2021-03-22
Statements of affirmations and vision boards are popular tools to keep your goals ever-present in your mind. Here is a quick guide on how you can use your life lists to direct the creation of these tools. Read More...
personal development
Software Developer Career Tips
21 October, 2019
Fitness Series
27 June, 2019
Cash Flow is King
29 July, 2019
DREAM Series
01 January, 2019
A 2020 Update
03 September, 2020
After several months of absence, I share a not-so-short update on my life.
personal development
Software Developer Career Tips: Closing Thoughts
12 February, 2020
My closing thoughts on the previous series with advice on what to consider when leaving your job.
personal development career quitting stress time management
Fitness Series: Illnesses and Injuries, Make a Contingency Plan
03 February, 2020
Revisiting the Fitness series to explore the idea of having a contingency plan to remove your emotions when recovering from a prolonged bout of sickness or an injury that requires time away from working out.
fitness injuries sickness progression
Software Developer Career Tips: The System Design Phase
27 January, 2020
A common category of interview questions that are being asked of both experienced and novice software developers alike are the 'System Design' questions. I cover a couple of resources to help you prepare for these questions.
personal development career interview system design
Software Developer Career Tips: The Technical Phase
21 January, 2020
The most notorious phase encountered in the interview process for a technology worker is the daunting technical phase which can come in a multitude of varieties which I'll briefly describe in this post (and also how to prepare).
personal development career interview
Software Developer Career Tips: Do Your Preliminary Research
13 January, 2020
When preparing for the in-person interview, you should do your research beforehand to anticipate what it may happen and how to evaluate and handle the possible offer.
personal development career interview
Software Developer Career Tips: The Initial Phone Screen
08 January, 2020
I look into the most common first step of the hiring process, the phone screen, and describe different ways to prepare yourself for this first encounter.
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Software Developer Career Tips: Your Application Strategy
23 December, 2019
I dive into two active application strategies when pursuing possible job opportunities, the cold application process, and the referral process. Then I quickly outline a general way to quantify and monitor your progress throughout these processes.
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Software Developer Career Tips: The Candidate Pool
16 December, 2019
It's helpful to develop either an explicit pool of potential candidates or a rough criterion to provide direction for your application and job pursuit efforts.
personal development career
Software Developer Career Tips: The Southeast.
09 December, 2019
We looked at the Big Three (San Francisco, Seattle, NYC), and we looked at the secondary hubs (Boston, Austin, Boulder, etc), and then continued on toward other metro areas (SLC, San Diego, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, etc), and now we finally look into many of the southeastern metro areas to see what opportunities are present within them.
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Software Developer Career Tips: The Other Metro Areas.
02 December, 2019
In this post, I survey some of the opportunities at many of the other metro areas here in the United States.
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Software Developer Career Tips: The Secondary Technology Hubs.
25 November, 2019
In this post, I take a closer look at a collection of rising technology hubs in the United States and the opportunities and cost-of-living trade-offs within.
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Software Developer Career Tips: The Big Three.
18 November, 2019
In this post, I take a closer look at the three major technology hubs in the United States.
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Software Developer Career Tips: Location, location, location.
11 November, 2019
Location matters. Should you move to where the jobs are? Can you simply work remotely from wherever you are? How does location affect your overall earning potential?
personal development career telecommuting moving location
Software Developer Career Tips: Unicorns and FAANGs and whatnot.
03 November, 2019
What is the Big N? What are unicorns? What companies should you target and where are they located?
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Software Developer Career Tips: Extracurricular Programming.
27 October, 2019
Extracurricular programming may seem like a requirement for most tech-centric employers. Therefore it is ideal to program with a purpose if you're working in code outside of your day job.
personal development career programming open source
Software Developer Career Tips: What I wish I would have known before I graduated.
21 October, 2019
Learn from my mistakes. I reflect on some general tips that I wish I would known and considered during my college years.
personal development career
Welcome to Thirty.
07 October, 2019
After a month long sabbatical, I reflect on my most recent birthday.
personal development career
Cash Flow is King: Increasing your income through passive investments.
03 September, 2019
The last category is all about investing in passive income investments such as dividend-yielding securities and real estate. I also wrap up how different actions and strategies in one category can benefit and help strategies in other categories.
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Cash Flow is King: Increasing your income through your business.
26 August, 2019
This next category describes the aims of the entrepreneurial spirit, whether it be a small automated business that provides a modest but consistent income or a grand visionary start-up aimed at growing as fast as possible and capturing a large market space ultimately culminating in a successful IPO or acquisition.
personal finance financial income wealth business entrepreneur
Cash Flow is King: Increasing your income through informational content.
19 August, 2019
Another viable but less dependent approach to producing more income on the side can be found in the world of delivering informational content online. The hours worked-income earned ratio can swing wildly in this arena and the low barrier of entry reduces the chance of success as more and more people frantically flood these spaces. However, if you manage to catch success in this category, you can bend the hours worked-income earned ratio in your favor to a considerable degree.
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Cash Flow is King: Increasing Income through a Side Hustle.
12 August, 2019
If you've maxed out the earning potential from your primary job and you're looking for opportunities to create more income during your hours outside of work; there are many different options in this second category which I will briefly explore.
personal finance financial income wealth side hustle freelancing freelance
Cash Flow is King: Increasing Income through your Primary Job.
05 August, 2019
Once you have your spending habits under relative control, you can turn your attention to the variety of methods to increase your income. In this post, I outline some of the advantages and disadvantages of increasing your income within the category of your primary job.
personal finance financial income wealth career
Cash Flow is King: Reducing Expenses
29 July, 2019
An effective financial life can be boiled down to the simple equation described as cash flow. There are two ways of effectively managing this metric by either reducing your expenses or increasing your income or both. In this quick post, I explain my own simple strategy for reducing expenses by auditing recurring scheduled expenses and optimizing areas of extreme spending.
personal finance financial frugality spending budget
Is there a perfect framework for goal setting and management?
22 July, 2019
It's easy to get overwhelmed with the multitude of personal development literature out there when evaluating your own life. I attempt to mesh together multiple systems and techniques to create a rough framework that can be adapted at handling progressive development at each scale and within each area of one's life in a very concise manner.
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Fitness Series: Nutrition and Documentation
08 July, 2019
The last post in this fitness series covers the diet and nutrition details and exactly how I try to track progress over time. Bonus: The spreadsheet that I use.
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The Strangest Secret
03 July, 2019
Earl Nightingale discloses what he describes as the Strangest Secret in a 1950's era motivational recording. I briefly describe what I believe that makes his message so appealing and relevant even to this day. Maybe you'll find his message encouraging as a call-to-action to take a more active and intentional role in your life.
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Fitness Series: Cardio, Cutting, and More
01 July, 2019
The next post in this fitness series covers how the general programming changes to accommodate cutting on a calorie deficit and adding cardio.
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Fitness Series: Strength Training with Wendler's 531 Programming
27 June, 2019
Switching gears for the next couple of posts, I'll discuss an often forgotten but equally important aspect of one's life. Their physical health. Starting with a very personal example, myself.
fitness weightlifting health strength
DREAM Series: Deployment and Reflections
24 June, 2019
The conclusive chapter on the DREAM series which followed many of the design and implementation choices that I encountered and made during its long development. Finally, deployment was at-hand and the system would undergo the full load of interactions which would expose any blind spots that were sure to exist from such a large project developed by only one developer. Despite this, the deployment went incredibly well.
dream architecture legacy code computer science PHP MySQL jQuery LAMP
DREAM Series: The Miscellaneous Reports
20 June, 2019
Rounding out the reports functionality of the DREAM series are the reports that can be best categorized as the miscellaneous reports. This includes the Admission Documents Tracking report, the Enrollment Evaluation report, and the Placements Information report.
dream architecture legacy code computer science PHP MySQL jQuery LAMP
DREAM Series: The Integrity Reports
17 June, 2019
Other reports commonly found within the assessment system are those responsible for generating information about missing data that should be collected through the assessment system such as assessment instrument submissions, background checks, and insurance checks.
dream architecture legacy code computer science PHP MySQL jQuery LAMP
DREAM Series: The Statistics Reports
13 June, 2019
Many of the reports that needed to be carried over to the new assessment system could be described as the Statistical Reports. These reports are responsible for generating statistical information for many of the entities residing within the assessment system such as Clinical Instructors, Faculty, Enrollments, and even Disposition Infractions.
dream architecture legacy code computer science PHP MySQL jQuery LAMP
A Goal-Agnostic Strategy to Personal Finance
10 June, 2019
Sometimes, when you don't have a clear consensus on your ultimate goals. It's good to have a system in place that you can later adapt if necessary to accommodate almost any future financial goal. Here's mine.
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DREAM Series: Student Life Cycle Reports
06 June, 2019
One important functionality of the assessment system is the ability to generate statistical reports for students in each phase of their academic careers such as Admission, Enrollment, and Graduation.
dream architecture legacy code computer science PHP MySQL jQuery LAMP
Was Paying Off My Car Early Worth It?
03 June, 2019
One of the first major purchases in everyone's life is a new(er) vehicle. Learn how I escaped unfavorable loan terms by refinancing and how upon reflection, I debate my decision to ultimately pay off the auto loan significantly earlier than the duration of the loan itself.
personal finance financial auto loans debt
DREAM Series: The Standards-Based Aggregate Reports
30 May, 2019
As I turn my attention back to the reports functionality of the assessment system, I develop what is called the Standards-Based Aggregate Reports, a close cousin of the Standard Instrument Aggregate Reports. However, this report can span multiple indicators across multiple instruments as long as they adhere to the chosen standards when generating the report.
dream architecture legacy code computer science PHP MySQL jQuery LAMP
What It Takes To Have a Successful Website?
28 May, 2019
I survey five extremely popular websites to determine many of the different commonalities that may have contributed to their success and how you can apply these same properties to your own blog website if you're starting out.
financial independence computer science blogging
DREAM Series: The Disposition Infraction Process
23 May, 2019
The design requirements call for the ability to facilitate the formal disposition infraction process within the new system. However, each program follows a different process so I need to generalize it enough so that a user can build their program-specific process within the system.
dream architecture legacy code computer science PHP MySQL jQuery LAMP
Why I Left My Regional Bank
20 May, 2019
Another personal finance story about my discovery of the world outside my local brick and mortar bank and why I ultimately decided to leave it. And why you might want to do the same.
personal finance financial checking account saving account
DREAM Series: Data Migration of Assessment Data, User Accounts, and More
17 May, 2019
The last steps in the migration process involve migrating the greatest amount of information, the assessment information. Once that information has been migrated over. It is time to finally migrate over the actual registered user accounts to this new system.
dream architecture legacy code computer science PHP MySQL jQuery LAMP
How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Credit Card
13 May, 2019
The personal story about how I stopped avoiding credit cards and learned to utilize them for the benefit of earning a small amount on my everyday purchases.
personal finance financial credit cards
DREAM Series: Data Migration of Enrollment and Admission Data
10 May, 2019
The next step included migrating over the admission tracking system information, enrollment information, user roles and permissions, and lastly the enrollment application settings. All in preparation for the migration of the assessment data itself.
dream architecture legacy code computer science PHP MySQL jQuery LAMP
DREAM Series: Data Migration of Organization and Content Data
06 May, 2019
As development continued on the new system, I needed to migrate the information from the older system to the new system for both testing and the eventual deployment.
dream architecture legacy code computer science PHP MySQL jQuery LAMP
DREAM Series: Automated Testing with Python and Selenium
03 May, 2019
As the new assessment system grew in both scope and functionality, I began to explore different avenues to automate repeated tests through the browser's interaction with the user interface.
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DREAM Series: The Standard Instrument Aggregate Reports
29 April, 2019
Once we have the assessment information present within the system from the multitude of Standard assessment instruments; we are ready to generate reports on this information. One type of these reports is the Standard Instrument Aggregate Reports.
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DREAM Series: The Standard Instrument Wizard and Multi-Level Permissions
26 April, 2019
Given the varied structure and behavior of the standard assessment instruments. There would need to be a creative and involved way to create new standard instruments within the new assessment system.
dream architecture legacy code computer science PHP MySQL jQuery LAMP
Surviving Survivor-ship Bias
22 April, 2019
Discouraged by the reality of survivor-ship bias? I reflect on the concept as it relates to common success stories and attempt to find an approach to dealing with this real and often defeating mindset toward entrepreneurship.
personal business career
DREAM Series: Representing the Standard Instrument structure in the database.
18 April, 2019
Generalizing the structure of the workhorse assessment instrument in the new system, the Standard Instrument.
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DREAM Series: Access Permissions for Instruments
15 April, 2019
Accommodating the multitude of access properties for instrument access and submission in the form of a collection of individual rules that must be satisfied.
dream architecture legacy code computer science PHP MySQL jQuery LAMP
DREAM Series: Assessment data gathering through assorted instruments.
12 April, 2019
The most important functionality of an assessment system is the gathering of data for the purpose of assessment, this is the responsibility of the assessment instruments.
dream architecture legacy code computer science PHP MySQL jQuery LAMP
Crash-Course Introduction to Freelance Work (Legal Business Entity, Taxes, and Financial Institutions)
08 April, 2019
An anecdotal crash-course into the not-so glamorous beginnings to starting a part-time freelance software development business: taxes, bank accounts, business entities and more...
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DREAM Series: User roles, system design, and access control management.
04 April, 2019
One of the key features of the system is the ability to grant and limit the interaction between users and different functionalities of the system. This required revisiting the overall design of the system and how user roles were handled.
dream architecture legacy code computer science PHP MySQL jQuery LAMP
DREAM Series: Generalizing the enrollment application process.
01 April, 2019
Student users submit an application for approval to generate their enrollments but each program has their own specific structure for this application? I determine the ideal way to generalize this process, allowing each program to create and change their enrollment application with the constant shifting requirements.
dream architecture legacy code computer science PHP MySQL jQuery LAMP
DREAM Series: Restructuring and managing enrollment information.
29 March, 2019
One important functionality of the assessment system is to capture assessment data attached to distinct enrollments or courses. Unfortunately, different programs treat the process of creating and managing these enrollments differently.
dream architecture legacy code computer science PHP MySQL jQuery LAMP
DREAM Series: Managing user accounts from within and content management.
25 March, 2019
Allowing administrative ability to govern user accounts and restructuring the content managed by the new system.
dream architecture legacy code computer science PHP MySQL jQuery LAMP
DREAM Series: Organization from a hard-coded solution to a data-driven customizable solution.
22 March, 2019
Separating the structure and content of the system from the code itself to allow for complete customization.
dream architecture legacy code computer science PHP MySQL jQuery LAMP
Nothing excites you about technology?
01 January, 2019
Overwhelmed with the breadth of the field of technology, how to find your specialization in a multitude of competing fields? How to generate excitement again, or for the first time.
personal technology career computer science interviews
DREAM Series: The beginning of the design and development of a complete new system.
01 January, 2019
The beginning of a complete re-design and refactoring of a legacy LAMP system from the ground up.
dream architecture legacy code computer science PHP MySQL jQuery LAMP
Case Study - Seeding Data into a Crowd-Sourced Application.
01 January, 2017
Seeding base data to a crowd-sourced Ruby on Rails application using a Python web-scraper.
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Case Study - Mars Devise Omniauthentication and Social Media Sharing
01 February, 2016
Multi-login/social media omniauthentication management in a Ruby on Rails web application.
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Case Study - Mars Geolocational Single-Page-Search
01 January, 2016
Using the Geokit gem package for geocoding locations and geolocational search in a Ruby on Rails application.
mars ruby rails postgresql
