31 Aug 2000

Thu, 31 Aug 2000 02:15:58 GMT

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

Tue, 29 Aug 2000 23:54:58 GMT

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.

Advogato blog for phlip

31 Aug 2000

29 Aug 2000