About

Topic

Explorations in to the world of Linux and Open Source software.

I am a PeopleSoft Consultant, and unlike much of the PeopleSoft world, I use Linux almost exclusively on my own laptop.  I am forced to connect to and interact with Windows machines.  I have learned a lot as a result, and that has made me a better programmer/consultant.

Goal

The goal of this blog is three-fold:

• Documenting Things I Learn: in case I have to do it again
• Share My Knowledge: in case others happen to attempt the things that I do
• Networking: bulding a network of readers or acquaintances

About Me

I am a PeopleSoft Technical Consultant.  I work for a small consulting firm who places me in contracts that generally have started as short term but have extended much longer.

I started my life with computers in middle school.  My programming started in eighth grade with Visual Basic.  For college, I got a computer science degree, and then, I started programming contracts.  At first, I was using Java, but then, I worked my way into SQR and finally PeopleTools.

I enjoy open source software probably most of all because I can explore.  I enjoy being creative, and the huge library of open source programs provides interesting and fun building blocks for creating all sorts of solutions.

Resume

View my Linked In profile.

Here are some of the topics that I have had experience with:

• Linux: I have run both Ubuntu and Fedora at various times on my laptop.
• Java: I have created several different programs for my personal use.  I have a web application that I track personal finances, etc at home in Tomcat and MySQL.  I also have release a couple of my Swing projects online.

Other Blogs

• PSst0101: My professional work with PeopleSoft and ERP topics.
• Digital Eagle: My personal ramblings, etc.

Open Source Contributions

• Project Shaphan: A database query tool designed to work with PeopleSoft databases.
• Project Sarah: A time-tracking application to help with my billing hours, etc.
• ContactsDB: A tool for managing a list of contacts.  This was originally started to help a non-profit manage a list of contacts they had in spreadsheets.  The plan was to create a program that could interface with various applications that store contact information and sync/massage that information.  The non-profit chose another tool before I was able to really get started, and I haven’t revisited it in a long time.  I hope to come back to it someday.
• psst0101shapes: A collection of icons for Dia to help with drawing diagrams for PeopleSoft.  This is another project I started, but my need for it changed, and I haven’t come back to it yet.
• Various Swing Tools:  I haven’t published it yet, but I have been starting on a set of tools that will help with developing Swing applications.  For example, Project Job displays an exception to a user in a nice standard dialog.
• Contribution Tracking application: I wrote a Swing-based application to track contributions to my church and to print statements for the members at the end of the year.  Again, I haven’t published yet, but I hope to.