Watercolor Christmas Card

My wife has tasked me with creating a watercolor Christmas scene so that we can create Christmas cards. The problem with this is that I've only begun exploring watercolor.  A secondary problem, and one that has always plagued me, is that I have no idea what sort of Christmas scene I ought to create.  But what's good about this is that I can at least write the verse for it (assuming she wants that as well).



I have been looking online for watercolor Christmas scenes and cards, as well as other media (e.g. pastel, acrylic, oil and even photographs.  I'm sure I'll come up with something, but we'll see how well I create it.  I'll post it here if it doesn't suck.  Or maybe even if it does.

Huge Weekend Sale Saturday, October 24 and Sunday, October 25 Only!

This weekend only at Scrapbooker's Dream we have a huge sale going on.

First we have a great deal on select papers: Buy 20 Sheets for $5.00

Next we have a red ticket sale where all items marked with a red ticket are reduced 50%.

And last we have a color ticket sale. When you see the following colored stickers on select products you'll save:

So come on in this weekend and check out all the cool deals! How can you afford to miss it!

New Official Scrapbooker's Dream Apparel

We have updated our official Scrapbooker's Dream apparel!  Check it out:

buy unique gifts at Zazzle

Harvest Dollars at Scrapbooker's Dream

Our store, Scrapbooker's Dream, has something new this year: Harvest Dollars!







Starting Tuesday, October 20, 2009 to Sunday, November 22, 2009, stop in and for every $15.00 (pre-tax) you spend you'll get one Harvest Dollar. For example, spend $15.00 get 1 harvest dollar, $30.00 get 2 harvest dollars, etc.  During the Thanksgiving Week (Monday, November 23 to Wednesday, November 25 and Friday, November 27) you can redeem your harvest dollars, each valued at $1.00. So come in, buy often and save!

New Blog: Software Architecture

I am a software architect as well as a software engineer.  I've created a few blogs about programming and java architecture, but Software Architecture, a new blog of mine, speaks generally about the design of software.  It is programming language neutral, and that's what I like about it.  So if you are a programmer and want to read about software architecture, just click on over and have a look.

Getting Comments

I noticed that I have a large number of hits on this blog of mine, and I can see from where they originate.  I have people from New York and the United Kingdom viewing this blog, but I wonder.  How do I go about receiving comments from my readers?  This blog of course is about nothing specific.  I rant about KMart, put my entire resume online and write about my tiny little retail store a mile from my house.  So does it make sense to have blogs that are specific to a topic?

I have a bunch of blogs that are about specific topics such as books and philosophy, programming and science, and even one of veganism.  But I just haven't kept up with them.  I have to be in a particular frame of mind (philosophical) to write about philosophy, or I have to be reading books to write in my book blog.  But I am lazy and so I write crap in this blog.  Perhaps I should write about controversy, really get into the reporter's mindset.  At one point I did want to be a journalist, but I am (or was) too shy to speak to people, so how could I report on anything interesting?

I'd like to write more about nature and the sciences--I mean I get a lot of science emails and subscribe to a number of such RSS streams from such blogs.  But the annoying thing about this is that I rarely launch my RSS reader, and I don't like google's reader thing.  I tend to like desktop software anyway because web apps, which are cool of course, are not really ready for use.  I hate that they are in a browser.  I like the idea of Adobe AIR and JavaFX which provide a nice rich client that is web based.  No longer are we  stuck by the whims and confinement of the browser.  Case in point.  If I am in an online text editor or web site builder, if I forget that I am not using a desktop app I tend to press some keys that I use in my Mac editors that cause the browser window to go back to a prior page, and thus I lose my work.

(useless tangent(
One thing I find very annoying about Safari, which the browser I use, is that there are so few plugins, and a lot of them are not free whereas Firefox, which still has too many problems, has so many cool, free plugins. What comes to mind specifically is Zemanta.  While it doesn't always show relevant information about what I am writing, there is always something useful, and often when I click on "related" links I get ideas for further research and writing.
))

I am a whiner, that's for certain, but do I ever try to change?  No.  So there it is.

How to Capitalize on My Software Development Experience

I am unemployed (still), and I have a lot of experience designing and writing software, but I seem to have no idea on how to make money with my skills.  I'm not sure if it's due to burnout or if I simply lack imagination or perhaps it's both.  So I am pasting my resume in this post to see if anyone could use my services.  I'll work remotely, on site, whatever.  So if you know anyone who can use my exceptional talent, please let me know.  Also, if you are a software developer and would like to create a startup, that would be awesome!  Thank you.

-----

Thomas J. Clancy

SUMMARY:
Creative, motivated software engineer with a passion and drive for creating innovative, cutting-edge, user-driven, successful software applications and services.

SKILL SET:

Development Environments/IDEs
=============================
Eclipse, Netbeans, IntelliJ, Jbuilder, Visual Studio, MagicDraw, Poseidon

Java Development Tools
======================
JDK 5 and 6, Java Annotations, EJB 3.0, AOP, JMS, JDBC, SOAP, Apache Commons, Java 2D, Swing, Java Mail, JSP, Servlets

Other Computer Languages
========================
C and C++, C#, Javascript, PHP, HTML, XHTML, XML, Ruby, Python, SQL

QA Tools
========
JUnit, NUnit, Rational Pure Coverage, Clover, JStyle, SmallWorlds

Web and Enterprise Application Servers
======================================
JBoss, Glassfish, Tomcat, Sun Application Server, Apache Web Server

Database Development
====================
Oracle, MySQL 5, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Informix

Operating Systems
=================
Windows 2000/XP, Linux, Sun Solaris, HP-UX, SCO UNIX, Mac OS X

General Development Expertise
=============================
OO Analysis and Design, UML 2.x, BPM, Workflow Theory, AOP, GUI Programming, TCP/IP, Sockets, Multi-threading

ACCEPTED ARTICLES:
“A Tale of Two Endians”, accepted for publication by the C/C++ Users Journal

EDUCATION:
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Thiel College, May 1991

MEMBERSHIPS: 
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
IEEE Computer Society

PATENTS: 
Co-inventor of a Complexity Management System (Patent Pending)

WORK EXPERIENCE:

Lead Software Engineer, Electronics for Imaging (EFI)
10/2007 to 6/23/2008
EFI develops MIS software for the Printing Industry.

ACHIEVMENTS

* Developed in Java a visual desktop server monitoring tool used to monitor status and licensing of EFI's traditional and digital printing MIS servers
* BDeveloped in Java EE5  a system-wide complex event and notification service utilizing JBoss remoting and EJB3
* Developed in Java and Java EE5 a generic command processing system used by various client applications to communicate with the MIS services.
* Researched Automated Planning and Scheduling theory for building a smart MIS that plans and schedules print jobs based on rules that infer the intent of partially specified orders


Lead Software Architect, TrueBaseline Corporation, Pittsburgh, PA
1/2006 to 6/2007
TrueBaseline develops application frameworks and products for the service management space and next generation networks.

ACHIEVMENTS

Helped establish standards and guidelines for the development staff
Promoted best practices in unit testing, code coverage analysis, code documentation and standardization
Designed the company's original flagship service management product, SOAComply, that provides compliance monitoring of networked hardware, software and SOA-based applications.  This included the following:
Developed Web Service APIs, and GUI
Employed an Adaptive Object Model as the core architecture
Developed in C# an edge-node graph library for use in network analysis
Implemented breadth-first and depth-first algorithms
Implemented Dijkstra's Algorithm (single source shortest path)
Developed TrueSMS, a service management framework designed to fulfill the requirements of the IPsphere architecture.
Designed TrueOMF (True Object Modeling and Management Framework) that employs Complex Event Processing (CEP) techniques and an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) architecture for efficient distributed processing.
Designed the Message Exchange Framework (MEF) which is a type of Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
Designed CEP framework for efficiently handling and routing business events.
Employed BPEL 2.0 as workflow language for orchestrating business processes
Employed Drools.NET as the basis for our declarative rule engine and policy control language
Designed TrueSDx, a Service Delivery Platform (SDP) Integration solution
Designed code generation tools for integration into native language applications (C#, C++, Java, Python)


Software Architect, Nationwide Appraisal Services Corporation (NASCO), Pittsburgh, PA 
9/2004 to 1/2006
NASCO provides to over 2000 clients in all fifty states both title and appraisal services, and develops products to manage customers' title and appraisals and to match vendors (appraisers) to potential customers.

ACHIEVMENTS

Designed in J2EE the algorithms and software framework necessary to accomplish automated vendor assignment. This included:
The creation of a detailed and concise architecture using UML 2.0
The creation of the mathematical notation for the vendor ranking algorithm
Designed a J2EE validation framework that incorporates java annotations, introspection, reflection and AOP
Established a standard for the peer code review process.
Wrote several papers and tutorials on unit testing as a way of introducing the development team to good unit testing practices.
Trained the development team the proper use and best practices of exception handling
Designed a simplified in-house, web-based CMS as a replacement of an expensive third party CMS
Redesigned and prototyped the workflow management system (WfMS) using Java, J2EE and Drools.  This included:
Full functional requirements and technical design documentation
A complete set of UML diagrams (class, sequence, activity, state chart and use-case)
Researched a number of commercial and open source workflow management system, taking parts from the best of breed
Developed an abstract business rule layer plugin architecture for third-party rule engine plug-ins
Built a process execution language based on JBoss jBMP which is used to specify and execute the workflows


Senior Software Engineer, Netspoke, Pittsburgh, PA
4/2003 to 3/12/2004
Netspoke develops integrated, web-based desktop and audio conferencing and recording software.

ACHIEVMENTS

Optimized the screen capturing software which is based on the open source QVT application
Designed in Qt and C++ an Archive Viewer used for interactive playback of recorded meetings
Developed a prototype plugin component of a collaborative white board
Integrated into the application various instant messaging applications for their presence functionality
Developed a C++ unit test library similar to JUnit

Team Lead/Software Architect/QA Specialist, SmartOps, Inc.,  Pittsburgh, PA.
5/2002 to 3/2003
SmartOps Corporation develops supply chain management and optimization software.

ACHIEVMENTS

Designed in Java the supply chain algorithms stress test software
Managed team of developers of the implementation of various in-house applications
Mentored  junior developers during design, estimation and implementation of internal projects
Evaluated and recommended software development tools such as Together Control Center and Rational XDE
Developed an efficient, generic event management system used for the propagation of system messages and logging.  This included:
Developed the Oracle database tables and SQL for queuing, retrieving and logging event messages
Created in MagicDraw the UML design documentation
Developed an efficient thread pool class that increased overall throughput performance
Developed in Java and Ascential DataStage ETL the third-party integration and data loading system
Specified the standards and managed the organization of the peer code review process.  This included:
The integration of Jstyle for use as an initial, automated code review
The mediation and documentation of code reviews
Implemented and integrated into the build process Clover code coverage analysis and reporting
Integrated into the build process the SmallWorlds static code analysis
Specified the standard for code style and best-practices in engineering


Software Architect, Personity, Inc., Pittsburgh, PA
12/2000 to 4/2002
Personity, Inc., formerly Network Projects, Inc., and now defunct, developed IETF-standardized presence, availability and instant messaging technologies for telecom companies.

ACHIEVMENTS

Developed in C++ the WAP web gateway interface for connecting cellphones to our presence and instant messaging services
Assisted in the specification and design of more advanced presence and instant messaging protocols
Assisting in enhancing and performance tuning the middle-ware and server software
Rewrote platform-specific C++ code into cross-platform code (threads and mutexes) that enabled us to run servers in Windows, Linux, HP-UX and Sun Solaris
Developed web-based server management software for controlling and provisioning remote servers
Developed server software licensing using the SentinelLM licensing software
Developed stress testing and user simulation software
Authored white papers that introduced clients to our software
Researched and authored proposals for new directions and functionality in these technologies


Consultant, Independent Concepts, Inc., Beaver Falls, PA
5/2000 to 12/2000
Independent Concepts, Inc., develops cognitive prosthetic medical devices, called Jogger, for use by people who suffer from various degrees of traumatic brain injury.

ACHIEVMENTS

Analyzed their legacy software and hardware platform
Designed a new system based on new requirements
Research alternative hand-held devices such as the Casio Cassiopeia E-115 and the Compaq iPAQ H3600
Prototyped some early concepts of the software in Microsoft’s Embedded Visual Tools 3.0
Authored complete design specifications for all parts of the new system, which included:
The desktop Jogger patient user interface
The desktop therapist’s user interface
The server architecture connecting patients and therapists
Device synchronization software that enables a therapist to modify a patient's daily tasks
A statistical analysis and reporting system based on a user’s response to each task performed


Sr. Software Engineer/Systems Architect, XCEL Communications Corp., Bethel Park, PA
1/2000 to 12/2000
XCEL Communications Corporation provides free web-based email, web fax services, email to fax services, as well as a host of other web-based services for small to medium-sized businesses.

ACHIEVMENTS

Developed in C++ a POP3 based client library, email routing services and Oracle ODBC wrappers
Led the effort to port the software to Java running on Linux. This included:
Deploying and configuring Redhat Linux Servers
Deploying and configuring the Apache web server
Analysis and design of the new system
Development in Java of the new system that included:
Development of multi-threaded POP3 rover application that, on request, retrieves a user’s email from POP3 servers and stores them in a web-mail database
A multi-threaded POP3 server for allowing users to get their mailroom web-mail via a POP3 compatible client (e.g. Microsoft Outlook, Eudora, etc.)
A multi-threaded MDA (mail delivery agent) that routes incoming mail from sendmail to the intended user’s in-box within our database
Mail filtering rule engine that is used by the MDA for providing such things as user-configurable spam filtering, private mail, etc.


Team Leader/Senior Software Developer, E-Transport, Inc.  Pittsburgh, PA
06/1997 to 12/1999
E-Transport (now part of Descartes Systems) develops document translation and workflow software systems for the ocean freight shipping industry

ACHIEVMENTS

Designed in C++ and Informix an object-based repository for storing, processing and retrieving documents that included
Enhancing an in-house C++ class library which wraps Informix’s ESQL/C library by providing it the ability to manage Blobs (binary large objects)
Implementing an LRU caching scheme for caching ESQL queries
Implementing a low-level, generic C++ library that stores, retrieves, indexes and otherwise manipulates attribute/value based objects regardless of the underlying database engine
Implementing a logical, session-based locking scheme for granting lock rights to clients for individual or groups of objects within the repository
Implementing a small SQL-like query language used by Mix’s repository search engine
Implementing the server layer which can act as a remote or compiled-in set of services for clients to easily store, retrieve and otherwise maintain objects in the Mix repository
Developed OO RPC client/server interface
Developed document and attribute level access services that controls access to all or parts of a document


Project Leader and Senior Software Engineer, Byers Engineering, Atlanta, Georgia
08/1995 to 06/1997
Byers Engineering develops CAD-based Automated Mapping, Facilities Management and Global Information Systems (AM/FM/GIS) software designed for in-field engineers of utility companies to plan and manage the installation of utilities such as telephone poles, coax cable, fiber optics and natural gas lines.

ACHIEVMENTS

Developed in C++ application components that included:
Spatial Query User Interface
Map-based connectivity
Renumbering of unique items of plant in a geographical exchange (area)
ACT (Administrator’s Configuration Tool)
Managed team of developers in porting software from OS/2 to Windows NT.
Established coding guidelines
Interviewed potential candidates
Debugged and maintained legacy C code
Redesigned and ported software written in C to C++
Developed graphical user interface enhancements and new GUI designs.
Tested and debugged core products such as ODBC class wrappers and the CAD engine


Manager of Software Development, Innovative Icons, Inc., Atlanta, Georgia
10/1993 to 08/1995
Innovative Icons developed Isabella, a greeting card, invitation and announcement ordering software for in-store kiosks.

ACHIEVMENTS

Wrote detailed requirements and design documentation as well as implementing in Borland
C++ under Windows 3.11 the following:
The Isabella order entry system
The back-end rendering, accounting and communications modules
A personal, CD-ROM based version for home office use
A multi-user version of Isabella for mall kiosks
Implemented software in Borland C++ and Visual C++ under Windows for Workgroups 3.11 that interfaced with Paradox databases using the Borland Database Engine for C++
Implemented back-end graphical interfaces to databases in Paradox 4.5 and 5.0
Managing the team of developers on the project
Interviewing and hiring new employees
Overseeing production of software and approving patch releases
Researching viability of an Internet-based Isabella system


INDEPENDENT EXPERIENCE:

Founder of MyBraynz.com, Canonsburg, PA
5/2002 to Present
MyBraynz develops open source web 2.0 applications and other software technologies that include concept modeling, complex event processing, collective intelligence and simulation.

ACHIEVMENTS

Currently developing
A web 2.0 social media platform using PHP, MySQL and jQuery
A blogging and publishing platform using PHP, MySQL and jQuery
Developed a Java-based discrete event simulation framework for exploring evolutionary processes.  This software was donated to Duke University as open source
Developed in Java and C# an object oriented implementation of Charles L. Forgy's Rete algorithm
Developed in Java a rudimentary, generics-based edge-node graph algorithms package
Developed in Java a Swing Geometry exploration and drawing system
Developed in Java some fundamental matrix and vector math packages
Developed in Java and J2EE a Workflow Management System


REFERENCES:
References available by request.

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