I was asked today, "What would you be doing... in an ideal world?".

I'm currently wrapping up a consulting engagement with a customer (will be ending the end of this month) and am actively looking for a new gig. In doing so, I met with someone (withholding names for the moment) who asked me this question. My answer, was basically this:

I want to walk into a company that's having issues - either with their existing solutions, their need for solutions, or their need to integrate their current solutions - and get the job done!

As I mention in my About page: I get a geek-flavored buzz from helping someone with a problem! I did not say, "I want to retire when I'm 30" or something of that ilk - I am one of those really lucky people who gets to do what he loves! The problem is - I'm not a sales person (at least to the extent that I can sell myself cold), so the majority of my engagements/customers are gained from 3rd-party or from word-of-mouth/referrals. Know of any such gigs? Comment here or email me - or comment for the other consultants out there if you have resources, tips, and tricks on how to land that dream gig!

We've all been there (especially consultants) - you're trying to increase the speed and performance of a horribly functionning application that was written circa 1999 and you're looking for a quick win. The database itself functions, albeit it's bloated and not designed very forward-thinking... but it's functional - just not very fast! So, you immediately start ripping it apart to see where you can trim it down for a v.+1 patch.

I ran into this myself just recently - my new client has their most critical business application... and it takes in upwards of 5 minutes to open a single document.

So I says, "Self... let's look under the hood!". And what I found was a pretty functional application that was more or less bogged down by it's UI. That's right, painting the screens was one - if not the biggest - issue resulting in a pitifully slow, business critical solution.

So - to troubleshoot (read: here's a hint to those who need to troubleshoot), I did the following:

1. Created a Computed Text instance on the main form.
2. ... with the following formula: @Text(@Now)
3. Copy and Paste this throughout the tabbed UI

When I launched the form the next time, I could literally see the lag in painting the screen represented via the timestamps visible as I went from tab to tab on the form. I could see the 5 minutes of lag, and more importantly, how that 5 minutes was spent.

I'll put a few more of these tips up here... a few things that I did to get that application that launched in 5 minutes to launch in under 30 seconds from the slowest of machines over the company WAN. There's a few more nuggets out there that I think will help us developers always looking to shed seconds off of loadtimes and functions!

Hear ye hear ye! Good friends of mine (due to their non-Sales sales approaches, honest business practices, and quality people up front and behind the scenes - which is a rare thing all around in IBM BPs today...) Resolutions Consulting, are hosting the Philadelphia area's IBM/Lotus Notes Domino 7 Live event, which not only includes the formal pre-Lotusphere introduction to ND7, but also offers a chance to sample some of the 3rd party solutions that run on the technology. Should prove interesting all around, and something that I'll try to make it out to schedule permitting.

Event Information

Date:	October 27, 2005
Time:	8:00AM to 2:15PM
Location:	The Villanova Conference Center
Sign Up:	Click here to read more and sign-up today!

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And on a personal note... I need help!

I'm going to try and get this addressed sometime tonight, but I'm a firm believer in using a hammer to drive a nail instead of a wrench, and when it comes to RSS feeds (and more importantly the reason that they won't work), I'm but a loley wrench!

The feed, found here just ain't workin' as of right now? Ideas?!

Update

Thanks to Vince, this site now has an official feed!