Dan Olsen’s Weblog

I have found that issue tracking software and Subversion repositories can be more of an obstacle then a help if not used properly. Since I started working for the State of Utah one of my responsibilities was to update Subversion and come up with some standards for our group. Another task I was assigned was getting bug tracking in place. I figured that it was not that big of a task. However, now I realize that software without a plan is a recipe for disaster.

I was surprised to find that people who have been in software their whole career don’t understand these tools. Now I am paying the price of not adequately training these developers. I am in the process of writing up some documentation and coming up with processes that involve the tools we have.

The one lesson I learned is to never assume people will understand the tools without adequate direction. Also, never assume anything.

I just read a tweet from Phil Windley about Zemanta so I thought I would see what it could do. So, I used it in Windows Live Writer to see how it did.

Zemanta looks at your post and tries to pick the right links for words or groups of words. It also tries to find images that correspond to your blog post. Pretty neat tool.

I decided to see how much comment spam my blog had. To my surprise it is almost 13,000 spam comments that have been caught. I was expecting to see a number around 500 or so.

I have decided to start using Twitter more frequently. I have never fully understood what that point of it was. I have found that you have to use it to figure out how you can benefit from it. I have already benefited from it by finding information based on other people tweets.

I am interested to hear how people are using Twitter. Please leave a comment and let me know.

As you can see, I changed my theme. I finally created my own like I’ve wanted to do all along. Please send you comments to let me know what you think.

I watched McCain’s and Obama’s speeches last night after Obama clinched the Presidency. I thought both men gave great speeches and I think the people of the United States have a great chance to take President-Elect Obama’s promise and run with it. Obama promised to listen to the people. The thing I like most about what Obama has done already for this country is that he has shown that the people really do have a say.

Although I am weary of Obama’s plan for this country I think we can start out with some positive momentum going into the next four years. If Obama can really get Washington’s act together we can start getting some work done. I was a supporter of Bush but over the last four years I got sick of his stubbornness. The constant battle between parties and standing on party lines instead of working hard to work for the people was getting old. Now we have a democratic president and democratic Senate and House if they can’t get something done the problems in this country are only going to get worse.

I believe we need to start looking past parties because it is getting in the way and not allowing the country to progress.

Lastly, I was disappointed in many of those in attendance at the McCain speech. When McCain mentioned Obama’s name people would boo. It is one thing to not agree with a candidate but I believe in respecting the office of the president. Obama is going to be our next president and he deserves this countries respect. Just remember, there is a difference between respect and agreeing with the President’s decisions. Too many people have forgotten this.

My congratulations go out to Barack Obama for his well deserved win and wish him the best in taking on the hardest job in the world.

I have enjoyed watching all the political skits on Saturday Night Live this election season. It is currently one of the few things about this election season that I am not getting tired of.

I have to say, my favorite was the McCain QVC TV spot.

I am subscribed to emails for both the McCain and Obama campaigns because I want to hear what both campaigns have to say. I have noticed something interesting. When I get an email from the McCain campaign it comes up and just asks if I want to load images. However, when I get an email from the Obama campaign, Thunderbird flags the emails as a scam. Is the Obama campaign a scam?

My personal opinion? I am scared about the change Obama wants to bring. Do I think this country needs change? Yes. Do I think Obama has the right kind of change? No. His ideas seam a little socialist to me. However, I am not too excited about John McCain. I am currently leaning towards a vote for Bob Barr.

One concern I have about this country is that too many people vote for their party instead of the best candidate. I encourage people to become informed voters! I really got interested in learning about candidates working with Phil Windley and seeing him really analyze the issues.

I downloaded Google Chrome as soon as I could. I’m always interested in trying out new Google products. They have always done a good job in my opinion. I use GMail, Google Apps, Google Reader, Picasa, etc. I’m a big Google fan.

I have liked Google Chrome so much that it is my default browser. Does it have everything I would like? No, not quite but it is showing promise.

One of the things I was surprised about was the fact that the browser wasn’t hooked into Google Bookmarks. I love the Google Toolbar and the Bookmark feature. I figured that this may be an addition later until I read on a user forum about the idea of integrating Google Bookmarks into the browser. Google is probably trying to avoid integrating their other products into the browser to avoid those anti-trust guys.

I am sure that there will be some sort of Google Toolbar for Google Chrome but it will be a plugin that you have to download. At the moment Chrome doesn’t support plugins but from the press release we know that those will be coming. I would love FireBug to be ported to Google Chrome. To develop my code I still use Firefox so I have FireBug support. The developer tools that are integrated into the browser are good but not as good as FireBug. However, they are much better then IE’s developer tools.

If you haven’t tried Google Chrome yet, I would recommend it. I love it!

Below is a video from CNN about Utah’s new 4-day work week.

Today was the first day of the “Working 4 Utah” initiative. This means that Utah State employees no work 4-10 hour days instead of 5-8 hour days. Ever since the announcement of the initiative the papers here in Utah have been writing stories about it. I have gone online and read some of the comments by people about state employees.

For some reason people think that 4-10s means less work then 5-8s even though it is still a 40 hour work week. I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to become a state employee because of of the stereotypes put on public employees. I was greatly surprised when I found people that work in the Department of Technology work just as hard if not harder then the people I worked with at Omniture.

Because of my findings amongst my fellow State employees I started thinking about my employment at Omniture. Some weeks I would put in 60-70 hours and sometimes even more. Even though we were at work longer at Omniture we didn’t get as much done as one might think hearing those numbers. The problem at Omniture was that if you didn’t stay late you were looked down upon even though you had a very successful day without staying late. I found that people at Omniture spend a lot of time watching TV, playing foosball, playing pool, etc.

Now at the state there isn’t much to do during breaks and lunch so people are focused on work. Looking back at my Omniture days I would say that we could have gotten the same amount of work done in a 40 hour week as we did in a 60 hour week. If people worked instead of played during the day they could be home more. I think in technology, people gauge your work by home many hours you put in at the office instead of how much work was done. I would go without a pool table or foosball table if that meant I would be focused on my work instead of knowing that I was expected to stay late even if I didn’t get anything done.

Another thing I noticed at Omniture was that after they brought dinner in for us, very little work got done. Now, I will admit that there are some people at Omniture that work long hours and get stuff done during every hour. However, those people are very few. It’s great to have a fun work place but not to the point that people expect me to sacrifice my family.

This week I have taken on new responsibilities at work. They have divided the development group in three groups. Internal Projects, New Projects and Support. I am the lead over the Support group which means I make sure the bugs get fixed in all our supported web apps as well as making enhancements to those web apps. I am also now in charge of web site projects. I have felt like I have been drinking out of a fire hose these first couple of days.

This is the kind of stuff I have wanted to do as I started my career in software development. Now that I have the chance I am excited and uncertain all at the same time. The hardest thing right now is just figuring all the things that need to get done. Once I get myself organized I am sure things will run a little smoother.

Just the first couple of days has helped me realize how important it is to be organized and how important it is to communicate clearly. I am in the process of figuring out the best way to organize all the work and how to follow up with developers and then bring it all together to help make solid, educated decisions.

If anyone has any good advice I would love to hear it. I want myself and my group to be successful.

So I am currently on the bus on my way into work. It is about 45 minutes on an express bus and then a shuttle bus that takes me up to the capitol building. When I first accepted the job with the State of Utah I was not excited about riding the bus. I knew I would have to since gas prices were too high to be able to drive to work every day.

Well, after almost 4 months of riding the bus, I have to say I love public transportation. UTA (Utah Transit Authority) now has Internet on all express busses and on Front Runner (the new commuter train that runs from Ogden to Salt Lake). The speed is a little slow but it allows me to get stuff done on the bus.

I must say. I am now a big fan of public transportation.

Yesterday Gov. Jon Huntsman of Utah announced that many state agencies will be moving to a condensed work week. Instead of a typical 5 day, 8 hour/day work week they will move to the 4 day, 10 hour/day work week.

The rumor had been swirling around the State Office Building on capitol hill but many of us thought they wouldn’t actually do it. However, yesterday morning al employees received an e-mail about it. This caused quite an uproar in the office. Most people are either strongly for it or strongly against it. I myself am one of the few that have mixed feelings. I am really excited about an extra day in my weekend to spend with my family. However, I am not excited about getting up an hour earlier and getting home an hour later.

I currently commute into Salt Lake from Springville which is about an hour south of Salt Lake. I currently take the bus because of ridiculous gas prices. I am one of the lucky bus riders that has a bus schedule that will easily accommodate my new work schedule. However, some people are not so lucky. One guy was saying yesterday that he would now have to leave home around 4:30am and he would not get home until around 8:00pm with the new 10 hour work day.

Gov. Huntsman said that the 4 day work week would be a trial run for a year so they can evaluate the impact. Most of us believe that the 4 day work week is here to stay. My wife and I have thought of moving closer to Salt Lake but with the housing market the way it is we don’t think we would be very successful in selling our house we bought a year ago.

There are currently many things the state still has to work out such as day care for employees as well as transportation concerns. They are launching the 4 day work week on August 4th and the plan to have most of those issues figured out before them. It was quite an aggressive move on the State’s part. All I have to say is that I’ll know how I really feel once I start working 10 hour days. I figure it will be like days I spent working at Omniture. The only difference is I get Fridays off.

So I switched jobs over a month and a half ago and I have always meant to write about why I changed jobs and I haven’t gotten around to it until now.

I started working at Omniture in May of 2006. I started out as an intern and for the almost two years I worked there I enjoyed it. However, I soon found myself working a lot of hours. Some days I was at work from 8:00am to midnight. A couple times of working late was fine and understandable but then it became a more regular thing.

After the late nights had gone on for a while I was realizing I was a away from my family too much and wasn’t able to fulfill some of my other responsibilities. Well, Omniture had me convinced that they paid really well. So for a while I just worked the late nights to support my family.

After a while I started talking to some of my buddies and found out that I was working a lot more hours then they were doing the same thing. I also found out I was getting paid less then most of them. One buddy told me that he worked for the State of Utah and never had to work more then 40 hours and he thought I should apply. I applied for two jobs at the with the State and was offered a position at the Office of Education. Unfortunately, the offer required me to take a $17,000/year pay cut. The was out of the question. I figured I’d do the other interview with the Department of Technology services. I wasn’t counting on an offer being much better from them. However, in the end I was offered just as much as Omniture was paying me.

My wife and I discussed the new offer and decided it was not a bad deal. Same pay, fewer hours and great benefits. I decided to take the job. Since March 10th I have been a employee for the State of Utah and enjoy that I am home more with my family now with an hour commute then I was with a 15 minute commute.

The point of this is that it is disappointing that there are so many people that ask a lot of hours from their employees but don’t compensate them for the time away from their family. My boss at Omniture told me they pay for all those hours and we shouldn’t need to be compensated. I think people higher up in the company forget that lower employees such as myself don’t benefit from the long hours like they did. They worked all those hours and made a lot of money but when the lower employees put in that amount of time they pay them a measly salary.

Don’t get me wrong. I miss working at Omniture but I had to decide whether Omniture was my family or my wife and kids were my family.

So I was little bored at one point in my life and decided to create a little page for my MyMiniCity.com city. MyMiniCity.com provides you with a link to each city that gives you XML with the current information about your city. So, instead of having to figure out what my city needed and entering the correct link, I just created a page that looked at the properties of my city and suggested the best link for me. So now I can go to http://www.dansworkshop.net/myminicity/olsen-land/ and I will be provided with a link that will best help my city.

If you don’t know what I am talking about your can go to http://myminicity.com and you’ll see what I am talking about.

I also created another page that gives me links that I regularly visit to help others with their cities. http://www.dansworkshop.net/myminicity/other/.

So I attended my first caucus last night as a mentioned in my previous post. I went in with the intent to just get a feel of what actually happens at a caucus. I must say that it was an awesome experience. For anyone who wishes to be active in politics, attending your state caucuses is a great way to actually get involved. There were about 20 in attendance last night which is far from the number of individuals who reside in the precinct. In some ways it was nice to have a small group but on the other hand I was disappointed that more people don’t care.

I am a believer in the idea that if you don’t participate in the political process you have no right to complain about your government. A young man I took with me to the caucus was not excited about going but he left with the understanding that if you want the government to hear your voice then you must participate in how officials are elected. The other young man I took with me loved the caucus. He was even more excited to find out that he could actually participate since he will be 18 by the November election. I wish I saw more young people getting involved even though they can’t vote. I’m sure if more adults were active in the political process we would see more young people joining in. Just because you can’t vote doesn’t mean your concerns about the government can’t be heard.

In conclusion, the two main topics that were discussed in our caucus were the budget/debt and education. I think I was in the minority since I voted against private school vouchers in the state of Utah. I believe that vouchers had good intentions but did not provide an equal opportunity for everyone. If we want to allow people to choose whether to send their kids to private school then we should give the poor as much of an opportunity as those with money. I don’t know how to do it but we need to make sure we don’t make more of a divide between the rich and the poor. I actually think that we should focus on making our public schools better and I think the best way to do that is require that parents be more involved in their children’s education. That is a big reason I believe charter schools and private schools are more successful. A student must have more then just the school educating them.

And there you have my brain dump.

Tonight are the Utah caucuses and I hope everyone gets out and has their voice heard. I am planning on going tonight which will be my first caucus. Over the past couple of years I’ve been more and more interested in politics. I actually changed jobs and I know work up at the state office building. I’m excited for the opportunity to go over and watch the state house and senate when they are in session.

Tonight we are taking a couple of young men from our church over to the caucus for our weekly activity. One of them is excited to go and see how a caucus works. The other says he is not interested. I think it is important to be part of the political process. I think those who don’t want to participate have no right to complain about their government.

I started to take an interest in politics when I saw my data being politically active and going to the state caucuses. Also with everything going on in the nation as well as in the state of Utah I have become more interested in making sure I am heard. So if you are not getting out and being a part of the political process then I don’t want to you hear you complain about your government officials.

I don’t know how many people have seen MyMiniCity. You can go to my city and see what it is about and then go and set up your own city.

I am testing Windows Live Writer to see if it is worth installing on my home computer for my wife to post to our own family blog. I’m always up to hear what others have to say about Windows Live Writer.