September 2004 - Posts

• I HATE the Presidential Debates !!!

  I really hope that I am not alone in this line of thought, but I really hate the Presidential Debates. I did debate back in secondary school and college, and to call these things "debates" is an insult to pillow and tickle fights everywhere. I don't know Read More... Posted Thursday, September 30, 2004 8:20 PM by FinServGuy | 8 Comments

• JUST RELEASED.....At long last!!!

  The Insurance Forms Reference Implementation for Microsoft Office 2003 is NOW AVAILABLE!!! You can download the code and files at the following location: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=E4DB6C80-4B5B-454B-8962-0441B61B521E&displaylang=en Read More... Posted Wednesday, September 29, 2004 3:23 PM by FinServGuy | 10 Comments

• Financial Value Chain (Part 5)

  In this final part of the Financial Value Chain series, I'd like to address, what I think can be the most exciting parts of the Financial Value Chain. Up to this point, it would be fairly easy to call parts 1 through 4 a common infrastructure that can Read More... Posted Tuesday, September 28, 2004 11:20 PM by FinServGuy | 4 Comments

• Favorites...and stuff

  Somehow I knew that this was going to be a great weekend. There's something about spending a wonderful afternoon out on Elliott Bay with the rest of the team that sets the stage for a great weekend. Thanks Pat ( http://www.pathelland.com ) for a great Read More... Posted Sunday, September 26, 2004 9:58 PM by FinServGuy | 4 Comments

• Interfaces and Abstractions

  There's something about Peter Sellers that totally cracks me up. I just finished watching "Dr. Strangelove" on TCM in my office here at home (as I also read a paper on Software Factories, a nice blend). After this last week, and as I watched the movie, Read More... Posted Saturday, September 25, 2004 10:46 PM by FinServGuy | 0 Comments

• Financial Value Chain (Part 4)

  This week has been just crazy. And today proves to be even busier, but I wanted to make sure that I moved this forward and talked about the supporting PLATFORM tools supporting the Financial Value Chain. With so many companies espousing web services and Read More... Posted Thursday, September 23, 2004 10:51 AM by FinServGuy | 0 Comments

• Random Weekend Thoughts

  I went out and bought Fable ( http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/rpg/fable/index.html?tag=mp_num1 ) last night. I just couldn't wait for the Microsoft Company Store to get it in stock. So I stayed up past 2 a.m. playing last night. Let me tell you, this game Read More... Posted Saturday, September 18, 2004 2:13 PM by FinServGuy | 5 Comments

• Financial Value Chain (Part 3)

  I'm working up a new "SOA friendly" term for Financial Value Chain (FVC) since that term just sounds a bit overused or ambiguous. But we'll stick with it for now until I am done. In this episode I want to talk about two of the layers of the FVC. Namely Read More... Posted Friday, September 17, 2004 4:15 PM by FinServGuy | 7 Comments

• Web Services Architecture Primer

  I just had to post this pointer to a GREAT article written on the web services architecture and a great educational read found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/webservices/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnwebsrv/html/introwsa.asp One thing that this Read More... Posted Friday, September 17, 2004 10:09 AM by FinServGuy | 2 Comments

• Insurance Value Chain becomes Financial Value Chain (Part 2)

  OK, so after looking at what I was going to write and hearing some offline feedback I'm going to break this into several parts, so this might be like a five part series (some others interspersed) so just stay tuned. Also, the limitation of these integration Read More... Posted Tuesday, September 14, 2004 12:08 PM by FinServGuy | 4 Comments

• The Insurance Value Chain (Part 1)

  So a number of people have sent me mail asking about the "Insurance Value Chain". So I thought I'd give a little background (Part 1) and future (Part 2) for what the Insurance Value Chain was and what it will become. Anyone who has watched Microsoft in Read More... Posted Friday, September 10, 2004 8:31 AM by FinServGuy | 10 Comments

• REAL Customer Service

  Is it sick and wrong of me to say that I'm in LOVE with the work that is coming out of the http://www.ws-i.org (WS-I)? Or perhaps "lust" is a better term. Anyway you put it, this stuff is just fantastic. And last night as I tried to get one of my kids Read More... Posted Thursday, September 09, 2004 2:27 PM by FinServGuy | 4 Comments

• Habit Forming and Architectural Excellence

  So here I am sitting in my office after a long weekend...and I mean LONG weekend. I decided to head out with my brother-in-law (a Software Dev Engineer on the Outlook team) to a wedding in Utah. And I thought a road trip would be fun. 27 hours of interstate Read More... Posted Wednesday, September 08, 2004 2:30 PM by FinServGuy | 3 Comments

• SOA and the death of the VAN

  Picture this…It’s the 1980s and Reaganomics is in full swing. Computer hard drives are about the size of a flash memory stick and modems are barely pushing the 14.4 envelope. But I’m a business and I need to connect electronically to other businesses. Read More... Posted Wednesday, September 01, 2004 10:31 PM by FinServGuy | 0 Comments