Doug Wagner, Author at Sunwapta Solutions

9 Sep 2010

Software Post-it Notes

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:51:33-06:00September 9th, 2010|Categories: Doug's Blog, Software Development, Technology|

Keeping things simple we would have just used post-it notes and a whiteboard or wall. We have lots of concurrent projects and could have used up lots of walls.

But we also have remote clients, developers and testers.

So we decided on a software solution. This is what the OnTime Planning Board looks like with client names removed.

Of course it is all drag and drop.

Note that we are currently using 1 week sprints with two major releases for these types of projects. I have found that longer sprints make it hard […]

8 Sep 2010

Pushing Out of the Comfort Zone

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:51:41-06:00September 8th, 2010|Categories: Doug's Blog, Mindset and Motivation, Software Development|

Recently we had a project where we received a rather complicated mail merge Word document that needed to be generated from a web site. If we could handle the Word documents directly, we would have a very flexible method of building similar applications for our clients in the future.

We looked at third party tools and several looked promising initially.

However, they seemed to fail on handling the nested if statements properly. The output in Word or PDF format was rendered incorrectly.

So we looked at using the docx (XML) format and the Microsoft docx SDK. The Word docx format saves the content […]

30 Aug 2010

Old Habits Are Hard to Break

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:51:48-06:00August 30th, 2010|Categories: Doug's Blog, Leadership, Mindset and Motivation|

I was doing some more reading on the train this evening. We all know old habits die hard but we try to change them all the same.

This approach is totally wrong.

Other than intentionally damaging your brain (which I strongly recommend against) it is impossible to actively rewire or remove an existing memory map once it has been firmly established. The more you think about a bad habit, the more it becomes entrenched; not less.

Yet well intentioned people try to change themselves and others using the brute force method all the time, even though it almost never works. You just end up getting […]

26 Aug 2010

Don’t “Tell” Me It Is Not Possible

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:51:56-06:00August 26th, 2010|Categories: Doug's Blog, Mindset and Motivation, Software Development|

Recently we building an application for a customer and we had to merge two existing PDF reports into one.

We already have a license for a utility that creates PDFs from HTML web pages. It can also append or merge existing PDFs into its output. But could it just merge two PDFs into one without printing a page first?

Well rather than waste time, our developer asked the vendor via e-mail support. The first attempt got dumped by their spam filter. The second took a few days to generate a response.

In the meantime our developer couldn't wait for the answer and made it […]

25 Aug 2010

When All Else Fails, Reboot

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:52:04-06:00August 25th, 2010|Categories: Doug's Blog, Technology|

Some of our client applications use Thawte SSL certificates. We've used them for year without any problems.

Recently Thawte upgraded their root certificate paths to make them deeper.

When we went to install the certificates on ISA server, we started getting error messages in the browser that the certificate chain had issues.

We found the relevant support article at Thawte and made sure all of the intermediate certificate authorities were installed, etc.

Still the problem persisted.

Resetting the publishing rule didn't work either. The certificates were there and everything was configured as per the specifications.

Only one option remained.

Reboot the server.

It used to be […]

24 Aug 2010

If It Wasn’t for Friction…

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:52:09-06:00August 24th, 2010|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Mindset and Motivation|

I was just thinking back to my university days as an engineer and was thinking about motion and friction.

Newton's First Law states: Every body remains in a state of rest or uniform motion (constant velocity) unless it is acted upon by an external unbalanced force.

Don't worry, I won't get much more technical than this, after all it has been a long time for me too…

This Law applies to two things I was recently thinking about:

1. Cars

When a car goes around a corner at speed, the friction of the tires on the road as you turn your steering wheel […]

23 Aug 2010

Crow Conventions and Other Dark Rumours

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:52:14-06:00August 23rd, 2010|Categories: Current Events, Doug's Blog, Mindset and Motivation|

Yesterday I looked out of the window, south over our yard and neighbour's field just after a thunderstorm had blown through.

There were hundreds and hundreds of crows. I've never seen this many crows in one spot before (in real life anyways).

It took a few minutes to realize that they were not making much noise. Hundreds of silent crows.

After about 15 minutes they started flying off in groups of 20-40 heading north. As you can imagine it took some time before the last group left.

Ominous if you are superstitious. They are obviously up to no good.

Ravens and crows (and magpies) have […]

11 Aug 2010

Mid-Life Crisis?

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:52:21-06:00August 11th, 2010|Categories: Books and Courses, Doug's Blog, Mindset and Motivation, Software Development|

What exactly causes a mid-life crisis?

A mid-life crisis can apply equally to your personal life and relationships, your business (normally after 5-10 years), your career, your spiritual life, etc.

Why do some people do drastic things and others weather the storm with just a minor blow-up?

You start out as a young adult with wide open possibilities and few obligations. You have the potential to write your own story.

As you go through life (or business) you can acquire obligations. A spouse, pets, kids, loan, a mortgage are some of the obvious ones. You require growing income to pay for all the obligations […]

28 Jul 2010

How Much Is Your Business Really Making?

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:52:25-06:00July 28th, 2010|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Leadership|

Profits = Income – expenses

Profit margin is the percentage of profit over income. If you keep the ratio consistent, adding more revenue equals more profit. Relatively simple concept. (For simplicity let's keep income taxes out of the discussion.)

Yet it is interpreted very liberally and differently by small businesses.

The main reason is that most small business owners (practice owners) think of the business as an extension of their own personal accounts.

The formula becomes:

PersonalIncome = Profit = Everything left over is mine

Essentially, they exclude their own income from the business from the expenses and this inflates the profit margin.

I think this is a […]

22 Jul 2010

How to Succeed Like Apple

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-06T12:55:51-06:00July 22nd, 2010|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Marketing|

Earlier this week I wrote a post on “i” dominating multi-platform support.

I just tripped across another well written post that gives great insight as to How to Succeed Like Apple, written by Jason Baptiste.

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About Doug Wagner

1. Cars