OK, so this is probably not going to get the pub that Oprah’s Book Club gets but hey, there is some really great reading out there that I thought I would share over time with you. I think that any time you can get a review or endorsement from your peer group, the more you can trust those results.

How many of us have had, or still have to, put up with an abusive person in our workplace? I am sure at some point that this has happened to us all. Or perhaps, and I sure hope this isn’t the case, YOU are the one dishing out the abuse. In either event I have a great book for you to read.

“The No Asshole Rule - Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t”

This book is authored by Stanford University professor, Robert I. Sutton PhD. Sutton has been published as an expert on this topic in the esteemed Harvard Business Review. It is a nice smooth read that claims itself as “The definitive guide to working with - and surviving - Bullies, Creeps, Jerks, Tyrants, Tormentors, Despots, Backstabbers, Egomaniacs, and all the other assholes who do their best to destroy you at work. Enjoy the book.

What did George Carlin mean to you if anything? I am not trying to date myself here, but this guy was to comedy as were the Beatles to music. A man that was way ahead of his time, his progressive style and willingness to approach topics that were considered taboo by many, illuminated what a refreshing and true talent he was. George, comedy and the rest of the world will miss you. May you rest in peace.

As promised readers, I am going to take my own learning experience and use it to explain ColdFusion TAGS and how one might make use of them. Of course you can get a really in depth view using the livedocs provided by Adobe. But I thought that perhaps sharing my experience outloud would actually benefit me as well as be helpful to others that are learning this excellent development language.

<CFABORT>

Let’s take a closer look at this handy little devil. This tag falls under the category of Flow Control and for good reason because that is exactly what the tag does. It stops the processing (or flow of), a ColdFusion page at the point that you place the tag in your code. The great thing is that it returns everything that was processed preceeding the tag. Therefore this is a handy tool to use to track down errors in your application.

It has a very simple syntax consisting of only one attribute.

So that’s it on this easy to use flow-control tag. Remember livedocs is a great reference tool visit it.

I used to be a good CF programmer. I was certified on all available training levels. Then I decided that a career change was in the best interest of my family so I moved away from coding. Fast forward 2 years and once again I was offered a position with my current firm which has required me to reacquaint myself with  ColdFusion and all of the companion technologies that help to create a pleasing user experience. I must say that it is like starting all over again, (yes I am whining). That said though, I thought that I would use the opportunity to do just that and start all over again. While doing that I realized that there are just as many people as ever out there that are looking for a great way to create dynamic content and know absolutely about ColdFusion. There are many popular choices like Ruby and PHP and of course .NET but for my money and the growing demand on speed to market there is only one clear cut choice and that is ColdFusion.

I am going to explore a new Coldfusion Tag at least once per week so stay tuned all you new CF’ers.

Whoa, what a surprise it was for me today my first Kernel Panic. I was happily working through my day when all of a sudden my mac book flashed a fancy screen and told me that I had to hard boot my system.

Hmmm, can you say blue errrr, gray screen of death? well I booted the thing as instructed and the message came back. Well as a new MAC user (and very pleased I might add) my cute little Apple bubble was bursting so I called tech support because after trying everything that Apple suggested I couldn’t get any response from the operating system. So naturally since nothing that Apple suggested worked I was driven to keep trying those things over and over again as if by some chance my nightmare was going to end. Not to be - after a few more tries I couldn’t even get the Kernel Panic error to show up, the computer just started beeping, 3 beeps over and over again. Time to take it to the shop. Got to the shop and this was the dialogue:

TECH: So it just beeps 3 times over and over again

ME: Yeah

TECH: Do the beeps sound like MEM-O-REE, MEM-O-REE, over and over again

ME: Huh?

TECH: I think you have some bad RAM lemme check…

5 minutes later tech walks out of the back room and the nightmare had ended as quickly as it had started. All because of a bad RAM stick.