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Dependency Management
With most software projects these days, including open source components is almost a given. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel and some components are so customized that it would take months to mimic the behavior. There are many ways to integrate these components into an application. One of my mantras when working on projects is that I just want to be able to checkout the project from a repository and build it; there shouldn't be several steps and I shouldn't have to worry about something outside of my control breaking the build.
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Mobile App Done Right
Last week I went to test drive a new car and after test driving, I was ready to buy. There are, of course, a number of steps required to purchase a car including securing a loan, providing proof of insurance, and getting insurance for the new vehicle. I've used my banking and insurance company's app for years basically to check my account balances. For the last year or so, I've checked my credit card balance almost weekly to make sure it isn't too high in anticipation of applying for a car loan. The app was useful for this, but that didn't prove the power of the app.
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Navigation or No Navigation
Back in July, I stumbled upon the Subaru Impreza as possibly my next car. With the release pegged at the end of the year, a few weeks ago, I started looking at the dealer sites to see when they'd get the car so I could test drive it. I picked the trim level I wanted (that was easy) and was looking at the option packages. There were only 2 choices and trying to figure out which one I wanted was quite difficult.
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Working From Home, the final chapter?
Up until 5 months ago, I worked from home for 17 years. For a number of reasons, I took a job working in an office and tried to make the best of it. Going into an office everyday was quite tough for me; even though the commute was an easy 30 minute drive each way, that was still an hour out of my day. In order to avoid traffic, I had to wake up at 6 am and got to the office no later than 7:30. I hadn't used an alarm clock regularly in years, so waking up with an alarm was not pleasant. I've written about working from home and 8 years ago, I wrote that I couldn't work in an office full time!