[I was recently asked to introduce my skills to a small, private mastermind. Here's what I wrote.]

I see my specialty as being a bridge between techs and "the rest of us".  While even the mention of technical writing may induce yawns, it's a skill that can be critical to the success of a project, and it's something that I do very well.  The more ( Read more... )

A friend of mine was telling me about the tons of code he has to write to deal with a Company table which has dozens of parameter columns. I suggested that he use a Parameter table, and then replace all of the parameter columns with a many-to-many table to set the Parameter values for each Company. A lot of the parameters are essentially ( Read more... )

Oh, speaking of voice jobs, I'd meant to add that I saw an ad on Wunderground for the Docker course on Udemy that I had recorded a while back, (below). Kind of funny, since I'm the least likely person to purchase said course. :-)


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I got three more voice acting jobs since I last posted, with another one in the wings. I've become pretty convinced that the algorithm that Upwork uses to present job applicants to potential clients takes into account a factor of "what have you done for me lately?". It's clearly not a coincidence that the more business I get from them, the more ( Read more... )

My investment firm client asked me for the ability to have their Members print current stock certificates from the database and the website, (apparently some sort of SEC requirement), which meant dynamically generating PDF's. I outsourced this part of the software at Upwork, and the developer chose to use the TCPDF package. It's quite powerful, ( Read more... )

The investment firm for whom I develop software closes their books monthly, and there are generally some tweaks that I need to perform just before each event, as the algorithms continue to evolve. I had to add a brand new screen with about 70 fields last month, and I was under the gun to get it out the door quickly, so I used this to upload the ( Read more... )

I've been writing software for the investment firm for almost a year and a half now. It was time to spruce up the database's Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD); we're now at 25 tables and 40 relationships, (and we're toying with adding seven more tables). I wanted to share what I could of the ERD, below. (I've already had to move five tables to a ( Read more... )

My daughter Sara has (apparently) been settling into her new job and home in Los Alamos, NM. She's also gotten back into blogging, and her writing is quite good, if I may kvellCat Lady and I went to play bingo last night. It was the first time I ever played. While I'm not a fan of gambling, I was still able to have fun. (I'm the type that keeps ( Read more... )

Fifty years old today. I guess it's as good an excuse as any for a perspective-style blog post ( Read more... )