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Real-World Projects & Work

  • Car Lift: Concrete (part 2)
    I’ve spent some time over the last few weeks getting ready for pouring the concrete. Busting up the floor was step one, but I had to back-fill with gravel, pack it down then add some reinforcement from rebar and remesh. The existing concrete wasn’t thick enough to dowel into (drill and epoxy in rebar) so I ended up using many…

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  • Car Lift: Concrete prep (part 1)
    Moving the car lift from the old home.It’s a beast and has been very helpful in maintaining the family vehicles and critical to the work on fixing up the 71′ Corvette. The new shop didn’t have the right thickness and strength concrete so I’m having to cut and bust up sections to be reinforced. I’m needing to make sure I…

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  • Guest Bath remodel
    Last year we updated a bathroom and thought the result was pretty fantastic.We recently moved homes again (9th move in ~20 years) and started right in on the new place. The guest bathroom needed some work and my wife wanted to try and do some “shiplap” on the ceiling, here is what the room looked like after removing some cabinets…

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Technology

  • Vision vs Strategy: building culture early
    I had a pretty positive response to a post on LinkedIn regarding when companies should look starting building their corporate culture. One mistake I’ve witnessed is that companies often don’t start defining their culture early on, and if they do, they don’t understand the amount of time and effort that should be dedicated to ensuring current staff select for culture…

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  • Automation: Shift Testing Left
    I’ve started up a GitHub public repo to help demonstrate ways to use code-based testing to go beyond “Unit”. https://github.com/boxofnotgoodery/net-testing-examples There is no shortage of discussion of adding or adding more “automation” to our solution and software development processes. However, many seem to still be somewhat stuck thinking that test or QA automation is something outside of the software development…

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  • Reusable components: design or extract?
    Are you always DRY or perhaps you follow the Rule of Three? I’m currently working at a software company that has two business models, one is the familiar contracted services dev shop, the other is publishing a public set of API’s to accelerate application development. We always try and look for opportunities to extract a reusable component out of project…

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  • Blank Slate: Building API’s for public consumption
    So, next week I’m heading off to a new company.  A true startup, no existing product to speak of.  Blank Slate… We will be building a SaaS based product.  The way people interact is entirely API driven. We know we want a developer friendly experience. Documentation needs to be solid and reliable. Going from documentation to trying out our API’s…

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Business

  • Vision vs Strategy: building culture early
    I had a pretty positive response to a post on LinkedIn regarding when companies should look starting building their corporate culture. One mistake I’ve witnessed is that companies often don’t start defining their culture early on, and if they do, they don’t understand the amount of time and effort that should be dedicated to ensuring current staff select for culture…

    Continue Reading

  • Automation: Shift Testing Left
    I’ve started up a GitHub public repo to help demonstrate ways to use code-based testing to go beyond “Unit”. https://github.com/boxofnotgoodery/net-testing-examples There is no shortage of discussion of adding or adding more “automation” to our solution and software development processes. However, many seem to still be somewhat stuck thinking that test or QA automation is something outside of the software development…

    Continue Reading

  • It’s 5 PM: Who are you? (part 1)
    Imagine you’ve just completed your workday, who are you? Far too often people identify themselves as who they are in some small context, not the whole. Are you the CEO, or perhaps you are just an intern leaving after your first day? Maybe you’ve just retired and this day is your last, or were you fired, forced out of a…

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