Articles

NASA Contract Status

The follow-up contrat to NASA HITSS, HITSS2, was awarded to DMI, Inc, in June 2012. The award has since been contested, so transition is no longer happening in July 2012.

FAAD

Financial Assistance Award Data; I used MSSQL SSIS to create a datafactory that extracts files from an FTP servers, transforms and loads the data. Replaced a manually-administered COBOL program.

FOCUS

My first project with NASA, FOCUS is designed to be an agency-wide accounting system. The most notable development for this system was a six-dimensional security model. The "bones" of FOCUS became the skeleton application that I would later customize into five other (barely-related) systems.

NVDB

The NASA Vendor Database is open to all vendors, both large and small, who wish to do business with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Vendors can post capability briefs in any format, sign up for email messages that give information on Source Sought Notices, Requests for Information (RFI) or Request for Proposals (RFP) along with a quarterly newsletter. This NVDB is used by all NASA employees for market research, communication, and educating the NASA industrial base about the requirements of the NASA Centers.

FAQs

Why can't I find Nucleus Technologies on the web?

Nucleus Technologies (aka Nucleus Solutions) was purchased by Hewitt Associates after I started working for NASA. Hewitt has since been purchased by AON (I think). In any case, Nucleus has long since stopped being a going-concern.

You list a bunch of skills that you've only been practicing for a year. What gives?

Frankly, it's an exciting time for the craft of internet programming. HTML5 ushers in amazing new fundamentals, browsers get smarter and faster, responsive technologies (as demonstrated by Bootstrap, in Github since April, 2011) amazes. Progressive enhancement, made possible by Modernizr and jQuery, distributes content in ways that support the past and the future equally. If you have half an hour, ask me about COPE.

You went to school at Longwood College, but your resume links to Longwood University. Is that a mistake?

Longwood College became Longwood University after I graduated.

What is 'task-centric' help?

Task-centric help is a method of providing helpful information that is relevant only to the webpages a user is accessing. In other words, instead of providing a user's manual that tells you everything about the system, chop that manual up into pieces that are then associated only with relevant pages. I gave a full presentation on the concept for the ColdFusion User's Group,