What's it all about, Alfie?

Wow... I'm not a big fan of change, as I feel very much like a fish out of water - whether I am or not. Today was no exception. It's a fantastically interesting place - lots of ideas, lots of activity, lots of interesting things to do... and tons to learn. I get the basics of what they are doing, but all the specific terminology is new - but not horribly hard to learn.

Still, it takes time and I need to keep at it until I feel a little more comfortable. Then I'll get into a better groove and be able to make progress on the things they want me to get working on.

Exciting times.

There's a pretty decent lightweight word processor called Bean out there for the Mac, and I noticed today that ver 2.2 was just released. The real advantage of Bean is that it's less than Pages, but more than TextEdit, and reads/writes Microsoft Word docs pretty nicely. It's not spectacular, but it's a wonderful little tool for a niche that so often goes unnoticed by the major players.

When I started using the Safari 4 Public Beta, the changes in the NSAttributedString caused VoodooPad Pro to not render text properly all the time. So when a new version was available, I upgraded and the problem went away. Now the guys at Flying Meat Inc, have released the official update to VoodooPad and I got it.

There are a few additional changes in the package, but the vast majority were in the pre-release I was using for the last week or so. It's a great place to put all those little notes, etc. that might otherwise find their way to post-its that could get lost, etc. Great tool for organization.

I saw a tweet from Wil Shipley about problems with the socket communications, and I felt for him... it's not a lot of fun getting your socket library working with all the problems that can arise in networking code, and Gus Mueller tweeted that he needed to look at BLIP. So I took a little look-see and realized that for Mac OS X, it is probably something I need to look at deeper.

There are a ton of things to remember to make a socket library work well in all kinds of conditions. I've spent the better part of a year getting one written in C++ for both linux and solaris - where the differences are really more striking than you'd expect, and I know it's not easy. So I'm all for making use of something that's already there - assuming it's written well, and flexible enough to allow me to do what I want to do without having to sacrifice something in order to work with the library.

BLIP looks to be a pretty nice system. It's written in ObjC and meant to work with the Mac OS X frameworks. There are classes for listening and connecting, for sending and receiving packets of information... it looks pretty good. It appears to be designed for the primary activity being information request/response, and that's nice as it's a big chunk of what I do, but there's also the more interactive things (chat) and FTP, and such. All nice to have in a toolkit.

Like I said... I need to give it a second look.

Well... June 25^th, 2001 to March 3^rd, 2009 - that's 2811 days - 7 years, 8 months and 9 days. That's a long time. There's been a lot of things that have happened in that time. The kids were a lot younger... I was a lot younger... and in the years a lot of things have changed... and a lot of things haven't.

I remember first coding the MarketMash client in Java on JBuilder on Windows. There was a lot to learn about the infrastructure I was going to be using, and then there was the "Server". This giant mysterious box that (set of boxes, actually) that were the "other end" of the calculations. I can remember there being a lot of problems in the beginning - still really building the way that the code needed to be built. But it was important to minimize the downtime and get the most features out to the client as quickly as possible.

There were a lot of interesting projects - the CacheStation... the MarketData Server... lots of projects that rose out of the ashes of other people's mistakes or poorly written systems to become some of the best code I've ever written. Stable, solid, reliable... just like a toaster.

There have been a lot of characters over the years as well. I'm proud to say that I count the traders as some of my biggest fans. They appreciated the productivity, and understood that "all politics are local" (great quote to me from a trader). They liked what I could do for them, and I did too. There have been exceptions... one trader accusing me of being racist... another refusing to let me eat lunch until I explained some of the workings of a project to him... not all great memories, but all very valuable ones.

I've had the joy to work with some of the finest people I know. I've also had the pleasure of working with some of the worst, and yes, I mean pleasure. If it hadn't been for these people, I'd have never known how really horrible some people can be to others, and duplicitous to boot. It's a lesson that I need to constantly remember in this business where you need to make sure you understand who your friends really are.

I'm winding down... packing things up... having a last burrito for the road. It's going to be a mixed-bag, I'm sure. Some people scrambling to get a little more knowledge from me, and that's going to be stressful for them - and me. But in the end, when I walk out the door for the last time, it's just that - the last time.

Lots to remember... and never forget.

This morning I saw that Firefox 3.0.7 was released and so I updated it on my laptop. I'm sure it's just another round of 'security and stability' enhancements, but hey, I use it every day and I might as well be as secure and stable as possible. There's no reason to tempt fate and ask for problems.

It's still not as nice as the new Safari 4 Beta, but hey... they don't have all the Apple developers working on it either. I have to say, Firefox is nice for compatibility, but Safari is the best browsing experience I've ever had.

Tomorrow is my last day at the Shop. More than seven and a half years here, and it's down to a single day. I've been on a bit of a slide these last two weeks, but I have to say, two things today made me feel like I really have done something right here.

First, I was going to get a Diet Coke, and passed by two of my favorite traders in the hall talking. As I passed, I said "I'm really going to miss you guys." To which they immediately responded "We're really going to miss you."

I was stunned. Happily. Never in my life had I expected that kind of affirmation from the traders. I know I have tried to be helpful, but that's a very subjective thing. I have built a few really cornerstone apps here, but to have them respond back like that was really very unexpected. It immediately put a smile on my face. Sure, I was leaving and was going to miss them, but they were going to miss me too.

The second thing happened when someone stopped by to ask me a few questions about one of the projects he was taking over for me. I'm not really sure how we got around to the topic of a certain manager in the group, but we did, and in the retelling of stories this guy mentioned that often he had the following exchange with this manager when discussing a task he was assigning to this person: (heavily paraphrased)

worker: That could be rather hard, and I'm not sure if it's even possible.

manager: It might take you two days to do the hard, but Bob could do the impossible straight-away.

While the relationship between myself and this manager has not always been wine and roses, I have done what he's asked, and it seems that even when he asks it, he must know that some of what he's asking is not just difficult - but difficult even for his better people.

This isn't going to make me stay, but it does make me feel good about the contributions I've made over the years. It hasn't gone unnoticed - which was a real possibility in my mind a few days ago. It's nice to know you'll be missed.

No doubt about it, there's blood in the water. This morning they let go two developers - one consultant and another employee. I'm guessing the employee got a decent severance package, but I have no first-hand knowledge on that point. The consultant, I'm guessing got nothing - it's the way of the employee/consultant world, as it were.

I don't know the details, but I'm certain this has everything to do with the markets and the staff cuts that started about a month ago in the Front Office. If it happened there, then I knew then, it eventually had to come to the IT group - developers and support staff. We just didn't know when.

What's a little shocking is that the employee was here for as long as I've been here - and yet I outlasted him by a single day. I'm guessing he had no idea it was coming, and that's no good for anyone. If you were at least in the process of making plans, then the layoff might not come as a complete surprise. But if you had no idea it was coming... well... then it can be a real kick in the belly.

No fun, in those cases.

I'm not sure I'll keep in touch with these guys, we weren't really close most of the time they have been here, but it's still sad to see the blood flow - for anyone.

UPDATE: I was amazed to learn that even more people than I knew were part of the layoffs. Also, that the management didn't even allow them the courtesy of clearing out their desks! I've seen some of the most unpopular people fired from this place - with security personnel standing by their desks as they packed to go. But they at least had the opportunity to pack their things.

What happened yesterday was nothing short of embarrassing. Any employer participating in this kind of behavior towards simple layoffs (as opposed to felony arrests) should be ashamed if itself. There's no possible, defensible, excusable reason for it. None. That it happened today is confirmation that this place has changed. And not for the better.

This morning I read about Amazon released an iPhone/iPod Touch app called 'Kindle for the iPhone' and I have to say I'm pretty darn pleased that they did. While the screen on my iPod Touch is not as big as my Kindle (1.0) screen, it's still nice that I can take a book or two or 50 with me on my iPod and read. The iPod screen is bright, easy to handle, and you really can't beat the convenience of having two ways to read my books.

I'm guessing they use the WiFi to talk to Amazon and permission the reader - not bad. I see that an iPhone would be a lot better at this, but that's not what I have, nor do I plan on getting one now. But it's a nice app, and I'm certainly going to try it out and see how it goes.

Good job, Amazon.

UPDATE: after downloading a few of my books from Amazon I'm really quite pleased with the interface. It's clean, easy to read, and a real treat. Not something I'd use all the time, but it's really not bad. Again, if I had an iPhone then it'd be great. The Kindle has the EVDO link, as does the iPhone, but my iPod is a little more limited with it's WiFi. But still - it's nice to have.

This morning Apple released updates to the AirPort Utilities and the Client. The tagline is the same - fixes and compatibility issues for the AirPort base stations and the clients hitting those stations. It's something that I need to update, but the station side of things is going to have to wait for the weekend when I have a little more time to get it installed - carefully.

Can't have the TimeCapsule down for long - it's way too valuable to Liza's machine.

Also included are updates to iLife Support, iPhoto, and iWork... it was a bumper day for Apple Updates.