Observations on Technology from an Aging Geek
In my last post I mentioned that I had been toying around with using Tomcat as the only servlet container to deploy all my ColdFusion applications to, regardless of what ColdFusion engine you needed to use for a specific project. My goal in trying to get this working was actually 3-fold: Learn more about how … Read more
A week or so ago, Matt Woodward posted a blog entry detailing how to install Railo and Open BlueDragon on Tomcat. Since then I’ve been experimenting with installing not only Railo and Open BlueDragon into Tomcat, but Adobe ColdFusion 8 and MX 7 as well. I’m trying to determine if this configuration is better for … Read more
For the last few weeks I’ve been working on a project that uses the Mach II, ColdSpring and Transfer frameworks for ColdFusion. This is my first “real” project using Transfer and, I have to say, I’m supremely impressed with the thought and work put into the framework by Mark Mandel. It seems every time that … Read more
As a small business, any business-related activity that keeps me from doing billable work costs me money. Obviously there is a certain amount of those hours that you have to deal with. The trick, in my mind, is to find ways to limit those hours so that you can get back to the business of … Read more
Yesterday I did something that I would have never thought I would do. I rode around in various airplanes just for the sake of riding in airplanes—I took a “mileage run”. Mileage runs are tickets purchased for the express purpose of gaining frequent flyer miles or segments. In my case, I needed segments. Six to … Read more
One of the things that I’ve missed greatly since moving to using a laptop as my primary machine just over 3 years ago is the ability to run multiple monitors. My old tower machine had a pretty hefty video card (for the time) in it that had both DVI and VGA connectors built in. At … Read more
I am working on a project for a client that is running ColdFusion MX7 on their servers and ran into a situation today where a search feature that worked perfectly in my local development environment (which, admittedly is running CF 8) produced some very inconsistent results when run on the testing server. This particular search … Read more
As some of you know, one of my other interests besides programming is amateur radio. I am the “liaison” or team lead between our local group of volunteer examiners (VEs) and the American Radio Relay League’s (ARRL) group responsible for overseeing license testing for the FCC. Part of the responsibility of being team lead is … Read more
I want to take a quick few minutes and thank Bob Flynn and the rest of the team for putting on such a wonderful conference. I would have written this last night but, honestly, my brain was mush after driving home. The entire thing was superbly organized, the facilities were absolutely top-notch, and the tracks … Read more
For the last couple of years, my travel and work schedule have really taken a toll on one of my favorite hobbies. I got my amateur (ham) radio license in 1994 while stationed at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, AZ. Ham radio is kind of like the original geek hobby. Before computers, before cell … Read more