Eric Polerecky

Cover Letter Fail

I noticed that the resume on my site – this site – is completely out of date. I try to keep it up to date as I work on new projects. It’s so easy to forget the amazing stuff I – and we – do after it’s released to customers or pushed to prod.

That process sent me down quite a rabbit hole and I ended up working on all my “professional” documents. However; I don’t think I got the Cover Letter right. What do you think?

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I have an extremely diverse background including Linux/BSD administration and Dynamic Languages; before they were in vogue. The past 5+ years I’ve been focused on .NET but recently dove back into Ruby with a small side project privateflock.com. I am waiting on a pending twitter whitelist to see if I can build out the functionality for the public. Right now it serves my needs just fine.

I am looking for a position very similar to my current high profile, high pressure, weight on my back position. However; I am not yet interested to becoming an Architect – I love coding too much.

I have a rather long background for my age; 32. I feel it helps me see the big picture on a daily basis. I have a large amount of tattoos and work daily to provide business value in whatever I am asked to do.

If not for the power going out in our building today I would just be leaving work now, about 7pm EST, with close to 40 hours so far this week….did I mention I love what I do?

I try to play and enjoy life as much as I work; I have two wonderful daughters and – excuse me – the best wife around. I spend almost all non-work free time with them.

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I am not sure this conveys anything except: I can’t spell, I <3 run on sentences and I have no writing prose.

It’s a good thing I get paid to code….maybe.

Bleeding Edge .NET Notes

Azure WCF development

There is a patch you must install that creates a local “load balancer” that fixes an issue with requests to and from AppFabric services. You’ll also have to update the behavior.

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/wcfazure/Wiki/View.aspx?title=KnownIssues

Azure Initialization

After publishing your services might hang, if they don’t start in around an hour, try stopping and restarting them.

http://blog.toddysm.com/2010/01/windows-azure-deployment-stuck-in-initializing-busy-stopping-why.html

Azure Instances

• You can’t set the number of running instances for any service to 0. If you do you get a Dr. Watson exception thrown in the Azure UI….Really; Dr. Watson!
• You can’t have more then 5 web roles, again cryptic Dr. Watson error message

Azure Upgrade

Upgrade means upload new code, when you do this you can’t change the configuration. If you need to add/remove/rename roles you will have to delete and redeploy.

WP7 Service References

You can only have one service reference in the current CTP.

Upgrading WP7 CTP to April

I tried it; following all the correct instructions the application was running but would bomb randomly. Recreating the project from scratch (copy/paste the code) fixed the issue.

WP7 Panorama

By far the best and most stable panorama: http://phone.codeplex.com/

Tags: azure, wp7

ASP.NET MVC in Action Personal Notes

1. Keep using a custom controller
2. Learn and Use Ajax Helpers More
3. Rob Conery’s Law: When you have an “if” statement in the view, make a helper!
1. I think this might be optional depending on your view engine. Spark almost solves? this problem.
4. I miss dynamic languages.
5. Please with model binding as a way to create a terse application/framework.

Unrecognized attribute ‘targetFramework’

Change the app pool to target the .NET 4.0 Framework…it defaults to 2.

Installing mono 2.4 on unbuntu jaunty

there are no native installers for ubuntu jaunty. you need to install from source. I found a nice shell script that does all the steps.

http://www.nabble.com/attachment/23469480/0/install-mono-2.4

Tags: mono linux shell ubuntu

Updated RSS Feed

Sorry everyone that uses RSS to read my blog, both of you listen up. I updated the feed url after all that google move stuff.

http://feeds2.feedburner.com/ericpolerecky

Tags: creepy, feedburner, rss, stakers

PC Rebuild – Check, Clean PC…Fail

I got back my shiny, rebuilt PC. After putting in a detailed build request for just Visual Studio, Visio and nothing else. No frameworks, tools, .NET stuff, nothing I fired it up. I am not shocked to see a workstation filled with so many programs, SDKs, runtimes, it looks like someone vomited up the results from a Microsoft downloads search for “.NET”. I never expected my request was not honored, I figured I would get the standard “developer” build, what I am shocked with is that the development leadership group (that I am part of) directed workstation services as to what software needs to be included in the image! FAIL!

Here is my post PC rebuild task list.

1. Install
   1. Windows Live Writer (& msn messenger) so I can blog about it…im a dork.
   2. Firefox
2. Outlook setup, painless.
3. Uninstall:
1. Windows Mobile 5 SDK R1 – Not developing for mobile.
2. Windows Mobile 5 SDK R2 – Not developing for mobile.
3. Microsoft .NET Compact Framework 2.0 SP2 – Not developing for mobile.
4. Microsoft .NET Compact Framework 3.5 – Not developing for mobile.
5. Microsoft Device Emulator Version 3.0 – Not developing for mobile.
6. Microsoft SQL Server Compact 4.5 Design Tools – Not developing for mobile.
7. Microsoft SQL Server Compact 4.5 – Not developing for mobile.
8. Microsoft SQL Server Compact 4.5 for Devices – Not developing for mobile.
9. Microsoft SQL Server Database Publishing Wizard 1.2 – Don’t have access to DB Servers per client standard.
4. Reopen the ticket to ask for the tech’s to install IIS (or provide me with a copy of i386). They did both!
5. Install (Using the Web Platform Installer):
1. ASP.NET MVC 1.0
2. .NET Framework 3.5 SP1
6. Install
1. Visual Studio 3.5 SP1
2. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition SP3
3. Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express

Now the workstation is how I would have expected it. From here I can spend the rest of the day installing all this software

Tags: workstation

25 Questions

1. I spent too much time thinking about writing this
2. I know I am a workaholic
3. I have a problem; I must be great at whatever I do
4. #3 includes being a provider for my family…Hence #2
5. I won a million dollars…but threw away the winning ticket
6. I worked in tattoo shops for 3 years as a body piercer, made and sold body jewelry and have had 10 non-ear piercings
7. Being a father is the scariest thing I have ever done
8. I lost my two best friends in the last 6 months that was very hard on me
9. Kate and I have not missed a MMA (ufc) in almost 4 years and it’s cost us about 2500$
10. I majored in culinary arts
11. I had the kanji symbols for “change” and “gathering” branded on the back of my legs with an electrocautery scalpel
12. I do not sweet the small stuff
13. I listen to podcasts about software development (TDD, OOO, DDD, ORM)
14. My body is way older then I am
15. I love learning
16. I can barely spell and smell
17. I really enjoy doing nothing
18. I was expelled from high school….twice
19. I spent a weekend working as a body piercer in a gay bar
20. I require 8 hours of sleep
21. I look forward to spending quality time with Kate
22. Small talk makes me Ill. I think I have aspergers
23. There are things I left off this list
24. Upon turning 30 my view of the world changed…I’m still trying to figure it out.
25. I need to hire a personal assistant

Using wordpress-automatic-upgrade to upgrade to 2.7-beta2

Today I updated eric.polerecky.com to 2.7-beta2 using the wordpress-automatic-upgrade plugin. Everything went smooth. Once the upgrade was complete I had to disable wordpress-automatic-upgrade because of some errors in the admin pages.

How to: edit wordpress-automatic-upgrade.php around line 2100 and change
$downloadURL = ‘http://wordpress.org/latest.zip’;
to
$downloadURL = ‘http://wordpress.org/wordpress-2.7-beta2.zip’;

Tags: wordpress

ProjectV – Enter the dojo

I’ve come to be unhappy with the jquery plugin system. I seem to be in a perpetual cycle of “lookup-download-install-initialized-use” and based on the recent milestone slippage I just don’t have the time required when the only payoff (vs. other JS libs) seems to be streamlined JavaScript package……then again aren’t all the plugins adding crazy overhead? Whatever…I’m going to use the dojotoolkit.

I love me some dojo!