And here's what we got:
So a while back I mentioned going back to school. In fact, I even recall writing a collection of articles all about the subject. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it in my twitter (or at the very least, bitched about it). Well unlike the real world, College gives you large, void-filled breaks between semesters. This allows people like me ample time to run out of excuses for things we should have either done, or been doing during the academic time frame.
In my case this revolves around:
Now since only a couple of those are actually proactive (I’ll leave you to decide which) I have to pick and choose what and when I do these things. What is the result? Well to give you a glimpse, it’s almost 2 AM as of the start of this post. This is after I applied to many, many bursaries through my school. Who knew that working two jobs wouldn’t be enough to actually stay out of debt? Guess I’ll have to get some more!
My financial woes are not what I plan to talk about today though. I plan to talk about what I can take away from my first semester.
Okay, technically this would be my seventh semester if you are counting the six from the last time I was in school. That is also part of this so read on!
I despise scope creep with every part of my being. To me, scope creep is comparable to nails on a chalk board, or having my hand slammed in a door again and again and again. It is the ruiner of projects, products, and I’m sure I could find some way to tie it into how Rock and/or Roll music is obviously ruining society. It takes what would in most cases be a solid project, a solid time line, and solid analysis, and tosses them all to the winds.
A quick, simple, and generalized definition: Scope Creep is when someone (yourself or otherwise) adds new functionality, features, or other additions while still expecting your project/product/whatever to still be due by the same time.
I tried to create a Custom List. I had event receivers attached to custom lists and i got this:
Cannot insert the value NULL into column ‘Name’, table ‘[somesharepointcontentdatabase].dbo.EventReceivers’;
column does not allow nulls. INSERT fails.
The statement has been terminated.
I found out what this means and how to get around it.
Everyone’s done it. We get lazy, we’re pressed for time, or we otherwise don’t care enough to standardize our stuff. I can note this most prevalently in code, but it easily extends into design and every day life.
I cannot claim to be innocent of this crime, nor would I. It takes effort, experience, and an iron will not to cut corners in everything you do.
I’m sick of Crummy User Experience (CUE). I’m sure there are many ways to describe it, and everyone can relate. Crummy User Experience is a broad term that generally describes when you -the user- interact with something -web form, bank machine, car door, etc- and it sucked, or sucks depending on you’re lifes requirements.
Recently I had to sign up for a couple sites, I won’t say what ones because I don’t wish to bring them any undo ire. What they did wrong was no different than many other sites do on a repeated basis: they didn’t tell me what to do.