software

Don't be a Slave to Your Vendors

One of the reasons I like and support the use of open source software is that you can avoid most of the drama that comes from relying on 3rd party vendors.  By this I mean.. you must pay exorbitant sums for ongoing maintenance, you are locked into their product upgrade treadmill, you have little say in the direction of their products, you have a single source for support, and if your vendor gets acquired there is a very good chance the product you depend on will go away or change in ways that force you to abandon it with even more pain.  I’ve seen this play out from both sides of the table having spent time in both enterprise environments and working for software companies.

What I do: Mysql Reporting Date Range Cheat Sheet

If you have to do any sort of reporting using mysql or other databases you will probably need to use relative date ranges that don’t depend on what day the report is being run. That is if you need a report for ‘last month’ that runs from the first to last day of the previous month.. or previous 3 months etc but not include any days in the current month.   Here is a small collection of queries…

Click to dial from OSX with Asterisk PBX

Here is a nice little utility that I put together and have been using for a while. If you use OSX and keep your contacts in the native Address Book application like I do.. and happen to have an Asterisk PBX… this will let you do a simple click-to-dial. It should be easy enough to setup for just about anyone and installation instructions are included. I didn’t wirte it from scratch.