As you read my blog, you’ll see I’m a fan of the iPhone, and Apple. I like their products, I like the way they do things. But, there are quite a few things I would like to see changed . The only way to see real change in any business, is to have competition.

I just saw a sneak peek of Viigo for the new Blackberry Storm. I’m not too impressed with the storm itself, but I am happy and motivated to see other devices with touch screen interfaces coming out. Viigo seems to be the RSS reader I want for iPhone, currently I use NetNewsWire, but Viigo seems to be able to do things that the current version for iPhone doesn’t. Here’s hoping someone from NNW is reading my lame blog, and gets some cues, on ways to enhance my experience with the phone. I’m loving the landscape mode, and the use of gestures to navigate from one article to the other.

Computer World has an article about Telecommuting . So, I thought I’d chip in my inflated $0.02. Telecommuting, doesn’t mean working from home. This is one of the biggest myths, and truths people will realize over time. What makes me such an expert? I’ve been telecommuting for the past 3 years, straight, full time. I’m not talking about moonlighting, and doing part time work for companies who post on craigslist. I’m talking multi million dollar projects. I haven’t been fired, I haven’t left the company, and I’ve been rewarded with a raise, and more importantly, I haven’t missed deadlines.

You still have a job, act like it. (The Ugly)

Telecommuting, is not that hard. But, it’s not the holy grail for workers either. You’re not going to become productive because you work from home, you’re not going to save a lot of gas, and you’re definitely not going to “make your own hours”. The last part is true, if you want to be a telecommuter.
Just because you work from home, or remotely, doesn’t mean your responsibilities to other people go away. Deadlines are deadlines, people need to know what you’re up to, and what the status is. The only time they can get this information is when they’re working. So therefore, you’re still working when they are. Sure, you can actually do the work later, but you better be awake and available to answer phone calls during the 9-5. Your client is being nice enough to let you make your own hours and work remotely, but they can only do so much, you must extend the favor back to them, by being available when they need you.

Working from home isn’t so awesome after all (The Bad)

You’re not going to work from home, if you itch to telecommute, you itch not because you love your home, it’s because you hate the monotony of your cubicle, and your office. You’ll hate your house soon enough. I’ve found that if I work from my house for more than a week, I go crazy, and productivity drops. I’ve found many cool coffee shops and bars that I work from. Yes, I said bar. No, I don’t drink while I work. Get yourself a good pair of headphones, a 3g card, and a good laptop. You’re finally free to work from where you want to, don’t waste it at home.

And the commute shall set you free! (The Good)

I’ve found that I’m more creative, I get more done, and more importantly I’m happier. I don’t have to worry about the morning traffic report, and I don’t have to worry about inclement weather. I make sure I’m available during the day, even if I’m not working, I can answer a phone call from the pool, if the call requires me to get on the computer, I can very quickly. It’s a type of freedom, that can only be experienced once you understand your new responsibility.

(Reposted from Zack Urlocker’s blog)

Andrii Nikitin, one of the MySQL support engineers located in Ukraine, has asked for help from MySQLers and so I’m sharing this information to the community at large. Andrii’s son Ivan, who is 2 1/2, is in need of a bone marrow transplant operation. This will require going to a clinic in Europe that will not be covered by regular insurance. So Andrii has aksed to see if we could help raise funds. The cost is expected to be 150,000 - 250,000 EUROS. A huge amount for an engineer from Ukraine to cover. But a small amount by many people could make a big difference.

Many MySQLers have kicked in to help out, but more is needed. Ivan’s health has taken a turn for the worse recently and the issue is now quite pressing. Even a small donation could mean the difference between life and death for Ivan.

I hope some of you who use MySQL or have young kids will join me in making a donation today. You can do so by using Paypal, by sending a check to MySQL, or via wire transfer.

Paypal:
http://tinyurl.com/6rxjsz
Or
by check payable to:

MySQL, Inc.
Mail to: MySQL, Inc.
Attn: Linda Dong
20450 Stevens Creek Blvd #350
Cupertino, CA 95014

or
US wire transfer:

MySQL Inc: 7396643001
SWIFT: NDEAUS3N

or
International wire transfer in any currency:
Bank: Nordea Bank
Bank address: Stockholm, Sweden
Bank account: 3259 17 03868
IBAN: SE27 3000 0000 0325 9170 3868
SWIFT: NDEASESS

Thanks to those who have donated already. A child’s life is precious and I hope we can give Ivan a chance.

To the KTLA reporter who was amazed by the people standing in line for the iphone. Yes, we know it’s just a phone. It’s just a phone, for God’s sake. Yet, you seem to miss the sad truth about your career. It’s a line, for a phone, and you are so horrible at reporting anything else, that your bosses sent you to report on a line. A line for God’s sake . Now, I could go on insulting you for your pathetic job, but you have kids to feed, so I understand you had to do what your bosses told you. So, let’s try to see this from another perspective.

Have you ever been excited about a sporting event? A football game, soccer, basketball, etc? Have you gone early for a movie premiere? I hope you said yes to at least one of the above, because otherwise you lead a very boring life. Now try and rationalize the logic of people who want to be home for kick off, tip off, or have to see the movie at midnight, the day of the premiere. Think about all the people who stand outside the line for the Oscars, who want to catch a glimpse of their favorite actor or actress.

Watching the opening kick off, with all your buddies at home is not going to change the outcome of the match. Getting to see a celebrity in the heat, is not going to change your life for the better. Yet, people do it. It’s called excitement, about something they care about. Something they’re passionate about.

Don’t mock someone’s passion, chances are you’re passionate about something they can’t relate to either.

Disclaimer: I stood in line for one hour on opening day, and decided to leave due to a conference call I had to attend, and I’ll be in line at 1:30AM for the premiere of The Dark Knight, so I can watch the 3:15AM show. I expect 450 other people in line with me, to watch “just another movie”.

I’m not sure if all recruiters work off some hidden cosmic rhythm, or if they share information.. but I find it amusing, that a bunch of them call me around the same time every month. Anyway, in the past 3-4 months I’ve been underwhelmed, and frankly offended by these email recruiters.

In light of This article by Nick Halstead , I thought I would throw in some experiences from contractor/job seeker side. I’m glad to see that these recruiters aren’t horrible just to the recruitee, but also to their paying client, yet disappointed.

Actual Conversation (this happened last week):
Recruiter Email and immediate phone call: Looking for web designer with over 10 years of experience in Adob (that’s how they pronounce it), photoshop, html, xhtml and css.
Me: I haven’t used photoshop since photoshop 3, I suck at design I learnt that in high school, i’m not fit for this position.
Recruiter: So how many years of Adob experience do you have? I have your old resume on file and I don’t see any.
me: Yes, because the last time I messed with photoshop, was when System 7.5 was out, and I had a pirated copy of it on our high school computer. I am not interested, and more so, I am not qualified for this position.
Recruiter: Ok do you think you can add photoshop to your resume and send it back to me?
me: ……. …. .. ..

This happens a lot, and I hate to say it, the recruiter is always some guy from India.

Now, almost all of my contracts I’ve found have been through recruiters, there are some really good ones out there, but finding the good ones shouldn’t be so hard. Recruiters are necessary, I’ve been on this one contract for 3 years now, this contract was found by a really good recruiter in Chicago. These guys were so good and ethical, that they haven’t tried to recruit me away, or use me as a way to get other candidates through the door, though I do know some other contractors that have started working there via them.

PS: To the recruiters reading this, this is not an invitation to solicit me. I’m just venting, I’m sure the good recruiters out there, have some horror stories of bad candidates themselves, I’d love to hear them.

There’s a really good paper that has won the first annual Security Best Practices competition held by FIRST (www.first.org ) and the CERT Coordination Center . The paper is from Taiwan, and shows a very interesting methodology of study, and more importantly a means to educate the human. As the paper says; “Social engineering concentrates on the weakest link of the computer security chain, which is also the most essential part of the security component: human.” You owe it to yourself to read it, and try to implement something educational within your organization. Your security patches will have no effect against a good social engineer.

Just a quick heads up for any PHP’ers in the San Antonio, TX area. Most of you probably don’t know, but San Antonio, does have a PHP meetup. The next meeting is on June 19th, 2008 at Bennigans off 1604. Here’s the Meetup Site, hope to see you there.

So, twitter is down again, all jokes aside, I know a lot of people say the problem with twitter is that it’s built on RoR, is it really? Is ROR really the problem? Or is it bad infrastructure? Could it be that twitter as simple as it is, is actually innovative in what it’s trying to do? Or is it doing something very simple, in a very foolish manner?

For the people who say the problem with Twitter is RoR, I’d like to ask them and possibly bribe them, into building a clone of twitter, in their language of choice.

Why? Because, I’m curious.. is it really the language, or the framework? or just poor architecture? is the architecture poor due to the framework’s limitations? I’ve thought a little bit about what Twitter is doing, and I can’t think of any other application that does the type of notification, except financial sites, and stock tickers.. but they usually claim the 20 minute delay.

I haven’t done any real research on twitter’s problems, I’m a consumer so I didn’t feel like trying to figure out where their blog is, or who is actually behind twitter, so pardon me if my question is dumb to some of you.

So Hasin Hayder’s post about questions that he asks during an interview. Specifically, if they know the name of the benevolent dictators, or creators of the languages and tools the person will be using for the job.

This has brought up a lot of discussion on his blog, with people saying he’s being unreasonable, and some agreeing with him. So, I thought I’d chime in as well. Chris has already done, so I’m going to join the bandwagon :).

Initially, I was in the “Hasin’s being a little harsh camp”, but I think I understand what he’s trying to do/say. Not knowing who Rasmus, or Michael, or Guido are, doesn’t mean you’re a bad programmer, but it could possibly give an indication of your passion. This is not a surefire way to tell though, usually I use the more direct method, and ask them what their passion is. Why? Because it’s easier to find out what their passion is. It’s fairly easy to ask, and there are no assumptions being made.
At the same time, one of the biggest things I look for, is the ability to say “I don’t know”. Even if it’s for something as trivial as “who’s the father of PHP?”, PHP is mature enough now, that not everyone will know, someone could be coming from a very strong Python, Perl or “name your language here” background. If someone told me they didn’t know, I’d hope they say but I could find out.. One thing I’ve learnt, is that if you go to a job where you aren’t learning anything new, you’re going to hate your job.

Knowing who Rasmus is, doesn’t indicate competency, but it could indicate my ability to carry on a conversation with you at a bar.

Considering the few posts made recently, regarding Telecommuting, I thought I’d put in my $0.02, adjusted for inflation.
See Cal’s Post and this awesome job opportunity.
I want to discuss the various tools and options available to the telecommuter in 2008.

Disclaimer: I don’t want to make this another post on the benefits of Telecommuting, as I strongly believe there is no silver bullet for the problems an individual or a company faces. There are many drawbacks to telecommuting, and the positives don’t always neutralize the drawbacks.

Background: I’ve been telecommuting since 2003, that’s when I decided to quit working for the ‘man’. I chose a laptop to give myself mobility. This mobility also came in the form of being single, unattached, and my willingness to drive. I drove from New Jersey to San Antonio, to Corpus Christi, TX, back to San Antonio, to San Francicso, to Los Angeles, to Boca Raton, FL, to Alexandria, VA, Birmingham, AL, to Herndon, VA to San Antonio TX.

All of this traveling was done between January 2003 and October 2005. So, for almost two years I lived in hotels, and everything I owned, fit in my Nissan Sentra. This was telecommuting 1.0, I call it telecommuting because quite often, I could work from my hotel room, they just wanted me close by, in case of meetings.

As much as I loved driving and finding new places, hotel life does get a bit tiring. So, in 2005 I decided to settle down in San Antonio. I’m sure a lot of you will wonder why I chose Texas of all places, to which I can only say ‘try it’.

Here are some tools I use to help keep my sanity, and my contract.

1. Laptop: I use a macbook pro as my one and only machine, the laptop is my primary means of income. My laptop is almost 1.5 yrs old, and it’s still more than what I need. My only gripes are:

   1. Glossy Screens: I chose the glossy screen from Apple, it’s a great looking screen, but it’s not the best in all situations (outdoors).
   2. Resolution: 1680×1050 is nice, but I think I’d prefer 1920×1200, so I want to buy the new MacBook Pro’s, but I don’t know what to do with this laptop first. I can’t logically, or fiscally justify two laptops.

   Since OS X has unix at the core, I have a local development environment for all my projects. I’ve tried out things like MAMP, MAMP Pro, but I keep going back to my old Linux roots. I have the default Apache, and a customized PHP installation, along with MySQL.

   I use subversion for my source control, though I am thinking of switching to GIT. But, whether you use GIT or SVN, it doesn’t matter as long as you use something it’s good. Basically, the use of SVN, Apache, PHP and MySQL allows me to have a full local dev environment. I can write new code, make bug fixes, document, whatever, all from the comfort of my laptop. And I never have to say
   “oh, I can’t get to that file it’s at home, or at the office”.

   The laptop alone gives me the freedom to work from home, or any other place with internet. As much as I love my laptop, I stronly urge you to learn to live without it as well. I’m a strong believer in the no laptop per meeting initiative (there should be one if there isn’t already).

   You don’t have to use a mac, or install Linux. I know people who are very happy with Windows as their primary OS/Development environment, this is development so performance is not your primary concern here.

2. Mobile Data Cards (EVDO/HSDPA): These things are awesome, and worth it if you telecommute. Now, I’m sure you’re going to ask.. but if I work from home, isn’t my cable/dsl faster and more reliable than Sprint/Verizon/ATT? Why yes it is, but telecommuting doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be in the comfort of your home all the time, nor does it mean that you’ll want to be. I spend more time at Starbucks, Coffee houses, and other places where the weather is nice, and the view is even nicer. None of these places have reliable Wifi, or wifi at all. But, my Sprint EVDO card works. Plus, for what I do, it’s awesome. I don’t upload massive files, I don’t download massive files, I upload incremental changes, ssh into remote machines, and I read the news with my RSS reader. I really don’t need a 10mbps internet connection. I need a stable connection, that lets me work anywhere. These card work all the time, and work every where I have been.
3. Good headphones: I use the V-Moda head phones, they are good enough for my ears. They sound great, and fit perfectly. They’re so comfortable that sometimes I get up with the phones still in my ears, only to be yanked down by the laptop. I’m interested in bluetooth headphones, if someone has any opinions, please share them. Anyway, the reason for headphones is because they help you concentrate. They drown out the ambient noise of the environment you’re in, OR you can turn up your music as loud as you like then. I can’t work in silence, nor can I work when other people are talking. I love listening to music when I work, it helps me concentrate.
4. An extra power cord: I have two power cords for my laptop. One is stationary and never leaves the house. The other is always in my laptop bag. This is just a peace of mind/convenience thing. I used to land in a different city, or get to the airport and find out I left my powercord at home, or at the client’s site, but no more. Part of it is due to better discipline, part of it is the intangible comfort I have when I travel, that there is always a cord at home.
5. A good laptop bag: Like a man or a woman, is hard to find. Everyone has their own preferences, I prefer to use bags that can carry things besides my laptop. I like to take pictures, and since I normally find myself in places I find interesting, the ability to have my camera with me is a huge plus. But, sometimes I want to travel light, I want the ability to take the camera out, as well as the compartments for the laptop and lenses. The bag should transform from a large laptop bearing bag, to a smaller version of it self.
   I prefer the use of back packs, but I like the style of messenger/brief case bags. So, I’m still trying to find the perfect fit, but for now I use a Targus back pack. I’ve tried Brenthaven, Tumi, Timbuk2, and InCase bags, the Targus has been with me the longest, due to it’s simplicty, and my ability to pack my camera bag in it, when I need to.
6. A portable hard drive: I have a Maxtor 160GB USB only drive, I bought it on sale for $80. I now have a constant backup of everything on my laptop. If I’m traveling, I just start the rsync before I go to bed. In case the events of the day cause me to lose my hard drive, drop my laptop, or I become a victim of the burning battery, my work is backed up. I am looking at Truecrypt, to see how I can make my backups a little bit more secure. If I lose/forget my drive, then my work becomes the property of Joe H4×0r, which is bad. I’d love to hear your opinions on this. I’m trying to find a balance between encrypting everything, and only encrypting the things I need encrypted.

I believe these 6 items, will help you, because they have helped me. I don’t want to talk too much in detail about how you should
live your day, or how you prioritize your tasks. There are plenty of sites out there to help you with GTD, Focusing, Time Tracking/management. Those same rules still apply, whether you work from home, or the office, you will still need to prioritize. You will still need to keep track of your hours, and you’ll still need to make time for the wife, kids, dogs, and most importantly, yourself.