Tomorrow is my first day as a full-time engineer at WeatherBill. I've been working there for a couple weeks as a contractor, but we all decided we wanted to snuggle a little closer together, so I'm going FT. I'm working with a couple old friends, which is pretty great, and for a still-early-stage startup, there's a pretty high percentage of people in the company that I enjoy getting drinks with after work. That hasn't really been the case since I worked at Critical Path in the late 90s, so I'm pretty stoked to be there.
This may be a surprising development to some, as the last time I discussed anything professional here, I was talking about joining Metaweb. Well, that job didn't last very long - a week, to be exact. It turned out that I didn't get a very accurate picture during the interview process of what my job would be like. Once I actually started, it became obvious very quickly that I hadn't understood exactly what kind of work I'd be doing, and I knew I wasn't going to be happy. This is not a comment on Metaweb; I have a lot of respect for them and hope they are successful. It just wasn't a good fit for me.
And so, after one smallish contract gig building a site in Rails, I'm back to Java land. For the last few weeks I've been doing some work with the most modern versions of Spring and Hibernate, learning FreeMarker, and even hacking on the browser side a bit with jQuery for remoting and DOM manipulation. Though Spring especially has come a long way in terms of embracing convention over configuration, Rails is still way ahead of it, especially in the amount of support Rails has for Ajax communication, at both the template and controller level. I've found myself more than once this week looking at the Rails API docs to figure out how to build custom FreeMarker macros that are reminiscent of ActionView's form_remote_tag and friends. I've always been about stealing ideas from the language I wish I was working in to make the language I'm actually working in suck a little less, so this whole thing feels pretty natural to me, and I hope that I can eventually make some of this code available for other folks who might be stuck in Java land and not have time to explore Rails enough to be able to steal some of its treasures for yourself.
This may be a surprising development to some, as the last time I discussed anything professional here, I was talking about joining Metaweb. Well, that job didn't last very long - a week, to be exact. It turned out that I didn't get a very accurate picture during the interview process of what my job would be like. Once I actually started, it became obvious very quickly that I hadn't understood exactly what kind of work I'd be doing, and I knew I wasn't going to be happy. This is not a comment on Metaweb; I have a lot of respect for them and hope they are successful. It just wasn't a good fit for me.
And so, after one smallish contract gig building a site in Rails, I'm back to Java land. For the last few weeks I've been doing some work with the most modern versions of Spring and Hibernate, learning FreeMarker, and even hacking on the browser side a bit with jQuery for remoting and DOM manipulation. Though Spring especially has come a long way in terms of embracing convention over configuration, Rails is still way ahead of it, especially in the amount of support Rails has for Ajax communication, at both the template and controller level. I've found myself more than once this week looking at the Rails API docs to figure out how to build custom FreeMarker macros that are reminiscent of ActionView's form_remote_tag and friends. I've always been about stealing ideas from the language I wish I was working in to make the language I'm actually working in suck a little less, so this whole thing feels pretty natural to me, and I hope that I can eventually make some of this code available for other folks who might be stuck in Java land and not have time to explore Rails enough to be able to steal some of its treasures for yourself.
My last long run, 16 miles, totally obliterated me, so I am nervous about this one. By the time you read this, I might already be roadkill.
Update: rocked it. slow, but finished strong. gorgeous day out there, wanted to be out sailing.
Update: rocked it. slow, but finished strong. gorgeous day out there, wanted to be out sailing.
Today's long run is 16 miles. I'm doing most of the second half of the SF Marathon course, plus the mileage getting to my starting point and home from the race end point. I've run segments of this course many times in the past, but this is the first time I will do the Embarcadero - Mission loop and then continue on to Golden Gate Park. Usually I stop and go home when I get back to the lower Haight.
By the way, I don't just post these maps to brag (although the e-peen opportunities are appreciated). I'll actually have this page loaded in Safari on my iPhone while I run so that I can doublecheck the course when I forget where I'm going or get lost.
Today's run soundtrack: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré.
By the way, I don't just post these maps to brag (although the e-peen opportunities are appreciated). I'll actually have this page loaded in Safari on my iPhone while I run so that I can doublecheck the course when I forget where I'm going or get lost.
Today's run soundtrack: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré.
Today is the first day of the early access program for Age of Conan. I've spent the last couple hours installing and patching the game, and I should be in soon. For anybody else who might be playing, I'm planning to roll a guardian named Locnar on the Set PvE server. Although I was initially drawn to the dark templar based on its description in the manual, I theorized that tanks would be as scarce in this game as they are in all others, and since I love tanking in WoW, I'll step up and play that role in this game too. Signs point to guardians being able to do reasonable amounts of damage too, so hopefully leveling with a defensive spec won't be as awful as it is in WoW.
Anybody else planning to play AoC? Share your details!
Anybody else planning to play AoC? Share your details!
I've been on Twitter for a while, but only recently started using it in earnest. I've got 'rific, have my Growl notifications up, and run a few Tweetscans through my feed reader to rush to the rescue of JRubyists in trouble. But I try to do something it seems most tweeters don't: I try not to crapflood my followers with useless bullshit.
[...]
That's meant unfollowing people that tweet nothing but their travel schedules, where in the house they happen to be sitting, what great new product their company just released, and a load of other nonsense. That's meant not following everyone that follows me, especially if their primary topics include walking the dog and taking out the trash.
http://headius.blogspot.com/2008/05/culling-herd.html
Huzzah! We should form a club. We could call it the I-Dont-Care-How-Awesome-The-Band-You-Are-Watching-Perform-Right-Now-Is-
I-Dont-Want-Twelve-Tweets-An-Hour-About-It Club.