Programmer, Analyst, Learner, Leader, Gamer

I am pretty well versed in RFID technology. At PREM (my last employer), we were thinking about implementing RFID for the purpose of building equipment tracking and maintenance tracking. We never implemented it due to cost with little time saved based on how we wanted to implement it, but I learned a lot about how RFID works and the value vs cost of them. So when I was asked to join a task team to identify solutions for RFID for a client at my current employer, I found this comprehensive article detailing the analytical value and ROI of RFID technology: http://www.teradata.com/t/pdf.aspx?a=83673&b=140892.

RFID solutions are not simple. They are VERY hard to implement, with a high start up cost and high upkeep cost (RFID tags 5-10 cents per tag, Barcode label less than 1 cent per label). From a physical and process standpoint they can be an operational challenge, but also from a software standpoint they can be equally complicated to implement well. The value in an RFID implementation is that they are fast and accurate in large volumes and/or frequency of scanning. The best RFID solutions are automated and don’t even require human intervention for scanning because they leverage the longer range RFID tags. Even when using short range tags which require human intervention for scanning, imagine walking into a room with 5,000 RFID tags and scanning them all in about 30 seconds (166 scans a second, some scanners are as fast as 400 scans a second). Let’s say there were 300 chemicals in the room, that’s still 2 seconds to scan all of them. Then you move on to the next room.

While they are expensive to implement and upkeep, the cost saving is in the time. From a software standpoint, you need a solution that will either POST-process all scans or buffer the scans and handle them one at a time. Ideally again since RFID is all about speed, you would want to do a lot of scanning all at once, then reconcile the scans later handling any special cases and errors all at once instead of piecemeal between scans or even scan batches. If you are slowed down by the interface of your scanning solution then it outweighs the benefits of RFID implementation in the first place.

The best RFID solution I can see is one that scans and collects data, then post scanning interfaces with a machine, processes the data, then intelligently based on pre-setup rules to handle exceptions. This is assuming that you don’t want to on the fly use their RFID tags to store information in the tag like current quantity, current location, etc, information that would be valuable to the scanning process. Who knows maybe as containers move within their facility, maybe they intend on updating the RFID tag to store actual transaction information. Of course I’m just going out on the limb of all the things you can do with RFID.

In the end, the value of RFID is all about speed. Speed, speed, and ummm speed. As long as the solution is fast and efficient, it outweighs the upfront cost of implementation and the maintenance cost of the tags / encoding devices.

Yes I’m alive and no I didn’t get eaten by the big WoW monster at level 70. It’s simply coincidence that when I hit 70 a day later I got the job at Dolphin and began a grueling 2 1/2 week “run of the gauntlet” finishing / starting & finishing a massively large amount of projects for PREM. All at the same time I started school at Devry on the 5th of March. Then I started the new job here at Dolphin a week later on the 12th, and it’s been a crazy roller-coaster ride ever since. I guess on top of it all we did push into Karazhan at the end of March and now I’m helping Ray catch up and he’s currently 69 with half a level of rested XP. I will try my best to keep up with my journal again now that things are starting to get back to the norm.

Life is good. Coffee is good. Code Monkey like Dolphin.

Today is just plain weird. I’m getting a lot of “Grats!”, “Good for you”, “I’m happy for you”, “I’m proud of you”, “Good luck”, and after all that I also got “You suck” or “Damn you”. Some people were shocked. Some people weren’t surprised at all. Some people were just surprised about the timing. Jacob took it better than I expected, but I think the fact that I’m being flexible with them is why he’s not pissed as hell, though I’m sure he was last night when he heard the news from Brian.

Tonight I get to pee in a cup and I faxed in my signed offer letter and authorization for a background check. I also got in the last of my paperwork for school which is great. I’m pretty excited about all these life changes. The guild is really starting to stabilize now too after the BC instability that all guilds are dealing with.

Software Engineer: 50,000 full benefits, fully paid for including health, dental (have to pay for this one), vision, short term, long term, flex spending, 401K… etc, etc. Working on a team of developers for enterprise level software. School reimbursement. Flexible hours. 4 miles from home. The list goes on and on.

I put in my resignation today to Jacob and told Brian in person. Tomorrow’s going to be an interesting day. I will be celebrating this evening with my family.

I can’t believe it… oh wait yeah I can. In my 2 1/2 plus years here at PREM I’ve lost SOOOOOOOOooooo much of my Windows development skills. It’s funny how I’ve been an application developer all this time and now since I’ve been at PREM I’ve lost so much of it because all I do here is write server side console widget like apps and web applications. None of which are elegant or honestly very functional. None of which last longer than a year around here. I’m getting really really burnt out on this company and need to move on. Every day someone does or says something that makes me think “Why do I care anymore? They sure as hell don’t!”. I really want to be writing real software here and the very few “new” skills I’ve learned since I started here are nothing compared to the skills I’ve LOST since I started here. I looked through the cert book I passed with flying colors. I’m reading through it and half of it is like “OMFG I’ve forgotten all of this”. I’m kinda depressed about my lost skill / knowledge. I want that back damnit!

Well I’ve installed C# 2005 Express, SQL Server 2005 Express, XNA Game Studio Express, and TorqueX. I downloaded the 22 part series from Microsoft on introduction to C# through learning how to write a 2-D game and then a 3-D game using C# and XNA. I picked up a book today at Powells “C# for Programmers” which looked like it had the right kind of content rich learning I’m looking for. This weekend I’m going to spend going through some of the training videos, the book, and looking at the colledges in the area, their programs, and what’s the best course of action that will get me some kind of results.

Even if I don’t end up going into the gaming industry, this approach by Microsoft on training through game design is going to get me into learning some hardcore fundamentals of C# that I don’t know and at the same time not be bored and exited to be coding this stuff. I still don’t know in the end if I want to refocus my carrier into game design or high end application design. Either way I’m sick and tired of writing all these custom code widgets and web applications that are all bastardizations of good working systems. Well I can rand on forever about it but the point is I hate where my carrier is and I know I was to shift directions.

I think my plan is that I will make a deal with PREM to focus on full time development for a little while banging out the necessary stuff for the next phase of the company, then I want to switch into a part time status and go back to school. I don’t know how they are going to take it. For all I know they are going to flip out and cut me off and go hire someone else. I just can’t go on being unhappy with my carrier and where I am in my skill sets just because I care about PREM. I can’t put them before me. So I’ve made the decision, my folks are backing me. I’m going down this road.

Stayed home and worked from home today. Wasn’t feeling 100% and didn’t feel up to leaving the house. All the same I think I got a TON of work done today. Finalized the templates for the 3 property portal types and banged out all the portals for all the properties. Then configured LDAP on all of them and some other key things. Now I’m just waiting on content so we can start really filling up the portals with good stuff.

Really starting to pump out a lot of widgets for DNN now. Stuff from Concierge able to see everyone’s work orders in a simple fashion or creating a contact in Corrigo. All these little widgets writing them now will get the code in place so later since it’s all of course re-usable code so we can put them all together to do REALLY cool shit.

Jacob is back in “lets get S@%# done as quickly as possible” aka “ready, set, GO!” mode. Today kicked off lots of planning and organization meeting I now have like 4 or 5 weekly planning meetings and brian has like 10. I don’t envy that at all. The good news is finally we’re really on the brink of launching the DNN version of the website. There’s a lot of integration stuff I need to get worked out coding wise to make this happen related to account creation process.

Today is the first “First Thursday” at PREM for a lot of new employees. It was nice instead of just standing around bullshitting with the same old people to take the time to mingle and get to know some of the new employees that have started in the last 2 weeks. PREM Group is growing fast and I’m damn proud to be a party of it.