About Displaced Guy

Rich Bianco (aka DisplacedGuy)

This blog was started by the Displaced Guy (a.k.a. Rich Bianco) when he ended an eight year contract with a Fortune 100 client in Orlando in 2010. Rich is an expert level PowerBuilder programmer with experience from version 3 through version 12 between 1993 and 2010. Rich has also worked with every major DBMS including Oracle, MS SQL Server, Sybase SQL Server, MySQL, Informix, DB2, and many of the minor databases.

Rich worked at the University of Wisconsin while finishing his Computer Science degree, then worked for Fortune 100 giants such as Walt Disney World, Siemens, Bank of America, AT&T, Time Warner Cable – Full Service Network, Dyncorp, Lockheed Martin, Wisconsin Power & Light and London Bridge.

Rich’s Professional Career

Programming experience started with Cobol, MVS JCL, CICS, System 370 Assembly, DB2, Pro*C and PowerBuilder 3.0. Rich started developing re-usable frameworks for PowerBuilder before they were commercially available. WPL Core is an extensive framework similar to the commercially available framework made available around PowerBuilder 5. Rich worked with a tech writer in creation of detailed help files and training material for less experienced developers. WPL Core Framework made an immediate and profound improvement in productivity at Wisconsin Power & Light.

Upon completion of the PowerBuilder framework and other projects at Wisconsin Power& Light,  an opportunity presented itself at Walt Disney World in Orlando Florida where Rich co-lead a team of developers in the creation of a framework specific to Disney and to the Informix database that Disney was using. This framework had profiling built in that could be controlled remotely to monitor performance of any one user PC, or a group of user PC’s. Interestingly the profiling functionality was later included in the commercially available framework offered by PowerSoft, the owner of PowerBuilder. Sybase subsequently purchased PowerBuilder from PowerSoft.

Upon running out of challenges in Wisconsin; Rich relocated his family to Orlando and worked on an experimental pilot project for Time Warner Cable – Full Service Network. The FSN was the first fully interactive cable deployment in the country. It was installed in an upscale subdivision in Longwood, Florida. The project was a success, however, the project was cancelled early by Time Warner Corporate due to funding problems. Rich’s role was that of a senior developer leading a small team of developers in creating data warehouse’s in Oracle and writing complex reports against Oracle tables having over 26 million rows representing each click a customer made on a remote control so that marketing analysts could determine usability and customer usage habits.  The project was a success in giving Time Warner early experience in the interactive cable arena, however the project was terminated abruptly leaving Rich with a decision to relocate to Denver, CO or leave Time Warner for other opportunities.

Rich continued doing mostly PowerBuilder and Oracle development at numerous Fortune 100 & Fortune 500 companies over the next ten years.  Rich also gained some web experience doing ASP, and XML, XSLT against Oracle at Bank of America in Jaxsonville, FL.   Rich took a contract at Dyncorp in Washington D.C. (Falls Church, Virginia), to help them finish a project that was behind schedule, using PowerBuilder and Oracle.  The project was software used for military deployment, that reduced the challenges of moving thousands of pieces of hardware (trucks, weapons, machinery, food, tanks) from many locations using many methods to many deployment areas in the country while maximizing available space on cargo ships and jets.

Upon completing the project for Dyncorp in Washington D.C. (Falls Church, Virginia), Rich began new contracts closer to his family in Orlando at giants Lockheed Martin, AT&T (part time), and London Bridge (formerly Check Free Corporation) developing Mortgage Default software that would run interchangeably on either Oracle or MS SQL Server.

Lastly, Rich began what was supposed to be a one year contract at Siemens Energy that stretched out to a full eight years.  The economic challenges put pressure on IT budgets leading to the unfortunate termination of all other PowerBuilder contractors, except Rich and his good friend who was also a top-producing developer.  Siemens was in the middle of a hiring freeze with two sole PB contractors bearing the brunt of the client server development.  Siemens was running on a dangerously lean staff to remain competitive in the marketplace when, in Sept, 2003 Rich’s co-developer and long-time friend died unexpectedly.  Rich was the only PB developer and would be the only developer to support all mission critical applications while enhancing them to adapt to changing business requirements and changing government rules and guidelines related to power generation.

The unexpected loss of Rich’s only PowerBuilder resource at Siemens forced him to accept responsibility for another large, mission critical PowerBuilder system that was extremely complex, interfacing directly plant design CAD/CAM tools to find design conflicts in new power plant electrical wiring, tubing, and connections.  This very unique application allowed Siemens engineers to find problems in the design stage rather than during plant construction where the cost of change was exponentially higher and risk of having to pay liquidated damages for not meeting project deadlines was common.

Rich was able to keep all PB applications running, while improving reliability and enhancing significantly from 2004-2010.  One of the mission critical applications, called IDEA, was originally planned to be re-written in Java in 2004, but each year the possibility of that happening became more remote because the user community was happy with the application and productivity gains from it, while at the same time the apps they were using from Java or SAP departments were disappointing, behind schedule, cancelled, or just did not work.

Some of the notable enhancements during Rich’s tenure at Siemens Energy are addition of a new Workflow Module to IDEA that was written in PB with heavy emphsis on the back-end using Oracle Packages, Stored Procedures, Triggers and UNIX batch processes with SQL*Loader.  The Workflow Module was designed in a way that allowed for easy addition of new business workflow’s.  After development of the workflow engine, for a Date Change workflow, three later workflow processes were added at minimal cost, and since much of the code was re-used they were implemented with virtually zero defects.  The three later workflows were for an R-Sheet process (moving equipment from cancelled projects to storage or storage to new projects), an MDL process which defined which documents would be delivered with each part, and lastly an ERL workflow, which was for the approval of actual line items that go into a new power plant project, and at the last stage of approval, PR’s were automatically cut to the SAP system.   The MDL workflow featured the ability to create PDF documents using data from the Oracle database, and attach it to an email sent to Siemens buyers for review and sending to various vendors when negotiating which documents we expect with their product when delivered.

Much of the reason Rich was able to do so much himself was his ability to identify areas hurting productivity and use benefits of object oriented programming and good program design to minimize those.   One factor, an automated error reporting system similar to Microsoft operating system that sends automated error reporting.   Rich found that users would work around errors, or just live with them and not say anything, so he implemented the automatic reporting.  Users would be notified the error was reported in a careful way as to not make them feel like they made a mistake.  Then when the problem was fixed they were notified and thanked for providing extra information.  It made for happy users who felt like they were part of the process, but it also made the application much more stable so Rich could keep up with the important things.

The interface to SAP is probably one of the main reasons that the IDEA system Rich developed and maintained was not considered for re-write in Java or .Net.  Rich developed the SAP interface as re-usable objects, so that the connectivity portion was re-used, and each new transaction involved making logic specific to the transaction.   Over Rich’s tenure at Siemens there were numerous interfaces to several different SAP systems and in total over a dozen new interfaces to various systems and major re-design of ERL systems.

Some of Rich’s accomplishments after leaving Siemens, include several personal websites including this blog, an Orlando Travel, Business and Relocation web directory, a personal project website, and side-jobs creating web-sites to sharpen Rich’s creative and web design skills.  The latest side-job, still in active development is http://www.lialiacollection.com/liala_v2 being developed as replacement to the current site to be replaced http://www.lialiacollection.com note: eventually the new site will exist at the main domain location, some time around mid-November 2010… Rich’s version of the site can be identified by looking at the About window, the old site text truncates off the end of the window and has a vertical menu, Rich’s new version of the site has a horizontal menu across the top of the site.   The new site has greatly improved navigation and greatly improved Collections pages with cool JavaScript photo gallery functionality.

Rich has also recently taken a WaveMaker training course, WaveMaker is a leading tool for creation of RIA (Rich Internet Applications) or enterprise cloud type applications.  Rich has invested a fair amount of time in WaveMaker and he believes they are the next PowerBuilder for enterprise web applications.  Rich has been studying Java and Microsoft .Net technologies in preparation for his next challenge.  Ideally Rich would be suited for converting existing PowerBuilder applications to WaveMaker and/or Java or .Net.

Lastly, Rich was able to help his daughter get moved out into her dorm at USF (University of South Florida) in Tampa, Florida.   His daughter is on a Bright Futures scholarship, and was admitted into the honors college at USF.   Rich is thankful that things worked out the way they did, and he could spend this precious time helping his daughter.

If you would like to speak to Rich about PowerBuilder, WaveMaker, Java or .Net development please initiate contact with him via email to start.  Please use rich at displacedguy.com or rich at otown411.com.   Rich has a family in the Orlando, Florida area and would prefer to stay in Florida for a while but he is open to travel positions and very open to travel/telecommute type positions.  Rich prefers challenge, and enjoys working in both team or single developer environments.  Rich is a true developer at heart and loves to make life easier for customers and lives to learn new things.   Rich is a self-starter and over-achiever who believes in accountability and respecting deadlines.

Need a top-notch, seasoned developer who can start tomorrow?  Contact Rich now, satisfaction guaranteed.  ;)

Sincerely,

Rich (aka DisplacedGuy)

Rich’s Web Hosting Company for the last five years – Highly Recommended !!

About WordPress

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Everything you see here, from the documentation to the code itself, was created by and for the community. WordPress is an Open Source project, which means there are hundreds of people all over the world working on it. (More than most commercial platforms.) It also means you are free to use it for anything from your personal blog to a Fortune 500 web site without paying anyone a license fee and a number of other important freedoms.

About WordPress.org

On this site you can download and install a software script called WordPress. To do this you need a web host who meets the minimum requirements and a little time. WordPress is completely customizable and can be used for almost anything. There is also a service called WordPress.com which lets you get started with a new and free WordPress-based blog in seconds, but varies in several ways and is less flexible than the WordPress you download and install yourself.