More Than Fun And Games

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On our blog we usually write about what we’re doing around the office. It’s easy because that’s what comes to our minds while we’re in the office. But what about our endeavors outside the office? How do our hobbies and extracurricular activities affect or complement what we do at Don’t Panic Labs? In my estimation,…

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Our 10 Most Popular Blog Posts of 2015

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As another year winds down, it’s only natural to look back at what we’ve accomplished. Just one part of what we do is share on our blog what we have learned and experienced. Since we’re not interested in keeping all of that just for ourselves, we hope the blog is a way we can help…

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Browser Debugging Between OS X and Visual Studio in Parallels

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Over the last seven months I’ve been developing web applications using Visual Studio in Parallels 10, and the experience is alternatingly fantastic and frustrating, depending on the day. Some days I get the performance I want out of Parallels, and other days it’s incredibly sluggish and quirky, especially when debugging in a browser. After several…

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Taking on a BIG Storage Challenge

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As IT Manager of Nebraska Global (including Don’t Panic Labs), I – along with Ted Larsen who is the other half of our entire IT department – face unique technology challenges every day. Sometimes they’re relatively simple, like recovering data after a hard drive failure. Sometimes they require a fair amount of physical agility, like…

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Another Transition Story: From Desktop to Surface Pro 3

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Last week we read Curtis’s story of how he transitioned from a desktop Windows machine to a MacBook Pro running Windows in Parallels 10. This week, I’m sharing my story of moving from a similar desktop machine to a Microsoft Surface Pro 3. Choosing the Hardware When it came time for me to choose the…

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A Developer’s Migration Story: Moving from Windows Desktop to MacBook Pro with Parallels

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At the beginning of 2015, the developers here at Don’t Panic Labs were given the option to choose any notebook or tablet computer to call our own. We wanted to encourage mobility and the freedom to work from different spaces when desired. We ended up with a good spread around the office – many choosing…

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Why We Love Microsoft

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So, I recently sent out a company-wide email regarding our firm’s favorite apps. I expected to see some obscure technical responses or maybe a couple Spotify-like cultural ones, but I did not expect to hear so much about Microsoft. Actually, I was shocked by what was returned. Of the responses, almost all of them referenced…

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Debugging on the Web

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When we develop for Windows, we use a debugger. So why does so much of our web development follow the code refresh ”Did it work?” progression? All modern web browsers have some sort of web development tools. These can be used to check your CSS, manually manipulate Document Object Model (DOM) elements, and even debug…

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Our Experience with Telerik Reporting

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The Beehive team recently had the opportunity to improve the quality of its reporting. We came to the conclusion that our current implementation too slow, difficult to keep configured, and too difficult to maintain. Our original implementation used SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), which is a server-based solution from Microsoft. This choice made sense in…

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Upgrading Projects to SQL 2012: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

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Experience is always a great teacher. And if I can learn something through experience I like to share it, especially if I can save others any amount of hassle. Case in point: our recent experience with upgrading to Microsoft SQL 2012 and how it affected our projects and nightly builds. Install This process is pretty…

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