Rampidbyter Rampid byter: A byte of my .Net developing life.

I took the 70-528 MCTS Web 2.0 certification today. Passed it and now can add the MCTS to my resume. I didn’t blog about it, I did tweet it though, but I decided to do a challenge to myself to get one certification a month until the new year. The last certifications I took for were back in 2007, with one upgrade failure in 2008ish, but since then I hadn’t really felt the need to get any additional certifications (especially when MCSD expired.)

Since I’m a independent consultant now it seemed to behoove me to get additional certifications. For the simple fact when I list them the description web/desktop with framework number helps HR see I'm still relevant to their search. Considering my current job duties focus mainly on web development I’d really like to get a few desktop and database related certifications in the list.

I scheduled the exam two weeks ago, studied each evening, and took it today with a successful result. What was even more awesome was I actually found Microsoft has a certification pack deal going on where you get a big discount WITH second shots for each certification in the pack. I bought the 3-exam pack and saved a boat load of money AND get free second-shot chances if I blow the first try. For the month of October I have my first MCTS in web, and looking forward to getting more in the coming months.

A long while ago before the iPad came out I made a post about the iPad being the perfect business device. In the last few months of actually owning the iPad, and actually taking it to work I can safely say it’s “almost” the perfect business PC. It’s kind of funny that at the clients I sit in a cube next to another guy with an iPad. In addition the main network admin at the facility also has an iPad at work. Each of us bring it to work for different purposes. The network admin uses it to troubleshoot network outages, mobile email device, and other associated duties. The developer I mentioned uses it for a variety of things such as at-home leisure gaming, project management, to-do task manager, notes, and development testing for the new apps being developed at the clients.

I wish I could say I use my iPad for more business related activities. I do take notes on it, reference development blogs/material, personal and business emails, and social media applications. I primarily use it as a mobile email device where I can have access to emails without needing them on a work PC. I mostly enjoy the ability to email a PDF to my iPad email address, import it into iBooks, and then have the ability to read that PDF at any time with the device.

The iPad has certainly changed the way I interact with computers. I take it with me almost everywhere. It’s my GPS, book shelf, TV, arcade gaming device, online comic reader, news source, and my social media device. I have all of my comics linked on the home screen, tech blogs, and new sites all available with a single tap. The best thing again is the pinch so I can change the screen to hide all the ads or distracting site floaters to get straight to the content meat. I can watch tech demonstrations via YouTube, and I can regularly update my Facebook and Twitter statuses for no one to read.

After having it for so long it’s still hard to justify the purchase of the device. It’s easy to sway people though. Since starting at the client people constantly stop to ask questions about the iPad. We actually managed to make a fellow developer so envious of our iPads that he went on a lunch break to buy one. It was neat seeing the device unboxed and his excitement, but as soon as he turned it on the iTunes prompt displayed. It’s kind of a buzz kill we all have to go through on first unboxing.

Still with any device there are problems. The big problem with the iPad is its design leads it to be primarily a data consumption device. Tapping out words with the virtual keyboard is slow, and is very cumbersome depending on how the device is held. That is a very big impact to producing any content via the device. Sure, they make an iPad keyboard dock called the Mac Air (ha.) Seriously though considering the price you might as well buy a Mac Air instead of an iPad if you actually want to create content in any timely manner on a very portable device. Still for being a consumption laden device it does its primary job well. The only limitation in fact is AT&T on 3G or availability of free wifi when you’re roaming.

Again, it’s “almost” there to being the perfect business device. The intuitive interfaces, the easy-to-use app store integration, and natural gesture motions make the device a gem of simplistic computing. The consistency and enforcement of development standards helps alleviate any bottlenecks to downloading an app and using it immediately. Don’t get me wrong I still don’t condone the Marxist control that Apple has over the device, but since the devices are easily rooted it’s still an even playing field. Either way it goes the iPad is still the only tablet device you could ever need.

The last three weeks has been a whirlwind of work. I started work October 4th with my first official client. I managed to land a six month contract for a staff augmentation role helping to relieve a backfilled position. The environment is eerily similar to a job I had a few years ago. Small development staff, large queue of critical work to be performed, and a very large legacy code base being revamped with no documentation. I’m noticing a trend…

The company itself deals in pre-paid debit cards, and essentially acts as a banking institution for its many customers. My first week was one giant brain dump. I learned the systems, the third party providers, business processes, and did a big code dive. I also ended up getting a bit of a glimpse into the financial world of pimps and prostitutes on how they launder money. I learned about MoneyPak fraud rings, and how incredibly dumb some would be defrauders are.

I can’t go into the specifics of what I’m doing, but it’s mostly been improving internal business applications and site redesign work. This last week was working solely on improving an emailing system that relies heavily on ExactTarget web services. I redesigned the internal email submission system with an improvement in efficiency of more than 50%. However, please note that ExactTarget isn’t exactly a speedy email submission system. I established a baseline for non-async triggered send mail requests at 10 minutes per 1000 emails sent. The async model isn’t much better, but is an improvement with about 5 minutes per 1000 emails.

The use of ‘async’ for the ExactTarget triggered send messages is a bit of a misleading expectation. Doing an ‘async’ send is nothing more than setting the RequestType property of the CreateOptions object passed to the standard Create function call. It still requires a somewhat significant delay in waiting for the request to round trip back to the calling application with a request ID output. It was impossible to get any baseline expectation from ExactTarget on any SLA.

Anyway, sorry about going off on that tangent a bit. After having been off for four weeks I have never felt more refreshed and focused. I managed to overcome many negative habits previously impacting my ability to focus on one task for long periods of time. I no longer feel compelled to check the same six news sites constantly, I no longer require music to stay on track, and I have never felt more productive. I know not all clients will be like this, and I am just incredibly happy it’s been such a great experience on my first time out.