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The Latest from Our Team
The Perfect Developer Laptop?
I have been using a laptop as my primary machine since about 1998. I have traditionally bought the fastest, biggest screen, biggest hard drive, most RAM beast I could find. I started with Apple laptops and then made the switch to Wintel after a few years. I usually bought a new machine every year or…
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Project Management – Release Planning
This is the second part of my series explaining how Don’t Panic Labs approaches project management through the lens of a software release cycle. How we approach release planning varies, but for this post I’ll focus a common approach we use: Themed Release Cycles. When we begin talking about an upcoming release, we look to…
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Project Management – An Introduction to How We Do It
Project management is a job that I find challenging and fulfilling, especially when one considers the various methodologies and philosophies that exist around managing software development projects. There’s no “one way” to approach project management. We have many tools in our toolbox and evaluate each project to determine how best to approach it. It’s part…
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Ted Larsen – Communitarian of the Month
This month we are recognizing IT engineer Ted Larsen. Here’s what he told us when we asked about his volunteer experiences. Why do you volunteer? I’m an overachiever AND completely awesome as well. I always sat in the front row at school and at the back of the bus on the way home. Not really….
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Dynamic Splash Screens in WPF
There’s a lot going on when an EliteForm PowerTracker starts up. Some of it isn’t our code, but some of it is. Here’s a high-level list of what happens: Load PowerTracker Load environment file Register events Initialize background workers Initialize queues Retrieve saved user options Check internet connectivity Fetch team data and icons from the…
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Paul Havel – Communitarian of the Month
This month we are recognizing IT manager Paul Havel. Here’s what he told us when we asked about his volunteer experiences. Why do you volunteer? Volunteering lets me directly connect with the community and the nonprofits that do so much to sustain it. It’s hard to beat the feeling you get from helping out and…
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Sticky Sessions for Amazon’s Elastic Load Balancers
One of the great features of Amazon’s Elastic Load Balancers (ELB) – at least in my opinion – is the ability to establish sticky sessions (or session affinity). These allow clients to connect to specific instances in the load-balancer for the life of a session. In typical situations (when you don’t use sticky sessions), calls…
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Russ Guill – Communitarian of the Month
This month we are recognizing technical writer Russ Guill. Here’s what he told us when we asked about his volunteer experiences. Why do you volunteer? I think it’s a responsibility that’s been given to me and to others who have the means (e.g., time, money, motivation) to give back to the community. I think we…
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Thoughts on the Inc Magazine 500 CEO Survey
Hopefully everyone has heard that Nebraska’s own Hudl was named to Inc. Magazine’s 500 Fastest Growing Private Companies in America. Major props to their team for their extremely hard work and smart choices (and a little bit of luck) during the last seven years. Hopefully, you’ll see us on the list in the next few…
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Nate Lowry – Communitarian of the Month
This month we are recognizing engineer Nate Lowry. Here’s what he told us when we asked about his volunteer experiences. Why do you volunteer? I know that hundreds of people put a lot of time into my future, so I’m just paying it forward to the next generation. What do you enjoy most about volunteering?…
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