Older blog entries for ErikLevy (starting at number 155)

This weeks almost over work wise. It has been productive. I've really helped the company do its job better, which is what I'm paid to do.

I've been working on core internal software instead of some of the e-commerce work I normally do, but since they all tie together, I've been indirectly working the online side as well.

Next week I will mainly be working on performance and hopefully some new features. So much of the project is completed, it is mainly just tying the loose ends down.

Wow. Massive software work. I've been correcting pass programming errors for a week now. Correcting someone else's mistakes seems to always put me in an awful mood. I guess I would rather be creating something new and wonderful.

The next weeks are going to be painful.

So, my birthday is coming up it seems. Getting a little older in your 20s doesn't seem to make much impact. I suppose given time, they mean more or less. I am expecting to find a new DVD player in my bag of gifts, as well as some other goodies.

VA Linux. Hmm. Well, I think reality has returned and it is that you can't make large sums of money off a community that prides itself on full sharing. At least they had a product (VA Servers), and while I'm sure they wouldn't be getting rid of it if it was bringing in tons of cash, the fact is I doubt OnSite is going to pay too many salaries.

There are ways to tie yourself into the network and make money, (hey, AOL sure knows how currently) but I don't think they will do it. I honestly have no idea what failing will mean for the sites I visit. Not a big fan of any of their newer sites, but thinkgeek and slashdot.org and kuro5hin (as a sponsor) will certainly be changed by VA going.

I saw Rusty say that it was Compaq giving them a new server, not VA Linux. Now this makes a lot more sense. They don't have any to give (or they need to sell those cheap fast?).

I'm an information junkie. I need it. I love it. The trouble is, you can only get so much for free and then you need to pay for the development and ideas you use to get your information. The economy has always had a dichotomy of free and not free. Maybe the Web was too off on the free side and with balance all will work out. The truth is, there has always been a barrier to information, if it is a price for an education or the price for a newspaper. Limited amounts of information are free, and the government helps support the education of the masses through libraries.

Wow. June 20th now and the 5th was my last entry. I thought it was only a few days even. Work has been extremely busy. Even though Phase I was completed, management and I agreed that we might as well switch over to a faster database. So I have spent the last few days building a central database system. This also means I have to convert software to use the faster system instead of the old system.

Already from what I can see, there have been base 10 increases. The question comes when we hit the stuff that takes a lot of CPU cycles, how the system acts with faster I/O. I'm hoping for the best.

Non work life has been good. My girlfriend and I have been doing all sorts of social events. I have been researching quite a lot of CS material that I have interests in and enjoying the process of understanding more of the underlying aspects of computers and networks.

All I will say about C|Net's Bill Gates story is remember the Altair :) In the end that seemed to work out for everyone.

Uraeus, I know I haven't been as active with linuxpower these past months, but that is because it seemed to be existing on its own.

The real culprit I think however is that I have other projects in mind now. LP was perfect for my needs for a few years and I still will be there for any one of the team or if the site needs me in a crunch. But, my outlook has changed over the last year or so, and I'm much more OS agnostic. I still think Linux is a wonderful social product that has produced 1960s levels of interesting in the hacker movement on a grand scale. But there are lots of fish in the sea and some of those fish do things better or worse than Linux. Part of being a hacker I feel is taking the time to understand the system as a whole and knowing when to use the right tool for the right job.

But that being said, there are people who still should travel the road that takes you to enlightenment and for those that haven't seen Linux in its glory or have, I suggest taking a bit of time and writing about it. Technology writers are sometimes people who like the thrill of technology but don't understand the nuts and bolts of the systems they write about. The other group are those that understand the technology and by writing, understand it that much better. Expressing your thoughts can be a difficult and worthy experience in the technical field. If you want to have free expression to clear your thoughts on something related to free software, email lpdevel@NOSPAM.l inuxpower.org. Take out the "NOSPAM." part.

Freedom has a price, and it is your time.

Work

Phase I was completed yesterday. Six months of work finally done. Pretty amazing. The whole system architecture is in my head, floating there, like the wind. The final system will probably be 50,000+ lines of code, with optimizations. My expertise in system hardware, networking, security, databases, programming, human resource management, and financial planning have all been pushed thanks to this project.

I finished the major part of the project the other day. So, I moved to installing our new server OSes. While they are mostly hardened already, they need to be update a bit more before they get behind even our firewalls.

There is so much to do in the next two weeks as we push to an internal alpha test.

Today is an important one for my project. After a little bit more of code, a major portion of my system should be completed. It is even on time.

That feels pretty good. There were some tough points. A part of my project requires me converting a legacy system written in MS specific languages to Java (and a few other languages for glue). At one point, by trying to add flexibility to the system, a piece of code that was 20 lines ended up at almost 200 in Java. Most of this was related to allowing analysts here to not have to go into code and make small changes like they have for the past years. So, that added some over head to the code.

If things work out and I finish, I'll update here.

I've been sick. Really sick. For the past five days I've been fighting something. I think I caught it from my girlfriend who got it from my sister who got it from her husband. Even though I have been on medicine for five days now, I still feel somewhat badly.

On Monday, I tried to work, and ending up doing things I shouldn't have. On Tues I fixed the problems but couldn't make any progress past that. Finally by Thurs. I finished an important piece of code. Today was some optimizations and code progress.

I also installed a SCSI 160 Mbyte/s. card in our main Web Server to attached to a SCSI tape drive. It took a bit of time for the office manager to find me the right SCSI cable, but eventually she did and I was good to go.

Well, the missing data at the company turned up to be known and was corrected. So that was good.

There has been a lot going on both at work and at home. For one, we got a kitten this weekend. A calico. Of course, since I believe almost all calicos are female, ours is too. She seems to be wonderfully full of life.

My niece also had a birthday this weekend. So we went to that. Sadly, we both seemed to catch something and now we both are on antibiotics. I don't feel wonderful, but I'm doing okay. Hopefully, I'll be better tomorrow. So much of the company's project is dependent on me getting things done. Being sick isn't on the list.

OpenBSD came today at work. I will probably start installing it tomorrow.

When you can't write due to (a) exhaustion and (b) being too busy, you know you are coming to an important time in your project.

The company got its SSL Cert. and some of the hardware has come in. OpenBSD should come any day now, and once it does I'll start to install it on some of the systems.

I have been trying to get code out but it has been difficult, as I am also responsible for getting presentation material for clients. You wouldn't think it would be that hard to get 8 slides for a presentation that looks professional. However, when you have to please someone who wants the best presentation possible and you feel like you should be working on software and hardware related issues, it runs into a multi-day scenario.

This morning, in my efforts to get some more software done, I ran into the problem of missing data. Looking back in the recent company archives it seems this data has been missing for at least a month. I'm going to have to find out if there has been a mistake or if somehow, there is no missing data and it just looks like there is. Of course, the people I need to ask aren't at work yet, so that will have to wait.