You Can Never Have Too Many Daves
This is what happens when: 1) you have multiple Dave's on your software development team, 2) you're punchy because you just successfully finished a major software release, and 3) you have a couple of spare pairs of 3D movie theater glasses running around.


This is me with fellow software developer, Dave Roberts, at General Dynamics.

Heck, this could be the start of a whole new style in web developer gear. What do you think?

Yahoo Mail Problems
Dear Yahoo,

Yahoo has been my front-end email client for 12 years. Is it time to change?

I use Yahoo as the front-end to manage my KeenerTech.com email. I have 12 years of history stored in folders within that client. But my email has been down for four days now. Even the Mail Options page won't load most of the time.

I can get my email through other means (my hosting service has a web-based client), so I'm only inconvenienced, not crippled. But seriously, this is supposed to be a professional service.

Your ads aren't broken, but my email is. Nothing on my end has changed. Nothing at my hosting service has changed.

Fix it, or lose a dedicated customer. Oh, and this blog entry will stay up as a permanent ad against your service.

   -- The Management --

Rails and the Apache SOLR Search Engine
My 2012 RubyNation conference talk about integrating the Apache SOLR search engine into Rails web sites is now online. Check it out!

MySQL: A Grab Bag of Useful Bits
Database management tools are nice to have, but they're not essential (I'm talking about you, MySQL Workbench). When the tools aren't working, for whatever reason, you can always go back to basics and create the objects you need from the simple, mysql command-line utility. Here's a grab bag of things you can do...

DevIgnition 3 Bigger Than Ever
DevIgnition 2012, now in it's 3rd year, was a smashing success! It's grown into a one-day, double-track conference with 170+ attendees. Many thanks to SAIC for helping us host this awesome event!

It's Good to Have Choices
When you do government contracting work, every once in a while you can run into problems with contract extensions, re-competes, protests, etc. It's always good to have a fallback plan, which is why I really appreciated getting an email containing the image shown below. It's good to know that there are opportunities out there for me, no matter what happens.

Agile Spaghetti
I recently had the opportunity to take the Agile Project Management class with Brian Watson from VersionOne. This was a prep class for the PMI-Agile Test.

During the class, one of the exercises was to build a freestanding structure using only spaghetti, Marshmallows, string and some blue tape. My team's end product appears below:

All About the GFIRST 2012 Conference
I'm at GFIRST 2012, the 8th Annual Cyber Security Conference hosted by the Department of Homeland Security. I spoke on Wednesday, August 22nd, with co-presenters David Roberts (General Dynamics) and Jonathan Quigg (Data Tactics), on the subject of "Social Networking: The Next Weapon Against Bad Actors."


The slides for the presentation will be online later. Meanwhile, I'd like to tell what the conference was like, how it differed from my expectations, and provide some thoughts about future directions for the conference.

RSA Biker Party
Yes, RSA knows how to throw a party.

The company is known for their extravagant parties at government conferences, but I'd never actually had a chance to attend one before. Awesome food, unlimited drinks and a live concert with Collective Soul.

Find out more about their August 22nd party at the GFIRST 2012 Conference in Atlanta, GA.

Active Breadcrumbs Gem
Now available - the active_breadcrumbs gem. It's a light-weight utility gem for creating breadcrumbs, a standard navigational aid for web sites. Now available for downloading at RubyGems.org.

This gem makes it easy to generate breadcrumb trails in a Rails application. The emphasis is on "structural" breadcrumbs, where a breadcrumb trail reflects the logical structure of a web site (as opposed to a "dynamic" trail, which reflects where the user has been - for which I humbbly suggest the user take advantage of the browser's Back button). For more information, see the documentation on GitHub.

Speaking at GFIRST 2012
I will be speaking at the GFIRST (Government Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams) 2012 Conference, which is hosted by the Department of Homeland Security. The conference brings together speakers, vendors and more than 1500 attendees from the cyber security arena for a week-long event featuring industry-related presentations, product demonstrations and training.

RubyNation Poster
Here's a stark, cool and unused RubyNation poster...