Code and Whatnot

After my 6 weeks of free company car ran out here in Los Angeles, I opted not to buy a car. Instead, I saved up the cash to spend 10 days in Europe. I got back last Monday. Here are some pictures.
So you might want to know how it is, living in […]

For good reason, this probably wouldn’t fly in most offices. But in a room full of 8 guys…
Ron Leach, a good friend of mine, stopped by the office today. I asked him to copy the tattered Black Snake Moan poster that’s been hanging out over my desk onto the whiteboard. Boy did […]

Now that Wikipedia has spoken articles, not much is left to separate it from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. We have a huge, mobile workforce cataloging a good chunk of human knowledge. The resource has become, in my regard, impossibly awesome already — just like the Hitchhiker’s Guide of Adams’ books.

myself: you sick still?
Jack: yeah… caught a good one
myself: nice
myself: i purposely didn’t visit you
myself: and i was feeling iffy by the end of yesterday
myself: so i drank straight bourbon while i worked last night
Jack: lol
myself: bourbon has helped me fend off many a cold
myself: you just have to rehydrate before you go to bed
Jack: […]

Dennis Forbes’ short article criticizes the practice of putting candidates through grueling tests on esoteric subjects. I’ll quote here:

Few professions demand that experienced practitioners, with a CV stuffed with academic and professional accomplishments, complete humiliating skill tests (usually scatter-shot testing whether the applicant happened to recently bone up on an esoteric area of a […]

Has anyone else noticed a lag in the availability of large image attachments in Yahoo! Mail? I’m using Y!M Beta, and it seems that large image attachments aren’t available for the first few minutes (up to 15 minutes) after a message appears in my inbox. After that, they download like a charm. […]

I bet you always wanted to know about me. I figured most of my traffic comes from searches, so I’d better put up a little information about the source of all this content.

Last updated 01-May-2007
The basics
Occupation: Software developer/tech lead
Employer: HUGE, Inc.
Specialties: PHP, MySQL, *nix, Bash, regular expressions
Hook: More than just a programmer, I am known as an effective communicator with and between engineers and management, a source of fresh product ideas, and a great person to tackle new problems.
Biographical details & trivia
Lives: Los Angeles, CA
Hometown: Hopatcong, NJ
Likes: […]

Pardon me for not being sold on the usefulness of rich text emails. Usually rich text means some irritating background image or ugly red fonts used for emphasis. Rich text is part of the reason Outlook enthusiasts are annoying. It was much to my chagrin last week when I noticed two friends […]

Usually the higher-ups do the hiring at OnForce, but today the programmers made a hire: Rat Nerd. Rat Nerd’s contribution will be to occupy this desk: until we get another programmer in here. Otherwise, we fear, an overzealous office manager might see the unused desk and remove it from the room, creating […]