Steve McCoy - Electronic Portfolio 
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Steve McCoy
1220 N 164th St
Omaha, NE 68118

         Mobile tel:         +1(402)598-5153

email: trmccoyx@cox.net

 

 

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- "stuff" from Steve McCoy

I have been in the technology business too long to not know how important some distractions & amusements are to keeping our sanity.  This page will be dedicated to finding some of those things and sharing them with others.  Feel free to email me additional items that you might find to be dedicated to helping us all keep the right things in the right perspectives.  An example to the right reflects that I've been lucky and climbed to most of the highest points in the continental U.S.  It's a great reminder to "stop" and look around.  You don't want to miss anything in the short time that we are all here.


 

I really am a pragmatist when it comes technology.  I strongly believe that you should always pursue the "best" overall solution that fits your needs and "architecture principles" (more on that later).  There have always been debates over what the best desktop solution is, but you cannot hide from Microsoft Windows being the overall "winner" for most folks in the world.    If you're a Windows user and haven't already moved to Windows 7, I would have to recommend that you give it some thought.  After having installed it on numerous systems, I can say with confidence that it is the most stable, cleanest Windows that I've ever had.  Its' error handling and stability make it a much more pleasant world to operate in even with downward compatibility for many older programs. 

That said, if you are running completely clean all the time with Vista, you probably don't have a good reason to update, but I'm simply saying, "Don't be afraid!".  In the past you probably have had some awful experiences with upgrading Windows and you probably won't with this.    Do your research, check your system recommendations and drivers and "go for it".

 

Here's a "classic" for you.. The Eight Queens Problem:

The premise here is that you have a chess board, and you have 8 "queens" that normally can attack other chess pieces in any direction on the board (horizontal, vertical, or either diagonal direction) and no other pieces.  Here is the "given"....... There are 92 possible ways to put the queens on the board such that none of them could attack each other.  How do you figure out all 92 positions?

If you're a programmer; how would you write a piece of code to produce the answers?  If you're not a programmer, just give it some thought.

This was one of my greatest lessons in how to write efficient programs.  When given this challenge in a college programming class, I spent 2 weeks drawing checkerboards and formulas and then wrote my program in 2 hours.  When turning it in I sat in class next to another student and we compared solutions.  We both had the same answers.  I wrote 58 lines of code and my program executed in 16 seconds.  The other solution was over 700 lines of code and took the computer 12 minutes to produce the same answers.  From that point on, system and program performance have always been critically important to me.

 

As a starting point.......... Here's Me!  Some time ago I decided that I needed to "personalize some documents, emails, etc......so.......... I caricatured me.  Don't be alarmed if I occasionally show up on your desktop!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Hot topics and reading recommendations regarding-technology. (News "tidbits")

- The Open Group
- TOGAF
- ITIL Information
- Project Management Institute (PMP info)
- American Society for Quality (six-sigma info)
- Microsoft
- IBM
- LINUX information
- TCP/IP (Internet Protocol Suite)
- Data Storage Topics
- Basics of Analytics


...Wondering what this is??? Click to take a look. (specials)


         
         
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Electronic portfolio of Stephen D. McCoy, Omaha, Nebraska

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