Dave Hannum's Blog About Stuff . . .

How I Got Started in ColdFusion

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 16:09:00 -0400

Well, I discovered TODAY that YESTERDAY had been declared "How I Got Started In ColdFusion Day" - so as is often the case, I'm a day late. [More]

Dirty Little Secret Copier Manufacturers Don't Tell You

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 10:29:00 -0400

A recent story on CBS News reveals that photo copiers can be loaded with secrets. While below is a link to the story, the thrust of it is this. Nearly all copy machines built since 2002 have a hard drive on them, much like your personal computer. Copies of hundreds or thousands of the documents copied on the machines resides on these hard drives. Thus, if financial documents, medical documents, highly proprietary information or such have been copied on the machine, and the copier is disposed of (trashed or sold) whoever controls the copier also now controls all that info! Read below - another case where we are victims of our own desire for convenience! http://tinyurl.com/y3mwyco

Elections, Olympics and Earthquakes, Oh my !!!

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 00:02:00 -0400

It's been an interesting few weeks of noteworthy events. It started with the Republican, Scott Brown, winning the Senate seat that had been almost the personal property of Teddy and the Kennedys. Follow that up with the terrible magnitude 7.0 earthquake in Haiti on January 12, the currently ongoing domination of the US in the Winter Olympics in Vancouver (current count 36), and now the 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Chile. What does it all mean? [More]

Thinking of Making a New Start? Forget It!

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:39:00 -0400

Once upon a time, folks who had ruined their life, generally screwed things up or just wanted to get away and start over, could up and move to a new town and voila - new life. Those days are gone my friend, thanks to the Internet and, specifically, social networking. The advent of Web 2.0 with all of it's interactivity, blogging, tweeting, facebooking, rss feeds, shopping and all that goes with it, means that most folks have left a trail that will live virtually, forever (every pun intended). User names and passwords on shopping sites means that even if you move from New York to California, they remember you. That is, unless you change them all. And how many folks really want to, or will take the time to do all that? Face it, if you shop Amazon, even if you appear in a new location, they'll greet you with your purchasing history and a collection of items they know you'll like! Wait, I thought this was a new start? OK - I'll make a new Facebook. Wait, I need to add a lot of my old friends, because I don't have any here! And those old friends will probably forget to remove my old profile from their list of 600 friends and some of thim will make more than one reference to my old personality. Busted! And Oh - and with sites like "Whitepages.com" - if I get a new phone, it's just a matter of days . . . While you can put in a huge amount of effort to cover your tracks, fact is most folks won't put in the effort, and even those who are willing, aren't aware of all of the places they are identified, tracked and tagged. So face it. Now, more than ever, your best bet is to take your time, and do your life right the first time. The Biblical saying "be sure your sins will find you out" is now something that even non-believers must believe in!

Whitehouse.gov Moves to Open Source Drupal . . . So What?

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:36:00 -0400

Publishing mogul Tim O'Reilly posted a commentary on 10/25/09 about the White House's move to open source Drupal for their content management system (CMS). It's an interesting article in which he makes the following statement near the bottom which reads: "Features that would have cost millions of dollars and years of development to add will now be rolled into the scope of current contracts." The it's intended context, that open source is significantly better and cheaper than commercial applications, the above comment, coming from someone like Tim O'Reilly surprises me. Why? Because it's false! Does Tim think that the Drupal community, or open source communities in general, are the only ones that shares code and applications? It's no secret that I am a huge ColdFusion supporter. Maybe there is an upfront cost to the ColdFusion stack, but anyone who has worked in the environment will tell you that the savings in development time, especially on an enterprise scope project such as the Whitehouse.com website, will quickly recover the up front cost, and from that point on, it's pure savings. Some may argue that the savings, in the case of the President's website, is in the fact that others, not White House programmers, write the code. Well, let's see. The White House employed prime contractor General Dynamics Information Systems, Drupal specialists Phase 2 and Acquia, hosting provider Terremark, and CDN-supplier Akamai, in order to pull this off. That had to have taken an economic stimulus package all it's own. Oh, and Tim O'Reilly has stock in Acquia (a fact that to his credit, he properly disclose in his article). Please understand. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Tim O'Reilly. I also know that I'm basically a nobody in the IT world. I have no bone other than with the general mindset that open source is the answer to all the world's IT woes - it just ain't true. And I have never seen a cost analysis that proves, in the enterprise, it is a long term cost savings. What you save in software licensing fees, you will quickly eat up in deployment and development fees. And the maintenance is often much more painful than with some commercial products. (Just ask any Java developer when Java goes from, say Java 4 to Java 5). Many commercial products (such as ColdFusion) have a nearly pain free and almost 100% backward compatible upgrade path. Can you say SAVINGS? There is a time and place for any solutions - otherwise, they would not really be a solution at all. I wish the White House all the best with their Drupal deployment. Tim O'Reilly's article: http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/10/whitehouse-switch-drupal-opensource.html

I Can't Believe It Took Fifty-One Years

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 22:59:00 -0400

OK - I've been a lot of places in my life. I've been in almost every state East of the Mississippi River, and several West of it. I've been to Cape Cod, the Smokey Mountains, the Black Hills, Yellowstone, the Blue Ride Mountains, the list goes on. But during the past couple of months, I've traveled in areas of my own little ole Meigs County Ohio - the county I've lived 4/5th of my life in - traveled roads and seen beauty that I've never known existed right here. Working with my wireless Internet company has given me reason to be in parts of this county I've never had a reason to be in before. Meigs County's East side is bordered by the Ohio River. It's the home of both the sharpest turn in the river, as well as the only place in the Ohio River that it flows Northeast. The East side of Meigs county closely resembles a "boot". Yes - a boot. With a defined toe and heel. The toe of the county is merely a mile and a half wide, from river bank to river bank. And it a beautiful area. It goes from hills that are around 950' above sea level down to around 600' and some flat river bottoms at the river's edge. A bit North of this, are some beautiful rolling farm land. Pastures of well groomed family farms that are still withstanding in the modern economy. This county is the brunt of many a joke by neighboring counties, but I sincerely doubt that the joke makers have traveled the beautiful areas I have the blessing of making my home. Meigs County, Ohio is a beautiful place, and I hope everyone can enjoy it the way I am able to!

Where Did The Years Go?

Sun, 17 May 2009 23:16:00 -0400

Today, I watched my two sons walk across the stage and receive their High School Diplomas. Up until that very moment, it had not hit me. That 18 years had passed since Casey had come into our lives as a little peanut that I held on my shoulder and rocked and rocked to sleep. And at that moment, it hit me that it's been 11 years since Cody, and his sister became our son and daughter. How I can remember oh so well those little faces, hands and feet. It was at that moment that I realized how much I missed those precious little guys running up to my truck when I'd pull in the driveway from work - so eager to tell me what they had been up to during the day, and to ask if I'd play with them. At the time, it didn't seem all that important - routine. But as I watched each of them, in turn walk across that stage - first Cody and then Casey, for that brief moment, all of those scenes raced in front of my eyes. It hit me then that I'll never have those moments again, and how I wish I'd have taken advantage of more of those opportunities. These two boys have been so easy to raise. They've demanded so little and found ways to be content with whatever they had. Casey tended to be more like me in terms of emotional make up - having is occasional melt down. Cody has always been the poster boy for "whatever comes, just deal with it". Almost to my envy at times. Don't get me wrong - they've both had their challenging moments like we all had for our parents when we were growing up. But there is just something about these two that is different. I believe it's their mother that makes that difference. Either that or the milk man, because I know it's not been me. OK - I know I'm not the only dad to be hit like this at this moment in life. I suppose all of us feel that we've been terribly inadequate as fathers. I think of all the times I did not stop what I was doing (it was far too important, you know) to give a few moments of undivided attention - moments that you now realize made absolutely no difference to whatever it was you were doing at the time, but make all the difference now - at least to me in my mind. Casey and Cody - I love you guys. And I am so very, very proud of you. How well you've turned out despite my lack of attention at times. I know all the dad's reading this must feel the same way. I think it's a brotherhood - but for this minute, I feel all alone. Time will fix that - I hope. I do know this. I can't wait to stop what I'm doing when a little guy runs up to me and says, "Grandpa - will you play with me?"

Coming Back To Life

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 22:23:00 -0400

Being a web programmer, I spend a LOT of time in a seat, at a desk, inside a building. Now understand, I have, by most standards, HUGE windows in my office. I am right on the ground floor and it's just a few short steps, and voila - I'm outside. But, as most programmers will relate - you get in the "zone" on a project - and when you do, you put your head down and boom, six hours have passed. You would not even realize that, except that your bladder is screaming at you or your stomach is growling so loud you can't hear the strokes on the keyboard anymore. The worst part of that kind of thing for me is that I get burned out. I've learned to recognize that, at that point, I either take a few days off, or I spend the next few days or weeks just spinning my wheels, until I DO take a few days off. Last week, I hit that wall. So I put in the last three days of this week off. I was out and about on Wed. It was "OK", but it was a rainy, overcast, blustery day. But Thursday - aaahhh - Thursday. I was out all day with a friend, and I have to say that I experienced feelings and emotions that I had not experienced in many years. It was mid 70's with the sun popping in and out from behind fluffy white cotton ball clouds and an ever so gentle breeze. Many times, during the day, I relived little emotions and senses I remember experiencing as a kid. You know, those long, lazy days where you mom locked you outside for what seemed like an eternity to a kid . . . It's amazing how different my perception of time is now that I'm most likely over half way through my life from when I was a kid. What seemed to be dragging hours as a kid is just a few moments now. (Anyway - sorry I digressed). But the point is, I felt as though I was actually coming back to life yesterday. Just those few fleeting hours of God's beauty did it for me. I have no intention of making that my last day. I was out and about all day again today, but it can't compare to the experience yesterday as I experienced this for the first time in a LONG time! Man, it feels good to come back to life again!

Being Organized . . . Again!

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 01:54:00 -0400

For many years in my life, both private and professional, I was a very organized person. I used to work as a field accountant and manager for a very large international construction company. I was always commended for returning the records of a completed project in extremely good order. My home (garage, office, etc) were kept in very good order. Then a funny thing happened. Two or three moves, three kids and a career change. For the past fourteen years, I've been a very dis-organized person. When I started programming for a living (day and night . . .) I quit being organized. This was aided by the event of moving into this home. We moved in on a cold November day, and by the time the last truck was unloaded, everyone was cold and tired, and stuff was just dumped into the basement and garage. So, for the past fourteen years, my garage, my basement and my office have been total chaos (and at times, not even organized chaos). This year, I vowed to change all that. And you know what? I'm actually doing it. I've gone back to being the one to pay the bills. So I have them organized. Bank statements, incoming bills, paid bills, you name it - it's where it should be! Last Saturday, I spent the whole day in my garage. My two sons helped me empty it. We all drug everything out, and they helped me sweep it out. At that point, I turned them loose (to work on their Senior English paper - the BIG one) and I worked for over six hours just organizing. I finally mounted the electric grinder my father-in-law got me for Christmas so many years ago I can't remember when it was. It's a very nice grinder. Also, for the very first time, my work bench is actually usable! Even my daughter noticed it, and said how much she likes it! There is actually room to get in and out of and AROUND our Expedition in the garage. With room to spare! Oh my!!! I know that for some of you, this is no big thing. You are always organized - like I used to be many moons ago. Well, move over. There is going to be one more of us in that arena. Well, that is if I can ever find time to get to my basement . . . .

What These Trillions Really Mean!

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 03:45:00 -0400

Have you ever seen a trillion dollars? OK - let's say this little zero "0" is $1. I am now going to put a trillion dollars on this page. Here we go . . . 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000 . . . Just Kidding . . . Really though. I just saw today where they say the deficit will be $9 trillion in 10 years! Let's do the math. There are roughly 6.75 billion people on the face of the earth. We have roughly 375 million of them here in good ole US of A. That's roughly 1/2 of one percent of the world population. There are currently about 116 million households with a mean income (that means half above and half below) of $50,000. So, with 116 million households earring income, the bill for each household for the deficit will be about $77,800. Great, where do you want me to send the check? I don't know about you, but that's more than I paid for my house (I live way out in the country), more than the value of all the vehicles I've ever owned, combined, and way more than over half of the households in the country earn in a year. How may years of income taxes does it take for you to pay (that's money you don't get back in any given year) that much? I've never come close to that amount with everything I've ever paid! And where is this money coming from? Let's see, the Chineese and Saudi's own most of the real estate in the nation already, so we can't mortgage that. Hummm, since we can't sell the buildings, how about the National Parks and Forests! Sure, sell the good old US of A herself! Why not? It's not worth much if you can't afford to live on her, right? If anything is true, it's that Americans are resilient. Look how fast we bounced back after Perl Harbor and 911. Like the Toby Keith song, "this big dog will fight if you rattle it's cage". The will of the people in the heartland is much greater than the collective idiot of the Republicans and Democrats and few Independents in Washington, D.C. Like Hank Jr. sings, "a country boy will survive!" This nation can survive. We all need to wake up and stand up for what is right. The silent majority has found it easier to be silent for way too long. Now, we've gotten what we've not asked for, and not spoken out against. The recent "Tea Parties" in some of our cities is very symbolic of what I am talking about. They may seem futile and a bit silly at first, but I hope they are the start of a collective awakening of this nation, to what is right, and just and necessary. And that we will all remember that freedom comes with both responsibility and a price. The price has been paid - the lives of thousands of our bravest. We must honor the price they paid by holding up our end - the responsibility end. It's time to wake up Americans! Let's take back our nation, our economy and the way of life our fathers and brothers and sisters have given their lives for! Let's make this nation great once again! It's not too late. It may be painful and it may get a lot scarier before it's through. But it's not too late and we can do this! Be strong, and do the right thing!

A Bad Time To Be A Dinosaur

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:56:00 -0400

While I've never considered myself to be a dinosaur, I do believe that if I am not careful, I am in danger of becoming one. You know what I mean - someone who is skill-set, paradigm, mind-set, technologically, or otherwise locked into a time that is quickly fading into history. The rapid advance of web technologies can render one a dinosaur in a blink of an eye. I know. I work with one (or more). It is so frustrating to have to explain and justify using technologies that, in the era in which they are locked, were so bleeding edge that you didn't dare use them. However, now, if they are not commonplace, are in many cases yesterday's methods. I believe it has to be as equally frustrating for them, to be scared to death of video, cascading style sheets and DHTML and heaven forbid Ajax, Flex, Flash and the like. But if I'm honest with myself, I see that what I'm doing with Ajax, DHTML and such are quickly falling laps behind the leaders. One thing I see that I believe protects me from becoming a fossil, if not a dinosaur, is that I at least am knowledgeable of these new technologies, what they do, how they do it and their place in today's web world. But true dinosaurs haven't got a clue how far they are behind. I sit in meetings with those who vehemently resist the use of Flash on a home page, page widths, beyond 540 pixels and have a massive stroke at the mention of video. It really makes me wonder why they still want to work in this environment when they are so very far behind the curve. And the sad fact is, the technologies are changing at an ever increasing rate. It's like a few years ago. The vehicles I drove were either current generation or maybe one body style change away. Nowadays, I see that the vehicles I drive are sometimes three or four generations behind. Today, it would be very easy to fall two or three generations behind in the technologies and methods I am using. It's a bad time to drift into the "dinosaur" mode. Once there, you are almost hopeless. I've not built a Flex application. But I sure know what Flex is, what it does, and know that I want to do things with it, things that would be very valuable to the mission of the department I am in. I'm not a dinosaur - I'm not a dinosaur - I'm not a dinosaur.

Just a Matter of Time

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:46:00 -0400

Last evening in Costa Rica, a 24 year old extreme motorbike jumper (ala X-Games) named Jeremy Lusk was killed in a crash. I have to be the first to admit that I have watched these types of events in awe of the stunts they pull off. However, I have also been repeating to my family that somebody will be killed doing this (or the freestyle snowboarding, or freestyle skateboarding, or freestyle bmx biking). The stunts they pull off have been getting increasingly bigger and bigger. You knew it was just a matter of time before the limit was reached. Now, I also have to admit that I love racing. And the number of race car drivers killed over the years far exceeds the number of X-Gamers. So where is the justification? What is the point I'm trying to make? Everything we do has risk. I tell my kids that every time they climb behind the wheel of a car to drive to school or a friends house, there is a risk that they will not make it home alive. It's a risk we are willing to take. But there is a difference. The difference is that in driving, or even racing, the point is not to keep pressing the envelope or raising the bar like it is in the extreme sports. Take NASCAR. They actually keep slowing the cars down. The point is not to keep setting speed records, it's to be the best driver with then best equipment where the speed playing field is mostly relegated. When my kids drive, they are (supposed to be) bound by speed limits and driving restrictions - all in the name of safety. But these extreme sports know no bounds. The whole point is to keep pushing to the next height, the next rotation, the next flip. The point is to keep doing more. That's the difference. No safety precautions have been taken in these. It's all young, exuberant talent that gets excited when the brush with disaster has been survived. A couple of years ago, the young skateboarder Jake Brown came within a gnats eyelash of meeting the same fate as Jeremy Lusk in the 2007 X-Games freestyle jumps. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLJe9ISn7XE) Yet, the next year, they were pushing the limits again, and they will surely push further this coming summer. I have told my family that I refuse to watch any more X-Games or extreme sports. I am not going to continue to patronize our country's obsession with pushing the limits just for the thrill. I do not believe that this feeding frenzy of excitement that our young people embrace today is healthy. We are no longer shocked by the site of somebody meeting their maker. YouTube, Most Shocking, Hollywood and the video game industry have taken the "shock" factor away. This is not good, and I believe we will reap more and more "benefits" from it. I believe it goes deeper than even that. I believe that the respect for life is gone. So what if somebody dies? That seems to be more and more the attitude of this land - at a younger and younger age. What do our kids have to look forward to if they have lost their innocence by age 7 or 8? No wonder they turn to more extreme, more daring, more drugs, more of everything . . . .

Turning A New Page In History

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:20:00 -0400

Today is historic, there is no doubt about that. The first non-"European-white-male" in the history of our nation was sworn in as it's 44th president. To me, what is even more telling of our time, is some of the things that took place in and around the swearing in ceremony. For example, as still at the time, President Bush arrived at the Dias, a crowd of totally classless, ignorant, disrespectful people were chanting like they were at a football game, singing, "Nah nah nah nah, hey hey, good-bye,". I believe I could safely bet a month's salary that 95% of these participants could not tell you the names of their Senator or Representative. Is this the caliber of people who elected our new president? I wonder if this is representative of the level of social conscience that determined our exiting president should have an approval rating of under 25%? If so, This scares me, and should scare you. I truly wish Obama the best. We need something to rally around. We need this country to come together and feel good about itself. We need the rest of the world to feel good about us, the U.S. But if Obama was elected on the merits of idiots like those at the following link [http://www.wjno.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html?feed=244038&article=4878923] then we don't have much to feel good about starting off this administration. I hope these types of behavior are the bottom of the barrel, and things climb steadily upward from this day forth.

Between A Rock And A Hard Place

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 23:52:00 -0400

Budget cuts, layoffs, consolidation, hiring freeze - but get the work done. Times like this remind me how good I've "had" it. In my still relatively new role in the "Web Services Group" here at Ohio University, I'm told I'm in a position to be on the "cutting edge". The CIO's vision of our group was to be, what he referred to as a type of "Skunk Works." I can see where that is true, however, I can't see how it's supposed to happen. Our "new" department is short several key positions. Thus, we are constantly under a crunch to turn out our projects. However, tasks that might be covered by the folks that we are short, fall on us who are there. So, to research, develop, experiment, learn, train on and thus develop the "cutting edge" stuff I'm supposed to be on the edge of, does not have time to happen. I see the technologies passing me bye. Flex, AIR, Ajax - all the things that are involved in "cutting edge" still elude my skill set. The things we "could" be doing are just that - things we "could" be doing. My boss agrees, but has no budget for and is so under the gun to satisfy customers, that we have no time or money to do what we "could" and "should" be doing. It's very frustrating to say the least. In the past, if I wanted/needed to learn something new, I went to a conference, seminar or training. Not now. Now it's learn it on my own - and I would - if I had time! The web is wonderful like never before for us developers. There are more tutorials, examples, example code and helps out there on about any technology. What there is NOT on the web is "time". You can't find more hours in a day on the web - not in any book, tutorial, demo or example code. It's just not there. So I tread on, caught between a rock and a hard place. I do what I can to provide useful things to our customers - not what I'd "like" to provide them - or what I "should" provide them. But just the minimal to get them buy. Oh, we have a few cool things in the works - but not the whiz-bang things I'd like them to be. Alas, the good thing is I still have a job - for now. The way they're talking around here - stay tuned!

Christmas Pics 2008

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 22:51:00 -0400

In Chester, Ohio, about 6 miles from our home, is the Chester Courthouse. It's the oldest standing courthouse in the state of Ohio, and maybe the Northwest Territory. It was built in 1824, and is still owned by the county. Beside it is the Chester Academy, built in 1839. Both buildings are being restored by the Chester-Shade Historical Association, of which Wendy and I have been associated with for about ten years now. Anyway, each year they have a beautiful REAL tree donated and decorated inside the courthouse. We love to have family photos taken there. Here are our 2008 Hannum Family Christmas photos, taken Sunday, December 21, 2008.