One of the great things about running a blog is the ability to share with random, distant strangers ideas that only a decade earlier would have been sequestered by a particular region or culture. Today, I’m officially declaring to the world one of the Utah’s greatest gifts to mankind: fry sauce. Utah’s mountains, fluffy snow, KFC, and rock climbing don’t hold a candle to the gift of fry sauce. Fry sauce is a brilliant, salmon-colored mixture of ketchup and mayonnaise, often creatively enhanced with BBQ sauce, garlic, chilies, and/or seasoning. Think I’m pulling your chain? Google frysauce and you’ll find hundreds of others who will never go back to plain ketchup for fry sousing. …I want more!
Posted in Life in General | No Comments »
Like many of the readers that will probably come across this article, I too was intrigued by the notion of the free trades that Zecco offers. Can it be true? What am I sacrificing in exchange? Is the pain worth it? I did my fair share of research by sifting through numerous blog posts and found a wide variety of opinions and experiences. I have now had over three months of the Zecco experience with two different trading accounts and am ready to add my story to the pile.
Having read about many difficulties opening Zecco accounts, I made sure I gave myself plenty of time to open my Roth IRA account at Zecco in order to fund it for the 2007 tax year by April 15. Here’s my journey of running the Zecco Gauntlet. …I want more!
Posted in Investing | 3 Comments »
With the advent of Flex and RIA (Rich Internet Application) development came AMF (Action Message Format). Flex, in general, focuses only on front-end functionality, meaning it does not directly hit a database to store or retrieve persistent data. Instead, database calls are written in a more traditional back-end language like Java, PHP, Python, or .NET and such services are then exposed to be “consumed” (used) by the Flex front-end.
AMF is a protocol that allows ActionScript (the language of Flash/Flex) to call services exposed by the back-end. Additionally, if you choose, AMF allows you to translate a programmer-defined object between ActionScript and your back-end language of choice. In other words, if you have a customer class in ActionScript and you want to pass an instantiated customer object to the back-end, you simply call the exposed back-end service and pass the customer object as a parameter. The AMF layer transparently translates the ActionScript customer object into, let’s say, a customer object in Java. This functionality isn’t required. Instead of using a class you have defined, you could instead just send an integer to the backend as a parameter and, after processing, send a string back to the front-end. …I want more!
Posted in Flex, PHP | 1 Comment »
Recently I implemented Jonathan Schemoul’s SmoothGallery and ran into a few issues. I’m certain there’s at least one other person out there searching desparately for answers, so here they are …I want more!
Posted in General Programming | 4 Comments »
School vouchers are the talk of the town these days here in Utah, and for good reason. The outcome of Referendum 1 could decide where your children go to school–that is, if it fails. If it passes, you can take your children to school pretty much wherever you durn well please. So why such resistance to Referendum 1? Let’s intimately converse.
Over the last few weeks I’ve had several discussions with people both for and against school vouchers. In my experience, there is a high correlation between opinion of school vouchers and opinion of the role of government in education. That is, those who feel that government should provide our children’s education are against school vouchers; conversely, those who feel that government should stay out of education are generally for school vouchers. That’s a simple enough concept. Still, some find the concept that education should be completely privatized to be far-fetched, radical, and on the fringe of insanity. But is it? I’ve consistently heard a few arguments advocating government-managed education and I have counter-arguments to accompany them: …I want more!
Posted in Politics | 9 Comments »
In a recent post, I talked about my migration to Ubuntu Linux on my main laptop. One thing I did not mention was my migration to a new code editor. While the search was long and lonely, I have finally reached an oasis of goodness. I hope to share it with you….in our intimate conversation. …I want more!
Posted in Linux | No Comments »
After a disappointing run earlier this year with openSUSE 10.2, I recently mustered up the desire to charter into Ubuntu territory. After a couple weeks of real-world use as well as various experimentation, I must say I’m pleasantly surprised at what the latest version of Ubuntu has to offer. …I want more!
Posted in Linux | 5 Comments »
While I have often vented my frustrations with how difficult it can be working with DHTML in ASP.NET, Microsoft has taken a great step in helping developers make the transition to their primarily postback-based framework. To explain, one reason why I love DHTML so much is that I hate having to post back to the server just to dynamically add/remove a text box or show/hide a particular div. What makes posting back worse is that when you get the regenerated page, the user’s browser jumps back to the top of the page. …I want more!
Posted in ASP.NET | 2 Comments »
I’m currently studying Information Systems at Brigham Young University where the main language being taught to students is Java, a very object-oriented language. Some students, after having learned Java, have difficulty making the jump from Java to PHP for one reason or another. While I do not profess to have reached the level of Zen Master in PHP, I do hope I can provide some insight in a way that fellow ISys junkies can take what they’ve learned and pick up PHP if they want. …I want more!
Posted in PHP | 8 Comments »
In years past, it was rare for anyone outside of the Mormon loop to hear of any public figure that was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka Mormon) besides Joseph Smith or maybe Brigham Young. Things have changed. Recently, a good portion of the world has become acquainted with the likes of Mitt Romney (presidential candidate), Glenn Beck (talk show host), and David Neeleman (former CEO of JetBlue), a short list of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that are now making waves in today’s society. Someone outside of the church, having heard the plethora of anti-Mormon propaganda, might ask, “How could such seemingly intelligent and logical people be deceived into believing such a cult!?” …I want more!
Posted in Religion | 7 Comments »
