Category: development

I have a the Jolly Roger up in my office, and the sign next to my door says, “Kevin P.* Lawver *the ‘p’ is for ‘pirate’”. I’ve had the flag for a while now (got it from Archie McPhee), and decided one day to put it up so everyone who walked past my door could see it. I wasn’t initially sure why I did it. I had it, and I put it up… simple as that. My manager asked about it yesterday, and here’s pretty much what I told him (flowered up for the it-ner-net).

I realized I was never going to influence the way the company does things by doing it the same old way. I’ve tried convincing people one at a time, and it was taking too long. I needed to do something subversive, something brash and stupid and “out there”. I decided to become a pirate. I realized that picking off one at a time wasn’t going to get me anywhere, and I needed an army of pirates. I am the fast ship in a world of gold-laden galleons. So, I collected a couple other like-minded people (who don’t realize it, but they’re pirates too), and we formed a pirate club. We put out a pirate manifesto, and now we’re collecting pirates. We’re recruiting them from the ranks of the very galleons we’re going to come back and take over. We’re going to take them off of the Same Old Thing and the That’s Just The Way It Is (which are crappy names for ships if you ask me). We’re going to train them in our pirate ways and then send them back to their ships to incite mutiny.

Why does it have to happen this way? Why am I forced into piracy? The ships are too big to be influenced by a single voice. They need to be taken from the inside, changed from within. The sailors know their one way of doing things, and because it gets them to port, and keeps the captain off their backs; that’s how they do it, and nothing else really seems to matter. I can’t infiltrate every ship and take it over. That would take too long. I need other folks to go in and do it for me.

Here I am, with my musket, eye patch and preachy parrot, to say there’s another way. All those galleons they’re so fiercely protecting are about to sink. The rocks ahead are sharp and the water is getting shallow. It’s time to throw some of that old stuff overboard and learn some new tricks.

I’m a pirate. I’ve got tricks a-plenty. I’m forming a pirate army. We’re taking over.

(this is all about web standards… pretty anti-climactic, huh?)

I have been a very good Employee today. I deserve some kind of SuperEmployee sticker and a bad picture of me in a cheap frame hung on the wall in our temporary lobby that says, “Kevin’s One Super Employee”. I may go do that myself tonight with Max. We’ll make a “Kevin’s One Super Employee” plaque. Then, I’ll bring to work really early tomorrow morning and hang it up before anyone gets here. Maybe I should start with someone else so no one suspects me. Although, I think I’m the only person here who would do such a thing, and everyone knows it. I have a pirate flag up on my wall, ferpetessack.

And to answer your next question, I have a pirate flag on my wall for a very good reason. I’ve been feeling extremely subversive lately. There’s usually a subversive undercurrent running through whatever I do. Recently, though, the undercurrent has become an undertorrent, and I just can’t help it. Maybe I’m feeling extra-subversive because my boss, and boss’s boss have both left in the past six weeks, and I’m feeling a little… grieved? Yeah, that’s as close as I can come to describing it. I lost the guy who hired me, protected our group from a lot of garbage, was in our corner the whole time, and made us better. I’ve also lost the best manager I’ve ever had. It’s kind of thrown me for a loop.

I’m not quite sure what to do next. I still have my projects, the things that “make me go”, but I don’t have the support system I had last week. I don’t have a manager I can tell anything to, give her any problem, and compliant and she’ll go fight the battle, or filter the message appropriately. I have a crappy filter. I usually just come out and say it, which isn’t the most productive trait to possess at the moment.

I’ve come to realize that I work best with a manager I can trust completely. I don’t want to have to play political games, and watch what I say with my direct manager. It’s too stressful, and makes work no fun at all. I have to be able to tell my manager what’s really going on, and have them do the same. If there’s no honesty in that relationship, there’s no trust. When there’s no trust, nothing productive happens. I’ve done pretty well so far in my career finding people I can trust, and good working relationships. The times I haven’t had that support system have been an absolute nightmare.

I don’t know… this post started out really light and sunny, didn’t it? I was faking it. There’s nothing sunny or light going on here. I’m worried that I won’t find that working chemistry again, and I’ll just be working instead of having fun. I’m afraid I’ll spend my days playing politics instead of building cool stuff and challenging myself. I’ve done that already. I’d rather not go back to it. You know, maybe everything will be alright. Maybe it won’t. It’s the not knowing that’s killing me at the moment.

My Googlehood is a whole lot more dignified than I remember it. I’ve got some pretty impressive neighbors now! What happened?

Composer is usually pretty painful to work with, but I realized today that it’s my old laptop’s fault. Composer works like a charm on my swanky new G5 (oh yes, I did not tell you the story of the swanky new G5 – it will have to wait). Composer’s extremely responsive in redrawing tables and other clumsy elements when it has two, count ’em, two 2ghz G5’s to do the calculations. And no, I’m not using Composer to write anything that’s going to see the light of day. It’s a word processor replacement to update a requirements document (using a template I have to use). I hate rules.

I am a gigantic dork. I’m also praying that Matt doesn’t post the kickball pictures he took (I got a sneak peek during the conference through his shared iPhoto gallery – aren’t you PC people jealous?). They’re my new weight-loss motivators. I’m going to print one of them out and super-glue it to the fridge.

In other words, the pirate flag is going up today. I’m taking over something. I don’t know what yet, but there may be some “yargh”-ing and “avast me hearties” heard. Be on the lookout.

Oh, thank goodness, you can now have acquaintances on Orkut. And if you don’t know what that is, or don’t care, fine. Move on along then.

First of all, I had fois gras for the first time last night, and it was fabulous. How come no one told me?

Second, I am so not a major geek. I’m a definite lower-case geek. Compared to the people here, I’m a guy off the street. Which makes me smile, in a way. A lot of the people here are big-G Geeks. They are implementors and the people who build the things that I use every day to communicate (web browsers, for instance). I am a user. I’m a user of the standards the W3C comes up with, and I’m a user of the products these standards are used in. I create documents that follow these standards and are displayed in their products. I am horribly out-numbered.

At least now, I know my role. I am the representative of the regular “author” or “user” of the standard, not of the implementor. It means I better get my act together (and to that end, I now own a module, which is kinda scary).

This week is alternately boring (when I don’t understand what’s going on), and interesting (when I do). The food is amazing for the most part, and I’m having a ball with the language (and my lack thereof). What fun! Next week… Texas!!

Can I just tell you how much fun Drupal is? It’s not fun in the traditional “Oh look mommy, a new toy” kind of way.\
It’s fun in the frustrating “gotta beat the next level of this game, but that stupid monster keeps eating me”. I just set up another instance of Drupal for a little work experiment, and the taxonomy still gets me. If you’re writing a book, you probably don’t want to use a big nested taxonomy because you probably want to use the book modules method of nesting pages into chapters. But, if you want to use the forum module, you do want to create a big nested taxonomy. Drupal is sometimes very confusing. It doesn’s sport the best documentation, although the community is very helpful. There are some default UI elements for regular users that are less than intuitive, the same for the settings.

This is the glory and the pain of using open source software. You have all this power to use it or change it however you want. But, you’re allowed no expectation of support or documentation and you might just hit a deadend with nowhere to go (for the new site, I ended up redoing the taxonomy three or four times until I got it “just so”). I haven’t had the time to learn PHP yet, so I can’t just go hack it apart and make it do what I want.

And it’s not that I don’t like it. I really do (this internal site will be my second with it, you know about the first already). Drupal has some outstanding features right out of the box (the forums are awesome, and I really dig the books module). There are some really cool modules out there, provided by really nice people. It could use some… polish. Yeah, that’s the word I’m looking for. I’m sure it’ll happen, someday.

This may be where I’m staying in France: Hotel L’Ermitage du Riou. Holy crap, I’m really going to France!

Last Saturday we made a trek to the local used book store, where I picked up a beat up French/English Dictionary and a French Grammar refresher. I also got biographies of Truman and Lincoln for the plane, a copy of Gray’s Anatomy for Max, a very cool Gray’s Anatomy coloring book, and Max got a couple books for himself. I’m excited. I have plane reservations, language, and almost hotel reservations. I have suitcases, will get plane snacks, an appetite, curiosity, and now need to go get some good walking boots and make sure I know where I put my passport.

And after that comes Austin and SXSW Interactive, and the chance to meet a bunch of bloggers I’ve been reading for years, and see what everyone else is up to in the web world. I can’t wait!! Oh, and I’m all set for Austin. I have plane, hotel, car, etc all taken care of. Thanks to Senor Brown, I have dinner plans for Thursday night.

Oh yeah… wait, I need to get back to work. It’s really hard to concentrate with all this travel on the horizon.

You’ll never guess where I’m going next week. No, really, you won’t. Give up? I’m going to France. Better yet, it’s not just France, it’s the Riviera. And the best part? It’s for work, so I won’t be paying for it (well, I’ll be paying for some of it, and then being paid back, but that’s a minor detail). Why am I going? That’s an excellent question. You are looking at the newest member of the W3C CSS Working Group, and I couldn’t be happier. It feels good to be involved (OK, I’m not really “involved” yet, but I will be), and to get out there in the world. I’m so used to working just within my own little world and peering out but not participating, that this should be a lot of fun.

And I’m still going to Texas, then Northern California in August and November. At this rate, I’ll be a “premier” level frequent flier in no time. Yippee!!