Archive for March, 2005
We had a bit of an outage there, sorry about that. We ended up doing a bit of an upgrade, and it ended up taking longer to get everything reinstalled again than I was hoping, and it ended up overlapping with my trip to my new job orientation out here in San Jose.
Things are going well now. Web services are restored, mysql back in bidnis. If you notice a particular service that still seems to be missing, please email me, and I’ll do what I can.
So I decided that instead of spending the money to buy myself the laptop (see previous posts), I’d dump it into a computer upgrade for myself. Its been a long time in the waiting, and I figured I’d do it right. Read more
I was poking around at stuff, and found a page that gives “Clear Sky Predictions” for something like 2700 areas around the country. This is the one for where I’m at:
That looks like it gets cut off since its so wide. There is a smaller one that I’m going to try to include in the footer on pages now that looks like this:
Dig it.
I’m really in some strange way completely excited now. I’ve just finished all the eBay paperwork, and sealed the envelope contained my acceptance of the offer and all the associated reams of paperwork. This marks a transition to a new part of my life, and I suppose thats always going to be an exciting feeling.
Dig it.
So after a brief hiatus, I’ve reinstalled my Sony Clié back up to what I had before. Got my games back on there. All the software I had purchased or otherwise downloaded, etc. I had sincerely forgotten how much fun the damn thing was. So I’m going to do some more cleanup on, get ZLauncher back to being configured the way I like it again, etc.
A Decent Distraction
This is actually the prequel to The Davinci Code, which was also excellent. Having read my fair share of conspiracy theory books, including many surrounding the Illuminatus and the Masons, I was pleased to see that he maintained about as much historical accuracy to those organizations as one is probably capable of anymore.
The book was fast paced, almost too much so. It is perhaps my one critique of it, is that it flows almost too quickly. The Davinci Code was similar, seemingly having been written for the pacing of a two hour movie. It will be interesting to see if, when either or both of these hit the big screen, whether much had to be left out. Perhaps I am spoiled by the epic 2000 pagers, like Focault’s Pendulum, and desire more research and less action. But still, it was a pleasant read.
The characters are engrossing, believable and passionate. The plot, while quick-paced, was almost never predictable, right to the very end. I even had one point where I thought I had it all figured out, only to be proven wrong several pages later. Nicely done, Mr. Brown. I will certainly continue to read his books as I find them.
[xrr rating=6/10]
I have formally accepted the offer from eBay. I will putting in my notice with Sun Microsystems on Monday, and my first official day (crisis of some sort of another notwithstanding) with eBay will be March 28th.
I’m very very pleased. I could expound on this for some time, but I think the essence of how I’m feeling is already captured. This is all goodness.
For those of you who’ve played around the inner workings of Apache, or even just done some of the fairly standard stuff with it, you may have at some point stumbled across mod_rewrite. Its actually an incredibly flexible tool when it comes to web servers, allowing all kinds of back end functionality to ease administration, all completely invisible to the users and clients viewing the pages. Great stuff.
Read more
As some of you know, I’ve been in the process of evaluating two job offers. One from my current employer, Sun, and the other from eBay. Its getting down to decision making time. At this point, all I’m waiting for is to have the respective offers on paper, in my hands before I formally make any announcements.
No matter what happens here, I will definitely say this: I’ve learned alot through this process. Its taught me what companies value in their employees, and what they are, and are not willing to do to retain that value. Furthermore, I’m now even more convinced that being completely upfront with everyone concerned in this has put me in a better position overall, and allowed me to maintain my professional and personal integrity in the process. I realize that doesn’t make any sense, but until they end of this decision making process (hopefully, within the next couple days), to say more would put one or both offers (and in the process, me) at risk. I should be able to post more here once this is all behind me, and I’ve made my selection.
With the idea of another machine incoming and a certain desire to remain firmly rooted in sanity, I decided to redo the wiring underneath my desk. In the past, say, 4 years, it achieved a certain Zen-like state of rat’s nest-edness. To unravel it would require the patience of a monk. Or, at least the flavor of one.
Read more
