Ultranormal

Author: Kevin Lawver

  • Snipe Hunting Dan over at

    Dan over at Red Cricket came up with a list of “You Know You’re From North Carolina if…” stuff, and snipe hunting was mentioned. It brought ugly memories flooding back of my snipe hunting days when I was young and dumber.

    They say Boy Scouts is a good way to learn responsibility, how to tie knots and live in the woods. I was an Eagle scout, but can’t remember anything more than a square knot. What they don’t tell you is that Scouts is a great way to learn how to be humiliated and to humiliate. Oh yeah, it’s all fun at the time. Thus, the Snipe Hunt.

    It was my first campout. I was 12. I was fat and insecure. The only thing I had going for me was my prodigious use of bodily function humor. Remember, I was 12. We’re talking about Snipe Hunting, aren’t we? Here’s the concept:

    1. A Snipe is either a small rodent or bird (from the description I always thought it was a Kiwi)
    2. The catch a Snipe, you walk around with a stick and a garbage bag and beat the bushes trying to flush one out.
    3. Depending on the age group, it’s always good to throw in a somber warning about an escape convict.
    4. The older, or at least wiser, members of the group go and hide in the bushes while no one’s looking.
    5. At the right time, inflict pants-wetting terror on the Sniper Hunters.

    The great part about it was that as soon as I got over the embarrassment of falling for it, I couldn’t wait to do it to the next group of kids who came in.

    So, if you’re 11 and reading this, don’t fall for it. There are no Snipes, just escaped convicts. If you ever DO go on a Snipe Hunt, carry a big stick and wail the hell out of anything that moves. That’ll teach ’em.

  • 97,000 results on Google for

    97,000 results on Google for “powered by blogger“. That’s pretty cool.

  • Inspiration Complete – Please Close Door On Way Out

    I was talking about inspiration the other day. Well, it works. It works so well in fact that it scares me.

    There’s nothing greater than having a big idea, building it and seeing it come out right. It’s just great.

    I showed it to my manager yesterday, who promptly realized that I could be writing myself out of a job. See, what I did was take all the thousands of lines to Tcl I have to write to create a search product and turned it into a bunch of configurable HTML tags. You have to love AOLserver. After pondering the fact that I could be creating the cause of my own demise, I realized that that’s OK. I’ve worked on Search for two and a half years. I’ve done pretty much everything I can do with it. And, there are lots of other stuff here that needs work. It may be time to take that next step and conquer a new geekMountain™.

    What a great day.

  • When asked, most executives say

    When asked, most executives say they’re not going to be moving to Linux in the near future. That’s funny. What “executive” really knows what OS their web site or infrastructure runs on? Do they care? Here, we’re moving quite a few “essential” systems to Linux, and folks are loving it. The best part is the move didn’t come from an “executive”. The idea was brought up by developers and sysadmins. They proved the case for it, and did it. Gotta love that.

  • In the words of Eve,

    In the words of Eve, “Corporations are bastards.“

  • Pondering the Present

    I wrote a very long post about the people I work with and what I think of them. I just deleted it and am starting over.

    Today, I got to spend four hours in the latest “search summit”, where all the business owners and non-technical people get together and talk about what they do. I got to speak up and talk about open source and open source projects that work. It was interesting getting to talk about something I love at work. I like what I do, but I don’t think I love it as much as I used to. I think Open Source is fascinating, and, while I haven’t actually written any code for any, I support and use a bunch of open-source software. I submit bug reports, use them, compile stuff, etc. I’m a good little open source consumer.

    Open Source Stuff Worth Using:

    • AOLserver: Yes, it’s open source! The server that runs the hardest hit sites on the web. It’s fast, cool, has a tightly integrated Db interface and is as open as you want it to be.
    • Mozilla: Fight Microsoft. Whatever you do… and I know this sounds weird coming from a guy who’s a whore to bad guy , but just do it. Any browser that works on all the OS’es I use and makes my pages look the same on all of them is something worth using.
    • Ximian GNOME: They’re the company arm of GNOME, but they’re one of the reasons I use Linux. They make the hard stuff a little easier for those of us who don’t want to get up to our elbows in debugging conflicts.
    • PostgreSQL: An open-source database that’s close enough to Oracle to make people think twice. It’s easy to set up, and thanks to the folks at OpenACS, works great with AOLserver.
    • OpenACS: I don’t use the software, but anything that gets people using AOLserver is a good thing. A solid community infrastructure platform. And the people behind it are cool too.

    I forget that what I do is unique. There aren’t many people who are the only frontend developer on a site that gets 19+ million hits a day and generates millions of dollars in revenue every year. I forget that I’ve been doing this longer than anyone else in my company. It’s strange that I get so caught up in the day-to-day drudge that I don’t sit back and realize that less than three years ago, I was welded to a headset in Tucson, talking to small businesspeople without a clue and helping them set up websites. I was paid by the hour. Now, I’m the guy people talk to, even when they shouldn’t, about searching and how to build them. It’s scary. It makes me proud.

    Now, if only I could start combining my work with this whole open source thing… Gotta work on that.

  • Take part in the madness

    Take part in the madness that is poodle beat poetry (and bonus: poodle astrology). I love Lynda Barry. It took me the longest time to start reading her comic in the Tucson Weekly. I thought it was sloppy and didn’t make any sense. Then, I woke up, and got hooked on Marlys. Now, she’s unleashed the poodle, and I can’t stop laughing.

  • Inspiration

    I love feeling like I’m on the edge of something huge. I’ve felt kind of stagnant the last few months, and I think I’m finally coming out of it. I’m still frustrated by a lot of what I have to do at work, and some of the people here (ok, a lot of them). But, I think I can get around that by working on this new thing. It’s huge. It’s revolutionary for our group and what we do. It could free me and the other two engineering guys up for bigger and better things.

    I’ve barely started on it other than proving that it can be done. The first round rules. It works! It doesn’t crash anything. It plays well with others and doesn’t break anything (yet). I need to add a bunch of configuration options to it and clean it up, which is the least fun part. But, once I’m done, I may never have to hear anyone say, “Can you move it two pixels over and make it blue? I’ll send you the color later today.”, ever again. Won’t that be nice?

    It’s too bad I can’t tell you all what it is. It’s really cool. It’s revolutionary. It’s counter-culture intuitive. It rocks the socks off the box. It’ll make you cry out my name and beg for more. Ok, maybe not that… but it’s cool. And it’s mine.

  • For a super early teaser,

    For a super early teaser, the Star Wars Episode 2 trailer is very well done.

  • PhotoDude.com has been fascinating to

    PhotoDude.com has been fascinating to read over the past few months. I used to go for the photos. They’re beautiful. Since 9/11, though, he’s turned his blog into a totally different animal. I don’t know quite how to explain the change, because I don’t really know him, but it seems that where there were once soft edges and humor, is all hard corners and harsh words. Interesting.