loose for our customers to use.
I have so many burning questions about how Drupal works, and so little time to break it. What happens if I rename a theme folder while it’s in use by a site? How do I arrange a “test site” or pre-production version of the site, and set up a live site at the same time? Can I have to completely separate Drupal installations on subdomains? I want to reserve ‘test.clientwebsite.com’ as a subdomain for every site that has Drupal, so I can install and review modules without worry. Is that possible? How do you set up a new instance of Drupal without a domain to hook it to? Will it break my symlinks if I rename the site folders? The multi-site install that I have set up looks pretty good, but where can I find some high-level Drupal vets who can critique it and tell me what a better practice might be? Why isn’t the FCK Editor module installed in the default version of Drupal? Is it really a security risk to allow your clients to upload files? If they do it on Facebook, why not elsewhere?
Perhaps when I look back, some of these questions will seem stupid or silly. At least it will give me a perspective on where I started from, and where I plan on going.
My CSS skills are certainly being put to the test. It’s easy to build your own code, difficult to read and understand the thinking behind everyone else’s code. I have had plenty of practice with CSS 2, but some of the concepts behind the Garland theme are astounding. Just trying to track down where all the hooks are located within the various php pages is a monumental task.
Despite the sink-or-swim situation, I am really enjoying the challenge. I have learned the rudiments of Drupal’s admin interface and the structure/vocabulary that powers it; I have successfully managed to make a multi-site installation with a single Drupal core; I have installed a few modules without trouble; I have skinned Drupal with one of our custom designs (and based it on the Garland theme – no time for custom PHPTemplating right now!);
If our test client likes it, then demand for a content management system by the rest of our state associations is going to spread like wildfire. We get 3-5 new web sites a week during busy season, just through word of mouth.
While the state associations are slow to pick up a web site, I imagine this will be just what they need to get excited about one. Remember, they still don’t know how powerful the web can be, as a service. Online forms instead of paper forms for membership applications, junior membership applications, scholarship applications, show entries and signing up to receive catalogs by mail. Just those normal demands would save them tons in paper and mailing costs a year. Add to that the ability to pay membership dues, show entry fees, and make donations to junior events, and we’re working miracles for them in terms of personnel.
That doesn’t even count the news traveling faster- state association newsletters, show results, president messages, general announcements, and organizing subcommittee communications would be convenient, since it’s broadcast on the web site, subscribed to via an RSS feed, or pushed through as a direct e-mail.
Yep, now that the updates have slowed down and busy season is cooling off, we’re dreaming big dreams here.
