Work Web Log Entries
My DZone Interview With Dan Wilson: Creating Software Simulations Using Interface-Driven Architecture
Posted: February 12, 2010 at 2:00 PM by Ben Nadel
When I was down at the CFinNC ColdFusion and FLEX conference , I had the wonderful opportunity to speak with Dan Wilson at the DZone offices. We got to talk about building rich internet applications (RIA) using design processes like Interface-Driven Architecture and web technologies like jQuery and ColdFusion. I had a lot of fun doing this and ... read more »
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Thoughts About Salaries And Raises As Motivated By Daniel Pink's Book, Drive
Posted: January 11, 2010 at 8:18 AM by Ben Nadel
This weekend, I started reading Daniel Pink's new book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us . I'm only in the middle of chapter 2, so I am sure it is way too early to draw any conclusions about anything; but, what I've read so far definitely has my mind churning. In the book, one key concept that he covers early on is the repeated... read more »
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Thoughts And Goals For 2010
Posted: January 3, 2010 at 1:28 PM by Ben Nadel
I know there a lot of people who don't believe in new year's resolutions; I am not one of those people. As much as I think it is important to take stock of your life on a regular basis, I appreciate the tradition of taking extra effort to do so at the start of a fresh calendar year. And so, here are my thoughts and hopes on what this upcoming year... read more »
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You Practice Gymnastics, I Practice Everything
Posted: March 2, 2009 at 10:34 AM by Ben Nadel
If you've read my blog for a while, you have hopefully noticed that I keep a very open mind when it comes to self-improvement. I have some strong beliefs in the way that I do things, but I often enjoy questioning these beliefs and having rich conversations about the founding of my beliefs as well as the beliefs of those around me. While some peopl... read more »
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If You Think You Know Nothing, You're Off To A Good Start
Posted: March 2, 2009 at 9:33 AM by Ben Nadel
Many years ago, when I was a personal trainer at Equinox Fitness, my fitness manager was teaching me how to develop training programs for clients. We talked about planes of movement and balance around the joints and varying intensity and all things related. He was a great teacher and was very patient with me. And yet, despite his teachings, I felt... read more »
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Getting ColdFusion To Work With MS SQL Server Express 2005 Databases
Posted: December 10, 2008 at 9:38 AM by Ben Nadel
Yesterday, after debating about whether or not to convert my blog to MySQL so that I could have a version of it running locally, I was persuaded by my esteemed Twitter colleagues to try using MS SQL Server Express since I do have SQL Server 2005 running in production. Downloading and installing SQL Server Express took the better part yesterday w... read more »
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Zen, Motorcycle Maintenance, And Producing Software
Posted: November 21, 2008 at 8:43 AM by Ben Nadel
I am currently working my way through Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig (thanks Joshua Cyr ). I've got a lot more to go, but this morning, the main character said something that I thought was quite profound, especially for me as a software engineer. To paraphrase (as I don't remember the exact words), he said: The ... read more »
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EtherPad: Potential For Great Peer Debugging
Posted: November 20, 2008 at 3:28 PM by Ben Nadel
After Brian Swartzfager posted an EtherPad tweet a little while ago, I went to watch their 90 second demo video. It looked pretty darn cool. I like the fact that you can just start a new pad online, no membership, no additional software, and just start inviting people to edit with you. While, I don't think it makes as much sense for two people... read more »
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Hal Helms On Object Oriented Programming - The Summary
Posted: October 26, 2008 at 3:50 PM by Ben Nadel
I spent this last week down in Florida at Hal Helms' " Real World OO " class on object oriented programming. While the code samples that we worked on were done in ColdFusion, the course was not really ColdFusion specific. The fundamental ideas of object oriented programming are universal and can be applied to just about any programming language ... read more »
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Hal Helms On Object Oriented Programming - Day Five
Posted: October 24, 2008 at 11:46 PM by Ben Nadel
This was the last day of Hal Helms' intensive 5 day course on object oriented programming - it's 11PM already and I just lost $40 playing Texas Holdem for the first time; needless to say, I'll keep this fairly short. I think the real breakthrough of the day involved persistence mechanisms. I'm not referring to any particular method of persistence,... read more »
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Hal Helms On Object Oriented Programming - Day Four
Posted: October 23, 2008 at 11:59 PM by Ben Nadel
Today was quite intense; we did a little bit of coding in the morning but the class quickly drifted away from the task management system and back into deep conversation. We got a little heated about the layers of an application and which layer should be responsible for what tasks. All the information that we covered was great, but for me, there we... read more »
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Hal Helms On Object Oriented Programming - Day Three
Posted: October 22, 2008 at 11:30 PM by Ben Nadel
Today is a bit harder to sum up because we actually started coding today rather than just talking theory and modeling classes. Before I get into that though, I just wanted to talk about my sleep last night; it wasn't good. I had a lot of trouble getting to sleep - I couldn't shut my brain off. It's like it just kept wanting to process all the stuf... read more »
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Hal Helms On Object Oriented Programming - Day Two
Posted: October 21, 2008 at 11:53 PM by Ben Nadel
Everything I've done so far in terms of object oriented programming in ColdFusion has been wrong. I came to this class thinking that I had a decent handle on OOP and needed the class to help me polish it up and tie it together a bit more; I'm sure that I could have been farther from the truth, but not that much farther. I know that an object i... read more »
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Hal Helms On Object Oriented Programming - Day One
Posted: October 20, 2008 at 11:07 PM by Ben Nadel
Yesterday afternoon, I arrived in Sarasota, Florida to attend Hal Helms ' one week seminar on Object Oriented Programming. I don't know if the planets where in the right alignment or what, but I got wind of this class last minute and just my luck, there was an opening. This is ultra exciting for me. As you saw last week, I have been looking for a... read more »
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Ask Ben: What I Look For In A Potential Employee - Passion
Posted: October 1, 2008 at 9:31 AM by Ben Nadel
I just thought id ask you for your opinion ... If you are looking to hire a CF developer, or any developer for that matter, what do you look for? Do you look for years experience, quality, skill set, job hopping, certifications? I have helped make hiring decisions as both the Chief Technology Officer at my previous company and as the Lead Softwa... read more »
