It seems to have been the day of phone calls.

First, there was the almost unintelligible call from what appears to be an Indian outsourcing company which is looking to put someone in a position in a city about an hour or so from here.

Normally, I don’t have a problem dealing with accents. I’ve known a lot of people from all over the world, so accents are really just par for the course for me. The problem with this one was the fact that it sounded like it went from an actual phone somewhere to a VoIP server, became packets that were flung across the internet via various combinations of physical lines and satellite, hit another VoIP server, were translated back into an actual phone transmission and then ended up at my handset.

That makes things a bit harder to understand.

The other call was from a recruiter in Pitt calling about an opening in Cleveland. Unfortunately it was a senior position and I’m not a senior person. On the upside, they sounded like they were interested in me for other possible positions, so they are supposed to be calling back tomorrow in order to get to know me better. This kind of behavior is kind of strange for a lot of “recruiters” because they tend to just throw resumes at a position and hope one sticks. I take this as a positive sign about these people.

Sometime next week, I should be having lunch with a local businessperson who runs a tech company here in town. I saw a strange posting on a job board for them so I decided to drop them a line and ask about the unusual requirements and introduce myself. On a personal/tech level, we seem to have hit things off since we seem to have some things in common.

Don’t look at me like that. It’s purely professional. Besides, it will be nice to have someone to talk to in this town considering the fact that I know almost nobody here.

Current mood: tired
Current music: INXS & Jimmy Barnes – Good Times

Well, my least favorite task is done for the year.

The cat has had his vet visit. Vet visits are never fun. There’s whining, biting, dirty looks and the cat doesn’t take it well either.

It’s hard to get him into the carrier at the house. It’s hard to get him out of the carrier at the vet’s – the carrier quite often has to be taken apart. It’s very easy to get him back into the carrier, and you’re lucky if the carrier has a door left on it when we get into the house.

This year wasn’t so bad though. These vets actually listened and left the handling of the furry demon up to me (he’s part wildcat – probably bobcat, and I am about the only person he won’t normally stick his over sized fangs into and if he does, it’s only to play or a light warning bite) after I warned them that he left his old vet in stitches a couple of times.

I thought it was amusing that the vet marveled at his teeth. She’d never seen fangs that big on a “housecat”. Hey, to me he’s a big fluffy marshmallow. To most other people on the other hand…

Standard checkup, rabies, leukemia, etc shots and his worming (this year they decided they valued their hands and gave him the shot instead of pills. That’s where he always gets revenge on the vet) and we were on our way back to the house. Once out of the carrier, he was torn between wanting to curl up next to me for comfort and snubbing me because I was the evil bastard that put him through all of the horrible tortures of the day.

Current mood: relaxed
Current music: Toad the Wet Sprocket – Hold Her Down

Keyboard came in, and for the last day I’ve been getting used to the layout as well as the shape of the keys.

Shape of the keys, you ask? Yes, this is one of the ergo boards that have parallelogram shaped keys to allow you to have a natural wrist position when you type instead of having to lay your hands at the “normal” typing angle. The frightening thing is that it really works.

It occurred to me this morning that the keyboard and mouse might not work with the linux partition on the laptop. Yes, I just realized that this morning. I was pleasantly surprised when it recognized both on boot up. Getting linux to recognize anything used to be painful when I first started using it years ago.

It really is improving. Now I just need a wireless card with linux support. Broadcom has real issues.

But, for now, I’m just sitting here, killing Spree.

Relax. I’m talking about the candy.

Fruity =]

Current mood: relaxed
Current music: none

Well, the keyboard should be here sometime tomorrow. Then I can finally get things arranged in a comfortable manner and get back down to business. It feels so nice to have a real workspace again.

I still can’t believe that I had to order something as simple as a USB keyboard. It’s no wonder there aren’t many technically oriented businesses here.

There is one other thing I want. One of these and a 200gb IDE hard drive to go with it. Anyone want to buy me one? =]

Current mood: amused
Current music: Nine Days – If I Am

Birthday was rather uneventful. Mostly time just spent out of the house. I think the most exciting thing I bought was lunch.

The next few days saw me rearranging things in this room and picking up a new desk and leather office chair. All I can say is that my wrist ached after putting together the desk. Two hours with a screwdriver was just no fun.

But now the desk and chair are together and being used. My frequently used books are sitting next to me, I have space to work and have a reference book open next to me, and a much more comfortable place to sit.

I love my chair. I know it sounds silly, but I’d forgotten how nice it is to have a good office chair. =]

Now I just want to get a USB keyboard so I can have things in a more natural layout. It’s sad when you have to order something that simple online, but there is no place here in town that has one I want.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Living Things – Bom Bom Bom

It’s my birthday.

I really need to get out of the house and spend some time alone so I probably won’t be here all day. If you need me, call the cell.

Let’s hope this year’s is better than the last.

I love Penn and Teller. When I was a kid, it wasn’t the David Copperfields or Houdinis of the world that got me interested in sleight or hand, stage magic, etc, it was Penn and Teller.

Why? Because they were smartasses about it, had fun with it, and weren’t afraid to show you how they did it. With them, it wasn’t some big mystery. In fact, I remember seeing them do tricks again after the initial presentation using clear props and showing you just how bizarre the whole thing really was.

Their personalities just really clicked with me.

What does this have to do with anything? A book I ordered came in today.

I’ve wanted this book since I first heard about it as a kid when it came out back in 1992. It’s out of print now, so about the only way you’ll find it is on the used marketplace on Amazon (or ebay, etc). I finally got around to getting a copy and have been giggling evilly ever since.

What book? “Penn and Teller’s How to Play with your Food”

Yes, you can run in fear now. The people who know me fairly well already know that I enjoy cooking. Put this together with my prank loving side and the world should be afraid.

For those of you who know me in person and think I seem too uptight to enjoy a good prank (either playing it on others or having it played on me), you really don’t know me as well as you seem to think.

Let’s just say that I’m going to make their special heart shaped Jell-o. The difference is that I have a *real* heart shaped mold *wicked grin*

I have one shaped like an anatomically correct brain too =]

Current mood: amused
Current music: Eve6 - Bang

I think I have just seen the absolute worst statement from an open source fanatic (not all people who use open source licenses are fanatics – I know I’m not).

"Frankly, your arrogant pragmatism nauseates me."

I don’t know what to say to that. Gee, I guess I’ll just stop actually doing anything and simply pontificate on how the world should be. Sorry, folks, but we pragmatists are the ones who actually get things done.

Could have something to do with the fact that we’re…what’s the word I’m looking for? Pragmatic. Yes, that’s it. We get things done because we’re pragmatic.

Good grief.

Current mood: amused
Current music: Clash – Rock the Casbah

Changing of the guard

Looks like Scott McNeely is stepping down as CEO of Sun and leaving Schwartz in charge. This is kind of weird, because, a few days ago, he joked about that particular ages-long rumor (his leaving) still going strong and still just being a rumor.

This could be very interesting. Good interesting or bad interesting is yet to be seen, but it could be interesting if nothing else. Hopefully Sun won’t nosedive after this (yes, I know that a lot of you are screaming that Sun’s been sinking for years).

Call me weird, but I’m rather fond of several of the company’s products. Their hardware is insanely great, Java is nice, and anyone who uses Linux or Unix-like operating systems has to like NFS (yes, you have Sun to thank for that). I would include OpenOffice in that list, but it was initially the result of the acquisition of Star Office, so it only sort of counts.

I think it’s funny that people seem to hate Sun for no real reason. I honestly think that it’s envy.

They complain about the boxes being too expensive - they are expensive, but they’re really worth it and run like tanks. What can I say? I WANT a Sun box at some point.

They complain about Solaris being flaky - not really true. There is the occasional bug or the one release of the operating system (which will remain nameless) that *ahem* didn’t perform that well, but on the whole, it’s an incredibly solid platform.

They cry bloody murder about Java (usually pulling out chestnuts that may have been true 10 years ago, but often weren’t even then) –
• “It’s not free! The information wants to be freeeeeee! (People who know me can insert the bird-like arm flapping here)” – They gave you the language. They document the whole thing. The only things that aren’t “free” (in the way you want it. It doesn’t cost you anything) are the JVM and the JRE. Get over yourself. Standards and languages should be open and well-documented (and this is something that Sun does remarkably well), but not everything has to be “free as in speech”
• “It doesn’t have pointers” - It’s not C++, people. That was part of the POINT of Java. Languages are tools. You use the one that best meets your needs. Part of the reason Java was created was to help prevent a lot of the common problems that occur in everyday C++ style code (memory leaks, referencing null pointers, etc).
• “It’s a memory hog” - it’s a little resource intense, but it’s not really that bad, honestly.
• “It’s SLOW!!1oneoneone!” - Slow? It takes a few seconds to initially load the VM, but after that, it’s about as fast as a native app. It’s not meant for an app that you open and close all day. It’s meant for medium to long term use applications. This is why they stress the garbage collection so much.
• “It’s ugly!” – Has anyone ever told you that you can make Swing apps look native? It takes a couple lines of code. Try cracking open a book sometime.
• “Swing sucks!!1oneoneone!” – Nice troll. I admit that when it came out, Swing wasn’t that great, but it’s gotten a whooooole lot better.
• “Write once, debug everywhere! Harharhar I’m so clever!” – You know, if you stick to the core libraries and don’t do anything stupid, there’s not a whole lot (if anything at all) that you need to change in order to run it on different platforms. The problem is that people seem to love using non-standard libraries or (even worse) some lame, half-assed third party JVM. Have you ever seen what you need to do to C or C++ to get it to run other places if you’re doing non-trivial things? They actually make programs and scripts to help automate the changes if that tells you anything.

Java was a big enough threat to Microsoft that MS decided to release their own version of it back in the 90’s in an attempt to fragment the community and break the battle cry of “write once, run everywhere.” After they found out that they couldn’t kill it off, they decided to make C# (which, if you look at it, is a whooooooole lot like Java).

I don’t want this to come off sounding like I’m a Sun fanatic. I’m not a fanatic of anything, really (except maybe usability). I believe that languages and platforms are tools and should be viewed as such. I just dislike when people try to trash things that they know nothing (or very little) about.

I just hope that Sun is able to stick around for a long time to come. They make good tools =]

Current mood: neutral
Current music: Dirty Vegas – Days Go By

A couple of weeks ago, I was called in for an interview with a local school district for the position of Tech Coordinator. Keep in mind that they are the ones who contacted me.

I walked into the conference room and was looked at in a manner that I really didn’t like. It was the look of “he’s too young”. It didn’t matter that I had all the experience required for the position (minus experience in writing grants, which really aren’t that hard to do), that I carry myself with dignity, and act in a relaxed yet professional manner. I was sitting on the other side of the table from a group composed of people anywhere from 40-60 or so years old who were basically going down their checklist and not showing any interest in me as a candidate because I was younger than they were.

Funny, I thought that we were all adults here.

The “no thank you” letter came today, not that it was a surprise after their behavior in the interview.

If you aren’t seriously interested in me as a possible member of your organization, then don’t contact me. My time is important to me and I do not really care for being jerked around, nor do I care for paying for travel expenses to speak with a company or organization which has no intention of hiring me.

People, I have development experience. I have experience in leading a team, and I have firsthand experience in how business works from my work on a startup. I am not an unqualified individual, and I expect at least a little professionalism in the way I am treated because I give it to others.

That said, if anyone is honestly interested in hiring me, please feel free to contact me. the email address is james@jameshollingshead.com

Current mood: annoyed
Current music: Thousand Foot Krutch - move

Sometimes, it really is the simple things.

Checking the mail today, I got a pleasant surprise – a letter. I stared at it for a minute, trying to figure out who it was from and then it hit me. It was an old friend of mine (whose last name now that she’s married I can never remember, hence my confusion at the return address).

She never writes me letters. The last time I got an actual pen and paper letter from her was probably 8 or 9 years ago when she sent me a few new photos.

In this age of email, sometimes it’s just really nice to get a real, physical letter. It brought a smile to me. I love that girl to death and I really do miss her sometimes. It’s a shame we aren’t closer geographically.

Current mood: happy
Current music: Dirty Vegas – A Million Ways

Do you happen to know the definition of funny?

There are a few, but I was sent a new one this evening – a job opening that required “very strong” experience in several varied technologies as well as several years of project management experience, expected the person applying to do three separate jobs (developer, manager, AND an Oracle DBA) and which offered to pay less than a lot of manufacturing jobs in this area.

Now that’s funny.

Thank you, but I believe I’ll pass.

Current mood: amused
Current music: Tonic – Casual Affair

My wrists are now happier. The wrist rests that I ordered for the laptop are here. It feels so good not to have to twist my wrists to type on this keyboard.

Now I just have to get used to the new position my wrists are in, but I have absolutely no problem with that *grin*

The only real downside is that it makes me take a hand off the keyboard to use the track pad, but that’s okay too since I don’t use the mouse all that much anyway =]

If anyone uses a laptop regularly (or has one as their only computer), I recommend getting a pair of these. They really help. And let’s face it – your wrists are worth more than $15.

Current mood: happy
Current music: Coheed and Cambria – the suffering

Solutions in search of a problem

It seems that the creator of Eiffel (a programming language) has decided (after a very long time) to open source their IDE for it.

Never heard of Eiffel? I’m not surprised. It was a clunky, unforgiving “you must do things my way” language that lost out to C++.

This news got posted to Slashdot. Many people immediately started praising the language (even those who admitted that they have never used it). And then the “If you want to try something really cool, you need to try [insert language here]”

I swear that all of these people are doing the old “I have a solution in search of a problem” dance. This is something that annoys the living daylights out of me. Do you have so little to do that you feel the need to go “my toy is better than your toy”?

Some languages have real use and are widely used out there in the world. C and C++ for when you need to be pretty close to the metal. Assembly for when you need to be REALLY close to the metal (or feel like giving yourself a headache). Ruby, Perl, etc for when you want to script out things or work really fast. Java or C# for various stuff. PHP, ASP, Rails, etc etc etc if you want to have web stuff.

Even *shudder* Lisp for when you want to get things done and/or give yourself an aneurism (I can’t believe I spelled that properly) while dealing with an almost entirely recursive language.

No, this was not a complete list, and I realize that. I was just making a point.

The point is that if your language does something new and useful (or even just a LOT better than the other option out there), great. Let us know. We might give it a shot. However, don’t get bent out of shape if we tell you we’re not interested afterward and PLEASE for the love of anything worthy of love do not show us some “I took [language] and added [feature] and now I want to call it [new name]. You all need to use this now” crap.

We’re likely to bash you over the head with vi (or your editor of choice) and replace you with a very small shell script. Let’s face it – we’d get more use out of the shell script than your pontificating about dead/dying languages. And we can always route the output for the shell script to /dev/null

Why the obsessions with the also-rans? They tried. They failed. Almost nobody uses them.

Almost nobody uses them for a reason. Just let it go.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Everclear – When it all goes wrong again

It was really tempting to go out for a while today until the wind really picked up and it started raining sporadically. With my luck, I’d get hit with a large tree limb while wandering through the park.

On the positive side, at least my business cards got here today (and several days ahead of schedule).

Current mood: bored
Current music: REM – Shiny Happy People

Where I’m coming from

I wasn’t around long enough to have to experience punch cards or paper tape.

My first computer used a television as a monitor and could only save to audio tape. I first learned to program in BASIC when it was the only real option and back then I found it was faster to simply re-type programs most of the time. The command line was my friend and I still use it a lot (as well as key combinations).

I got to spend some time on BBSes before the internet was a normal thing to have access to. In fact, I used to have some of the basic modem commands memorized.

Printers were an expensive dream until I was a teenager when my parents got me my first computer with a hard drive. It was a 100mhz 486 (one of the last of the 486s actually) that I eventually modded the living daylights out of and dubbed Frankenstein because it was cheaper than buying a new computer (being a kid, I didn’t have a lot of money). With it, they got me a dot matrix printer which actually had an LCD display and menus (it was a real geek printer).

Back then, Sneakernet was almost the only way to get new and interesting software and information if you weren’t lucky enough to have BBS access. The other way was the meager software selections that some stores offered (there was actually a store in my small hometown that sold copies of shareware games and applications. It became a big deal to us).

I remember when AOL finally got dial up numbers even remotely close to us. We were all still running Windows 3.1x and my friend was the only one of us who had a modem. His mother (who basically claimed me as another son) got an account for us and we inevitably racked up an insane phone bill because it turns out the number they gave us was just out of local calling range.

(This is the point at which I thank her for not killing us. Thank you, Kim.)

We discovered IRC. I still remember #kwik-e-mart fondly (!squishy).

(I should also make a comment here which will only make sense to a very small handful of people who might come across this – “Bob Dole wants out!”)

My two friends and I learned HTML (later joined by another friend), made websites on geocities when it was still the best option out there, and got Hotmail accounts because it was the only way we could all have email addresses. From there, we began learning more (we even took a stab at Java 1) and started talking to people around the world who had similar interests, making many friends along the way.

I remember when MP3s came out (and was upset when Frankenstein was too slow to play them). I also remember the mod file scene that came before it. In fact, I think I still have a copy of Cubic Player and a stack of floppies worth of mod files around here somewhere.

Sometime while all of this was happening, an ISP started up in the next town over. They had all of a couple of modems in the beginning and the speeds were horrible, but it was better than AOL. By this point, we had all gotten modems and could do things from our own homes instead of Eric’s or the library (as long as our parents didn’t threaten to kill us for tying up the phone line).

We kept learning new things and meeting new people. Some of us even went on to meet at least a few of the people we met online in person and got very close to some of them. Good times were had, in one case love was found, and tragedies were shared (not least among them was when a very good friend that I’d gotten to know over the course of several years died along with her two children in a car crash late one night).

We were introduced to Linux back when it was only practical to buy on CD and was a pain in the ass to install and get working (It ate my hard drive. I’m glad it’s much easier now.). Before then, the only Unix machines we had ever seen were at the other end of a very long strand of wire that made ear-splitting squealing sounds if you listened to it.

Between the start of it all and now, a lot of things have happened. New computers, new technologies, a great deal of learning, meeting and losing friends, high school graduation, college and graduation from there, the rise of the search engine, and a lot of other things of a personal and technical nature.

Here’s to hoping that we get to keep learning and meeting new people. I wish you luck, my friends, wherever you are. I remember the time fondly and hope that you are all well.

Current mood: thoughtful
Current music: Mr Big - Shine

I think it was one of those days when the weather had a visible effect on me.

I finished the write up for the magazine on Spring Break con and then went out for a little while to enjoy the absolutely gorgeous day. It was tempting to just take off for the day and wander around, but that would have been a bad idea since I have an interview tomorrow.

It would have been the prefect day to spend training. Hopefully this weekend will be as good so I can get some play time.

Current mood: happy
Current music: Melissa Etheridge - I Really Like You

Walking through the great soul sucking mart today, I spotted a movie in the $5 bin that I’d been meaning to see and never got around to, so I picked it up.

Cabin Fever.

I admit it. I love cheesy horror movies (my movie collection is a favorite around the end of October). I laughed until I almost cried. I swear the best two parts were the Listerine scene and the hand biting kung fu kid.

Yes, folks, Listerine – for all those questionable hook ups with girls who have strange skin eating diseases. *giggle*

I spent half the movie with a WTF expression on my face and the other half almost falling out of bed from laughing so hard.

Oh man was that worth the $5.

Current mood: amused
Current music: none

Spring Break and new cards

I suppose I should probably give an update now that Spring Break con is over. I spent the last couple of days recovering (no real revelry, drunken or otherwise – just kind of worn out) so I’m just now getting around to the updates.

It all started Wed night with dinner with the presenters and some of the con staff. I have to say that I hadn’t had that much fun in a long time. It was just a bunch of technical people (and the girlfriend of one of the staff members) having dinner and shooting the breeze. Nothing really that eventful, just a fun night.

However, I still think it’s hilarious that the one guy was kind of puzzled at the fact that I both spent a fair chunk of my childhood on a farm and I fenced in college. Apparently fencers should be too snotty for that sort of thing. I come across as frighteningly down to earth to most people. Go figure. *chuckle*

Fast forward to the next day.

I got to the building where the con was being held at about 8am (set up was between 7:30 and 9) and didn’t see John, so I had a minor moment of panic since he said he was going to be there at 7:30 to set up. A mildly worried call to his office showed that he was on his way and that all was well.

Well, okay, not everything was well – the CDs that we were going to pass out didn’t turn out well, but that’s okay. These things happen. The banner, however, looked good and the fliers were good.

Most of the day was spent between my going to different talks and manning the booth (or should I use “personing?” According to the spell-checker, it isn’t a real word, but we must be PC after all *smirk*). There were plenty of cool people that stopped by the booth and, of course, a few that were hostile (whether it was to Rails, which featured in our banner, or to open source in general. I never will understand the hostility to a huge group of things thing).

Most of the talks I went to were really cool. In fact, all but one of the ones that I attended were given by people I’d had dinner with the night before.

The best of these was, by far, the last. It was also the least technical. The basic topic? How to actually have a life while being in the profession of software development. A lot of it was things that I’ve been saying for a long time along with a few things that I hadn’t seriously considered. It’s just kind of nice to hear that sort of thing coming from someone else. It sort of makes you feel like you aren’t either crazy or the only one.

All in all, things were pretty good. It’s just that I never knew how exhausting it was dealing with a conference full of people asking questions. It kind of makes me glad that I missed the deadline to be a speaker. I didn’t think I was ready for that anyway even though the people at the con wanted me to speak. At the moment, writing and coding are weird enough. Speaking may come in the future.

Oh yes. I can see it now. “And now, let’s discuss why it is that I have no problem ad-libbing in an informal situation (say, on the floor at a conference while speaking with vendors and my peers), but put behind a desk or podium I get nervous and trip over myself.” That’d go over really well. :-P

Actually, they wanted me to speak on Open Source, but the same things would apply. “The source – it’s open. Hence the name. Have I mentioned that I dislike RMS? The whole of the software world doesn’t have to be free. It should be up to the people who make the software (or who commission it) to decide what they want to do with it.”

In truth, I would probably be a lot better at it than that, but it is occasionally fun to lampoon oneself, though I do dislike RMS.

Being the clueful, slightly smart-assed (when appropriate) guy chatting about random things with others and giving a talk that people are taking seriously are two completely different things. If I could only manage that level of comfort and rapport in the second situation, I’d be golden =]

Oh well, on to the other part of the topic.

I’ve been out of business cards for way too long. I kept meaning to order them, but things always came up. I finally bit the bullet and sent in the order for new cards on Friday. If you really want to see what they look like, you can look here. I’m not worried about stalkers. All of that contact information is available on my website anyway.

They should be here in a couple of weeks.

It’s kind of necessary anymore. I get too many people asking for my card. I find it kind of amusing that, if you don’t have one to give them, so many of them tend to take you less seriously. Oh well. That should be remedied here in the next week or so.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Aqua – Doctor Jones

End of an era?

I got an email today from Gael Duval, creator of Mandrake Linux (now Mandriva) with an updated set of contact information, notification that he and Mandriva have parted ways, and a heads up about his new project, Ulteo.

It wasn’t his choice – more like a Steve Jobs treatment. If you'd like to have a little more in the way of details, Gael's explaination can be found here.

Way to go, folks. Firing the founder tends to do wonderful things for the company. Look at how Apple was doing during Job’s absence.

In all seriousness though, I’d just like to wish Gael good luck in his new venture.

Current mood: contemplative
Current music: Cruxshadows – Eurydice