Frayed...... No more!

I posted a short time ago that I had re-entered the job market thanks to the company that I work for eliminating my position.  To recap, they notified us (my entire group) back in October 2012.  I was given my notice and a termination date in mid January that would terminate my employment in April.

I have to admit that prior to the bombshell they called an announcement, I had been looking around at jobs and had been on a couple of interviews over several months prior.  It was only a casual looking as I was employed.  Once we received the news that casual looking turned to an all out assault into the job market to find my next job.

It took a little while, but I am quite proud to announce that I FOUND A JOB!!!!!!  I was beginning to get in the mindset that I wasn't good enough and wouldn't find anything, but I have to say the two interviews that I went on felt really good.  The company is amazing and still in start-up mode, so its in the process of growing and expanding.

I have 4 days of work left and I will be done with the employer who apparently didn't want us around any more (maybe some day I will expand on that vague idea).  The good news is that I am employed, joining an amazing company and plan on getting my head right into the job.


On a side note, I found out something about the way my current employer is going about their 'moving of positions', that is really just disgusting and underhanded.  From what I found out, if you terminate or lay off a certain number of employees, it must be reported to the Federal Government and counted among the unemployment statistics.  The media then get hold of the news your doing layoffs and that can really worry people and even effect your stock price in some cases.

So what is my current company doing?  They are doing the terminations / position moves in small groups that fly juuuuuust under the Federal radar.  Thus, they can move the jobs and terminate the positions (knowing most won't relocate) and they don't have to report it.  They are actually working to shut down the site where we are, so the fact that they are doing it in small chunks and nobody will be none the wiser that all those people were laid off and the site closed, is just wrong if you ask me.

I just hope that in the long run, the choices they are making as far as staffing to replace many years of talent and experience, come back to bite them in the a$$!  The look at the numbers and don't give a crud about the people and their experience.  It goes to show that in large corporate America, nobody is safe, no matter what.

Thoughts on Pinguy Linux

Ever since Ubuntu has completely switched to its Unity desktop (which I have to say I am not at all pleased with), I have been looking around at some different distributions.  Some have been ok, some have been quickly removed from my system (mostly for lacking any thought by the person who put it together).

Today I discovered a link to Pinguy Linux while going through the headlines on Hacker News.  A quick read of the description peaked my curiosity, so I downloaded a copy via their Torrent link.  I have to say that it was nice to see my download hit 3.4 Mb / second as the download finished in a matter of minutes.  I then created a virtual machine and installed the distribution into it.

The installation went pretty quickly and I was up and running in only a matter of about 10 minutes.  First impressions are quite important when you are trying to make a difference and this one did not blow me away.

After everything started up, I noticed that there is a dock on the left side of the screen containing folders.  Maybe its me just being picky, but I didn't want it there.  The unfortunate thing is that I couldn't figure out how to get rid of it.  For me, this was strike one. The system status app that auto runs is actually nice, keeping the user informed of processes, ram used, disk space, etc.

The next strike came when I started going through the Applications menu.  While there were plenty of apps for multimedia and such, there weren't any development type apps. I know its not a requirement for everyone, but nothing?  That wasn't the strike though.... it was when I scanned down to the wine applications menu, scanned over a couple of levels to find that Microsoft's Notepad had been installed by default.  Really?  Notepad?  I am on a Linux system that has plenty of editors available to it.  Why on Earth would I want an inferior product like Notepad?  (I say inferior, mind you, as a sign of its lacking any features, not as a slam to Micro$oft).

As I was browsing around, I noticed that the background kept changing.  They had pre-setup a rotating desktop background that cycled through pre-installed pictures. Why?  That takes up system resources that could be used for greater good.  And, when your running in a virtual machine as I am, you haven't allocated a ton of ram to begin with.  So, for me that was strike three.

All in all, if your on a fixed system, not in a Virtual Machine environment and you don't mind some of the quirks and "features" I have described (and your a multimedia geek), then maybe this is for you.  For me though, I am removing it and moving on to the next one.   The closest I have found for a distribution to switch to is Linux Mint.  We shall see though..... we shall see.

Once more into the fray.....

Not to pull a quote from the movie "The Grey", but it seems appropriate considering my situation.  Back in October, the company I work for decided that my group (and a couple of other groups) needed to be relocated to one of their offices in another state.  To say that we were blindsided by this decision was an understatement.  I mean there were rumors abound for years about its possibility, but nothing ever came of it..... till now.

Seeing as how all 7 members of the team I am on are choosing to take severance (including me), they are losing many years of experience supporting their client facing product.  Four of us have already received our 90 notice of termination, and of everyone in the group, I think that I am the one most actively looking for work at the moment.  Sure, it would be nice to bank the severance, but I have to admit that staying employed and keeping a roof over my families heads is a bit more important in my opinion.

So, I have been actively doing things like learning Python and MongoDB and rebuilding my skills in Perl (which I have only used periodically over the last 3 years, but am getting right back onto that bicycle).  I am hopeful that one of the interviews that I have had (and am going to be going on) pans out as I really want to keep working.

So, at this point I have 75 days left to find myself a job.  Fingers crossed!

A Moment Of Regret

Quite a vague title for a blog post, I know.  Some of you are probably thinking, "What happened?  What did you do?".  I was thinking the same thing recently and am still kicking myself a bit.

I have a VPS(Virtual Private Server) that I have rented online for the last couple of years.  Its mostly a playground where I can do development for projects.  I have had a yearning to get a website up on it and maybe advertise my coding services, but with everything that's going on (especially as of late), I just haven't had the time to do that.

Anyway, I digress from my point.  I run Ubuntu Linux on the VPS and about 3 1/2 weeks ago I logged on to do some stuff and tried to install something through the apt package manager and was presented with some really funky errors.  Thankfully I had seen the errors but once before and they were those tell tale errors that say, "your distribution is flipping old and you need to UPGRADE!!!".  

So, I backed up my coding and my home directory and even my web directory where I kept things like my wiki, which had a TON of nice docs that I constantly referenced.  I then proceeded to attempt to upgrade my version from the command line, but was met with some other errors which puzzled me.  A bit of research on Google still had me puzzled.  Since I had to get some coding done, I decided to do a full re-install from the VPS control panel.  After it completed, I logged back in, uploaded my web directory, re-setup things like Apache, MySQL, PHP, Python, etc., configuring as I went.

I got my web server working and attempted to go to my wiki as I needed to reference something and that was the moment that stopped me.  I realized that in my rush to back everything up and get things re-installed, I had backed up my wiki software yes, but COMPLETELY forgot about....... the database.   Yes, everything in my wiki was toast.....gone..... kaput!

So here is a lesson for you everyone, back EVERYTHING up and make sure to not forget your databases.  I am still getting things configured and added, but my wiki needs the most work of all.  C'est la vie!

Bye, Bye Grazely!

Back in a July 2011 post, here in my blog, I made mention of a new bookmarking service that had arrived on the seen called Grazely.   At the time I was excited and happy at the prospect of a new bookmarking site, considering the unstable nature of delicious.com at the time.

Well, its been almost a year and a half now, and at this point Grazely is D.E.A.D.!  Apparently they announced it on their site back in September 2012, telling users to download their bookmarks, but considering I hadn't actually visited the site, I was simply bookmarking from my browser, I completely missed this.

So, imagine my surprise when I went to bookmark something a couple of weeks ago and got a failure.  I attempted to visit the sites URL, but was met with an error saying that the site didn't exist.  I turned to my email, found the address for one of the admins I had chatted with early on and inquired about the status of the site.  It took him a few days to get back to me, but he did, informing me of the site's demise.  He claimed too much competition to keep going.

Most of the sites out there were social networking bookmark sites now, like delicious.  I wasn't in whole-hearted agreeance with this move by most sites as I just simply wanted a place for my bookmarks.   It took a bit of searching before I found Grazely, but was intrigued when I did.

After getting a response from the admin, I then inquired as to whether or not my nearly 6000 bookmarks could be retrieved or not and he came back with a, "Sorry, everything has been deleted."  How depressing and unfortunately.  Thankfully I am not that trusting.  :-)  I kept a duplicate bookmark on delicious for just this occasion.  I did have a backup copy of the grazely bookmarks from a few months ago, but having everything on delicious really helped.

So, if you turned to Grazely, I am very sorry.  How is one to know if a site will simply bomb this hard or not.  Please don't hold it against me.   If I do find another site and it seems credible and (hopefully) stable, I will be sure and post again.

The Peril's of Upgrading

As a lot of people have done, I recently upgraded my Mac to Mountain Lion (OSx 10.8 (subsequently installing the 10.8.1 upgrade that was released not long after my upgraded)).

As with any operating system. there are some things that just don't work after the upgrade.  Sadly, I expected this, as I have yet to find an OS that doesn't break something upon upgrading.  When I upgraded one of my Ubuntu boxes after 11.10 came out, I was blown away by the number of things it screwed me on.  Some of the critical things I used every day were completely gone, such as:

- Apache
- Python
- MySQL

Just to name a very small subset.  All of the command line installation utilities that are necessary for building software by hand were also gone.  It took me a couple hours but thanks to my backups prior, I was able to get everything back in working order relatively quickly.

But, I digress a bit, sorry.  After upgrading to Mountain Lion, I didn't immediately notice anything awry.  The post installation notice did notify me that some apps were not compatible.  For instance, Parallels stopped working, so you will have to download a new version or re-install if you have the version compatible with the new OSx version.

One thing I noticed though, was that installing things with easy_install or pip (python package installer) had gone away or stopped working.  The same was true for setuptools, which is used when installing with things like like pip or easy_install.

To correct some of the things that will drive you crazy, you will want to go to this site.   If you haven't done it after upgrading, you will need to probably re-install Xcode and then, per that link, install the commandline tools that it references.  I know it says some had issues, I didn't experience any thankfully.

As I mentioned a couple of paragraphs above, my setuptools had completely disappeared from the installation after the upgrade.  So, to re-install them, you will need to download them from the PyPi page here.  Download the most current .egg and then issue the following command:

sudo sh setuptools-0.6c11-py2.7.egg

I used the most current .egg version as of this posting for the command above.  After working through the issues that I had experienced post upgrade, my system is again back to where I want/need it for my daily work.  Hopefully this will help you as well.  Remember also that there are a plethora of other post Mountain Lion upgrade guides on Google, just search for them.  What I have here is obviously not the be all, end all.

The Question of Questions

After the digression of my last post, which really was not technically based, I was going to get back to the really juicy stuff.  Instead, I will only partially back to the good stuff.

I was reading a CNN article on Marissa Mayer, the Google-ite Engineer turned Yahoo CEO.  In the article, which outlines 11 facts about her, #6 in the list caught my eye.  It says that in her original job interview, which was conducted at one point by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google's co-founders, they asked her the following question:

"How would you write a spell-check program when you have a vocabulary so big it won't fit in a computer?"

I have to say that that is one heck of an interview question.  One that you cannot really prepare for.  They were more than likely simply seeking her quick insight of the issue to see how she would approach it, but none the less its an amazingly specific question that would knock a lot of people on their butts, I am sure.

I have seen questions from people on some of these coding forums, asking for lists of interview questions that they can study for their upcoming interview.  Every time that I see one of those questions I want to tell them to pick up the book nearest to them that covers the language in question and to study that in its entirety.

The possibility of questions in an interview is astounding and one could not even hope to study the exact questions that would be asked in a given interview.  My point is that all you can do is study and code and do your best when you get to the interview.  Its all you'll really be able to do to prepare.

I, unfortunately, don't interview very well as I tend to freeze up mentally.  Sure, I know how to code, but I am usually so insanely nervous in an interview that to ask me to code or think about technical problems more than likely comes across disappointing.

Ok, enough embarrassing myself and boring you with useless details.  

Losing an Art Form

Hello everyone!  What a year it has been so far, and I am sure that you have a similar feeling about it as well.  I feel that each year gets crazier and crazier, but then that could be that our kids are getting older and older, but their energy levels are still rising.

I was reading a friends blog recently and came across this amazing post about something so amazingly simple.  Mark Keating, the owner of the blog, was talking about how crowded our lives are with tech that we are losing touch with something as simple as the pen and paper.  There are dozens of note taking applications on our phones, tablets, pc's and laptops, that all we need do these days is fire one of them up, write down what is on our mind and save it, no actual writing involved.

Its sad really because the way things are going, how long will it be before people are no longer writing, their typing up their notes.  If that were to happen, a very beautiful art would be lost on technology and go the way of things like the dodo, and won't ever be seen again. 

In Mark's blog post, he gives what is essentially a features list of the pen and paper.  Its an amazing addition to post which really opens ones eyes to the perfection that the pen and paper really have and continue to have.  Here is the list from his post:

• No specialist input devices
• Compatible with all hands and eyes
• Never crashes
• Rarely corrupts data
• Splash recovery
• Language agnostic
• Fits in a convenient pocket[5]
• Fast data input
• No Startup times
• No application charges or updates
• Full ASCII/ANSi support[6]
• No ‘generation’ of devices
• Reality display (TM)
• Version safe
• Future safe
• Full version compatibility between devices, languages, users and systems
• Available in a seemingly infinite variety of styles and colours
• No vendor lock in and many high-street stockists
• Can be used during take off and landing on a plane

As you can see, Mark went to town on the list, but its wonderfully accurate.  I hope you enjoy this enough that you want to maybe put down the keyboard and just go write.  Heck, go buy a journal and write an entry every day.  Sure, I sound like a 9th grade English teacher, but they did have a point with their making you keep a journal.

I know this post is a bit non-tech, but I hope you enjoyed it.  If you would like to read Mark's post, you can find it here.  Enjoy and happy writing!

Sweet Hiatus, I return from thee

As you can tell, this blog has been a bit dormant since September of last year.  Allow me to apologize for that.  My day job switched my shifts and it has taken a bit of getting used to.  Now that I have a few months under my belt working my new shift, I believe I should be in a better position to continue with blogging activities.  

I would like to take a moment to thank my friend Richard McCutchen for his flatteringly awesome #FollowFriday post on his blog.  I am the first mention and am quite grateful to him for that.  Thanks a million Richard!

Seeing as its currently just after 11pm, it is still friday, so here goes:

• Richard McCutchen (@psychocoder): If you have a project that requires the services of a .Net coder, then Richard is certainly your man.  His work speaks for itself, as does his kindness. 
• Benjamin Howarth (@benjaminhowarth):  Ben is another .Net coder who deserves a good mention.  He is a good friend and colleague who has an amazingly big heart.  If your in the UK and looking to hire someone for your coding project, please be sure and contact him.

I know, its a short list, but at the moment its all I can muster.   I would like to thank al of our readers for their patience and say that more intriguing articles are on their way.

Twitter, the Missing RSS and the Graffiti

I was recently setting it up so that the tweets from my ParsedContent Solutions twitter feed would be propagated to my Facebook page of the same name.  At first I was trying to figure out the best way to do this.  Sure, I could have activated the Facebook integration inside the Twitter account, but it was stating that it would post that to MY Facebook wall, which is not what I wanted, I wanted it to go to my businesses wall.

Well, after some digging and reading, I activated a Facebook application called RSS Graffiti.    Its an interesting app because it manages the posting of your feed to your different pages and it handles multiple so its really cool.  The settings in the app allow you to tell it where to post what feed and how often to poll for new content.

In setting it up, you have to first give the application permission to post to your page's wall.  This isn't a problem since that is what I am wanting.  After that though you are asked for your feed url.  Now, on Twitter you used to find the atypical orange RSS feed button near the bottom right side of your page.  You would have just had to click on it to see the feed url and copy it.  Well, I didn't see it and started a bit of a search to try and find it or something else that I could use.  I finally found an intriguing article that enlightened me to the fact that Twitter had officially removed the RSS button and feed, but that was only in lieu of their API, which they prefer everyone use.

Yes, this is a break from what standards would dictate, but its their service and you unfortunately have to conform to their way of operating.  The article did enlighten everyone to the url that you would need to use for your feed which is as follows:


     https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=username


In the above you would simply replace 'username' with your twitter id.  You can test this url by copying and pasting it into your browser's url bar as it will work fine.  Once you have it you simply plug it into RSS Graffiti and voila, a feed to pull from.

Keep in mind when that even after putting in the feed URL into RSS Graffiti, I recommend you go through the settings for the app and ensure its posting the way you want it to.  There are 3 options for posting:

1. Standard:  This posts the tweet to your wall and states its from the Twitter feed.  Recommended for most feeds.
2. Compact: For publishing shorts from things like Twitter without changing your Facebook status.
3. Status Updates:  This posts the tweets to your wall as if it were a Facebook Status update.  You can't even tell that this came from the Twitter feed.

Whatever you choose, test it to make sure its what you want.