This is the first time I have accomplished anything. I mean this is the greatest, grandest scheme of things. I have functional software, that with another week or two of work is ready to make money. It's no longer a technical problem, but a business one. I'm ready to go out and demo it, and I will in a few hours. I'm nervous, my palms are sweaty and I'm in a place that I've never been. I have more support than I thought I would, but it doesn't sooth the nerves. A freshly made double-mocha doesn't help this either, but it keeps me alert and sharp. I'm sleeping enough, but I can't not think about this.

These are the moments that life is made of, because these are the moments I feel the most alive.

Comments disabled because this is for my own benefit, not yours.

Ok, so I have an idea for advertising my company. It's getting to that point "Real Soon Now." My software functions, in the basic form and is in "Icing on the cake" mode. I'm really over-using quotes today and I'm enjoying it.

I still need to add another view-point, but it will probably only take another week to code up and then I'll be in full blown beta mode by December, which is a very good thing. The hard part of this business is really getting the advertising and word-of-mouth out there. I've been thinking of several ways to go about this, and after talking with a few people a lot of them agree that seeing if I can get people to just hand out brochures to my target audience it will be the most effective way.

So, I was thinking that I want to compensate people someway for this because you will effectively be marketing for my company. Since I don't want to cut you all checks for a buck fifty if that's all you get, I was thinking of a "Good Will" advertising campaign. It breaks down like this: Each brochure packet that I send out will have a unique code on it for that person. It's a referral code so I can keep track of who delivered it. For every person that signs up through your referral, I will send $10 to any 503(c) organization of your choosing.

This can be the EFF, or anything, as long as it is a taxable charity. I really want to help out the world, and help myself out. It's just an idea I'm kicking around and would like to get some feedback. Ask your friends what they think about it, and have them ask their friends and post in here. I don't want to give money to the people doing the referrals for a few different reasons, one is that I don't want to start up a "WORK FROM HOME!!! MAKE $5,000PT!" type fiasco, or get into 1099 payments or anything. Legalities are too overwhelming, but donating to a real charity is a pretty easy thing to do.

Update: Sorry, at the moment this is U.S. only! I will be adding other countries, but not right now, so if you aren't an American you can bugger off!

This has been my project for the day... really, it's weekend. My goal is to get nerdfarm.org, and get the business plan in a very workable format. Granted, they aren't related at all, but it's a good break between artistic, code, and business.

nerdfarm.org, version two point oh, in effect. I still need to get the user signup stuff going on, the download links, a cleaner journal entry system (but you can't see it cause you aren't a member, bitch!) It's getting there, and it's a thousand-line day and I'm freaking done.

I will release the nerdfarm code as a sample site for MagicBox, if anybody is interested, because there is still virtually no documentation for MagicBox.

Sorry -- I am an idiot. I fixed the redirect, and now you know my development network is the TLD '.dev'

Clever, isn't it?

Update - IE6 is apparently broken. I'm not sure what's wrong with it, but it seems very unhappy. I don't do shit on IE, but it works fine on Konqueror and Mozilla, so if anybody can help me out with why it's broken, I'd appreciate it.

Update - Thank you, BofKentucky! Telling me in polite terms I'm an idiot, and I didn't close the tag. Also, fixed the valid stuff, so now it validates as xhtml and all that. So, it works under IE but there is one weird rendering issue with the title bar. I hate IE.

Watching the season finale right now. Just a quick note for those who watch it:

You know why they had to pick a nice guy?
Anybody else would have kicked their ass, especially Ralph. I know I would, but only if I could have still kept the $100K.

So, here's a poll for you guys, too. Fuck off, Em.

Is Joe Schmoe:
A. Worth it
B. Kill em all
C. Funny as long as it's not me
D. Molly is hot
E. Ashleigh is hot
F. Kip isn't gay?

George Carlin was right, life should go backwards. It should end with 9 months in the womb, and the grand finale being an orgasm. But it isn't.

Live life like it's the only one you have. Never say you are bored, before you do, get up and improve your life. Indifference is what makes being old so sad. When you look back a few years back and realize all the time you wasted, your life flashes before your eyes. That isn't what I want, and I doubt it is what you want. It's like what they say, "Nobody says they want to be a junky when they grow up."

I've wasted enough time in my life, and I hate every minute I did. I'm in a race to finish this software to start a company before I find a job. The only thing I can think of is that I should have done this when I was 21. Or 20.

The reality is that I couldn't do it then, because I had to waste that time to learn the lessons that make this time a possible success.

"Why did he commit to trolling?

"Trolling?"

He repeats the word out loud as if he is shocked by it. The word itself sounds evil, doesn't it? he says. He prefers provoking. Even heckling is fine. It is easier on the ear, intellectual even, much more civilized. He chuckles. Wasn't that part of the game, one of the tricks learned on bulletin boards a decade or two ago when he still was a kid. His aim was to make the unthinkable argument sound pedestrian, to persuade a target to lose his or her temper in a futile attempt to debunk the apparently solid post based on insane, completely outrageous logic. Of course the pitch always sounded better if the troll honestly believed - for a moment at least - in his point and appeared sincere since when he wrote about "promoting discussion" or "ushering in the voice of reason". In this, he considered himself a master. He could play any side, argue for any cause with equal zeal, conviction and (un)logic. He took pride of being an intellectual mercenary posting for any and all causes from the religious right wing propaganda to the nuttiest left-wing liberal whinging - in a foreign language no less.

Eric Ass Raymond had been a believer in the power of international discussion online - once. But later. Ah, no, no. too much had happened. By then he had come to see the blogs differently. "They are mostly a silly game," he explains. Adults wearing children's masks, trying to prove intellectual superiority to each other, like schoolboys measuring prick lengths in an elite private school for boys. What purpose does it all serve? Who really gains? He pauses, composing his thoughts.

Who is the greater fool? he asks, his voice intense. The man who believes his own lies and spends his nights rationalizing the obvious contradictions in his posts? Or a man who sees the lies for exactly what they are and, recognizing them, uses them for his own pleasure? He chuckles, and just as quickly begins to cough, the result of too much alcohol, asthma and a weak constitution. He's been drinking daily since he was 24 and he was once determined to not stop now that he is in his mid fourties. There are too few pleasures in life to stop. That's different now. He feels he must heal.

Trolling? Why did Eric Ass Raymond become a troll? Was it the booze or did the trolling drive him to boozing? Finding out that there were people out there who could find his posts funny, insightful or even interesting although he himself sometimes couldn't even remember writing them?

He toys with the question, addressing it in the third person, as if he himself is curious to discover an answer. Was it some event that sparked Eric's real-life persona to become an attention seeking depressed still functioning alcoholic egomaniac or had the seeds for it always been in his blood, slumbering inside some defective DNA, waiting to burst free? The conversation amuses him. Could his trolling or alcoholism have been preordained? Which of our actions are truly our own? he asks. Which are determined before our birth? Were his parents somehow to blame? Or some childhood trauma long repressed? Not a chance. It's me, myself and I to blame if there is anything to lay the blame on.

Trolling. Boozing. The same?"

Well, that's enough drama. At least the trolling stops here and now. I am tired of playing this game on any forum. During the last seven years on Slashdot I've been a contributor, a gutter-troll, a karma-whore and now, in the character of Eric Ass Raymond, a troll with constant excellent karma. I am tired. I don't know what I believe in or if I believe in anything anymore. Things must change.

So, what next? Rehab next week. I'm getting too old to keep drinking and maintain my standards at work. Since the therapists will certainly latch on to my history on Slashdot and, if they're any good they will quite correctly recognize the association between Slashdot and my addiction, I will probably quit posting here for a long time.

Signing off indefinitely.

Mandrake really did a great job making it "User Friendly" -- and I think this is probably the best introduction distro to date. The upsetting part was rebooting and being met with a very fucked up KDE desktop. Somehow, the upgrade decided it wanted to mess my entire desktop up. Woo.

So, I fixed that pretty quickly and am running Mozilla 1.4. The font support in Mozilla 1.4 (I'm assuming is using GTK2) is great, and nice and anti-aliased. It looks very clean, and so far all my other "custom" builds are working flawlessly. I'm running Gimp-unstable, and that was a bit of a pain in the ass running under Mandrake 9.1.

So, if you are a Mandrake user you should definitely go ahead and upgrade.

This shit is fun!

You remember that old adage that gets told, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."? I think we need a bit of a revision for that statement.

Those who can, do. Those who can't, become recruiters.

I just got finished meeting with my agent at my contracting firm. Well, that was what I thought. She went on to Permanent Placement, and I was going to meet with her and her replacement. Except I met with her replacements replacement, and some woman from Cupertino, California.

I have an appointment at 3:30. In my world, an appointment at 3:30 means that I show up at 3:25 and you have me in an office no later than 3:32. Unless you have "M.D." after your name this is what I expect. If I pull in six figures of revenue for your company, I expect there to be coffee and pastries waiting for me. At 3:40, my brain was contemplating what the hell happened to this place.

At 3:43 my tetris game (Thank you modern cellphone) was interrupted by Steve. I would protect the innocent, if there were any. At which point, I get brought into a conference room where they talk about my previous job and where I want to go. My choices are this small ass town in Oregon or Vegas. Vegas, Baby. For less than what I make now. Coding PHP. No offense to the PHP coders around here, but I don't want to make a living pretending I can use references.

I thought their job was to give me jobs. I make them money, and I get some of that. That's the game, and they don't know how to play it. So, at about 3:51 I was on my way to the car shaking my head and chuckling at them. They'll still be in business, because the people they talk to don't have any idea they're stupid.

There are certain questions that can prove one to be completely out of their depth. While asking me about my work, I said I did quite a bit of Perl code for client/server communication and some web applications. He then asked, "Oh, so did you use Tomcat for your perl web applications?"

How the fuck is this monkey going to get me a job? "So, tell me again how it is you fed the bananas monkeys?"
"Sorry, Steve, I feed bananas to monkeys."
"Ooooohhhh."

My project just got killed. It's not a big surprise that it got killed, but the manner of killing was quite a surprise. The CEO is an absolute dick, and an idiot at that. He can't manage his way out of a wet paper bag, much less a company.

The whole run down is that we had a very important deadline to meet. In August. I got my piece done, which was the end user software (and it's nice... I'm really bummed it wont see the light of day.) The people who are actually running the business are also idiots. This entire business is ran by idiots, but it's a child company. I sort of contract for the idiots, they pay my wages and I do work for both the parent and them.

Well, not anymore. The child company CEO has now ceased any further money going into the project which means that all contractors are now going bye bye. So, they don't get the "desperately needed" new software interface because I've been hacking on it while waiting for the data to get mostly correct. I made a huge change and am halfway through fixing it, and they cut it. The irony in that is really amusing.

I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do. I may sell my car and live off the money from that and try to start my company up full time. I may find a management position (almost 7 years in the industry coding now... I think I'm about ripe) or I may just do more code monkeying.

I'm really sad to see this project go, it was a really important project to me and I was really happy to work on it. Above all, a lot of the people I worked with were really great people (not the idiots in the child company, but in the parent company.) I'm going to really miss all of them.

It's been a shitty Friday morning, but I saw it coming for a long time now (Since July) so it's not a big surprise. This is the first time I've gotten my contract cut, so it's an interesting feeling. I was at a company until the last of it's employees walked out the door, and I have a feeling this company will be doing the same. It's a shame, because with the right leadership they could have done some great things.

The dot com bubble isn't completely dead.

The long awaited (not really, nobody was using 0.9) MagicBox release is ready to roll. I just need to package it and start writing the documentation.

If you like or are forced to write web-applications, this software is for you.

If you hate maintaining templates, and versioning, this software is for you.

If you hate managing database connections, and stored procedures, this software is for you!

Download in the next 10 minutes and we'll throw in a free sample configuration file! A 1 kilobyte value!

I'm a bit overjoyed about seeing this go. It's been a pretty long journey to get here, with everything working smoothly and efficiently. Fighting with template engines and looking at other template engines to see how they work, and then crafting our own extensible template engine. It's been a fun project, and I'm glad to have something really usable come out of it. Even though I'm labeling this as an RC1 I still have to go through and work the logging out. So, that will change for RC2 but I want to get some people testing the core functions.

When I get home tonight I will write up a tutorial, installation guide, development guide, template usage guide.. and ... well, shit, that's a lot of guides. I'll probably type out a page or two to get people started and show some examples.

Hopefully I can get a few people testing it and using it, because it really does work well. If anybody here is interested, I will provide some free AIM consulting to get you going with it.

Software Rundown
MagicBox is a mod_perl framework that transparently handles object caching, database caching, session management, and template management. It provides a flexible and extensible template interface, as well as a "Data Broker" interface for working with the database. You can even modify the database usage to work with multiple databases with different query sets very easily just by storing SQL files in a directory.

It traverses URLs like Object pathways, instead of actual files. If you have a module called, "Foo" that is your default you can access it by $ROOT/Foo or $ROOT/, as well as $ROOT/Anything/You/Want. Unless you have a module Anything.pm in your module path. Or if you have a function called Anything in your Foo.pm module. Get it? Hopefully, because these docs suck.

I'll package it up over tonight as much as I can, hopefully I'll get it all done.

Cheers!

I wrote a response to this jackass, Ed Stroligo, who wrote a nice little article.
You can read it here.

It is my first response, I hope you would enjoy it!

Updated - Someone with the name of "Stroligo" has responded. Whether it's him or not remains to be proven, but the counter points he has presented aren't exactly bullet-proof to say the least. I'll be curious to see how it goes.

Here's a link to his response.

Luckily the failure has to do with hardware, and not my idiocy. After the SSL shit I've been back to working on mod_perl and MagicBox. The new version of MagicBox impelements a new template engine, a data broker engine, as well as a revamped object system. The only thing that is the same is the session management. I'm also writing more documentation so people can actually use it. Woo.

Girlfriends laptop fizzled out during an upgrade to Mdk9.1. I think the hard drive was bad, and we just hadn't rebooted nor really used it in a long time. So, I gave her my laptop (which sucks, and I feel bad) to use. Gnome was running about 3 times faster than KDE so it's using Gnome right now. As long as she can type in Japanese and use Mozilla she's happy, so it all works out. I've gotten the approval to get a PowerBook to replace it after we get back from Japan. My printer finally printed something in the way it was supposed to. It's working great off of my machine, but this isn't exactly the best solution as I reboot into Windows (BF1942, and VPN access) so it'll be unavailable during those times. Oh well, maybe I'll mess with it under Gentoo a bit more.

The nerdfarm.org server died during a "routine upgrade." Colo people are (hopefully) diligently working on resolving the issues. Not sure when it will be back up again, but hopefully soon. Very soon. Without me losing any data.

I played Clue in Japanese on Saturday night. It's an interesting game in Japanese, and I won. It was Miss Scarlet, in the Billiard Room, with the Revolver. I drank a lot of Sake, but didn't get drunk. That is an irritating event. It was a good weekend, though, even admist all the hardware failures. Had a decent time with some friends on Saturday (See, I'm not antisocial) and got some good code done. Now I just need nerdfarm.org to go back up so I can start writing the nerdfarm code.

Player Vs. Player and Penny Arcade are having a good ol' fashioned zing-fest. It's worthy to check out, and it's pretty entertaining. I hope it continues for a few days. I would like to take this moment to say how grateful I am this isn't with Megatokyo or anything because Fred would just piss in his blog and not post a comic, or post a filler about a depressed robotic girl who is in love with a pedophile.

I just thought I'd get in on the action.