tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-199089702024-03-27T01:15:40.542-07:00RyanButcher.com BlogDiscussing emerging technologies, views on technology and related issues.Ryan Butcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08627177475503874332noreply@blogger.comBlogger21125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19908970.post-14411841232451840292023-09-18T19:49:00.006-07:002023-10-18T06:11:04.732-07:0040-ish dad on Generation AI<p>I've gotten more than a few questions about AI this year, and not to minimize its risks (which are substantial), I'll shift for a sec and focus on its pervasive impact - from a 40 something year old dad that's dealt with data and tech for a couple decades. </p><p>If you're my age, think back to high school when the internet was just chatter. You knew of it, maybe used it, but not everyone had it. Those AOL/Netzero discs and dial-up screeches come to mind, right? It was around - but not a constant in daily life.</p><p>Over the years, you began to rely on the internet more and more. Then, suddenly, one day it was in your pocket.</p><p>Think about how your life completely shifted as this happened – your efficiency, interactions, influence, exposure to new things, ability to get to your Aunt Rosy's house from any location on the globe – virtually everything changed, for better or worse.</p><p>The key takeaway is having lived through a time without widespread internet, you can remember just how drastically things changed over a relatively short period of time.</p><p>Now a lot of us in our forties have kids who are reaching the age we were in high school. Our kids just can't understand a life without the internet; they've always had it.</p><p>These same kids are in a similar situation now with AI. They get its importance, but it's as new to them as the internet was to you in high school. It's just starting to weave its way into their routines - mainly for research papers, right? 😉. </p><p>Those AI generated papers are the screeching modem sounds they'll remember.</p><p>Our kids (and us) will increasingly interact with different forms of AI, day by day, month by month. It will become a daily occurrence and, eventually, minute-to-minute in ways we can and can't predict now. </p><p>Dependance may be a better word. Just like the internet did to our generation. </p><p>For better or worse in our kids adult lives, most interactions, decisions, and content consumption will be influenced by, or generated by AI. </p><p>Technologies like this only mature every couple decades, and they shape the next 50-100 just like the internet did for us. </p><p>When my kids are my age they'll probably post something similar. Maybe they'll have something generate it, I don't know. But It's pretty certain to me they'll remember a time without AI. I trust they will. </p><p>We did a good job remembering life without the internet, right?</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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</div><br><p></p>Ryan Butcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08627177475503874332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19908970.post-88680801829378841902019-08-20T05:42:00.002-07:002023-09-18T20:03:49.933-07:00Inc500 - Check!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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When we started eAudit in 2013 we had many goals for the company. Create a great team, create a great product, create incredible value for our customers, scale quickly - to name a few.</div>
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When I exited the company earlier this year I was confident we had accomplished all of these. The technologies we created in our 800sq ft Greenville NC office saved our customers immense time and money. There were countless challenges solved, countless late nights, countless sacrifices.</div>
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Today because of the hard work over those years by our team, <a href="https://www.inc.com/profile/eaudit" target="_blank">eAudit has been designated in the Inc500 as one of the fastest growing companies in the country</a>, a personal goal of mine from the onset. It wasn't easy but we did it. You did it. We did what we said we were going to do, and I'll never forget it - thank you all. I wish the company further success as it continues to grow. #onward</div>
Ryan Butcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08627177475503874332noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19908970.post-67274599600153263092018-01-03T08:37:00.000-08:002018-10-16T08:38:51.079-07:00Thank you Majid<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Today I got an unexpected visit from an incredible human (his humility will force him to hate this post).<br />
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About 5 years back, with my family's support, I took one of most "all things considered" risks of my life - an opportunity to toss stability aside and make something great.
We interviewed droves of candidates to build the impossible. Hard to imagine but turns out there just wasn't a lot of people that passed that "sniff" test. That understood, possessed the ability, or for that matter willing to take that risk. This guy is different on all counts.<br />
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With support from partners that also believed, we setup shop in a 12x12 storage room - the first official "office". Equipped with a "well seasoned" conference table, 2 or 3 computers and as many monitors as we could get surplus from ECU for $20 a pop. In that room we debated, designed, hustled, and built the core of eAudit.<br />
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Since then there were also countless unfiltered cultural debates, insights, lessons, life experiences, exposure - all shared from what the world probably considers otherwise opposite lives. Priceless in every sense.<br />
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Fast forward and we've processed packages to well over 1 in 3 addresses in the US. Hundreds of millions of packages, billions of charges; meaning you (or your neighbors) have already been touched in an off sense way by our software if you've received a package on your doorstep since 2014 or so.<br />
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We joke all the time we've spent more time in the same room over the years than we have with our wives, and it's actually probably true. In these years this man also turned down countless enormous offers. I mean LIFE changing offers - from every software name that each of you use every day.<br />
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He's always stuck with me for a quarter the pay and five times the work.<br />
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I have no answer for it but I do know this; I've been blessed to no description for the people that have been willing to take risks on me in my life. Myself now pushin' 40, I've also been around long enough know who these people are - and that these people are few and far between.<br />
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To a great engineer, a great person, and a valued friend - we, my family, I thank you Majid Darabi
Go make GREAT things in Silicon Valley - we all wish you the best in this next chapter.
SHOW 'EM HOW IT'S DONE!!!!!! 🦄🦄🦄🦄
#GOBIGORGOHOME #ONWARD!!<br />
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Ryan Butcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08627177475503874332noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19908970.post-59218027494342552662017-12-14T10:50:00.000-08:002018-08-29T11:40:24.502-07:00Holidays 2017: Will My “Ship” Get There On Time?<div style=" margin-bottom: 20px;">
Peak shipping season is in full swing and 2017 is shaping up to be an interesting year. Our team has been busy forecasting/monitoring parcel traffic volume and the question on everyone’s mind is: Will my “ship” get there on time?</div>
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If you’re still planning on shipping this holiday season, here’s what you need to know. If you just want to see if your package is likely to arrive on time skip to the infographic below. [<a href="http://eaudit.com/2017/12/14/holidays-2017-will-my-ship-get-there-on-time/#ontime" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">skip</a>]</div>
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Online sales is growing at estimated 18% as opposed to a relatively static retail growth of about 4%, fueling major package volume increases for USPS, UPS and FedEx and others. There are several uniques about the 2017 peak landscape and most interestingly, outside of the general volume increase, is the fact that Christmas day falls on a Monday this year. This further compounds staffing complexity for the carriers with two major delivery days falling on a weekend – traditionally limited service days (Sat 12/23 and Sun 12/24).</div>
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The good news so far (at least at the time of this writing) is that weather has for the most part been on the side of the carriers nationwide.</div>
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Here is a breakout of the package volume the carriers expect to push through their networks Nov 27 through Dec 24:</div>
<ul >
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;"><b style="box-sizing: border-box;">FedEx 400M Packages (~ +10% YoY)</b></li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;"><b style="box-sizing: border-box;">UPS 750M Packages (~ +7% YoY)</b></li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;"><b style="box-sizing: border-box;">USPS 850M Packages (~ +10% YoY)</b></li>
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Consider those numbers for a second before you bash the carriers. 2 billion. That’s a lot of boxes. These guys/gals are working hard.</div>
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At eAudit we’ve monitored the ramp up over the last few weeks and <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">forecasted 68% overall package volume increase</strong> over a typical month (<strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">a 9% increase </strong>over December 2016) for our customers, confirming the carriers expectations and further expansion of online transactions.</div>
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This isn’t totally unexpected however, if you track back to summer 2017 you’ll observe a significant uptick (5-7% YoY) in shipping containers destined for the U.S. In other words merchants have been stocking inventory at record pace therefore making bets on this season for many months.<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="ontime" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333;"></a><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />
Although the anticipated volume is less than a surprise, we’ve observed the carrier networks are still showing signs of major congestion. Despite bringing on 95K additional temporary hires, UPS has already implemented a <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">70 hour work week for many employees </strong>and has already admitted volume is exceeding their expectation. FedEx brought 50K additional people to handle the load and are also working extended hours. Even with the added resources UPS and FedEx are still struggling to clear existing volume from record setting $6.5+ billion in Cyber Monday sales this year. This backup is also evident in the significant week over week upticks we’re observing in our customers deliveries past their commit times (arriving late).</div>
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So, will your “ship” arrive on time? Our basic recommendation is to <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">finish up as much online shopping by Friday 12/15</strong> to avoid unnecessary risk or expense this year. The closer the holiday becomes <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">we also recommend considering “ship to store” options</strong> if available. Delivering hundreds of packages to a store is far more efficient for the carriers than your doorstep which could increase the odds of an on time delivery in your favor.</div>
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Friday 12/15 is the last day general ground shipments have a reasonable expectation to arrive by Dec 23, with UPS having a slight advantage this year with it’s newly expanded Saturday Delivery for Ground service. Starting Monday, the options start to dwindle with only premium options being available.</div>
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We’re watching Dec 22 closely as it’s the last day most premium services should deliver <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">that are not upgraded to Saturday delivery</strong>(additional cost). Saturday Delivery option is key here, remember to select it and pay the piper if you need to!</div>
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As always the most up to date delivery estimates are going to be from the carriers themselves, here are links to each of their online delivery date estimation tools:</div>
<ul style=" font-size: 14px;">
<li ><a href="https://wwwapps.ups.com/ctc/request?loc=en_US" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">UPS Time in Transit </a></li>
<li ><a href="https://www.fedex.com/ratefinder/home?cc=US&language=en&locId=express" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">FedEx Transit Times</a></li>
<li ><a href="https://postcalc.usps.com/" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">USPS Calculator</a></li>
</ul>
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Another important consideration for parcel shipping this year are changes to the carriers money back guarantee. FedEx has kept step with it’s 2016 announcements while UPS has made a significant change to Ground service guarantees, waiving refunds for the entire season as opposed to partially last year. UPS’s guarantee is still slightly stronger however, by still time guaranteeing Next Day Air Early and WW Express to within 90 minutes, as opposed to all FedEx air services by end of day.</div>
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2017 UPS Holiday Money Back Guarantee (<a href="https://www.ups.com/assets/resources/media/en_US/UPS_PeakSeason.pdf" text-decoration-line: none;">link</a>)</div>
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<strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">UPS Air and International Scheduled Dec 18-23:</strong><br />
Next Day Air Early and World Wide Express Plus: +90 Mins to delivery time<br />
All other Air by End of Day</div>
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<strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">UPS Ground and Standard Picked up Nov 27-Dec 24:</strong><br />
No Money Back Guarantee if Late<br />
<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">(2016 no guarantee dates: 11/27- 12/3 and 12/18-12/24)</em></div>
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2017 FedEx Holiday Money Back Guarantee (<a href="http://images.fedex.com/us/services/pdf/holiday-money-back-guarantee_2017.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;">link</a>)</div>
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<strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">FedEx Air and International Scheduled Dec 18-23:</strong><br />
All By End of Day</div>
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<strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">FedEx Ground and Home Delivery Picked up Nov 27-Dec 24</strong><br />
No Money Back Guarantee if Late</div>
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Ryan Butcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08627177475503874332noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19908970.post-51931555731882363022016-01-20T08:19:00.002-08:002016-01-20T15:56:54.348-08:00The Best App for Productivity Isn't an App.I get the question frequently. As a tech guy what's the best app out there to manage your time?<br />
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New task and productivity apps come and go all the time and I've used them all. So to go ahead and technically answer the question, day to day I'll always use Google Calendar (meetings/scheduling), Google Notes (don't forget), <a href="https://trello.com/">Trello</a> (prioritization/progress) , and even Gmail (this stuff all comes from somewhere). I've found you can manage most any project within the combination of these apps. Sure, there's more specialized ones out there but I'm talking about what makes us productive.<br />
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Turns out there's many good apps out there and then there's the process that I actually rely on: <br />
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<b>6"x 9" Steno Books.</b><br />
So hold on. You're a tech startup guy and you're not using an app? Blasphemy.<br />
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Well - yes and let me give some background on why you <u>always</u> want these in your toolkit. I like ones with a plastic cover, for what it's worth.<br />
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<b>They're always on.</b><br />
You don't have to charge or plug in a notebook. It's always on, it's always there. They're mobile, no wifi, and work everywhere.<br />
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<b>It's an archive.</b><br />
You always have a physical record nearby, no password to remember - no locking your information into someone else's platform. No changing platforms.<br />
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<b>You physically write.</b><br />
This is an important one. There's something about physically writing something down that binds you to a task, and triggers importance to see it through. I'm not a psychologist, but it's true. At least for me.<br />
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<b>You physically cross things off.</b><br />
Goes hand and hand with the above. I only <strike>cross something off my list</strike> when I have verified or reasonably confident it is complete. Sticking to this one rule faithfully adds vital importance to the act of crossing something off. Make it a habit and soon you'll start getting a feeling of accomplishment when you cross something off. Hold yourself accountable.<br />
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Years ago I worked for a company that had an internal task management system. Tickets, tasks, projects would come into it assigned from everywhere, and I would login to see what I had to do. <br />
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Once I completed a task and click a link, a huge page size image of a coffee cup would appear, along with something along the lines of "Congratulations this task is complete". Ah. I could relax.<br />
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I worked there for five years. Literally thousands of tasks I completed to see this silly message and picture. Some tasks took 2 minutes, some took weeks but the outcome was always the same. Seeing the coffee cup was pretty satisfying. Also knowing that if I closed a task when something wasn't actually fully completed, quickly felt like cheating. That same thing applies when crossing something off in my notebook. <br />
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I picked up the habit of using Steno books about 10 years ago while working on government projects. They always had them around. I'm cheap. I started using what was there, and it stuck. The key to making it work is to define a standard process. There's many standard ways to do it but I just made up a simple one that works for me, your mileage may vary.<br />
<ol>
<li>Date the top of each new page.</li>
<li>Draw a box next to any line signifying it's an action item</li>
<li><strike>Only cross off tasks when they're verified complete/closed</strike></li>
<li>If page fills up, I use circles across entire line signifying it is not complete and copy the line to a new page. (This also helps show things that are taking more time or you're procrastinating on as you flip through the pages)</li>
<li>Don't commingle tasks and notes. Any new page can be used for notes (meetings etc) but no tasks lists on a notes page.</li>
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On the notes pages, I will usually staple a post it note so the edge hangs outside the book and title the notes so I can find them easily.</div>
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Every Friday I will go back through the last 10 or so pages of the book and look for things I may have missed or note any accomplishments. This helps close the week, reflect, and plan for the next. <br />
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Each new notebook I put my name, email address and phone number on the back cover in case I leave it somewhere (saved me several times). I also put the date I started the new notebook. It takes me 45-90 days to fill up a notebook, and when it's full I write that date on the back. This allows me to see what date range the info in each one is when I have to look back through my stack. So yes, I have stacks of notebooks crossing many years and projects at this point.</div>
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So that's my app. Keep things simple, follow your own process, and write things down the old school way.<br />
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<br />Ryan Butcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08627177475503874332noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19908970.post-74528893900605522422011-07-07T13:24:00.000-07:002012-05-02T07:20:33.656-07:00Building a High Pressure Solar Powered Rainwater Irrigation System<div style="text-align: left;">
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Water is free when it's rain, so is sunlight. Why not put the two together and build a sustainable irrigation system - here's how I got it going.</div>
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<img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5626737625852658194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLAbygmO6rnYHeXM1csIskJ5d6R__n18yMWDHRw9s05uT8q3j78MtmFUCRw99ERAufzJLpArRWv5YlemDuW1nXs8WyJiPDT5y74RLIK3Cxxwi0ueHXEHvSmMJ9e1JcuDdk-jVirA/s200/IMAG0592.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 120px; margin: 0 0 10px 10px; width: 200px;" /><br />
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In the early spring of 2011 my wife started a new garden at our house in North Carolina. Once all the tilling and planting was done, we needed a watering system (aka drag a hose to the end of the lawn). Seeing a bump in our water bill and running hoses back and forth got a little old, so I wanted to design a sustainable irrigation system. To the drawing board and time for a project!</div>
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The goals of the project were pretty straight forward.</div>
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<li>Store and reuse rainwater runoff from the house</li>
<li>Had to be easy to use (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">ie</span>. pull the handle on the hose and it sprays)</li>
<li>High pressure to service 200+ feet of hose and/or underground pipe</li>
<li>Go completely green and leverage solar power to run the pump system - why not at this point</li>
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Why you ask? Well because everyone needs a backup plan for irrigation during a complete power and city water service interruption! Just kidding, this project started by looking into renewable water resources and adding the solar power just seemed to fit better with the overall theme it took on - plus it turned out pretty cool, it's off the grid and all completely renewable. [Queue "Go Green" chant here]. This could easily be adapted for remote locations etc..</div>
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<img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5626737860244428130" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDRMQPHNO8Jo0Q8YuoNv9sy8c6nAlYGVOcDA8GS3IXZ3LECKx-dLAmKZ1uhi2xwioTFIjYcPjyaSPkuHnbeFB8iqQbOZLoQ0PopmNXfWOYueYYElYyJME-KSELbS3K0UEuCt0pgA/s200/IMAG0550.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 120px; margin: 0 0 10px 10px; width: 200px;" /><br />
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First I set off looking at how other people had accomplished rainwater systems. I found that many used reclaimed 55 gallon barrels to store rainwater. Although this is a great idea, I needed more storage space so I quickly started looking at larger containers. I went with a 400 gallon polypropylene tank that I picked up locally from a farmer that used it for water only. Before running across the tank I considered using standard <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate_bulk_container"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">IBC</span> totes</a>, which allot of people seem to be doing with good success - I recommend finding some of those totes if you cant get your hands on a good tank.</div>
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Rainwater quick math..</div>
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45 minutes of decent rain fills my 400 gallon tank so don't think you wont have enough water to fill the tank you choose. More specifically 1 inch of rain on a 1,000 square feet roof yields 623 gallons. <b> </b>The one consideration I will also mention is factor in how much your tank will weigh full. Water weighs 8.35 lbs per gallon, so at 400 gallons full my tank weighs in at a hefty 3340 lbs (or as much as a typical mid sized car). I <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">would <b>NOT</b></span> suggest setting that on your deck, support its foundation well.</div>
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Now that I had a tank, mounted in position under a good gutter downspout - I started looking at pumps.</div>
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<img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5626741222134536642" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-h-pV2dEI4JMKLAuD_c56wqR7v43-ELH7XpXDCzEvkWC_ks42p0jthZxVIUuZxFPo2pZELyFIMpZYIebgHzmTAiiq5Y1TdoG4GnpjFFPaaJoL04i1BQD24y8RLeaV7JFz3TGpkw/s200/IMAG0595.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 120px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 0px; width: 200px;" /><br />
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Many small residential rainwater systems rely on gravity to feed a small spigot. As you can see on the left I incorporated that also but I needed high pressure across a long distance so a good pump was necessary. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Unbeknownst</span> to me when I started this endeavor pumps are apparently science into themselves, and before this I was completely uninitiated. After speaking with several pump vendors, finishing the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">internet</span> (yep, the entire i<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">nternet</span>), and an honorary degree in hydrodynamics I decided on a 12v on demand diaphragm pump. Basically what this means is when the pump detects a drop in pressure on the hose side (sprayer nozzle open) it starts, when it builds up pressure (sprayer nozzle closed) it stops. 12v because I would be running it off a deep cycle battery charged by solar and on demand so I wouldn't have to explain to anyone how not to burn up a pump.</div>
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I ended up purchasing a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Delevan</span> 7870 model pump which was</div>
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probably a little overkill. Its pumping 7 <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">GPM</span> @ 60 PSI - it works great.</div>
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<img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5626738746076095122" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguNxC3WqVMQ5vr3-Usu6QumgTJQQyE9qc_LRSMsDdpvzxRhwaCMWmkr7UbNd3uqz6ueuEx7WmdfTySU-d0bwmwuXsDL_Ohosdv8GMIIB3qU4fp_ZXS7_4rZTl32u7NTUKY6OrfmQ/s200/IMAG0577.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 120px; margin: 0 0 10px 10px; width: 200px;" /><br />
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To power the system I picked up a deep cycle marine battery, 45 watt solar panel and regulator. I got a great deal on the panels from Harbor Freight, so far so good and charges well even in not optimal sun conditions. I wired the regulator into my <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">sunroom</span> where I added a small 300watt A/C inverter to also use the free solar power for a lamp or radio when I'm hanging out on the porch (an outlet on the porch was something the builder apparently forgot but that's another story). The regulator obviously also feeds the marine battery keeping it fully charged for the pump. All these electronics I stuffed in a little cabinet to keep it dry and monitor the charge etc. I mounted a power switch on the battery box to start up the pump and wired it all up.</div>
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<img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5626738237689518146" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzsTdEs_xretI7RYZBAx8SPjeQQfMhjBrUp5EHZeT5o6IBcDh5kNBHmID96M1LiR1rvX1ULIJo-wmTo2b1f5s0y1Ds9rUTjCgFu_93GwwSnL8pXWQeW0bSyRpIRsuhhIuqTF4Oew/s200/IMAG0594.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 120px; margin: 0 0 10px 10px; width: 200px;" /><br />
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The pump wasn't designed to be doused with rain and the</div>
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elements so I mounted it into another battery box. According to the manufacturer it also had some tendencies to overheat so I wired in a small 12v fan from my computer grave yard parts bin. It seems to keep it cool enough for the service its done so far. </div>
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A couple more notes of what I found through talking with people and trial and error. Be sure to have a good hose or pipe on the output side of the pump. Your spray nozzles cant be too restrictive or they will cause the pump to get all the way to 60psi (or whatever the cut off point of your pump is) and then cut off. You will know you have too much restriction if you spray the hose and the pump cycles on and off continuously - this is bad and will kill the pump in short order. The idea is for the pump to stay on continuously when the trigger on the hose is pulled or the sprinkler is running</div>
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In lieu of a first flush system that diverts the first 10-20 gallons of water into a reserve tank (for cleaner water) I grabbed a small skimmer basket from my local pool supply store, a tiny one at around 6" across that fit perfectly into the tank opening. I then put a filter sock in the skimmer basket (pool store had those also). So far pretty good filtration for all but the finest particulates and is really easy to pop out and clean. I may eventually build a first flush system however. </div>
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<img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5626739584988421826" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzlymh0R6JpK39K51NoyiNRpxT8DY5JdMwK6NBUweMkuNdX6OZaohp0m-lIvYGWA2OsAKQrx2WeJpLCPsnVqSIe2abD2w34nclNuMTLAYLQjbSeg7nwBaJWf_RARSxKrJcjFMPLg/s200/IMAG0589.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 120px; margin: 0 0 10px 10px; width: 200px;" /><br />
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For the garden I ran about a 220ft trench and 3/4" <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">PEX</span> PVC piping. This is connected to a bib that runs a 3/4" commercial sprinkler head. There was plenty of flow and not enough restriction to cycle the pump on and off - perfect. (pic to the right is finishing up the trench to bury the pipe)</div>
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For the regular hose I have 200ft of 3/4" hose with a run of the mill sprayer nozzle. I did have to try several before I found one that had enough flow, therefore keeping the pump running. Remember an on demand pump cycling on and off will become a boat anchor very soon. (to reference I use either the hose or the pipe to the sprinkler, not both at the same time)</div>
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Some take aways from using my system:</div>
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<li>3/4" sprinkler head throws water 40' (A=<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">π</span> *r<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 24px;">² </span>)- so that's irrigating over 5000sq ft off a solar charged pump!</li>
<li>Tank fills in about 45<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">mins</span> of decent rain</li>
<li>Deep cycle battery has never completely drained with solar and current usage (yet)</li>
<li>While running commercial sprinkler, tank can be completely drained in about an hour</li>
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Some adds I am considering:</div>
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<li>First flush diversion system for cleaner water</li>
<li>Float switch to turn off pump when water is low</li>
<li>Check valves and add line from house so I can switch sprinkler to city water if no rain</li>
<li>Secondary tank under porch</li>
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Although this is a high level overview of the entire design and build hopefully it will help you with your own sustainable solar powered rainwater system, good luck and have fun building something. <br />
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If you read this far, you should <a href="http://twitter.com/ryanbutcher">follow me on Twitter!</a></div>
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<br /></div>Ryan Butcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08627177475503874332noreply@blogger.com237tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19908970.post-34518435476518005142010-07-03T16:30:00.000-07:002016-01-29T06:03:53.628-08:00The Oryan Project: from the garage to near space<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6q_VI4otYwDm2j7gRGf7giZxqj-g29_ImEhDo8GZZSJNy-JW1b8-Vz79MHkzdvkq0tze8BWjn6W_Y4P1hxjNP4AvZRr2DYPpsKCW09rMrm44FIsT4TjWlKuB7-O8fkVhQxnC2Nw/s1600/MASTERSTITCH_consumebetter.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="72" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5506898822306012242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6q_VI4otYwDm2j7gRGf7giZxqj-g29_ImEhDo8GZZSJNy-JW1b8-Vz79MHkzdvkq0tze8BWjn6W_Y4P1hxjNP4AvZRr2DYPpsKCW09rMrm44FIsT4TjWlKuB7-O8fkVhQxnC2Nw/s320/MASTERSTITCH_consumebetter.jpg" style="display: block; height: 72px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">Pano from ~100 of our pics stitched together</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUS2j0rwVK5ChfRXvVuK4aAD7hPdQXwiyEEb-PA1r9Yy271w5L71iC45iqhaOqwWK65uUEn_E7u8Aa8HygVgFOw6bU8llKlF5xJy8S6ZDrtElnohoUujMvLW58ZRBg2LTStjYM4Q/s1600/OryanIIpredictedpath.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="145" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5506898830328796946" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUS2j0rwVK5ChfRXvVuK4aAD7hPdQXwiyEEb-PA1r9Yy271w5L71iC45iqhaOqwWK65uUEn_E7u8Aa8HygVgFOw6bU8llKlF5xJy8S6ZDrtElnohoUujMvLW58ZRBg2LTStjYM4Q/s200/OryanIIpredictedpath.jpg" style="display: block; height: 232px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: left;">Pre-Launch Predicted Trajectory</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD8MtjUeBJRd4uCCFHm1UCsJF5dkwVb7nBg6hJWwKlFMguoNmZHS9mVfd60zPEUQ1knBldHMol9Sd2xXTtxE4I_YEokRJaLAfdvAK_TVFip5LbrU-eKUJrcZcNunvDPgn8AXyGuw/s1600/IMG_3088.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="300" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5506898812839290658" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD8MtjUeBJRd4uCCFHm1UCsJF5dkwVb7nBg6hJWwKlFMguoNmZHS9mVfd60zPEUQ1knBldHMol9Sd2xXTtxE4I_YEokRJaLAfdvAK_TVFip5LbrU-eKUJrcZcNunvDPgn8AXyGuw/s400/IMG_3088.JPG" style="display: block; height: 240px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">It's pretty quiet and cold up here.</span></td></tr>
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Update: I created a subsite for this project as there's way too much information and images for a blog post, check out our website for this project at <a href="http://www.astrohack.com/">Astrohack.com</a>. </div>
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Well, It's been quite a while since an update. We've been working on a number of things but probably most interesting was/is Project Oryan (<a href="http://www.astrohack.com/">Astrohack</a>). The project was a self induced challenge to launch a platform into the stratosphere and take some amazing pictures of the little ball in which we live, all from commercially available parts and some garage space.</div>
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To date we've had many successful launches and have developed a stable repeatable launch process and platform. We've made it 100k feet several times and captured some amazing shots and data. We were surprised at all the attention it receives and have been covered by local and national media. We've also been fortunate to attend youth science activities to show our crafts and discuss the challenges of near space photography.</div>
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The pictures are from our second try. We lost communication with Oryan I on decent, but I'm happy to say Oryan II which was launched on July 1, 2010 was recovered successfully and worked flawlessly. Expect a better write up soon, but for now take a look at a couple of the pictures we got...<br />
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<span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">If you read this far, you should </span><a href="http://twitter.com/ryanbutcher" style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">follow me on Twitter!</a>
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Ryan Butcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08627177475503874332noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19908970.post-31146644686470914622009-06-23T07:06:00.000-07:002012-05-02T07:21:36.637-07:00The Great Tech Organization and the Digital Split<div align="left">
Ever since private companies and government started using computers there has been someone making the decisions on what <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">technologies</span></span> to leverage. In the beginning options were limited so choices were easy (albeit expensive). Entities adopt methods of sharing information and for better or worse stick with the plan over the course of a decade or longer. As fast paced as the industry is, there have only been a few leaps that have changed the game entirely but they all add up to where technology fits in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">today's</span></span> workplace (and for that matter where it's going).<br />
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1. Cheap Computers: Once computers got cheap enough, they became ubiquitous.<br />
2. The Internet: Once they were all connected, people could share information (chaotically at best)<br />
3. The Great <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2"><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Organization</span></span>: This is where we are now, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0">web 2.0</a>. Open access to information, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing">clouds form </a><br />
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Numbers one and two are past tense so let's focus on three. The Great Tech <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3"><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Organization</span></span>, or so I call it. Allot of people refer to it as web 2.0, 3.0, cloud or Generation Y computing. Whatever <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4"><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">nomenclature</span></span> you tag it with the idea is the same, to untangle the lack of standards from the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5"><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Internet</span></span> boom and really start using information efficiently by making access platform transparent (my name is still the best, however).<br />
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"The Great Tech <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6"><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Organization</span></span>" made possible incredibly powerful <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7"><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">applications</span></span> that we all use (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">ok</span></span>, unless you are over 35 - we'll get to that later) daily. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9"><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Interconnected</span></span> (via standards) cloud <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">applications</span></span> and methods like<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_(metadata)"> tagging</a>, <a href="http://www.facebook.com/"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Facebook</span></span></a>, <a href="http://www.google.com/apps">Google Apps</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/">YouTube</a>, <a href="http://www.twitter.com/">Twitter</a> etc are all built in a way to share the information they contain freely at will with anyone, or any application that chooses to access it. This did a number of things but mainly it allowed anyone from the best application engineers down to shade tree developers to tap into incredibly powerful specialized central systems to enhance their own <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">applications</span></span> while allowing the people to decide what data they need. So... That's why there is a embedded <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">youtube</span></span> videos on every random website out there.. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">hmmm</span></span>. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Thats</span></span> why I can view what 200 of my friends have on their mind right now, from my Blackberry - and react if I want to. Let the people have the data and they will figure out what to do with it, that's the idea here. Once all these systems had a way to communicate, other than via browser (which required a human), the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">internet</span></span> starts to become a less chaotic, more <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">effiecient</span></span>, and more organized place to live.<br />
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So here we are in 2009 with all of these great <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">applications</span></span> at our disposal on demand. At no other time could the average Joe access so much information so quickly. So we use all this information socially, is big business taking note?<br />
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The Digital Split in today's businesses: There was a time that one generation of people who <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">didnt</span></span> grow up with computers disregarded them, computers were almost entirely embraced by the youth but not their parents. That's what I call the "Analog Split". Today most everyone uses a computer to communicate in one way or another and for the most part people have adopted the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">internet</span></span> as here to stay. What we see now is the Digital Split, where one generation of business is used to doing things the old fashion way (centralized in house servers, email messaging, custom specialized <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">applications</span></span>) and the current/future way (cloud computing, social networking, and web 2.0 <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">applications</span></span>). </div>
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<br />
So who is adopting the new methods? Which side of the Digital Split is your company? </div>
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</div>
<div align="center">
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<img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356108504840481970" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDQaUhUHbGo2SjSVi8F0di0PNvbH6rmLXoXZWDLSsURRhY2NbVDyje2OWA8CrgQw0eV_akrHD209NA2ukCPHgmhI8Qo0LFdmfhp6xxd0eSzkGvtVfNr7H2UAnn76VqfE9DglTEiw/s320/socialwhitehouse.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 240px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /> <br />
<div align="center">
<span style="font-size: 78%;">Social network links on the official White House website</span></div>
<br />
Let's look at the feds. The US Government is actually doing a great job in my opinion, with at least part of the solution, and much better than many large companies (yep, I said it). This is largely due to allot of youthful influence on new policy when it comes to IT and a new <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">administration</span></span> willing to roll the dice. They are starting by <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">communicating</span></span> with the masses. The president spells this out as the new government vision in a <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Transparency_and_Open_Government/">January 2009 <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">briefing </span></a>from the White House. You'll notice the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/whitehouse?blend=1&ob=4">White House</a> has it's own YouTube channel and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">Facebook</span> page (as does the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/statevideo">State Dept</a>, and so on and so on..). <a href="http://twitter.com/BARACKOBAMA">Obama</a> pushes twitter updates constantly. It's not 100% effective yet, or nearly close, but you can see that they take it seriously. Take a look at the <a href="http://www.data.gov/">Data.gov project</a> and you will see the feds are also putting open access methods into practice also (someone up there is on the right side of the split). It's not just a way for the country to promote its agenda (it is) but it's also the new way of doing business. The people have adopted these methods to communicate personally, why <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">shouldnt</span></span> business? I say they should, if you want to remain competitive.<br />
<br />
So take note of which side of this digital split your company is on. The lines between personal and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27"><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">professional</span></span> computing are blurring by the day. The smart money rightfully recognizes the power this brings. Skills that will be in demand in the future may revolve around YouTube, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">Facebook</span></span>, or anything else your boss <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29"><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">doesn't</span></span> want you using while at "work". For the first time since the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30">internet</span></span>, the people are ahead of business in way they think about sharing information. Besides, 1 million heads are better than, say.. one - right?<br />
<br />
If you read this far, you should <a href="http://twitter.com/ryanbutcher">follow me on Twitter!</a>Ryan Butcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08627177475503874332noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19908970.post-61150307128358378352009-02-05T15:42:00.000-08:002016-01-20T15:46:46.494-08:00Special ThanksThank you to Loyola University students for skyping me into class today to talk about the information technology industry as relates to the federal government. I had fun and best of luck in all of your future endeavors.Ryan Butcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08627177475503874332noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19908970.post-35721383458819765852009-01-10T21:14:00.001-08:002016-01-29T05:51:49.008-08:00Weathering a "Reply to All" storm<div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO69JhFpphNWrnODtwbR4BFblGeyWMSbRwTik15o8uRnm0s_FjvjZqABqpz6K9n10bFpaB-Wnhqvo_Z5TaoPZnsv9u5DeWel78lHh04bbproppeky33JMt0kflqpQFsUO9J9NYRw/s1600/PJ-AZ761B_bonds_G_20110307205104.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO69JhFpphNWrnODtwbR4BFblGeyWMSbRwTik15o8uRnm0s_FjvjZqABqpz6K9n10bFpaB-Wnhqvo_Z5TaoPZnsv9u5DeWel78lHh04bbproppeky33JMt0kflqpQFsUO9J9NYRw/s640/PJ-AZ761B_bonds_G_20110307205104.jpg" width="241" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Infographic printed in WSJ 3/8/11 from my interview</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<div>
<b>March 2011 Update:</b> Had a great conversation with The Wall Street Journal about reply all storms - Check out the article and graphic based on our interview ("The Perfect Email Storm") on the WSJ site <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703386704576186520353326558.html">here</a>.</div>
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If you work for a large organization, chances are you have seen a "reply to all" email storm. It starts out like this, someone sends an email to a distribution list which contains every email address in the company(thousands of addresses). One person clicks "reply to all", and says something like "please remove me from this discussion". Well, this is the first of three phases of an email storm. I'll call it the calm before the storm, to make it more exciting... If you're keeping count we've got two emails out to everyone in the company.<br />
<br />
Phase two. Many of the recipients of the email think, "hey, me too, this email has nothing to do with my job or what's on <a href="http://woot.com/"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">woot</span></span></a> today so I want off this email chain too". So about 5% of these people click "reply to all" and send a message indicating they want off too. Now we're up to 70 or 80 emails to everyone in the company.<br />
<br />
Phase Three of the storm commences. Phase three is when another 5% of the recipients get tired of the unsolicited flood of emails so they, yes, REPLY TO ALL to inform everyone to stop replying to all. It makes me tired just typing it, but it happens and it gets even worse. The replies start nice, of course everyone wants to help. Then people start getting angry, and, yes, reply to all to tell them about it.<br />
<br />
Now this all sounds a bit silly, but I have seen this happen twice in the last two years at two different (large) organizations. The first time at "company A" was bad, but thankfully it was limited to a small (in comparison) <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">distro</span></span> list of about 1500 people. The second and most recent instance of the phenomena was <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">a lot</span> worse and the initial email went out to about 25,000 recipients. The result of the second example was tormented exchange servers that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3"><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">couldn't</span></span> handle the load and inevitably shut down email for the organization, globally. (yes, there were some CHOICE emails in the flood that were quite funny and I assume more than one person was canned for their replies) Needless to say there are a lot of embarrassed people at the site right now for the self inflicted email crash.<br />
<br />
So what do you do. First off, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4"><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">don't</span></span> reply to all to tell everyone not to reply to all. Even if you <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5"><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">haven't</span></span> done one full hour of actual work all year and you KNOW that if you tell everyone to stop that will save the day, everyone will clap, and you will get a raise. That wont happen, it just wont. So <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6"><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">don't</span></span> click it!<br />
<br />
The second thing is if you send an email to a large distribution list, put the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">distro</span></span> list address in the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">bcc</span></span> line. Then, in the first line of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9"><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">email</span></span> indicate the name of the list the email was sent to so all the recipients know. If a recipient replies to all on a message you sent to a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">bcc</span></span>, it will only go the the sender and not what was in the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">bcc</span></span>.<br />
<br />
Another novel way, if again you are the sender, is to block the reply all button for your recipients. Now, granted, this will only work for Outlook users using Exchange within an organization, but if this is a good match then this will actually remove the button from the recipients mail for your message. Pretty cool! Here's how to do it:<br />
<br />
Add the following macro to your Outlook(2003).<br />
<br />
Sub NoReplyAll()<br />
Dim myolapp As Object<br />
Dim myinspector As Object<br />
Set myolapp = CreateObject("Outlook.Application")<br />
Set myinspector = myolapp.ActiveInspector<br />
myinspector.CurrentItem.Actions("Reply to All").Enabled = False<br />
myinspector.CurrentItem.Actions("Forward").Enabled = False<br />
End sub<br />
<br />
After creating the macro, you can create a button in your message window to run the macro when you create a new message. Running the macro prior to sending the message changes the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">metadata</span></span> that exchange reads to disallow the “Forward” and “Reply to All” buttons for everyone receiving the message within the same organization and using Outlook.<br />
<br />
Anyhow, for what it’s worth, if you are sending email to a large distribution list or know someone that frequently does – this may be helpful in stopping a storm before it starts.<br />
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If you read this far, you should <a href="http://twitter.com/ryanbutcher">follow me on Twitter!</a>Ryan Butcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08627177475503874332noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19908970.post-52436418857874390392008-08-26T19:43:00.000-07:002008-09-18T19:55:34.708-07:00Version 2.0, Release 2 is here! (Ryker's new brother)I've been offline AGAIN anxiously awaiting the arrival of our second son, we're very excited he is here! <strong>Cade William Butcher</strong> was born on August 24th, 2008 weighing 7 lbs 3 oz and 19 inches. We're very excited about the new addition to our family and development staff (in a few years maybe)!!Ryan Butcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08627177475503874332noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19908970.post-84112408968711594212008-02-22T09:54:00.000-08:002008-02-22T10:19:07.476-08:003DTelemetry beta is here!In a previous post I eluded to a project I was working on involving GPS and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">OBDII</span> vehicle data. The beta is now online and ready for download <a href="http://www.3dtelemetry.com/">here</a>. All you need is an <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">NMEA</span> compatible GPS device or logger, and an <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">OBDII</span> scanner if you want to import vehicle data (3<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">DTelemetry</span> will create maps without <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">OBDII</span> also).<br /><br />3<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Dtelemetry</span> takes data logged in your favorite <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">OBDII</span> scan tool (growing compatibility list <a href="http://www.3dtelemetry.com/3dtelemetry36">here</a>) and merges it with the GPS data that it (or an external GPS logger) <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">aquires</span> along your drive. 3<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">DTelemetry</span> then exports the data into <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">KML</span> format for viewing within Google Earth. So, essentially you will be able to see on a 3D map that your Mass Air Flow pressure was 2lbs in corner 4 and the engine reported 6400RPM while you were passing grandma's house. <br /><br />This is obviously going to be an ongoing project and I will update my blog with any dramatic changes, but check the site (<a href="http://www.3dtelemetry.com/">http://www.3dtelemetry.com</a>) for the latest information. Debugging from the passenger seat has presented an entirely different programming experience, but this one has been <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">allot</span> of fun to create so far. Special thanks to Jay and the gang at <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11"><a href="http://www.autoenginuity.com/">Autoenginuity</a></span> and others for <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">fielding</span> my incessant questions about <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">OBDII</span>.<br /><br />I intend to keep the application free during this initial beta phase and then very affordable once we have a valid release. I think there are too many high priced doodads out there for the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">amateur</span> racer these days. So if you enjoy your car and you're looking for something useful and cool that wont break the bank check it out!<br /><br />Please feel free to drop me a line with any suggestions or comments!Ryan Butcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08627177475503874332noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19908970.post-46274601405852258662007-12-04T13:12:00.000-08:002012-05-02T07:23:36.699-07:00Making sense of the Global Positioning SystemThanks to the U.S. Department of Defense (and good ole President Ronald Reagan) GPS signals are freely available for civilian use. The fact is, today GPS is basically ubiquitous in most people's lives. Most new cars use it to show you where you are and your proximity to the nearest Starbucks. Raising the "cool factor" bar for technology using GPS is its implications on the Internet as we know it. For example people are <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocoding">geocoding </a>their images in their online photo albums, Cool apps like <a href="http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html">Google Earth</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocaching">Geocaching</a> and all sorts of new creative games using real places are sprouting up all over the Internet (people are going outside again!). Basically, with GPS the Internet can break out of it's closed linear stage and becomes part of our real three dimensional world. Very cool, but more on that later - let's dive into what makes the Global Positioning System tick and how you can take advantage of the technology in your next project.<br />
<br />
You will find that most GPS devices out there (USB GPS for your PC, handheld GPS's, etc etc) will report data from satellites in a neat standard format called NMEA. NMEA uses a serial ASCII protocol to send GPS data to your application for consumption. The resulting comma delimited data is piped out or logged sentence by sentence from your device. The NMEA format makes it easy to take the data and parse it anyway we'd like. Now we could just use the software that came with our Microsoft's Streets and Trips or Earthmate GPS but that's no fun.<br />
<br />
<strong>Decoding GPS log files</strong><br />
There are many different types of NMEA sentences. Luckily they are all in an easy to read format. The first field is the sentence type and will start with $. I am only going to focus on a couple sentence types that give us our position information. For the purpose of this blog, we'll ignore the other sentences but there is plenty of references online about them.<br />
<br />
My favorites, $GPGGA and $GPRMC. You will find that these two will have all the data you should need for tracking.<br />
<br />
Example sentence (GPGGA):<br />
$GPGGA,192122,3514.7971,N,07634.7585,W,1,04,01.3,00006.2,M,-035.9,M,,*79<br />
<br />
Translation:<br />
$GPGGA,hhmmss.ss,llll.ll,a,yyyyy.yy,a,x,xx,x.x,x.x,M,x.x,M,x.x,xxxx*hh<br />
<br />
Here is what each field means:<br />
1 = UTC of Position<br />
2 = Latitude<br />
3 = N or S<br />
4 = Longitude<br />
5 = E or W<br />
6 = GPS quality indicator (0=invalid; 1=GPS fix; 2=Diff. GPS fix)<br />
7 = Number of satellites in use [not those in view]<br />
8 = Horizontal dilution of position<br />
9 = Antenna altitude above/below mean sea level (geoid)<br />
10 = Meters (Antenna height unit)<br />
11 = Geoidal separation (Diff. between WGS-84 earth ellipsoid and<br />
mean sea level. -=geoid is below WGS-84 ellipsoid)<br />
12 = Meters (Units of geoidal separation)<br />
13 = Age in seconds since last update from diff. reference station<br />
14 = Diff. reference station ID#<br />
15 = Checksum<br />
<br />
Example sentence (GPRMC):<br />
$GPRMC,192137,A,3514.7966,N,07634.7588,W,000.0,000.0,310707,,,A*66<br />
<br />
Translation:<br />
$GPRMC,hhmmss.ss,A,llll.ll,a,yyyyy.yy,a,x.x,x.x,ddmmyy,x.x,a,m*hh<br />
<br />
Here is what each field means:<br />
<br />
1 = UTC time of fix<br />
2 = Data status (A=Valid position, V=navigation receiver warning)<br />
3 = Latitude of fix<br />
4 = N or S of longitude<br />
5 = Longitude of fix<br />
6 = E or W of longitude<br />
7 = Speed over ground in knots<br />
8 = Track made good in degrees True<br />
9 = UTC date of fix<br />
10 = Magnetic variation degrees (Easterly var. subtracts from true course)<br />
11 = E or W of magnetic variation<br />
12 = Mode indicator, (A=Autonomous, D=Differential, E=Estimated, N=Data not valid)<br />
13 = Checksum<br />
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By parsing these etypes either in real time by reading the data from a COM port, or from an existing log file you can use the coordinate information in any way you choose. I am currently working on a cool (Ok, I think its cool..) vehicle tracking application that I should be releasing here on this site soon. There are allot of good examples floating around with source code that should give you a handle on using this data. <br />
<br />
In closing, the Global Positioning System is a powerful resource that you can tap into and enable your applications to become spatially aware. This opens plenty of doors for new and innovative apps - so get coding!<br />
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If you read this far, you should <a href="http://twitter.com/ryanbutcher">follow me on Twitter!</a>Ryan Butcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08627177475503874332noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19908970.post-39226601227592406062007-08-29T05:37:00.000-07:002012-05-02T07:22:01.476-07:00XSS vulnerabilities, do they even care?Is your site at risk? If you knew it was would you do anything about it? I would hope so, but, you'd be surprised. I've found many "very large" companies online with exploitable vulnerabilities in their main websites that could potentially be very embarrassing and costly. <br />
<br />
This article is the start of several where I will test the philosophy of "responsible disclosure" by contacting 5 companies and notify them of security holes that I have found in their sites - even offer assistance and resolutions - to see how long it takes for them to fix them, if at all. I'll keep the names of the companies to myself and just describe them as "industry/estimated # of employees". Just a little <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_hat">white hat</a> test that should get interesting.<br />
<br />
By now, most companies and organizations have a little more than a static html brochure online. Most sites are actually full blown online applications either purchased "off the shelf", developed in house, or custom developed by some third party. Dynamic sites, although a necessity, can potentially open doors when improper techniques are used when developed. Once your web application is online, mal-intented site patrons have all the time in the world to pick apart your site for potential vulnerabilities. I speak from experience as web applications that I have created have even been the target of attacks in the past - and I'd be ignorant to think they wouldn't be targeted again in the future. <br />
<br />
Some background on the method of the day, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-site_scripting">XSS</a>..<br />
<br />
For this test I'm going to focus on one facet of web application security, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-site_scripting">XSS</a>(or more confusingly CSS in some cases - not <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Css">Cascading Style Sheets</a>). <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-site_scripting">XSS</a> stands for cross site scripting and is generally a method employed by hackers to inject their own modified code into your site. I have identified a diverse range of flawed websites below to see what, if anything, their reaction is to someone telling them they have a problem. Here are the companies and description:<br />
<br />
<b>1. Retail/95,000 Employees</b>- notified webmasters 8/30/2007<br />
<b>2. Government/1,000 Employees</b>- notified webmasters 8/29/2007<br />
<b>3. Manufactoring/23,000 Employees</b>- notified webmasters 8/30/2007<br />
<b>4. Transportation/19,000 Empl0yees</b>- notified webmasters 8/30/2007<br />
<b>5. Pharmaceutical/2,000 Employees</b>- notified webmasters 8/30/2007 <br />
<br />
If you'd like for me to take a quick run through of your site, drop me an email with the URL and I'll be glad to send you what if anything I find (time permitting:) <br />
<br />
So, there you have it. I'll post updates as responses come in. Let the whirlwind begin.<br />
<br />
If you read this far, you should <a href="http://twitter.com/ryanbutcher">follow me on Twitter!</a>Ryan Butcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08627177475503874332noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19908970.post-69204573135393798692007-07-03T06:52:00.000-07:002012-05-02T07:23:58.755-07:00Displaying fiscal year with VBScriptIn an effort to drive engineers bananas, at some point a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump">financial <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">wienie</span></a> decided that a normal calendar we've been using for thousands of years just <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">wasnt</span> up to par. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_year">Fiscal dates </a>took root in the government and <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">corporate</span> America, surely chaos would ensue..<br />
<br />
Truthfully, fiscal dating makes more sense to companies because the organization can then make their own rules and target the start and end dates around important production times or downtime.<br />
<br />
There are many good ways to generate the fiscal date information, I've found that one really quick and dirty way to display just the year is by using <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">vbscript</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4"><a href="http://www.w3schools.com/vbscript/func_dateadd.asp">datedd</a> and <a href="http://www.w3schools.com/vbscript/func_datepart.asp">datepart</a>. </span><br />
<br />
Our example will use the Government fiscal year which starts October 1 so will need to add one year to the current year if it is October, Nov, or Dec.<br />
<br />
<%<br />
if (DatePart("M",Date)) = "10" then<br />
FISCALYEAR = DateAdd("yyyy",1,date)<br />
<br />
elseif (DatePart("M",Date)) = "11" then<br />
FISCALYEAR = DateAdd("yyyy",1,date)<br />
<br />
elseif (DatePart("M",Date)) = "12" then<br />
FISCALYEAR = DateAdd("yyyy",1,date)<br />
<br />
else<br />
FISCALYEAR = DateAdd("yyyy",0,date)<br />
end if<br />
%><br />
<br />
If your fiscal year starts in, say, August.. August is the 8th month so start your script with<br />
if (DatePart("M",Date)) = "8" then<br />
and then continue through the months through the end of the year (12). Happy scripting, or rather, fiscalling!<br />
<br />
If you read this far, you should <a href="http://twitter.com/ryanbutcher">follow me on Twitter!</a>Ryan Butcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08627177475503874332noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19908970.post-87763870179067130382007-06-06T17:44:00.000-07:002008-09-18T19:59:58.358-07:00Version 2.0 is hereI've been offline for a while in anticipation of our new son, and we're happy to report that he's finally here. <strong>Ryker Douglas Butcher</strong> was born on May 11th, 2007 weighing 8 lbs and 20 inches.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.ryanamy.com/">Click for Details</a><br /><br />Now that he's here, it's time to put him to work - be on the lookout for some upcoming blogs on a couple of projects I am cooking up in the lab utilizing RFID technology.Ryan Butcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08627177475503874332noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19908970.post-43733470704727549402006-12-03T14:13:00.000-08:002006-12-03T15:00:49.943-08:00Take Control of High Level Userid'sIt's been a while since I published anything so I figured I would drop a quick tip/suggestion for account administration that works well. One of the most overlooked and dangerous habits of system administrators, development staff etc is good plan for safe usage of high access user accounts. Obviously it's bad <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">practice</span> to allow users to perform all of their day to day responsibilities (email, web browsing, etc.) while logged in as an administrator. These accounts should be reserved only for performing the duties in which they were created for. If allowing otherwise, one of your power users users will eventually <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">succumb</span> to a virus or browse some <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">illegitimate</span> website and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">reak</span> much more havoc on your <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">infrastructure</span> as they potentially would logged in as a normal user.. Not a good plan.<br /><br />So, how is your staff <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">supposed</span> to do their jobs without having an administrator account? One simple solution that works well is to create two separate accounts for these users. One account should have very minimal access levels allowing just the basics. The users should use these accounts as their <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">login</span> everyday. Make the second id's similar to the first but prefix them with a standard naming convention like "admin" to make them easier to manage. The second id's should have all appropriate permissions for all of the employees tasks.<br /><br />Now, forcing your users to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">login</span> and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">logout</span> all day long will make them go bananas, and truthfully you will not get anyone to abide by this for very long without forcing and denying things link email on the administrator accounts. To make <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">every one's</span> life easier, you could create a batch file for each the users that executes the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">RUNAS</span> command, and fires up the command prompt running as the admin user.<br /><br />Example of the batch file contents:<br />runas /user:domain\administratorid cmd<br /><br />Drop a shortcut to the batch on their desktops via AD to make it really easy for them. There's also alot of good options in the runas command that you can take advantage of like using alternate profiles if need be.<br /><br />Now that we have our user logged in with a stripped down account, and they are running the cool custom command prompt as the administrator you should be all set. The user can actually drag and drop any program into this command prompt (Computer manager, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">SQL</span> manager, etc) and voila - it fires up as the admin account. The user can keep this prompt running all day and use it over and over whenever they need to access an admin level application.<br /><br />In closing - Having a good, organized strategy for <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">account</span> access is paramount in creating a safe, secure and happy infrastructure.Ryan Butcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08627177475503874332noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19908970.post-1141167110861502872006-02-28T14:51:00.000-08:002012-05-02T07:22:31.105-07:00Standards in enterprise level intranetsThis is more of a best practices blog than a technical one. After seeing several large enterprise level intranets grind themselves to near uselessness, I figured it was time to shed some light on why standards can be so important.<br />
<br />
Defined standards is an often overlooked part of a companies internal computing strategy, yet in my opinion a very important one. Introducing standards into web systems will in the long run save user frustration, save time, save money, and ensure that an organization's investment in their information is accessible.<br />
<br />
Keeping a few simple things in mind when laying out your design will inevitably create a better end user experience.<br />
<br />
<b>Successful enterprise level intranets should contain usable, organized information</b>. Feel free to babble on about the history of your company on your extranet, remember to keep your intranet environment concise and to the point. The key is the intranet is a tool, and when users brains are highjacked by lack of organization an extraneous information the effectiveness is lost. The end users should be able to retrieve what the are looking for quickly, and then to move on.<br />
<br />
<b>Early intranet adopters usually have chaotic web structures. </b> Many larger companies have a disorganized or non existent web structure because their strategy was (and is)to piece together all their departments home made websites. Every department has a self proclaimed web aficionado, and that person was typically usually tapped to "put together" and maintain that dept's intranet site. This leads to a host of issues including lack of central management, unbalanced traffic loads (both physical loads and "political") and my personal pet peeve - departmental branding which I will get into a bit later. All of these things lend themselves to an inefficient end user experience. It may sound harsh, but taking the design liberties away from your rouge developers will foster a user centric and standard web experience. Management of corporate intranets should be centrally managed in regards to design and function, actual content should be delegated. <br />
<br />
<b>Drop the fancy logos</b>. One thing that I have seen over the years in most or all of the patched together intranet systems is custom departmental logos popping up. Some facets of an organization will in fact need self branding, but keep in mind most don't and when they don't they add to the confusion factor. Adopt a rendition of your corporate logo, and create a clear background for sublevels to modify with a picture explaining what it is that they do. Your company has already spent millions of dollars developing an image for itself, it may hurt, but it is better than your fancy new logo that you made in Photoshop. Sub-branding also throws off new users. I speak from experience when I say an intranet with a different header image and logo in each site makes a new employee wonder how many different companies are involved. Sure departmental pride is a good thing, but who do you actually work for - creating sub logos projects you are on a different team altogether and not working for a common goal.<br />
<br />
In closing, it is easy to see why we need standards. Designing the superstructure of your intranet smart will make your investment give a much higher return. So, develop your design standards in regards to Look/Feel, Navigation, and keep them user focused! Long story short - all development including back end systems, graphics, and applications should be agreed upon at a corporate level by development staff and management. Delegate content management tasks the guys in each dept whose experience consists of making a website for their local church. Good luck, you're gonna need it.<br />
<br />
If you read this far, you should <a href="http://twitter.com/ryanbutcher">follow me on Twitter!</a>Ryan Butcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08627177475503874332noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19908970.post-1138827894400555482006-02-01T13:01:00.000-08:002012-05-02T07:23:15.950-07:00Classic ASP on 2003 Server with disabled Connection Pooling.I thought that this experience was blog-worthy due to the highly undocumented nature of this problem. I hope that it can shed some light on why your new MS2003 web migration isn't exactly holding it's own under a moderate traffic load.<br />
<br />
Day starts like this.. You take initiative and migrate all of your rusty old NT webfarm to a happy new Win2003 environment. You're running very expensive and highly trafficked custom ASP code, with a remote SQL backend. Expecting huge performance gains from the cutting edge systems, you brief everyone on the IT staff about the new direction the neglected websystems are headed.<br />
<br />
You migrate all of the systems over in one fell swoop, do a bit of testing and after deciding that everything checks out - you swap the DNS entries and now the applications are live on the new hardware. <br />
<br />
4am the phone rings, it's Tokyo and they want to know why their business critical web applications are not serving pages.<br />
<br />
Saving you from my ranting soliloquy, this is an issue that I recently ran into. All ran smooth as a whistle until there was a mild, I stress <strong>mild</strong>, load (<300 concurrent connections) on the servers. But why did cutting edge servers running the latest Microsoft webserving technology get out performed by old NT machines? The answer is in the way that 2003 server talks to SQL backends with connection pooling disabled.<br />
<br />
If you read this far, you should <a href="http://twitter.com/ryanbutcher">follow me on Twitter!</a>
<br />
<br />
Basically the web server was running out of available ports to communicate with the back end SQL server. This became evident by running a basic netstat on the test webserver during one of the load tests and monitoring the connection traffic. By default, w2k3 server reserves 4000 ports for communicating with SQL. The netstat showed me that all 4000 ports were quickly simultaneously opened to the SQL server. When the server runs over this allotment, it will start denying the connections. These opened ports are reserved for a default 4 minutes, so even if the connection is idle - it is still in a "TIME_WAIT" status, essentially unusable by another request. Every request after this limit gets denied until ports are freed. This is a very "obscure" feature of 2003 and classic ASP. There are essentially two ways to fix the problem, in this case, partly to do with the nature of the applications, I chose to increase the port allotment on the webserver to allow more simultaneous connections. Here is the quick and dirty fix:<br />
<br />
In the afflicted webservers registry, add the key<br />
<br />
Value Name: MaxUserPort<br />
Data Type: REG_DWORD<br />
Value: 65534<br />
<br />
to<br />
<br />
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters<br />
<br />
This essentially gives the client (in this case a webserver) 60000 more ports to play with. After applying the changes, the load tests show that this successfully resolved our issue. <br />
<br />
You should under just about all circumstances be using connection pooling, however there are some circumstances where this is not feasable. In my own opinion, I am not confident that connection pooling works very well after some of the load tests I have done on 2003 server communicating with a SQL backend (in my case I was using a SQL cluster). This may or not have been fixed by the time this is read, if it was an issue at all.<br />
<br />
After spending hours testing and researching this issue, we happened on this fix. Since then MS has published this KB article explaining most of what is going on here. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/328476">http://support.microsoft.com/kb/328476</a><br />
<br />
Please note, that this may or may not be the best solution for your setup. This type of issue can also be evident if there are other underlying problems such as poorly closed code or quickly opening and closing connections in the code which can lead to high stress on your database servers. <br />
<br />
I hope this is useful info, I know it would have been to me had I run across it.<br />
<br />
If you read this far, you should <a href="http://twitter.com/ryanbutcher">follow me on Twitter!</a>Ryan Butcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08627177475503874332noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19908970.post-1137783189308541502006-01-20T10:50:00.000-08:002006-01-20T10:53:09.310-08:00The Second E-RevolutionI look at starting an e-business like a treasure hunter, with an idea as the map and the successful venture the treasure. You have to follow your treasure map before someone else gets a chance to photocopy it and claim the gold for themselves. You have to protect your ideas at all costs because in many cases it can be your only true asset until you have large online following.<br /><br />Your product or service has to be new, original, witty, and it helps if it is something that the media would have a field day with. That's one thing that many people don't understand about the internet and starting a business on it. The internet was built to share information, so in turn, anything that is new or original on the net has the tendency to spread like wildfire whether it makes financial sense or not. Internet businesses have been won and lost over a single article, but the overall longevity of the venture depends on the effort put forth to keep the site on the top in terms of technology, ease of use and services. The media is a powerful force when it comes to ecommerce but without a concerted effort to stay the first you will find that spotlight will burn out very quickly.<br /><br />Many skeptics say that the dot com era has financially come and gone but in my opinion it hasn't even started yet. The rise and fall of the dot coms of the late 90's was due to over-hyped overvalued stocks, not because the internet was not a sturdy platform for business. The dot coms came and went because we had the ideas for using the internet to make money but the general population didn't yet have the dependency or trust in the net. This left the startups having to sell the public on why using the internet was better than driving to their local Best Buy. The net still has inherit values which make it perfect for business in the future:<br /><br />1. Relative low overhead<br />2. It's always upgradeable<br />3. Growing dependency of public on the net <br /><br />Devices (Phones, PDA's, cars, etc) are becoming more and more 'smart' or connected. This in turn is moving us more and more into a wired (and wireless) world. As the world becomes more used to the idea of information at the click of a mouse or the touch of a button, they are also becoming more dependent on these services. Imagine trading your TV in for a radio. Crazy? Of course it is, but with wireless connections on the rise, trading a web enabled smartphone in for an analog cellular would be just as ridiculous.<br /><br />We are just now physically catching up with all the promises we got about the internet and how it was going to change our lives. The general public is using powerful internet tools to book their flights, sell old junk, and to communicate more and more every day. Trust in the internet is finally growing and with that trust people are spending more money for products and services found solely online.<br /><br />The idea is the same, have a great idea for a website and become a millionaire, but this time around the stakes are much higher and the reward much greater for those who can succeed in the second E-revolution.Ryan Butcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08627177475503874332noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19908970.post-1134695994159196602005-12-15T17:19:00.000-08:002006-01-20T10:50:19.250-08:00Greetings EarthlingsHello World, and welcome finally to my BLOG. I have been meaning to put all of my rants into a blog for years, and finally this comes to fruition. No more procrastination, no more excuses. Please fel free to post your own comments and questions. I vow to update the site at least twice a month, perhaps more - but attempt to spare you from useless dribble. So sit back, relax - and dont forget to bookmark ryanbutcher.com, a sometimes personal, sometimes professional blog...Ryan Butcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08627177475503874332noreply@blogger.com2