Doug Boude (rhymes with 'loud')

THE DAY CFUNITED DIED

2010-07-31T01:27:00-05:00

As you ALL know, this was the last CFUnited ever, and as an attendee, I am certain that this fact was actually a positive influence on how the conference played out. The camaraderie that is always an integral part of this event was magnified by the ever-present fact that we just don’t know when we may be able to assemble ourselves in these numbers again. I know for myself (and I do believe that

My Top 20 Life Lessons for Boys and Young Men

2010-05-06T09:30:00-05:00

Life Lessons for Boys, Young Men, and Men

Things i've learned over the years that, if taken to heart by a young man, will save him immense amounts of grief. If you are a father or mentor to young men and/or boys, make it a point to help instill these things into them. By example is always best, but weaving such things into daily conversation and situations can have a positive affect as well. <

My Top 20 Life Lessons for Husbands and Fathers

2010-04-22T01:45:00-05:00

Following are the top 20 things that I have come to learn over the years that I feel, if implemented, taught, embraced, and adhered to, will be the keys to maintaining a happy and efficient home, as well as a posterity fully prepared to go forth and do likewise.
Feel free to add to this list in the comments! :)

(note: the followi

The Death of an Anarchist

2010-02-18T14:44:10-05:00
Editor's Note: This letter was copied from the Austin American Statesman's web site, and is purported to be from the web site of Joe Stack, who crashed an airplane into the IRS building in Austin, Texas on the morning of February 18th, 2010. Though I can't condone Mr. Stack's actions, I can absolutely comprehend and empathize with his point of view, line of thinking, rationale, logic, and frustrat

(User) Interface-Driven Architecture vs Model Driven Architecture

2009-12-01T14:18:00-05:00

Part of what makes me a professional developer, in my opinion, is the fact that I always make it a point to learn and evolve. When what I knew and was certain of yesterday becomes intertwined with some new thing I learn today, great things happen and my understandings and persepectives change. Recently, that very thing occurred regarding my mindset on how to approach any new development project, so I thought I would share the ex

On Falling Behind...

2009-09-10T17:42:00-05:00

This blog post began as a simple comment to Ray's blog post "Are We Falling Behind", but darn him, he moved me such that it turned into multiple paragraphs!

So, here's the commentary that the afore mentioned post and the thoughts of all its commenters evoked fro

Buying a New Home is Easy! Part 2 of 2

2009-09-07T23:18:00-05:00

Just before completing the process of moving into my wife and I's new home, I did a blog post covering what I consider to be a lot of good tips, info, and ideas. Now that we've been in the home for a full week, there are a few more things regarding this process I'd like to share as well.

If you haven't read the fi

Strange Validation Issue with CFARGUMENT

2009-08-25T15:40:00-05:00

I was chatting with a buddy of mine today about an issue he had encountered when passing a list of numbers into a cfargument whose type was set to "numeric" (CF 8). For whatever reason, he could pass in the string "1,6,7" and it would actually validate as a numeric value. When passing in a fourth number, such as "1,6,7,9", it threw an error based on the argument type, which it rightfully should have

Buying a New Home is EASY! Part 1 of 2

2009-08-24T22:50:00-05:00

(I shared more details prior to this post in a previous post)

Tomorrow morning at 9 am, my wife and I go to close on our new home. Just to make sure we come prepared, we called the builder today to find out what the specific amount of closing costs would be. To our surprise, I was told that the only t

Assurant Health (NYSE:AIZ) Denies Coverage Because Young Man is Autistic

2009-07-15T16:42:00-05:00

I have spent the majority of today shopping around for medical benefits for myself and my family. Only it wasn't very much like shopping; not at all. It was more like going through a divorce, or a death, or some other traumatic event that causes the rest of life to be put on hold while you do lots of typing, talking, researching, worrying, counseling, fretting, waiting anxiously, and spending money you didn't have to begin with.

Employers: Save Yourself And Your Employees Some Healthcare Cash!

2009-07-15T14:18:00-05:00

Health Benefits and the costs thereof. I won't even pretend to be anal enough to have managed to have wrapped my head around the unnecessarily over-complicated subject of health benefits, but I did just go through an experience regarding that topic that I feel is worthy of sharing.

The Scenario
I am the non-custodial parent of several children for which I provide support and me

My Yoke is Easy and My Burden is Light

2009-01-15T08:03:15-05:00

For twelve years I dedicated myself to Christianity. Not the casual, “add it to your collection of good things you lay claim to” style of Christianity; I rather gave myself to it, immersed myself in it, surrounded myself with it, and spent every waking moment working hard in one fashion or another trying desperately to achieve my understanding of what it meant to “b

A Look at Male Enhancement

2008-12-16T04:03:00-05:00

Allow me to preface by saying that I am well aware that NO MALE reading this post has ever considered, imagined, entertained the remotest thought of, or especially TRIED any of the seemingly popular and wildly successful (according to Ron Jeremy) male enhancement nutraceuticals. I know this is the case...we're all fantastically pleased with our packages just the way they are; no room for improvement there. Lend me your imaginati

I Have a Dream....

2008-11-22T12:41:53-05:00

The collective abilities of the many always surpass the few. This is common knowledge, and pervades every aspect of life so much so that we probably don't even take note of it. A pride of lions takes more game than one hunting solo; the most correct answer is the distillation of many people's opinions rather than that of a single individual; the list could go on ad finitum. So why then is it that so many people who catch the ent

Is Your ColdFusion User Group Lame?

2008-10-08T14:16:00-05:00

For the last several months it has been my distinct opinion that the ColdFusion user group down here in San Antonio is, to put it frankly, lame. Attendance is high when we have more than three people show up (including the manager and co manager), the agenda is non-existent really, and all of our best meetings are held at the Flying Saucer (local college hangout with hundreds of kinds of beer) or TGIs (killer apple tinis). It's

The 42 Year Old (Political) Virgin

2008-10-05T17:14:00-05:00

I can't help but relate to the 40 Year Old Virgin, as I myself am 42 and for whatever reason (I have no good explanation for it), THIS year is the VERY FIRST TIME politics has ever attracted my interest. It's almost like I've just now hit political puberty or something (I mean, I KNEW that changes were taking place inside of me but I was confused about them and didn't know what they meant!). Every single election year, I've turn

On Being Sorry...

2008-10-04T12:34:00-05:00
"Sorry", the word itself, is so very often misused and abused. 99% of the time, "sorry" is thrown out in the midst of a disagreement more as a mockery and gesture of pure loathing for the other person rather than the healing, fulfilling word that it was intended to be. Though no expert on the subject, living life and being observant along the way has resulted in some relevant insight, so I&n

The Dark Side of Good Intentions

2008-01-04T11:16:50-05:00

As I traversed the route I always do from my Jeep to the entrance of the office building where I work, I glanced at the now empty nest that lay in the ivy bed under the oak tree. Pin feathers and empty, broken egg shells decorated the area as scavengers had left it somewhat disheveled in their search for any of the ducklings which may not have hatched. The raccoons found nothing in the nest, howeve

Promoting Family Unity - The Power of Forgiveness

2007-09-22T07:36:00-05:00
The other day a very close friend of mine IM’d me, quite distraught and looking for input on a situation he had at home between he and his two young daughters. The situation was that his wife’s father was terminally ill and so she was out of town, spending as much time with her father and family until he passed away. So my friend, we’ll call him John, was left to tend to all of his usual burdens as provider and da

Promoting Family Unity: A Weekend at the Beach!

2007-08-20T23:20:00-05:00
The plan materialized late one night over sweating glasses of White Merlot when Jen and I did the budget and weighed out our options.Camping was up there on the list, and fared well with regards to the budget; but even at night up in the south Texas hill country, it's STILL too hot to sleep comfortably outdoors, so we opted to postpone camping until late fall. Neither she nor her children had ever been to Mustang Islan

The Boude Bunch: When Two Families Become One

2007-08-20T23:09:00-05:00
Promoting family unity is an ongoing process, one that can be extremely complex, fragile, and always requiring constant vigilance and purpose. The process can be even more challenging when the family you're unifying was once two separate ones. Enter if you will into the realm of "The Steps": Step children, step parents.Not only are there the normal human social hurdles to overcome when blending lives in this

Have You Heard the One About...

2007-08-14T11:33:00-05:00
It was a moonless, black, rainy night in the heart of the Texas Hill country as I hugged the hairpin curves of the two-lane blacktop, earnestly striving to make it to my appointment on time. Fall had descended a month ago and the black silhouettes of the dormant mesquite trees were the only thing outside of my truck's narrow high beams that I could discern. That is, until I rounded yet another sharp left bend in the road and saw, t

The Battle of the Bulge

2007-08-10T12:59:39-05:00
I'm an observer. Not only do I look at what's in front of me while I drive down life's highway, I take note of the ever changing landscape on either side of me. One of those landscapes that seems to be "evolving" is my body. I can think back to my senior year in high school when I was a wrestler, weighing in at 129 pounds of pure muscle and sinew. My waist was 30 inches, and my height...well, it was exactly the same as it

Text-Link-Ads: leaving Adsense in the dust

2007-08-02T10:38:00-05:00
Inspired by Michael Dinowitz' article on "Making Google Pay", I recently decided to follow his recipe and see if perhaps I too could make Google pay. I really had no expectations going into it, but I must say that I'm not overly impressed with the results. Over the course of about two months, Google has paid me a whopping [exact amount ommitted for fear of ticking off Google. Suffice it to say, it isn't much]. On top of t

The Key to True Conflict Resolution

2007-07-01T06:23:00-05:00
A design pattern is a recurring concept, arrangement of things, and/or repeated process. Life is composed entirely of such patterns. From the patterns found in the genetic blueprints of even the simplest form of life to the consistent and measurable rising and setting of the sun: life is a beautiful matrix of overlaid and interacting patterns. Ah, but more than simply random patterns, these are patterns in the very des

American Airlines, YOU SUCK!

2007-06-27T00:00:00-05:00
American Airlines, if you were a gas, you would be malodiferous and noxious; if you were a teenage girl, you would be gangly and plain, nobody would ever ask you to the prom, and you would die a virgin.

This particular day, I've found myself with you, American Airlines, in an intimate setting, and all of the assumptions I had about you based on hearsay and things gleaned from between the lines over the years have turned

My Grandpa

2007-05-31T01:29:00-05:00

My mind swam as I drove the thirty minutes to the hospital, my thoughts wandering back and forth between the cares of my day and my love and concern for my grandpa. I had just walked in from a pleasant lunch with one of my fellow Masons when the front desk lady flagged me down and handed me a scribbled note that read “grandpa – hospital – emergency – call mom”. Sometim

CSS vs Table based layouts: Speed Differential

2007-04-20T11:20:00-05:00
Myself and a coworker of mine, Joe Gautreau, did an interesting experiment this week regarding load-time speed comparison between CSS-based templates vs table-based. Personally I wouldn't have thought there would be much difference, if any, but the results were eye-opening...33% less time to load a CSS'd version than the table version. You can read the details of it I have noticed that curling your eyelashes while driving results in an open-highway velocity that is an average of 15 mph less than that of the remaining traffic.