In my case this revolves around:

• My portfolio
• Posts with real content
• Reading books
• Spending time with Theresa while she is down from that god-forsaken place North Bay.
• Aimlessly trying to catch up on my games

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!

1. Being lazy sucks

This may come as a shock to some of you, but I was not always a star pupil. Oh no, in fact I used to revel in my ability to half-ass almost any project and end up with a 65-70 (that’s a C to a B- to the rest of the world) on any given assignment or project. If I didn’t like the course, I would try even less and be happy with a 55-58 (D to D+). My parents browbeat me, my teachers clucked their tongues and shook their heads, but I just breezed though my University-level (that’s Canadian fancy-talk for advanced) courses. By doing the University-level courses and applying to College, my average was bumped up considerably, and I got into College.

So you would think that since my parents were paying, and I had just managed to squeak by, that I would learn the error of my ways, straighten-up and fly right.

You would think wrong, of course.

By the end of my college stint, with the exception of a couple of classes (Web Development 1,2 and 3 pretty much) I was still hovering around that 70. The only thing that landed me the job that I got was through determination, charisma, and steaming piles of luck.

This kind of thing only works so well and for so long.

Working this job changed a lot of things. First, I learned how to stay up for long periods of time. Second, I learned to hate take-out food (don’t worry I’m getting better now). Third, it beat the lazy out of me with the Crowbar of Client Dead-lines. I learned that being lazy when people are paying you is a very good way to get your ass fired. I wasn’t fired, but believe me that there was no alternative to hard work. In many ways I am thankful for this.

When the opportunity came along for me to go back to school for something that interests me way more than keyboard-jockeying, I took it. With that decision came many things in quick succession:

1. Getting a second job
2. Saving like a bastard
3. Tuition, books, and other school bills
4. Losing my full-time, nicely-waged job
5. Homework
6. More goddamned bills
7. Tests, presentations, and apparently a video

If this had happened the first time I went through school, I probably would have killed myself, my family, or everyone I know in a murderous rage by now. Thankfully, through my on-the-job experience, I had learned how to organize my work, get it done, and still manage to find time to sleep.

I’d like to point out that because if this skill, I have managed to work two jobs while maintaining an average of 90% + overall so far. I don’t know how to explain this any better than I already have: being lazy sucks. If you have issues with being lazy, procrastinating, or otherwise messing-about, believe me that you have to work constantly against those urges. I have to all the time, but in the end you only screw yourself if you get lazy.

2. Keep your stuff safe

Dropbox. I love Dropbox. I could sing praises for this system for hours. Well okay, probably more like 15 minutes max, but that’s not the point here. Dropbox allows you to synchronize files within a certain directory (the Dropbox folder, shockingly) to their web servers. What does this mean? It means that everything in that folder can be accessed through their online web interface. and what does that mean? It means that if your are ever separated from your computer, your computer explodes, or anything in between you can still get to the files stored on their servers. You can also hook multiple computers into the same account, and it will sync the files between them as well. This allows you to share files between computers that may not be anywhere near the same network.

I’m not trying to sell you anything (it’s actually a free for the basic level), but it does assist in my point. Keeping your stuff safe is as important when it comes to school as it does ot your home. Thankfully, I didn’t have any horrible experiences with exploding computers or file separation, but it was still a good practice. By using this system, I safeguard myself against very bad situations. Colleges and Universities really don’t care all that much of your personal plights. In fact many teachers I’ve had I’ve overheard them say “well that sucks, too bad.”

You can’t stop every bad thing from happening, but you can take preventative measures.

3. Organization actually works.

I hate organizers. I still do! With their paper and their spiral binding, bah! Thankfully, I found alternatives that work. As it happens, I use Thunderbird. The nice thing about Thunderbird, much like Firefox, is the ability to use add-ons. Lightning (an add-on version of Sunbird) and a Provider for Google Calendars have allowed me to get my shit together without the use of those silly paper-based organizers.

Please note that I have met many people who prefer the paper-based organizers: I was basically born with a mouse in my hand, so I’m inclined to use technology whenever possible. It’s a failing I live with.

In any case, Lightning allows you to have a calendar built into Thunderbird. It also provides an interface to create tasks as well, though I don’t use those. The Google Calendar plugin allows you to use Lightning with Google Calendars. This means that much like the Dropbox argument, you can still access your calendars if your computer explodes. I have made a personal, work, homework/assignment, and school schedule calendars. For the first time, I actually know what things are due when, and how to schedule my time around work and other things. It’s silly to think that it took me this long to figure out that organizing things actually helps get things done faster.

If you don’t use Thunderbird, Google Calendars, or computers in general, you can still work to get yourself organized. I can honestly say that once I introduced the organizer strategy,

4.Go that extra mile

I spent five hours working  on a typography exercise that involved me making an apple. Five hours of tweezers, 12 point font, and rubber cement. Sounds insane, doesn’t it? Well, it probably does but it also shows a determination to really put out something that is more than “alright.”

This one comes with at least some backup facts. I’ve only got three of my marks back (out of six), but everything has been above a 90. I’ve been known to spend hours and hours on things that others have put together in one or two. Does that mean I’m overdoing it? Very probably, I have no illusions that I may be going well beyond the call of duty here. That is also my point though: Spending that extra time can (in most cases) result in a more polished product.

This is something I’ve learned over time. Back when I was lazy, I was the master of doing everything last-minute. This wasn’t a lack of organization or anything, I chose to do everything at the last minute because part of me felt that I operated best under the pressure. As it turns out, I do alright under pressure and there is nothing wrong with that. But I do amazingly well, as it turns out, when I have the extra time to self-critique, improve, revise, and even experiment.

Is there anything wrong with only spending two hours on something and getting a 75% (B) on what you did? Not at all, if what you’re looking for is a 75%. Since that’s no where near what I want out of the education I am paying for (and it’s not cheap, though I’m sure there are some angry University students that would love to talk to me), I have to put in the extra time myself. I want to be the best I can, and school only gives you the tools in which to do that; it’s up to you to use them to the best of your ability.

5. Don’t be a Dick

Note: I am so sorry for the amount of times ‘dick’ comes up in this section. This is going to play havoc with my SEO.

This sounds simple, but it’s actually harder than one would think. The issue is that it goes two ways, and it’s easy to act like a dick when you don’t even realize:

Being the Dick

This is pretty simple. If you act like a dick, you are being the dick. Acting like a dick can be, but is not limited to the following:

• Boasting about any/everything you do.
• Trying to out-boast anyone else (they may be dicks, but you’re a bigger one).
• Rubbing marks in peoples face.
• Saying how awesome you are at something, and then criticizing the teacher (publicly).
• Being snooty, arrogant, or otherwise acting “better” than others.
• Making fun of people (grow the fuck up kthnx).
• Picking fights, either physical or mental.

When you do things like this, it may make you feel better. It may make you feel confident and self-assured. It will make everyone around you loathe whenever you open your word hole. Friends that you have will come to resent you, and you will end up with fewer contacts coming out of school, and less leway with people when it’s needed.

Returning the Dickness

This is the one people don’t realize. you may think that “an eye for an eye” is a good mandate to follow, but when other people want to start gouging your eyes out, there’s an issue. Here are easy ways to return the dickness without realizing it:

• Trying to shut up a dick by attacking their person, ability, etc.
• Trying to out boast someone to shut them up/put them in their place (once again, you are the bigger dick).
• Faux modesty (you’re not fooling anyone).
• Following suit with a dick (joining in with mocking, criticizing etc.).
• Being a dick to a dick because their a dick.

Some of those are fairly obvious, but a couple are less obvious.

Trying to act modest just annoys people. You’re really not fooling anyone. When someone gives you a compliment, take it, and return something in kind. Don’t elaborate on your greatness, nor say that you suck and don’t know how you got the mark you did. That will make them feel even worse, they’ll think you’re a liar, and you may even start to believe it yourself. Undermining your own self-confidence doesn’t help anyone.

When being a dick towards a dick, you may think you are giving them a taste (heh) of their own medicine. You may know what you’re doing, but those around you may not perceive it the same way; they may just see two dicks trying to out-dick one another. On top of that, the dick you are being a dick to may not even realize you are being a dick towards them. The result of this is that you look like a dick, but got none of the supposed revenge.

Not being the Dick

This should be fairly apparent, but for the sake of completeness, I will include a list for this anyways. I’m always a fan of things being full-circle. Anyways, how to not be a dick:

• Be helpful. When people ask for help, help them if you can.
• Give constructive criticism. “That sucks” isn’t doing anyone any good. “You could try doing this for this reason” will glean a much better reception.
• Be kind. Don’t rip on people when something isn’t good. You can be kind with constructive criticism as much as you can with compliments.
• Accept compliments, and return in kind.
• Don’t single people out to rip on them. It doesn’t help anyone.
• Be courteous. There’s nothing wrong with “please” and “thank you”.

Generally to avoid being a dick, you have to be a generally good and nice person. I’m not saying I exhibit all of these traits (far from, really); what I’m saying is that you should try to exhibit as many as you can. It’s a process of continuous improvement.

6. Do your work

This doesn’t even need a large section, and by all accounts it shouldn’t really have to be on here. Make time to do your work, and for crap sake, do your work. I can’t tell you how many people I know in my section that lost marks simply because they didn’t do assignment. Generally speaking, you cannot lose marks for trying. If you don’t hand something in, you get a zero. If you hand in crap, you can get a one. One is infinitely better than zero (quiet, math nerds), and handing assignments in can only help your cause.

It is this point that probably caused most of my lost marks. Many assignments in my last stint in College went completely undone; ignored for the sake of ignoring them. I can’t honestly say that I even had better things to do because I was just lazy back then. Teachers even told me that if I just handed something in, it would help my marks, but I scoffed at their wisdom, and ended up (in some cases) with a 58%. I have no defense for it, and now I understand what they were saying.

7. Figure out how to study

This one was probably the hardest for me, and of course it is also the point that gave me the most. It was by a freak accident that I found out how to study effectively. I was in the school lounge one day when someone asked me if I had studied for the test. “What test?” I responded (this is before the organizer thing). I then had two hours to learn 1/3rd of my textbook. It may sound insane, but I figured out a process of reading and constant quizzing is actually how I learned best. I’ve refined it a bit since then, and it now involves me writing the points down, highlighting them, force memorizing them, and having people quiz me on things in random order. By the end of the session I will have forgotten my name, my address, and how to drive, but God damn do I know the course material.

I never used to be this way. I used to depend entirely on my ability to recall from memory. As it turns out that works, but it’s not 100% for me. By combining my passive ability with active studying, I can make sure I know what I need to.

I’m not saying that this will work for you. Hell, some people would look at my method and crap themselves. Others would look at this (my girlfriend comes to mind) and say that it’s not nearly enough. I’m not here to sell my method, though if it works for you go nuts, I’m simply saying that studying is worth it in the end.  Find the best way for you to study, and go for it. It might take a couple takes to get it right, but there’s a way for everyone.

8. Take time to relax

At first glance, you would think that this point would directly contrast others that I have made. You would be wrong, but I can totally understand how you would do that. Let me explain:

Taking time for yourself is not being lazy, it is not skipping out on work, and it is not aiming for the average. It can be if your relaxation time is way too large, and causes those points to happen. It all comes down to balance with relaxation time. All work and no play make jack a dull boy. It’s very true, you know. When you don’t take time for yourself, you will eventually become frustrated, irritable, and probably end up shooting the mailman.

Taking time to relax and recharge has benefits that I don’t need to voice. I’m sure a brief search on the Internet will tell you more than I ever could. It makes you feel better, which will help you work better. It also takes your mind off of things, which can result in you having a flash of brilliance on a problem you were having. I’ve always found that taking an hour for a bath and a book (shut up, I don’t need to hear what a wuss I sound like) leaves me feeling way better.

I’m sure I’m missing many points that I could probably rig up, but after 3000 words, I’m running out of brain and witty banter. I hope that my points on my education can help, maybe even educate, some others. If you have your own points to add, feel free to comment with them.

I would love for the simple answer to be to say “No.” To stand up for your project plan and combat the forces of evil that are working tirelessly to ruin your brain-child. Unfortunately saying no generally lands you in the dog house with your superior, or fired and replaced with someone who may or may not be your better.

Many of us know that taking the direct approach will generally land us in the unemployment line, and so people generally tend to do nothing. I’m not saying it doesn’t work, but I can say that you have to be on very good terms with whoever you are dealing with if you want to pull a stunt like this. For the record: clients like this even less than bosses, so you can easily swap the two. If the client drops you because of your nay nay attitude, you could still end up in the unemployment line making my visual just as real.

So what can you do?

Talk it through

You can always try and talk them out of it, or at the very least discuss the validity of adding their new bauble to the project at all, let alone so late into it. This option is usually attempted in the “last-ditch” phase of everything, which is a shame because that is when it is least useful. Try this tactic first if only for the fact that it poses the least amount of backlash. The ensuing discussion could actually lead to different approaches or insights that may actually help you with the newest addition, or even another part of your project. You may end up doing it, but at least everyone knows where they stand.

Bargain.

This doesn’t always work, but it is generally worth a shot. The most painless and the easiest to approach, try bargaining with your client/boss to see if you can avoid their addition, or add it to a later release. I suggest the latter because if the suggestion isn’t utterly retarded, then you have a goal for the next release which will make everyone happy. If, however, it is bat-shit insane to add then try and talk them down from their idea.

Make sure the request isn’t documented anywhere, and other devious things

This way you can “forget” either willingly or by taking advantage of your piss-poor memory. I don’t personally suggest this because unless your cliboss (made it up, and I’m going with it) shares your goldfish memory, they’ll probably neglect to mention it until you think you’ve gotten away with your scheme, and now you’re stuck doing the late shift. This will also probably make you look like an idiot, and send you down on the foodchain. From what I have seen, experienced, and otherwise know, I can honestly say that subterfuge works the least in almost any professional situation.Unless you’re a professional con-man, you’re probably going to be seen right through. Save yourself the agony and try a more legitimate approach.

Suck it up buttercup

You could of course do the work. This is an option, and one that many people are stuck doing. Sometimes you can’t get out of it, and it will hurt you inside every time. This is doubly so if it is legitimately your fault. If you missed something in your analysis phase, it makes you feel more like a moron when you’re burning that midnight oil to meet your cliboss’ (still using it) expectations. An easy way to help avoid this is to make sure you do a solid and thorough job on your information gathering and analysis. Make sure you involve the required parties to actually cover the angles needed. This won’t stop scope creep every time, but at the very least you can be safe and sure that it is not of your doing. Bitterness is better when it’s not directed at yourself.

Stick with “No”

If none of those work, you can still say no. The only way this can work is to back up your negativity with solid proof that by including feature X into your doodad, you will not be able to hit the deadline. You’ll generally need to back this up with graphs, numbers, and strong reasons as to why it can’t be done. You’ll still get the skunk eye, but at least you can feel better knowing that you can back up your stance with information to support you. This also has the added bonus of making sure that someone in charge is informed, which takes much of the responsibility out of your hands. Granted this may not add up to doing anything more than wasting time, because some times the addition just has to be in there. It sucks, but sometimes you’re boned either way.

Sometimes you’ll end up getting screwed over and end up working late or whatever you need to do to get the job done. It’s not really avoidable in ever scenario. You can limit how often it happens though. The best way is to make sure you’ve covered your bases throughout the entire process with sign-offs and cliboss interaction. The more they are involved from the start the more personal responsibility they will feel, and the more information you can work with from the get go.

Then I tried to create a Custom List. I had event receivers attached to custom lists (ListTemplateID=100 for those who care) 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.

Took me a good two hours of trying everything I could think of with my XML and code, only to be repeatedly thwarted by this database-level error! I tried commenting out different sections of my receivers and still got the error. When I commented the entire <Receivers> section, things ran fine, but not the <Receiver> items inside. What the hell is going on? Read on!

I’ll give an example of what I’m talking about here – the following comes from MSDN:

feature.xml:
<Feature
Scope=”Web”
Title=”Simple Updating Item Event Handler Registration”
Id=”A6B8687A-3200-4b01-AD76-09E8D163FB9A”
xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/”>
<ElementManifests>
<ElementManifest Location=”elements.xml”/>
</ElementManifests>
</Feature>

inside the feature.xml file (above) it references the following file:

elements.xml:

<Elements xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/”>
<Receivers
ListTemplateOwner=”ADDABAAA-1111-2222-3333-111111111111″
ListTemplateId=”104″>
<Receiver>
<Name>SimpleUpdateEvent</Name>
<Type>ItemUpdating</Type>
<SequenceNumber>10000</SequenceNumber>
<Assembly>SimpleUpdateEventHandler, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=10b23036c9b36d6d</Assembly>
<Class>MS.Samples.SimpleItemUpdateHandler</Class>
<Data></Data>
<Filter></Filter>
</Receiver>
</Receivers>
</Elements>

This works fine. Here’s something interesting though: any comments – <!– Like this –> - you have in the <Receivers> node will be literally interpreted as <Receiver> nodes! That means whenever it tries to attach event receivers to any list, it treats the comments as actual receivers! That’s right, for whatever reason, the code that ties event receivers to lists literally loops through every node (comments are still considered nodes!) and tries to use them instead of using any sort of XPath. How hard is it to use “//Elements/Receivers/Receiver” as your node collection XPath? I really hope whoever wrote that code got the ruler or something.

The solution: Remove comments from your Feature xml file(s).

I say this because God only knows where else this is happening, and the odds of you realizing that it is something that should just work, like comments, are probably not that high. Remember folks, sometimes the most obtuse problems have the most simple answers. Try not to over-think things.

A huge thank you must go out to Janne Mattila for being the first (and apparently only according to Google) documenting this. I wish I had looked sooner.

I’m bringing this up from an exceptionally small thing I noticed while at work today. As I have previously stated, I work with SharePoint. Much of the time I am branding it (though not in my current project!) and so I have a rather intimate and abusive relationship with the program. I find myself constantly finding weird styling quirks put into the environment that prove that SharePoint was built by a large group of people.

There are many instances within SharePoint – and I’m sure within WSS as well – where certain styles that should be consistent end up being done completely different ways. I wish I had a screen shot as an example, but you’ll have to use your imagination here. Picture two dropdown buttons. When you hover over them, they glow, and a menu appears. No picture the HTML for both dropdown buttons being completely different, with no shared styles or markup whatsoever.

This happens all over the place. Hell, there is markup all over the place that is either broken, non-standard (don’t get me started on WSS/SharePoint and it’s default markup) and over 6 thousand lines of styles if you add up all the sheets. 6 thousand! There is no need for that, and yet it exists because of – say it with me now – the lack of consistency.This lack of consistency then cascades down to people like me, who are stuck styling the damned things. Had there been a discussion between the differing groups, or the markup left to a third group so that they could all be structured the same way other peoples lives would then be made easier.

Another example I can bring up is with code. My code, my co-workers code, random interweb code, it happens everywhere. It is far more frequent when you work on rapid products, or many projects that build off of their predecessor. I can speak from experience that unless you code with the future in mind you will end up patching things… usually more than once.

In a perfect world you’d be able to properly scope your work out, develop your use cases, figure out your flow, and develop in a modular, expandable way. This of course requires a couple things: Time, patience, and knowledge. I can assure you that even if you think you have all three you don’t. The only time this can ever happen is when you are developing something for yourself and even then more often than not you’re just throwing something together for your own use, and those tend to be the worst for patch jobs… at least from my experience.

In the end all I can say is plan things out. Figure out a system and stick to it; even if it’s not the best it will at least not be the best everywhere. This makes it much easier to upgrade/fix later on. If you come up with 5 different solutions for 5 different things when they could all share common attributes, you are just making more work for yourself.

Save your time, your brain, and your fellow workers from the agony of added work brought about by inconsistency. Get a game plan, stick with it, and for the love of god: be consistent.

P.S. I managed to spell consistency wrong every time in this post while writing it.

P.P.S. Except for the one in the first postscript.

Update:

Success! I have a screen shot of the dropdown menus in question!
(Technically this update happened before the post went public, but whatever)

Most people have no problem with following these rules, though I will say that my address will forever be 123 Fake St. unless something is getting shipped to me. The problem is not in the rules but in their explanation to us.

Sometimes websites are very clear about what they want by specifying it in clear, concise language: “Username must be between 5 and 11 characters and contain at least 1 number” or “Postal Code example: A1B 2C3“. This is a good practice because assuming your users are idiots will ironically result in a much lower screwup rate.

The point I’m getting to here is when you don’t state you’re rules, your users will default to basic behavior. Most people don’t know that usernames tend to have numbers in them now, and I’m sure even less know that because of your half-assed attempt at regex the postal code needs to be in capitals.

What does this mean? Well depending on how you set up the form users may be forced to fill it all out again. This is a pain in the ass to start, and when you throw in the fact that many websites do not include detailed error messages (error summaries people, error summaries) the users may -and in my case will- be forced to fill out the same form multiple times.

This is an example of CUE. Lazy programmers and lazy testing tend to be the main cause of form-based issues. I know this because I was a lazy programmer who submitted his stuff to a very thorough quality assurance person. He turned around and ripped my form apart. I learned quickly that by putting forth the additional effort into planning it all out and doing the job right, that two things would happen: the first thing is that I’d have less work coming back from the QA guys. The second was that I realized I was creating the same thing that annoyed me so often on the web. I’m a reformed man as a result.

What I’m trying to get at is that when you’re building something, no matter what it is, try and look at it from the end-users stand point. This can be a difficult task at time and believe me when I say that it takes some practice. You have to figure how users can screw things up that you find straight-forward and fix said things.

Once you know how they can screw them up, save yourself some time and tell them how not to screw them up. As long as you stop their input from decimating your server (sanitize your inputs, people) you can make your life easier by telling the user how to do things the right way.

That’s not lazy, that’s empowering.

Another step is to make sure that when they do screw up (which they will) make sure you tell them what they actually did wrong. DHTML and AJAX controls depending on your validation requirements, can be fantastic ways to validate on the fly… assuming you don’t make your error messages jarring (i.e. javascript popup messages are bad, don’t do them) or elusive (top of the page? I’m 15 inches down the form, I’m not going to see that) or cryptic “An error occurred.”

Once again, ask yourself what you would expect the user to see when they go through it. Do you really think big JavaScript popups are the best way to tell the user that their postal code can’t have spaces? Probably not, but I’m sure it made sense at the time.

I know I’m using submission forms heavily as my example here, but the idea is still the same. Once you’re done building your whateveritis, try it out yourself. Try drawing up some use-cases get some friends or colleagues to try it out. Pretend you’re a blathering idiot, and see how well you do then. Hell, find a blathering idiot and point him in your whatchimacallits direction. Do whatever you have to to get the sense of the users process. Find the problem areas with your thingimajigs before they become the bane of every end-users (which in turn will become the bane of your) life.

Don’t be lazy, and do it right the first time people.