So this week has been a HARD CORE CRUNCH WEEK.  Not only did I have a decent allotment of work to complete at WebTrends but I also had relatives visit, another project that I'm trying to finish up kick in, and in addition to all that a April 2nd deadline that I had to knock out this week for a side site I'm working on.  Needless to say this week blossomed into a wonderfully huge crazy super long hour daily non-stop coding party.  Every day has consisted of code, design, cube questions, database implementation, session training preparation, WebTrends meetings, meetings with friends, a beer for a break, a quick awesome meal here, another there, and then a few hours of sleep.  Non-stop is really kind of a weak way to say what this week has been, because really, the remote idea that a stop was even possible is wrong.

So to summarize, for my readers and myself.  Here's what I've knocked out this week and a few things from last week for good measure.

Unfuddled Account

I could NOT have completed this last week without having setup an Unfuddled Account to manage all the projects that I have going on.  Many of them would have just languished and no progress would have been made.  Instead I've moved forward on ALL fronts.  Absolute awesome what some task management software can help a person do.

Unfuddled offers some amazing project software to assist with tasks, messaging, and all that.  The back end of course is managed via a rocking Subversion Source Repository.  If anybody has projects, side projects, or anything that has "steps" toward the end goal, Unfuddled is an awesome option!

Social Sites and Page Flakes

I've picked up and started working on a kind of "standard" for inserting and utilizing Page Flakes (ala www.pageflakes.com) within other sites I'm building.  The concept of drag-able, self managed, widgets to contain everything from address books to zoo listings is awesome.  I can definitely see it being integrated into more and more web sites in the future.

In addition to that I picked up the O'Reilly Book from one of the main developers on Page Flakes called Building a Web 2.0 Portal with ASP.NET 3.5.  Very awesome book if you're interested in portals and especially if you're interested in Page Flakes or page widgets.

BLOG Failure

Lately I've been a failure at attempting to keep the ole' blog updated.  What has really ruffled my feathers and I hope to do something about in a few months, is get started porting or creating my own custom blog engine and social site code base.  I have some done, but I'm absolutely zero steps closer to getting this site transferred into that new application base.  If I had to write an error message related to my lack of blogging it would look like the "Best Software error message EVER".

WebTrends, Analytics, Business Intelligence, and more Analytics

Another thing that I've got the ball rolling on finally is to start a high end WebTrends Account (which is NOT your grandpa's analytics account).  With this I'm going to start building out tons of capabilities into some libraries for auto-tagging of sites for web site analytics.  This should be an interesting effort as it touches on personal hobby in addition to work related activities.  It will be nice to bridge that gap.  It will also be nice to go far beyond what I am able to derive from Google Analytics and the open source AWStats Analytics I have installed on the server I have this blog and associated sites hosted on.

I've finally got it scoped out what I can present and show of WebTrends Software and what I can or can't talk about without getting canned or cause damage to the company - so basically - I'm going to display, show, and write about everything that I would even if I didn't have any limits.  So stay tuned my analytics readers, there will be some good material posted soon.  Especially if you're developing customized or highly proprietary implementations utilizing WebTrends for Analytics, Visitor Intelligence (Cubes!), or other functions.

I knew it was possible, was wondering if or when it would be available.

JQuery Intellisense.

Ok, so lately there has been a decent bit of frustration from our crew about how to deploy a Analysis Services Project from BIDS to XMLA without going into SQL Management Studio and going through that whole mess.  Well my fellow coworker Xander got a solution figured out for this.  One of the other key side effects is that one doesn't actually need the database/cube itself physically on the box once this is done, but simply the project itself (it helps to have a cube to push to).

First just setup the actual XMLA build process.  To do this click on Tools and then External Tools.

Click on Add and in the Title, Command, Arguments, and Initial Directory enter the following;

• Title:  Build XMLA
• Command: Microsoft.AnalysisServices.Deployment.exe
• Arguments: "-enter project name here-.asDatabase" /d /o:..\..\Project.xmla
• Initial Directory: $(ProjectDir)\bin
• Check the "prompt for arguments" option.
• Check the "output window" option.

When the prompt comes up during execution of the Build XMLA you must remember to enter your project name exactly so that the database name matches.

Select OK and then click on Tools again.  You will now see a Build XMLA option on the Tools menu.

Now open a new project.  Since it is the standard template example, I'm going to open up AdventureWorks. 

Make sure just before executing this that you have done a clean build of the project.  Without a build the necessary *.aspDatabase file won't be available.  Once you have opened and built the solution then click on the Tools -> Build XMLA option.  The argument prompt will appear.  Enter the project name as shown in the image.  Now you should see the output window display the status.

After execution navigate to the project root and you will find the "Project.xmla" file.  Now you're good to go without fighting with SQL Management Studio all the time, nor needing a physical installation of your database/cube.

I'm not a Pontiac fan, but this in particular was just too awesome of an ad to pass up.

Found via a fellow technology industry cohort Amybeth Hale.  So check out memories of spy hunter.

So this week I'm in Newark at a client site.  I must admit it is great to get out of the office and see WebTrends' Software in action.  In the office it is easy to get overwhelmed with the bugs, the development plan, the client services schedule, the team action, and the list goes on.  It is truly nice to get out and see what all this work actually comes to.

So far I've been able to work out some great key tagging strategies and plans for utilization of the warehouse product that we offer.  The reporting capabilities that the client will have, combining their internal technologies with ours, are unsurpassed in the analytics market.  Some of the ideas that I've talked about with the client are coming back with me for future prospective enhancements or services offerings.

One piece of software that works surprisingly well with the WebTrends Warehouse is Microsoft's Reporting Services.  Between WebTrends Analytics and Warehouse, combining the data in SQL Server, and utilizing the Reporting Services Solution as a reporting add on to what is already included in the box pretty much allows a client to slice, dice, and pepper that data anyway they want to create the information they need.

I'm hoping to write up some of the cool solutions that can be built with WebTrends and the other 3rd Party Software out there.  As always, stay tuned and I'll be posting soon.

Scobleizer goes on a partial rant about slackers.  His correlations are all out of whack.  I'm not even going to link him as I feel he doesn't need anymore publicity then he already has.

I still strongly agree with the Edwards W. Demming and the "Toyota" crowd.  You don't slave away to get results, you work smarter.  If you can't get your job done in a nice solid 6-8 hr day, then a 8-15 hr day of "busting ass" is NOT going to get the product done faster, better, or in a more solid way.  It usually just means there is a better way to get something done sitting around the corner. Sometimes those hours come up, but by all means they should be a rarity and not a commonality at companies.

To paraphrase, if the ground troops can't do their jobs, the fault lies at the hands of management.  Good leaders can get almost any employee to be a great asset, it is all about positioning, and if that can't be done those same leaders need to know when to pull the welcoming mat out and send em' packing.

It sounds harsh, but it really isn't.

For those of you who read/subscribe to my RSS feed I'll be making some massive changes soon.  When I make those changes I'm mapping all my future RSS feeds through Feedburner.  The link is http://feeds.feedburner.com/LooselyCoupledHumanCodeFactory

So if you're a subscriber or reader of the RSS feed please re-subscribe to that instead of the domain derived RSS feed path.

The reason for these changes will be seen in the near future when I deploy my own custom built blog/forum/widget based website.  So stay tuned, it's gonna be awesome!

So I decided, after not checking for months, quarters, probably a year or two, where the performance is for some browsers.  Here's what I got.

IE is bloated - no surprise really.  Slow tactile response to clicking.  Page load fast, faster depending on caching styles and certain "IE" style caching favoritism it seems to have for Microsoft oriented pages - hmmm.

Firefox is doing very well.  Sometimes slow but more active response in tactile feeling.  Pages load somewhat fast.  Some pages load faster than in other browsers, but it seems to be a little fussy about certain AJAX or Javascript intensive apps.  Not as troublesome as IE though.

Opera is doing ok.  Tactile response is instant on everything.  Pages appear to load extremely fast.  If it is ECMA compliant javascript, it screams fast.

The websites I loaded are; www.adronbhall.com (Mostly just CSS and a few externally derived bits and formatting - nothing intensive for the browsers), http://www.nextbus.com/predictor/publicMap.shtml?a=portsc (NextBus Streetcar Java app for arrival times), and www.pageflakes.com (nice AJAXy intensive page).

The results;  (click on the images to enlarge)

Initial load with all the browser tabs opened in each browser.

All three browsers displaying the tabs I opened.

I opened up four page flakes tabs in each browser.

I picked one of the tabs (the first one) and added each of these page flake widgets.

Now it became this obvious who rocks, and who does not.

So I was digging around on www.indeed.com and they have some really cool analytic tools for deducing what the job market and salary info is for a particular industry.  Just put in the keywords and boom, awesome results.  One of the things that is self evident, is what the architect and pattern software skill sets allow as for default pay grade. I also want to point out though, these numbers are somewhat low (by about 5-10%).  They do however show the fact that with those skill sets, the rates go up substantially.  Regardless, the graphs and data are really cool, and some interesting analysis of these data points can be performed.

Oh my, this is exactly how it seems to work.  Doh!