Older blog entries for josh (starting at number 35)

The JXTA launch went well.. No major crashes or complaints which is obviously always a good thing. I've been hanging out on the discuss mailing list and it has had some great traffic and great posts already.

I firmly believe in the concept of eating your own dog food so I was ecstatic about upgrading the current Tigris.Org to run the latest software. However, the actual process wasn't well thought out and people decided to do the upgrade late at night without really talking to anyone else. Much GAR was felt today.

One cool thing which I did this week was to get our stuff running on a 2.4 kernel, 4 processor machine. We call it the beast and it has been a thorn in many people's sides for the past few months. Everything ran fine after I found out about the LD_ASSUME_KERNEL trick...

Had some appointments this afternoon so I was away from the computer for most of the day. When I got back, it seemed that all hell had broken loose and everyone was scurrying around looking for answers to questions which they didn't know how to ask.

I recognize that we have a huge client launch on Wednesday but it just seems silly to ignore the solid decisions which were made last week and instead move into untested waters.

Much GAR!

More knowledge transfer going on.. Things are going quite well which is awesome.

Wrote a new Ant task which will dynamically create a new build.xml file.

Heading up the office tomorrow... 7 AM flight into SFO.. Ugh! Why am I still awake? Oh yeah, because I have work to do.

stephane started today which is awesome. That's the real reason I'm heading up north so that I can walk her through the madness that is Tigris.. Hopefully, it won't be TOO overwhelming but I'd be lying if I said, I didn't want her to be just a little afraid..

I erased my TODO whiteboard today and amazingly enough, it was tough for me to stay focused.. Hrm.. That's not good...

Hacking

Didn't do much of anything this weekend... My daughter was too interested in looking for the Easter bunny than to watch her daddy sit and type... :)

I'm writing this just for elise...

Work

The time has come for us to start clustering some of our installs. That presents many challenges since so much is already assumed in our app. Obviously that's not a good thing but now's the *perfect* time to fix it.

I'm currently looking at the python bindings for the rpm database. It could yield some interesting scripts if things work well... I wonder if anyone has built Java bindings for it... Hmmm....

Hacking

Got Reef to build again and sent in a couple of patches. Nothing fancy or major, just a fix for an API change. Hopefully, I'll have more time to work on things especially the Manila stuff tomorrow and Sunday.

Feedback to lucas at collab dot net

I got set up with eazel-hacking today. Various pieces are building fine but the dependencies for Reef are not. I think it might be because I have already installed some things. Since I'm not 100% sure, I'll just ask in IRC tomorrow.

Work

Various things are pulling me in different directions. A bit frustrating but it happens. I have a feeling that there is going to be a holy war soon though, the battle between Linux and Solaris.

I have been making progress on my TODO list though which is a good thing but I'm still not anywhere close to where I want to be.

Bring the noise to lucas at collab dot net

I got a little whiteboard today for my desk... It's kind of scary putting down my TODO list. It's good to actually 'see' it but it's a bit overwhelming.

Hacking

Made some progress with Reef.. Here's a screenshot of work so far... Note that I'm learning both Python and Gtk as I'm going along...

Work

I have a new partner in crime starting on Monday. I'm trying frantically to document things which have been in my head for the past few months.. That's both good and bad... :)

I have another site which I update much more than this. Unfortunately, it is down.. Oh well...

Work

I'm finally able to take a break from Solaris porting for a day or two. That's nice. As a way of 'relaxing', I think I'm going to rework our current build/install process. It currently is a somewhat Rube Goldbergish system involving Make and Ant but I think it can be made much cleaner. That'll give me something to do today.

Hacking

I'm trying to get Reef up and running.. Having a bit of a hard time but the folks on IRC have been helpful...

Today was one of those days were I had a great plan for what I wanted to accomplish but by 9:30 AM, the plan was smashed against the wall and I spent the rest of the day playing catch-up. I finally see light at the end of the tunnel in regards to the Solaris work I've been doing. All of our RPM's are built there but I need to work out a better process of building them on both Linux and Solaris. I'm sure Ant will again come in handy.

I am stoked because today I found out that I will soon have a partner in crime who will work with me. That's great news because there is so much stuff to do and it's all 'very important.' One more person will be incredible.

I have started to dread Thursday. It's our weekly developers meeting and it easily lasts two hours. Normally, I'm on the phone calling in but since I'm up at HQ's this week, I was able to 'experience' it in person. Ugh!

But the day wasn't a total loss since after work I went out with leonard and elise and met crackmonkey and stephane. Pitchers of Guinness were enjoyed.

Work

Still working on Solaris, moving between building Solaris pkg's and RPM's.