Advogato: Personal info for phlip

phlip is currently certified at Journeyer level.

Name: Matt Phillips
Member since: 2000-08-29 23:24:43
Last Login: N/A

Notes: By day I'm a systems administrator for a software development company. Some how this keeps bringing me back to open source development. I'm one of several developers working on SquirrelMail, a GPLed web based email program written in PHP4. I'm also the source of many bug reports to the PHP developers that no one else can ever seem to reproduce. :-)
How do I get roped into these things? I chose to be a systems admin because I like that much more the development. Now I find myself creating an account on a free software site like this!

Projects

Helper on The Universe

Recent blog entries by phlip

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31 Aug 2000 »

Ever notice how people that know little but have a bigger ego can manage to woo people into thinking they are smarter than they really are? I had the pleasure of working with some people (not from my company) that get paid at times more than $200 an hour to play with their expensive toys. I was asked to help this guy study one of our servers because a few people had complained about the speed. We spent 2 hours setting up his expensive fluke meters and network taps in order for him to do a simple network packet sniff. Then we spent an hour waiting for him to figure out what he did wrong. Once he got it working he was only able to tell us what we already knew about the speed... It wasn't our server's problem. It seems that 90% of a consultants job must be the perception they create for their clients. Guess I'll never make a very good consultant. I'm not good at smoke and mirrors.

On a much better note, if anyone reading this is using PHP, upgrade to 4.0.2! All the problems I'd previously reported have gone away, and the speed has increased a bit.

29 Aug 2000 »

Why does business have to be so, umm, business oriented? I work for a company that definitely pushes for quality over quantity, but we still have to cut features and crapify other features because of marketing people. Even our UI guys get a bit upset because they have to take something that looks visually appealing and crapify it so that users can use flashy colors and animated banners, etc.

Will there ever be a day when the majority of computer users are savvy enough and familiar enough with technology that they recognize the value of simplicity and elegance, not flashieness (is this a word?) and bloat? Maybe I'm just dreaming.

phlip certified others as follows:

phlip certified eskimoses as Journeyer
phlip certified alan as Master
phlip certified zeev as Master
phlip certified andi as Master
phlip certified thies as Master
phlip certified jimw as Master
phlip certified rasmus as Master
phlip certified sascha as Master
phlip certified andrei as Master
phlip certified ssb as Master
phlip certified jtraub as Journeyer
phlip certified ravskel as Apprentice
phlip certified davej as Master
phlip certified thomppj as Journeyer
phlip certified lkehresman as Journeyer
phlip certified gpadgham as Journeyer

Others have certified phlip as follows:

ErikLevy certified phlip as Apprentice
Michael certified phlip as Apprentice
eskimoses certified phlip as Journeyer
jrf certified phlip as Apprentice
davej certified phlip as Apprentice
thomppj certified phlip as Journeyer
gpadgham certified phlip as Journeyer
Dougiamas certified phlip as Journeyer

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