About My Father's Business

Even as I sit down to write I'm not sure what I want to say.  I've gone back and forth about how I want to describe my life over the past few weeks and what angle I want to show.  This blog is about living your life every day and finding the connections to the gospel and spiritual things but I've really struggled putting my thoughts together on this one.  In part it's because I'm still in the middle of the things I'll describe later and I don't have a happy ending a wrapped up in a neat little moral-of-the-story, but it's also because I'm not sure how much of what's happened I'm ready to share with the Internet.  So I'm just going to start writing and we'll see where this thing goes. Let's rewind the tape to a couple of weeks ago.  It was a day like most others, only this one somehow turned out different.  It started like most other days-wake up, eat breakfast with my daughter, watch cartoons while getting ready for work/school.

I hope Mike is okay with me using his name in my blog.  I don't really have a way to confirm because I've never actually met Mike.  I don't know what he looks like, where he lives, or his favorite color.  I don't know really anything about him other than the fact that he saved my life, in a very figurative sense.  Mike, just like me was a guy with a problem.  The particulars of the problem are not important.  What matters is that Mike was somehow able to solve his problem and what makes Mike my hero is that he posted his solution in his blog on the Internet.  (Those interested in the gory details of my issue can visit  Mike's blog .  Don't say I didn't warn you though). This is not an uncommon situation for computer nerds.  Often when we run into a problem the first place we turn is Google.  I've often told people who ask me what I do for work that I'm a professional Googler.  The amount of information at our fingertips is amazing and between Googl

You don't have to be a computer programmer to appreciate the value of words within a language, but it sure does help.  Your entire career and the success of the programs you build depend on your ability to choose the right words in the right combination, which the provide the proper instructions to the computer to run your program.  Choose the wrong words, or put them in the wrong order and it doesn't work.  The computer can't guess what you meant to say.  It only knows what you actually said.  And while you may not realize it, people behave in much the same way.  We can't rely on the other person guessing what we really meant to say.  It helps to say the thing you really mean in the first place. Now, when you dive a bit deeper it's turns a bit into a chicken/egg type of dilemma.  While it's true that your choice of words and commands instructs the computer what to do, it's also true that you choose your commands based on what you want the computer to do.

Most stories worth retelling start with a simple question:  Do you remember that one time?  Whether it be an inside joke among family (coconuts) or reminiscing with a friend about an activity that it's still not clear how anyone survived (rotating drivers inside of a moving vehicle) these are the experiences that create the best, most lasting memories.  In the moment they occur they may not feel like events or experiences you'll have in your treasure chest of memories later in life but inevitably you'll find yourself siting down next to someone with whom you have shared one of these unique experiences and one of you will ask the other:  Do you remember that one time? So here's the thing about these stories and experiences.  You can't share them with just anyone, but you have to share them with someone.  For example, I went to San Francisco last year on a business trip by myself and have some good memories of walking across the Golden Gate Bridge with a freezing ra

I recently attended a technology conference and one of the sessions was focused on website security.  This is something that people are becoming more and more aware of, sometimes painfully so.  The presenter in this session was trying to drive home the point that website developers need to be thinking about how to secure their websites from day one.  He related a how-not-to experience he had with a close friend.  This friend was getting ready for the release of a new website and he called the presenter the night before to see if he had any thoughts on how to make the website as secure as possible.  The presenter told him his best option was to not release the website.  The friend told him that wasn't an option, so the presenter suggested he change the website code so that when someone tried to log in they would immediately get logged back out. The presenters point was that the night before is the wrong time to start thinking about security, but it got me thinking that the real pr

What's in a name?  We can thank good old Bill Shakespeare for posing some of the most though provoking questions known to man.  So let's ponder together what really is in a name.  Shakespeare says that a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.  That may be true, but if you're trying to get my attention in a crowded room, you'd better get my name right or you're not going to have much luck.  So is a thing defined by it's name, or is a name really nothing more than a label? Let's take a quick refresher course in the English language.  Most of it speak it fluently, but few of us remember any of the rules.  For most of us it's a little like trying to redeem reward points or frequent flyer miles.  "I" before "e" except after "c", not valid on major holidays or on days that end in "y".  We're aware that rules exist, but no clue how to explain them.  Luckily for me I have a daughter in second grade who is

My 4 year old has developed a cute habit when she says prayers.  She has started to learn to pray on her own and we no longer prompt her with what to say next.  But she always starts the same way.  "Dear Heavenly Father, Thank you for this most beautifulest day."  Now, my immediate reaction the first time she said that was to correct her, but I decided not to.  I sounds so cute when she says it, and they'll be plenty of time for proper grammar later.  Between her Mom and her Papa (my wife's dad) she'll get more than her share of grammar tips.  But as time has gone on I have discovered entirely new reasons why I'm glad I resisted the urge to help. As a computer programmer I deal with several different programming languages.  Some of the ones I use more frequently are Java, PL/SQL, Bash, Javascript, and a little bit of Python.  Now I realize that to most of you it's all Greek, but there are nearly as many programming languages as there are spoken language

One of the most important things I've had to learn as a computer programmer is how computers remember and process information.  When you write software you are generally going to be storing information of some kind and then doing things with that information.  Every single piece of software I have ever encountered used information in one way or another. Now, most computer code is written in such a way that the information is gathered into a temporary location first.  Depending on the programming language and what type of software you are building this location is known by names such as The Session, RAM, Variables, and other things, but the bottom line is that more often than not the information gathered by the program is temporary.  As soon as you leave the program, or turn off your computer the information is lost.  You need to write additional code to store that information in a permanent location, such as a database, hard drive and so on. The process of moving information fr