Michael Richard Murphy

I don’t get it.

I went to the mall today to run an errand and grab some lunch. While I was there, I saw two high school kids walking around.

One had headphones on and the other had a cell phone glued to his ear.

Why did they even go together?

I don’t get it. I guess I’m old.

Last week I finished one of Citigroup’s Online Learning Courses and got certified in “Upgrading Web Development Skills from ASP to Microsoft® ASP.NET”

They made the mistake of giving me access to their entire online learning catalog (which is like giving a kid free reign in a candy shop) so this week I’m starting an introduction to C# course.

I also received a trial “ASP.NET Using Visual C# 2005 ” training CD-ROM from www.appdev.com so I need to try that out.

It feels good to finally be learning .NET/C# after putting it off for so long. Or not necessarily putting it off but finally making it a priority and being able to cross it off my To-Do list. Hopefully you’ll see me posting some .NET-related Brainbench certifications here in the next few months before my subscription there expires in November.

I’m pretty excited that this week I added some pretty cool drag and drop functionality to an application I’ve been working on. I talked about Yahoo!’s UI library here a while ago and finally put it to use.

I’ve been converting a PowerPoint presentation and exercises used by Human Resources to train new hires into a web application and drag and drop seemed like the perfect design for a term matching exercise.

The application isn’t available outside our corporate network but I hope (I use that term loosely given the frequency of my posts lately) to post some examples of what’s possible at some point.

I don’t want to downplay my Javascript skills but Yahoo! has made it pretty easy to implement these libraries. There’s a downloadable zip of dependent files for each library that developers link to in their applications. After that, the API provides you with the methods for adding whatever interaction you like. I was able to put together a passable application in an afternoon and now it just needs some polishing and finishing touches.

Check out Yahoo!’s UI Library and create!

It’s been well over 90 here today and after spending 10 hours in front of a computer during the day it’s just too hot to do it now. I am wondering one thing however…

I saw a realty sign today that had this name on it: Spaminato. If that was really your last name, how could anyone ever receive email from you sent using your real name?

If you’ve wondered what I’ve been up to all this time, you’ll be glad to know that michaelrichardmurphy.com is almost complete.

That will be home of my web development business. I’ve mentioned here a few times that I’ve been working with some clients on the side and now I’ve started to get more serious about it.

The announcement will be made here within the next few weeks so stayed tuned. Hopefully when that’s complete, I’ll have a little more time to start writing here again since I’ve been working on some cool things that I’d really like to talk about.