I code, therefore I am... a software engineer.

What is Information? And What are ITs Metaphysical Consequences?

“The I.T. Crowd” is a British sitcom that revolves around the comedic escapades of the socially awkward IT department located in the basement of Reynholm Industries. The series follows the misadventures of tech geeks Moss and Roy, and their computer-illiterate manager, Jen, as they navigate both the technical and social challenges of their daily lives.

In Season 3 Episode 3 (Tramps Like Us), Jen interviews for a new job at another company. During the interview she is asked the meaning of “I.T.” She has no answer so she excuses herself to the “loo” in order to call Moss or Roy for the answer. The following conversation ensues.

Jen: [On the phone] What does IT mean?
Moss: What?
Jen: IT. What does it mean? Someone just asked me.
Moss: You don’t know what it means?
Jen: No, I never thought to ask.
Moss: This must be Jen!

The answer to the question, of course, is “information technology.” That raises an even more interesting question.

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New Blog Design

It has been a while since I’ve changed the layout of this blog. I’ve got some plans for more upcoming posts on software engineering, but I wanted to freshen up the feel first. One of my goals was to use the Bootstrap framework to create a responsive layout. In other words, it looks good (or …

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Hey Microsoft, Where Are My Keyboard Shortcuts!?

I recently upgraded to Microsoft Office 2010. I really like the way the design team is going on their newer versions. It is really sleek and nice feeling, but I’ve noticed something missing… my keyboard shortcuts! I’m a Linux guy at heart (I install cygwin on every Windows machine I own and/or use) so performing …

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Upgrade Time : WordPress 2.9 and MySQL 5

WordPress 2.9 was release somewhat recently and so like a good WP minion I logged into my site and clicked the update button. Error… uh oh. Apparently WordPress 2.9 requires a more recent version of MySQL (>= 4.1.2). My host installed MySQL 5 ages ago but I’ve never bothered with migrating to the new version because I didn’t have a reason to. Now I do. So here’s how my upgrade went.

First I made a full backup of both the web content and the MySQL database. The MySQL database backup was just a mysqldump command like so:

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