Michael Richard Murphy

One of the difficulties of web development is that no O/S or browser renders designs in quite the same way. It’s time consuming (and sometimes impossible) to get your design looking just so for every possible combination. It’s also hardware and software intensive. Not everyone has access to PCs running Windows 98, XP, and/or 2000 plus Macs with OS 9 or OS X plus Linux or Unix machines, not to mention the plethora of browsers available on those platforms.

Drum roll please…until now. I stumbled across browsershots.org yesterday and it’s wonderful!

Enter the URL you want test in different platforms and browsers and browsershots.org uses distributed computing to snap screenshots in your choice of browser/platform. Those screenshots are then uploaded for your viewing pleasure. Problem solved.

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.

A few thoughts:

1. I᾿m still alive…
2. Somebody always has it worse.
   A friend of ours called last night to say her car was totalled in a collision with a truck. Funny thing…nobody was in either vehicle. The truck was hurtled into her parked car after it got hit by a train. You really do have to laugh. Apparently the truck got stuck on the tracks and somebody was in the process of reporting it to CSX when the train came. Luckily no one was hurt but talk about a freak accident.
3. Last year around this time I bought and moved into a house in the town where I grew up. In fact, without knowing it, I rode my bike by this house many, many times on my way to and from where most of my school friends lived. This weekend some friends of ours where in town and all the kids walked down the street to a corner store that I visited myself when I was their age. As expected, they came back with what we sent them for and candy and soda. It makes me happy.

The Student Loan Corporation is pretty good about employee appreciation. They put on about 6, very nice, internal events a year that differ in themes. There’s always a holiday party around Christmas time but throughout the rest of the year they mix it up with events like an Olympic-themed series of games, a Casino Night, Spring Break, etc. Pictures from these events get posted to the Internal Events page of the intranet. A screenshot of that page is below:

What you can’t tell from that picture is that most of the images are animated gifs. Between all the movement and the differing, non-matching, background colors, I go into convulsions everytime I see this page. When it was time this week to post the latest round of pictures, I couldn’t take it anymore. It was time to spruce things up a little so I took an hour or so to do some spring “cleaning”:

Now each event is linked to by a ‘polaroid snapshop’ of an icon representing it rather than a dancing turkey or swinging medal. I like its cleaner, more professional look. What do you think?

I am pleased to announce the debut of BVEMusic.com.

BVEMusic.com is the website of Brendan Van Epps, a jazz saxophonist from Syracuse, New York. This website supports the release of Brendan’s new CD, When She Dances. The site also allows Brendan to communicate appearance dates to his audience. BVEMusic.com interfaces with Brendan’s existing Paypal account, providing fans with a simple convenient way to purchase When She Dances.

Please join me in congratulating Brendan on his new website, BVEMusic.com, and wishing him much success in the future.

Not that long ago, I mentioned that Citigroup’s NAIT was interested in the recognition program I wrote for The Student Loan Corporation.

Well, this past Friday, I presented a portion of the program to a representative of that project team and he was impressed. He’ll be presenting his findings to the team this week so we’ll have to see where it goes from there.

To see my little web app go from the several hundred employee Student Loan Corporation to adoption by Citigroup, the world’s largest financial institution, might blow my mind.

On a side note, the shirts I designed for the 2006 Corporate Challenge were apparently a big hit although I was a little disappointed. To reduce the printing costs and because of possibly foul weather, they decided to print in a single color on not white. I guess I can’t blame them for being frugal but I was not a big fan of the turquoise color that was chosen. Ugh.

Just yesterday I made what I thought was a simple change to a layout. It had a horizontal navigation at the top (an floated list) and two floating content areas below it taking up approximately half the screen each.

For some reason, when I removed a menu item from the end of the navigation, all hell broke loose in Firefox. The left-hand float moved right and the right-hand float bumped down under it. Amazingly the design still rendered as desired in Internet Explorer so I didn’t put a whole lot of detective work into it. The site would only be accessibly on our corporate network where Firefox is almost a four letter word. But it did bother me that removing that one item (which should have no effect on the floats) broke everything so badly. Alas, I still had bigger fish to fry and other problems to focus on so that was going on the back burner.

It’s funny how solutions sometimes present themselves in unlikely places just when you need them. I had cut out reading my regular blogs some time ago to focus on other things but I had a few minutes so I decided to check some out. I’m glad I did since the latest post from Shaun Inman discusses the fragile nature of floats and his solution.

I think I may have found the solution I’m looking for. Check it out, it’s definitely worth a read.

While writing this recognition application for The Student Loan Corporation, overlapping roles has been a constant thorn in my side.

Application administrators and managers have access to certain functions, such as the ability to approve nominations of different levels, that general users do not.

Managers were relatively easy to handle. Creating an employee table that correlated managers and their direct reports allowed me to move nominations for specific employees to the appropriate manager’s queue.

Adminstrators are a whole different beast however. Not only do admins need to be able to function as normal users and administrators, they can also be people managers. As far as approvals were concerned, it was tricky (but doable) to figure out when a nomination needed to be approved by a specific employee acting as an administrator and when that specific employee needed to function as a people manager. Their role in these instances affected whether or not the nomination moved on and to where.

I solved this problem by creating different statuses to indicate where each nomination was in the approval process. Based on that information, I was able to determine where it should go next. That problem has been behind me for a little while now and it’s been smooth sailing until recently.

Roles are starting to get muddled again now that I’m working on the redemption portion of the application. The idea is that an employee’s accumulated recognition points can be redeemed for prizes. These prizes reside in an inventory maintained by the administrator.

This is where it gets slightly complicated. Because quite a few of the prizes are company branded and the program sponsor is Human Resources, these items are also used for other purposes such as charity give-aways or gifts for visiting executives. The admin now needs to be able to remove items from inventory from time to time for these purposes. Since the recognition program depends upon an accurate count of the items available for redemption, these withdrawals really need to take place through the system. The rub for me was how to determine when the administrator is removing these items as an adminstrator for the purposes just discussed and when they are legitimately redeeming credits accumulated as a normal user. In one instance, this action would mean reducing their accumulated credits for the redeemed prizes while in the other, it would not.

The idea that I’d need to figure this out eventually has been floating around in the back of my mind nagging me. I kept putting it off because I didn’t want to invest the brain power I thought would be necessary to figure it out. Little did I know how short an amount of time it would actually take.

SLC is rapidly outgrowing the available space in their current location so people are tight. I’ve had a tough time concentrating lately with anywhere from 6 to 8 people within three feet of me all having their own conversations and working. Maybe I just have superhuman hearing but there’s this constant chatter than once I pick up on, I can’t drown out, even with headphones.

Anyway, I’m getting down to the wire on this project and this functionality is one of the few remaining pieces so I decided it was time to just knock it out.

Yesterday at lunch I headed over to a trail nearby with the idea that I would get some fresh air (and quiet), focus exclusively on this problem, and come back to work with a solution. I’m proud to report that less than two minutes from the trailhead, I had everything worked out. About an hour after returning to work, the solution was implemented.

I guess the next time I’m strugging with something, instead of putting it off, I’ll just take a walk.

I’ve threatened to reveal big news here many times in the past and lately has been no exception. So here is some of the latest…

1. I’m working on three new web sites for clients. The URLs will be revealed here when they’re complete but I’m pretty excited about them.

2. The biggest news however is that the employee recognition program I’ve been writing for The Student Loan Corporation will be reviewed by North American Information Technology for possible use within all of Citigroup. NAIT has really gotten serious about standardizing technology across Citigroup’s multiple businesses.

   One of the ways they’d do this is by rolling out certain applications to the entire business. Since my recognition application already meets a lot of their requirments and is well liked by The Student Loan Corporation employees, I’ve been told it will be considered. It’s really going to be pushed up since it’s great visibility for the technology department at SLC but also great visibility for me. I never imagined I’ve been writing an application for the world’s largest financial institution. It would be nice if it works out that way. Stay tuned…

Speaking of real products from real companies…I’ve been using DropSend a lot lately.

DropSend is a nifty web app from Carson Systems that solves the problem of transferring files too large for email from one computer or person to another. Want to transfer some files from work to home or vice versa but don’t have a thumb drive handy? DropSend. Want to get a comp to a client but the file size would blow out their email server? DropSend.

DropSend lets you upload files to their server either for storage or for sending to another person. Pricing for this service varies depending on a couple factors including frequency of use or desired storage size. Up to 5 sends/month and 250MB of storage is free. FREE!

They also offer business plans up to 250GB of storage, unlimited sends, 100 or more users, and file encryption. The business plan is also brandable so a hosting or other technology services company can offer it to their clients as a value-add.

This is a real web site for a real product from a real company. Talk about balls…literally.

Ok, so it’s been a very, very long time since I’ve written here. As usual, there is lots of stuff going on. It’s all subjects for other posts however.

I attended a seminar today on Feng Shui in the workplace. May is Asian American History Month (I think) so the company sponsored this seminar at lunch. I had some free time and I’m sometimes interested in stuff like this so I dropped in.

The seminar was taught by a local Feng Shui Master named Louisa Ong-Lee who put on a very captivating presentation. She trained under a well known Feng Shui Master in Singapore for many years and now she consults here as well as speaks and writes on topics related to Feng Shui.

For those of you that aren’t familiar, Feng Shui is the ancient Chinese art of position and placement of objects to create positive energy. For those of you that are familiar, I apologize, those are my own words to describe it. The idea is that placing certain objects in certain locations can result in a more harmonious environment which in turn can attract health, wealth, happiness, etc. The brochure says that although this is an art, a lot of it is based on mathematical and scientific calculations. I don’t know if it is or is not, we only had an hour so we focused more on the whats than the whys.

The idea that simply placing certain objects in certain locations facing in certain directions can bring health, wealth, and happiness would certainly be enticing. Afterall, who doesn’t want those things? Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s that simple. It never is.

I mentioned in a previous post that I’ve been thinking a lot about happiness lately. What it really is, meaning, how does it feel to be happy? Where it comes from, meaning, does it come from having things, from other people, from personal achievement, etc. This is pretty on topic because by practicing Feng Shui you can supposedly attract positive energy and repel negative energy. If that’s true and your life becomes filled with positive energy, then it stands to reason that all other aspects of your life will improve.

Your new positive energy will probably result in a better mood, which you will probably bring to your workplace, which will probably be noticed by your boss, which will probably enhance your career, which will probably enhance your bottom line, which will probably reduce any possible financial stressed in your life, which will put you in a better mood…

I guess my question, and the ultimate point of this article is if the expectation that placing certain objects in certain locations will bring positive energy to your life and mood, is it necessary to actually do it? Just like the recipients of a placebo often times report their symptoms relieved, could simply making a conscious decision to practice Feng Shui and the expectation of the results be enough to bring about those results without actually doing anything more? Maybe the decision by that person to learn and practice Feng Shui is more important than the actual act of placing the objects. Maybe that’s the commitment necessary to make positive changes.

As an example of what I mean, a recent combination of busy-ness and laziness has kept me from getting as much exercise as I need and like. I know I feel better and less stressed when I’m getting that exercise so I decided to make a conscious decision to make time for it. Even though I’ve only found time to run once since making the decision (give me a break, I said it was a recent decision), I’ve actually felt better since making the decision.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking Feng Shui. People can use all the help they can get when it comes to health, wealth, and happiness. I just think it can’t be as easy as having an aquarium in a certain corner of your house. A martial-artist friend of mine used to have a t-shirt that said something like Discipline…if it came in a can, everyone would have it. Or something like that. What the attribute is really isn’t important. The point is, if it’s worth having, you need to work for it. So whether you practice Feng Shui or not, make a conscious decision to put yourself in surroundings that lift you up and improve your mood. You’ll be glad you did.

I apologize for the off-topic posts lately. I’ll be making two or three major announcements before the month is over that will bring the focus of this site back to technology.

I just got back from a week in Orlando visiting some of Disney’s different theme parks. My parents tell me that when I was much younger, we went almost every year just before school started. I only have vague recollections of some of it and of course the Wonder Years-style home movies of the experience.

The various parks are all adjacent to one another and inter-connected either by parkings lots, tram, the monorail, or ferries. Even though each park is massive, there are still only three or four ways into the complex and then visitors are sent in different directions to each park. I don’t remember the exact wording but above each entrance is a sign that says something to the effect of “Welcome to Disney World” and under that, “The Happiest Celebration on Earth”

Like I said earlier, I have only vague memories of Disney but wasn’t it always referred to as “The Happiest Place on Earth”? Maybe I made that up but that’s the way I remember it.

The happiest celebration is certainly more fitting since it can reasonably be assumed that anyone celebrating is happy. Maybe they secretly and quietly changed it from the happiest place because some of the people that I saw weren’t all that happy.

They weren’t happy about trudging around in the hot hot sun for 12 hours on a death march to see everything or waiting in line for 40 minutes to ride a 3 minute ride. They weren’t happy to pay $2.50 for a bag of Doritos that would cost 99¢ anywhere else. It should be noted that while I experienced all of those things, I’m not complaining about them. I fully realize that that is the cost of vacationing. I’m merely reporting what I observed. Parents upset with their children, children upset with their parents, couples frustrated with each other. Everyone with their own idea of what vacation means.

Anyhow, this is all just a convenient segue for me to explore the idea of happiness in future posts. It’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. Different people have different ideas of what happiness is and sometimes it’s not even what they think.

Here it is, The Student Loan Corporation/Citigroup/Smith Barney shirt for the 2006 JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge:

I got a call yesterday from a good friend and former coworker of mine.

A year or so ago he sat next to the CIO of well known company on a flight back here from the West Coast. They talked, he impressed this gentleman, and they stayed in touch.

He called to tell me that he was offered one of their coveted project management internship positions this summer (he has one semester left). He also wanted to thank me for my support all these years and the opportunities he had while working for me to get the experience necessary to get this internship.

Clark, I wish I could take credit for your success but that’s all you. I just let you do what you’re good at. You’re one of the most motivated, hardest working people I know and I’d work with you on any project, any time.

Congratulations, you deserve it.

I read recently in the New York Times that Mc Donald’s has moved some of their drive-up window order taking to centralized call centers in an effort to improve service and cut costs.

While you probably won’t might not be ordering Big Macs from customer service reps in New Delhi or the Philippines anytime soon, orders from some customers in Hawaii, Oregon, Maryland (and others places I’ve forgotten) are traveling as far as California before being routed back to computers inside the local restaurants. The article says this new process is designed to speed up order taking and fulfillment. Hmmmm.