Banana Hammock

Monday, June 02, 2008

While staying with my father in New Jersey over the Memorial Day weekend, I discovered this lovely item in his kitchen:

Yes. A miniature hammock with a bunch of bananas in it. A banana hammock. My father didn't get it. The humor was entirely lost on him.

Technorati Tags: Banana Hammock.

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The Big Word Project

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

The Big Word Project is a fun little project setup by two guys from Northern Ireland whose main goal is to study how different words mean different things to different people. Well, that's their stated goal, anyway. I'm sure that one of their unstated goals is to make money.

To participate in the project, you go to their website, TheBigWordProject.com, and search for words. You can then "purchase" a word at the price of $1.00 per letter. By purchasing a word, you can have it link to any website of your choosing, thus redefining the word. For instance, Greg Storey at Airbag Industries purchased "singular" - a great word for him in my opinion - which now links to his site.

After a good 30 second of thought, I purchased "schadenfreude" - my very favorite word in the entire world - which means "to take enjoyment from the misfortune of others." Basically, being an asshole. I like that. It pleases me. You can find a link to my word on the sidebar of this site, just below the search box.

Was it a waste of $13? No way. I really dig neat little projects like theirs. It's a nice departure from normal word play, and let's face it - free marketing for my terrible, horrible, no-good blog. One thing is certain, though: You can expect to read more schadenfreude stories on here now!

Technorati Tags: schadenfreude, The Big Word Project.

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CMS for the Accessible Federal Agency

Friday, April 25, 2008

Every now and then I'm tasked with an especially interesting assignment at the office. A real "humdinger" of a task that breaks the cycle of normalcy and helps to pad the old resume. By default my job tends to revolve around a few tasks that are repeated throughout the weeks and months: website design, maintenance, Section 508 issue resolution, UI support, and helping to write standard operating procedures/white papers. So when new, important tasks come up, I always jump at the chance to help break the monotony. Today was one of those big days.

Today I was tasked with taking the lead on picking a Content Management System (CMS) for the federal agency that I currently work for on-site. It's a very big, very important responsibility that will have a deep impact on everything that I and the web team here do from now until the end of our contract in four years. This will steer the direction that we go and lock us into a very expensive piece of software. Obviously not a task to take lightly.

So, what is it we're looking for in our CMS? Well, the "need-to-haves" are:

• Works on the .NET / IIS platform with SQL/Oracle database support
• Generates valid XHTML
• Uses templates that are/can be easily made to be Section 508
• Costs under $30k
• Can be implemented on both an Intranet and Internet site
• Highly scalable
• Licensed and supported commercially
• Includes a user friendly WYSIWYG editor for non-technical content managers

Those are the basic elements of the CMS solution that we're looking for. At first glance those seem like a lot of requirements, but really those are just skimming the surface. Cost will probably be an issue and if we decide to go with one of the more expensive packages there will no doubt be discussions back and forth about whether or not it's worth it.

So far in my research, I've come across three CMS packages that fit the basic bill. The first (and best fit thus far) is Percussion Software's Rhthymix, which ironically is being used by HHS. It's got a lot of bang for the buck, and seems to be fairly easy to implement. The price is also listed as "negotiable", which means it's either ridiculously expensive or might actually be within our budget.

The other two packages I've found thus far are called Immediacy CMS and RedDot CMS, which seems to be the more solid of the two at first glance, but starts at $55k - way out of our price range. Never the less, it's going to stay on the list for the initial presentation.

Next Steps

As today was the first day of this project, obviously nothing major will come of what progress has been made thus far. The process of picking out our CMS is going to be long and thorough since it represents a major paradigm shift in the way we currently get our content out onto the web.

After picking out three or four solid CMS packages I'll call the vendors to ask the tough questions (price, support, availability, scale, upgrades, true Section 508 compliance, etc.) as well as try and setup a good date for them to come out and give us a nice demo. That's followed up by discussion, demo testing, more discussion, and then the real work begins: setup, implementation, and moving content from flat ASPX pages to clean, database-driven content.

There's a lot of work ahead of me, and I don't see this really getting to the decision point until May or June, but that will give us a lot of time to get our pages cleaned up and ready for the transition and for me to continue growing my hair out I'll have something to tear out while the transition is going on.

Technorati Tags: cms, content management system, immediacy, reddot, rhythmix.

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Site transition: Successful!

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

I am pleased to inform you that the move from my former web host to my new host, as well as the transition from ASP-driven pages to PHP-driven pages was successful and there was zero downtime. The DNS update was propogated within four hours of the initial update, and thanks to some handy tricks with my .htaccess file, search engine placement and bookmarks should be preserved perfectly.

The only thing that isn't currently working is the contact form, which I'll need to work on a bit. It's been using ASP Formmail for a few years now, so I've got to consider whether or not to use Dreamhost's free cgi Formmail or write my own script. Depends on my laziness level, I suppose.

Either way, if you discover a bug or find a broken link, please let me know via the comments for this post. Thanks!

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The transition begins!

Mexijew.com will be going down at some point over the next few days while I move it to a new host and switch it over to php. Initially, all of the pages will still be .asp, but I've got the .htaccess file configured to read the .asp extension as a php file, thus preserving search engine placement and keeping URL's fresh and real.

See you on the flip side!

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Is it time for Hillary to pack it up?

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

As many of my old readers know, and most of the new ones have probably figured out, I am a liberal. A moderate liberal, anyway. I'm not one of those "foam at the mouth" types who go monkey shit crazy for raising taxes and social programs, but I'm definitely more to the left than I am to the right. I, like many Americans, have been displeased with the way the US policy has been shaped in the last seven years and I'm looking forward to a change of any kind, because let's be honest here: None of the 3 major candidates are as corrosively partisan as the Bush Administration has been. No matter who wins, it's highly likely that we'll see some positive changes in some of the issues that matter the most (money, war, foreign policy).

Still, there's something that's bothering me. When it was time to vote in the Maryland Primaries, I didn't vote because I honestly couldn't decide which democrat I liked more - Hillary or Obama. Honestly, both of them share stances on the issues I'm most concerned about that it's hard to tell which would be better for me. Both also represent what I feel to be a major positive achievement in the history of our country: Both would be a tremendous first for the US - first true female contender for president, or first African-American contender for president. The way I see it, it's a win/win scenario both ways.

As time has gone on and things have been released about both candidates, I have admittedly leaned a little more towards Hillary Clinton. Not because of anything she did, however. I've leaned a little more towards Hillary because of the anti-semitic comments made by Barack Obama's pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. While Obama did come out and say that he didn't agree with some of the less-than-friendly stuff that Rev. Wright said, he didn't do what most politicians do in situations like this: distance themselves from the offender. While I can appreciate the candor with which Obama spoke about this incident, my inner Jew is always afraid and suspicious of people who associate themselves with those who blindly dislike my people or blame them for things that we aren't at fault for.

Despite all of that, however, I think it might be time for Hillary Clinton to pack it up and leave the race. Lately she and Obama have been going at it in a very negative way, and I'd hate to see this kind of negativity go far enough that it would damage the chance of the democratic presidential candidate in November. I don't think that would happen since the US has a very short memory of things that are said and done, but I don't think intra-party turmoil does us any good either, except to give the media something to discuss constantly.

Is it time for Hillary to pack it up, or should she continue to campaign and let the cards fall as they will at the Democratic National Convention in August?

Technorati Tags: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Elections, Democrats.

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It's time for a change

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

For over five years now, I've blogged on Mexijew.com and it's been a bittersweet experience. I enjoy blogging, and really enjoy all of the great feedback and e-mails I get from people. I haven't enjoyed the racist e-mails and comments, or the fact that I'm simply not comfortable giving some of my coworkers the link to this blog because, well, mexijew sounds more like a racial slur than something that an IT professional writes on.

With that in mind, I believe it's time for a change. I'm going to keep this blog going, and I'm going to keep the domain name mexijew.com, but I'm going to use a new domain name with it as well. I already own a number of domain names that I'm not really using, so I thought I'd give you, my loyal readers, the chance to have some input on what the new domain name should be.

I currently have two domain names that I'm not really using for anything and could switch to:

• PartialZero.com - Test blog using WordPress
• Flavored-Air.com - Mostly used for file storage

This might also be a good time to move this site from old school ASP 3.0 to php, although there's some obvious logistical issues that would have to be worked out (as well as search engine placement issues), but I think that's something that needs to happen anyway. There's no good reason to use ASP 3.0 anymore.

Do you have any suggestions? Do you think either of those domain names would be great to use? Let me know - post in the comments below.

Technorati Tags: mexijew.com, domain names.

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A Haiku

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Busy week at work
Nothing of substance to write
Dogs love Snausages.

Technorati Tags: Haiku.

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