Category: development

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.

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Categorized as AOL

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.

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Categorized as linux

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.

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.

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Categorized as blogging

A New Convert

I tried it before, when it was new. It wasn’t ready, and neither was my poor little Powerbook. I couldn’t logon to my ISP, watch DVD’s or do much of anything. Then, I got my new machine, and the update and now, I am a OS X convert. I hate to admit it. I got the machine to have a machine to run YellowDog on. Now, I spend my time in the bubble gum world of OS X, drinking in the stoplight icons, the warm fuzziness of the first daunting but now comfortable UI. Next thing you know, I’ll be using it more than my PC and then I’ll become a designer and wear turtlenecks, small glasses and tight jeans. I’ll drink small coffees and complain about how those stupid production people ruin my designs.

I admit it, that’s a longshot, but I do like OS X, which I NEVER thought would happen. See, Alice, people CAN change.

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Categorized as os x