Older blog entries for cwinters (starting at number 55)

Icky hardware stuff: got snazzy new mb and cpu but problems abound. Methinks it's a problem with the power supply, new one coming will test that out. Way, way too much time spent screwing around with it, reading forums, newsgroups, scouring google, etc. Arg.

SPOPS now supports lazy loading, which means that listing hundreds of HTML page objects won't eat up all your memory and demand more. (Doh!) New release (0.40) should be out shortly.

OpenInteract is going well. I created a relatively simple project management app for myself, mostly for the app but also to get back up to speed on things. Mission accomplished on both counts.

Did an informal presentation about OI last friday down in DC. Wouldn't you know it, I'd neglected to install a browser on my laptop, so it was all talk talk talk. A couple of people seemed to really get it, which was nice. I think after YAPC I'm going to make an effort to get around to various perl user groups to give a talk on OI, as well. By then, I'll have a browser on my laptop and even prepared slides!

dyork: Could you check that link on your DocBook instructions again? I tried it and got an error. I'm very interested in this.

Well, it's official now: I'm on my own. The previous place went through some recent turbulence which, combined with the fact that I was once again the only developer working on a product, got me looking elsewhere. And where did I wind up? Right back where I started, basically, except I have much more freedom than before.

Most of my time is contractually spoken for by one of my previous employers, which means stability. But the company I just left is (80% sure) going to hire me for projects and training as well. Hopefully this will be a good excuse for me to get out and meet people and see what else is around too -- something I don't always naturally do.

Before I left, I gave three days of training on the product I've been working on for the last six months along with the whole J2EE/EJB/... framework. It seemed to go well, but I noticed a disturbing tendency in myself to talk in abstractions rather than use concrete analogies. For one of them one of our more creative developers rescued me: in talking about serialization, he made the analogy that you can talk about food over the phone (a serializable object) but you can't send a big mac over the phone (a non-serializable object).

I'm going to miss working in the same office as these guys -- they could be crude at times, but always clever and rarely mean-spirited. We'll see what develops.

Plans for the summmer are jelling: yapc in mid-June, Greece in June/July (finally a honeymoon!) and Monterey, California for a wedding in early August -- with a few days for padding.

I'm getting back into OpenInteract/SPOPS development. I was a little burned out for a bit -- I wonder how often this happens to other people? I just needed a few weeks away from thinking about or doing anything with the project (other than idle wakeup/shower wandering mind thoughts). However, a developer in Germany has been asking a few questions on the -dev list and privately about OI and it's been acting as kindling for more ideas -- surely a good sign. I hope to be able to drum up interest at yapc, and one of the surest ways to do that is have excellent docs for people to learn from. ("Gentlemen, you have your assignments.")

I have two more weeks at The Company and then I'm on my own, although a big chunk of my time is already spoken for, so it's not as risky as it initially sounds. I still have some mixed feelings about leaving -- the developers that are left are generally quite bright and if other folks had started Java development a couple months ago I might still be there. But if I'm going to be working by myself, I might as well be doing someting I really like :-)

Another job change is in the future. I'll be working for myself -- I grabbed the domain name warefor.com just because it sounded cool in a development sense, marketing sense and old english sense. Working primarily on OpenInteract and implementation projects, which is excellent. OI development has been stalled for a few weeks because I'm trying to get a life, so this will kickstart all that.

More later...

pjones: Glad you're not generalizing or anything.... Try coming up to yapc in a couple months and see what the community is really like.

Work stuff is muddled -- a magic 8-ball would say: "Uncertain, come back later." Continued fallout from last week's doings -- everyone is working shorter days and sitting around talking about things like "Who's the most successful person who was once in a successful band?"

Went to the first night game (and Pirates win!) at the brand new PNC Park. Nice! Watching baseball in Three Rivers was painful but this was quite intimate. Even better, this was my first anniversary present and my wife managed to somehow score some excellent seats. I haven't been paying much attention to baseball (or sports in general) the last couple of years (too many other things to concentrate on, and it's like cheering for laundry) but we had lots of fun.

OI/SPOPS development hasn't done much in the last week or so. Postgres support will be in 0.40, which hopefully I'll be able to get out next week.

Ouch ouch ouch. Company turbulence resulted in 40% of the folks being laid off yesterday. Brutal way to do it too. Watching people pack up their stuff is painfully sad.

Company turbulence, not fun. Will find out tomorrow (hopefully) what's what. Not that it's hard to find another job, but stability has its advantages.

While DBI may be faster than JDBC for real-world work, at least JDBC has some kick-ass metadata capabilities.

Finally motivated enough to use JDE for Java development, kicking JBuilder to the curb. Little learning curve since IDEs tend to take care of project management things for you, but it's all settled and quite cool now. XEmacs, why did I ever leave thee?

Building EJBs in Perl is quite robust now, having moved to the Template Toolkit for much of the work. (When will I learn?) Added 'default' capabilities to model existing data (since JDBC gives us that metadata), among other things.

Joined a gym last weekend and have actually gone quite a few times. It's pretty decent -- not loaded with crazybuff muscleheads or people looking to score. I'm hoping to get back into running again -- I know it's not good for your joints (etc.), but it really fits my personality. Bicycling does too, but running is about as low-overhead (and low-maintenance) as you can get.

Yay, it's allergy season! (blech) Why is it I can remember a line from a Simpsons episode I last saw three years ago but I can't remember when my allergies get all riled up every year. Says something about priorities....

Investigating Postgres more. Got SPOPS to pass the limited tests and OpenInteract to install on it. Sweet. I think with some more work I'll make this the database I use on free/fun projects. The only (small) bone I have to pick is with the command-line utilities. Personally, I like the mysql approach for administration of one binary and many options (e.g., mysqladmin create mydb) versus the handful of binaries used by Postgres (initdb, createuser, createdb, vacuum, ...). But that's quite minor.

Also played some with POE -- neat-o!

I am so looking forward to spring, even with the sneezing (etc.).

Barb and I are looking to join a gym/club/whatnot. It will be good for us both, but it's going to take some effort to stick with it.

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