prog: (Default)
I spent the morning finishing up this little contract job, creating a Minti tag for Johnny's Selected Seeds. Minti is the system I helped create back at MINT for building Apache/MySQL/Perl-based dynamic websites, and JSS is one of the many companies that absorbed pieces of MINT's human resources.

It sure took me back to work with all my old, kooky method names again, and see that Minti is still broken (or, rather, very easy to break) in the same ways it was when I last worked with it, a year and a half ago, despite the fact that Arcus has continued to develop it over this time. I got to talk to Alisa, our old webmaster, again after I accidentally blew away her test site's config by forgetting about one of the many chicken-waving ceremonies one must perform when updating some server information. So that was nice.

Now I am grappling with SourceForge's kooky UI again, as I attempt to update one of my bits of software there, a shopping cart Perl module that I wrote at MINT in 2000, and to which Andy has made a few bugfixes since I left. Once I figured out what he did, I declared it the new version. It's still almost completely undocumented, but after functioning for about two years in a production envrionment, it's stable enough to deserve a link from my homepage or something... yet another thing to throw on the "Stuff that I worked on a lot when I was paid to be interested in them but then I left that job so I don't care that much about them anymore: enjoy!" pile.

Geek geek geek Oh yeah, yesterday I turned my whole personal website, hosted on a PC at Arcus, into a CVS module, which I then checked out onto my iBook. In theory, I now have a fully-functional test platform. Pretty good! Maybe I'll actually do something about updating that silly site now.
prog: (Default)
Today I finished a draft of a column that I last week successfully pitched to an online publication (where I've appeared before) and asked some former cow orkers for a tech review. Got two responses, one helpful, one less so. Put it aside for now.

Fielded an idea from a couple of more recent ex-orkers regarding an online resource for all kinds of legislative tracking. I noted how it rekindled my ideas about a sort of IMDB for Congress, where bills and laws are like film titles and the congresspeople behind them are like the cast and crew, and everything is hyperlinked and automated. That would be kind of cool.

Picked up another Arcus contract. (Or got tossed one, rather.) It's a 20-hour job due in two weeks, but is most notable in that it requires me to get familiar with some software that I wrote two years ago, including a shopping cart Perl module that I was rather proud of at the time, and have since utterly forgotten about. It has lived on, in my wake. Nutty. Also, hmm. Despite Joe's feelings to the contrary, I still can't find anything like it on CPAN. This I will put on my list of things to revive.

Revive? I today found that O'Reilly.com has a link in their catalog page to P&X, so I really have to at least mention it on my own site. Haven't done this yet, but I did get bit by the desire to play with "corndog", my own weblog software. I got it running on my iBook with a little bit of struggle (more the fault of my not-quite-understanding of one aspect of HTML::Mason). It's ready for me to swoop in and add the glossary components that I've been wanting for many many months. That, sadly, may prove to be the end of my regular LJ postings. I think it will be for the best. We'll see what happens.

It's past 7 but I think I'll change my pants and head over to Denis' anyway.

More Mail

Feb. 28th, 2002 03:02 pm
prog: (coffee_tummy)
Arcus finally sent me a check. It says "Caffeinated Consulting" beneath my name. Eek... I thought I made it clear the letterhead was a gag. Now I will pay for my little prank.

Mumble. Well, if it actually ends up making a difference, I'll go ahead and register a DBA. So: nyeah.

Me, Inc.

Dec. 27th, 2001 11:28 pm
prog: (Default)
I finally got around to sending Arcus a bill. For some reason, I waited until the owner sent mail to a list saying that he just spent too much money on toys. Take that! Anyway, bless Mac OS X for having Save to PDF an option in all of its standard print dialogs (by way of the Preview app), cuz god knows that I'd never get around to actually printing this out and mailing it to them.

I made up some bogus letterhead, too.

Yes, that is an iconic coffee mug lodged in an iconic stomach. I stole it from this page. Yes, I told Arcus that it's not a real DBA.

Leaves

Dec. 6th, 2001 02:22 pm
prog: (Default)
The Diesel, I see, has embraced the strange weather by removing the wintertime battens from its roll-up front facade. I still feel the need to have some token acknowledging that these temperatures shouldn't be here: I'm wearing my corduroy sportcoat, something I wouldn't do were we having this very same weather in June.

I wasn't nervous until two people at the Sunday gaming group agreed: "That's it. We're done, we're doomed. Head for high land!" While their attitude was ha-ha-only-serious, seeing any amount of fatalism in my friends still fills me with dread. This, and the constant little reminders of the oddball atmosphere (here comes Charles in the door wearing shorts, listen to the squeak of the air conditioner at the office), has put a dint on my ability to focus on things.

Internet access at home has been squidgy for over a week now, despite Charles' efforts to make the new would-be firewall machine, the scrounged Alpha, work. Last night we went shopping at Micro Center, and I picked me up a new Netgear wireless router. Though it has its own firewall capabilities, Charles wants it sitting behind the Alpha-based one if at all paossible. If we determine that the box is simply toast, we'll fall back to using the Netgear as the house firewall instead. Tonight should hold the moment of truth.

(I played with the router's Web-based configuator a little, enough to change the admin password from the factory-default "1234" (There's a tip for all you 1337 1s) (Also: insert quote from "Spaceballs" here, if you are Carla; I'll have to tell her about this and see if this triggers her automated quote mechanisms as I predict) and make its broadcast identifier string "Chez Chestnut"... @whee)

Today, though, I'm on my way back to O'Reilly to hang out (uninvited, but I'm fairly certain I'm welcome, given my goal; see below), since Internet access is out-and-out dead at Chez Chestnut, the Alpha idling with a screenful of kernel compilation error messages until we decide what to do with this mess. Charles is sincere in his belief that we can hit a working solution tonight. I just hope we can hit one before Saturday.

The pressure to not spend this Netless afternoon reading or watching movies comes from the imperitave to Finish The Book Dammit that Erik and I received yesterday. I must spend the next week and a half in hack-and-describe mode in order for this to work according to schedule. Strange and Wondeful fact: I think I can hold up my part. I don't know how, but over the last mangle of weeks (maybe since autumn) my confidence with the project has risen a lot, and stayed there. I've managed to get a lot done, and the path ahead of me seems reasonably well-defined. I'll say no more on this, though. I know myself a little too well for that. Mmm-hmm.

I'm also making progress on the other thing I told everyone I'd put off until the move was done, and have completed the first draft of my Statement of Objects essay for my MIT application and vetted it by Jon, my principal sponsor in this crazy endeavor. He filled my head with ideas for stuff the essay still needs, so that's gotta happen today, because there's now one month left for me to finish filling this thing out. I still have to choose who to tap for writing a third recommendation letter, but after speaking with Jon yesterday I have some ideas, at last.

Finally, my first-ever contracted programming job reached feature-complete stage this week. Yay. Now comes the part where the customer tells me about all the changes they need. It's just like I read about! But in this case the customers are also my dear friends, so it's all good.

Mistrust

Dec. 1st, 2001 07:15 am
prog: (Default)
I do not trust this weather. Surely something is afoot when one's Cambridge home is cooler than the air outside, by virtue of the shade -- in December.
Naturally my thoughts turn to worries about global warming, but I don't remember this past summer as particularly dreadful.

Several months ago I read articles on science websites about big ol' chunks of Antarctica breaking away from the mainland, detected by satellite imagery and such. I believe that mention of this got all the way up to cnn.com as far as mainstream media penetration, but it didn't rise above the bottommost headlines, under the 'SCIENCE' subheading. Not very good.

I told Cthulhia via email that I wouldn't mind accompanying her and queue on their road trip this weekend, but haven't heard back from her yet, and am not pressing the issue. On the one hand, I have a lot of work to do, and staying home would probably help me accomplish it. On the other, I have never been to NYC, let alone during these most interesting times, let alone in the company of cool people, and I think I'd net a tidy bundle of valuable XP from the experience. Plus: I do have a laptop, as I am so prone to forget. On the third hand, having friends like cthulhia means that these sorts of opportunities pop up not entirely infrequently, so I wouldn't weep to pass this one up. I shall do whatever.

Went to a most interesting lecture wednesday afternoon, Nadine Sorensen(?), president of the ACLU addressing an MIT crowd about U.S. government intrusion of its citizens' Internet usage. I wrote a report about it, but it's on the iBook, which is currently not on any network, alas: Rick came and took away the house firewall, and busy busy Charles, though he has toiled mightily upon it, has yet to properly set up the firewall rules of the replacement box we were able to scrounge. He has kindly given me an account on it, though, allowing me to LJ at you now by way of lynx. Not too bad, but I found yesterday that trying to do Web development with nothing but consoles is kinda painful. Despite this, my first contract job (what an awful-sounding phrase...) shall be completed this weekend, NYC or not.

Charles is one of these people who broadcasts their good moods by speaking in a silly accent. There ought to be a name for these people.
prog: (Default)
Logged two hours of work today for Arcus, my first two ever as an independent contractor. Picked up plenty of useful advice from veteran contractor (and Arcus bossman) Jim, on when and when not to bill. Figuring out how to navigate the customer's whacked-out labyrinth of existing databases and APIs: bill. Thinking to self about how to solve the problem at hand: bill. Having chosen a particular attack path, figuring out how that is supposed to work, prior to actually applying it to the problem: do not bill.

I've been using a little OS X dock app called AtWork as my clocky tool, though Adam thinks I should learn how to use the time-tracking Emacs mode he heard about. GEEK


Charles says that he has successfully phoned my employment references, and presented this information, at long last, to the super-busy landlord and her husband. (Said employers corroborate this, though I do trust Charles, who, I remind myself, hangs directly off the small but succulent trust network I've built in Boston -- and views me in exactly the same way, with the same network.)

This news came in the nick of time, as, after speaking with my parents about the situation, I had resolved to leap at the other opportunity if the first was still stalled by day's end. And so, the waiting game continues, now through a second weekend.

The mail from friends, gaming groups, and social circles in Boston really makes me pine to be there again, despite the fact that I don't get out much, no matter where I am. :)

Gaming... there is RPG madness due to happen, a critical point in our Nephilim campaign, possibly a Big Fight, when I really should be there. Should I say "foo" and drive down and maybe hope for crash space? Dunno. OTOH, there is no lack of stuff to get done here. Like, oh, I dunno, the book? Mumble


I had better set about fixing my homesite, which is still littered with debris and broken internal links from the move. Between laziness and general disconnection from the rest of the world (something that definitely fuels the former), I haven't so far been bothered with it. Bad, bad. This is not the time to be ambivalent about my face to the world, friend.

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