Now that I no longer work at DaVita and for Smith Micro, the company, while it doesn’t embrace social media, certainly isn’t completely ignorant of its power and possibilities. In a recent issue of Harvard Business Review, I very much enjoyed reading an article with interviews from senior people at large companies discussing how they are handling the social media beast.

Yes, all of them mentioned how security and leaking is an issue, but the companies who made online expression part of their corporate culture – rather than blocking all possible access by every employee – found that their teams went out of their way to responsibly share information when communicating online.

DaVita was a great company at managing, nurturing and supporting the local social interactions of people all across the company, but seemed clueless when it came to the online extension of those relationships.

I wonder how many companies out there are truly making an effort to embrace the future rather than sticking their heads in the sand and pretending that the change isn’t happening. Of course, there are some organization that simply cannot risk their teams having the ability to share information online while they are work – I understand that. However, it also appears that some companies hide behind this visage of “oh we’re working on far too important stuff to risk some stupid employee telling everyone about it” when they manufacture paper clips, or build medical devices, when the truth is that they simply don’t understand how to manage it.

Fear and ignorance are powerful motivators.

A few days ago, it was a father of two sitting next to us at Famous Dave’s BBQ. A boy and girl, both around 9 years, were having a great time. They weren’t misbehaving, they were being funny and rambunctious; just a couple of cool kids. The entire meal, dad was on his mobile phone reading a spreadsheet and reading his email. The only interaction he had was to look up occasionally and growl at his kids to be quiet.

It gave me the impression that it was his “weekend with the kids, per the terms of my divorce.” He was simply taking up space, and not being a father, or even a worthwhile dinner companion.

Completely judgmental on my part, I know, but I couldn’t help it. I actually know some men who operate like this as a way of life, and seeing this guy made me transfer that anger to him immediately.

How about all those guys who work until 7:00 at night, come home, expect dinner to be made for them, don’t care for the kids (except a dismissive “good night” when the little wife takes them to bed), and then sit in front of the TV until they lumber off to bed themselves.

Who are you? Why did you even get married, or have kids?

What kind of emotionally stunted troglodyte do you have to be to not realize that your kids are your legacy, your joy, your opportunity to make the world a better place, and let’s not forget – your responsibility.

Also, I don’t buy the whole, “my kids are out of control”, or “my wife is a shrill harpy who won’t leave me alone.”  I’m sowwy, widdle buddy, is life getting a widdle hard fo you? You mean you can’t sit awound and watch da boob tube, hang wit your widdle fweinds like you used to?

Are you a man, or a boy? Take control of your life. Make it better. Pay attention to your wife, and let her know how important she is to you. Take out the stupid garbage. Give the kids a bath every once in a while. Get down on the floor and roughhouse with your kids. Let them know how special and magical they are to you. Leave work early once in a while to take everyone out for pizza. Wake up early on Sunday and take everyone’s groggy, grumpy ass to the park to play for a while.

What in the world is wrong with you????

Whew, ok.. Rant over.

I decided to extend the standard ColumnModel class to automatically wrap all cells in the grid, unless overridden (see below).

WordWrapColumnModel

Ext.grid.WordWrapColumnModel = Ext.extend(Ext.grid.ColumnModel, {

   initComponent: function(){
      Ext.grid.WordWrapColumnModel.superclass.initComponent.apply(this, arguments);
   },

   getRenderer : function(col){
      if(!this.config[col].renderer){
         if (typeof(this.config[col].wordWrap)=='undefined' || this.config[col].wordWrap==true){
            return Ext.grid.ColumnModel.wordWrapRenderer;
         } else {
            return Ext.grid.ColumnModel.defaultRenderer;
         }
      }
      return this.config[col].renderer;
   },

   onRender: function(){
      Ext.grid.WordWrapColumnModel.superclass.onRender.apply(this, arguments);
   }
});

Ext.grid.ColumnModel.wordWrapRenderer = function(value){
    return '<div style="white-space:normal !important;">' + value + '</div>;
};

Ext.reg('wordwrapcolumnmodel', Ext.grid.WordWrapColumnModel);

Usage

By using this column model class, all columns will, by default, wrap their text if the text length is greater than the width of the column. You can override this if you want any of the columns to not wrap by specifying the wordWrap: false config option.

var NoteColumnModel = new Ext.grid.WordWrapColumnModel([{
       id        : 'first_name',
       header    : 'First Name',
       dataIndex : 'first_name',
       width     : 100
    },{
       id        : 'last_name',
       header    : 'Last Name',
       dataIndex : 'last_name',
       width     : 100,
       wordWrap  : false
    },{
       id        : 'setup_date',
       header    : 'Created',
       dataIndex : 'setup_date',
       width     : 100
    },{
       id        : 'note_txt',
       header    : 'Note Text',
       dataIndex : 'note_txt',
       width     : 600
    }
]);

It got me thinking about how many different ways do I write a function in one day. Let’s see…

-=  Java and C#  =-
public <type> myFunction([args])...

-=  Javascript  =-
function myFunction([args])...

-=  ColdFusion  =-
public <type> function myFunction([args])...

-=  Flex  =-
public function myFunction([args]):<type>

No wonder I confused from time to time.

Back in the halcyon days of 2007, I had the unenviable task of shoring up some very hastily written applications (by database developers and a couple of hacks who were here before me) using ColdFusion and HTML/Javascript. I beefed up the corporate offerings by implementing industry-accepted practices and patterns, used well-established libraries and got upgrades to the ColdFusion servers.

Then, in late 2008, the decision was made to scrap any future development of HTML/Javascript user interfaces and use Flex instead. That was exciting because of two reasons:

• I got to learn a cool technology like Flex
• I didn’t have to port any of my existing ColdFusion code to another language.

Fast forward to 2010 and now the entire company is rolling over to the .NET stack. Now I get to brush up on my rusty C# skills which I haven’t used in almost 4 years; I get to learn the ASP.NET MVC architecture; I get to have fun learning how to connect our .NET applications to our Oracle databases; lastly, I get to estimate how long it would take to convert our entire ColdFusion code base to .NET.

I’ll still get to work in ColdFusion from time to time, but .NET is the future…. for now.  Perhaps 2012 will be the year we convert everything to Java!

I’m all for rolling with the punches and evolving my skill set to match what is needed for the organization to be successful, but I’m also no longer 24 years old with oodles of free time at my disposal (or the accompanying mental agility). Doing these massive switches takes a little more time at my venerable age.

I’ll do my best to correctly paraphrase his response.

Apparently, a Social Media Ninja is someone who has 5000 followers on their Twitter account, shares links to articles that other people post throughout the day, and has an active Facebook fan page.

Huh.

So I guess my 15-year-old niece is a Social Media Ninja. Perhaps she should be out there trying to get the same jobs that this tool – I mean Ninja – is trying to procure.

Not once did he talk about how these amazing, super-human like powers could possibly help a business retain, or gain, customers. He failed to mention that he could affect a company’s revenue stream in any way shape or form. Apparently he just wants someone to hire him so that he can create a Twitter account, and a Facebook fan page and sit there and talk to people all day.

No strategy. No plan. Sorry, that means no results.

However, he does have something cool to put on his business cards.

This is a complementary article to Antipimp’s “I could care less what they say.”. Read that first if you have a moment, then come back here and finish up.  Take your time, it’s worth it. 

.

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Now, let’s talk about the other side of the fence.

Once you get the awesome job that Asshat Antipimp lined up for you, trust me when I say that no one gives a flip how many lines of code you wrote, or what awesome application framework you used. They care that you solved their problem and that it won’t break in a month.

Software folks are notorious for their.

• Oddball personalities
• A penchant for useless, esoteric knowledge of science fiction and fantasy literature
• Ability to completely disregard all social convention
• Expediency in stinking up a room
• Many other curious behaviors..

My least favorite trait of many of my colleagues is their mistaken belief that other people give a shit about the technology. Well, actually, they do, but only when it doesn’t work. Things can be sunshine and roses and kisses and hugs for years, but trust me, when you write an application that doesn’t work, then be prepared to kiss your technology goodbye – or end up on the street.

The 99% of the world that doesn’t know how to write a ternary operation sees software as a means to an end, and that’s it folks. Writing software is “magic” to them and I hate to see application developers exploit that fact.

They aren’t amazed by your ability to use an ORM package.

They don’t care that you squeezed a few more cool aspects into your IoC architecture.

Then even don’t care that you’ve taken the painstaking effort to apply industry-standard usability practices to make it easier for them to work with it.

They. just. want. it. to. work.

Therefore, if you find yourself taking 20 minutes to explain to the eyes-glazed-over, bored-beyond-tears business folks how awesome you are, then it’s time to shut the hell up, sit down, and let them bicker about the fact that you used the wrong shade of blue in the application header.

Your job is to solve problems and make the lives of other easier. They don’t understand what you do, and no matter how long you try to explain it to them, they’ll still only care about having a picture of their dog on their web site.

Your search is over.

Antipimp

One thing I particularly like is its feature of automatically adding cool effects to photos.  Here’s an example of the Photo Album.

View Full Album

It automatically imported my settings, tags, categories, and previous posts, and I can just jot a quick post anytime without having to log into my blog’s admin site and deal with the clunky interface there.

Don’t count me as a Microsoft fan-boy yet, but this is definitely a tool I’ll keep using.

Then, to top it all off, it was THE PERFECT WEEKEND.  Sunshine, light breeze, 74 degrees from Saturday morning until Monday night.  I actually took full advantage and reorganized our garage – not a minor undertaking.  We’re currently using it for storage of items that we’d rather not unpack until we finally buy a home (still renting), and since we’re now in year three, it was time to purge some items that we now realize will never be unpacked, and consolidate other items into suitable containers.

I was able to increase the amount of free floor space in the garage by no less than 75 square feet, along with getting the more heavily used boxes/items (like Christmas decorations) in front and the less used in the back

Here’s a picture of the girls after the Great Easter Egg Hunt of 2010.

* Note: My wife is not a heathen atheist like me, she’s just not a churchgoer.  A believer nonetheless.