All entries of my technical and business blog

“Trust falls” are a team-building activity that some of my friends have had to endure. I’ve been threatened with this exercise a few times. But, I’ve never had to do it. Luckily, I’ve been able to convince my team members I will participate without having to test their bicep and shoulder strength. Or, perhaps I’m just not trusting enough. (I once worked at a place that had a few employees that were really good friends and would force-trust-fall on each other. When a group of colleagues were walking in a row, one would just throw himself backwards into the person behind him surprising them and shouting “trust fall!” This was the only “trust fall” that I was forced to participate in.)

Here is a PDF download of the presentation I made at the Greater Milwaukee Area WordPress Meetup.

I like to think that I’m somewhat of a PHP purist. And, when I travel to user groups, one of my favorite talks to give is named “Tell Aaron What To Do.” Basically, the goal is to solve two problems I pose using plain HTML and PHP. Oh, and do it with core PHP, no frameworks, no libraries, just plain vanilla PHP. At the end, I’ll run a number of integration and security tests against the code the group has written to see if we were successful.

I just finished giving a talk at MKEPUG about 8 PHP Command Line Tips and Tricks. Normally I try to export my talks / slides into PDF. This time, my presentation was a little different - I used embedded video in KeyNote. So, I’ll provide the KeyNote file for download - sorry to those who don’t have KeyNote or a mac. :-/ 8 PHP Command Line Tips and Tricks KeyNote File

Are all American CEO’s psychopaths? It is a very interesting question - one that I tackled in 2012 when I was finishing my capstone at Cardinal Stritch University.

Considering I write a lot about business in this blog - and a few years has passed now since I used this paper for credit - I thought I’d “open source” it for those who might have an extra few minutes in their day! Hah!

I’m going to say something that I never thought I’d say in my life. In fact, I’m not sure that a single programmer has ever said this! Ready?

I find it very difficult to find out information about my local elected officials. Even the federal website for congress mentions that there is no central database of email addresses and contact information for their members - which is just crazy to me.

In the last decade or two, the US proliferation of low quality reality television shows has been unstoppable. “Big Brother” would be ashamed by some of his siblings. There are shows that follow famous people (although, I’m not entirely certain why some of them are famous), shows that involve the audience, shows that support nerds; basically anything you can imagine! I pretend I’m above this, I surely don’t fall into the category of people who sit at home and pine over “The Bachelor.” I normally flip the channel right past these shows.

Fair warning - I normally don’t write too personally in this blog - but this one is something different. Something I think people need to read.

Every leader has a particular methodology or key point they focus on. Whether it be a small detail, a general philosophy or a repeated phrase, you know that if you are near that leader, you will become very familiar with their demand. In my team, my demand is to pay attention to detail.