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Speaking about Solr at KCDC
20 February 2012I will be speaking this year at the Kansas City Developer Conference(KCDC)! The title of my talk is "Open Source RESTful Search: Solr" and the topic, obviously, is Solr. This will be my first time giving a technical presentation, and I'm excited to have the privilege to give it at KCDC.
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The Importance of Working on Interesting Problems
16 February 2012How important is it to work on interesting and/or challenging problems? I propose that it is very important. I have been quite privileged at Softek to have worked on mostly very interesting and often challenging problems, projects, and products. However, I was tasked with a less than interesting and more tedious than challenging project for several weeks. Having since finished that project and moved back to the interesting sort of projects, I've realized how much of a difference it makes for my productiveness and happiness to work on interesting projects.
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Area User Groups: A Collaborative Approach
08 February 2012Lately, I've been dissatisfied with some of our Kansas City technical user groups. If the topic for the evening is interesting, I will usually go. However, when I do attend, I often leave disappointed. Why?
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Discipline in Software Development and in Life
31 January 2012We require discipline in every facet of our lives. It takes discipline to practice every day to master an instrument. It takes discipline to study in college when everyone wants to just have fun. It takes discipline to eat healthily and to exercise. It takes even more discipline to run a marathon. It takes discipline to handle all the streams of information in our lives. And, of course, it takes discipline to be a professional software developer ...
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Dealing with Information Overload (and Improving Effectiveness) - The Takeaway
26 January 2012Scott Hanselman's (@shanselman) talk was probably one of the most immediately applicable talks at CodeMash. It was full of ideas, insights, and actionable items. In this article, I'll try to tease out the main points of Scott's presentation along with the action items. I'll also detail my own answers to the questions and how I'm dealing with information overload.
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CodeMash 2.0.1.2: There and back again
23 January 2012CodeMash this year was my first. I had a wonderful time learning, splashing around at the water park, playing dominion, meeting new people, and of course eating the food.