Posts on Dennis Eugene Stepp, Jr.

Reviewing An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management by Will Larson

Thu, 27 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I admit this is the second time I’m reading through this book. I first read Will’s book back in 2019 or 2020. I remember really enjoying it at that moment. Things were different then. It was a pre-covid world for one. I worked primary in the office. I worked for a much smaller company than I do now. I’ve learned so many things in the years since. So why revisit this book again? Well, because I’m at a new stage in my career and this sounds like fun. Heck, this was probably the last technical book I’ve read. This also isn’t the kind of book you read once and your problems are solved. These are skills you have to practice and situation change meaning your approach may have to change to meet the new challenges along the way.

Strength Finders Revisited - 2020 Edition

Sun, 26 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In November of 2017, I wrote a post about the results of Strength Finders: a personal assessment developed by American psychologist, Donald O. Clifton. This assessment has helped me over the last few years of my career. A colleague of mine suggested that I retake the assessment and the result both surprised and also didn’t surprise me.

StrengthsFinder

The assessment provides insight into 34 unique strengths which are grouped into 4 categories:

Replacement Cases and Art for Sega Saturn Games

Sun, 05 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

If you are a game collector it is a joy to show and tell people about your game collection. Unfortunately, some of the games in the collect might have broken or beat up boxes. Cover art seems to go missing quite a bit and it really drags down the overall appearance of the rest of the collection. The good news is that you can solve those issues.

Last week, I found reproduction Sega Saturn long box cases on Amazon last week and decided to pick some up to tidy up my game collection. I recently have picked up a few Sega Saturn games that either didn’t have a case or had cases that were cracked, scratched, or broken (which is common). I also had a discs that were just floating around loose. With my trusty tape measure I figured out the dimensions to print out new front and back covers so that they fit in these cases. But since the cover I found was shopped for a DVD size case, I had to shop back in the spines correctly and split the single image into front and back images.

2019 - Unexpected Surprises

Tue, 24 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The year started off as it does for many: committing to goals that haven’t been realized without a means to be held accountable. I planned to start exercising consistently every week and planning out meals every day. I had home improvement projects in mind that never came to light because I was lazy, disorganized, and distracted. I had such high hopes for Unibear Studio that have yet to see the light of day. In many ways, 2019 was a failure. However, sometimes random events turn out to lead you down paths you didn’t realize you could take.

Designing Pluggable AI for Enemies with Unity

Fri, 15 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

State controllers in Unity can quickly get out of hand if you throw the kitchen sink into them. Taking the time to break apart your state machine and crafting pluggable components will make your system testable, flexible, clean, and composable.

Disclaimer: While I’m going to provide examples, not all the implementation details will be explained as this post is meant to exemplify the high level concept of building pluggable AI.

What's Important to Me as a Technologist

Sat, 15 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

In one word: culture.

I recently had a vacation and it gave me some time to reflect on what I find is important to me as a technologist. I’ve narrowed it down to two main categories however when i think about the overarching picture only one thing stood out to me. Interestingly as I thought my way through this, specific technologies or languages never seemed to surface. All the proper nouns that you see on a job description (i.e. Java, C#, Spring, Linux, etc.) on a resume, well they don’t matter really matter to me that much. Even as I look through a lens of software development they only matter in a seemingly way. That’s simply not what I’m interested in as a potential candidate or an interviewer. Let me explain what I mean.

Checking HTTP Request/Response in PowerShell

Tue, 03 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This is as much for my reference as it may be yours, but here is a quick PowerShell script to check a HTTP request/response.

# Create the request
$HTTP_Request = [System.Net.WebRequest]::Create('http://www.google.com')

# Get the response
$HTTP_Response = $HTTP_Request.GetResponse()

# Get the HTTP as a interger
$HTTP_Status = [int]$HTTP_Response.StatusCode

If ($HTTP_Status -eq 200) {
    Write-Host "Site is OK!"
}
Else {
    Write-Host "The Site may be down, please check!"
}

# Clean up and close the request.
$HTTP_Response.Close()

Thanks for reading and good luck!

There, Here, and Where I'm Going: A Software Developer's Tale

Fri, 11 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Today was my last day at Radio Systems Corporation. The decision to leave did not come over night and it wasn’t easy to make.

I started my career fresh out of college as a Software Engineer in 2011 with Health Care Service Corporation in Chicago, IL. I spent two years with HCSC working on high-volume transaction processing which were COBOL programs converted to asynchronous Java programs spend across several machines. As far as the technicalities of these programs I don’t remember much, but what I do remember are the people I worked with.

2017: Postmortem

Sun, 31 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

First Things First

2017 was a great year for me personally and professionally. At work, I migrated from the Enterprise Resource Planning team to the Software Development team. I attended a couple conferences here in the Southeast. I participated in 3 game jams and several other projects through the year. I’d like to take some time now to reflect on this year’s journey and start thinking about the roadmap for 2018.

Postmortem: Ludum Dare 40

Mon, 11 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Check out my game on ldjam.com!

Recently, I participated in Ludum Dare 49, a global game jam in which thousands of participants come together to pair up or fly solo to create a game from scratch. There are two different modes you can decide from: the compo (48 hours, solo) or the jam (72 hours, solo/team). For LD 40, I ended up working by myself mostly.

Weeks Before LD40

The weeks leading up LD40 the plan was to work with a couple other guys but everyone couldn’t get time off work. So the day before LD40 started I decided I’d go it alone.

Strengths and Behaviors

Mon, 13 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Understanding your strengths and behaviors can help you be more effective in your career and personal life. We are naturally good at certain things and we work better with some people better than others. I think it’s important to not only understand yourself but the team you work with as well.

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

Based on the conceptual theories of Carl Jung, Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers published the first version of the MBTI in 1944. Their belief was that women who were entering the industrial workforce during WWII would be more able to identify what war-time jobs would be most beneficial to them.

Create Your Static Site with Hugo

Sat, 28 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

There’s many different options when it comes to generating a static site, Jekyll, Hexo, Gatsbyjs, MkDocs, Wyam, and many more. So why did I choose to create this blog with Hugo?

No reason. I just did. All of these options are viable for creating something like a blog, but I do suggest if your use case is more complicate and you have some experience with React, then do check out Gatsbyjs.

Let’s Get Started

First off, you’re going to need to have Git and hugo installed. If you haven’t used Chocolatey, this is so easy to install hugo. Simply open a PowerShell console and run this command.

Unity: Introduction to the Core UI

Wed, 18 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

You could say I’m pretty green when it comes to knowing my way around the Unity game engine. Come with me on a journey through some core UI elements and a few silly examples, some of which may actually be practical in your next Unity project.

Update Unity Preference

I’m going to do you a real solid. Trust me, you’ll want to update the Playmode tint to a really obnoxious color like #E70C6EFF so that you know for a fact when you are in Play mode. Props to @DJFariel for that tip.

Flyway, Gradle, Oracle JDBC

Mon, 16 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I’m writing this blog post to hopefully help out some poor soul who is trying to automate their Oracle database deployments using the Flyway plugin for Gradle. This was kind of a pain to accomplish because at the time of this post the documentation was scattered about and difficult to piece together. Let’s take care of that. </rant>

Assumptions

You’ve created new projects in IntelliJ Idea before.
You’re somewhat familiar with how Gradle builds work.
You’re somewhat familiar with Oracle Database.
You’re new to Flyway

Tools and Tech

Create a New Project

Create a new gradle project in IntelliJ IDEA. (Again, you don’t have to use IDEA, it’s just a suggestion) Fill in all the necessary project details as you would normally.

Managing the Stage

Mon, 11 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This Labor Day weekend marked the [45th Earl Park Fall Festival] (https://www.earlparkfestival.com/) in Earl Park, Indiana. Growing up just 6 miles south of this rural farm town, the annual festival has always held a special place in my heart. It is a tremendous honor to continue the legacy of so many community members including my grandfather, Leonard Hardebeck.

I remember as a 90’s kid walking around with my parents down the midway and stopping at the 4H stand for a pop. (Indiana is in the north and you call it a pop, not soda!) You have to stop by the Goodland Lion’s Club ice cream stand for a twist (chocolate and vanilla) cone. Then you have an cinnamon roll stand. It’s surprising I don’t have diabetes!

Ludum Dare 39: Running Out of Power

Tue, 01 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday concluded Ludum Dare 39, a global game jam in which thousands of participants come together to pair up or fly solo to create a game from scratch. There are two different modes you can decide from: the compo (48 hours, solo) or the jam (72 hours, solo/team). For the 39th Ludum Dare, my good friend Daniel, artist/composer came to stay with me over the weekend (I went to see him on the 38th Ludum Dare). Meanwhile, our lead programmer was staying at his home.

Finding Your Headspace

Fri, 17 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

For the last few years, I’ve essentially been a software developer doing Tier 1 support. Instead of proactively being able to simplify and optimize our software solutions, all I could do was react to the business units who were reporting issues. The pile of bugs kept growing and growing and managing those bugs proved to be in itself almost a full time job. I know that I’m not the first developer to be in this situation and I certainly won’t be the last. If you haven’t been in this spiral of decay let me tell you something: It Bleeping Sucks! Just know that it doesn’t have to be this way.