Tech
Missives
I plan on writing about my experiences with current technologies, to include but not be limited to things I have learned that may help others and ease their pain.
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I plan on writing about my experiences with current technologies, to include but not be limited to things I have learned that may help others and ease their pain.
Ok let’s get this out there... I am what used to be called a Microsoft bigot... today the politically correct way to say that would be Fan Boy I guess. Either way the result is still the same... how much of the Kool-Aid did I drink, well I finally gave up my Windows 10 Phone only when they couldn't be purchased anymore. I shouldn't have to say anything more, but I have never let that stop me. I had a Windows phones since 2007. So yes, I had a Samsung SCH-I760 with a two inch square screen, a pen, a full QWERTY keyboard, and yes a 1.3 megapixel camera running Windows mobile 6!!! You know they were the smart phones that were around before Apple invented the smart phone, but I digress. I bought and wore a Microsoft Band (but I waited for the Band 2) and my primary PC is a Surface Pro Book 2. I walked, no ran away from gMail and anything Google years ago, when the do-no-evil* crowd became the Darth Vader of privacy. I never really understood the love affair folks have with Apple and the products they make, especially since you almost have to do everything there way or no way. To their credit, they really do seem to make our privacy a priority so when my carrier tempted me with an iPhone I finally gave in.
All that said I am not so jaded that I won't call Microsoft out when they fail me and those that count on them to be better than they sometimes are. Originally my tech missives on these pages where going to tales of my work on a CMS that I was developing and other tech. Now it will be a home for occasional random tech thoughts about the devices I use and other things of interest.
As the web matured as an important avenue for people to get their message out groups of all sizes discovered they needed to have a web presence. It was the early 2000's and during this time I started build web sites for small non-profits as time permitted. Eventually the school where my sons attended decided they too needed a web site. Up until that time most of the sites I built were fairly static with updates occurring maybe once a quarter. The school turned out to be very different. I built the first version of the school site with Front Page which turned out to be both a blessing and a curse. It made publishing and keeping track of things a little easier, but it was still quite tedious and time-consuming and not always what you expected. The school had a fair amount of static content, but they wanted to be able to make weekly updates, post a calendar. and eventually weekly uploads of flyers and information parents needed. So soon I was spending 10-20 hrs. a week updating the web site as a volunteer. They fell in love with the immediacy of getting information out and available for parents, I started hating life cause my free time was consumed with making the necessary changes. It was time to find a CMS which was simple enough I could turn it over to them to update but fully featured enough to meet their business needs. The trouble was simple and the features they wanted didn't exist. I was Windows guy and the tech at the time was IIS and Active Server Pages which was VB based. Connecting to a SQL Server was out of the question due to budget limitations so that didn't leave much except for MS Access. Fortunately I found some examples using said technologies and so the saga began, I would try and build my own web application to automate the publishing (and retiring) of the content that needed to be updated on a regular basis... if only I had known then what I know now.
Here are some articles in the planning stages...