Jayson's Blog

In my previous CS Tidbit, I outlined how to add an archive page to your blogs to free up some sidebar real estate while still giving readers access to our post history. Of course, now that we have this in place, how do we let our readers know where it is? In the past, adding links to one of the standard sidebar widgets meant manually adding entries to various skin files, and doing it in each theme on our site. There was also really no way to control security on the links either without adding some more customizations, ie if you had a link that you only wanted displayed to logged in users, or to owners of a particular section (Sharepoint calls this Security Trimming, I'm not sure what CS refers to it as).

Fortunately for us, CS now supports creating nested navigation bar items via the control panel, and also allows us to specify security attributes to control what audience gets to see these links. In this tidbit, I'll outline how to accomplish this. Our end result is going to look something like this:

This is just the standard navigation bar that you'd see in CS2008.5's Hawaii theme, along with 4 nested navigation bar items. To create these items, navigate to Control Panel and select Site Administration, and then head over to Site Theme. The url to this page will look something like http://<yourSite.com>/ControlPanel/Settings/ThemeConfiguration.aspx. In the theme configuration editor, select the Header tab and look for the section called Navigation Bar. You'll see a box similar to the one pictured here:

In this example, we'll add a link to the archive page we created in the previous CS Tidbit. Click the Add button, and then fill in information similar to the following:

Once you're done putting in the correct info, click save. You can then click and drag the newly created link to the section where you'd like it to be nested under. It's actually a pretty slick control. Once you have it where you want, click the save button in the lower right hand corner and navigate back to your site. The newly created nested navigation item should be displayed under the section you placed it in. All of this adds some nice navigational touches for your site visitors to be able to find stuff in an easier more consistent manner.

Community Server 2008.5 was released recently. The half dozen or sites that I've upgraded over the weekend went without a hitch; the new Windows Client upgrader application is very easy to use...the toughest part is waiting for all of your site files to finish FTP'ing back up to your site. The only downside I've seen for CS 2008.5 is that it only ships with one theme, which is called Hawaii. I was initially underwhelmed by this theme, but after getting to know it a little better it's grown on me. Total time to get JK.com upgraded and customized was about 6 hours total, although I do have a few non-standard tweaks that I always have to re-implement for new CS releases.

I do plan on starting up my CS Tidbits post category again as well with some common tweaks, plus outlines of new features in CS 2008.5. I can say that my first reaction to this release is that performance has been improved quite a bit. Kudos to Telligent for a fantastic CS release!

I've been a software developer for almost 7 years now. To say I've had a good run at it would be an understatement (both financially and via life satisfaction)...I have no college degree, and learned most of my trade both on the job and in my spare time. Computers are one of the few fields where you can rise quickly through pure hard work and dedication without the requirement of a degree. With the proliferation of online communities and blogging, getting networked in to make even more of a name for yourself and over the years I've met some amazing people via blogging and communities. So why the title of this post?

I've decided to move on.

*pause for effect*

So what would possess someone with so much time and energy invested in his career to walk away from close to 6 figures a year, reasonable working hours, and a good working environment? The answer really isn't that simple actually and is the culmination of several different factors. And to be honest, I'm not exactly walking away from anything. Over the years, I've gained experience that can never be taken away, and computers will always be one of my main passions...there's no way I could have gotten to where I am today if they weren't. Everything I've learned will be easily transferable to my future endeavors. The short answer is that people change over time. What they want out of life changes, their goals and desires that they strive for. I've been in this business in some way shape or form since I was in my early twenties, and what I wanted out of life then is completely different than what I want now at age 30. Having a stable desk based job was great, but about 2 years ago I noticed myself getting restless, going in to work day after day, watching the months roll by...and unfortunately I started to grow discontent with both my career and the industry as a whole. Again, things change over time...what makes a person happy today may not necessarily make them happy 5 years from now.

So needless to say that after 2 years of more or less just going through the motions of the daily grind, I came to the incredibly hard decision that it's time for a change. Cube life just doesn't suit me anymore. Staring into a computer monitor for 9 hours a day has taken its toll, and after a lot of soul searching and talking to dozens (if not hundreds) of folks both in this business and otherwise the choice became pretty obvious: It was time to exit stage right more towards the top of my career rather than let my growing disinterest and restlessness start to jeopardize my future endeavors. So that's what I've done.

My relationship with my former employer has been severed and as of now I am out of the world of Corporate IT. I'm back in school fulltime working towards my B.A. Chemistry (which was my original major way back when I wanted to be a physician or a chemist, pre dotcom boom). I'll also be pursuing more of my creative interests as well, such as music and music production by taking classes related to those disciplines. I'm still young, and now is the time when there aren't other pressing obligations that would prohibit such a radical lifestyle change. The end goal as of now is either medical school, or post graduate work in Chemical Engineering. Outside of computers, chemistry and music were my biggest passions. The dotcom era steered me away from them...and while it was an amazing experience it is time to get back to my roots. That's not to say that I won't be doing any moonlighting...a complete severance might be too severe, but for now the main focus is school. If I bust my ass, I can have my B.A. in 2 years. I'll do a year here at the local university, and will then transfer to UNC to complete my B.A.

So how will this transition affect my blog, and any loyal readers I have left? That I don't know, but there will definitely be some changes in the direction of my writings. The lack of content over the past 2 years compared with previous time periods should be a pretty good indication of my growing discontent with the software industry. I'm sure I will still make technical posts from time to time as I still have several hobby projects I'm working on, but any content related to the business of software and Corporate IT will surely be few and far between, if at all. Seeing as school will be my number one priority, I'm sure content related to my Chemistry endeavors will begin once I start my major coursework. This will not become a student blog, but the focus from .Net and software development will surely change to more science and music. I realize I'll lose some readers in the process, but I also hope to start getting in touch with a new audience as well. Hell, maybe just stick around to keep tabs on my progress if you'd like. It promises to be an amazing journey, and knowing me, a very interesting one as well.

I will still be lurking around in areas such as Community Server, as well as reading most of your blogs in the little spare time I'll have going forward. I don't think I would have been half the developer that I was without having read your posts and gotten to know you over the past few years...I attribute much of my success to the circle of friends I've made through this blog and other communities. You guys know who you are, and you pushed me to be a better developer, and to give back whatever I could in the process. I'll be keeping up with you guys throughout this journey.

So that's it. Or is it? The only thing that is changing is my focus and where my efforts are directed. If I was able to accomplish what I did in the software industry, I have confidence in myself that my future endeavors should be equally as rewarding. I have had some amazing times in the software biz, and have learned more than I ever thought my tiny brain could handle. While cubicle life ultimately took its toll on me, I wouldn't trade any of it for anything else. Now at age 30 because of my years in the industry, I feel I'm better equipped for this new path than I ever could have been had I not pursued computers...I'll always be incredibly grateful for that.

After several years of minimal upgrades, the highly acclaimed Western Digital Raptor has gotten a serious upgrade: Enter the WD VelociRaptor, which wasn't supposed to be released to the masses until mid June but is available now over at Newegg. I've been a subscriber to Jeff Atwood's line of thinking for a long time now...that hard drive speed is the single most important factor in the overall speed of a machine and therefore should not be skimped on. Buy the fastest drive you can afford as your main boot drive, and then just buy a larger/slower/cheaper drive to stuff all of your data in.

Regardless of what line of reasoning you subscribe to, there is simply no reason not to buy one of the new VelociRaptor drives if you can afford it. I got mine in the mail earlier this week and decided to run a simple benchmark using HD Tune on it versus my older SATA I 150 gigabyte Raptor. Most of the hardware sites are claiming about 35% better performance, however that's not what I'm seeing:

Old School Raptor (SATA I 150 gigs):

New School VelociRaptor (SATA II 300 gigs):

As should be pretty apparent, these numbers show a much better gain than 35%. I ran the tests several times to make sure I was hallucinating Of course real world usage is a completely different story, but the cold hard numbers don't lie...the new VelociRaptors are beating my older Raptor by more than 50% in each category. And yes, my machine definitely feels a lot faster now as well. Boot time is down by 15-20 seconds (well under a minute to desktop now), applications fly to life when double clicked, games load in about half the time. The most amazing thing about this drive is that they got all of this extra performance using 2.5" platters. The drive may look pretty beefy, but 70% of that surface area is actually just a heatsink with the drive itself situated in the middle. Of course it being so small means it's completely silent as well. I use sound dampening in my case (rubber grommets), but the older Raptor could reach aircraft carrier levels during I/O intensive operations.

Expensive? Yes. Bleeding edge? Certainly. The best upgrade for your machine for the money? Absolutely. If you've got 300 bucks laying around and want to see noticeable performance improvements in your machine, this is a no-brainer.

I used to mountain bike. A lot. For some inexplicable reason I stopped a few years ago when other priorities manifested themselves, but recently I decided to start up again. While I'm not horribly out of shape, I'm definitely not the rider I used to be...but I aim to change this soon as the legs start getting used to pedaling again. I never have been much of a weight lifting guy, but the muscle group I've gravitated towards working when I do lift has been legs, and that's also apparent by the sports I choose to do (cycling, skiing).

For any mountain bikers who read this blog, I ride a GT XCR 2000, although mine is similar to the one mentioned in that link in frame only; most of the parts have been upgraded to Shimano XT models, I have a minimalist style seat, and carbon stem/bars/seatpost...the bike tips the scales at about 27lbs and more upgrades for weight savings are planned. While it's an older bike, the system that GT invented, i-Drive (which stands for independent drive) is still hailed as an engineering marvel for full suspension bikes as it was one of the first designs to eliminate pedal bob and brake jacking without having to resort to unwieldy looking linkage systems which were heavy and complicated: The more moving parts a bike has, the higher the chance of failure on one of those parts. Overall it's a very fun bike to ride. See you guys on the trails!