I am amazed by Twitter. A simple question asking “What are you doing?” and it has become wildly popular. What I think is even more interesting are the great web apps that have showed up around the web utilizing it’s API. Some of these are really cool (foamee, strawpoll, twistori, fuelfrog). I am inspired and think aggregating certain twitter data could be very useful.

Twitter, let’s build something. I have an idea for a twitter-based web app and I plan to build it over the coming weeks in my spare time. Check back here or follow me on twitter to see how it goes.

Southwest airlines has officially won me over for all of my air travel needs (minus flying to Atlanta). I have flown many different airlines over my life and Southwest is the first to have departed and arrived on time, twice. Both flights were great and the way they do seating is brilliantly simple. I love it. But what really won me over was when I had to change my flight the other night. I logged into Southwest.com fully expecting a hefty “Change your Ticket” fee of $100 and it was free! I couldn’t believe it, I was thrilled. I even got a credit of $15 towards a future flight. Thank you Southwest, you genuinely care about customers.

Blown away by this moment at Crosspointe. The capacity for a community to pull together, give above and beyond, and make a difference that will affect generations to come. This is something amazing to be a part of. Six days, $405,802.97, and a place that will be forever changed. A huge thanks to God, Jonathan’s obedience to listen and ask, and to every person who stepped up and sacrificed.

I think it’s important to focus your time and resources in such a way that you can make the biggest impact/difference. Each of us has our strengths and weaknesses across all activities of life. Perhaps as a developer/designer, it means managing 2 projects at a time instead of 4; As a manager, 3 employees at a time instead of 6; Read 1 book at a time instead of 4. Support 2 causes/charities at a time instead of 8. Participate in 1 sport at a time instead of 2. It’s our willingness to know our limits and embrace them; targeting our focuses to meet with the greatest impact, instead of with frustration. I never like the idea of being spread thin. It pulls us away from what matters most to us in life. We can all take a look at this within our own life and re-evaluate from time to time. I’m willing to bet it will make you smile a little more when you know you are making a difference.

Introducing our nephew Harrison Case Dooley!  Harrison was born May 19th at 7:37am weighing in at 6 pounds, 13.5 ounces, along with a full head of hair.  My sister Lauren and her husband Brett are proud parents and have a healthy son.  We are all very excited and thank you all for your continued prayers.  Lindsey and I are now officially Uncle Chris and Aunt Lindsey.  We are very excited for Lauren, Brett and the whole family.  Whether or not Harrison will be a War Eagle or a Bulldog is undecided, but my prediction is that he will be a Hokie.  Harrison the Hokie seems fitting.

Congrats Brett and Lauren, we love you guys.

My brother Kevin passed away last weekend. I wanted to write something brief about him since he was a huge part of my life.

Kevin was my stepbrother, but I never thought of him this way. He was and always will be my brother. He had one of the biggest hearts of anyone I knew. He loved people and people loved him. He had amazing people skills and a sense of humor that could make anyone laugh. His ability to tell stories and recall details of situations was truly a gift from God. He didn’t settle for passivity; he was usually fighting for other people and their relationships. He cared so much for others, and listening and cheering them up was definitely a ministry he lived out. Unfortunately, he also had some personal addictions he didn’t beat. Kevin always said he was proud of me. In hindsight, I was always super proud of him, especially to be his older brother. He was a listener, an adventurer, comedian, joy giver and my best man. These are things I was always treasure about him.

I have so many awesome memories with Kev, I never want to forget any. He had a passion for life and I know he is in Heaven now. He knew the Lord as his Savior and I have that peace in my heart. I will always love my brother. He is one that just can’t be replaced by anything.

Love you Kevin. I will miss you bro.

His obituary.

Some photos of my brother, my best man.

When using IBATIS, use $parameter$ to inject literals in your sql maps. For instance, if you have a sql query that injects a comma separated list of ids, using #parameter# will put quotes in the sql, causing an error if you were using the “in” operator. Using $parameter$ removes the quotes and your sql is content.

Example with #:

select filter.id from filter where filtertypeid = #filterTypeId#
and typeid in (#typeIds#);

could yield

select filter.id from filter where filtertypeid = '2' and typeid in ('0,1,4');

Example with $:

select filter.id from filter where filtertypeid = #filterTypeId#
and typeid in ($typeIds$);

could yield

select filter.id from filter where filtertypeid = '2' and typeid in (0,1,4);

Conclusion:

Remember to use your dollar signs.

Usability is beautiful. I think it shines when the interface is simple. Simple to the point that users get it when they see it (an Ah-Ha moment), and the flow comes naturally. That simplicity comes with a focus on understanding your user and the problems they want to solve. Your solution orients them in a way to solve their problem more effectively and moves complication out of the picture.

I attended Refresh the Triangle for the first time last Thursday at iContact in Durham.  Rob Goodlatte gave a great talk on “Justifying Design”.  He made some good points about what to consider when designing for the web.  There were two points that he made that I certainly agree with and I think are worth mentioning again:

1. Design is about Problem Solving.
2. Define Goals by Asking Interesting Questions.

As a designer/developer, when creating a website or web application, your goal is to understand and solve a problem for your user.  In order to do this, you have to ask the right questions throughout the build process.  You have to be intentional about understanding your user and identifying their whole problem.  The result (and what I think Rob’s ultimate conclusion was from his talk) is a functional and elegant user experience.

Also, iContact did a great job of hosting the event.  It was nice to meet with some of their developers and their host for the night, Brandon Milford.

Friday night was a great night out with friends, catching up on life and enjoying a great meal.  One of the highlights was this micro remote control helicopter called the Havoc Heli.  It was so much fun to fly around.  Needless to say, within minutes of playing with it, we had created various challenges to accomplish.  I used to love R/C cars and airplanes growing up.  This brought back some good memories.  It amazes me how much fun you can have with this little toy.  I think I want one.