the geek whisperer

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68853506303903083662011-10-05T14:32:53.866-07:00the geek whisperernotes on software, management, and Silicon Valleyboghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.comBlogger311100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-68353079596227647362011-04-26T10:08:00.000-07:002011-05-01T22:27:43.035-07:00Compare and Contrast (2)

(a)(b)

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-26332716835853720142011-04-04T13:23:00.000-07:002011-04-04T13:27:15.569-07:00Compare and Contrast

(a)(b)

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-83120849734540226622011-03-29T18:16:00.000-07:002011-03-31T12:00:26.753-07:00What's your METHODOLOGY?

How do you organize development to reliably meet your goals?Usually, we all develop with an approach that can be charitably characterized as pragmatic, and not-so-charitably as somnolent. Most organizations develop the way they've always developed, with very little introspection into how they do their thing, why they do it that way, or how they might improve.It's worthwhile to see if you can

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-78668861605704145012011-03-02T10:09:00.000-08:002011-03-02T14:56:12.467-08:00How to retain guest focus in VMware and still use CTRL-ALT.

My needs are modest, straightforward, and oft-thwarted.Today's hope was two hours--two hours, I say!--of straightforward, unencumbered forward progress. Forward progress, in this case, ending in a decent hour-long training presentation with a few performance numbers thrown in. Like I say, modest.Instead, I spent nearly an hour monkeying around with VMware's VCenter (it says 4.0, but I am

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-1875701497688577012010-11-29T20:52:00.000-08:002010-12-02T19:04:37.611-08:00neuron

beware: extrapolation at workYou're probably already forgotten the news story about Bill Nye. Sorry, I'm not firing fast enough these days.So here's the deal. Bill Nye is talking at USC, and he passes out. Bad sushi or something. Whatever. He's fine, apparently.But here's the interesting part. Instead of everyone rushing the stage to see what's wrong with him, or call an ambulance...

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-40181846954809154842010-10-14T09:12:00.000-07:002010-10-14T14:07:44.205-07:00A Babel of Coding Standards

Interesting pluralities for the day:- a flotilla of handymen (all late)- a Babel of coding standardsInteresting lesson of the day...Python. I know, being a hep systems programmer type, I really should know All Things Scripting language, but I've put off Python for a while. C and assembly are more my modus operandi. However, I've got a nifty, small little project and it seems a nice test

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-50592327844737529522010-09-17T06:31:00.000-07:002010-09-17T07:10:03.976-07:00panic: out of coffee

This message has been automatically generated in response to the creation of a trouble ticket regarding: "Bwoop bwoop bwoop. Coffee machine DOWN. Productivity CRASHING. Bwoop Bwoop Bwoop."There is no need to reply to this message right now. Your ticket has been assigned an ID of [rt.thecompany.com #19892]. Please include this string in the subject line of all future correspondence about this

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-29882205473713967252010-06-20T12:03:00.000-07:002010-07-13T23:15:57.918-07:00Do I Seem Cooler to You?

Is there a special spring in my step? Am I dressing better? Perhaps it's the haircut. Maybe it's the really good bike ride I had this morning (south to Uvas and Calero reservoirs, north to the Los Gatos Coffee Roasting Company, in case you were wondering).There must be something different. Some inexpressible ineffable je ne sais quois. I think I'm going to need to upgrade my hair and

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-63017473577810831802010-06-08T16:05:00.000-07:002010-06-09T09:35:54.419-07:00Martini Monkey, meet The New You

Music: React 10. Just for track 6 on disc 1.We have seen the future, and it is increasingly clean, white and Dystopian. Within a couple of days of my last missive about our new terminal in SJC, news surfaces about the transport options to get to and from the airport. I am not making this up!Pod Car, circa 2010Pod Car, circa 2274Sure enough, it's the Logan's Run pod cars! Yeah, they try to

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-74193881970226760032010-05-17T22:00:00.000-07:002010-06-09T18:44:41.940-07:00Notes from Terminal C

For the Music List: Miles Davis, "Kind of Blue". Evokes the coolness of the early 60's very nicely (it was actually recorded in 1959). Makes me think of people dressed well for travel. Hats, cigarettes, horn-rimmed glasses. Plus, I just could not bring myself to the obvious "Do you know the way..."It's a gray day in San Jose. The air around SJC seems laden with grit and grime from

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-28453416827517814302010-05-06T17:46:00.000-07:002010-05-08T22:26:00.441-07:00A Twisty Maze of Linux Clocks, All Slightly Different

Pardon me while I indulge my inner geek. I'm going to talk about how clocks work in Linux. Why am I doing this? Because you need to know. It's confusing, complicated, and not terribly well documented (yet). But mostly because I want to indulge my inner geek.Clocks and timers can be a bit confusing. There are a lot of them, and they all seem to work slightly differently. This post describes

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-5595749675067203962009-09-29T22:07:00.000-07:002009-09-30T15:21:53.293-07:00My War Against the Machines

The ending is part of our collective hive mind; we all know how it goes. The LHC goes and sucks the world into an angry black spot. Skynet decides our future in a microsecond. We all end up Meat Batteries in the Matrix. Resistance is futile; our distinctiveness will be added blah blah blah.Conventional wisdom opines that intelligence is proportional to connectivity. The more we connect our

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-69935337476863028102009-08-07T00:37:00.000-07:002009-08-07T00:46:51.998-07:00Ahead of the Curve

Apparently I'm a couple of weeks ahead of the curve. This story from Reuters, reported by Yahoo! today, repeats the substance of my essay, Damaged Goods. Perhaps in a couple of days they will follow up with the caveat about what information can be taken into account, and what cannot, when making hiring decisions...P.S. Otto accepted our offer.

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-43822892298754859512009-08-03T15:32:00.000-07:002009-08-04T13:01:41.607-07:00Undamaged Goods

(Note: there are positive aspects to posting blog entries over a 28.8 KBaud modem link, as I am doing tonight--but adding pictures to one's blog entries is not one of them.)My last note exhorted you, Mr. Manager, to effective use of your resources to ensure the sanity of your prospective employees (insofar as that is possible with any software type). This is a good tendency. However, it can be

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-21421103554378124982009-07-18T20:00:00.000-07:002009-07-18T21:30:58.616-07:00Damaged Goods

Music to my e-ears this morning:I did work with Otto, but not closely. I would neither advocate nor discourage your hiring him based on the limited work we did together.Paydirt. I'm making Otto an offer on Monday. This was the last of my reference checks. The first three were given by him, and glowing, and followed up on very successful interviews by team members I trust. This last check was

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-87280836750937885552009-04-22T22:13:00.000-07:002009-04-22T22:24:17.220-07:00Take your Progeny to Work Day

My colleague Mark and I worked together a while back at a start-up. At this company, now deceased, everything was "Operations"--Engineering was "Product Operations", Sales was "Sales Operations", Ops was...whatever the heck it was. Mark and I, emboldened by our status as part of the Engineering Eight (the eight developers who started on day 1), formed the core of Fun Operations, or FOPS.While

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-59450699827642784042009-03-01T10:53:00.000-08:002009-03-01T18:42:45.516-08:00Je suis l'oignon

I'm cooking breakfast this morning. Eggs, sausage, hash browns. Good stuff. Three large skillets deployed at once. Better stuff.Our range is a six-burner Viking. Unlike most yuppies, we actually use all six burners. We have a pot-filler above the range, which we also use almost daily. Hanging from the pot-filler is a sign my wife gave me, which states:...or: The Chef is always right.

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-22358869781587423922009-02-23T09:42:00.001-08:002009-02-23T20:38:31.743-08:00Who's Watching You? (and how are They doing it?) [part 2]

(Note: this is part 2 of my article on Internet Surveillance. This section focuses on data mining of Web services you may be using, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others. The third part, about wireless surveillance, will be forthcoming. Stay tuned.)I have new Twitter buddies whom I have never met. Oddly, they seem to know my musical tastes. Hang on with me while I explain. It may

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-26843534072713349712009-02-22T20:07:00.000-08:002009-02-22T22:41:57.559-08:00Who's Watching You? (and how are They doing it?)

(Note: the "code" and screen captures in this entry are a little messed up right now. I promise to fix it.)It was fun (and a bit hair-raising) to see one of my past adventures, Narus, mentioned in a recent book about the NSA in the post-9/11 era. The book is The Shadow Factory by James Bamford.Narus was a place that seemed destined to garner publicity--and not necessarily of the good sort.

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-2395486450191670762009-02-20T13:54:00.001-08:002009-02-20T13:57:10.691-08:00Yet More on the Network

Techrepublic has an article today describing some of the search-engine websites available for getting your name out there. While I stand my original opinion that one should be picky, there are some options described there which sound intriguing. I won't commit to actually using any of them...but I'll check them out. You may want to as well!

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-89871564504505998712009-02-11T10:49:00.000-08:002009-02-11T11:12:02.461-08:00More on Networking

Synergistically and coincidentally, I came across this article from the Harvard Business Review just after my previous posting about building your personal network. The article describes attributes of "emotional intelligence" that are valuable in good leaders (it also describes how these attributes are often discounted as mere wimpiness). In describing one of those attributes, Social Skill, the

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-18643436621662149022009-02-10T06:58:00.000-08:002009-02-11T11:13:23.394-08:00It's the Network

My previous post talked about my thoughts on how to do a layoff, from the standpoint of the subject of the sentence--the axe-swinger, in this case, me.Most discussions of layoffs focus on the other side, and with good reason--most people affected by the layoff are, um, ... Affected By The Layoff. For example, there's this discussion. Or this one. Or this, or this, or this.I could go on, but I

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-90667261899645718992009-01-28T22:51:00.000-08:002009-01-28T23:16:35.828-08:00Creature Features

As if it weren't all just too much these days......I headed out to the Los Gatos Coffee Roasting Company for my usual cuppa this morning after dropping off the kids. It makes little sense to get on the freeway at 8:30 AM in Silicon Valley. I try to get a little prep time in at the coffee shop, maybe check email and so forth. With the cold (okay, it's cold for California), the tables have been

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-20421735022687697452009-01-26T21:00:00.000-08:002009-01-26T20:56:01.234-08:00A fistful of scalps

I'm sitting in the Blue Sky Bar at the Denver airport, waiting for the last flight back to San Jose. It's a standard airport joint, distinguished only by its location near my exit gate. There aren't even any interesting local beers. They have Fat Tire on tap, but then, who doesn't? (what I really want is a Boulder Beer, perhaps "Hazed and Infused") The walls are plastered with life-size

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-25007959054119944482008-12-03T13:35:00.000-08:002009-01-06T15:53:15.313-08:00Notes from the Manse

(Note: this post was originally written in 2005.)The sad truth is that Bangalore is, in fact, the Pittsburgh of India.After a week in the town doing the company's business, I headed out of town with my driver, Nizam (whose name does not rhyme with "Shazam!"). At the moment, I am in a colonial mansion in Mysore (pronounced My-Sir), the Hotel Metropole. There is heavy tropical rain outside,

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-90768249191137666262008-10-24T23:00:00.000-07:002008-10-23T23:55:31.770-07:00Get Out of the Way

I'm hanging out under a tree at a local school, watching one of my children at soccer practice. It is one of those great California Friday evenings: cool but not too cool...blue sky...deep, dark clouds lined with radiant silver as the sun sets behind them over the Santa Cruz mountains. Work done for the week.I should be totally relaxed. But I am not. James Surowiecki is pissing me off.You

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-22859379215384174162008-10-14T21:22:00.000-07:002008-10-20T11:30:56.469-07:00IndoJava

Lots of us have Coffee Habits. When you go to India, this habit won't end. Accordingly, you need to know about IndoJava.The hierarchy of coffee goes something like this (on a scale of least- to most-powerful/nasty)chaitealatteBrewed American coffeeBrewed Eurocoffee/IndoCoffeeBad-Tasting UNIX(tm) brand coffee3 teaspoons of Nescafe in water, nuked for three minutes at high power.IndoJavaFor those

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-11407011913390897952008-10-06T23:02:00.000-07:002008-10-07T10:10:22.130-07:00A Parable

Once upon a time, there was a spider.The spider was large, hairy and, frankly, a bit disturbing to the other residents--especially the flies.This fear was more than a little warranted, since the spider was known to KILL and EAT intruders into its web.This was not, however, because of hunger. It was out of anger.The spider was a grump.The spider lived for one thing: weaving. Day in and day out,

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-36064478807625402182008-09-24T22:37:00.000-07:002008-10-02T10:21:31.091-07:00Working on India Time

Image by Rajesh DangiPrakash is calling in for our weekly staff meeting. It's 9:00 AM my time--I've just walked the kids to school--but for him it's 10:30 PM. (By the way, Prakash is not his real name, nor are any of the names used below.) There are a couple other team members online already--sipping coffee in Santa Clara, joking at the office in Boulder, and thinking about going home for the

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-75870978879934508442008-09-15T20:31:00.000-07:002008-09-19T13:47:40.822-07:00Unit testing?

I've just read an interesting sequence of questions and answers over at stackoverflow, titled "Is Unit Testing Worth the Effort?" The question is posed earnestly enough:I am working to integrate Unit Testing into the development process on the team I work on and there are some skeptics. What are some good ways to convince the skeptical developers on the team of the value of Unit Testing? In my

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6885350630390308366.post-65650834445547352562008-08-14T16:42:00.000-07:002008-09-18T14:46:56.871-07:00When BWGs roamed the Earth

Matt looks at me as I sit down for lunch today and opines, "nice place, huh?"Nice, indeed. We're having lunch at a new Persian/Italian restaurant in Silicon Valley (Persian/Italian? Don't ask).But I am suffering from major time/space discontinuity, because this very building once hosted my third Real Job, as a busboy at Fisherman's Village. My first Real Job was across the parking lot, at what

boghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02138601803360376111noreply@blogger.com2