One of the more interesting things I’ve noticed about my new job is how much more “stuff” I seem to collect. For whatever reason there seems to be more (and varied) files and printouts and pictures and videos and stacks.

Oi the stacks.

When I was still writing code all day, or least pretending to, I had one stack. It was the “This junk needs to be taken to the recycling bin downstairs but that implies carrying it all downstairs which considering the fact that downstairs is downstairs from where I’m at makes it a royal PITA stack.” Eventually the stack would quite literally reach a tipping point and the stack would become a pile at which time something simply had to be done.

Now I stop and look around and I have a least eight and a half stacks and I’m highly suspicious that there are another couple that quickly hide whenever I look in their direction. The old recycling stack still exists, which is a testament to laziness in that I could, if a standing wall were not withstanding, easily hit the recycling bin from my current seat. Given a couple of tries I could probably even do it left handed.

But now I’ve also got a TestTrack Pro stack, a TestTrack TCM stack, a Surround SCM stack, a book publisher stack, an unread magazine stack, and several funny little note card stacks that I blame entirely on Merlin Mann and David Allen. Well, truthfully, it isn’t all their fault, JK Rowling should shoulder some of the blame for interrupting The Process as it were.

If we really geek out and consider folders on a harddrive stacks then I think I’m just going to cry. Or perhaps I’ll just starting drinking. Heck, maybe I’ll do both, that seems like a reasonable multitasking pair.

And just imagine when Leopard ships with actual stacks. “Yeah, I’ll have a vodka martini. No, Goose is fine. And do you have a box of Kleenex back there?”

Now I have high hopes that the stacks will get better after they get much worse as the new TestTrack and new Surround releases get out there. I’d just as soon spill the beans and tell you all the new features now, I mean we’re all friends here. That way the product specific stacks could be merged with the recycling stack and I’ll guarantee you when that happens the bin will be getting a visit or twelve. Unfortunately, I can’t do that yet. I know, it’s killing me too.

I can give you a hint though. Or can I? Hmm, the decisions. Let’s just say that the new TestTrack will help me deal with the stacks. Kind of. Sort of. Unfortunately his brother Surround will just be an enabler and allow more stacks. Metaphorically, hypothetically, dodgy grammatically speaking that is.

So, anyhow, that’s my random observation of the day. I’ll even sum up the whole post in case you skipped to the end. “Blah blah blah stacks blah blah vodka blah blah blah I really shouldn’t so I won’t sorry about that blah blah to the blah.”

Someday, if you’re really lucky, I’ll work up the courage to talk about my lists. That’ll make the stacks look like simple piles of paper. Even the stack that’s made up of lists.

Due to the overwhelmingly positive response I’ve received since last selling out a coworker who did a podcast intervew it is with great pride that I bring you:

Matt Disher, our CIO and chief network dude, professing his undying love for the iPhone.

Alright that might be stretch, but the part where I said he’s on the podcast is true.

So I’ve been tinkering around with some voice and video recording lately and have come to a conclusion:

The built-in microphone on a Macbook Pro is pitiful best described as barely adequate.

Knowing how to complain to the right people, I told my sad tale of audio woe to Rick last week. Yesterday he swung by with a bag from the Apple store that looks suspiciously like the size and shape of the iPhone box. Barely had I got out, “Oh-geez-no-seriously-you-shouldn’t-have-but-I’m-glad-you-did-I-promise-to-take-real-good-care-of-it-and-not-use-too-many-minutes-on-personal-calls” that he pulled a box for a Blue Snowball.

Here it is sitting on my desk:

With the addition of this guy, playing around with GarageBand has just been barrels of fun. Plus it’s a great conversation starter when people come by.

“What is that thing?”

“That’s like retro and stuff.”

“That’s really cool looking.”

“Blue Snowball? Isn’t that the name of a Furby or a Gremlin or a My Little Pony or something?”

Little kid enchanted horse joking aside it is a fantastic microphone so far. I’m even seriously considering commandeering an empty demo room we have here and turning it into a full recording studio. Now if I only I could get a record deal or a morning drive-time talk radio show…

So this past week there was the big unveiling of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. I actually got to go to a small unveiling of the 777 with my Dad back when it was first introduced. Well, truth be told, I didn’t get to see the plane because it hadn’t been built yet. Oh, and we weren’t in Seattle. But I got to see my Dad’s company’s contribution, a part for the plane’s wheel.

Hmm, story loses some of its punch doesn’t it?

It was a REALLY big wheel though.

It took them years before the things were actually flying yet I find that I have still never flown on one. The reasons:

A. I live in the Cincinnati area and it’s airport, CVG, is one of the biggest Delta hubs around.
B. Delta only owns like eight of the things.
C. Of the eight the own they all seem to fly to the Far East.
D. To date my travel needs to that side of the world have been very low.

I have had the opportunity to fly on many a 767 and Airbus somethingoranothers to Europe but that’s just not the same. Funny side story, on one of those the flights the in-flight movies were MVP: Most Valuable Primate a story of a chimp playing hockey and Center Stage a movie about the excitement and intrigue of a ballet company.

That was the first, and only time, that I’ve mentally tried to will myself to die. I can still see the little Delta triangle symbols on the seat in front of me while I concentrated.

Obviously, it didn’t work.

Funny side story to my side story, when getting the link for MVP from IMDB I discovered that they had made not one, but two sequels to the monkey hockey movie. Naturally, because a chimp playing hockey is a tad unrealistic, they were MVP 2: Most Vertical Primate (monkey skateboarding) and MXP: Most Xtreme Primate (monkey snowboarding). For the curious, the IMDB users gave the monkey movies 2.9, 2.2, and 3.8 stars out of ten. That makes the ballet movie and its whopping 6.2 look like The Godfather.

To wrap up with at least a little bit of tech from Wikipedia:

Light-emitting diode (LED) cabin lighting (three color), will be used instead of fluorescent tubes, allowing the aircraft to be entirely ‘bulbless’ and have 128 color combinations.

That’s a dry way of explaining what Extreme Technology describes:

Dreamliner’s new interior will create a new sensation for passengers inside the cabin. Illuminated by arrays of light emitting diodes, both the brightness and the color of the sky-like cabin ceiling can be controlled in flight by the crew. Flight attendants can give passengers a sense of daylight when desired, and when they want to help passengers rest, simulate a beautiful nighttime sky.

It’s Harry Potter meets an airline cabin. At least this way, the next time I try to will myself to death because of a monkey or ballet movie I won’t have to look at Delta upholstery. Next time it will be fake LED stars.

I was first introduced to Linux when I was college in the mid-90’s. Well, it really wasn’t an introduction since it isn’t a person, but you get the idea. Back then all our coursework was done on VMS on a big old VAX which required to me spend loads of time in the labs sitting in front of a VT220 terminal. (Or if you were really lucky a VT420.)

All I know is that its text based interface on the 386 in my room let me procrastinate there instead of procrastinating in the lab. Plus my room had a TV.

Linux had me at LILO.

Fast forward to today and I came across a post at howsoftwareisbuilt that poses the question:

I’m curious, what are the specific issues that ISV and IHVs run into when they tackle supporting the various distros?

This came from reading a different post at Adobe. This talks about a world much different than my dorm room a long time ago.

“Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities, we didn’t have to produce anything! You’ve never been out of college! You don’t know what it’s like out there! I’ve worked in the private sector. They expect results.” — Dr. Ray Stantz

We’ve been shipping Linux versions of our products for years and have had a range of issues to fight through. (Required libraries, configuration file locations, etc.)

But the biggest issue, by far, without rival, is testing time. And this is also the issue that I think is easily forgotten about. When you have an open source project and someone downloads/compiles/installs your product and then it doesn’t work the conversation can go like this.

Person with problem: “Um, yeah, I tried to use XYZ and the ABC said the DEF was GHI’d up.”

Now the program maintainer can answer this question in a variety of ways, and here’s the kicker, ALL of these methods are legitimate.

Maintainer Answer #1: “Hmm, that’s weird. Let’s see if we can figure this out.”

Maintainer Answer #2: “I’m sorry but I’m super busy at the moment, you could post your message on the web and see if anyone else has seen it.”

Maintainer Answer #3: “RTFM.”

Maintainer Answer #4: No response at all

Maintainer Answer #5: “You have the source, you can fix it yourself.”

The problem you run into if you are an ISV is that only answer #1 is acceptable. Thus, in order to make sure that you don’t have pull a #1 very often, it becomes necessary to test your app as much as you can on various distros. And that, unfortunately, takes a lot of time. For instance, what if the user has only Gnome installed. Or just KDE? Or both? Or neither? In which of those cases do the fonts render correctly? Do they at all?

And this is all assuming that the application even runs. Let’s say you built it on Fedora Core 3. There’s a real good chance it runs on FC4, FC5, etc. What about FC2, that one might not work. How about RedHat 6.2, not much of a chance at all. SuSE 9.0, who knows?

So who knows, maybe someday this all won’t be an issue. I guess it is all just the nature of the game. Supporting Linux professionally is a lot different than just running it yourself. I suppose that’s what has caused us to grown apart. Sure we still interact, but it isn’t like it used to be. We’re just in very different places than we used to be. That time was magical though and I’m sure going forward we’ll still be good friends.