Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

posted January 31, 2012 by Ryan in Business, Consulting

Let me start by asking a question… If someone handed you a piece of paper and asked for it to be cut in half; what would you do? You’d go get a pair of scissors and cut the paper – right? On the other hand, you could go think about the problem, come up with a solution, and fabricate your own cutting device. But why? There is a pair of scissors sitting right on your desk and they work great – solution found!

Take this same thought and apply it to software – or more generally, any technological problem or scenario. You could spend time and money coming up a solution and I’m sure it would work great. However, if there is already a solution available, why not use it?! The ultimate goal is about offering the best possible solution to the client – whether that be something fully customized, a product off the shelf, or some hybrid of the two.

Keep this in mind and don’t reinvent the wheel!

Baltimore Consulting

posted January 24, 2012 by Ryan in Business

Dear Client,

This letter is to inform you that we have recently changed our business name from Sequencing, Inc. to Baltimore Consulting. Please be advised that there is no change in ownership or management. We hope the name change will help in our efforts to expand our market share and client base.  We will continue to provide you with the same IT services, dedication and excellence that we have built our reputation on since 2004.
sequencing_logo_vertical
Thank you for being one of our valued clients. For any inquiries, feel free to call us at 443.541.3354.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.

Easily Convert a String to RTF in .NET

posted January 20, 2012 by Ryan in Development

I came across a situation where I needed to convert a string into RTF format dynamically in an application. After some searching for a .NET RTF library or a conversion function, I decided to just implement my own find/replace method. Needless to say, this proved to be rather tricky. An then, the ah ha moment… I got a tip from a colleague to use the WinForms RichTextBox control and let it do the work. After a little testing, it seems to work pretty well so I figured I’d share this snippet if you ever have the same issue.

private static string FormatAsRTF(string DirtyText)
{
	System.Windows.Forms.RichTextBox rtf = new System.Windows.Forms.RichTextBox();
	rtf.Text = DirtyText;
	return rtf.Rtf;
}
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Local DateTime Utility Function

posted January 17, 2012 by Ryan in Development

Just wanted to share a quick utility function. We have a server in another timezone and this frequently presents issues in our client apps when displaying time stamps. There isn’t really a solid solution to handle this in the database so I put together this little utility function that can be called rather than DateTime.Now to get the current local time.

public static DateTime CurrentDateTime()
{
   return TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTime(TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTimeToUtc(DateTime.Now,
                       TimeZoneInfo.Local),
                       TimeZoneInfo.Utc,
                       TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById("Eastern Standard Time"));
}

I have this in a utility class called AppLogic so all I need to do is call AppLogic.CurrentDateTime() to get the local EST time. Obviously, you would change your time zone where applicable.

Enjoy!

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